Читать книгу Daughter Of The Burning City - Amanda Foody - Страница 12
ОглавлениеThe 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.”
