“No, no.” Vanya raised his hands. “Keep talking, Misha. Enlighten us with your grand and infinite wisdom.”

“Are they always like this?” Pelin asked, glancing my way.

I rolled my eyes. “You have no idea.”

“As I was about to say before Ivan interrupted me, imperial citizens fund the universities with their taxes,” Mikhail said evenly, turning back to me. “It would be a drain on resources to admit foreigners.”

“Call it what you will, young man. In any case, disregarding the university quota, the cap on medical permits issued to Yezmirskiy expats and Stranniki is one-tenth of a percent of each governorate’s respective populations.” Emre’s accent still softened the hard edges of his words, but his voice took on a different tone, becoming cool and clinical. I realized he was like Vanya—stepping between the roles he was expected to play, showing only parts of himself. “So, you do the math. One doctor per every thousand Yezmirskiy expats and Kosa-born residents of Yezmirskiy descent, and these include not just surgeons, but apothecarists, dentists, and physicians.”

“At first, we just showed off my father’s specimens and the medical devices we brought with us,” Pelin added. “But then Adélard’s Emporium of Oddities opened in the waterfront district.”

“After that, it became an arms race.” Emre smiled dryly. “If Adélard and his so-called ‘stuffed rusalka’ taught me anything, it’s that the reality doesn’t matter as much as the idea, the feeling. We needed a new angle, to reinvent ourselves.”

“It was my idea to bring in the rusalka act,” Pelin said, with a touch of satisfaction.

“And mine to be the upyr!” Aergul piped in.

Pelin rolled her eyes and lightly nudged her sister’s head. “No, it wasn’t.”

“I don’t care whose idea it was,” Vanya cut in. “I want my money back.”

Emre sighed.

“All right, all right.” He retrieved our coins from his leather pouch then hesitated. “You know what, forget the money. I think I can do you folks something even better. You say you’re traveling? Well, do you have a place to stay yet?”

“Not yet,” Mikhail said.

Emre jerked his chin upward. “We’ve got a spare room in the attic. It’s nice, airy, and we’ll throw in a free dinner too. Just as long as this act stays between us.”

21

The attic proved to be a large, drafty space crammed with such an assortment of oddities that, as we headed deeper in, I was a little nervous the floor might collapse beneath our feet. There was only one cot, shoved between a precarious stack of steamer trunks and a taxidermied creature that looked eerily human.

Vanya poked the creature’s snout, sending a scatter of sawdust seeping from a tear in its side. “There goes my sleep tonight. Forever, I should say.”

“What is it?” I asked, studying it closer. Half the creature’s face had been eaten away by mites, revealing the pale shelf of bone beneath its short brown fur.

He shrugged. “Your guess is as good as mine. A bear, maybe?”