by Amanda Foody
“Do you actually know everyone in Gomorrah?” I ask.
“No. Maybe a fifth or so directly, and about half through information.”
I smirk. Not quite as impressive as he makes himself seem.
“And you get all your information from...prettymen and prettwomen?”
“A lot of information but not quite. I also make friends with everyone who sells necessities, like food, water, the tax collector. Because if you know them, you’ll have a connection to everyone in Gomorrah.”
“I suppose that makes sense. But why bother with any of this? Why are you a gossip-worker? You don’t get paid for it, like you do for your shows.”
He shrugs. “Like I said, the people here interest me. They’re nothing like the people at home, who are bound by the rules of Ovren and purity.” The bitterness gives his voice a sharper edge. His walking stick clacks against the shards of a broken beer bottle, and he kicks it. “You know, now that you’ve seen one of my shows, maybe I should see one of yours. When is the next one?”
“Probably once we reach the next city.” No one feels in the mood to perform without Blister or Gill, but unfortunately, we’ll run out of money if we’re not generating ticket sales. Villiam gave us the rest of the time in Cartona off, but once we reach Gentoa, we’ll need to put our performance smiles back on.
We pass a bordello tent nearly five stories tall, leaning to the side and looking like a strong wind could blow it over. The tent is entirely bright pink, and dancing outside the door is Yelema, the prettywoman who was having tea with Luca when I first walked into his tent. She waves at him, and I try not to stare too much at her dancing, even if I’m a little transfixed by her suggestive routine.
Luca waves back with barely a passing glance.
“I’ve heard there’s a man at your show whose hair is made of nails,” Luca says.
I pull my gaze away from Yelema’s hips. “That’s Crown.”
“Now, I don’t know a lot about how illusion-work is done, but I’m assuming you came up with that idea. My question is...how?”
“Not exactly. I imagined all my illusions in vivid detail before creating them, but I never imagined them to be, well, freaks. That part is beyond my control. I don’t know why. Villiam thinks it’s my subconscious.”
“Your subconscious?” he asks.
“I’m a little unique.” I tap my mask. “So I tend to like people like myself, apparently. And it’s hard to run a Freak Show if we’re all normal.”
“I can see the sense in that. People who are different—freaks, as you say—tend to enjoy the company of those like themselves.”
We near the stake fence at the edge of the Downhill, with all its trash and charms. Lightning bugs blink throughout the Uphill, gathering around the glowing paper lanterns or along the dewy grass. Luca reaches out and cups one in his hand.
“I used to put them in jars as a kid,” he says. “Don’t worry. I let them out afterward. I recall your sentiments about cockroaches.”
“There are huge lightning bugs in the Great Mountains called blinking beetles. They’re the size of hummingbirds.”
Luca lifts up his cupped hands and peeks at the lightning bug inside. “Another bit of information I’ll never need to know.” He lets the bug go, and it hovers between the two of us, blinking.
“As if spying on people and learning every detail of their lives is somehow useful information.”
“I do not spy on people,” he says haughtily.
“Then what do you do?”
“I...” He pauses. “I also do other things, besides my gossip-working and being publicly killed. I like stargazing. I know quite a bit about stars.”
We pass through the clearing and enter the Uphill, where most of the activities are winding down for the night. Everything closes here much earlier than in the Downhill. Residents clean up the food wrappers and trash littered throughout the grass outside their caravans. Some take their laundry off the lines or throw tarps over their tents in case of rain.
“Like what?” I ask. The only things I know about stars are the nonsense Villiam tells me.
“Right now, it’s the constellation of the lion.” Luca points to a pattern in the night sky. “Once a year, the moon will position itself directly behind the lion’s head like a mane. It’s said that on that day each year, a king is either made or falls.”
“When is it?”
“It already passed a few days ago. I don’t know about any kings coming or going, though. It’s just a story the town loon used to tell.”
We approach the Freak Show tent, with its black and red stripes and shimmering glass ball at its peak. Tree stands beside our sign, slouched slightly but not quite sleeping, and blending into the forest scenery. He watches us approach, particularly Luca. “A bit fancier than my little platform,” he says, then startles. “Oh, I didn’t see him there.” He eyes Tree up and down and then extends his hand.
Tree doesn’t move.
Luca moves the hand away and shoves it in his pocket. His eyes narrow as he inspects Tree, as if making sure he’s awake. I stifle a laugh. No one seems to understand Tree besides me. “So,” he says awkwardly, “I’ll see you tomorrow, then.”
Both of us pause, and I’m not sure why. Perhaps because this walk has felt very casual, that a lot of our relationship feels casual, when it is centered around the deaths of my uncle and baby brother. It was somehow surprisingly easy to forget that fact when I was at his tent, bickering about things that don’t matter, but now we’re here, in front of my tent and the grief it houses.
A few minutes ago, I was someone else. Someone distanced from the despair here.
But now that I’m back, I’m Sorina again.
“I’ll see you tomorrow,” I say. “Thanks for the company.”
He doesn’t say anything but simply nods and walks down the path.
I decided earlier we weren’t going to be friends. But as I watch him disappear into the smoke, I suppose I could warm up to him. This partnership won’t be a complete disaster.
I turn to Tree, who leans down over me so that his leaves itch the back of my neck. One of them falls at my feet. “You’re shedding,” I tell him.
He pokes my cheek with one of his twigs, which scratches me. He forgets which parts of me tickle and which do not.
I tickle him under his arm, and his laughs make his leaves shake as if a wind blew through him. “You’re not usually in the Festival at night. Are you keeping watch?”
He nods. His eyes are wide. He’s worried. He’s missing Gill and Blister.
I rub behind his ear. “We’ll protect them, don’t you worry.”
CHAPTER TEN
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 he
rself. 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.