“No. I don’t know what he would find in the tent that the rest of us wouldn’t,” I say. “But do we really need to bury him tonight? That’s...that isn’t enough—” I’m crying. Villiam hugs me and shushes me but still allows me to finish. I feel a hundred things at once. Grateful for the comfort. Embarrassed that I’m keeping him here when thousands of people are depending upon him. Angry at Frice. Angrier at the killer. Lost. Confused. Horrified.
Because I’ve been training with Villiam and learning about how Gomorrah works for years, I also know that moving the entire city is no easy feat to accomplish in several days, let alone a few hours. He genuinely does not have time for me.
“Send my apologies to our family. Tell them I’m thinking of them. I wish I could be there to help them in person. This is...such a tragedy,” he says, tears glistening in his eyes. “And promise me you’ll return when the commotion has died down.”
The commotion won’t disappear for several days, not until we reach the next city. It’s hard to think that far into the future. It’s hard to picture anything except the night ahead of me, of packing up the stage where Gill died, of burying him without a coffin, without a ceremony. It’s impossible to think beyond saying goodbye.
Nevertheless, I mutter, “I promise.”
The Gomorrah Festival does not travel like other circuses, groups of wanderers, bands of musicians, thieves or markets, because it is all of those at the same time. If someone stood at the peak of the Winding Pass—the stony, barren mountains we are crossing to reach the city of Cartona—it would appear as if an entire burning city were on the move beneath them. Due to the suddenness of our departure, tents are still raised and wheeled on platforms, parties continue in the Downhill as the sun begins to rise and the white torches glimmer within the haze of smoke. It goes on for miles, with a population of over ten thousand inhabitants. Our nickname is “The Wandering City.”
If that same person had watched the Gomorrah Festival travel before, they would also realize that its atmosphere feels different this morning. More subdued and downcast. There’s less music, laughing and cheering since the Fricians kicked us out.
Or maybe the morning wind is cooler than usual, and it’s just a chill. Gomorrah is older than anyone can remember and unlikely to be intimidated by the actions of a single Up-Mountain city-state.
Perhaps I am the only one in Gomorrah feeling the chill. Perhaps, after Gill’s death, the music, laughing and cheering is quieter only to me.
Apart from Tree, who prefers to walk on his own, my family sleeps in two separate caravans when we travel—one for Crown, Gill, Unu and Du and Blister, and one for the rest of us. I sleep between Nicoleta and Venera. Hawk’s feet are across from mine and sometimes kick me during the day while we rest. The caravan is packed full of trunks, the floor covered in blankets and the ground in between littered with popcorn kernels and peanut shells.
I sit up and stare out the window at the Winding Pass peaks jutting into the sky, mere silhouettes through Gomorrah’s smoke. The sun has risen, barely. Gomorrah is beginning to go to bed, and I have yet to fall asleep. The memories of Gill’s corpse and his brief burial a few hours ago continue to haunt me. Even though I’ve washed my hands over and over, removing every last trace of blood, I wipe them on my bedsheets once, twice, three times.
I replay my last conversation with Gill over in my mind. I was a jerk. Not only yesterday, the day he died, but the day before, and before, and before. I could’ve listened to his advice more often. Read the books he suggested. Made an effort to spend time with him, instead of avoiding his lectures.
I want to sleep until reality feels more like a dream. I want to never wake up.
But I have business to attend to and others to look after. Jiafu will still be awake in the Downhill. Even though it’s dawn and no longer safe to venture outside, I’ll have to take my chances for now. At least this errand will keep me distracted.
I slept in my regular clothes last night, so I crawl past Hawk and creak open the door. Then I jump out of the moving caravan into the knee-high grass of the Winding Pass.
Gomorrah can be more difficult to navigate while it’s moving, but I’ve explored the Downhill once before during the day, when the nicest people of the Downhill—which is not saying very much—are asleep and the rest of the crooks are awake. In the Downhill, no one cares that I’m Villiam’s adopted daughter. Actually, they’d probably love to skin me because of it. No one there is a star performer, a great attraction or seemingly special at all. In Gomorrah, everyone might be treated equally, but, in the end, money divides the affluent from the rest. If Villiam wasn’t paying for my family’s space, we’d barely be affording the Uphill ourselves.
It takes me ten minutes to walk to where the Uphill intersects with the Downhill. There’s a fifty-meter gap between those two sections of caravans, and as I trudge across the small, open field, I feel eyes peering at me from ahead. People are watching me, wondering why an Uphill girl would visit them at this hour.
The wood of the caravans here rots from years of rain, with holes along the walls just large enough to toss out the contents of an ashtray or for someone to covertly slip a delivery in the gap beneath a windowsill. The ribs of horses, mules and the occasional more exotic elephants who pull the caravans are more pronounced. Their eyes burn red, and their dirty coats swarm with clouds of fleas. I worry that if I get too close, they might mistake me for the meal their owners forgot to feed them.
Thankfully, Jiafu doesn’t live deep within the Downhill, and I make it there without becoming a horse’s breakfast. The cramped caravan he calls home is striped purple and black, with no sign or indication of what a visitor might find inside. All of his clients already know who he is and where to find him—he doesn’t need advertisements.
I knock on the dull black door and walk to keep up with it. No response. After thirty seconds of more knocking—and a man poking his head out of a nearby caravan, telling me to piss off—Jiafu answers. He grimaces when he sees me and rubs his temples, one of which has a deep scar that snakes down to his chin.
“What do you want?” he asks. His shadow dances on the grass below him, twisting into almost gruesome positions, as if trying to tear itself away from the body casting it.
“You weren’t waiting for me last night,” I say. “After the show.”
“There were officials about. I needed to head back home and protect my merchandise.”
“I want the money now. I want my cut.”
“Too bad. I haven’t sold it yet. I don’t got your cut. Now run away, princess.”
“Sold what yet?” I say, loudly and dramatically. “Oh, you mean the priceless ring of Count...Pomp-di-something from Frice? That’s worth a fortune?”
The man who told me to piss off earlier pokes his head outside again. As do a few others. I have their attention.
Jiafu narrows his eyes and then he yanks me by my tunic and hoists me into his caravan. Inside, there are five times as many crates as in my own, with just enough floor space for a mattress in the corner. Everything reeks of burnt coffee and feet.
“You think I had a chance to sell the ring?” he hisses. “We just left Frice.”
“I didn’t expect Kahina to have to travel again so soon. I want the money to get her medicine as soon as we get to Cartona.” Packing and traveling isn’t easy on her, especially in this part of the Up-Mountains, where the roads are unpaved and hard on her bones. And now that Gill is...now that Gill is gone, ensuring Kahina stays healthy is more important to me than ever. I can’t lose anyone else.
He