“Of course, sweetbug. Did you know Villiam has begun sending me the medicine? You don’t have to burden yourself with that anymore.”
I’m surprised. She never wanted me to ask Villiam for money, even when I suggested it when she first grew ill. She said it would come from Gomorrah’s public funds, which helps everyone here. She’d rather die than inconvenience someone else. “You’re not a burden,” I say. “You’ve never been a burden.”
She shows me her arm, the one covered in veins. “Do you see this? They used to snake all the way up to my shoulder. Now they’re barely past my elbow.” She massages my scalp. “I’m getting better. It’s taken years and an awful lot of medicine and worry on everyone’s parts, but you don’t have to fret about losing me. I’m not going anywhere.”
At last, the crying stops. I try to sink deeper into her blankets. To relax. But all I can think about is Luca’s execution. How will they manage to kill someone who cannot die?
I remember that conversation with him at the apothecary in Cartona. He believes Hellfire would do the trick. But I haven’t told that to anyone, and I don’t think he has, either.
Should I have shared his theory with Villiam?
Suddenly, there’s a shout from outside, and running, and the sound of doors slamming. I instantly think back to the Menagerie, to the time the Frician officials stormed the Festival. To the night Gill died.
Kahina peeks out her window. “People are packing up their displays. We’ve barely opened.” She leans out farther. “There’s smoke ahead. Darker smoke than usual. Something is burning.” She pulls away, her expression grave. “I don’t think we’re welcome in Leonita.”
I wipe my running nose and pull my hair out of my face. Anything to distract myself from my heartache. I’m with Kahina, who is not going to die of the snaking sickness. My family is inside my head, and they’re not going to die, either. I won’t let them. It doesn’t matter what’s happening outside.
I’m in control.
“What is going to happen to Luca?” she asks.
“They’re executing him. Probably tonight.” I roll over onto my back so that I face her ceiling, covered in hanging plants. “I don’t want to go back to my tent.”
“You don’t have to,” she says. “But I was wondering if you’d want to hear my suspicions. I was waiting until the verdict was announced, because it’s about Luca. About the Were’s Claw.”
“What do you mean?”
“I’d never met Luca before, until Venera’s funeral,” she says. “When we shook the coin pot for him, I remember the fortune being foggy. The Were’s Claw felt distant, disconnected.” She grabs the coin from where it rests on her shelf and turns it over in her black-veined hand. “Once I met him, I knew there was something strange about him.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean there is a cloud of nothing around him. I see absolutely nothing in his fate.”
“You weren’t touching him or doing a proper reading.”
“I don’t think I would see anything then, either,” she says. “This is a nasty business, sweetbug. Terrible.” She grabs her jar of coins off the table and shakes it. A red coin pops out beside the Were’s Claw. “The Coin of Falsehoods. Something we know isn’t true. Something is wrong with what we know.”
What is she suggesting? That Luca is innocent? Our informants told us that he is the spy, that he is the killer.
I’ve already made up my mind to hate him.
“What’s wrong?” I ask. “What don’t we know?”
“I’m trying to see into your fortune, but it’s blurry.” She closes her eyes and leans her head back, almost moaning. “There’s nothing around Luca at all. There’s nothing around any of your illusions.” She opens her eyes and squeezes the Coin of Falsehoods. “What is Luca’s jynx-work?”
“Luca is a poison-worker,” I say.
“The boy who cannot die,” she says. “No one cannot die, sweetbug. No one who truly walks this earth.”
“What are you saying?”
“I’m saying that could be the missing piece. Luca could be an illusion,” she says. “A freak.”
Impossible.
“That doesn’t make any sense. I never created him.”
“You cannot always trust your mind,” she says. “Memory can be the clay of mind-workers. Memory changes each time you look back on it. Memory fades. If a worker looks into your mind, then pieces will be left behind. So the song goes.”
I consider the time with Jiafu, when he swore he paid me, yet I didn’t remember it. When I stole his coins and later found my payment from him in my bedsheets. I think about the unknown origins of the purple butterfly Agatha preserved for me, and how she insisted I was the one who gave it to her.
“I wouldn’t forget,” I say. “I wouldn’t forget making him.”
But my words falter. Could I have? What if the killer is a mind-worker, who has been peering inside my head all along? Tuyet is a mind-worker, and certainly not the only one in Gomorrah. Anyone with that ability could see inside my thoughts, my memories, and figure out how to mold them.
And if I were a charm-worker, they could be molding me.
“If he’s an illusion—which I’m positive he’s not—then I can make him disappear,” I say, trying to sound confident, like Kahina’s words haven’t shaken me. “I can lock him in a Trunk, if I’m close enough.”
And if he is an illusion, he could be a target like the others. If he is an illusion, he isn’t safe. Poison-worker or not.
Not that I believe Kahina’s words. I don’t know any mind-workers. I couldn’t possibly forget creating an entire illusion. But her suspicions are still enough to worry me. If what she believes is true, Luca could face execution for a crime he didn’t commit.
I have to find him. And once I do, I’ll make sure he doesn’t leave my side. I’ll tell Villiam our suspicions. Luca will be set free. We will all make progress. We’ll learn the truth. Together.
My determination falters for a moment, remembering what Villiam told me. “But the informant...he said Luca was the spy,” I say.
“The Coin of Falsehoods, though vague, is a reliable fortune,” she says.
Luca could be innocent.
And I let the guards take him.
“I need to find him,” I say.
“It’s dangerous,” she says.
“I know. But I’ll be back. I’ll come back with him, and you can read him again. You’ll see he isn’t an illusion. And if he’s not...” He would still be guilty. “I don’t know. I don’t want him to die.”
If they figured out how to kill him, he could already be dead.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
I sprint as fast as I can to the Menagerie, my mind in knots. Usually on our first night in a new city, the Festival bustles with activity. But Gomorrah is strangely empty, smelling of kettle corn and roasted cashews, waiting for patrons. An uneasiness hangs in the air that I can’t simply be imagining. The fortune-workers and other attractions of the Uphill don’t have their signs out, either because they aren’t expecting any visitors or because they don’t want any. I turn around toward the smoke Kahina mentioned, billowing black and ugly into Gomorrah’s dark sky. It’s coming from Skull Gate.
Everywhere, people close the windows and doors of their caravans. They pack up, as if preparing to leave. Did Villiam give the warning to flee? I haven’t heard a horn.
The commotion near the entrance to the Festival only makes me more anxious. I can’t help but picture Luca the way we found Venera, his throat slit. Or his back and chest riddled with stab wounds, like Gill.
But Luca can’t die. If someone tries to kill him, he’ll just come back.
Villiam said he murdered my family. So doesn’t he deserve to die?
I don’t know what to believe. I haven’t known what to believe, what to do or anything since I held Gill’s lifeless body in my arms a month ago.