He shook his head. “Those are just rumors. There are no travelers. There is nothing beyond the sea.”
I started to argue with him, but a Middling woman in dark green trousers and a green tunic edged with a finger’s-width of lace approached and produced a writ fragrant with perfume and latticed with elegant handwriting. The purse that dangled from her wrist was heavy. He immediately turned his attention to her. I left the stand, and wandered.
“Dreams!” someone called. “Dreams for sale!”
I traced the cry to a booth densely surrounded by people.
“Your most deeply held desire! Or a dream of flight? A sweet cat-nap for the timid! A nightmare for the brave! One vial of dream vial for one hundred god-crowns.”
“Who would buy a nightmare?” I murmured to myself.
“They would,” said a voice behind me.
I turned to see a boy, a Middling child whose dark head barely reached my shoulder. His light eyes looked up into mine, then flicked left. I followed his gaze to see two young men approaching the stall.
High Kith. One wore close-fitting trousers in Elysium crimson; the other’s hand flashed with a large emerald ring. Though I was far away, I could tell that his ear glinted with more jewels, and his black hair gleamed with intricate braids. Even if the men’s dress hadn’t marked their kith, their expressions would have made it obvious: the dreamy disdain as they made their way through the Middling crowd, the manner in which people stepped to the side to let them pass, as though each person in the crowd were a pleat on a fan rapidly folded. Faded amusement floated across the expressions of the High-Kith men.
“You’re staring.” The boy laughed.
“They would never buy a nightmare.”
“Of course they would. When your life is filled with pleasure, a brush with danger is fun.”
I thought about Sid treating imprisonment as a fascinating adventure. “Maybe you’re right. What would you buy?”
He squinted one eye. “Middlings can’t buy magic.”
“But if you could.” I said it quickly, so that he wouldn’t think I didn’t already know that.
He shrugged. “It is as it is.” But his face was hard with dissatisfaction.
“I’m looking for someone,” I said, and described Sid.
He rubbed his chin, a little exaggerated in the gesture. He probably knew full well that acting like an old man was charming in one so young. “And what kind of dream would she buy?”
I huffed. “Her most deeply held desire.” Then I thought again. “Actually, I wouldn’t put it past her to drink a nightmare and desire at the same time.”
“Why do you want to find someone like that?”
I bristled. “You’re a little young to be so nosy. Shouldn’t you be in bed at this hour?”
“Shouldn’t you be behind the wall?”
My breath caught in my throat. I felt as light as paper.
“Don’t worry,” he said. “I won’t tell.”
But I couldn’t speak.
“I promise,” he said.
When I remained silent, he said, “Me, I want a way up quarter, same as you. A way out. I want what they’ve got.” He nodded at the High-Kith young men, who had purchased several dream vials, pocketing all but one. That vial they uncorked, and stood sniffing at the contents. “Why don’t you ask them about your friend?” he said. “You don’t make such a bad Middling. I just have a savvy eye.”
“How,” I said, “did you know?”
“Next time, pretend like you belong. Lie to yourself until you believe it.”
Could I do that?
“It’s a midnight lie,” he said reassuringly. “High Kith are easier to fool than Middlings, since we mix around the city a lot and see all sorts of people.”
One of the men touched a finger to the contents of a vial and then to his tongue. His eyes widened. Then he schooled his expression back into boredom.
“Go on,” the boy said. “Ask them.”
“I don’t know.”
“Well, do you want to find your friend or not,” he said, and turned, ducking into the crowd of people behind him.
It was true that of anybody in this market, the two High-Kith men were the likeliest to know Sid. The deference that the warden of the jail, a Middling, had shown to her had made it clear that even if she came from a place with no kiths, here she was thought of as High—or at least she could play the part convincingly.
I thought about how I had believed Sid to be a boy simply because of her hair and clothes and that it was dark.
Well, and how she spoke about women.
How she spoke about me.
My cheeks grew hot. The burn on my cheek pulsed with pain.
Maybe, yes, I felt confident enough that the Middling boy was right, that most people don’t think beyond what they believe they know to be true. But it wasn’t confidence that pushed me toward the High-Kith men. It wasn’t daring.
It was the need to escape my own blush.
I ignored it and marched up to them. “Excuse me,” I said.
The one dressed in Elysium crimson dropped the vial he was holding. It smashed at his feet. A violet vapor rose from the shards and twined about his ankles.
“My dream of power,” he said.
“Ours,” his companion said. “You broke it.”
“It broke it.”
“I’m sorry,” I said, “but—”
“It keeps speaking.”
“I’m looking for—”
“Astonishing.”
“Did we drink the dream already? Did I dream that the vial I purchased for one hundred gold god-crowns broke at my very feet?”
“No, fool,” said the man in crimson. “Why would a dream of power be about an upstart Middling girl? It is not even a pretty one. Look at that nasty burn.”
“Perhaps we are to make it do what we want. Perhaps that is the dream.”
I thought about how easily Sid would turn this situation into what she wanted it to be. “This is your dream,” I said. “The most powerful people are benevolent. I need your help finding someone. If you are truly powerful, you will help me.”
“It is lying, brother,” said the man in crimson. “But it is funny. Help it? Hilarious!”
“Pick this up.” The man with black braids tapped his jeweled sandal near the broken glass.
As I knelt to gather the shards, I began to describe Sid.
“Shut up. So chattery,” said the black-haired man. “Buzz buzz, maggoty fly. And stupid. I told you: pick this up!”
“I am picking it up,” I said evenly. “Sid is a traveler, a friend of mine—”
He dissolved into laughter. “Absurd! Unbelievable!”
“She likes to go to High-Kith parties—”
“I told you to pick this up. This shard. The biggest one.”
I let the small shards in my hand tinkle to the ground, and reached to collect the longest one, by his foot.
“Yes. That one. It is truly brainless, is it not, brother, even for a Middling? Now, fly. Cut yourself.”
I froze, the shard in my hand. “What?”
“Cut yourself, I said. Your finger, your hand, I do not care. This is my dream. You will do as I say.”
“I don’t—”
“I want to taste it.”
“Brother.” The crimson man rolled his eyes. “You know that Middling blood is useless.”
The other wagged his finger. “We do not know. This is a dream. The rules might be different. Three drops, little fly. Right on my tongue. And then”—his chin lifted proudly—“I will help you.”
Hope lifted into my throat. Three drops of blood was an easy price to pay. If this had been a tithe, it would have been one of the gentlest, the kind taken from children. The man stood, head tilted back, mouth wide-open.
“I wish you could see yourself, brother.” The crimson man giggled.
I pricked my finger. Blood welled. I squeezed three quivering drops into the High-Kith’s mouth. He swallo
wed.
I said, “Now will you tell me where I can find her?”
“No!” He bent over with laughter. “Of course not! Stupid fly! Did you see, brother, how I tricked it? Help it! Oh, I want another dream. Give me another. You have all the vials. Quickly, quickly.”
Shaking his head in amusement, the crimson man reached into his pockets, then frowned.
He removed his hands. He patted his clothes. “Brother…”
But his brother was not paying attention. He had straightened, laughter dying on his lips. He was staring at nothing that I could see, his face locked into a rigid expression.
“A thief!” The crimson man whirled around, pivoting to find who had emptied his pockets.
We saw a small shadow dart through the crowd and down an alleyway.
“Thief!” The High-Kith man shouted more loudly this time. “Catch him!” he cried, and ran toward where the boy had vanished.
His brother remained where he was—oblivious, it seemed, to anything around him.
I had been twice tricked. Once by him, and once by the boy, who had sent me on a fool’s errand to use me as a distraction.
I sighed, lifting my eyes to the sky, which was when I noticed that it had grayed with light from the coming morning.
My stomach jolted. I had to get back. Soon, everyone in the tavern would be awake.
I rushed toward the wall, weaving through the diminishing crowd. The night buyers, weary, were heading home, too. I cast a glance over my shoulder. Behind me, the High-Kith man stood, stock-still, where I had left him. He disappeared behind me as I raced toward the gate.
Then invisible fingers tugged at the elbow of my coat. I yelped.
“Shh,” said the boy, who pulled me into the alley where he had been hiding.
“You,” I said.
“Don’t be mad. You were great. Here, take one.” He opened his hands. Eight vials rested on his palms.
“I don’t want one.” I had enough trouble telling what was real. “I don’t need dreams.”
“Boring! Go on.”
“You probably kept the best one for yourself.”
“You are a smart fly,” he said cheerfully.
I looked at the labels on the vials. Dream of demons. Dream of saviors. Dream of purple donkeys. Dream of kisses … I stopped reading. I did not want kisses. I already knew what they were like.
The vials rocked gently on the boy’s palms.
Dream of now, said one label, and I paused, then saw that the writing was scribbled. I had misread it.
Dream of new.
“That one.” Why had I risked going beyond the wall, if not in search of some kind of beginning?
He handed it to me. “See, I was right,” he said. “About those High men, how they like bad even better than good.”
I wasn’t thinking anymore about the vial in my hand. I was remembering how the man had frozen, staring. “My blood did something to him.”
The boy shrugged, stowing the other vials into his pockets. “Nah. Those two were foxed.”
“Foxed?”
“Drunk. Drugged. Or both. They definitely drank or ate something weird long before they began roaming the night market. The High Kith have got all sorts of stuff to addle their brains.”
“Magic,” I said.
“Hallucinations,” he corrected. “Clever tricks to make the High Kith spend more money. The things people call ‘magic’ don’t last. A flower that sings as it opens its petals? Withered and dead within a day. A tiny key that melts on your tongue and makes you the smartest person in the room? You’re back to your old self after a few hours, with a headache to boot.”
“That doesn’t mean it’s not magic.”
“You want to believe that, just like everyone else. I get it. Makes life more exciting. And maybe you’re right. But whatever it is, it’s no good to me if it can’t be kept.”
I understood. Something that disappears isn’t worth having unless you already have a lot of everything else.
But then I thought about sugar. I thought about this night, which was precious to me even if I hadn’t found what I was seeking, even if—I glanced at the brightening sky—the night was almost over and I might never have another one like it.
“I’ve got to go,” I said.
“Hey. Your friend. What’s so important about finding her?”
Maybe she had already left the city. She had said we would never see each other again.
“Nothing,” I said. “Not really. I just needed an excuse to screw up my courage to go beyond the wall.”
I think I believed that, at the time.
* * *
Dawn was seeping through my window when I snuck into my room. Brilliant pink and syrupy orange. High-Kith colors.
I fumbled out of my clothes. I slipped my passport into a wide crack in one of the beams where it supported the ceiling. The dream vial I tucked among the dull clothes in my wardrobe, having no better place to hide it.
One hour, maybe, of sleep. Then work.
Work as always, days of sameness.
Except that I was different. I felt the difference shimmering all over my skin.
I returned to the wardrobe. I slid the dream of new vial from its hiding place. A splash of golden liquid sloshed at its bottom. The thin, curved glass was cool beneath my nervous fingers. I carried the vial with me into bed.
I uncorked the vial. Its liquid smelled like lemons and fizzed. Popping bubbles tickled my nose. This seemed somehow so friendly, so teasing, that I was reminded of Sid. I tipped the vial and drank.
The liquid burned, pleasingly, all the way down.
The pillow beneath my cheek felt as smooth as milk.
I dropped like a stone into sleep.
20
I WAS IN THE AGORA. I recognized it by its black-and-white diamond pavement, but it looked so astonishingly different from the agora I passed through every day that I didn’t pay attention, at first, to the cluster of people at its sunny center.
The walls of the buildings that surrounded the agora had been white all my life. But in my dream the walls rioted with color. I was too far away to see the patterns, though the slight geometry to the lines and shapes suggested that the images were made by tiny mosaic tiles.
No gaping holes marked the pavement such as the hole where children had ice-skated during the ice wind. Instead, statues of marble and colored glass towered high: a girl with flowers cascading from her mouth; a man whose eyes changed from blue to lavender with the shift of light. He held aloft a twisting snake carved from green travertine. A leaping fawn bore the face of a human child.
There were too many statues for me to count. Some gleamed with jets of water: half statue, half fountain.
A cry rose from the crowd. Curious, I turned toward the seething knot of people.
Not yet, said a small voice behind me.
I turned.
A little girl stood there, rich black hair flowing past her shoulders, her oval-shaped face somber and quiet, her mouth finely shaped, as though painted by a delicate brush, yet firmly pressed in worry. Her eyes were grass green in the sunlight.
Oh, I thought, My eyes are green.
Which was when I realized who stood before me.
You’re me, I told her. But I don’t understand. This is a dream of what is new. You are old.
She shook her head. You are old, she said. I am a child.
No, I mean … you have already happened.
She shrugged.
Am I in the past? I asked.
Yes, she said, but something new is about to happen.
I took a step toward the crowd, whose shouts grew louder. I glimpsed a glowing knife.
The black-haired girl caught my hand. You can’t, she said. You can’t let him see you.
Who?
The god.
I nearly told her that there were no gods, but this was a dream, and she was my younger self, so it seemed pointless and even rude to insist on reality.
Her h
and tightened around mine. He cannot see you, she said. If he sees you, he will know you. He will take you.
Before I could ask her what she meant, she pulled me behind a statue. Wait, she said, until it is over.
What is? What is happening over there?
Murder.
A scream split the air. I wrenched free of the girl and out of our hiding place.
Many people in the crowd had glowing knives now. Their hands lifted and plunged. Little fires danced off the blades. I could see now, through the roiling mob of people, a creature at the center.
It had a vaguely human shape, but hands all over its naked body. They stretched open in pain. It was the same creature I had dreamed about when I was in the prison with Sid.
It screamed. It tried to snatch at people surrounding it, but the crowd lopped off the many hands and struck at the creature’s throat. Bright red spilled from its mouth and wounds, but it was not normal blood. It flowed like liquid flame, striped with pink, edged with orange.
The god’s blood poured onto the black-and-white pavement, and the creature’s screams faded to a whimper.
No one, said the girl by my side, has ever killed a god before.
When the fire-blood slowed to a trickle and then stopped, the crowd fled. The agora was empty now, save for the enormous mutilated carcass.
No one except the girl and I was there to see a duskwing, its cool gray feathers stammering at its sides, dip its beak in the blood.
It shifted before our eyes, wings painted with sudden scarlet. Its stubby, thin tail bloomed into long, soft, curling pink feathers. Its eyes winked like bright emerald chips.
That is the Elysium, I said.
She nodded. The gods’ bird, she said, and fell silent as it took flight, its scalloped-edged wings illuminated by the sun. It ribboned through the sky, dipping and weaving through the hot blue.
Tell me, the girl said. Do I grow up happy?
It seemed wrong to lie and cruel to tell the truth. I said, Not everyone needs to be happy.
Her firm mouth flattened to a line. She said, Yes, they do.
I was going to say that she was a child and so could not possibly understand how the world gets in the way of happiness. I was going to say that hoping to be happy is a kind of greed. It should be enough to feel safe.
The Midnight Lie Page 9
