Daughter of the Burning City

by Amanda Foody

  “I will get straight to the point,” he says, resigned. “Chimal doesn’t trust you. He doesn’t think your heart is in this. I have worked with Chimal for over seven years, and if he doesn’t sense complete and utter loyalty, he won’t work with you.”

  “Of course my heart is in this. The Alliance may have murdered two members of my family. What more does he want from me? Should I kneel? I don’t need to agree with him to know we are on the same side.” I curl my hands into fists. I’m completely and utterly loyal to Gomorrah, but not to him. We only met a few minutes ago; he hasn’t earned my trust yet.

  “He wants you to speak to Hawk.”

  “He seems unwilling to compromise.” The salty winds from the nearby coast blow my hair against my face, and I hold it back and wrap my cloak tighter around myself to keep warm.

  “As do you.”

  “Surrendering is not the same as compromise.”

  “Chimal is the man planning the details of this mission. He won’t include you in his plans if he doesn’t trust you. He’s the captain of the guard—he is essential to this. He’s been essential to Gomorrah for years.”

  I hear the words he has left unspoken. That I’m inessential to the protection of the Festival. The thought of this stings more than a little.

  “Then I will help the effort in some other way,” I say at last.

  “There are no other illusion-workers in Gomorrah.”

  “I thought you said the Downhill was our arsenal, and I thought I was a future proprietor. Not Gomorrah’s finest weapon.”

  “Your skills are necessary. Do you think I would ask this of you if they weren’t? I’ve already had the argument with Chimal that you’re having with me now.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me you brought me here for this? I thought I was getting a tour.”

  “I didn’t know he wanted to use Hawk until just now. He’s only mentioned you in passing before this.”

  “I don’t want Chimal to use anyone. Not me and certainly not anyone else in my family.” I turn to leave. I have other things to do today, like finding Jiafu to return the extra coins and meeting with Luca to interview another suspect. I don’t want to stay here long enough for Chimal and Villiam to convince me. Not before I have time to think everything over, and maybe talk to Luca.

  If Chimal is so essential, he can push Villiam home.

  “You have a day to think about this,” my father says from behind me. “If you want, we can all talk to Hawk together.”

  I ignore his comment as I walk away. No one is talking to Hawk; I don’t want her to know we even had this conversation. If I decide to help them, that’s one thing, but I won’t allow them to put any more of my family in harm’s way—not even for justice.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  The overcast sky obscures the few stars visible through Gomorrah’s smoke, so the only light in the Downhill comes from the green-fire torches, flickering from the heavy coastal winds. Several of the torches have blown out. Everything is green and dark and hushed, and, despite becoming accustomed to the Downhill after visiting it so much with Luca, I’m acutely aware of how little I know about these neighborhoods of Gomorrah, which are not nearly as nice as Chimal’s. The person who lives in the tent beside me could be a killer. Or a shadow-worker could be skulking about between caravans, waiting for an opportunity to grasp my shadow in the green light, like I’m a rabbit walking into a snare. Villiam said that I would have nothing to worry about, as the future proprietor, but I don’t believe him. I don’t feel like a proprietor. I feel very much like a girl, far too young to make the decisions ahead of me.

  Jiafu isn’t in his caravan, even though it’s only five o’clock and he rarely rises before eight. I wait for him, my right hand in my pocket, gripping a concealed knife. My illusion-work prevents me from being noticed, but, today, even being invisible doesn’t seem like enough to keep me calm.

  Jiafu returns forty minutes later, whistling, and I lessen my illusion-work as he reaches his cart. “Holy shit,” he curses, when I appear out of nowhere. “’Rina, what the hell were you thinking? You look like a monster in that mask.”

  I lift a hand to my violet mask, which doesn’t pair well with the green lighting. I’m going to assume that’s what he meant and not that I appear to be a monster.

  I throw him his coin purse with the fifteen gold coins from the other one added to it. “I don’t know if you were lying, but I’d still like to work with you, if you don’t mind.”

  “You have a lot of balls calling me a liar,” he says. “And you have even more balls to be coming back here after the other day.”

  “I thought we were cousins.”

  “Fuck you, princess.” He spits on my shoes. “You’re lucky I haven’t sent someone to beat your freak ass.”

  “Don’t be like that. We work well together.”

  “Yeah, like a lion and a gazelle. And you keep forgetting that I’m the lion. And that you need to watch your back.”

  I smirk. “You didn’t seem much like a lion the other day. Bet they heard you screaming all across the Downhill.”

  “You want to say that again, freak?” He pulls a knife out of his pocket. I’m fairly certain that Jiafu is an empty threat. He wouldn’t hurt Gomorrah’s princess. He’s not that reckless.

  But that doesn’t mean I’m going to stick around to find out if I’m wrong. So much for repairing our business relationship.

  “Careful,” I whisper. “How do you know I’m actually standing here? This could be an illusion. I could be behind you right now, and I could gut you through your back.”

  And I do just that—without the gutting part. The image of me stays put in front of him, while the actual me, unnoticeable, tiptoes away into the darkness.

  “This isn’t you, bitch. You’re not breathing or moving,” I hear Jiafu say from behind me.

  “Go to hell,” I say. It’s a sound illusion. Jiafu hears it to his right, and he whips around, his knife out. But there’s no one there. I’m gone, running through the moving Downhill to Luca’s caravan.

  * * *

  Luca sits at the edge of his caravan, his feet dangling. He taps his walking stick against his door with one hand and checks his golden pocket watch with the other. He doesn’t look up as I approach, so I get to study him for a moment. His blond hair rustled from the wind. His pristinely white shirt. His angular features.

  He looks up and smiles with his dimples. My heart does a little twirl.

  I’ve never had a crush on someone. I may have admired from afar but not like this. When the fairy tales spoke of butterflies, I didn’t anticipate it feeling more like hornets.

  “How are you?” he asks.

  “Good.” My cheeks are warm and flushed, and I might just die of embarrassment.

  “I hear Villiam is well enough.”

  “He is.”

  “You’re not usually so quiet.” He hops off the caravan. “Do you have news? I heard his attacker killed himself. Cyanide. Not particularly elegant.”

  I have a million things I wish to say. That, though not certain, it’s seeming more and more likely that the Alliance is behind my family’s murders. That training to be proprietor means potentially putting myself in danger. That I’m scared. I’m scared of what Villiam is asking of me. I’m scared of the Alliance, of what they have and may have done. I’m more scared that Luca is right, and the killer is from Gomorrah working on a separate agenda. How many enemies do I have? Who might be lurking in Gomorrah’s smoke?

  Luca’s contemplative expression appears all the more serious in the green torch light. “You don’t have to say anything.”

  “Are you still certain that the killer is in Gomorrah? That we’re not wasting our time?”

  He raises his eyebrows. “As certain as ever.”

  I
f I ask why, that will lead to an entire debate of theories. Of Villiam’s attacker versus the one who attacked Gill and Blister. Of the Alliance’s agenda or something else. Maybe to Villiam and Luca, that debate would feel more like simply words. A battle of logic. To me, all I can see is how little we see, how dense the fog is that covers our enemies. We have no idea what we may be up against. Any theory could be right. Any person could be suspicious.

  “Let’s just go,” I say.

  I don’t know how I’ve never noticed before, but Luca walks everywhere as if he is bracing himself to run through a brick wall. He keeps his shoulders locked, his head down and, at full walking speed, could outrun the average horse. He barrels through the Downhill, all one hundred and fifty lanky pounds of him, and I follow awkwardly in his trail.

  By the time we reach our destination, I’m sweating in every conceivable place I could sweat. I take off my mask for a moment to wipe the droplets off my forehead and nose.

  “So who are we meeting tonight?” I ask, panting slightly.

  “Her name is Tuyet,” Luca says, his voice steady and his breathing normal, despite our near run to reach here. “She’s not as harmless as Narayan. If you’re looking for someone cold enough to kill a baby, Tuyet is a respectable guess.”

  Goose bumps prickle up my arms. Regardless of whether this is the woman who murdered Gill and Blister, the idea of facing someone so cold-blooded unnerves me.

  Luca leans forward so that I can feel his breath on my cheek. I have the urge to pull away at his closeness, but I don’t want him to think that I’m acting strangely. Or know that he’s plagued my thoughts all afternoon. “Tuyet has two types of jynx-work. Rare, but when it happens, the two kinds of magic often blend together. Tuyet is both a mind-worker and a fortune-worker. She can hear what you think before you think it. The average mind-worker needs to touch you to use their jynx-work, but Tuyet can hear your thoughts as if you’re speaking. This makes her one of the most successful assassins in Gomorrah.”

  I stiffen at the mention of assassins, as it reminds me of my conversation with Villiam and Chimal earlier today. Something to ask Luca about later.

  Luca continues, “She’s also rather famous for not possessing a heart—literally, I mean.”

  “What do you mean, she doesn’t have a heart?” I ask, mystified. “How is she alive, then?”

  “It’s a mystery. She has no pulse, and yet her blood pumps.”

  A mystery. That’s how everyone describes me—I have no eyes, and yet I see. The Girl Who Sees Without Eyes.

  I never thought I would have something in common with a killer.

  “I advise you not to speak,” Luca says. “Forgive me, but you’re not good at keeping your thoughts quiet. Even I can tell what you’re thinking half the time, and I’m not a mind-worker.”

  “What should I do, then? Just stand there?”

  “I’ll do the talking,” he says.

  “Can’t she hear your thoughts, too?”

  “Probably.” He smiles. “But not for certain.”

  I’m about to open my mouth to tell him he’s not half so smart as he thinks he is, when he says, “Just trust me on this. I’m trying to help you, remember?”

  I nod hesitantly.

  “Good. Glad that’s settled.” He disappears inside the open caravan.

  I take a deep breath and climb in after him.

  The caravan is decorated in a similar manner to my own and to every other caravan in Gomorrah. A low, fold-up table. A collection of pillows, tapestries and candles sold from any vendor in the Uphill. And, since Gomorrah is traveling, a number of trunks stacked in the corner. It’s so remarkably average that I wonder if we’re in the wrong home.

  “You expected it to be more morbid? Perhaps with some skulls, with gemstones for eyes?” a woman’s voice says to my right, chorusing my own thoughts.

  Tuyet sits in the corner, playing with a deck of cards. Not fortune cards, which are compiled in a deck with various trump cards depicting each animal of the constellations. It’s just a regular deck. She turns the ace of spades over in her hand, her pointed fingernails clacking against its edges.

  She has olive skin made darker by the tattoos along her forehead, neck and arms. Upon closer examination, I realize it is one giant tattoo of a flower with drooping midnight-blue petals, drawn in the gentle brushstrokes of the Eastern art style. The intensity of the color and the details within the lines are so fine that it’s difficult to believe they could be drawn in such a way on human skin instead of paper.

  “That’s a black maiden flower,” I say. Its essence is in one of Luca’s vials on his belt.

  “Which you know because it’s a famous poison,” she says. “That’s what you were thinking. And you’re not supposed to speak, which is what he was thinking. He’s right, you know. It makes your thoughts louder.” She nods to Luca, who stiffens. “Actually, it isn’t a black maiden flower. Though it appears so in the dark. In full light, you can see the color of the petals better, a more vibrant blue. The maiden’s daughter, it’s called. Perfectly edible.”

  She stands, and she’s the tallest in the room by at least three inches. She looks me up and down. “You’re Villiam’s adopted daughter,” she says.

  “How do you know that?” I ask. Luca and I are standing in the shadow of her caravan—she cannot see my face. “I wasn’t thinking it. Or about to think it.”

  “Because you are thinking it, whether or not you realize it. Everyone has dozens of thoughts jumbling around in their head, and almost all of them are what I call static. You think them so often you stop listening, even as they repeat over and over. I can hear you thinking I am Sorina Gomorrah—which is the loudest of the static, yet the one you ignore the most. Your identity. And then there are thoughts like Gill Gill Gill and Blister Blister Blister. The people—no, illusions—you wonder if I could have killed.”

  Luca sighs. “Conversations with you always get right to the point.”

  “But you’re not really interested in how I’m doing, or the weather or the nutty politics of all these cities we keep coming and going from. You’re not here for small talk.”

  “Can we at least sit down?” he asks. “I’m rather fond of formalities.”

  The corner of her lip twitches. It’s not exactly a smile, but it’s close. “Why not?” The three of us sit around her table. In the light, she momentarily examines my eyeless mask. Then she looks away, much in the way adults tell children not to stare at deformities.

  “Why do you think my jynx-work would be able to kill illusions?” she asks. There’s no hint of annoyance in her voice at being accused of murder. “Because guilt doesn’t pinch as hard as hunger pains.” She eyes me. “Your thoughts are very loud, dear. You need to sharpen your mind.”

  “What are you suggesting?” I ask, even though I know exactly what she meant. I clench my teeth.

  “You don’t think you’re smart, either,” she says. “Being smart isn’t everything. Right, Luca? You’ve certainly learned that the hard way.”

  Not a single expression crosses Luca’s face.

  She examines him. “But, even so, your thoughts are difficult for me to hear. Not like you’re covering them, like a mind-worker might. Like your static is in knots.”

  “That can’t be good,” Luca says, not sounding particularly concerned.

  She laughs more genuinely than I imagined an assassin could. She lives in too average of a home. All this directness unnerves me. No matter what we say, she will always know the meaning behind our words. She will always be the one in the position of power. It occurs to me that, if she can hear all of my thoughts, she already knows of my feelings for Luca and about my conversation with Villiam and Chimal today. How easy it must be for her to unravel secrets. I wonder if I should leave before she discovers something else, but the damage is prob
ably already done.

  “I didn’t kill the two illusions. I had no reason to. I’m not the only assassin in Gomorrah, but I’m the best. No one is going to pay me top dollar to drown a baby. You could pay anyone to do that.”

  “Not everyone would do it,” I counter.

  “But someone would. Someone mad, probably, to go messing with the proprietor’s daughter. It seems to me you want someone who doesn’t make it their living to kill people. None of us are trying to be on Villiam’s bad side. We don’t mess with the guard.”

  “That’s not much of an alibi,” I say.

  “If it takes jynx-work to kill your illusions, mine doesn’t even make sense,” she says. “And if it doesn’t, no one is going to pay a lion to kill a caterpillar when a pigeon would do just fine.”

  I whip toward Luca with a This is bullshit, right? kind of expression, but he has his eyes closed, as if concentrating.

  “That makes sense,” he says.

  “Any liar can make sense,” I say. She could’ve been hired by the Alliance. She could be a spy. What a brilliant spy she would make.

  At this, Tuyet barks out a laugh. “If the Alliance was seeking out a traitor, they wouldn’t choose Gomorrah’s most famous assassin. They’re much craftier than that. If it’s a spy you seek, then you should concern yourselves with those closest to you.”

  That would narrow our scope to Kahina, Villiam and the illusions, and none of them have the means or motive—or such cruelty in their hearts.

  Luca stands and straightens his posh Up-Mountain clothes. “We’re leaving.”

  “That fight brewing in your head,” Tuyet says, “take it outside.”

  Luca grabs my hand, and I think it’s meant to be reassuring, but it only makes my heart hammer. He pulls me outside before I can say anything, and he crosses his arms as if bracing himself for the storm coming.

  “She still could’ve killed Gill and Blister,” I say.

  “She had no reason to,” Luca says. “No motive. In fact, she had a better reason not to.”