“Look at the one I got, Sorina,” Hawk says. “I’m not interrupting you, am I?”
“No,” I say. I need a break. I don’t have the attention span to read an entire book in one sitting.
She hands me the coin. It’s the Necromancer, a rarer coin than even the Beheaded Dame. Unu and Du are probably seething with her finding this. I flip through the pages of the book until I find the Necromancer.
“She was a proprietor of Gomorrah shortly after the city burned. She’s credited with the charm that keeps the city burning. Legend goes that she bound the souls of the dead to the city walls, who, eternally smoldering, cloak the city in its smoke.”
Her eyes widen. “That’swhy there’s smoke?”
“It’s just a legend.”
“All legends in Gomorrah are true,” Unu says devilishly, having overheard pieces of our conversation. Hawk whitens.
“Don’t you two have chores?” I ask them. “Shouldn’t you be taking care of the horses?” The animals are Unu and Du’s only job.
They skulk outside, leaving Hawk to stare nervously at her new lucky coin.
“It’s not real,” I say, even though it might be.
She nods slowly. “You missed Kahina. She stopped by earlier and brought us all caramel rice cakes.”
“How did she look?” Her most recent supply of medicine is probably running low. I will have to pay Jiafu a visit later. He has had ample time to sell Count Pomp-di-pomp’s ring in Cartona.
“She looked about the same. Do you want a rice cake?”
“That’s all right. I’m still full from Crown’s kebabs.”
I close my book and head back to my room, sectioned off from the rest of the tent by a tapestry. It’s mainly full of pillows and the specimens of my bug collection, which Venera doesn’t particularly mind. She follows me back there, lacking her usual makeup, her brown hair braided down to her waist. “Mind if I join you?” she asks.
I sit down and scoot over to give her room. “This is your room now, too.”
Venera sits, a stack of papers on her lap. She manages all the books and financials of the Freak Show. The rest of us can’t handle working with so many numbers, but Venera can not only do all the math in her head, she seems to enjoy it, as well. She finds the repetition and mindlessness comforting. I don’t find it mindless at all, probably because I’m not half as smart as her. I wish other people knew Venera as I do; our neighbors merely view her as a party girl, leaving every night with a face full of makeup and returning each morning at the early hours of dawn.
“Why do you think Nicoleta has us on lockdown?” she asks.
“No idea,” I lie.
“I think she’s shaken up about Blister. She was supposed to be watching him.” Venera’s voice is steady, as if we were discussing the weather, not our dead baby brother. Venera has always had a talent for distancing herself from anything unpleasant. Apparently it’s a skill I need to develop, as well.
“I don’t mind us all being here,” I say. In the other room, Unu and Du bicker about who gets the last caramel rice cake, somehow already finished caring for the horses. Nicoleta snaps at Hawk—no, she hasn’t finished the laundry. She has a pounding headache.
“Let’s talk about something different.” Venera sets her papers aside and leans back into the pillows. “Any special someone in your life?”
I smile at the familiarity of the conversation. As if our lives are still normal.
“If there was, you’d be the first to know,” I say. “What about you? Anyone you’re off seeing when you leave after the shows?”
She rolls to her left so that her back faces me. “I don’t know.”
“What do you mean, you don’t know?”
“I mean that I don’t know. No one is interested in someone who isn’t even real.”
Her words linger in the air for a few moments and then she continues.
“Men like me. I mean, I can bend myself backward, twice. Then I discover the next day they don’t want to see me again. They say, ‘I just wanted to know what it was like. It’s a better version of jerking off.’ I’m just a fantasy they can touch.” Venera curls herself into a ball, and I don’t know whether to hug her or not. She has never mentioned anything like this to me before. I don’t know what to say. I wasn’t prepared for such a sudden outpouring of emotion. “I’m sorry to tell you all these things. Out of the blue.”
“Who said these things to you?”
