The Price {Completed}

Chapter Nine

I never knew exactly when Ferdinand was dismissed from the company. One night I danced with him and the next the Funeral Dance was cut from the show and I performed a solo. His picture and name were stripped from the posters and advertisements. He no longer danced for the Lennox Company, and I didn't see his departure. A goodbye hadn't even been a distant dream.

                Listening to Mr. Lennox's words, I tried not to let Ferdinand's leaving get as far as my heart. Whether Mr. Lennox had fired him, or he had left because of the beating, no one told me. But he was gone, and he made no attempt to talk to me. I had caused him so much pain that I did not blame him. But I couldn't let that effect my dancing. I pushed him firmly from my mind, locking the memory of the room beneath the stage and the feeling of his hands against mine into a dark corner of my mind that I carefully made sure to avoid. Now I had to focus on my dancing, for without Ferdinand's star power our popularity took a turn for the worse.

                The nobles slowly came less and less until our private boxes stood empty and the majority of the seats went empty during performances. We were forced into lowering our ticket prices in order to be sure that the only customers we had left, the factory workers and their families, could afford to come. So amongst the plush velvet and dazzling sparkling costumes, whole families in ragged clothes and struggling to keep the smallest children quiet looked out of place. I wished that we still performed in the old school house where the audience wouldn't look as uncomfortable as they did, and we wouldn't be touted in every newspaper around as the failing new project of the Crown. We became symbols of a king's old fashioned and destructive follies. A wound spurting money in an already crippled kingdom.

                Without me really noticing it, the ranks of our audience became to switch out from the factory workers to men wearing white uniforms. They seemed to invade so gradually that I only noticed them when I bowed during one show and looked up to see a sea of them, stretching before me. They clapped as if it was their job, their mouths thin lines in their serious faces. And right in front of me I saw the familiar figure of Doctor Alkaev. He had swapped out the suit from the party into a uniform like the men around him. His bore a gold sash across his chest that made my stomach clench with unease.

                When the curtains fell and Mr. Lennox pulled my arm through his to walk me back to the practice room, Doctor Alkaev intercepted us. He raised a hand in greeting and Mr. Lennox shook it.

                "How are you, Alkaev?" he said, motioning for Gertrude and the others to walk ahead. He didn't say one way or the other what I was supposed to do, but when I tried to extract my arm, he looked down and shook his head.

                I still wasn't trusted on my own, then.

                "I would like to introduce you to Karl Matveev," Alkaev said, turning to rest his hand on the shoulder of a young man with a dour looking face and broad shoulders. His hair fell in a youthful flop across his forehead, but he seemed completely unaware of being only a few years older than me. He offered his hand to Mr. Lennox and nodded his head in greeting.

                "Doctor Alkaev has said much about you, Mr. Lennox," Matveev said.

                Mr. Lennox nodded at the young man's sleeve as he shook his hand. "You wear the Rose of Freedom. You are a supporter of the Vigilant Men's stance?"

                I stiffened, my eyes seeking out that white cloth rose that was tucked away almost hidden beneath his cuff. Matveev pulled down his jacket sleeve until the rose disappear under it.

                Doctor Alkaev broke the tension by clapping both men on the shoulder and pushing them along the hallway until we came to the practice room. I went inside expecting to see my fellow dancers, but instead seeing a group of white-uniformed men. They looked up at our entrance and greeted Mr. Lennox with raised glasses of clear liquor.