While we’re gathered together in our sitting room, seated on the floor among peanut shells and junk that no one has bothered to clean, Nicoleta tells the group that she thinks sleeping in the same tent together will cheer everyone up. I, unwilling to participate and be the bearer of bad news, focus on my book. Neither Crown nor Tree seem to care much one way or the other, but Hawk and Unu and Du complain about it until nearly sunrise.
“Du has morning breath. I’m not sleeping next to him.”
“Hawk snores.”
“Unu sleep-talks. It’s terrifying.”
“Then sleep at opposite sides of the room,” Nicoleta snaps. She rubs her temples, and I brace myself for the complaints I’m bound to hear later about one of her stress headaches. “Hawk, you can trade places with Crown.”
“But his feet—” Du starts.
Nicoleta grabs him by his ear. “If I hear your voice again in the next ten minutes, I’ll shave you both bald in your sleep.” Both of their jaws drop in expressions of horror. Unu and Du’s impressive manes of brown hair are their pride and joy.
Nicoleta takes a deep breath to compose herself. Her hair has fallen piece by piece out of her bun, and she scratches at the dry skin on her arms, leaving streaks across her biceps. “Venera, you can sleep in Sorina’s room to make room for the others.”
I look up at the mention of my name. Villiam likely expects me to have the reading finished for when we meet again the day after tomorrow, but Venera would be a welcome distraction. I’m currently skimming the book about Gomorrah’s proprietors, though the stories are rife with bloodshed.
Hawk digs into her pouch of lucky coins. Earlier today, she and Unu and Du traded some of theirs in the gambling neighborhood.
“Look at the one I got, Sorina,” Hawk says. “I’m not interrupting you, am I?”
“No,” I say. I need a break. I don’t have the attention span to read an entire book in one sitting.
She hands me the coin. It’s the Necromancer, a rarer coin than even the Beheaded Dame. Unu and Du are probably seething with her finding this. I flip through the pages of the book until I find the Necromancer.
“She was a proprietor of Gomorrah shortly after the city burned. She’s credited with the charm that keeps the city burning. Legend goes that she bound the souls of the dead to the city walls, who, eternally smoldering, cloak the city in its smoke.”
Her eyes widen. “That’s why there’s smoke?”
“It’s just a legend.”
“All legends in Gomorrah are true,” Unu says devilishly, having overheard pieces of our conversation. Hawk whitens.
“Don’t you two have chores?” I ask them. “Shouldn’t you be taking care of the horses?” The animals are Unu and Du’s only job.
They skulk outside, leaving Hawk to stare nervously at her new lucky coin.
“It’s not real,” I say, even though it might be.
She nods slowly. “You missed Kahina. She stopped by earlier and brought us all caramel rice cakes.”
“How did she look?” Her most recent supply of medicine is probably running low. I will have to pay Jiafu a visit later. He has had ample time to sell Count Pomp-di-pomp’s ring in Cartona.
“She looked about the same. Do you want a rice cake?”
“That’s all right. I’m still full from Crown’s kebabs.”
I close my book and head back to my room, sectioned off from the rest of the tent by a tapestry. It’s mainly full of pillows and the specimens of my bug collection, which Venera doesn’t particularly mind. She follows me back there, lacking her usual makeup, her brown hair braided down to her waist. “Mind if I join you?” she asks.
I sit down and scoot over to give her room. “This is your room now, too.”
Venera sits, a stack of papers on her lap. She manages all the books and financials of the Freak Show. The rest of us can’t handle working with so many numbers, but Venera can not only do all the math in her head, she seems to enjoy it, as well. She finds the repetition and mindlessness comforting. I don’t find it mindless at all, probably because I’m not half as smart as her. I wish other people knew Venera as I do; our neighbors merely view her as a party girl, leaving every night with a face full of makeup and returning each morning at the early hours of dawn.
“Why do you think Nicoleta has us on lockdown?” she asks.
“No idea,” I lie.
“I think she’s shaken up about Blister. She was supposed to be watching him.” Venera’s voice is steady, as if we were discussing the weather, not our dead baby brother. Venera has always had a talent for distancing herself from anything unpleasant. Apparently it’s a skill I need to develop, as well.
“I don’t mind us all being here,” I say. In the other room, Unu and Du bicker about who gets the last caramel rice cake, somehow already finished caring for the horses. Nicoleta snaps at Hawk—no, she hasn’t finished the laundry. She has a pounding headache.
“Let’s talk about something different.” Venera sets her papers aside and leans back into the pillows. “Any special someone in your life?”
I smile at the familiarity of the conversation. As if our lives are still normal.
“If there was, you’d be the first to know,” I say. “What about you? Anyone you’re off seeing when you leave after the shows?”
She rolls to her left so that her back faces me. “I don’t know.”
“What do you mean, you don’t know?”
“I mean that I don’t know. No one is interested in someone who isn’t even real.”
Her words linger in the air for a few moments and then she continues.
“Men like me. I mean, I can bend myself backward, twice. Then I discover the next day they don’t want to see me again. They say, ‘I just wanted to know what it was like. It’s a better version of jerking off.’ I’m just a fantasy they can touch.” Venera curls herself into a ball, and I don’t know whether to hug her or not. She has never mentioned anything like this to me before. I don’t know what to say. I wasn’t prepared for such a sudden outpouring of emotion. “I’m sorry to tell you all these things. Out of the blue.”
“Who said these things to you?”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“It does to me. I’ll show them another illusion they can touch. One with claws. And horns—”
“I don’t want you to go after them,” she says.
“Why not? You are not one step above jerking off. You are the smartest person with numbers I know. You could give a pep talk to a man chin-deep in quicksand. You’re funny and sincere and a joy to be around, and they tell you you’re a better version of jerking off? How would they like to be jerked off by a horseshoe crab?”
Even though I can’t see her face, I’m sure she’s smiling.
“I don’t want you to do that,” she says.
“Well, what do you want?”
“I want to find another job for when I’m not working at the Freak Show, something to keep me busy besides parties. Maybe I could handle Gomorrah’s books like I do for the show, if Villiam will let me,” she says. “And I want to meet someone who sticks around. I want kids, if that’s possible. I want to know how to go through life not being really alive.”
I can’t think of anything to say to that.
* * *
Our first suspect is a man named Narayan who lives at the edge of the Uphill, on the opposite side of the Festival from the Freak Show. This explains why I’ve never seen him before. During the early hours of the night, he works for an attraction called the Show of Mysteries, in which a man uses mechanical contraptions to make it appear as if he has achieved the impossible. Like turning pigeons into butterflies. Or sawing a beautiful woman in half.
“Narayan is the only actual mystery in the show,” Luca says. He wears an outrageous puffed-sleeve shirt that I assume he had before joining Gomorrah, since no one I know would be caught dead in it. The fabric is shiny and expensive, with silver strands woven into the sleeves and faux diamond buttons. During all his time spent at the Festival, he has somehow managed to keep it stainless and pure white.
“In his act, Narayan enters a coffin standing up in the center of the stage. Then the magician inserts swords inside. Narayan has the ability to lose his solid form, so that he can walk through the walls of the coffin and the floor without the audience knowing. He calls it ghost-work.”
The two of us pass the Menagerie tent. I glance at the swan dragon banner under which a Frician official hacked off that man’s fingers last week. The air smells of licorice cherries, a scent I’ve come to associate with the comfort of home.
But it doesn’t smell comforting now, on our walk to uncover a murderer.
“I know Narayan because he holds a second job working in the Downhill for a man named Jiafu, a ringleader of thieves. Perhaps you know him, Sorina?” Luca asks, then looks at me pointedly.
How does he know about Jiafu?
“I might be acquainted with him,” I say. I expect Luca to reply with a statement of judgment, but he doesn’t.
“I picked Narayan to visit first because you have this common acquaintance,” he says.
I’ve never met one of Jiafu’s other cronies, and though it’s not impossible, I doubt that Narayan’s work with him would translate into any sort of a motive. What would he stand to gain? I’m not Jiafu’s favorite crook, by any stretch. I’ve worked a few minor jobs. None worth killing over.
“I’ve already arranged for Narayan to speak with us,” Luca says. He swings his black cane through the air in a loop. “So he’ll be here.”
“How did you manage that?” I ask.
He shrugs. “I paid him.”
“You didn’t have to do that,” I say. Working the way he does, money must be precious to him. Though I find myself surprisingly pleased that he would choose to spend some on helping me.
“Consider it a gift.” He hesitates when he sees my pursed lips. “Is something wrong?”
Besides the amount of reading I crammed into my brain earlier today, I’m still uneasy after my conversation with Venera. I had no idea she wanted a family. Can she have one? When I created my illusions, I always thought about who they would be for me, not the independent lives they would lead. I have created living, functioning people. Is that normal for illusion-workers? Villiam said he’s done as much research as possible into my abilities, but surely my family isn’t normal?
I’m interviewing a suspect in mere moments. I can’t be distracted.
“No, I just have a lot on my mind,” I say.
“Understandably so. Take a deep breath.”
I do.
“Hold it.”
I do.
“Now picture someone annoying in their underwear.”
My mind naturally goes to an image of him. I’m so startled by this command and mortified at my own thoughts that I let out of bark of nervous laughter.
“Feel better?” he asks. “It’s what I do before my shows.”
“Um, yes,” I say, my cheeks growing warm. “Let’s just get this over with.”
We step inside the tent to the Show of Mysteries. It’s overly decorated, in my opinion. Chairs painted with purple glitter. The stage torches each burn a different color—the result of the same fire-work that keeps the Downhill’s torches green and the Uphill’s white. Black-and-red-striped tape lines the stage.
Narayan sits on the stage, his skinny legs dangling off it. He has deep brown skin and wears his hair in one long braid that reaches his tailbone, and his pointed eyebrows are dyed silver. He looks to be in his midtwenties, maybe older. The intensity of his eyebrows overshadows any further impression of his other facial features.
“Hello,” Luca says cheerfully, as if we’ve come around for tea. “I hope we haven’t inconvenienced you by meeting so soon.”
“Not at all,” he says. “I needed a break, you know? My girl back home is ready to pop—” he makes an exaggerated circular motion over his stomach “—and you know how they get. Driving me mad. All she does is order me around while she sits back, complaining about her mother or her sister. I need a breather.” He reaches behind him and pulls out a beer bottle.
“Well, he’s a talker,” Luca mutters beside me.
As we walk closer, Narayan gets a clearer view of us. He studies Luca’s expensive clothes and walking stick briefly, but his eyes rest on me. “How do you see out of that thing on your face?” he asks. I’m surprised he doesn’t immediately know who I am, and Luca’s words from a few nights ago enter my mind: You’re not that important.
“I manage,” I say coolly.
“That’s a woman for you. Eyes on the back of their heads.”
“You remember why we’re here, don’t you?” Luca asks.
“You’re going to ask me questions.” He sets his beer bottle down, leaps off the stage and staggers for a moment before collapsing in an audience seat. “Ask away.”
Luca doesn’t make eye contact while asking his questions. He examines the bottom of his walking stick and then taps it against the toe of his shoe. “We were curious about your ghost-work. It’s not very common, is it?”
He jabs his thumb at his chest. “You’re looking at the only one.”
“I’ve seen your act before,” Luca says. “I imagine you simply use your ghost-work to fall right from the coffin through the floor, right?”
“Yep. There’s space under the stage. I keep snacks down there.”
Luca smirks. “What kind of snacks?”
“Beer.”
This man doesn’t seem like he could have killed Gill and Blister. Not only does he lack a motive, I doubt he’s smart enough to have committed two murders and thrown suspicion off himself each time. And his ghost-work doesn’t seem to be the kind that would make illusions killable. Not that I know what that jynx-work might be, but this one doesn’t feel right.
“Have you been busy lately?” Luca asks. “The show performs every night, does it not?”
“Every night. I usually get one night off a week, but lately I’ve been staying on. Babies are expensive. So my girl keeps telling me.”
“So were you working two nights ago?”
“Yep. Working every night except when we were traveling.” He finishes off his beer. “Gets me away from my woman.”
“Uh-huh,” I say with disgust, thinking of Venera’s troubles. People like him are the reason I have trust issues. “So do we get to see your ghost-work?”
“Sure, if you want.” He holds out his hand. “Shake it.”
I reach for it but swipe only at air. I wiggle my fingers in the empty space that appears to be Narayan’s wrist.
“Almost like an illusion,” Luca says. He grabs my arm and pulls me back toward him, and then he leans down to my ear. “What do you think of his jynx-work?”
“He’s not smart enough,” I whisper back.
“That’s not his jynx-work.”
“And he has an alibi that we can verify with the manager of the Show of Mysteries.”
Luca sighs. “You’re not much of an outside-the-box thinker, are you? He could be lying. There could be something to his jynx-work we don’t know about.”
“He’s a drunk, Luca.”
“I’m certainly not disagreeing with you about that.”
Narayan points between us. “You’re both jynx-workers?” We nod. “What kind?”
“Poison-worker,” Luca says.
“What does that mean?”
“It means I can’t die, even if you kill me.”
“No shit? Can I try to kill you? Uh, if you don’t mind—”
“I have a show in the Downhill. Pay up and you can.”
Narayan nods enthusiastically. “Yeah, I think I will. Sounds fun. No offense, but you look like you’d be fun to kill.”
“What do you mean?”
Narayan makes motions over the top of his head. “Your hair. It’s too everywhere. It annoys me.”
“Well, that’s rather harsh.” Luca turns around, twisting a blond strand around his finger. “Does my hair annoy you, Sorina?”
My face warms. Why is he asking me? As if I cared about his hair. “Your hair is fine.”
“I think that’s all of our questions,” Luca says. “Thanks, Narayan. I know you’re a busy man. I’ll send your wife a gift for the baby.”
His face softens with a loopy grin. “Our fortune-worker said it’s a girl. She’ll be a pretty one, like her momma.”
When we leave the tent, I say to Luca, “You’re awfully formal to a drunk.”
Luca shrugs. “So what are you going to get his daughter?”
“Me? I didn’t agree to that.”
“It’s polite,” he says.
I mutter a curse under my breath. I suppose I could ask Kahina to make the baby a life quilt. She loves making those.
“We’ll go see the next person tomorrow,” Luca says. I almost demand to know why we’re not seeking out anyone else tonight but catch myself, remembering that Luca has a whole life of his own outside this investigation. He probably has a prettyman to share crumpets with or something equally as absurd to do later. And I can’t expect progress to be made overnight.
“Same time?” he asks.
“That’s fine. But I’m not leaving yet. I’m following you to the Downhill. I need to talk to Jiafu.”
We pass through the food market at the back corner of the Uphill that caters to Gomorrah residents, not to visitors. It’s been months since we’ve been in the Down-Mountains, so most of the food is local. Fresh apples and pears. Beef, poultry and deer meat hang from wooden stakes, rubbed with salt for preservation.
Luca waves to a few of the vendors and calls them by name. I grimace. I’ve come here my entire life to shop for food, and I don’t know any of their names. Luca’s lived in Gomorrah for less than a year, and he’s managed to make friends with half the Festival. How am I supposed to be proprietor if I don’t know anyone?
“What do you do for Jiafu?” Luca asks.
“Don’t you already know?”
“Yes. I do. I’m just making conversation. Does Villiam know that you help Jiafu steal from patrons during your shows?” His voice lacks the judgmental bite I’m used to from Nicoleta and Gill about my side work.
“Villiam doesn’t know,” I say.
“Ah, Gomorrah’s princess doesn’t have as clean a nose as Villiam believes.” Luca smiles the way our fortune-worker neighbor smiles when hearing a fresh piece of gossip. It occurs to me that Luca is simply a paler, younger, male version of her—the local gossip, only with more entitlement. “Why do you need to meet with Jiafu?”
“He still owes me my cut from the last job. It’s time for me to collect.”
“That sounds quite amusing. Would you object to me spectating?”
“Go ahead.” Usually Jiafu isn’t difficult about paying me, but I’ve never had to ask for it so long after the job. An audience could be advantageous. Jiafu is uncomfortable being the center of attention.
We pass the fence between the Uphill and the Downhill. Above us, the crescent moon glows dimly over the mountains. In a little over an hour, the birds will start chirping, and the sun will rise, and drunks will skulk outside in the Downhill.
I lead Luca in the direction opposite the path to his tent, where Jiafu’s caravan is parked in between a brothel and a tavern. Black paint covers every inch of it, so it practically blends into the darkness. Appropriate for a shadow-worker. Having a flashy caravan would be bad for business, when business hinges on not being noticed.
I knock on his door. “It’s me,” I say. It’s early enough that Jiafu will be awake but not out and about.
“’Rina?” he says from inside. “What’d I do to have to see your ugly face again?”
I wince. Maybe having Luca as an audience wasn’t the best idea. “You didn’t pay me.”
“Yeah, I did.”
“Don’t shit with me.” I knock harder on the door. “Open up.”
He swings open the door. On the ground below him, his shadow twists and curls in the torchlight, marking him as a shadow-worker. His left eye is sporting an impressive shiner.
I smirk as I climb inside, Luca behind me. “Who gave you that?”
“I gave you your money two days ago. I handed it right to you.” He flicks my forehead. “Don’t tell me you lost it, cousin.”
“Lost it? You never gave it to me!”
He grabs fistfuls of hair in each hand and yanks his head back. For a shadow-worker, he has quite the dramatic flair. “It was two days ago. In the late afternoon. You were coming back with your whole lot of illusions from the baby’s funeral. I put it in your hand. I offered my condolences, and I left. Are you mental now or something?” He glances at Luca. “And who’s this Up-Mountainer? Your boyfriend? Come to convince me to pay you twice? He’s not much of a muscle, ’Rina—”
“You’re lying,” I say. “You’re never awake that early.”
“How would I even know about the funeral thing if I wasn’t there?” He points at the door. “Get out. You’re a lunatic.”
I flinch at the insult, my hands shaking. I would remember it if Jiafu paid me after the funeral. It’s not as if I would’ve forgotten. Which means he’s lying and trying to make me second-guess myself. It’s a pretty poor attempt. And it’s embarrassing in front of Luca, who might be starting to think that I really am crazy.
I rack my brain for an illusion terrorizing enough to make Jiafu piss himself. Venomous moths come to mind, the golden ones from the rainforests in the Vurundi Lands.
They appear one at a time, buzzing inside the cart.
“Don’t you pull this shit,” Jiafu says.
More moths appear, their eyes black, their stingers sharp and as long as my thumb. My Strings vaguely appear around my feet from using so much illusion-work, and I step aside so as not to get tangled up in them.
“I’m not kidding. Stop this.” He backs away from the moths toward the opposite wall of his cart. “You don’t want to fuck with me, ’Rina.”
The moths attack him, swarming as he swats at them and screams. While Jiafu falls to the floor in a fit, I reach into his pocket and pull out his coin purse. Then I jump out of the caravan. I’ll make the moths go away in a few minutes, once we’re far gone.
“Was that wise?” Luca asks. “He’s a criminal, who is acquainted with other, scarier criminals.”
“I’m pretty scary, too.”
In the caravan opposite us, an old man peeks his head outside to figure out where the screaming is coming from.
“What if he sends one of these criminals to your place tomorrow morning to threaten you or the others?” Luca asks.
I swallow. Maybe it was a reckless move. But I need the money for Kahina. He should’ve paid me what he owed me. “I have this friend who is half tree. He’s seven feet tall. He’s made of bark, the sharp kind—”
Luca rolls his eyes. “Don’t act like you thought that through one bit.”
Where does he get off thinking he can act like my father? He’s not exactly responsible, allowing people to kill him all the time. What if something happens, and his head rolls off the stage, but he never wakes up? Does he even know what kind of fire he’s playing with?
But his company is growing on me, and he is helping me, so I’m not going to yell at him. Not over this. Instead, I change the subject.
“Do you want to go into Cartona with me tomorrow afternoon? I know that’s rather early...” I say, holding up the coin purse. “But I have some shopping to do.”
His face darkens. “Is it wise to go into Cartona?”
“Of course it is. I’ve been in plenty of cities before.”
“This far north in the Up-Mountains? They won’t take kindly to someone like you.”
I straighten my mask. Someone like me. Someone deformed. “I’ve dealt with unpleasant people before. I can handle myself.” I shake my head. “Never mind. Forget I asked.”
He opens his mouth to say something and then abruptly shuts it. “Then...enjoy your trip.”