A darkly irresistible new fantasy set in the infamous Gomorrah Festival, a traveling carnival of debauchery that caters to the strangest of dreams and desires

Sixteen-year-old Sorina has spent most of her life within the smoldering borders of the Gomorrah Festival. Yet even among the many unusual members of the traveling circus-city, Sorina stands apart as the only illusion-worker born in hundreds of years. This rare talent allows her to create illusions that others can see, feel and touch, with personalities all their own. Her creations are her family, and together they make up the cast of the Festival’s Freak Show.

But no matter how lifelike they may seem, her illusions are still just that—illusions, and not truly real. Or so she always believed...until one of them is murdered.

Desperate to protect her family, Sorina must track down the culprit and determine how they killed a person who doesn’t actually exist. Her search for answers leads her to the self-proclaimed gossip-worker Luca. Their investigation sends them through a haze of political turmoil and forbidden romance, and into the most sinister corners of the Festival. But as the killer continues murdering Sorina’s illusions one by one, she must unravel the horrifying truth before all her loved ones disappear.

Daughter of the Burning City

Amanda Foody

An imprint of HarperCollins Publishers Ltd

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

First published in Great Britain by HQ in 2017

Copyright © Amanda Foody 2017

Amanda Foody asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Ebook Edition © July 2017 ISBN: 9781474055512

Version: 2018-09-04

Praise for Daughter of the Burning City

“Amanda Foody’s stunning debut is full of velvety language, intricate worldbuilding, and a story that treads the fine line of horror and fantasy. This is the kind of read that makes your spine shiver, and your heart beat faster.”

—Roshani Chokshi, New York Times bestselling author of The Star-Touched Queen

“Utterly original. Amanda Foody has a wicked imagination. If you enjoy your fantasy on the darker side, then you will love Gomorrah!”

—Stephanie Garber, New York Times bestselling author of Caraval

“I love the vivid, sumptuous world Amanda Foody has created: Sorina’s magic, her illusionary family and the Gomorrah Festival make for a wildly inventive mystery I won’t soon forget.”

—Virginia Boecker, author of The Witch Hunter series

AMANDA FOODY has always considered imagination to be our best attempt at magic. When she is not writing young-adult fantasy about spectacle, extravagance and prestige, she is figuring out this whole “adult” thing. A recent graduate of the College of William and Mary, she now lives near Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, with her many siblings and many books. Daughter of the Burning City is her first novel.

For my Quidditch team:

Ryan &

McKenna &

Parker &

Alex &

Connor &

Erica.

Contents

Cover

Back Cover Text

Title Page

Praise

About the Author

Dedication

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

Gill illustration

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

Blister illustration

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

Nicoleta illustration

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

Venera illustration

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Hawk illustration

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Unu and Du illustration

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Crown illustration

CHAPTER NINETEEN

CHAPTER TWENTY

Tree illustration

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

Luca illustration

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Copyright

CHAPTER ONE

I peek from behind the tattered velvet curtains at the chattering audience, their mouths full of candied pineapple and kettle corn. With their pale faces flushed from excitement and the heat, they look as gullible as dandelions, much like the patrons in the past five cities. The Gomorrah Festival hasn’t been permitted to travel this far north in the Up-Mountains in over three years, and these people look like they’re attending the opera or the theater rather than our traveling carnival of debauchery.

The women wear frilly dresses in burnt golds and oranges, buckled to the point of suffocation, some with rosy-cheeked children bouncing on their laps, others with cleavage as high as their chins. The men have shoulder pads to seem broader, stilted loafers to seem taller and painted silver pocket watches to seem richer.

If buckles, stilts and paint are enough to hoodwink them, then they won’t notice that the eight “freaks” of my freak show are, in fact, only one.

Tonight’s mark, Count Pomp-di-pomp—or is it Count Pomp-von-Pompa?—smokes an expensive pipe in the second row, his mustache gleaming with leftover saffron honey from the pastry he had earlier. He’s sitting too close to the front, which won’t make it easy for Jiafu to steal the count’s ring.

That’s where I come in.

My job is to distract the audience so that Pomp-di-pomp doesn’t notice Jiafu’s shadow-work coaxing the sapphire ring off of his porky finger and dropping it onto the grass below.

A drum and fiddle play an entrancing Down-Mountain tune to quiet the audience’s chatter, and I let the curtain fall, blocking my view. The Gomorrah Festival Freak Show will soon begin.

This is my favorite part of the performance: the anticipation. The drumbeats pound erratically, as if dizzy from drinking several mugs of the Festival’s spiced wine. Everything sticks in this humid air: the aromas of carnival food, the gray smoke that shrouds Gomorrah like a cloak and the jittery intakes of breath from the audience, wondering whether the freak show will prove as gruesome as the sign outside promised:

The Gomorrah Festival Freak Show.

Walk the line between abnormal and monstrous.

From the opposite end of the stage, behind the curtain on stage right, Nicoleta nods at me. I reach for the rope and yank down. The pulley spins and whistles, and the curtain rises.

Nicoleta struts—a very practiced, rigid strut—into the spotlight, her heels clicking and the slit in her gown revealing a lacy violet garter at the curve of her thigh. When I first created her three years ago, she had knee-shaking stage fright, and I needed to control her during the show like a puppet. Now she’s so accustomed to her role that I turn away, unneeded, and tie on my best mask. Rhinestones of varying sizes and shades of red cover it, from the curled edges near my temples to the tip of my nose. I need to dazzle, after all.

“Welcome to the Gomorrah Festival Freak Show,” Nicoleta says.

The audience gawks at her. Like the particular Up-Mountainers in this city, and unlike any of the other members of my family, Nicoleta has fair skin. Freckles. Pale brown hair draped to her elbows. Skinny wrists and skinnier, child-like legs. Many members of Gomorrah have Up-Mountain heritage, whether obvious or diluted, but these northern city dwellers always expect the enticingly unfamiliar: sensual, audacious and wild.

The audience’s expressions seem to say, Poor, lost girl, what are you doing working at Gomorrah? Where are your parents? Your chaperone? You can’t be more than twenty-two.

“I am Nicoleta, the show’s manager, and I hope you’re enjoying your first Gomorrah Festival in...three years, I hear?”

The audience stiffens; they stop fanning themselves, stop chewing their candied pineapple. I curse under my breath.

Nicoleta has a knack—a compulsion, really—for saying the wrong thing. This is the Festival’s first night in Frice, a city-state known—like many others—for its strict religious leaders and disapproval of the Gomorrah lifestyle. Three years ago, a minor rebellion in the Vurundi kingdom ousted the Frician merchants from power there. Despite quickly reclaiming its tyrannous governorships, and despite Gomorrah’s utter lack of involvement, Frice decided to restrict the Festival’s traveling in this region. I can’t have Nicoleta scaring away our few visitors by reminding them that their city officials disapprove of them being here, even at an attraction as innocent as a freak show.

“For those of you with weaker constitutions, I suggest you exit before our opening act,” Nicoleta says. Her tone rises and falls at the proper moments. The theatrics of her performance in our show are the opposite of Nicoleta’s role in our family, which Unu and Du have dubbed “stick in the bum.” Every night, she manages to transform—or, better put, improve—her entire demeanor for the sake of the show, since her own abilities are too unreliable to deserve an act. Some days, she can pull our caravans better than our two horses combined. Others, she needs Tree to open our jars of lychee preserves.

“The sights you are about to witness are shocking, even monstrous,” she continues. A young boy in the front row clings to his mother, pulling at her puffed, apricot sleeves. “Children, cover your eyes. Parents, beware. Because the show is about to begin.”

While the audience leans forward in their seats, I prepare for the upcoming act by picturing the Strings, as I call them. I have almost two hundred Strings, glowing silver, dragging behind me as I walk, like the train of a fraying gown. Only I can see them and, even then, only when I focus. I mentally reach down and pluck out four particular Strings and circle them around my hands until they’re taut. The others remain in a heap on the wooden floor.

“I’d like to introduce you to a man found within the faraway Forest of Ruins,” Nicoleta lies. Backstage, Hawk stops playing the fiddle, and Unu and Du reduce the tempo on their drums. I yank on the Strings to command my puppet.

Thump. Thump.

The audience gasps as the Human Tree stomps onto the stage. His skin is made entirely of bark, and his midsection measures as wide as a hundred-year-old oak trunk. It’s difficult to make out his facial features in the twisted lumps of wood, except for his sunken, beetle-black eyes and emptiness of expression. Leaves droop from the branches jutting out from his shoulders, adding several feet to his already daunting stature. His fingers curl into splintery twigs as he waves hello.

From backstage, my hand waves, as well. If I don’t control Tree, he’ll scream profanity that will make half these fancy ladies faint. If he works himself into a real tantrum, he’ll tear off the bark on his stomach until blood trickles out like sap.

His act begins, which is mostly him stomping around and grunting, and me yanking this way and that on his Strings to make him do so. I crafted him when I was three years old, before I considered the performance potential of my illusions.

The six other illusions wait with me backstage.

Venera, the boneless acrobat more flexible than a dripping egg yolk, brushes rouge on her painted white cheeks at a vanity. She pouts in the mirror and then pushes aside a strand of dark hair from her face. She’s beautiful, especially in her skintight, black-and-purple-striped suit. Every night, the audience practically drools over her...until they watch her body flatten into a puddle or her arms roll up like a croissant.

Beside her, Crown files the fingernails that grow from his body where hair should be. He keeps the nails on his arms and legs smooth, giving him a scaly look, but he doesn’t touch the ones on his hands and head, which are curled, yellow daggers as long as butcher knives. Though Crown was my second illusion, made ten years ago, he appears to be seventy-five. He always smokes a cigar before his performance so his gentle voice will sound as prickly as his skin.

Hawk plays the fiddle in an almost spiritual concentration while what’s left of a chipmunk—dinner—hangs out of her mouth. Her brown wings are tucked under her fuchsia cape, where they will remain until she unfolds them during her act, screeches and flies over the—usually shrieking—audience. Her talons pluck at the fiddle’s strings at an incomparable speed. Her ultimate goal is to challenge the devil himself to a fiddle contest, and she figures by traveling with the world’s most famous festival of depravity, she’s bound to run into him one day.

Blister, the chubby one-year-old, plays with the beads dangling off of Unu and Du’s drum. Rather than focusing on their rhythm, Unu and Du bicker about something, per usual. Du punches Unu with their shared left arm. Unu hisses an unpleasant word loudly, which Blister then tries out for himself, missing the double s sound and saying something resembling a-owl.

Gill snaps at them all to be quiet and then resumes reading his novel. Even wearing a rusted diver’s helmet full of water, he manages to make out the words on the pages. Bubbles seep from the gills on his cheeks as he sighs. As the loner of our family, he generally prefers the quiet company of books to our boisterous, pre-show jitters. He only raises his voice during our games of lucky coins—he holds the family record for the most consecutive wins (twenty-one). I suspect he’s been cheating by allowing Hawk, Unu and Du to forfeit games on purpose in exchange for lighter homework assignments.

“Keep an eye on Blister,” I remind the boys. “Those drums are flammable.”

“Tell Unu to stuff a drumstick up his—” Du glances hesitantly at Gill “—backside.”

“That’s your backside, too, dung-brain,” Unu says.

“It’s an expression,” says Du. “I like its sentiment.”

It would hardly be a classic Gomorrah Festival Freak Show if the audience couldn’t hear my brothers tormenting each other backstage.

“I’ll stick it up both your assholes if you don’t shut it,” I say. They pay me no attention; they know I never follow through with my threats.

“A-owl,” Blister says again.

“Language, Sorina,” Gill groans.

“Shit. Sorry,” I reply, but I’m only mildly chagrined. Blister’s been hearing all our foul mouths since the day he came to be.

One by one, they perform their acts: the Boneless Acrobat; the Fingernail Mace; the Half Girl, Half Hawk; the Fire-Breathing Baby; the Two-Headed Boy; and the Trout Man. The audience roars as Hawk screeches and soars over their seats, cheers at each splash of Gill flipping in and out of his tank like a trained dolphin. They are utterly unaware that the “freaks” are actually my illusions, projected for anyone to see.

The only real freak in Gomorrah is me.

“For the finale,” Nicoleta says, as I hurriedly smooth down my shoulder-length black hair, “a mysterious performer who’s been with Gomorrah since her childhood. She’s the Girl Who Sees Without Eyes, and if you remain in your seats, she’ll reveal wonders you can see, hear, smell and even touch.”

I greet the audience as Unu and Du wheel Gill’s massive glass tank offstage. The hem of my black robes swish across the floor, and a hood drapes over all but my violet-painted lips. Count Pomp-di-pomp murmurs to the plump woman beside him, perhaps his wife. Another person Jiafu will need to sneak around during my act.

The room holds its breath as I remove the hood, only to reveal my mask.

“Take the mask off,” a man shouts from the back.

“Those who see her true face turn to stone,” says Nicoleta. Of course, that’s horseshit. I just hate the screams, same as Tree with his bark skin, Unu and Du with their two heads and Hawk with her wings and claws. As good as we have it in Gomorrah, no one wants to be a freak.

The fiddle and drums fade to silence as I raise my arms.

The tent’s ceiling and grass floor disappear, replaced with colorful galaxies so the crowd seems suspended within the cosmos. The woman beside Count Pomp-di-pomp shrieks and lifts her feet off the endless, black ground and then wipes the sweat from her forehead with her pearl-studded glove.

Nicoleta jabbers a spiel about the wonders of my sight, as if my lack of eyes allows me to see more than everyone else. Between my forehead and cheekbones is flat skin, but I can see just the same as the rest of the world. I’m an illusion-worker, the rarest form of jynx-worker, gifted in mirages real enough to touch, smell, hear and taste. My most intricate illusions are my family and the other members of the freak show: living figments of my imagination.

I’ve never met another illusion-worker—only read about them—but as far as I know, I am the only one born without eyes who relies on my jynx-work to see. No doctor or medicine man can explain how this works. Maybe I don’t see like everyone else does—it’s not as if I could test that out—but I see, color and all, and I’m not one to question things I don’t really need answers for.

I throw all of my energy into this performance, so much that my Strings are fully visible to me and tangle at my feet. I avoid moving around onstage, in case I trip. Normally, the Strings aren’t solid, but when I’m commanding this much power? My ankle just might catch, and I’ll topple into the front row.

Fabricated constellations whirl past, and the audience grips the edges of their seats. The planets orbit the room as if the tent marks the center of the universe and that universe is performing for us, its revolutions a celestial dance and me, the musician.

During my ten-minute act of shooting stars, crescent moons and burning suns, I’m too consumed by the exertion of my performance to notice if Jiafu stole Count Pomp-di-pomp’s ring. The illusion dissipates, and I lower my hands. I stare around the tent with exhilaration, and my chest heaves up and down beneath my thick robes. I was marvelous.

The audience claps. Count Pomp-di-pomp’s sapphire no longer glistens on his finger. Which means Jiafu managed to steal it undetected.

The seven other illusions join me for our final bows and farewell to the audience. Tired, I struggle to maintain control of the two more problematic illusions, Tree and Blister. One slip, and Tree could trample the audience under his clubbed feet. Or Blister could hiccup and set the tent on fire. Again.

Jiafu lurks in the back of the tent and picks his teeth with a steel comb. I avoid his gaze so the audience doesn’t turn to where I’m looking. His body is cloaked in shadow, barely visible against the black and red stripes of the tent, except for the whites of his eyes and the light reflecting off his comb. With his scarred face and patched-up clothes, he looks like a beast who just crawled out of the kennel.

The illusions exit stage left, except for me and Gill, whom I wheel in his tank to stage right. I rarely see him without his diver’s helmet, which he wears whenever outside of his tank. His chin-length black hair is suspended in the water, and his skin prunes all over, even his silver-toned face, like a piece of rotten fruit. His smile for the audience disappears the moment we’re out of sight.

“Why was Jiafu here?” he demands.

I smile and tilt my head to the side. “Who?”

Before he can answer, I slip around him backstage. I don’t feel like listening to any of his lectures tonight. I know Gill means well, but we’ve argued about Jiafu before, and we’re both more stubborn than mules and keep kicking up the same dirt. Neither of us will change our minds.

Venera is seated at her vanity, scanning her makeup collection and slathering a glittery lotion across her brown skin. As per her daily ritual, she’ll wash off her stage powder and reapply a new look for the Downhill parties later tonight. Hawk bickers with Unu and Du about which game they’ll play—chess or lucky coins. Blister reaches for his favorite top from his cauldron cradle while Crown leans forward in his chair to help him. Besides Gill, only Tree is absent—he prefers to stay outdoors when we’re not performing.

I’ve barely reached my own vanity when Nicoleta corners me.

“Why do you keep working for Jiafu?” she asks. Between her and Gill scolding me and everyone else bickering with each other, my only moments of peace are on stage. “He isn’t trust—”

“You all know why I work for him. Or am I the only one who cares about Kahina?” I tear off my mask and toss it on the vanity. The money I earn working for Jiafu goes to medicine for Kahina and her snaking sickness, a malady she’s battled for an impressive five years. Although Villiam, the owner of the Gomorrah Festival, adopted me as a young child, it was Kahina the fortune-worker who raised me. It was Kahina who taught me to play lucky coins, to love nature, to embrace being a misfit.

And while Kahina didn’t exactly raise my illusions, they love her as much as I do. She visits often with gifts of sweets and handmade knits.

Nicoleta sighs and fiddles with the ruby hairpin tucked behind her ear. “I know why, but there are safer ways to earn money, Sorina. I just don’t want Jiafu to start expecting things from you, to keep you working for him even when Kahina...gets better.”

I ignore the hesitation in her words. Kahina will improve. If the snaking sickness intended to claim her, it would have slithered its way into her heart years ago.

“Jiafu adores me,” I say. “And he’s terrified of me.”

“The way every man should see you,” Venera chimes in from beside me as she applies her signature black lipstick. I covertly hold up a hand, and she high-fives me behind my back. At least Venera is always on my side.

“Jiafu knows I’m not one of his cronies,” I tell Nicoleta.

Nicoleta purses her lips. “What if Jiafu gets caught by Up-Mountain officials?” Nicoleta is an ardent supporter of what-ifs. “He could take you down with him.”

“Could you stop? You’re giving me anxiety,” Venera and I say together.

Of all my illusions, Venera and I are the most alike. I made her to be the perfect best friend for me—fashion-savvy, fun and stop-and-stare gorgeous. The younger-looking illusions—Hawk, Unu and Du and Blister—are like my younger siblings. Crown: my grandfather. Gill: the voice of authority. Nicoleta: the bossy older sister. And Tree is...Tree.

I hunt through my various masks—all small, covering only the eye area—and select a simple one with matte sequins, a satin interior and a spider design on the top right corner. I never venture into public without a mask, where Up-Mountain children can gape while their parents call me monstrous, or an abomination, or any other colorful choice of word. I have no eyebrows, no eyes, not even indents where eyes should be. When I was younger, I tried to cast an illusion of these features, but something about the cold emptiness in my fake eyes looked even more unsettling than my normal appearance—nor could I maintain the image for more than a few minutes. Though I made peace with my face years ago, I don’t have the thickest skin—it only takes a single whisper or sickened stare to reopen old wounds.

But I have nice lips, I remind myself. I line them in blood-red lipstick, which pairs devilishly with my dark mask. My skin is fair, my straight hair so black it’s almost blue, like the people who live in the Eastern Kingdoms of the Down-Mountains. I don’t remember my home before Gomorrah, but Villiam has told me stories about how he adopted me in one of those kingdoms, and Kahina has made a point to introduce me to foods from my homeland, like sugar-coated tanghulu that a vendor sells near Skull Gate. But none of us discuss my past often; otherwise we might dwell on what my fate could have been, had Villiam not found me, an eyeless slave girl. Sometimes I wish I remembered. But when I speak to others in Gomorrah with stories like mine, I feel relieved that I don’t.

“Tonight is meant for fun,” Venera says. “Save your bickering for another time.”

She’s right. Tonight we’re all attending a show at the Menagerie, a rare, expensive treat we indulge in whenever we save enough for the tickets. The Menagerie is Gomorrah’s gaudiest, most exciting and most overpriced attraction.

Blister darts out from behind me and holds up his hand. I give him a high five. Afterward, he moves on to Venera. He does this after every show.

“Are you ready to see some tigers and dragons?” Venera asks him.

He roars in affirmation, and Venera laughs and pinches his cheek.

Crown appears in the doorway with Unu, Du and Gill—who looks rather sour—behind him. They are changed out of their costumes.

Unu and Du rub their hands together. “The cherries are on you, Sorina,” Unu says.

I lost the last game of lucky coins. “Only one bag for you guys, though.”

“But there are two of us,” Du complains.

“You’ve only got one stomach.”

“You’d hardly know that from the way they eat,” Gill mutters. He jokingly flicks Unu on his ear. Flicking is his way of showing affection.

“We should leave now, or we’ll be late,” Nicoleta says. As if anything in Gomorrah starts on schedule, or our family is ever on time.

We march out of our tent into the dense smoke of Gomorrah and head north, toward the games neighborhood. It’s a bit of a detour, but the food in that neighborhood is better than anywhere else—sticky buns that melt on your tongue, nuts dipped in honey like beetles preserved within amber, saltwater taffy you can buy by the yard. Plus, most of us can’t resist wasting a few of our coins on a game or two. Unu and Du get a kick out of having people guess their weight with their two heads. Crown has a special gift for ring toss. Nicoleta, when she’s feeling up to it, can make the bell chime when she smashes the airbag with the hammer.

My family does not go anywhere quietly. Tree’s steps thunder as if we’re walking with a crowd of one hundred rather than nine. Hawk squabbles with Unu and Du, who keep rubbing her feathers against the grain. Venera and I walk, arms linked and chatting about the yogurt face masks we might try tonight. The paths of Gomorrah are narrow and winding, sometimes only wide enough between tents for a single person to slip through. But we don’t care about stopping traffic. The residents let me pass because I’m the proprietor’s daughter, an association that brings me an uncomfortable amount of notoriety and weighty expectations. The visitors nearly lunge out of our way after one look at Unu and Du’s heads, Crown’s curling yellow scalp of nails or Tree.

We approach our favorite vendor of licorice-dipped cherries—Gomorrah’s signature treat—and Unu and Du steer us aside.

“How many bags am I buying?” I ask.

Each of them shouts how many they want.

“I’m not buying fourteen bags.” I hold up my flimsy coin purse. “You guys are milking me dry.”

Crown fishes in his pocket for change before Du stops him. “You can’t help her. She lost. Rules are rules.”

Lucky coins is a sacred game in my family.

I curse under my breath and thrust my entire savings—one week’s worth, since I can’t save anything more than a few days—into the vendor’s hands. His eyes light up as he hands us a full quarter of his stock.

Afterward, with our teeth sticky from black licorice and our lips stained red from cherry juice, we head toward the Menagerie singing one of Gomorrah’s folk songs.

Wicked, wicked to the core. The city will burn forevermore.

Or mostly singing. Unu and Du shriek to drown out Hawk, who, as always, is trying to show off her vocal range and make everyone else sound bad.

The Menagerie’s spires tower into the smoke that covers the Festival like an endless expanse of storm clouds. Its tent is so black it appears like a hole, seeping the color away from its surroundings. Pink, red and violet streamers—Gomorrah’s colors—ripple in the breeze at its peak.

The line outside snakes around the tent, and we grab a place at the end. Because the Menagerie is such a popular attraction, stands for kettle corn, palm readers and charms salesmen clutter its perimeter.

“Care for some coins?” a man asks Hawk. He bites the coin, and his teeth clack against the bronze. She turns her back to him, a pro at dealing with persistent vendors, but he continues, “Solid. Good quality. I have the Handmaiden, the Red Jester, the Harbinger—”

“We have enough coins,” Nicoleta tells him. We all know the coins sold in this part of the Festival attract more tourists than actual players. The gambling neighborhood sells the characters of real and rare value.

Perhaps it is the stern edge in Nicoleta’s voice, or perhaps the vendor knows a lost cause when he sees one, but he doesn’t pester us again, even though we remain next to his stand for several more minutes. He moves on to the Up-Mountain patrons behind us, who marvel at the thin coins and ask the vendor how to play.

“It’s your face,” Hawk tells Nicoleta. “He can see the lack of fun and warmth in your eyes.”

“I resent that,” she says.

Unu and Du tug on the sleeve of my night cloak. “Will you buy us some spiced wine?” Du whispers eagerly, his hazel eyes sparkling in the white torchlight. Unu, on the other hand, stares at their feet.

“You’re eleven,” I say.

“That’s an arbitrary number you made up.”

“Arbitrary is a big word for you.”

Du gives me one of his classic Du expressions. He leans his head back and scrunches his entire face together like he’s eaten a whole mouthful of sour-cherry drops. He uses this to feign being insulted.

Normally, I might say yes, but the spiced wine in this area of Gomorrah is highly potent—meant to get guests drunk and happy to spend. “Sorry, kiddo.” I pinch his cheek. “I’m too responsible a sister for that.”

The Menagerie tent opens three minutes later, and the queue of guests shuffles inside at an excruciatingly slow pace past the ticket booth. The entrance is a hallway lit by iron lampposts on either side so that our shadows stripe across the grass floor. In between the lamps stand taxidermied animals from the Down-Mountains. We pass an Eberian snow tiger, its pelt winter-white and its stripes hooked and curled at the points. A chimera hunches to our left, its goat and lion heads frozen in midhowl.

“You’re the goat for sure,” Du whispers to Unu.

There’s a leopard dragon, a few falcons and exotic birds, and one panda—all previous performers at the Menagerie. As a child, Villiam took me to the shows to watch the panda, who now watches us with vacant eyes.

The Up-Mountain guests point and gawk at the creatures we’ve seen a hundred times. They chatter incessantly and fan themselves, occasionally turning around to sneak peeks at us. I hear a woman say we must be in some kind of costumes. Hawk hugs her arms and her wings close to herself. Gill flicks her on the shoulder, and she manages a smile.

We have all learned—or tried to learn—to ignore the comments that follow us.

We enter the main part of the Menagerie, a huge open room with a circus ring, several trapezes and a collection of balls and hoops. My family slides into benches toward the back—we can never afford front row. The air smells of stale manure and kettle corn.

“Happy family night,” Venera says, and we raise our bags of licorice cherries in a sort of cheers.

For the next few minutes, I am caught up in the excitement of the Menagerie. I live for the anticipation of a good show. My legs twitch. I constantly change my sitting position. I eat too many of my snacks before the show even begins, and my stomach cramps from all the sugar. The others chatter to themselves about the last time we visited the Menagerie, when an acrobat broke his leg. Gill murmurs to Nicoleta—the only one who really listens to him—about the boring novel he’s reading.

Then I notice the noise outside. Shouts. Running. It grows louder, loud enough that many in the audience turn around, as if to see the commotion through the red-, pink- and purple-striped tent walls.

“Does that sound rather panicked to you?” Gill asks to my right. “Like something’s wrong?”

“I’m sure nothing’s wrong,” I say. Shouts and strange noises are business as usual in Gomorrah. Probably some drunkards passing through.

“But doesn’t it sound like something is?”

I listen closer. There are shouts. Feet running. Maybe...maybe the sound of horses, as well. I can’t be certain, but it does seem like more than a few drunkards. As the proprietor’s daughter, destined to one day become proprietor myself, I should inspect the commotion. But it’s family night. At the Menagerie. I don’t want to give up my seat. I’m sure it’s nothing important, and if it is, Villiam will take care of it anyway.

A man in a black tuxedo with a red undershirt strides into the center of the circus ring. He clears his throat, and the audience quiets. “I apologize, but the ten o’clock Menagerie show has been canceled. Tickets can be fully refunded at the booths at the north and south entrances. Please exit in an orderly fashion through the way you entered. We hope you enjoy the rest of your time at the Gomorrah Festival.”

The noise of the crowd immediately grows into an uproar. Among the shouts and complaints, Unu and Du’s and Hawk’s are some of the loudest.

“That’s rubbish,” Du sulks. “Our show is never canceled.”

“It’s probably from whatever is happening outside,” Gill says. “It mustn’t be anything good.”

“You’re right,” Nicoleta says. She stands. “We should leave now. Before the rush.”

Most of the audience remains in their seats, as if sitting around long enough will bring the manager back and force him to start the show. But the manager nearly sprinted out of the circus ring, so I doubt anyone will return. Clearly whatever is happening is important.

I grab my bag of licorice cherries and try not to let the true extent of my disappointment show. This is the Menagerie. What sort of pandemonium does it take to shut down Gomorrah’s biggest attraction?

“We better hurry if we don’t want to stand in line for the rest of the night waiting for our money back,” Nicoleta tells us.

We gather our few belongings and file out of the stands. The audience crowds in the hallway, and the eight of us link arms—Nicoleta carries Blister—to avoid losing each other. Once we approach the exit, the commotion grows louder.

Screams.

“What’s going on?” Hawk asks. “Tree, can you see anything?”

Tree doesn’t answer. He swats at a fly buzzing around his leaves.

“It’s officials,” the man in front of us says.

“Officials? Like Frician city officials?” I ask, confused. “What are they doing at the Festival?” They allowed us to come to Frice. Have they changed their minds? Will they force us to leave? It wouldn’t be the first time a city-state has rescinded an invitation after gazing at Gomorrah’s intimidating burning skyline up close. It looks like Hell itself has shown up on their doorsteps.

“Causing trouble,” Gill says, always stating the obvious. Anything involving Up-Mountain officials means trouble.

We’ll have to cut our plans short—the Menagerie, the fireworks show, all of it. Officials love to target jynx-workers, and even if I’m the only true one among us, our appearances will make us stand out. I could joke about how it has something to do with us being abominations to their god. But the joke is less funny here, considering all the blood that has been spilled for thousands of years in the name of that same god in this city alone, not to mention in the rest of the world.

No, it isn’t much of a joke at all.

“Straight home,” Nicoleta says. “Does everyone hear?”

“Yes,” we chorus. No one argues with Nicoleta when there’s a crisis.

We step into the smoky night air, right in the middle of the clearing that was once filled with vendors, fortune-workers and laughing guests. Now, everyone is running. White-coated Frician officials on horseback charge dangerously close to the Gomorrah merchants packing up their stands. The officials brandish clubs and holler at passersby. Several brandish swords and crossbows.

Gomorrah is chaos.

CHAPTER TWO

The coin merchant’s table crashes to the ground, and lucky coins cascade onto the grass in a rushing clatter. The official whose horse overturned the stand stops and dismounts. I hold my breath and squirm closer to Gill as the merchant drops to his knees and collects his fallen merchandise.

“We need to hurry,” Nicoleta says. She points in the direction of a nearby path for us to flee.

The official picks up a coin and examines it. “The Harbinger? He looks like a demon.” He throws the coin into the merchant’s lap. “Are you a jynx-worker?”

“No,” the merchant says, his voice strong. He stands to meet the official’s eyes.

“Then what are these for, if not divining?”

“It’s a game. Collector’s items.”

“A game,” he mocks. “A festival. Pretty words for a city of rot and smoke. Nothing about this place is play.”

Gill tugs on my arm. The others have broken apart and are running for Nicoleta’s path. “It’s time to go,” he says.

I eye the ticket booth behind us, loath to lose all the money we spent. We saved for this night. I won’t let a few Up-Mountain officials force us to throw our money away and terrorize us in our own home.

I disentangle myself from Gill’s grip. “I’m getting our money back.”

Gill’s eyes widen in alarm. “There are more important things.”

“No. Family night is a whole month of saving, and we didn’t get to have it. I’m getting. Our money. Back.” I say this sternly enough so that Gill won’t argue with me. And he doesn’t.

“Be careful,” he says.

“Always am.”

I whip around toward the ticket booth. A crowd surrounds it, shouting at the girl inside, who’s shouting right back. There are twenty yards between them and me, plus a few officials in their white coats on whiter stallions beneath the Menagerie’s banners, admiring the chaos around them and tormenting those in costume, searching for jynx-workers.

Villiam always told me the Up-Mountains hate us because they are afraid. He’s told me stories that date back two thousand years, when Gomorrah was once a true city in the Great Mountains—a narrow strip of land dividing the two continents. When its skyline was blue instead of burning. When jynx-workers wielding fire and shadow could dominate regions at any end of the world. Even though anyone can be born with jynx-work in their blood, it was the Up-Mountainers who turned away from it, and the Down-Mountainers who came to celebrate it. The Up-Mountains—from the wintry tundras in the north, to the humid bayous in the south, across cultures, across peoples—united under their common-held fear and warrior god. Now they are powerful, and even the most capable jynx-worker is no match for the massive Up-Mountain armies.

It will only take a few minutes to retrieve the money, I tell myself. Screams ring out behind me. Figures appear and disappear in the constant Gomorrah smoke. Hooves thunder past.

I’ll be home in a few minutes. Like hell I’m leaving without our money. I am the proprietor’s daughter, and I will never be afraid while within Gomorrah.

My illusion-work is not entirely for entertainment. A useful trick I’ve learned while living in the Festival is to convince someone they are looking at one thing, when really they are looking at something else. A sleight of hand, of sorts. It’s significantly easier than persuading someone there’s nothing to see at all.

I cast my usual trick: a moth.

To those around me, there is no girl passing them in a long cloak. There is no person. No shadow, even. There’s a moth, fluttering from torch to torch in lazy curls, oblivious to the hysteria around it. A torn scrap of paper drifting in Gomorrah’s smoke. If they concentrated or stood at a distance, they would glimpse the outline of my body, blurry like a reflection in a pond. But no one is going to stare that closely at a moth.

With my illusion protecting me, I pass the officials without notice and head to the booth. I shelter behind a tentpole, blocking myself from the view of those in the clearing. Once the illusion fades, I don’t want an official to harass me because of my eyeless mask. Or worse, for someone from Gomorrah to recognize me as the proprietor’s daughter and demand I stop the officials. As if they’d listen to a sixteen-year-old, small Down-Mountain girl. A jynx-worker. A freak.

I let go of my illusion and push my way to the front of the those crowded around the ticket booth. Inside, the frazzled girl shrieks, “You all live here! Just come back tomorrow!” Somewhere to our right, another vendor stand is knocked to the ground with a crash, followed by the thudding of wooden jugs of spiced wine.

She’s right. Everyone in the group has mixed features and wears Gomorrah trousers and tunics. Those in Gomorrah are known for their stinginess, and waiting a whole day for our money back isn’t going to cut it—not for me, not for anyone here. Those tickets cost a fortune.

A child screeches. I briefly look away from the booth, but it is an Up-Mountain child. He has nothing to fear. His father shushes him and pulls him away from the frenzied horses.

Be careful, Gill told me.

I’m definitely not being careful.

“Today you say money back, tomorrow you’ll change your minds,” one man says. He holds out his grubby hand beneath the glass opening of the booth.

“Where’s the manager?” another asks.

“He’s calming the swan dragon,” the girl snaps. Her eyes fall on me, in the fringe of the crowd, and they widen. “You’re Villiam’s daughter.” The others turn to me, and I curse under my breath. They all recognize me, but I know none of them. I shouldn’t be here. “Take care of them. The Menagerie has to focus on its animals and the safety of the Gomorrah patrons and residents first. If you all return first thing tomorrow, we’ll refund your tickets.”

She scampers away from the booth, leaving me with the unruly group. She was smart. The Menagerie, being Gomorrah’s most profitable attraction, receives Villiam’s special attention. Right now, I should care more about their needs than those of a few residents. That is what a proprietor would do. A proprietor would have their priorities straight.

The group watches me expectantly. A proprietor would also know at least a few of their names, and I can barely remember the names and faces of the neighbors I’ve had for eight or more years. But they all know mine. My face is the most recognizable in the Festival. I do not search for anonymity, but I hate to glimpse the repulsion or pity in their eyes.

“It’s for your safety,” I stammer. “The swan dragon—”

“—is older than shit,” one woman says. “Lot of harm she’ll do.”

“Let me take your names. I’ll make right sure the Menagerie returns your money tomorrow—”

“With all the officials here, wreaking havoc? You’ll be too busy cleaning up their mess, and you won’t bother with this.” The man spits at my feet. I grimace. He would hardly do that to Villiam, or even Villiam’s assistant, Agni. It’s easier to dismiss a freak. And truth be told, Villiam rarely assigns me any real work. My proprietorship lessons are lectures of micro-agriculture and craftsmanship; about the external structure of Gomorrah, a vast, traveling city. Never about what truly makes it tick.

“To hell with this.” The man storms off.

Fine, let him leave. He’ll probably rant about how lousy I am to his friends, which will return to me in whispers and stares—never anything outright rude, nothing that might risk inciting Villiam’s wrath, but the kind that makes me feel like a freak show even outside the performance tent.

I stare at the small, copper coins in the tin box inside the booth—dull and tarnished but still more beckoning than starlight. It doesn’t matter that I don’t know these people’s names. I know why they’re here, same as me. For their month’s earnings. For the money to make sure no one in their families has to do work on the side, like petty thievery. To ensure their loved ones have whatever they need, like medicine.

“Just need some paper,” I mutter and then slip inside the ticket booth. I grab a sheet and a pencil. “I’ll take your names—”

“But how will we—”

“I want my money back as much as you do. Now give me your damned names so that we can all get the hell out of here.”

The woman in front huffs. “You’re crass for a princess.”

I hate that nickname. Real princesses are no more than pretty bargaining chips. I’m no pawn, and I gave up on pretty a long time ago.

“Not for Gomorrah’s princess,” I say.

They stop bickering, give me their names and shuffle away. Once I’m alone, I reach beneath the counter and grab my family’s forty-five copper coins. Then I slap the list of names on the table—no longer my problem—and leave.

Frice has stormed the Festival. Gomorrah has bigger things to worry about than ticket refunds.

My trusty moth illusion gets me safely from the Menagerie to our neighborhood, though I pass several officials along the path and cringe away each time. But they cannot see me, and if I concentrate hard enough, they could touch me and not know it. I stumble toward our tent, sweaty and out of breath but victorious.

Gill waits outside, and I brace myself for the scolding that I probably deserve. He swats at my moth until I drop the illusion. “Are you all right?” he asks.

“I’m fine.”

“That was rash,” he says. “You could’ve been hurt.”

I jingle my pocket. “Got the money.”

“No one cares about the money. We were all worried sick.”

I know it wasn’t the smartest plan. But tomorrow night, when the officials leave and Gomorrah has cleaned itself up, everyone will be thankful for the extra change.

“Well, I’m fine.” I push past him to go inside, but he grabs my arm.

“And why was Jiafu here tonight?” he asks, for the second time.

“How should I know? Maybe he wanted to watch our show,” I say, careful not to let the others overhear inside. Crown and Nicoleta also don’t approve of my thieving with Jiafu, and some of them—like Hawk and Unu and Du—don’t even know about it.

“Jiafu is trouble, Sorina.”

“It was nothing. All’s dandy.” Jiafu and I have swindled enough jobs at the show to know it never affects our ticket sales.

“I don’t know what you two did,” he says, “but Gomorrah’s in enough trouble here as it is. If rumors spread beyond Frice that we’ve been stealing from patrons, then the other Up-Mountain cities will revoke their invitations to come. Not to mention all this chaos.”

He acts as if Jiafu and I are the only thieves in this whole festival of debauchery. To the visitors, the chance of pickpockets or magical mischief accounts for half the thrill of Gomorrah.

“It was a small job. Count Pomp-di-pomp is supposed to be a bit dim, anyway. He’ll probably think he lost his ring himself.”

Gill rolls his eyes. “It’s Count Pompdidorra. He’s a very influential man.”

“Whatever.”

“Sorina,” he says, sighing. Most of Gill’s sentences are followed by a sigh. At least half of those are aimed at me. When I created Gill, I had “loving uncle” in mind, but, instead, he’s more of a nuisance. Though maybe that’s a bit harsh. It’s not that I don’t love Gill. Not that he doesn’t love me and all of us. But he’s certainly grumpier than in my original blueprints. If we wanted to live by all his rules, we’d go live in a religion-crazed Up-Mountain city. The only person who listens to Gill is

Nicoleta, who is essentially his henchman, repeating his advice or scolding someone whenever Gill isn’t present to do so himself.

“To be frank—” Gill is always frank “—you’re jeopardizing the already grim reputation of the entire Festival. And if people keep losing valuable possessions during our show, no one’s going to buy tickets.”

I’m done with this conversation. Unless Gill can concoct a new idea for me to earn some coin for Kahina, then I’ll stick with Jiafu. I’m not really hurting anyone. The patrons we select are too rich to notice a missing necklace here, a missing watch there.

“It’s my show,” I say.

“If it’s all your show, you can do tricks in this tank next time. Or fit into Venera’s two-by-two-foot box,” he snaps. “Don’t be a child.”

“Technically, I’m older than you,” I say. I created Gill when I was nine, which only makes him seven years old.

He sighs. “Of course, Sorina, you always have the last word.”

This particular statement infuriates me more than anything else. I’m sorry I worried him, but Kahina is more important than the slim risk involved. And I don’t understand how I could possibly be damaging the Festival’s reputation when people are always whispering about assassins and drug dealers in the Downhill. Petty theft is nothing compared to that.

I turn, my cloak swishing behind me, and stomp inside.

The others sit around our foldout table, huddled together on floor cushions. By the untouched game of lucky coins and the way they fidget, I can tell they’ve been worried.

I toss the forty-five coins on the table, which spill out of their pouch with clatters and clangs. Venera grimly gathers them up to add to our family-stash jar. “Got them no problem,” I say, knowing that I sound like an ass.

“It’s almost midnight,” Nicoleta says. “You took a long time.”

“Is it?” Jiafu and I usually meet at midnight after jobs, but I didn’t notice him waiting for me outside. I hate to leave them again, if only for a moment, but I need to talk to Jiafu.

“We can play lucky coins, now that we’re all here,” Unu says. He holds up the Beheaded Dame coin—the jewel of his collection—to glint in the lantern light.

“I’m not ready to lose again just yet,” I say. “I’m going to keep watch and make sure no officials come near the tent. I’ll be—”

“You shouldn’t go outside,” Nicoleta says, sighing. If one more person sighs at me, I’ll tear my hair out. The bald girl who sees without eyes. What a sight.

“—just out back,” I finish, waving and slipping out before any of them can stop me. There’s less commotion in our neighborhood than near the Menagerie and Skull Gate. Plus, I have my illusions to obscure me. I’m not worried.

The night air is sticky, yet refreshing compared to the tension with the others inside. Thankfully, Gill has disappeared—skulked back to his tent, where he’ll probably keep to himself the rest of the night, reading another one of his boring novels, where nothing exciting or romantic ever happens, and the reader always learns some righteous lesson in the end.

Lightning bugs blink within clouds of gnats, circling my face. The smoke that envelops Gomorrah utterly blocks out any view of the sky. The smoke is part of Gomorrah’s legend: once upon a time, we were burned to the ground. But we did not die. Instead we kept burning, kept moving, kept growing. The smoke surrounds us, even if we no longer burn. There is no fire, but sometimes, if you catch yourself around Gomorrah’s edges, the air thickens from stifling heat and the lanterns glow a little bit brighter. It reminds me of walking into the city’s memory—a very ancient memory.

This section of Gomorrah is lit by white torchlights and paper lanterns, which wear golden halos in the gray fog. Everyone in the Festival seems like a silhouette, a shadow of an actual person. It makes it easy to get lost and, depending where you are in Gomorrah, never be found again.

I scan the area beside my tent—a small clearing that serves as the back of two other tents, which house a family of fortune-workers and a silk salesman. Jiafu is nowhere. We usually meet outside after jobs, so why isn’t he here? If he’s skipping out on me, I swear, he’ll wake up tomorrow thinking there are dung beetles crawling out of his nostrils. I have a hard time believing Jiafu, the master of all crooks, would be scared of a few officials.

I sit on the grass, facing toward the thousands of tents that make up the Gomorrah Festival, the tallest being the Menagerie at the center. The family-friendly attractions—if you could call anything at Gomorrah family-friendly—are closest to the entrance, like games, circuses and my freak show. The majority of the Festival is in the back—private tents for prettymen and prettywomen, bars and gambling. We call that area the Downhill. Of the thousands of people who live in Gomorrah, I know the fewest from there.

Jiafu has five minutes before I get angry.

To the left, something catches my eye. A golden centipede wriggles down a tent post, and I suck in my breath and examine it. It’s the size of my pinky but twice as wide, with beady black eyes and soft fuzz. I gently pick it up and let it tickle my palm with its hundred feet.

I don’t remember when my bug collection began. I have over three hundred insects, gathered from various regions where the Festival has taken me, both in the Up-Mountains and Down-Mountains. A charm-worker down the way preserves them for me in glass vials, which I keep for decoration in my room—both for the aesthetics and to ensure that Nicoleta rarely comes in to nag me. Occasionally Villiam will gift me a book of local insects so I can learn about the ones in my collection. I like to consider myself an expert on all creepy crawlies. Probably because they make other people uncomfortable, but I see just how unique and fascinating they are. Highly underrated creatures. The bugs and I have this in common.

A horn blares across Gomorrah. Followed by screams.

“What the hell is that?” I wonder aloud. The centipede crawls up my wrist and arm, unperturbed. It sounded like a city horn from Frice. Maybe the officials are leaving.

I tiptoe around our three tents—the two where we sleep, and the Freak Show’s tent—wishing I wasn’t alone, in case I do need to face an official. Wishing we, like most of Gomorrah’s residents, lived near the Festival’s perimeter, not along a main path.

Across from the Freak Show tent lives another fortune-worker, and she—always determined to be the first on Gomorrah’s lengthy grapevine—slips out down the path to investigate the commotion approaching our neighborhood. I creep near one of the torch poles to be closer to the light.

An official on horseback trots down our path. By the way he scans the area, he’s looking for something or someone. Perhaps he’s rounding up the Frician citizens and marching them back to their city. The noise covered his approach, so I haven’t had time to prepare an illusion. I’m exposed.

The official stares at me, his face contorted in disgust. The centipede drops from my arm into the grass, but I don’t dare move to search for it. After a few tense moments, the official passes. I let out a sigh of relief.

I head back inside my tent, thinking I’ll just cut through the stage area to the back. It’s safer to be out of sight. And clearly Jiafu isn’t coming.

The show tent is empty, all the audience chairs vacant and the ground littered with kettle-corn kernels. I squint in the darkness. There’s something on the stage, but I can’t tell what it is.

“Hello?” I say, in case it’s a person. No one answers.

I creep closer to the stage and then climb up the steps. Something cracks under my sandal. The floor glistens. I’m standing in a mess of water and glass.

A figure lies on the floor, unmoving and limp. My eyes slowly adjust, so I can tell it’s a man lying facedown. He lies on a bed of broken glass and a puddle of water in the dead center of the stage.

I scream and then root around my pockets for a match, my hands trembling. I find one, strike it and bend down to the man’s body, bracing myself for my worst suspicions to be confirmed. I instantly recognize his dark hair, the grooves on both sides of his neck and his webbed hands.

It’s Gill.

I scream his name and then drop to the floor and roll him over. The back of his shirt is covered in blood. I shake him a few times, but he never responds. I rest his head on my lap, and blood dribbles from his mouth down his chin. “Gill. Gill,” I plead. I check his pulse, but find none.

None.

“No. No. No.” This is impossible. Gill can’t be dead. He’s my illusion. His body, though it feels solid, is only a figment of my imagination. No one can kill him, because he doesn’t truly exist.

Hesitantly, I lean him on his side and lift up his shirt, exposing the half dozen stab wounds across his back. They are a jagged, messy and oozing contrast to the smooth and translucent silver of his skin. My stomach wretches. I roll him onto his back once more and hug him closer.

I’m struck with a sudden inspiration; a flicker of hope. I can fix this. I can make him disappear. I can make him disappear and he’ll come back, just like before.

I grasp for my Strings and find Gill’s tethered among them. I gather them into a ball and toss them into his Trunk, a section of my mind I rarely visit except to make the illusions disappear. His Strings are lighter than usual, as if strands of hair rather than proper threads. Though the Trunk is open and full of Gill’s Strings, he doesn’t vanish from the stage as he should. I cry out in frustration. Why won’t he disappear?

His body remains in my arms, dead.

None of this makes sense.

I run my hands down his limp arm to his fingertips, to a shard of glass on the stage floor. The wheeled platform of the tank lies a few feet away. This glass couldn’t have broken by accident—it’s thick, made especially for Gill’s act during the show. Someone shattered it on purpose and then, afterward, stabbed him while he suffocated.

Someone, somehow, murdered him.

CHAPTER THREE

The dampness of the salt water and Gill’s blood seeps into my clothes. The sleeves of my robes. The knees of my thin pants. I tremble from the coldness against my skin, from the idea of kneeling in a pool of blood, from the image of Gill dying in this very spot. Of him gasping for oxygen, staring at the face of his killer, writhing on the stage floor among the broken glass, with no breath to call for help.

Gill’s body is heavy, pressing my kneecaps and ankle bones against the hard wood of the stage. All I register is what’s here. The slimy, sardine-like feeling of Gill’s corpse. The dead weight of it. The smells of blood, salt and my own sweat.

My body trembles. His Strings slip out of his Trunk and fall back at my feet, one end of them tied to my ankle and the other tied to Gill’s. I squeeze them until my knuckles whiten and gather them into my lap, resting them against Gill’s stomach.

He’s dead. He can’t be dead, but he is. He won’t disappear.

He’s more real in death than he was alive.

Suddenly panicked, I whip my head around. What if Gill’s killer is still lurking in the darkness? I don’t see anyone, but someone could be behind me, watching me. I can almost feel their breath on my neck.

Panic simmers in my gut, and the sobs burst out of me like a dam collapsing. He’s dead. This is a body. Sickened and petrified, I push him off my lap and then wipe my hands on my robes.

I’ll never have a chance to apologize for worrying him earlier.

Footsteps thump toward stage right, and Nicoleta emerges, carrying a torch. “What’s wrong?” she asks and then freezes when she reaches me and Gill. I feel like one of the rare, taxidermied animals displayed at the entrance of the Menagerie, frozen and surrounded by expressions of horror.

She doesn’t scream like I did at first, but she shudders. She inches forward, growing slower with each step, as if she doesn’t want her torchlight to fully illuminate the scene in front of her. “Is he dead?” she whispers, her eyes locked on Gill’s body.

“Yes. I came in here and found him like this. His blood...his blood is all over me,” I choke out, my voice cracking. I scrub my hands over and over with my cloak, desperate to remove the sticky red stains on my palms, desperate to feel clean even after they’ve been wiped away. My lungs don’t feel like they’re stretching properly, like walls are crushing them from both sides. Each of my inhales grows shorter, faster. My heart pounds.

This was no accident.

“Someone killed him,” I say. I sound as though I’m being strangled.

She looks at me gravely. “Get up. Come over here.” As I get to my feet, she adds, “No, no, shut his eyes first.” With trembling hands, I bend down and close his eyes. The feeling of his clammy skin makes me feel like vomiting. I remind myself that this is Gill. My bossy but well-meaning uncle. My family.

I hurry to Nicoleta and bury my face in her shoulder. “Take that off,” she says, nodding at my cloak. “You’re covered in blood. If an official comes in, what will they think? We need to clean you up and move him. Now.”

“Someone killed him,” I blubber. “He has stab wounds all over his back. Someone smashed his tank. Someone wheeled his tank here—”

Nicoleta grabs my shoulders and rips off my cloak. Despite everything, her voice is steady but sharpened by a terseness that I imagine is shock. “Did you see anyone? Hear anything?”

“No. It was so loud outside. I was just talking to him a little while ago. Then I went in to talk to you and the others, and when I came back, he was gone—”

“Can you make the body disappear?”

“No.” And even if I could, the thought of keeping Gill locked away like this inside my mind unnerves me.

“Then we need to clean all this up, hide his body.”

“I need to tell Villiam. We need to find out who did this.”

She bundles my cloak in her arms. “The officials—”

“I braved the officials for some coins. You think I won’t do it for Gill?” Again, I feel the urge to wipe my bloodstained hands, and Nicoleta holds my cloak out for me like a towel. My stomach flips. This is Gill’s blood covering me. Blood from the wounds that killed him.

“Then go, and be careful,” she says. “I’ll talk to Venera and Crown.”

I race out of the tent, half to put distance between me and the body and half in my urgency to find Villiam. As I leave, I faintly hear Nicoleta cry out, now that she’s alone with her own grief.

Outside, a few silhouettes clothed in the white glow of the torches and encased in smoke wander through the paths that wind across Gomorrah like veins. Many of them are patrons, judging by their taffeta dresses and patent shoes. They pause at each fork in the path and waver in between the hundreds of tents. The paths do not follow any logic, as they change each time Gomorrah travels to a new city.

No matter how fast I run, I cannot escape from the scene of Gill’s murder berating my mind. I try to calm myself, to prepare for speaking with Villiam. I know my father, and, despite the horror of these events, he will want facts, logic and composure in order to help. I’m not certain if I am capable of that now, but, still, I prepare my case.

After Gill and I spoke, he probably returned to the boys’ tent alone and climbed into his tank, as he always does after shows and family nights. He can climb in by himself, but he cannot climb out without the help of a ladder. It would be easy for the killer to kick the ladder aside, leaving Gill helpless within the tank. We wouldn’t be able to hear him scream within the water.

The killer then would’ve wheeled Gill to the stage. The killer must have known Gill, must have intended to kill him, specifically, and for us to find him in such a dramatic, horrible fashion, center stage.

Even from outside, I wouldn’t have heard the tank smash because of all the commotion. I wouldn’t have heard the violence of the killer stabbing him, which I’m sure he did to prevent Gill from shouting—all the wounds were at the top of his back, near his lungs. And I was too distracted by the passing official to notice anyone sneaking around outside our tent.

The killer had been there. Right there. And I’d missed him. How did I not see him? I should never have let Gill return to his tent alone. With his nose buried in a book, he probably wouldn’t notice anyone following him.

I could’ve prevented this. A helplessness churns inside me, a desperation to pinch myself and pretend this was a nightmare.

Who would want to kill Gill? He didn’t have any enemies—none of us do but especially not Gill. He kept to himself, rarely leaving our caravans or tents unless absolutely necessary. The other members of Gomorrah know him the least of all my illusions. Unless I was the real target...yet the killer would have had ample opportunity to attack me while I stood alone outside. Then again, who would target me? I may be the proprietor’s daughter, but I don’t actually possess any power.

It’s possible an Up-Mountain religious fanatic killed him. Just the thought of that makes me furious, and I curl my hands into fists. I hate the Up-Mountainers. I hate them and their hateful god.

But it couldn’t have been a random fanatic. The murderer knew where Gill slept. They knew exactly how to kill him. They knew where to kill him.

A white-coated official storms down the path and turns to a larger road. He carries a short sword in one hand, which clangs against the massive religious chain around his neck—a sword with the sun behind it, the sun representing light and Ovren, their god, and the sword symbolizing the eternal war against the “unfaithful,” or anyone who dares to practice jynx-work—who dares to exist despite the warrior god, who would have them gone. I immediately lurch back inside and wait for him to pass. I don’t trust the Up-Mountain religion, which focuses more on cleansing others of sin than cleansing oneself.

He passes, and I hurry to the path, now with my moth illusion to cloak me. It is rarely this quiet in Gomorrah at night, when everyone is awake. Usually there are the rattles of dice from within the striped tents, the crackling of a thousand torches and bonfires, and the songs of fiddles and flutes. Now there are only pounding footsteps interspersed with shrieks in the distant night.

From the direction where I am heading.

I weave through the paths, and even though they’ve changed, I know instinctively where to head, as the central points in Gomorrah always seem to fall on the same spots.

For a visitor, after walking through the mouth of Skull Gate and past the ticket booth, you’d approach the map of Gomorrah, made of thin cow’s hide stretched and bound to two ten-foot stakes. Above the map is written The Festival of Burning Desires.

Gomorrah is shaped like a coffin, with the entrance—Skull Gate—at the crown of the head and the twin obelisks at the bottom corners. The top half of the coffin is called the Uphill, and its main attractions include the Menagerie, near the forehead of the coffin; the House of Delights and Horrors, located along the left shoulder; and my Freak Show, located at the right shoulder...all from the point of view of the deceased, that is.

I pull up the hood of my cloak and sprint northeast, toward the Menagerie’s spire. The closer I run toward it, the louder the commotion becomes. Frician patrons drunkenly stumble their way back to Skull Gate, nearly as wary of the passing officials as I am. Everywhere is the shouting of arguments and confusion, and I imagine the heart of it will be around the proprietor’s tent.

I enter the clearing around the Menagerie. Gomorrah’s guards surround the entrance areas to keep the dangerous animals inside and all others out. Gomorrah officials wear all black, even over their faces, so they could blend into the Menagerie tent if not for the whites of their eyes. The Frician officials, in their tasseled, gussied uniforms, gather beneath the ruby banners in this clearing, each one depicting a different legendary animal. The officials stand straighter than toy soldiers.

Beneath the swan dragon’s banner, an argument ensues.

“We haven’t done anything wrong,” a man shouts.

Another beside him says, “You’re using pathetic excuses to shut down the Festival.”

“Let her go,” roar another four people.

At the center of the crowd, a young woman with fair skin wearing a red tiered vest struggles against the grip of one of the guards. I don’t know her name, but by her lavish jewelry and heavy makeup, I assume she works as a prettywoman in the Downhill.

“Whore,” the guard hisses at her. Her tears make her white eyeliner stream down her face.

Although the Festival’s guards remain still—they would never attack without a direct order from Villiam or their captain—a Gomorrah man rushes at the guard with a wooden staff. It doesn’t surprise me that the official’s insult riled him up. In Gomorrah, there are prostitutes and there are crooks. There are doctors and there are teachers. The Up-Mountainers consider us all the same—scum—so every profession, every person is given the same level of respect by other members of Gomorrah. No one here would dream of calling that woman anything other than her name.

The official brings down his sword and slices off all four of the man’s fingers on his left hand. Both the woman and the man scream, and I’m so shocked that my moth illusion flickers for a moment. I swerve away from the crowd as the official throws the woman down. On her knees, she cries and digs in the dirt for the fingers of the screaming man.

I lick my lips and imagine the illusions I would conjure for those officials. I could make them feel a swarm of beetles pinching every inch of their skin or see hazy, bloody specters cutting off their own fingers. But if I use jynx-work on a Frician, I’ll only cause the Festival—and Villiam—more trouble. A whole barrel full of trouble.

If that man protecting the woman had been an Up-Mountainer, the guard would’ve only hit him with the handle of his sword. Or simply yelled at him.

I’m so angry that it distracts me, for a moment, from why I am paying Villiam a visit—Gill’s body lying limp among water, blood and shards of glass. The anger dissipates, replaced by a heaviness in my chest that I recognize as grief. I immediately miss the anger.

Villiam is the priority. As much as I’d love to send the officials fleeing for their mamas and their priests through Skull Gate, I wouldn’t be helping anyone. They’d only return with more officials behind them.

And Gill would still be dead.

I skirt around the crowd to a smaller path that leads, within three minutes, to Villiam’s tent. I pass a number of storefronts, one selling licorice-dipped cherries, another hawking charmed lamps from the Forty Deserts, but none of them are open. Their torches are blown out, the flaps on their tents closed to visitors.

Villiam’s tent is modest in appearance, a vibrant but unpatterned red, with a wooden sign hanging by the door reading Proprietor. You would hardly know it’s his as you pass by it, with the aromas of licorice and the beckoning of vendors to distract you. Nevertheless, a crowd of people has managed to find it well and good. Most of them look like members of Gomorrah whose belongings were probably damaged by Frician officials. A few Frician guests linger, as well, no doubt planning to demand their money back.

Still working my moth illusion, I slip inside the tent and make my way toward the front of the line. One of the Frician officials stands guard at the door leading to Villiam’s office. As if it’s his to guard. He swats at the moth, narrowly missing my nose.

“Villiam will see you all in a few minutes,” he says to the person in front, a boy maybe a year or two older than me. Unlike the other guards, this official has a softer face. But I don’t trust appearances much. “My captain is currently speaking with him.”

“I’m not in any hurry,” the boy says. His voice is calm in comparison to the panic among the others in the tent. From his blond hair and his accent, he’s clearly an Up-Mountainer. But he’s not dressed like the patrons, all in frilly costumes the color of candy. He doesn’t dress like he’s here for a show; he dresses like he is a show himself. He must live in Gomorrah.

“Then maybe you should let the people behind you move ahead of you,” I mutter.

He startles and looks over his shoulder. I didn’t realize I had spoken loudly enough to be heard. To my surprise, he allows the woman behind him to take his place in line. He walks to the side of the tent and pulls out a journal and a pen, which he amuses himself with for the next half hour we stand waiting.

Nicoleta has probably told Venera and Crown about the murder by now. I picture her scrubbing and sweeping up the stage floor while rehearsing the words she will say to the others. I imagine Crown carrying Gill’s body back to his tent and Venera cleaning it. She’ll wash away the blood and change his clothes. Crown will tear up but insist over and over that he’s okay, and he’ll pace the tent wondering why something so dreadful could’ve happened to our family.

Visualizing these things doesn’t make me feel better, but I can’t stop. Part of me thinks that I should be there helping them. All I’m doing is waiting in line, wasting time, avoiding my family when we should be together. But talking to Villiam is more important. He’ll be able to help us find the killer. And that’s worth waiting for.

Behind me, several more Frician officials parade into the tent, shoving aside those in line to make room for themselves. They all have squished faces, pale brown hair and light eyes. One of them knocks shoulders with the boy, who is too enraptured with his notebook to notice them, like he comes from this region. Even his accent matches theirs.

“I’m already tired of this place,” the official says to his friends. “I’ll never wash the smell of these people out of my clothes.”

“Three fucking pieces for a bag of cherries?” another complains.

“You could spend the three pieces on sweeter cherries deeper in Gomorrah, I hear.”

“Three pieces? I wouldn’t pay over half a copper for a single girl here—”

“Cheap and vile,” the boy says, his gaze fixed on his notebook. “It’s no wonder you have to pay to find company for the night.”

The first official whips around. “What did you say to me?” He examines the Up-Mountain boy with a mixture of shock and confusion. He looks like one of them.

“I said...” The boy glances up from his notebook. “Ah, now that I see your face properly, I understand it’s more than just your charming personality that repels women.”

With incredible reaction time, the official punches the boy in the face, slicing open his cheek with the numerous rings on his hand. As the boy falls, the others in the tent back away to remain out of the line of fire. There are several people pressed against me, though none of them seem to notice that they are pushing against what they perceive as a moth and then empty space. This is a good way to get accidentally trampled, so I nudge my way to the front of the crowd, where I have more breathing room and a better view of the show. I could use a distraction.

The boy stands up, grinning. He snaps his leather-bound notebook closed and returns it and his pen to an inside pocket of his vest.

Perhaps he has a death wish, or finds thrill in the danger—not an unusual trait in Gomorrah. But I don’t recognize his face, and I study him, now that he has grown the slightest bit more interesting.

He has layers and layers of blond hair pushed back and hanging past his collarbone. He wears a jacket the color of rubies—a dye you’d usually only find in performance clothes in Gomorrah because of its price. The patterns stitched over it resemble clockwork in a variety of colors. This is paired with a white button-up, a black silk top hat, freshly polished boots and a belt lined with vials—each filled with a different liquid, some bright yellow or green, others clear—and a black walking stick. His face is young and defined by thick eyebrows, full lips and a silver stud piercing on the side of his nose.

As he glares at the official, the cut that was gushing blood down his cheek only moments ago fades. He licks his fingers and rubs away the blood. Several people in the tent gasp, even take a few more steps back. I, however, am more intrigued and tiptoe closer.

The official’s eyes widen. He grabs a fistful of the boy’s shirt and yanks him forward so that they’re chest to chest. Though the boy is taller by a couple inches, the official is wider by several more.

“So you’re a jynx-worker?” The official spits on the boy’s face. Clearly, the official doesn’t care that the boy is from the Up-Mountains. A jynx-worker of any origin is equated to scum. Impure, as Ovren decrees. Dirtied by magic.

“Where are your papers?” the official asks him, clearly interested to know which city-state the boy comes from.

“I lost them. It’s a rather long story involving an altercation between two prettymen known as the Ebony Tower and Maximilian ‘The Whip’ Tarla. I found myself unfortunately caught in the middle,” the boy explains.

“It’s a crime for an Up-Mountain devil-worker to travel without papers.”

“Not in Gomorrah, it isn’t.”

Another punch. Another cut. The official is holding him up so the boy can’t fall over this time, and we can clearly see his wound stitch itself back together.

“What kind of jynx-work is this?” one of the other officials murmurs.

“The devil kind,” the boy says. “I’m the son of a snow demon. The bastard son. And my mother is a prettywoman. I’m not allowed in twelve kingdoms, including the Kingdom of Ovren and the Kingdom of Hell.”

Though he’s clearly joking, the official pulls away from him the way a person jolts back from touching a hot charcoal. He rips out his sword and holds it to the boy’s throat. A Frician lady beside me screams.

“It’s no sin to Ovren to kill one such as you,” the official tells the boy.

The boy very much brought this on himself, but that official probably would kill him if not stopped, and I don’t like the idea of anyone else dying tonight.

Thinking up an illusion isn’t difficult, since the boy provided me with such useful inspiration. In the eyes of the officials, he grows several heads larger, as tall as the tent’s ceiling. His jaw unhinges, his mouth drops open and bits of ice pour out of it, onto their fair hair. Crimson horns sprout from his head and the sides of his arms, some as long as the official’s sword.

The official shrieks and swings his blade at the illusion’s head, but, of course, there’s nothing there. The boy, bemused at the officials’ sudden loss of sanity, backs away.

The illusion swings its arm down at the officials, but it misses—they’re already running outside.

The people around me whisper in a combination of uncertainty and amusement.

The boy’s sight falls on me. I was too focused on the details of my snow-demon illusion to maintain the moth one. He strolls toward me as if, moments ago, there wasn’t a sword pointed at his throat. He brushes dust off his jacket.

“You’re welcome,” I say.

“You weren’t there before,” he says matter-of-factly.

“I’ve been here the whole time. You just didn’t see me. You’re rather reckless, you know.”

“I wasn’t about to let them really hurt me.”

“No, but you’re causing problems for the whole Festival.” I cringe. Isn’t that what Gill told me earlier?

The crowd around us has finally noticed me. “You’re the freak girl,” someone says. “Villiam’s daughter.”

Cringing, I try to ignore them and head to the front of the line. Nobody stops me from cutting in.

The boy follows me. “I’m Luca,” he says. When I don’t give him my own name, he adds, “That’s a clever mask you’re sporting. One without slits or holes. How does it work?”

“I don’t have eyes,” I say.

If that catches him off guard, he doesn’t show it. “I’ve only lived in Gomorrah for a year, and I don’t know many people. Perhaps you’d be willing to show me around. I’m certain I’d enjoy your perspective on this place.”

“I can’t.”

Villiam’s assistant, Agni, squeezes past the kind-faced Frician official at the door. Agni is a lanky man in his forties who’s always squinting, even in the nighttime. He squints around the tent for a few moments before realizing I’m there.

“Sorina,” he whispers. In addition to the squinting, Agni always whispers. Someone once told me it’s because he’s such a powerful fire-worker—his voice is hoarse from breathing in all that smoke. When Agni isn’t serving as Villiam’s assistant, he works at the Menagerie, training rare animals to jump through flaming hoops, or participates in Gomorrah’s nightly fireworks show. Everyone knows him...and everyone knows his family’s tragic story.

“I need to speak to Villiam,” I tell him. “It’s urgent.”

“He’ll see you—” he raises his voice “—but everyone else should come back in another hour.”

There’s an uproar of protest as I climb the steps out of the tent and into Villiam’s enormous caravan, muttering a quiet goodbye to Luca. Inside, the caravan is set up like a proper parlor, with two men sitting there, Villiam and the Frician captain—or general, or colonel, or whatever his title may be. The walls are layered with cabinets of books collected from all over the world. It’s clear upon first entering the room what interests Villiam—knowledge. A telescope rests on a table by the window, surrounded by papers and trinkets. Villiam even commissioned an artist to paint the ceiling to resemble the night sky on the day he was born, which he claims speaks wonders about his destiny. The carpet is fur, the seats leather and the tablecloth silk.

The Frician captain tenses as I approach. His light eyes scan me, as if trying to determine who exactly I am—a young girl wearing a sparkling, beaded tunic and a sequined party mask—and what I could possibly be doing interrupting their meeting. Even though he’s sitting down, it’s obvious he’s tall, but his height seems to be the only characteristic that gives him any authority. His face is gaunt and unintelligent, and he wheezes as he inhales the soothing incense of Villiam’s office. He does not frighten me.

Villiam smiles at me the way he always does, as if he were expecting me. No matter the situation, he makes a great effort to appear at ease and prepared. Some in Gomorrah believe that Villiam is a fortune-worker with fewer cards and crystal balls, but he isn’t a jynx-worker at all—he only looks like one. The quick shifts in his dark eyes give the impression that he can read all the lies you’ve ever told, as though they’re etched on your forehead. He has a habit of muttering to himself under his breath—usually reminders about paperwork, occasionally a sarcastic comment spoken only, apparently, to amuse himself. Even his manner of speech is unnerving. He has a skill for putting words into your mouth, steering the conversation in any direction he chooses and escorting you out of his office with a smile on your face, yet with more problems than when you arrived.

“Ah, Sorina,” Villiam says. Just the sound of his voice is comforting, and I want to run forward and embrace him, but I hold myself back in the presence of the captain. “I’m just tickled you were able to join us.” He thinks I’m here to help him with proprietor duties. The thought never even crossed my mind until now, with how distraught I’ve been since I found Gill’s body.

I force a smile and inch my way closer to their table. “I was hoping to speak to you in private,” I say.

“Of course,” Villiam says. “The captain was just leaving. But first, Captain Mayhern, I’m pleased to introduce you to my daughter, Sorina. She’s a captivating performer here at Gomorrah.”

“Is that so?” Captain Mayhern asks. He seems unsure that I could be Villiam’s daughter. Villiam has mixed Down-Mountain features from the many generations of Gomorrah proprietors in his blood. He wears his dark, curly hair long, sometimes tied at the nape of his neck, sometimes simply down. His skin is a dusty gold, with freckles along his forearms and nose. By contrast, my looks are definitely Eastern—I’m clearly not his daughter.

I am in no mood to be introduced to an Up-Mountain captain and play the charming young lady, but I try to keep the smile on my face for Villiam’s sake.

“A pleasure,” I say. “What brings a Frician captain to Gomorrah?” I already know the answer. To cause trouble.

“Pleasantries,” he says, holding out his hand.

“Funny.” I don’t take his hand. “On my way here, I witnessed one of your soldiers pleasantly slice my friend’s fingers off.” I didn’t know the man, but he was of Gomorrah. In every aspect that matters, he is a friend.

He reddens, as all Up-Mountainers seem to do whenever they are uncomfortable. I rarely see an Up-Mountainer whose cheeks aren’t wearing some shade of red. “We’re here to keep Lord Ovren’s peace.”

His god has a very different version of peace than mine.

Villiam ushers the captain out. He compliments his conversation, assures the man that Gomorrah will be out of Frice’s borders by morning and other such pleasantries. I bite my tongue until the soft-faced official has led the captain out of the room.

“They’re making us leave Frice by tomorrow morning?” I ask Villiam.

“They aren’t pleased with the conduct of their citizens here. The religious officials had hoped their citizens would behave more...well, behave.” He frowns. “But it is more than that. An extremely influential Frician duke has gone missing. They were here searching for him.”

A thousand insults, a thousand sarcastic comments cross my mind. But I don’t say them in front of Villiam. He can be quick to scold if I say something he deems out of line. Which includes most things I wish to say.

“Are you all right, Sorina? You look troubled,” Villiam says. He always knows when something is bothering me before I say so. “Would you like tea? Some honey biscuits?” Villiam views food as a cure-for-all.

I run to him and press my face into his chest. In practically one, drawn-out breath, I relay him the details of Gill’s murder. I talk quickly because if I slow down, I will start crying again. And I have to be strong. I need to be able to present the facts, so Villiam can work out the answers for me. Villiam always knows how to handle a difficult situation and solve even the trickiest problem.

Throughout the story, Villiam keeps a stoic expression, as if contemplating a puzzle from one of his books. I don’t know how he can keep himself so contained. He knew Gill. He knows all my illusions. He examined my sketches of them before I finished them; he interviewed them soon after their creation to make sure they were suitable for performance. He knows them as people. Even though they are illusions, they are considered to be members of Gomorrah like anyone else.

He must be upset, but I’m grateful that he’s remaining calm for my sake.

“Are you all right?” he asks. “You haven’t been hurt? And the others? You didn’t see—”

“I’m fine. The rest of us are all fine.”

His eyes scan over me, as if searching for invisible bruises. Then his shoulders relax. He unties my mask and hands me a tissue, so that it’s easier to blow my nose.

“I’m so sorry, Sorina. I’m so, so sorry.” He rubs my back and then sits me down in a chair at his table. I grab a throw blanket to wrap around myself for comfort.

“I just don’t understand how it’s possible,” I say. “Gill is an illusion.”

“It shouldn’t be possible,” he says. “I don’t understand it. I’m at a loss. None of your illusions should be able to die.” He squeezes his hand into a fist until his knuckles whiten, releases his grip and then repeats, over and over. He does this whenever he is in a tizzy, as he would call it.

“We need to find out who did this immediately,” I say. “I wish I could’ve seen more. That I’d been paying attention—”

A sharp knock sounds, and Agni pokes his head through Villiam’s door. “Sir, there’s a fire in Skull Market.”

Villiam grimaces. “None of this is your fault, Sorina. And it destroys me that I cannot give you all the help and support you need right now. But with the problems with Frice, Gomorrah leaving at sunrise and apparently a part of the Downhill on fire, there is too much I must do. I need you to promise me something, my dear.”

“What?”

“You must hurry and bury him—I’ll send a few of Gomorrah’s guards to help you and to search your neighborhood for anything to help us find the killer. You must act quickly. If the Frician officials see him with their duke missing, they will grow suspicious. The entire Festival could face trouble.”

Packing up all of our belongings and the stage equipment usually takes several hours. If we’re leaving at sunrise, we would need to get started now. This doesn’t give us a lot of time to bury Gill’s body, let alone to say a proper farewell.

All because one Up-Mountain politician got himself lost. He’s probably somewhere in the Downhill, drunk and falling off his bar stool, and we need to pack up, forgo our grieving and move out, just to give the Frician officials peace of mind. Where is our peace of mind? I tear a loose thread out of the blanket and squeeze it in my hand.

“Sir,” Agni says from outside, “the fire.”

“Another minute,” Villiam grunts. He kisses my forehead, where he always kisses me. Then he kneels down in front of me. “I’m so sorry, but there are ten thousand people to pack up and move in a few hours. I must focus on them first, but I promise you, tomorrow—once Gomorrah is moving—we will discuss what happened to Gill.”

“But the killer could be gone by then,” I protest.

“There is nothing I can do right now.” Villiam’s voice cracks. I’ve never heard him so frazzled. “I’d give anything to help you, but Gomorrah is in a crisis.” He hesitates. “Do you want me to send Agni with you?” Agni is always at Villiam’s side. Villiam considers his advice and presence to be invaluable.

“No. I don’t know what he would find in the tent that the rest of us wouldn’t,” I say. “But do we really need to bury him tonight? That’s...that isn’t enough—” I’m crying. Villiam hugs me and shushes me but still allows me to finish. I feel a hundred things at once. Grateful for the comfort. Embarrassed that I’m keeping him here when thousands of people are depending upon him. Angry at Frice. Angrier at the killer. Lost. Confused. Horrified.

Because I’ve been training with Villiam and learning about how Gomorrah works for years, I also know that moving the entire city is no easy feat to accomplish in several days, let alone a few hours. He genuinely does not have time for me.

“Send my apologies to our family. Tell them I’m thinking of them. I wish I could be there to help them in person. This is...such a tragedy,” he says, tears glistening in his eyes. “And promise me you’ll return when the commotion has died down.”

The commotion won’t disappear for several days, not until we reach the next city. It’s hard to think that far into the future. It’s hard to picture anything except the night ahead of me, of packing up the stage where Gill died, of burying him without a coffin, without a ceremony. It’s impossible to think beyond saying goodbye.

Nevertheless, I mutter, “I promise.”

CHAPTER FOUR

The Gomorrah Festival does not travel like other circuses, groups of wanderers, bands of musicians, thieves or markets, because it is all of those at the same time. If someone stood at the peak of the Winding Pass—the stony, barren mountains we are crossing to reach the city of Cartona—it would appear as if an entire burning city were on the move beneath them. Due to the suddenness of our departure, tents are still raised and wheeled on platforms, parties continue in the Downhill as the sun begins to rise and the white torches glimmer within the haze of smoke. It goes on for miles, with a population of over ten thousand inhabitants. Our nickname is “The Wandering City.”

If that same person had watched the Gomorrah Festival travel before, they would also realize that its atmosphere feels different this morning. More subdued and downcast. There’s less music, laughing and cheering since the Fricians kicked us out.

Or maybe the morning wind is cooler than usual, and it’s just a chill. Gomorrah is older than anyone can remember and unlikely to be intimidated by the actions of a single Up-Mountain city-state.

Perhaps I am the only one in Gomorrah feeling the chill. Perhaps, after Gill’s death, the music, laughing and cheering is quieter only to me.

Apart from Tree, who prefers to walk on his own, my family sleeps in two separate caravans when we travel—one for Crown, Gill, Unu and Du and Blister, and one for the rest of us. I sleep between Nicoleta and Venera. Hawk’s feet are across from mine and sometimes kick me during the day while we rest. The caravan is packed full of trunks, the floor covered in blankets and the ground in between littered with popcorn kernels and peanut shells.

I sit up and stare out the window at the Winding Pass peaks jutting into the sky, mere silhouettes through Gomorrah’s smoke. The sun has risen, barely. Gomorrah is beginning to go to bed, and I have yet to fall asleep. The memories of Gill’s corpse and his brief burial a few hours ago continue to haunt me. Even though I’ve washed my hands over and over, removing every last trace of blood, I wipe them on my bedsheets once, twice, three times.

I replay my last conversation with Gill over in my mind. I was a jerk. Not only yesterday, the day he died, but the day before, and before, and before. I could’ve listened to his advice more often. Read the books he suggested. Made an effort to spend time with him, instead of avoiding his lectures.

I want to sleep until reality feels more like a dream. I want to never wake up.

But I have business to attend to and others to look after. Jiafu will still be awake in the Downhill. Even though it’s dawn and no longer safe to venture outside, I’ll have to take my chances for now. At least this errand will keep me distracted.

I slept in my regular clothes last night, so I crawl past Hawk and creak open the door. Then I jump out of the moving caravan into the knee-high grass of the Winding Pass.

Gomorrah can be more difficult to navigate while it’s moving, but I’ve explored the Downhill once before during the day, when the nicest people of the Downhill—which is not saying very much—are asleep and the rest of the crooks are awake. In the Downhill, no one cares that I’m Villiam’s adopted daughter. Actually, they’d probably love to skin me because of it. No one there is a star performer, a great attraction or seemingly special at all. In Gomorrah, everyone might be treated equally, but, in the end, money divides the affluent from the rest. If Villiam wasn’t paying for my family’s space, we’d barely be affording the Uphill ourselves.

It takes me ten minutes to walk to where the Uphill intersects with the Downhill. There’s a fifty-meter gap between those two sections of caravans, and as I trudge across the small, open field, I feel eyes peering at me from ahead. People are watching me, wondering why an Uphill girl would visit them at this hour.

The wood of the caravans here rots from years of rain, with holes along the walls just large enough to toss out the contents of an ashtray or for someone to covertly slip a delivery in the gap beneath a windowsill. The ribs of horses, mules and the occasional more exotic elephants who pull the caravans are more pronounced. Their eyes burn red, and their dirty coats swarm with clouds of fleas. I worry that if I get too close, they might mistake me for the meal their owners forgot to feed them.

Thankfully, Jiafu doesn’t live deep within the Downhill, and I make it there without becoming a horse’s breakfast. The cramped caravan he calls home is striped purple and black, with no sign or indication of what a visitor might find inside. All of his clients already know who he is and where to find him—he doesn’t need advertisements.

I knock on the dull black door and walk to keep up with it. No response. After thirty seconds of more knocking—and a man poking his head out of a nearby caravan, telling me to piss off—Jiafu answers. He grimaces when he sees me and rubs his temples, one of which has a deep scar that snakes down to his chin.

“What do you want?” he asks. His shadow dances on the grass below him, twisting into almost gruesome positions, as if trying to tear itself away from the body casting it.

“You weren’t waiting for me last night,” I say. “After the show.”

“There were officials about. I needed to head back home and protect my merchandise.”

“I want the money now. I want my cut.”

“Too bad. I haven’t sold it yet. I don’t got your cut. Now run away, princess.”

“Sold what yet?” I say, loudly and dramatically. “Oh, you mean the priceless ring of Count...Pomp-di-something from Frice? That’s worth a fortune?”

The man who told me to piss off earlier pokes his head outside again. As do a few others. I have their attention.

Jiafu narrows his eyes and then he yanks me by my tunic and hoists me into his caravan. Inside, there are five times as many crates as in my own, with just enough floor space for a mattress in the corner. Everything reeks of burnt coffee and feet.

“You think I had a chance to sell the ring?” he hisses. “We just left Frice.”

“I didn’t expect Kahina to have to travel again so soon. I want the money to get her medicine as soon as we get to Cartona.” Packing and traveling isn’t easy on her, especially in this part of the Up-Mountains, where the roads are unpaved and hard on her bones. And now that Gill is...now that Gill is gone, ensuring Kahina stays healthy is more important to me than ever. I can’t lose anyone else.

He pauses. “There is another job. One of my men noticed this guy carrying a big purse of change. He’s at a bar now getting piss-drunk. If you could make an illusion, someone to mug him—”

“That’s not how it works,” I say, annoyed. I’ve had this conversation with Jiafu before.

“You said it takes a while to make an illusion, but I’ve been to several of your shows, and your act is different each time. You make it up on the spot.”

I rub my temples. “Yes, that type of illusion is improv. But you’re asking for a person. You’re asking for someone you can touch, hear and smell, someone real like Nicoleta and the others. They take me months.”

“Then get started making one. Big, preferably good with a sword—”

“The answer is no.”

Even though I’ve technically made all of my illusions, I don’t really think of them that way. They’re their own persons. They’re my family. I created them to be the friends I never had.

I’m not exactly the most popular person in the Festival. Who would trust someone who has the power to deceive you in every manner?

He jabs his finger in my face. “Look, freak, that job wasn’t easy last night when you had the Count sitting in the front, and—”

I hold back my wince. “If you call me freak again, you’ll think maggots are eating out your insides.” I take three steps forward. Jiafu is several inches taller than me, but that doesn’t matter. I can make him look like an ant. I can make myself look like a giant.

He leans back. “Hey now, ’Rina, don’t be like that. We’re cousins, eh?”

Jiafu plays this card a lot. He comes from the Eastern Kingdoms of the Down-Mountains, like me, so he thinks we’re family. We’re not even friends.

“Don’t bother. I want my cut. I want my thirty percent. And I want it as soon as possible.”

He collapses onto the floor mattress and kicks his legs up on a crate. “There’s nothing I can tell you. I want to give you the money. Really, I want to. I want to reward all my friends.” I narrow my eyes. We’re. Not. Friends. “But I don’t have anything. I’ll sell it in Cartona. Then you get your cut.”

I sigh. This is about what I expected. Sure, Jiafu probably has some money hidden inside these crates that he could give me, but that would take a bit of coercion on my part. It would take an impressive illusion to make him cooperate. What would scare Jiafu? An enraged ex-mistress? A debt collector? I didn’t get enough sleep for my imagination to be at its best.

“Sorry, cousin,” Jiafu says.

“You’re not my family.”

“Would you prefer princess?” He lifts his left leg and points his calloused toe toward the door. “Come back after we’re settled in Cartona, and I have time for some business.”

“I will.” I try to make my voice sound forceful, intimidating, but I only sound broken. I plaster a smile on my face and push aside the thoughts of Kahina’s snaking sickness and of Gill. Then I mutter a goodbye and jump out of his caravan.

I’m not on my game.

Outside is the sound of millions of caravans moving and horses trotting. I walk past the smell of opium teas and a sign for what I’m sure is questionable goat curry.

Sleep will be impossible, so instead of making my way home, I head toward the center of the Uphill, toward a particular caravan decked out in fuchsia drapes and murals finger-painted by neighboring children. A sign on the door reads Fortune-Worker: Explore the Successes, Loves And Wonders That Await You.

I knock. It’s not as if she’s sleeping. In all the time I’ve known her, Kahina barely sleeps. She stays awake most of the day watering her herb garden and stringing necklaces and belts out of forgotten coins. And worrying about everyone’s futures. She should spend more time concerning herself with her own.

“I’m not done yet,” she calls from inside.

“No, it’s me,” I say.

A pause. There’s a rustle that sounds of coins tinkling together. Then she opens the door, a smile stretching across her face. “Sorina.” She holds out her hand to help me into the caravan.

The first thing I notice is the purple of her veins that spread from her fingertips up her forearm in a winding, swollen web. I freeze.

She laughs and switches hands. Her right one is normal and not yet infected. I grab it and climb into her caravan, eyeing her hesitantly. Other than the dark, snaking veins, she looks healthy. Which almost makes the sickness crueler, convincing you she’s fine until, very suddenly, she won’t be. The sickness will creep through her blood, snaking through her bloodstream into either her heart, lungs or brain—wherever it reaches first. The process can take years. From there, the disease progresses quickly, attacking the organ and deteriorating it cell by cell, until it can no longer function. No one knows how it spreads, but it’s common, both in the Up- and Down-Mountains.

Her long dreadlocks are pulled into a bun, full and beautiful. Her brown skin has its normal glow. Her ankle-length skirt and tunic fit her the same as always. Sometimes it’s easy to forget that she’s dying.

She occupies an entire medium-sized caravan to herself. Usually, that would be quite expensive, but since she has grown ill, a lot of her friends and neighbors have pulled their resources together to make her more comfortable. Kahina chose to use the extra space to add more volume to her herb and vegetable garden, many of which she makes into medicines or herbal teas. Unfortunately, none of them are rare enough to treat her own disease. The potted plants take up the majority of her home, and I brush a palm leaf out of my way as I crawl into her actual living space, which is mainly taken up by her bed, a drawer for fortune-work objects like crystals and cards, and a short table. The pots clack together as the caravan rides across the bumpy road.

Kahina lies back down on her bed and returns to the embroidery she was working on. With its red stitching and plain patchwork, it’s meant for a newborn boy. As the baby ages, the empty patches will be filled with cross-stitching depicting various life moments.

“Tya is going to have a boy in January,” Kahina says. “I figured I might as well start now.”

Kahina’s jynx-work allows her to glimpse into the future of individuals. She’s accurate the majority of the time, but I’ve witnessed a few occasions where she’s gotten a detail wrong. So it seems rash for her to make a blanket for a child that may still be born a girl. Especially because fortunes grow less certain the further into the future Kahina searches.

“You couldn’t wait a few more months to start?” I ask.

“I may not have a few more months.”

I pause before sitting down in the corner of her caravan. “You can’t talk like that,” I plead. “You can’t. I’m getting you medicine. The best quality there is. I’m not going to let anything happen...” My voice cracks. “Nothing is going to happen to you.” My head hurts from the build-up of pressure, and I steady my breathing to avoid crying. Damn it. I thought I could compose myself, but I am one unpleasant thought away from hysterics, no different than a few hours ago. I thought being in the comfort of Kahina’s caravan would help.

“You’re right,” Kahina says quickly. “I shouldn’t say things like that. Are you all right, Sorina?”

“Y-yes,” I say. But talking makes my breathing stagger, and then I can’t hold it back anymore. I cough out a sob, which turns into another and then another. There are no tears, of course, but my face reddens and my nose runs. I feel as though my entire heart has shattered.

“What has made this come on?” she asks, crawling to my side.

I bury my face into her shoulder and mumble something unintelligible.

“You’re really worrying me—”

“Gill’s dead. Someone killed him. Last night.”

I feel her whole body go rigid with shock. “What do you mean, someone killed him?”

I tell her the entire story, just like I told Villiam last night, and it’s no easier to share a second time. As I near the end, Kahina gets up to pour me a stone-cold mug of chamomile tea. “We were arguing when I last talked to him,” I choke. “I... I wasn’t kind.”

“Arguing about what?” Kahina asks.

“Nothing important,” I lie. She wouldn’t like to hear that I’ve been working with a Downhill thief to supply her medicine. I’ve been telling her that the Freak Show has been booming lately. I’m not certain if she buys this, but Kahina always said I don’t have to tell her anything I don’t want to. Before this, I’ve never had anything to conceal from her.

She presses me closer to her and hands me the tea. Then she runs her fingers through my hair, the way she used to when I was a child. “I’m so sorry, sweetbug. I wish I could’ve seen this coming.”

Kahina is unable to see the fortunes of my illusions because they aren’t entirely real.

But apparently they’re real enough to die.

I wish I could tell her about how worried I am about her, too. About how I feel the same anxiety, as if, even though my lungs are expanding, I’m not getting any air. And the feeling won’t go away. But Kahina hates it when I bring up her health. She hates to see how it affects me.

“It’s not fair,” I say. “It’s not fair that the Up-Mountainers get to storm our Festival and then call us the criminals. They get drunk, and they buy drugs, and they pay for all sorts of sins and call us the sinners for giving them the business they want.” I wipe my nose with the back of my hand.

“I don’t like to hear you talking like that,” Kahina says gently.

“What do you mean? It’s the truth. What they do isn’t right.”

“No, it isn’t right. But that doesn’t mean I like to hear my sweetbug saying ugly, angry things. Not my beautiful sweetbug. You’re allowed to be sad. Of course you can grieve. And anger is a stage of grief. But some never move beyond that, and I worry about you when you say such things.” She tugs at the ribbon of my mask until it slips off. “There. That feel better?”

Kahina always treats me like a child. She treats everyone like children, even people with more wrinkles and body aches than her. Her only child died at only two months old many, many years ago, yet she always said it was her destiny to be a mother, that every fortune-worker in Gomorrah told her that. So Kahina became a sort of mother to everyone in the Festival, quilting blankets, sending baskets of tea and keeping lucky coins for everyone she cares about.

But I’m her sweetbug.

When Villiam first adopted me, I was only three years old. He may have been my father, but, in truth, he was more of a teacher. He needed someone else to look after me while he managed the Festival, but no one was too keen to babysit me, with my freakish face, my unsettling jynx-work and Tree following me wherever I went. Only Kahina volunteered. And though Villiam and Kahina may have different views on parenting, Villiam has always appreciated the maternal role she plays in my life.

“What is Villiam doing to find the perpetrator?” she asks.

“I don’t know yet. He was too overwhelmed with moving the Festival to do anything last night. He sent some guards. But they only asked us a few questions and left.”

“That doesn’t surprise me—last night was chaotic. I hope he doesn’t involve you further in the investigation.”

I pull away. “Why not?”

“Because I know Villiam. I’ve known him since he was a boy. And as much as he loves to involve you in all of his work, he doesn’t know you like I do. He’s clever and calculating—able to detach himself from a situation to view it objectively. You are not like that.”

“I could be. If that’s what it took,” I insist. I’m going to be proprietor one day, so I’ll need to be.

“Now, sweetbug,” she says, continuing to run her fingers through my hair, “no one wants you to go through that. What happened to Gill is a wretched thing. But you need to promise me that you won’t let the anger get to you. You have too beautiful a soul for that. You focus on love, because you still have a whole family who loves you. Don’t you forget that. And drink your tea.”

“A whole family I made up.”

“I was made on a cold January night by a fisherman and a fortune-worker, not by you,” she says wryly.

I snort. A very clogged, snotty snort.

“Yes, Venera and Hawk and all of your family may be illusions, but they still love you. And love is real. Love is a choice.” She squeezes my hand, and I stare at her black veins with a mess of dread pinching at my gut. I don’t know what I’d do without Kahina. “Now, you’re going to take it easy right now. You’re going to sleep and cry and eat or not eat as much as you want until we get to Cartona. And then you’re going to perform your show and see your friends and do things again. And it won’t feel better right away, but it will eventually.”

Would it get better? I don’t have any friends to see—the only people I spend time with are my illusions, Kahina and Villiam. Most people in Gomorrah avoid me because my face makes them uneasy. Even with my mask on, people have complained because they can’t see my expression or tell if I’m looking at them. Around me, they cannot trust their own senses. I make everyone uncomfortable. It’s easier to be among other misfits.

“I promised Villiam I’d go see him tonight,” I say.

She purses her lips, and I prepare myself for another speech about not getting involved in the investigation.

She must know I won’t take her advice. Not on this.

“Then, after tonight,” she says. “You take time to yourself, okay?”

“Okay. But can you do a reading for me before I go?” Kahina often does fortune-work for me. I may have given up on aspirations of beauty, but my fantasies of romance have been kindling since Kahina told me fairy tales as a child. So I usually ask if she sees anything remotely romantic in my future. She never does.

“Of course,” Kahina says. “Maybe there’s a mystery man.”

“Or lady,” I add. When I imagine myself in Kahina’s fairy tales, I tend to prefer princes and princesses equally. “I was hoping you could read for anyone connected to what happened to Gill. Through me.” I sit up, my hair brushing against the leaves of a palm potted behind me.

“I don’t think that’s a good idea, Sorina.” She only uses my name when aggravated.

“I just want to make sure that everyone else is safe,” I say. “Please. It would make me feel better.”

“Fine. But only this once.”

She grabs a black clay jug from her table. Inside are hundreds of coins, each with a different symbol. I take the jug and shake it until one coin falls out from the opening underneath. It’s a gold piece with a menace on it—a type of demon believed to live in the Great Mountains, the region between the two continents. Not a good sign.

She turns it over in her hand. “You are surrounded by confusion,” she says. “It’s strange. Difficult to see through. As if you’re surrounded by the same smoke as Gomorrah.”

I’m not sure what to make of that, but I’ve grown used to Kahina’s vagueness after hundreds of readings.

“You can’t see anything?” I ask.

“There’s only the negative energy in your aura.”

“What about any positive energy with a good jawline and broad shoulders? Or doe eyes and silky hair?” I ask it with a teasing smile, so Kahina doesn’t suspect I’m thinking “ugly thoughts.”

She laughs and then shakes her head. “I don’t see any good jawlines or doe eyes, but, then again, I don’t usually do those sort of readings with the coins. Do you want some tea leaves?”

“That’s okay.” Not like the tea leaves have foretold anything before, and I don’t have much desire to finish my cold mug of chamomile. “I’m going back to sleep until I see Villiam.”

“That’s a good idea, sweetbug.” She squeezes my hand. “Sleep as much as you’d like.”

CHAPTER FIVE

I yank one foot after another out of the mud as I trudge my way to Villiam’s caravan. This Up-Mountain road wasn’t made for heavy travel in the rain. Especially not with hundreds of mules, horses and caravans ahead, tearing the ground apart and leaving a mess in their trail. With each step, I sink into the earth halfway up my shins.

The red tent usually outside Villiam’s caravan is currently packed away, so the whole caravan is visible. It was painted black about thirty years ago, so now it’s merely speckled with the remaining paint, revealing pale wood beneath. Fresher coats of red, pink and purple spell out the swirling letters of The Gomorrah Festival. I knock on the door, walking to keep up with the two enormous stallions that pull it.

Villiam answers. As usual, he wears neatly pressed business clothes, though I doubt he’s seen anyone today, as it’s barely four o’clock in the afternoon. He extends his hand out to help me up and then embraces me once I climb inside. “Dismal outside, isn’t it?” he says.

“It’s appropriate,” I answer.

Agni is in the process of setting out a full four-course meal. In Gomorrah, breakfast is our typical supper, with the heartiest foods eaten before guests arrive. He reaches out every few moments to catch an empty wineglass knocked over by the bumps of the caravan. “Maybe the breakfast wine should be skipped today, sir,” Agni says.

“Nonsense. Wine is an important component of a meal,” Villiam says, ever the gourmet. “And without all the pieces, a whole structure could collapse.”

Agni rolls his eyes and lets the pepper shaker tumble to the floor, spilling out onto the fur carpet.

“I didn’t realize I was coming for breakfast,” I say. “You just said you wanted to speak with me.”

“Why? Have you already eaten?”

“I’m not hungry.” Eating doesn’t have much appeal. The only things that have gotten me out of bed since I spoke to Kahina this morning are Villiam’s mandatory invitation to meet with him and the need to relieve myself.

“I know it’s difficult, but you need to keep your spirits up,” he says. “And take off your mask. Make yourself comfortable.”

Difficult is hardly the word. More like impossible. Even if I wasn’t hating myself for the way I last spoke to Gill, I’m surrounded by seven others who are grieving. The only one attempting to pull us together is Nicoleta, who brought us candied pecans and cashews, but the bag is lying untouched in the corner of our caravan, and I’m sure it was the same in the boys’ cart, especially now that one of their riders is gone.

“I chose some of your favorite dishes,” Villiam says, drawing me out of my morose thoughts.

With my mask off, I sit down at the table and eye the plates. Herbed lamb legs; some kind of mix of butternut squash, peas and beets; a huge dish of steaming yellow rice; and a cream curry sauce with mint. It’s very colorful. And it looks delicious. But the table keeps shaking as the bumps on the road jolt the caravan. Agni runs past me—reeking of smoke, as usual—and stabilizes one of the many bookshelves.

Still, it’s a nice gesture. Condolences and empathy are not my father’s strengths, but he always manages to reach out to me in smaller ways. Particularly ways that involve candies or aged cheese.

Villiam sits opposite me and places his napkin on his lap, ignoring the disorder around him, even when someone knocks on the door. Agni ducks outside to answer it. It’s not like Villiam to set his proprietor duties aside, even for me. He must feel guilty about not being able to help me last night.

“Will the Freak Show be performing while we’re in Cartona?” Villiam asks.

I tilt my head. We aren’t meeting to talk pleasantries. But Villiam adds, “Eat first. You need to eat.”

My stomach clenches as I eye the huge portions on my plate. I can’t possibly eat all of this. I could barely manage a nibble.

“We’re planning on it,” I say in answer to his question. We can’t afford to stop the show for an entire week.

Villiam grabs generous helpings of each dish and adds them to his own plate. “Perhaps I will pay a visit. It’s been too long since I’ve seen one of your shows.” When I was a child, Villiam used to attend our performances at least once a week. He always sat in the front row, clapping the loudest, even if Nicoleta stuttered through her speech or I blanked when creating an illusion.

Before he can grab his fork, Agni pops his head back in. “Sir, half the Downhill is stuck in the mud. They’re almost half a mile behind us.”

He sighs. “Tell Skull Gate to stop moving. We’ll have to wait out the rain.” When Agni leaves, Villiam mumbles, “Half a mile behind. Preposterous. I should’ve known earlier.” Villiam has a habit of talking to himself. He looks up and smiles. “The rain will stop in a few hours.”

“Your fortune-worker is never right about the weather,” I say.

“Timar and I have been working together a long time.”

“But he’s terrible. You should find a new one. There are hundreds—”

“I will do no such thing.” He pops a piece of squash in his mouth. Villiam is loyal to a fault. “And none of this weather would be a problem if Frice had given us more time to leave. We could’ve waited out the storm.”

The caravan stops moving now that Gomorrah has received the order. The sounds of utensils rattling on the table and books falling to the floor stops, and the tension eases from my shoulders. I hadn’t realized how anxious all of that was making me. I decide to ignore my lack of appetite and taste the lamb, which is juicy and hot, thanks to Agni’s fire-work. It’s one thousand times better than Crown’s grub food.

“Did they ever find that duke who went missing? The one they kicked us out over?” I ask.

“Yes. They found him dead in his parlor,” Villiam says. I choke a bit on the lamb. “It appears a political rival had him killed. It had nothing to do with Gomorrah.”

“Unless they think one of our assassins did it.”

“Assassins? In Gomorrah? Whatever would give you that idea?”

He likes to play this game, pretending Gomorrah is the safe circus I believed it to be as a child. One day, he’ll admit to the assassins. One day, he’ll teach me more about Gomorrah than merely its mechanics. One day, he’ll stop treating me like a child. I’m sixteen and his only heir. When will he truly train me to be a proprietor?

“We’re passing several cities now,” Villiam continues. “Ukarce, Meera, Thire. All denying us refuge. What if the rain worsens and it floods? What if some of our people die? Compassionate Ovren doesn’t have much compassion for those on the other side of His mountains.”

“I thought Timar said the rains would stop.”

“That is not the point.” He stabs his knife into the leg of lamb. I only meant the comment as a joke. The events of last night must have caused him more stress than I thought. “The point is that the Up-Mountainers get away with whatever they want.” His words echo my own to Kahina earlier. “If we weren’t forced to tour here, I’d move us down the mountains to more civilized provinces.”

The problem with touring Gomorrah in the Down-Mountains is that they’re not nearly as interested in us as the people are here. Fortune-workers, charm-workers, they have all those. Nearly everyone in Gomorrah comes from the Down-Mountains. We’re simply the most dangerous—and oldest—festival around, one hundred times larger and grander than any other roaming carnival. The Up-Mountains—or, at least, the cities that don’t shut us out—find us “exotic.” They buy mundane trinkets and call them treasures. They marvel at the simplest of jynx-work, when they’re not cursing it. And they keep us in business.

“If you don’t mind—I do appreciate all the food—but I would rather go straight to talking about Gill,” I say. I didn’t come here to listen to Villiam rant about politics.

His face softens. “Of course.” He leans forward and rests his elbows on the table. “As I recall, you said it was the stab wounds that killed him...not the suffocation?”

I stiffen as I picture the blood seeping through the back of Gill’s shirt. “Yes.”

“Perhaps the assailant only meant to scare him by shattering his tank, but when Gill cried out, he grew scared himself and attacked.” My chest tightens as the scene plays out in my head. The killer kicking away Gill’s ladder. Wheeling him helplessly to the stage. Smashing the tank and letting Gill fall to the floor. “You mentioned the wounds were messy, didn’t you? How many were there?”

“I didn’t... I didn’t count. But, yes, they were messy.” I clutch my stomach. I shouldn’t have eaten anything at all.

He studies my face. “Sorina, we don’t need to talk about this. The last thing I want is to upset you.”

“No.” What did Kahina say? That I couldn’t detach myself. Maybe she’s right. I can’t simply remove myself from my emotions the way Villiam can. But that doesn’t mean I’m going to give up. “I want justice.”

“It was more than likely a religious fanatic from Frice,” Villiam says. “I’m powerless to bring such a person to justice.”

“But I don’t think it was,” I protest. “How would a random visitor know that Gill would be alone in his tent? And how would they know that Gill can’t breathe in air?”

“Perhaps because he sleeps in a vat of seawater?”

“Someone murdered Gill. They killed him, on stage, for me to find. And he’s not even real! I created him! They’re not supposed to be able to get hurt! I didn’t create a family so that they’d die!” I cover my face with my hands as I cry for the fifth time in the last twenty-four hours. It’s difficult to hold back the sobs, and Villiam quiets for a minute until I bring myself back under control.

“I already began an investigation into his death, you know,” Villiam says. “Not so much into the perpetrator but how someone managed to kill him. The guards last night have written me a report on what they found. I promise you I will find the answers.”

I wipe my nose on one of Villiam’s expensive table napkins. “What kind of investigation?”

“I’m not certain I want you involved. You and the others are grieving. It isn’t healthy to be focusing on revenge. Focus on healing, instead. You’re clearly still distraught—”

“I’m not distraught—”

“You aren’t yourself. You’re on edge. You look like you’ve barely slept. And you’re only sixteen years old—”

“But I need to know who did this.”

“And I will try to find you as many answers as I can,” Villiam says, his voice tight. He has obviously already made his decision to leave me out of this. “We’re exploring all possibilities. Questioning people near your tent. Looking into our visitors’ book. Determining—”

“That isn’t going to tell us how Gill was killed,” I say.

“I was getting to that part, if you would only stop interrupting me.” His deep voice booms, and I sink into my seat, holding on to my composure by a thin thread. “I’m also trying to determine if there is some aspect to your jynx-work we don’t know about.”

I frown. “Like what?”

“As you know, illusion-workers aren’t common anymore. I’ve never met one. Perhaps there are aspects to your abilities that have been forgotten over the years.”

I stand and walk toward Villiam’s bookshelves, half to examine his collection and half to hide my face as its redness fades. “You have books all about illusion-work, though. You said you know everything about it.”

“I’m sure I do, but we’re investigating it, just in case,” he says. “I’m not suggesting you do nothing. I’ve known you for thirteen years—you’re hardly the type of girl to sit still. So perform in your show. Go out and meet more people who aren’t illusions. You need to keep yourself busy. But not with this. This won’t help you move on. I’m worried about you.”

I only half listen and browse through his encyclopedias on jynx-work, most of which are on the floor. They’re massive volumes, each bound in quality leather with golden tabs on the side, marking places where Villiam has taken notes. They chronicle the types of jynx-work that have come and gone over the past few centuries. Many abilities cycle. Some die out. Occasionally one never seen before becomes common.

“Could I read through these books, as well?” I ask.

“I assure you that I’ve read them all multiple times. There won’t be any answers for us in there.”

“But still. I’d like to read them. You’re always telling me to read more. This would give me something to do.” I pluck a volume of jynx-work from the Eastern Kingdoms in the last century. On the cover is a sea dragon curled into a spiral, its scales embellished with a glistening glaze. “And if you’re not using books, how are you investigating illusion-work?”

“I keep detailed records on the jynx-work of everyone here, especially you.” Beneath the shelves sits a trunk large enough to fit a person, which contains the records of everyone living in Gomorrah. We are not an easy people to track. Some have lineages that trace back to the earliest days of Gomorrah, but more often, our members are misfits who joined on a whim. We have Down-Mountainers escaping criminal charges. Up-Mountainers persecuted for their jynx-work. People attracted to a nomadic lifestyle, to performance, to the magic of the Festival. Gomorrah is as large as many of the city-states we visit, so the role of the proprietor is no easy task.

“There may be something I’ve forgotten,” Villiam says. “Maybe you should revisit your original sketches for the illusions. Perhaps there was a fault in your blueprints.”

“Gill’s death isn’t my fault,” I snap, loud enough to startle him and also myself. I won’t let myself think like that. The only person to blame is the killer.

“No. Of course not, Sorina. It’s not your fault.” He stands and gives me another hug, and even though I’m upset about not being part of his investigation, I can’t help but give in to the comfort my father offers.

After he kisses my forehead and pulls away, I slide the volume back onto the shelf. There couldn’t possibly be a fault in the blueprints for my illusions. If it was a building that had burned down, the question would not be whether the structural integrity was compromised but rather the identity of the arsonist. Except...these buildings were supposed to be indestructible.

Maybe it doesn’t have anything to do with my illusion-work at all. Maybe the killer is the one with unusual powers. That must be how they managed to kill one of my illusions.

This idea sits well with me, easing the guilt and instead channeling it into anger. I trace my fingers along the leather bindings of the volumes, scratching them with my fingernails.

I don’t mention my idea to Villiam. He already berated me about not focusing on revenge. I need to focus on “healing.” But what if revenge is the path to healing? To closure? I’m not just going to sit back and go about life normally when a piece of it was ripped away.

And if Villiam isn’t willing to help me, I’ll just find someone else who is.

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