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To see Eva Yan in the Broken Heart was to see the tsarina holding court. She glowed there, although it could have just been a trick of the light. Her hair tumbled down her back in golden curls, her eyes the very same shade. She was, he realized, quite like Vera Verba. The gilt bangles adorning her arms must have been from the very same craftsman. It humanized Eva, to know that she was a customer to the same mundane artisans as any other Townswoman. They were finely wrought — they suited her.
One almost expected to see a crown atop her regal head. It would have suited her well. It would have explained the captive air that announced her presence. Something about Eva Yan just made people want to please her. There were none more affected than the two unlikeliest of compatriots — utopians in reluctant detente. Despite the wishes of both participants, relations were thawing, in recognition of a greater enemy — carefree ignorance.
It was hard to explain the look of their eyes as they gazed at her. Andrey Stamatin’s eyes softened. He wasn’t so fierce when it came to her. It was a peculiar thing. Such a harsh man, yet he became something else entirely for her. Still a wild card, but a chained bear. He entertained the tsarina, but could do no more, lest she be frightened. Men marveled at the way she carelessly held his tether, how deeply he revered her flighty grasp. The moment he snapped at someone, she’d fix him with a look more ethereal than reproachful — this was nothing for her to see — and he’d save his vitriol for another day.
Yulia Lyuricheva’s eyes brightened. She became the master of ceremony. She inducted an endless stream of entertainers: ballet, acrobatics, tableaux — butchers, brides, odonghe. Anything to entertain her tsarina. One might have expected jealousy as Eva flitted between amusements, and certainly Yulia felt it, but she never revealed it. That remarkably clever mind, in all its delicate calculus, momentarily lost its razor edge, that she might feel the glide of a golden hand, the sort of token that could sustain a person for an age. Eva applauded for singers and danced with brides, mimicking their steps ineptly. Her light steps and touches seem to catch the light.
Eva arched her arms, she floated through the air, she advanced and retreated, and yet all of it was somehow hollow. He contemplated it. He remembered a girl just as golden and bewitching, a girl who could have held them all in her hand, had her careless masters freed her.