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.”
If 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.