The Midnight Lie

by Marie Rutkoski

  I edged away. “I’m not really reading.” I returned the book to her. “It was the god of discovery.”

  If she was bothered by my shifting away from her, she didn’t show it. She said, “I wonder what it takes to kill a god.”

  “There are no gods.”

  “What if there were, and they were all killed? Or what if there were, and they all fled?”

  “I thought you didn’t believe in them, either.”

  “I was raised to consider all possibilities.”

  “Because your parents believe in gods?”

  Now she looked uncomfortable. “It has more to do with strategy.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “People can refuse to see a possibility. Maybe they don’t want it. Maybe it never occurs to them, or is even awful to them. But people make bad choices when they don’t know the full range of choices. People come to wrong conclusions if they don’t understand all the possible questions.”

  “Are your parents scholars?” I asked. Sid’s eyes widened in amusement, so I tried again. “Merchants?”

  “Well, they certainly wanted to sell me.” Sid rubbed the back of her neck and tugged absently at the fastening at the back of her dress. “Don’t take what I said about strategy too close to heart. Being open to all possibilities has a flaw, too.”

  “What flaw?”

  “It can make you doubt what you know.” Then she imitated someone else’s voice, someone who spoke in a too-elegant way. “But how can you be sure, Sidarine, if you’ve never so much as looked at a man? How can you know, when you’ve never even kissed one?”

  She said it steadily. Her face was unchanging, her expression perfectly even. Her long hands lay folded across her knee, the lines of her arms so poised, so ladylike, that I could see a different version of Sid than the one who had rummaged through the piano and made me jump off a balcony.

  I said, “Sidarine is a pretty name.”

  She pinched her silk sleeve. “It’s like this dress.” Then she cut a mock-menacing look in my direction. “Don’t ever use that name, or our friendship is over.”

  Friendship? Was that what this was? I felt a sudden, hard determination to be unfazed by Sid, who so clearly enjoyed fazing everyone. I want to see your face, she had said in the prison, the next time that I shock you.

  “Turn around,” I said.

  Her black eyes widened. I saw her start to ask a question. Then, to my surprise, she did exactly what I had told her to do. She shifted her weight on the edge of the bed and turned so that I saw the back of her head, her neck and the perfect posture of her straight shoulders, the three hook-and-eye fastenings on the back of her dress. Steadily, I opened each one. “Since you have trouble doing it yourself,” I said. “Since I’m supposed to be your maid.”

  She was quiet. The red silk of her dress lay open on her shoulders, exposing the skin of her back down to her waist. I had decided, resolutely, not to look at her bare skin. But a drop of water fell between her shoulder blades. For a moment I didn’t understand where the water had come from. I thought it might be an illusion.

  But it was from my hair. The water droplet had slipped from the ends of my hair, wet from the bath. I saw her skin twitch. The water slid down her spine. It disappeared into the silk at her waist.

  I stood. I said good night. I closed the door behind me.

  I don’t think she knew my heart was twisting inside me like a blind animal.

  I don’t think she knew I had held my breath as I undid each fastening.

  She couldn’t have known how I went to my room and crawled into bed, worried about how bold I had been.

  What I had done could easily have looked like nothing—no more than me performing my new job as her maid, for which she had paid handsomely.

  But I knew what it really was.

  I liked Sid too much. I liked the sight of her bare back. I had wanted to follow the water droplet with my fingertip.

  In my bed in the dark I touched the Elysium feather where it burned against my breast. I wondered if the feather had made me want Sid. I wondered if it could make her want me.

  25

  MAYBE IF I HAD BEEN able to keep the Elysium bird, people in the Ward would have looked at me the way they did with Sid beside me: in disbelieving wonder. The heat was as bad as it had been the day before, but people came out into the streets when they heard the gossip about a High lady visiting the Ward. They saw the gold-embroidered indigo batiste of her simply cut dress, her easy yet perfect posture that made everyone else look like they were slouching, and how the sunlight caught her short hair. Sid refused to carry a parasol.

  “You’ll burn,” I warned. Her skin was too pale.

  “You, I notice, are not carrying a parasol.”

  “I’m darker than you. Anyway, I’m not allowed. It’s not my kith.”

  She glanced at me as we walked. I liked having an excuse to meet her gaze.

  “I want my hands free,” she said. She made a face, as if a parasol in her hand would be a burden, and even the idea were an itchy cloth irritating her skin. She spoke as if she were a worker who used her hands all the time. It was true that her hands didn’t look like a lady’s hands. She wore no rings. Her nails were cut to the quick. Little scars marked the fingers. A long, narrow scar crossed the back of her right hand.

  “Where did you get that?” I asked.

  “This? Fighting a tiger.”

  “I’d like a real answer.”

  “A lovelorn girl who just couldn’t let me go.”

  “Sid.”

  “A duel to the death. I won, of course.”

  “Is it possible for you to tell any story in which you’re not the hero?”

  “So you would like a boring lie?”

  “I’d like the truth.”

  “No,” she said cheerfully, “I don’t think you actually do.” She ran a hand along the white wall as we walked toward the artisan workshops. “So the whole Ward is painted white? Show me the spot you found, with the colored paint beneath.”

  I shook my head. “Later. I don’t want anyone to see us do it. Everyone is staring at you.”

  She lifted her brows. “And you.”

  I had never before had so many eyes on me. I tried to do my usual trick of pretending everyone on the streets had forgotten me, but I found that I couldn’t, maybe because I couldn’t forget myself. I felt too aware of my body: the sun in my face; the narrow distance between Sid and me; the swish of her dress; the scuff of my sandals; the prickle down the back of my neck as I realized that it wasn’t just that people were staring at Sid, at her strange beauty, or at me, the little shadow walking beside her. It was her and me, together, that captured their attention. Gazes darted from her face to mine.

  I showed Sid the workshops of the makers in the Ward. She appreciatively examined each item, praising the maker, but I could tell from the slight furrow between her brows that she was disappointed, that the carved jewelry box with its cunning secret compartment held no real interest for her, that the pink blown-glass vase that she claimed was gorgeous was in fact useless. Although she flattered every artisan, who seemed to grow a little taller with Sid’s expressed admiration, I knew she hadn’t found what she’d hoped.

  I worried that she wasn’t easy to please, despite whatever words she might say to the contrary.

  I worried that I was too attuned to what she wanted.

  She shut a compact mirror. We were in Terrin’s shop, the two of us reflected everywhere in the mirrors surrounding us like facets of an enormous, hollow jewel. I saw Sid’s dissatisfaction.

  “What is it?” I said. “What are you looking for?”

  She tugged me gently in the direction of the door and the streets outside the shop. I saw her hand on mine from all the angles of all the mirrors as she drew me toward the door. Terrin’s eyes widened at such an unexpected, even shocking, gesture between someone of Sid’s kith and someone of mine. I wondered what my face showed as my fingers tightened arou
nd Sid’s hand, the one with the long scar.

  “Everything is just … normal,” she said when we’d left the cool of the shop. A wind had picked up, but it was so hot it felt like the breath of a dog. “There are mirrors like that compact beyond the wall, but one half shows yourself and the other shows how you want to look. If you stare at that half long enough, your face will change to match what you see, at least for an hour or so. But there is nothing unusual about Terrin’s mirrors, or any other goods in the Ward. The objects are inert. Dead. If there is magic, it isn’t here.”

  Something dwindled inside me. “Does that mean you’ll leave?”

  But she didn’t answer, because a man called my name. She dropped my hand.

  It was Aden, striding toward us.

  26

  “NIRRIM, I NEED YOU,” he said.

  “Need?” Sid’s mouth curled.

  “Excuse us,” he told her, just barely polite, with an expression that betrayed frustration that he needed to be polite with her. “Nirrim, now.”

  Sid’s face showed disbelief but also a knowing look that I didn’t understand and didn’t like. “Just a moment,” I told her, and pulled Aden across the street.

  “What is wrong with you?” I demanded.

  “With me? What are you doing with her?”

  “I’m working.”

  “You’re prancing around the Ward like you’re that lady’s pet.” His blue eyes were bright with disgust. “Everyone’s been talking.”

  “It’s a job. I’m her escort.”

  “I don’t care how she’s dressed. She’s not High. She’s not even Herrath. A traveler, they say. Maybe so, maybe there are other countries across the sea, but if she is from one of them all that means is that she can tell whatever lies she likes and her countrymen aren’t here to prove her wrong.”

  “She paid,” I said. “In gold coins.”

  “So what? People fake their kith all the time. You know that. You help them do that. Gold coins and a fancy dress and a fancy attitude don’t mean anything.”

  “Why are you so angry? This has nothing to do with you.”

  “I don’t like how she looks.”

  “She can’t help being born High Kith any more than we can help being born Half Kith.”

  He snorted. “If you don’t see what I mean, then maybe it’s for the best.”

  But I did see what he meant. He could have meant that she looked foreign, but there was another possible meaning to his words. I became uncomfortably aware of all the times Sid had mentioned being with women. I knew what she was. Did Aden somehow know, too?

  Was it something you could see on a person’s face?

  I felt myself flush. “Did you come find me just because the Ward is gossiping and you wanted to yell at me about a bored foreigner with money to spend?”

  “I came here for you. I came because I care about you.” He took my shoulders in his large hands.

  I stepped back.

  “Nirrim, did you hunt the Elysium the night you were arrested?”

  Raven had said we should keep what had happened with the Elysium secret. “No, of course not.”

  “A soldier died that night.”

  Dread crept through my belly. “So?”

  “The militia think it wasn’t an accident. They think it was murder.”

  I glanced across the street to where Sid waited, her right hand at her waist. I said, “That has nothing to do with me.”

  “Except that Annin said you caught the bird and turned it in.”

  “Why did you ask me a question you knew the answer to?”

  “Why did you lie? You lied to me, Nirrim.” His expression grew wounded. I felt instantly guilty but also angry, because he wanted me to feel guilty, and his question had never been a question. It had been a test.

  He said, “My friend Darin saw a girl climbing to the roof to catch the bird. The soldier climbed after her.”

  I felt instantly cold despite the heat.

  “He described her to me,” Aden said. “He said it was you.”

  “She wasn’t me,” I whispered.

  “She kicked the soldier to his death.”

  “I didn’t.”

  “The militia found black hair stuck to the building’s fresh paint. Like yours.”

  I remembered how, that night, a lock of my hair had gotten matted with paint. “Lots of people have black hair. It’s common.” But my voice trembled.

  Aden touched my cheek. His hands fell to my shoulders again, and this time I allowed it. I had no choice. I let him pull me into his arms.

  “You lied to me because you were afraid,” he said.

  I was afraid. I was afraid of him. He could so easily ruin my life.

  “You don’t need to be,” he said. “I told Darin not to talk about what he saw. I’ll protect you.” I looked up at him. He brushed the hair from my face. “I love you,” he said. He kissed my cold mouth.

  “I love you, too,” I said, because there was nothing else I could say.

  He let me go then, reassured, the anxiety that had been sparking all around him soothed now into satisfaction. He glanced across the street at Sid with something like disdain, or disinterest, or pity, before he kissed me again, deeply, and left, promising to come to the tavern as soon as he could.

  When I walked toward Sid, I saw that her hand was on the hilt of a large knife I had never noticed before. It seemed to be belted beneath her dress, hidden under the fabric, its hilt now showing through a slit in the side. Sid shifted her hand and the dagger disappeared again beneath the fabric. Her expression was neutral yet closed. Everything felt huge inside me. I wanted to explain everything that had happened with Aden. I wanted it to spill out like a confession, like milk from a broken jug. But then I remembered Aden suggesting that Sid was faking her kith, and even though I didn’t care if she was faking it, not exactly, I became frighteningly aware of how little I knew about her.

  Aden, at least, I knew. Aden, I could trust.

  What would Sid think, if she knew I had killed someone?

  What would she do?

  “I suppose that’s your sweetheart.” Sid’s voice was cool.

  “No.”

  “Ah, Nirrim. It’s never wise to lie when no one will believe you.”

  27

  “WHY DON’T YOU LEAD ME to the red paint you found,” Sid said, “beneath the coat of white.” Her voice sounded friendly enough, but too perfectly calibrated to be truly friendly. She was like that the whole way to the building, commenting on the surprising charm of the Ward. “Not bad, for a prison,” she said.

  I glanced around. “It’s so plain. You are surely used to better.”

  “It has been made to look plain.”

  We were passing through the agora. She said, “Do you see that temple?”

  “It’s not a temple. It is for storing grain.”

  “Look at the cornices along the top. It looks like decorations have been chiseled away. And there.” She pointed to the holes in the agora’s paved square. “What used to be there? Statues, maybe? The holes seem the right size for it.”

  I thought of the visions I had had of the agora. It felt dizzying to hear Sid suggest, without knowing it, that what I had seen was real. For so long I had thought of those visions as dangerous signs of my unsteady mind. It unnerved me to wonder if Sid was right—if I had been right, all these years. I wasn’t sure what it would mean if she and I were both right.

  I repeated what Morah had once said to me. “The agora has always been this way. It is as it is.”

  Sid shut her mouth. The sky darkened as we walked. Indi flowers growing along the walls nodded in the warm wind. Silver ants glinted as they disappeared into cracks along the walls. The heat would break soon.

  I asked, “Why do you carry a weapon?”

  “Oh, that.”

  “You looked like you would use it.”

  “I was worried about you,” she said. “I didn’t need to be.”

  “I’ve kno
wn Aden for years. He’s harmless.”

  “If you say so.”

  “He would never hurt me.”

  Dryly, she said, “What a compelling reason to care for someone.”

  But it was a good reason, and if Sid could laugh at it, it was only because her life had been so easy. “As if you need a reason,” I said. “As if you don’t just tumble into any woman’s bed.”

  “You wound me, Nirrim.” She lay a hand on her heart. “Not just any woman. I have standards. They must be beautiful. Adoring.” She ticked the criteria off with her fingers. “They must let me have my way. And never stay longer than one night.”

  “How romantic.”

  “Oh, yes. Just like your hero back there. Such broad shoulders! And his jaw. I loved his jaw. Why, you could shovel dirt with that jaw.”

  I didn’t want to talk about Aden. It sounded like she was mocking him, but really she was mocking me. “You didn’t answer my question about that knife.”

  “Dagger.”

  “Why do you wear it beneath your dress?”

  “I always wear it.”

  “But why do you hide it?”

  She brushed her hand through the air as if batting something away. As we walked, the wind grew. The sky turned the color of slate. “It’s not the custom here to wear a weapon openly.”

  “But it is the custom where you come from?”

  “For some people.”

  “Which people?”

  “Nirrim, why are you interrogating me about my dagger?”

  Frustrated, I said, “Because you’re dodging my questions.”

  “No, I’m not. I’ve answered them all. How much farther to that wall of yours? Is that thunder?”

  That faint rumble was thunder. It would rain, just as Sirah had said that it would. As always, she had been exactly right about when the rain would come. I was glad for the coming storm. The people of the Ward were going into their homes, which meant that Sid and I were the only ones left on the street.

  I said, “I want a straight answer.”

  “Very well. I will give you a straight answer if you give me one.”

  “To what question?”