“I... I don’t know. It didn’t come up at first, and now I feel like I’ve been lying to him.” Now that I know Villiam’s, Agni’s and Chimal’s true feelings regarding those born in the Up-Mountains, I’m even more reluctant to reveal my relationship with Luca to my father. I don’t want him to feel betrayed. “I may be able to ask the guard tomorrow. We’re just arriving in Gentoa. I can say the new city is making my family anxious. But I don’t want to wake them now and make them suspicious. It’s already so late.”
A man approaches us carrying hundreds of cheap hookah pipes for sale. I’m about to snap at him—simply to snap atanyone—when Luca pleasantly waves him away. I wish I could be so cordial.
I need to lie down and take deep breaths. I need a glass of water. I need fresh air not polluted with ancient smoke.
“Jiafu’s cronies could be paid as bodyguards,” Luca says.
“Jiafu and I aren’t on the best of terms at the moment.” Considering he pulled a knife on me last time I saw him.
“That doesn’t matter,” he says. “I know what will convince him. You and I can go visit him tonight.”
He leans down and whispers a secret into my ear.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
As predicted, Jiafu isn’t happy to see me waiting for him at his caravan with Luca. His eyes bulge, and he walks toward us, stumbling in a zigzag pattern with the smell of the tavern on his breath.
“I told you not to show your freak face here again,” he spits out.
“Nice to see you, too, cousin,” I say. “This is Luca.”
Luca leans lazily against his walking stick, but I can tell he’s upset because of how tightly he grips it. He examines Jiafu the way a tarantula might inspect a fly already caught in its web. Even though Luca’s skill with fighting begins and ends with him getting killed, he has managed to appear intimidating without needing to speak a word.
“Kudos to you, freak, for managing to find someone even freakier than you are. Yeah, I found out who he is,” Jiafu says, as I startle slightly. “You don’t seem the type to hang out with an Up-Mountainer. What would Villiam have to say?”
I expect Luca to react to the accusation, but his face remains impassive.
“I have a favor to ask of you,” I say.
“Like hell I’d do anything for you.”
“Well, it’s not exactly a favor. More like blackmail.”
Jiafu raises his eyebrows. “If you turn me in, we both go down.”
“Oh, I’m not talking about that,” I say lightly. “I’m talking about the boy who works at the Menagerie. The boy named Zhihao.”
He’s been very careful, Luca told me earlier.His half brother, Zhihao, works cleaning out the manure in the Menagerie, and he lives in one of the orphan tents in the Uphill. He’s ten years old and probably the only person who matters to Jiafu. Jiafu won’t want anyone finding out about him, because anyone associated with someone in Jiafu’s business could be in danger.
Jiafu stiffens as if something has grasped his shadow. “I don’t know who you’re talking about.”
“Ten years old,” I say. “You have the same mother, don’t you?”
I told Luca that, as much as I dislike Jiafu, I wasn’t prepared to expose his ten-year-old brother and thus put a kid in danger. But Luca assured me it wouldn’t come to that. Hopefully Jiafu won’t figure out that this is all an empty threat.
“We can talk inside,” he grunts and then slides his key into the door of his black caravan. Luca and I climb inside. It still smells of burnt coffee and feet.
Why can’t Jiafu just work a safer job if he cared about his brother so much?I asked Luca.
Because, he said,he loves his job. He lives for the danger of it.
“How did you find out about Zhihao?” Jiafu asks once he shuts the door. “He hasn’t been telling people, has he?”
“It doesn’t matter how we found out,” I say. “I have a favor to ask you. I need some bodyguards tonight.”
“Are you paying me?”
“No.”
