“I think she’s shaken up about Blister. She was supposed to be watching him.” Venera’s voice is steady, as if we were discussing the weather, not our dead baby brother. Venera has always had a talent for distancing herself from anything unpleasant. Apparently it’s a skill I need to develop, as well.
“I don’t mind us all being here,” I say. In the other room, Unu and Du bicker about who gets the last caramel rice cake, somehow already finished caring for the horses. Nicoleta snaps at Hawk—no, she hasn’t finished the laundry. She has a pounding headache.
“Let’s talk about something different.” Venera sets her papers aside and leans back into the pillows. “Any special someone in your life?”
I smile at the familiarity of the conversation. As if our lives are still normal.
“If there was, you’d be the first to know,” I say. “What about you? Anyone you’re off seeing when you leave after the shows?”
She rolls to her left so that her back faces me. “I don’t know.”
“What do you mean, you don’t know?”
“I mean that I don’t know. No one is interested in someone who isn’t even real.”
Her words linger in the air for a few moments and then she continues.
“Men like me. I mean, I can bend myself backward, twice. Then I discover the next day they don’t want to see me again. They say, ‘I just wanted to know what it was like. It’s a better version of jerking off.’ I’m just a fantasy they can touch.” Venera curls herself into a ball, and I don’t know whether to hug her or not. She has never mentioned anything like this to me before. I don’t know what to say. I wasn’t prepared for such a sudden outpouring of emotion. “I’m sorry to tell you all these things. Out of the blue.”
“Who said these things to you?”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“It does to me. I’ll show them another illusion they can touch. One with claws. And horns—”
“I don’t want you to go after them,” she says.
“Why not? You are not one step above jerking off. You are the smartest person with numbers I know. You could give a pep talk to a man chin-deep in quicksand. You’re funny and sincere and a joy to be around, and they tell you you’re a better version of jerking off? How would they like to be jerked off by a horseshoe crab?”
Even though I can’t see her face, I’m sure she’s smiling.
“I don’t want you to do that,” she says.
“Well, what do you want?”
“I want to find another job for when I’m not working at the Freak Show, something to keep me busy besides parties. Maybe I could handle Gomorrah’s books like I do for the show, if Villiam will let me,” she says. “And I want to meet someone who sticks around. I want kids, if that’s possible. I want to know how to go through life not being really alive.”
I can’t think of anything to say to that.
*
Our first suspect is a man named Narayan who lives at the edge of the Uphill, on the opposite side of the Festival from the Freak Show. This explains why I’ve never seen him before. During the early hours of the night, he works for an attraction called the Show of Mysteries, in which a man uses mechanical contraptions to make it appear as if he has achieved the impossible. Like turning pigeons into butterflies. Or sawing a beautiful woman in half.
“Narayan is the only actual mystery in the show,” Luca says. He wears an outrageous puffed-sleeve shirt that I assume he had before joining Gomorrah, since no one I know would be caught dead in it. The fabric is shiny and expensive, with silver strands woven into the sleeves and faux diamond buttons. During all his time spent at the Festival, he has somehow managed to keep it stainless and pure white.
“In his act, Narayan enters a coffin standing up in the center of the stage. Then the magician inserts swords inside. Narayan has the ability to lose his solid form, so that he can walk through the walls of the coffin and the floor without the audience knowing. He calls it ghost-work.”
The two of us pass the Menagerie tent. I glance at the swan dragon banner under which a Frician official hacked off that man’s fingers last week. The air smells of licorice cherries, a scent I’ve come to associate with the comfort of home.
But it doesn’t smell comforting now, on our walk to uncover a murderer.
“I know Narayan because he holds a second job working in the Downhill for a man named Jiafu, a ringleader of thieves. Perhaps you know him, Sorina?” Luca asks, then looks at me pointedly.
How does he know about Jiafu?
“I might be acquainted with him,” I say. I expect Luca to reply with a statement of judgment, but he doesn’t.
“I picked Narayan to visit first because you have this common acquaintance,” he says.
I’ve never met one of Jiafu’s other cronies, and though it’s not impossible, I doubt that Narayan’s work with him would translate into any sort of a motive. What would he stand to gain? I’m not Jiafu’s favorite crook, by any stretch. I’ve worked a few minor jobs. None worth killing over.
“I’ve already arranged for Narayan to speak with us,” Luca says. He swings his black cane through the air in a loop. “So he’ll be here.”
“How did you manage that?” I ask.
He shrugs. “I paid him.”
“You didn’t have to do that,” I say. Working the way he does, money must be precious to him. Though I find myself surprisingly pleased that he would choose to spend some on helping me.
“Consider it a gift.” He hesitates when he sees my pursed lips. “Is something wrong?”
Besides the amount of reading I crammed into my brain earlier today, I’m still uneasy after my conversation with Venera. I had no idea she wanted a family. Can she have one? When I created my illusions, I always thought about who they would be for me, not the independent lives they would lead. I have created living, functioning people. Is that normal for illusion-workers? Villiam said he’s done as much research as possible into my abilities, but surely my family isn’t normal?
I’m interviewing a suspect in mere moments. I can’t be distracted.
“No, I just have a lot on my mind,” I say.
“Understandably so. Take a deep breath.”
I do.
“Hold it.”
I do.
“Now picture someone annoying in their underwear.”
My mind naturally goes to an image of him. I’m so startled by this command and mortified at my own thoughts that I let out of bark of nervous laughter.
“Feel better?” he asks. “It’s what I do before my shows.”
“Um, yes,” I say, my cheeks growing warm. “Let’s just get this over with.”
We step inside the tent to the Show of Mysteries. It’s overly decorated, in my opinion. Chairs painted with purple glitter. The stage torches each burn a different color—the result of the same fire-work that keeps the Downhill’s torches green and the Uphill’s white. Black-and-red-striped tape lines the stage.
Narayan sits on the stage, his skinny legs dangling off it. He has deep brown skin and wears his hair in one long braid that reaches his tailbone, and his pointed eyebrows are dyed silver. He looks to be in his midtwenties, maybe older. The intensity of his eyebrows overshadows any further impression of his other facial features.