“You, Down-Mountain girl,” someone hisses to my left. An elderly woman crouches underneath the vendor’s stand, her skin sagged and hanging off her face, as if she’s shedding one layer at a time. “How dare you come to Cartona? We don’t need whores or thieves like you in our holy city. A disgrace.” Her voice trails on the s sound. “After the death of the baby prince, the poor baby prince—”
“Excuse me,” I say to the vendor, “there’s a woman hiding beneath your stand.”
The man frowns and lifts the cloth over the table. “Bitch! What do you think you’re doing?” He kicks her, and she groans and crawls out from underneath. “I could call the officials and have you thrown into the Pit!” I take several steps back to get out of the way as the woman flees around the corner, reeking of sweat and piss.
The vendor turns his attention to me. “Would you like an apple? They are the freshest in the city. So juicy...” He lifts up a browned slice from a sample and holds it to my lips. “Take a bite. You will want to buy more.”
“No, thank you,” I say. “What did the woman mean? About the prince?”
“The crown prince died of pneumonia earlier this week. Ovren can be cruel even to the most innocent.” He looks over my clothes, which, though simple and unassuming, do not entirely match the white attire of everyone around me. My tights peek out from underneath. “You are not from here.” His eyes light up. “You’re a Gomorrah girl. I hear the Gomorrah girls will lay with a man for next to nothing.”
He grabs my hand and tightens his grip, even as I try to squirm away. “And you’re blind. You shouldn’t care. You aren’t worth as much as other girls.”
A scream rises in my throat, but that would only cause a scene. All that matters is buying Kahina’s medicine and leaving.
“I can see the blistering sunburn on your nose,” I say instead. “And your fat gut. And each of your nose hairs.” With one hand braced against the table, I push myself away from him and walk toward the apothecary, despite how decrepit it appears from the outside. The repugnant man continues to call after me, but I ignore him and duck into the shop.
Luca stands near one of the shelves. “It smells good in here. Like mint.”
I hug my arms to my chest. The homeless woman’s words about the prince echo in my head, and in an instant, I’ve switched from Sorina-with-Luca to regular Sorina, the one whose baby brother and uncle just died. The Sorina who knows her face makes her worth less than other girls.
“Are you all right?” Luca asks.
“I’m fine.”
“You’re not fine.”
“How can you tell? It’s not like my half face gives anything away.”
“Because your whole body is rigid and tense, and you usually walk as if you’re floating.”
I uncross my arms. I like the idea of floating high above everyone else, where no one can touch me. Does Luca really think I look like that? “I’d rather not talk about it,” I say truthfully. Venera can best remind me that I’m beautiful and worth ten times more than that man could ever dream of. Luca doesn’t need to hear about all my problems. Besides, I’d rather forget about it.
Luca doesn’t ask any more questions, but I can tell he wants to by the way he keeps glancing at me and frowning. He points to one of the shelves full of vials. “They have an impressive collection of poisons. I’m thinking of buying a few for my show.”
“Don’t you think it’s dangerous to play so many games with death?” I say.
“Not if I never lose.”
“What do you think that means for you? Will you just go on living...forever?”
He picks up a vial full of gray powder and holds it up to the light of the crooked candelabra. “Maybe. I don’t know. I don’t really think I’m immortal.” He returns the vial to the shelf and inspects a new one. “I have a theory about a way to kill me.”
“Chop you into pieces and bury your body parts in different locations?”
He opens his mouth to say something and then pauses. “You’ve given this thought?”
I laugh. “I guess so.”
“Hellfire,” he says. “That’s my theory.”
There’s some sense to that. Hellfire is an everlasting fire created by skilled fire-workers, which glows a brilliant gold. Since his immortality is jynx-work, it seems logical that a different sort of jynx-work could counteract it and prevent him from rapidly healing or resurrecting.
He reaches into the pocket of his pants and drops several tiny trinkets into my hand. “I keep charms sewn into my clothes—usually my vest—to protect from Hellfire, in case a fire-worker were to take a chance at my show.”
There are three charms. One looks like an animal fang wrapped in wine-soaked thread. The middle one is fabric with an embroidered image of the sun, and the last is some kind of dried herb inside a glass bead.
“The sun protects from Hellfire. The other two protect from harm,” he says. “Made by the charm-worker who lives behind me.”
“I’m glad to see you take a bit of precaution in your work.”
“I’m perfectly safe.”
“I’m just worried that one of these days your head will roll and your body won’t get up to retrieve it.”
He laughs without any mirth. “Doubtful.”
The medicines are displayed on the opposite end of the shop, next to the body creams and ointments. The elixir for snaking sickness is the same deep purple as the disease itself and thicker than molasses. Kahina claims it tastes like crushed-up centipedes.
I find the vial on the shelf and hand it to the shopkeeper, who, like most others in this city, wears white. “Three spoonfuls a day. With food. Should last about three months,” he says. I pay him fifteen of Jiafu’s gold coins, enough to buy my entire family food for two weeks. The elixir doesn’t come cheap, but it’s a small price to pay for Kahina’s health and comfort.
Luca narrows his eyes at our transaction. Once the apothecary’s back is turned, he whispers, “This medicine isn’t proven to do anything.”
“It slows the progression of the disease.”
“That’s conjecture. The snaking sickness takes who it will.”
“It’s helping Kahina,” I grit through my teeth. “Do you think I would go to such extremes for something I didn’t believe would work?”
“I believe you would go to any extreme to help your family.”
I seethe for a moment, deciding whether or not to snap at him again. Luca isn’t the first person to tell me that the elixir is merely a gimmick. The snaking sickness takes thousands of people every year, Up-Mountainers and Down-Mountainers, rich and poor, elixir or no elixir. But that doesn’t mean I won’t try. I can’t just do nothing.
After we exit the shop, Luca says, “Let’s leave sooner rather than later. The sound of church bells, in my experience, is a warning to people like us.”
It’s not as if people can tell we’re jynx-workers just by looking at us. The only one who sticks out is me, in my eyeless violet-sequined mask. I’m the freak.
“I’ll be happy to leave this city behind,” I say.
In less than a week, Gomorrah will pack up and move to the next city-state, Gentoa, farther up the Up-Mountain’s western coast. It will take six days of travel through the valleys between the sea and the mountains. In Gentoa, we’ll start performing the Freak Show again, and we’ll be a hundred miles away from the place where Blister died. His small grave will remain here, in a place that meant nothing to him or to his family, just as Gill’s remains in Frice. I hate to think of both of them alone, where no one will visit them until Gomorrah’s smoke passes over the horizon once again.
As we leave the bazaar, a group of Cartonian officials approach from down the street in white coats with black mourning bands around their arms. They each brandish a sword. Passersby duck out of their way as they run toward the bazaar, almost in a stampede. Several voices cry out. Doors slam all around us.
“What’s going on?” Luca asks.