Daughter of the Burning City

by Amanda Foody

  “True, I’m no fortune-worker, but I wish I’d only realized... Dalimil’s kidnapping could have angered Exander into retribution. Venera didn’t deserve that.” He sighs. “Sometimes I forget how much you’ve grown. You’re hardly a child anymore.”

  I don’t respond to this, though I definitely agree with him. I don’t feel like a child. I never did, really, but when I reflect over the past several weeks, I can’t help but remember my old self as childish.

  How could I possibly lead Gomorrah when I can’t even protect my family? When my anxiety threatens to send me into a panic every night? When I hardly know anyone in this Festival?

  Throughout our years of training, Villiam and I’ve never spoken about the obvious elephant in the room. I’m a freak. The proprietor has a responsibility to correspond with city leaders, to meet with them to organize Gomorrah’s travels, as well as to lead the city and the thousands of people in it. Who’s going to listen to me? The sight of me makes everyone uncomfortable. No matter how much I learn of Gomorrah, of history and of leadership, all that knowledge is lost if I’m unwanted.

  “It’s growing late,” I say. “Don’t you need to open Skull Gate?”

  “You’re right. It’s nearly sundown. I hadn’t even noticed that we’ve stopped moving.” He stands and approaches me. I think at first he’s going to kiss my forehead, as he often does, but instead he gets to his knees so that we are—theoretically—seeing eye to eye. “I don’t think I can in good conscience conceal this from you. Our informants returned this afternoon.”

  My heart skips a beat. “What did they say?”

  “I’m afraid Luca is the spy. He’s been corresponding with Exander through messengers. We believe he recognized your jynx-work for what it is, before even we did. Or, as you said, he hired a charm-worker to complete the links between your family and Up-Mountain politicians. We have evidence Exander selected all of the victims himself. He intends to break the Alliance and conquer the Up-Mountain cities.”

  Despite everything else Villiam just said, I can only hear one piece echoing in my mind: Luca is the spy.

  “I’m sorry,” he says, “I know you were hoping—”

  “It doesn’t matter.”

  “Of course it does. It—”

  “I’m going to see Kahina,” I say.

  Villiam’s face falls. “If you want to talk to me—”

  “It’s not you,” I say. I just don’t want to spend another second in this caravan. I don’t want to think about Luca and what he did to my family. I hate him like I’ve never hated anyone before.

  I befriended him.

  I kissed him.

  I thought, for a few precious moments, that I could love him. More important, I thought he could love me. The only person in my life besides Villiam and Kahina whom I didn’t imagine into being.

  Everything was a lie. One betrayal followed by another. My stomach knots.

  “You haven’t eaten anything,” Villiam says.

  “I’m not very hungry.” I gather my bag and head to the door. “What will happen to him?”

  “He’s going to be executed. Once we’ve determined how to get around his jynx-work.”

  I nod. Of course. But the thought of him dying, for good this time, pains my heart more than a little bit.

  “Sorina,” he says. He kisses my forehead. “I’m sorry.”

  “Me, too.”

  “I love you.”

  I smile weakly. “I love you, too.”

  * * *

  Kahina opens her door with a sorrowful expression on her face. “Oh, sweetbug. I haven’t seen you in days.”

  “It was Luca,” I sob. “He murdered them.”

  She opens her door wider for me to climb inside her caravan and then pulls me into a long embrace. The inside smells of freshly potted mulch and tea. After we split apart, she wraps a quilt around my shoulders, and I take off my mask and lie down on her bed.

  “Do you want to talk, sweetbug?” she asks. “Or do you want to sleep?”

  “Talk.” If I go to sleep, my family will reappear. I want to wait until we are inside our new tent, surrounded by Gomorrah’s guards. Even if the killer is locked away, I don’t feel safe. I might never feel safe. “You were right, you and Villiam. You told me not to trust Up-Mountainers.”

  “I never thought it would come to that,” she says. “I’m hardly happy to have been right.” She runs her fingers through my hair. “Where’s your family?”

  “Locked away.” I wrap the quilt tighter around myself. “Can you talk for a few minutes?” My voice sounds weak and broken through my sobs. “I just want to listen.”

  “Of course, sweetbug. Did you know Villiam has begun sending me the medicine? You don’t have to burden yourself with that anymore.”

  I’m surprised. She never wanted me to ask Villiam for money, even when I suggested it when she first grew ill. She said it would come from Gomorrah’s public funds, which helps everyone here. She’d rather die than inconvenience someone else. “You’re not a burden,” I say. “You’ve never been a burden.”

  She shows me her arm, the one covered in veins. “Do you see this? They used to snake all the way up to my shoulder. Now they’re barely past my elbow.” She massages my scalp. “I’m getting better. It’s taken years and an awful lot of medicine and worry on everyone’s parts, but you don’t have to fret about losing me. I’m not going anywhere.”

  At last, the crying stops. I try to sink deeper into her blankets. To relax. But all I can think about is Luca’s execution. How will they manage to kill someone who cannot die?

  I remember that conversation with him at the apothecary in Cartona. He believes Hellfire would do the trick. But I haven’t told that to anyone, and I don’t think he has, either.

  Should I have shared his theory with Villiam?

  Suddenly, there’s a shout from outside, and running, and the sound of doors slamming. I instantly think back to the Menagerie, to the time the Frician officials stormed the Festival. To the night Gill died.

  Kahina peeks out her window. “People are packing up their displays. We’ve barely opened.” She leans out farther. “There’s smoke ahead. Darker smoke than usual. Something is burning.” She pulls away, her expression grave. “I don’t think we’re welcome in Leonita.”

  I wipe my running nose and pull my hair out of my face. Anything to distract myself from my heartache. I’m with Kahina, who is not going to die of the snaking sickness. My family is inside my head, and they’re not going to die, either. I won’t let them. It doesn’t matter what’s happening outside.

  I’m in control.

  “What is going to happen to Luca?” she asks.

  “They’re executing him. Probably tonight.” I roll over onto my back so that I face her ceiling, covered in hanging plants. “I don’t want to go back to my tent.”

  “You don’t have to,” she says. “But I was wondering if you’d want to hear my suspicions. I was waiting until the verdict was announced, because it’s about Luca. About the Were’s Claw.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I’d never met Luca before, until Venera’s funeral,” she says. “When we shook the coin pot for him, I remember the fortune being foggy. The Were’s Claw felt distant, disconnected.” She grabs the coin from where it rests on her shelf and turns it over in her black-veined hand. “Once I met him, I knew there was something strange about him.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean there is a cloud of nothing around him. I see absolutely nothing in his fate.”

  “You weren’t touching him or doing a proper reading.”

  “I don’t think I would see anything then, either,” she says. “This is a nasty business, sweetbug. Terrible.” She grabs her jar of coins off the table and shakes it. A red coin
pops out beside the Were’s Claw. “The Coin of Falsehoods. Something we know isn’t true. Something is wrong with what we know.”

  What is she suggesting? That Luca is innocent? Our informants told us that he is the spy, that he is the killer.

  I’ve already made up my mind to hate him.

  “What’s wrong?” I ask. “What don’t we know?”

  “I’m trying to see into your fortune, but it’s blurry.” She closes her eyes and leans her head back, almost moaning. “There’s nothing around Luca at all. There’s nothing around any of your illusions.” She opens her eyes and squeezes the Coin of Falsehoods. “What is Luca’s jynx-work?”

  “Luca is a poison-worker,” I say.

  “The boy who cannot die,” she says. “No one cannot die, sweetbug. No one who truly walks this earth.”

  “What are you saying?”

  “I’m saying that could be the missing piece. Luca could be an illusion,” she says. “A freak.”

  Impossible.

  “That doesn’t make any sense. I never created him.”

  “You cannot always trust your mind,” she says. “Memory can be the clay of mind-workers. Memory changes each time you look back on it. Memory fades. If a worker looks into your mind, then pieces will be left behind. So the song goes.”

  I consider the time with Jiafu, when he swore he paid me, yet I didn’t remember it. When I stole his coins and later found my payment from him in my bedsheets. I think about the unknown origins of the purple butterfly Agatha preserved for me, and how she insisted I was the one who gave it to her.

  “I wouldn’t forget,” I say. “I wouldn’t forget making him.”

  But my words falter. Could I have? What if the killer is a mind-worker, who has been peering inside my head all along? Tuyet is a mind-worker, and certainly not the only one in Gomorrah. Anyone with that ability could see inside my thoughts, my memories, and figure out how to mold them.

  And if I were a charm-worker, they could be molding me.

  “If he’s an illusion—which I’m positive he’s not—then I can make him disappear,” I say, trying to sound confident, like Kahina’s words haven’t shaken me. “I can lock him in a Trunk, if I’m close enough.”

  And if he is an illusion, he could be a target like the others. If he is an illusion, he isn’t safe. Poison-worker or not.

  Not that I believe Kahina’s words. I don’t know any mind-workers. I couldn’t possibly forget creating an entire illusion. But her suspicions are still enough to worry me. If what she believes is true, Luca could face execution for a crime he didn’t commit.

  I have to find him. And once I do, I’ll make sure he doesn’t leave my side. I’ll tell Villiam our suspicions. Luca will be set free. We will all make progress. We’ll learn the truth. Together.

  My determination falters for a moment, remembering what Villiam told me. “But the informant...he said Luca was the spy,” I say.

  “The Coin of Falsehoods, though vague, is a reliable fortune,” she says.

  Luca could be innocent.

  And I let the guards take him.

  “I need to find him,” I say.

  “It’s dangerous,” she says.

  “I know. But I’ll be back. I’ll come back with him, and you can read him again. You’ll see he isn’t an illusion. And if he’s not...” He would still be guilty. “I don’t know. I don’t want him to die.”

  If they figured out how to kill him, he could already be dead.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  I sprint as fast as I can to the Menagerie, my mind in knots. Usually on our first night in a new city, the Festival bustles with activity. But Gomorrah is strangely empty, smelling of kettle corn and roasted cashews, waiting for patrons. An uneasiness hangs in the air that I can’t simply be imagining. The fortune-workers and other attractions of the Uphill don’t have their signs out, either because they aren’t expecting any visitors or because they don’t want any. I turn around toward the smoke Kahina mentioned, billowing black and ugly into Gomorrah’s dark sky. It’s coming from Skull Gate.

  Everywhere, people close the windows and doors of their caravans. They pack up, as if preparing to leave. Did Villiam give the warning to flee? I haven’t heard a horn.

  The commotion near the entrance to the Festival only makes me more anxious. I can’t help but picture Luca the way we found Venera, his throat slit. Or his back and chest riddled with stab wounds, like Gill.

  But Luca can’t die. If someone tries to kill him, he’ll just come back.

  Villiam said he murdered my family. So doesn’t he deserve to die?

  I don’t know what to believe. I haven’t known what to believe, what to do or anything since I held Gill’s lifeless body in my arms a month ago.

  I try to think about the idea of Luca being an illusion logically, to remove my emotional perspective, the way Villiam or Luca would want me to. But I can’t. Luca can’t be an illusion. Every illusion I’ve created has taken months of work, sketches and blueprints. How could I forget all of that? How could I forget creating him?

  A painful stitch develops in my side, so I half walk, half jog the rest of the way to the Menagerie. The slow pace grates on me, only adding to my sense of anxiety and urgency.

  My heel crunches on something in the grass. I bend down and pick up the pieces of three charms, which look as if they were broken even before I stepped on them. Someone ground them into the dirt.

  Suddenly, I recognize them. They’re the charms Luca had made to protect him from Hellfire. He had them sewn into that atrocious vest he always wears. Maybe Agni found them in his shirt, brought them out to show Villiam and then smashed them beyond repair.

  Fear boils in my stomach. What if Luca really is an illusion? What if he’s the next target, linked to another political figure? What if someone has discovered the secret to killing him?

  I run around the Menagerie to the main entrance, toward the clearing that leads directly to the Festival’s entrance. The Menagerie, being at the dead center of Gomorrah, is also the dead center of trouble.

  I run directly toward the chaos.

  Up-Mountain officials swarm around the clearing, iron masks concealing their faces. In front of them, members of Gomorrah protest. A few of them have swords of their own, but they don’t have them brandished. They seem to be in a standoff with the officials, not willing to attack in case it causes a full-out brawl. The officials would not hesitate to kill them if that happened.

  Skull Gate is burning in the distance. A crowd points at the Leonitian officials who stand behind it, their torches raised as they push into the Festival. They carry short swords pointing out, daring anyone to approach them. A few people turn and run. The others are more defiant. Members of the guard untie their jackets and reveal their black uniforms beneath. They pull on masks that cover all but their eyes.

  “We’re looking for the proprietor,” one of the officials says.

  Well, they’re certainly going to get his attention by burning down Skull Gate.

  I wonder if I should step forward. I could take over as the proprietor here, try to bring the situation under control. If Villiam were here, that’s what he would tell me to do. Gomorrah comes before anything else, even family.

  But suddenly I realize that I can’t do that. I never could. As much as I love the Festival, I would abandon this life in a heartbeat if it meant keeping my family safe. And maybe that means I’ll never be the sort of proprietor Gomorrah needs.

  That’s what Villiam would say.

  Or maybe it means I’m simply kind of heart. That’s what Kahina would tell me.

  One of Gomorrah’s guards approaches the official. “We’ve already sent someone for the proprietor. In the meantime, we ask you to wait outside. You’re distressing our residents.”

 
“We have orders from our new lord to make this Festival of Sin leave,” the official says. “Thanks to the sin and impurity your Festival has brought to our land, our previous lord has been consumed by his snaking sickness, may he rest in peace.”

  “We don’t give a shit about your lords,” the guard says.

  The official makes a move to smack him across the head with the handle of his sword, but the guard catches it and yanks the official off his horse.

  The old lord is dead? That means that the new lord is Exander, the leader of the Alliance. A shiver of dread trickles down my spine as I realize that the most powerful man in the Up-Mountains now leads its most formidable city-state.

  Someone bumps into my shoulder as they run past, knocking me to the side. Others follow, fleeing from the officials. They haven’t come here with peace on their minds. Who knows what devastation they could cause before Villiam gets here?

  With my moth illusion to conceal me, I slip around the crowds to the Menagerie’s entrance. The taxidermied animals, many of them knocked over, stare at me as I enter. I cannot shake the image of a dead Luca out of my mind. Dead like these old Gomorrah performers. Even if he can’t really die.

  In more ways than one, it makes sense that Luca could be an illusion. His poison-working is an anomaly, maybe just as bizarre as Crown’s nails or Hawk’s wings. And Kahina cannot see anything in his fortune. Tuyet struggled to hear his thoughts.

  But what does that say about me? That I may have fallen in love with one of my own illusions, someone I created?

  No wonder Luca, with his handsome face and strange abilities, fell for someone like me. The only person who could love a freak is another freak.

  I step inside the empty main show room, lit by five torches near the center ring. The Menagerie tent is massive. There are dozens of tunnels, hundreds of hiding places. I search around the room for one of those tunnels and choose a small, concealed one, probably meant for the performers to enter the backstage area. This is where they were keeping Dalimil, but he’s no longer here.

  The inside is barely lit, and it reeks of animal droppings. There don’t seem to be any actual animals here right now, thank goodness. The last thing I need is to run into a chimera.