The Midnight Lie

by Marie Rutkoski

  She tapped a finger against her lips, considering. “And you?”

  “I will come home, too.”

  “Home,” she repeated.

  “Here,” I said.

  She made a face. “So you want … a month’s vacation in the High quarter.”

  “An adventure,” I reminded her.

  “And then you’ll come right back here and bake for your mistress and kiss that very tall man you love.” She sounded mocking. “Like nothing ever happened, no matter what happens.”

  “It’s just a month,” I said defensively, unsure of what else to say. “This is what I want.”

  “Why do you want this?”

  The answer was too big and frightening to explain, even to myself. “I just do.”

  “Well,” she said, “I do like giving women what they want.”

  “Is that a yes?”

  She let out a sigh through her teeth. “Yes, that’s a yes. Gods help me.”

  “Thank you,” I said, and she laughed. “So prim,” she said, “for someone so demanding. Now. I’ll have that back.” She reached for the letter.

  I pulled it away. “It’s mine now.”

  “Oh no.” She wagged a finger at me. “No, no, no.”

  “You said you wouldn’t send the letter anyway. And I don’t understand its language. You should have no problem giving it to me.”

  She scrunched up her brow. “Why do you want a letter you can’t read?”

  Because it’s written in your hand, I wanted to say. Because it will be a piece of you I can keep when you eventually do leave. “Because you were rude to me, and I claim it as payment.”

  “Rude?” She grimaced. “I was horrible.”

  “The worst.”

  “I was the worst!”

  “Like a nasty, cold queen.”

  “King, dear Nirrim.”

  “I’m not going to forgive you.”

  She caught my empty hand. “Please.” She was serious now. “Forgive me. I was angry.”

  She held my hand a little too hard, but I liked it. I curled my fingers around hers. And that was all right. A woman could hold a woman’s hand. Friends did that in the Ward all the time, and no one looked at them with reproach. Sid’s skin was soft, her hand warmer than mine. Looking at my fingers entwined with hers, I asked, “Why were you angry?”

  “I was angry at myself.”

  “That’s not an answer.”

  “It’s all the answer you’ll get.” She opened my hand and studied the well of my palm. She ran a thumb over it. I felt the echo of her touch travel up my back. She brought my hand to her mouth. She kissed my palm, then closed my hand around the ghost of her kiss, which sang into my closed fingers. Pleasure poured down my wrist.

  She dropped my hand.

  “That’s a custom,” she said breezily, “in my country. It’s a way of saying thank you for being forgiven.”

  It sounded believable. What did I know, anyway, of her country, except what she had told me? But something made me say, “Is that a lie?”

  “Maybe,” she said. “Will you help me pack?”

  So I did. Together we settled her gorgeous clothes into the trunk as though putting them to bed, tucking them in gently. I was glad to busy my hands. I needed to ignore my singing skin, to ignore that kiss, which had no meaning, or only the meaning that Sid gave it.

  But:

  She was staying in the city.

  She was taking me up quarter, even if it was only because of what she thought I could do for her.

  31

  “YOU WANT TO LEAVE ME?” Tears welled in Raven’s eyes.

  “No,” I said, “of course not. It is only for a month. Then I will come home.”

  “Don’t you love me? How can you leave me alone?”

  I knelt beside her chair. Sid, who had insisted on being present when I told Raven, looked on, her expression closed. I took Raven’s hands, which were folded limply in her lap. I pressed them to my cheek. A thick sludge of guilt bubbled up. I remembered what Morah had told me about her baby, but maybe Morah didn’t understand Raven like I did, how much emotion the older woman had within her, how important it was to hold her three girls close, as she would any children. She made mistakes, but no one could doubt her affection, not when tears were slipping down her face and loneliness aged her face. “I love you so much,” I told her. “You won’t be alone. You have Morah and Annin.”

  “They are not you.”

  Her words glowed within me. It was selfish, I knew, to be so happy to be her favorite. And it was wrong (I knew this, too), but I couldn’t help thinking that what had happened with Morah could never happen with me. I was Raven’s special girl. When I gazed upon her, I saw the worn face that I loved and the glint of a golden chain at her throat, half hidden by her dress, that reminded me of the moon necklace my mother had worn. Sometimes I would catch a glimpse of Raven’s delicate chain, and I would pretend that if only she untucked the necklace from her dress I would see the crescent-moon pendant dangling from it. I would pretend that she was my mother. Raven had always promised to protect me, to care for me, to make certain I wanted for nothing. “I will be back, Ama,” I said, using the word for mother, “I promise.”

  Raven’s hand tightened hard on my chin. She forced my face up so that she could stare into my eyes. It hurt my neck and my jaw ached beneath her thumb, but I said nothing because Raven did this only because she cared so much and was scared to lose me. “You call me Ama, but you don’t mean it. How can you mean it, when you can leave me so easily?”

  I heard the scrape of Sid’s boot. “Let go of her,” Sid said. “You are hurting her.”

  Raven released me, her blue eyes bright with sadness and anger. “What about our project?” she asked me, with a cautious eye on Sid. My heart sank as Raven carefully chose her words to screen their true meaning from Sid. “Even if you care nothing for me, how can you abandon everyone who depends on you?”

  It was true. Without me, Raven wouldn’t dare forge passports. She could trace officials’ signatures, perhaps, but she couldn’t remember the tricks of their various and different handwriting the way that I did, the quirks and squiggles that would occur in the longer textual portions of a passport, the sections that described the bearer’s family, background, and appearance.

  “You know as well as I do,” Raven said, “that if you leave, lives will be ruined.”

  “Lives will be ruined?” Sid’s voice was cool and incredulous. “Because she leaves the Ward for a month? What do you put in your breads and cakes, Nirrim, that the fate and happiness of so many will hang in the balance without them?”

  Raven gave me a hard, warning look. Her hand twitched. I swallowed. “When I return,” I said carefully, “I will bake twice as many.”

  “Three times,” Raven said, “to make up for lost time.”

  “So you’ll let me leave?”

  “I didn’t say that. Leave me? Oh, my girl.” Raven’s tears returned. She wiped them from her cheeks with the hem of her apron. “You are cruel.”

  “Nonsense.” Sid’s voice was crisp. “Nothing can be so dire that a baker can’t leave her place of employment for a month without people languishing.”

  “You don’t understand,” I told Sid.

  Raven gave me a satisfied smile. Her smile warmed me. It made me feel less nervous. I was still capable of winning her approval, even if I was selfish enough to leave her alone with the task of helping the Half Kith who needed to leave the Ward. “Yes,” she told Sid, “you don’t know what it’s like to scrape by. To make do with so little. You don’t know what it is like to have a business to run, how hard I work for my girls. These hands.” She lifted one. It was gnarled and soft. “I work them to the very bone. With my best girl gone, what will I do?”

  Sid rolled her eyes.

  Her contempt made me angry. Whatever her life had been like, she had been so spoiled. A mother, a father, a trunk of luxurious clothes, a seemingly endless supply of gold. She could
n’t even begin to comprehend Raven’s situation. “Give Raven my earnings,” I told her.

  Sid didn’t like that. “We didn’t discuss payment.”

  “Well, now I come at a price.”

  “Fine,” Sid said. “Service rendered deserves fair pay. But I have hired you, not your mistress.”

  “It’s one and the same. I would give everything to Raven anyway.”

  Raven gave me a tiny, proud smile. Sid looked furious. Her eyes were black fire. She reached inside her jacket, pulled a small leather purse from an inner pocket, and handed it to Raven. I could see the rich luster of gold peeking from the purse when Raven opened it. Her face grew peaceful for a moment, then almost instantly tight and worried again. “That’s all?” she said. “For a whole month?”

  “I’ll give you twice that,” Sid said. “You’ll receive the second half upon her return to the tavern.”

  “Oh, I know how it will be,” Raven muttered to me. “She will turn you against me. You will never come home. I know this woman’s ways. I see what she wants. She will keep you for herself.”

  “I will do no such thing.” Sid sounded disgusted.

  “One day I will be gone,” Raven said to me, “and you will remember this. You never forget anything. You will remember how I begged and you abandoned me.”

  “Oh, please,” Sid said.

  “You’re heartless,” I told her.

  “Thank the gods I am.” She offered more gold. “Here. For your pains.”

  Raven took the money and folded her hand quickly around it, probably because the offer shamed her even though she needed it. “Well.” Raven gave me a brave little smile. “I suppose I don’t have a choice, do I?”

  “It’s only for a little while,” I promised.

  Raven nodded slowly to herself, but she looked so much older, with a quiver to her chin. She got to her feet unsteadily, patted my cheek, and shuffled from the room. When she had gone, Sid took one look at my face and said impatiently, “For gods’ sake. It’s not like she is going to die without you.”

  “It’s hard for her to give me up. She loves me.”

  “She sold you,” Sid snapped. I said nothing in reply, because it was clear that she didn’t understand, and didn’t want to.

  * * *

  “I am so jealous,” Annin said. She had burst into my room telling me that she wanted to help me pack, then looked at my clothes and told me that if I took them with me she would kill me, they were so impoverished of any beauty, any joy, any life.

  “I wear them every day,” I said.

  “Not one day more! You can’t wear this in the High quarter. You would look like a stillborn mouse. Like a sick wren. Like an old woman! Like Sirah the rain-sayer. Please, Nirrim. For my sake. Promise that you will wear gorgeous clothes and think of me. Your mistress will give them to you. She is so kind.”

  “Is she?” I wondered out loud, remembering how cold she had been to Raven.

  “Of course! Look.” From her pocket Annin pulled the pink lace scarf I had seen earlier in Sid’s trunk.

  “Oh,” I said.

  “Don’t you think it’s beautiful?”

  Sid barely knew Annin, yet she had given a gift perfectly suited to please her. I felt an unpleasant, jealous twinge. I looked into Annin’s eager, pretty face. “You can’t wear it,” I told her. “It’s High.”

  Her face fell a little, but she just stroked the scarf and said, “I can wear it in my room.”

  “What’s the point if no one will see you?”

  “I will see.”

  “You don’t have a mirror.”

  “I will know I am wearing it,” she insisted, clutching the scarf, and it reminded me of the rag I had cherished once, the one from Helin’s dress. I brushed a loose tendril out of Annin’s face. “You’re right,” I said. “Of course you will. It’s the perfect color for you.”

  She beamed. “Isn’t it?”

  I removed two dresses from my wardrobe, a sleeveless one for hot weather, and one for cooler weather, just in case an ice wind came. The dresses were made of good, sturdy cloth—a little rough, and in shades of taupe and dark brown, but I was used to them, and I didn’t want to have to ask Sid for anything.

  “Nirrim, no. They make you look like you’ve been molded out of clay!”

  “They suit me.” I folded them into a large satchel.

  She blew out a wistful breath. “I wish I were going.”

  I looked up in surprise from my task, though I shouldn’t have been surprised, because I had always believed that out of all of us who worked in the tavern, she wanted the impossible the most. Maybe what surprised me was that it had turned out that I was the one. I had wanted the impossible—to go into the High quarter—and I was getting it. And it wasn’t the only impossible thing I wanted. Maybe what made me pause was the realization that wanting one impossible thing and achieving it is only a little satisfying, because then you are encouraged to want more. I touched the Elysium feather hidden above my heart. I remembered how I had wondered whether the feather drew me to Sid, or Sid to me.

  “I want you to have something,” I told Annin, and withdrew the feather from my dress.

  She gasped. “Is that—?”

  “Here.” Held aloft in my fingers, the feather looked like a billowing flame.

  “I can’t. It’s too beautiful. How can you even bear to touch it?”

  I tucked it in her hair behind her ear. Annin reached up gingerly to touch it with her fingertips.

  I said, “I don’t want you to think that a stranger, just because she’s High, can give you better gifts than a sister.”

  “A sister?” Her eyes widened. “Really?”

  “Really.”

  “I will miss you,” she said.

  This made me feel guilty—not because I wouldn’t miss her, but because she didn’t know that I had given her the feather not so much as a gift, but to be rid of it. I did half believe that it had some power to pull Sid toward me. Why else had she agreed to my demand?

  At the time, I believed I was giving Annin the feather so that, if it had any power, it would no longer affect me. It would no longer affect Sid. She would be my mistress and I would be her servant, and we would be partners in a strange quest. I would never long for anything more, without that burning feather above my heart.

  Now I know that it was more complicated than that. I gave away the feather because I wanted to see if Sid would like me without it. I wanted her to want me for myself alone.

  32

  “READY?” SID SAID. HER ENORMOUS trunk sat inside the tavern, waiting for a pair of hired men to collect it and convey it through the wall. We stood outside the door on the unevenly paved street. The rain had washed away some of the heat, or at least the way heat sticks to the skin like a layer of grime. The sky was marbled with shining clouds. A cool breeze played with my hair. I tucked it behind my ears.

  “Not quite,” I said. “I have someone to see first.”

  Her mouth curled. “Someone special?”

  “I can’t leave without saying good-bye.”

  “I do it all the time.”

  “I’m not like you.”

  “Go then, and collect your kiss.” Her tone was amused yet bored.

  Disappointment puddled inside me. I knew enough of what I felt for Sid to understand that her indifference to Aden was a rejection of me.

  “Explain to me,” she said, “what is so appealing about a boy’s kiss? Is it the rasp of stubble?”

  I could have said: Sometimes it is comforting. I could have said: It used to be, at first, that kissing him felt like an important skill to learn. I liked to learn things. And part of having a good memory was remembering exactly how Aden liked to be kissed. What was so wrong in enjoying that I could do that? It used to be nice to kiss him. Warm and safe. I could have said: Kissing him is better than dealing with his hurt if I don’t.

  I could have said: I am afraid of his hurt.

  I could have confessed that I
had killed a man and explained that Aden knew, and maybe he would no longer protect me if he couldn’t claim me as his.

  He must believe that I am his, I could have said.

  Instead I said, “I’ll meet you at the wall.”

  “Don’t keep me waiting long,” Sid said, and walked away, whistling a tune I didn’t recognize.

  * * *

  “I don’t understand,” Aden said when I pushed his hands away. His eyes had brightened when he saw me at his door. He had pulled me out of the sunny street and into the darkness of his home. “Why are you always so cold? All I want to do is show you how much I love you. I miss you when I don’t see you.”

  “I came here to tell you something.”

  He started to draw me in the direction of his bedroom. “You can tell me later.”

  “No,” I said. “I don’t want to.”

  He abruptly let me go. He held up his hands dramatically, large fingers spread wide and empty, as though to show he had no weapon. “Gods, Nirrim. You’re acting like I’m forcing you. It would be nice, you know,” he added bitterly, “if for once it was you who wanted me.”

  I imagined lifting my mouth to Sid’s. Heat rushed into my cheeks.

  Aden touched my warm face. His anger relented into affection. “You’re so pretty when you blush,” he said. “I understand if you feel shy sometimes. I know that girls do. There are men who take advantage, but I never will.”

  But you are, I wanted to say. You are using what you know to keep me in place, right by your side. You don’t even know you’re doing it, and I am too afraid to say what you’re doing, because of what you might do to me.

  “I can’t help wanting you,” he said, “and I get carried away, yes, but it’s only because I love you. Do you hear me? Nirrim, I want to marry you.”

  My body went very still. “You do?”

  He smiled. “You don’t believe me?”

  Dread unspooled in my belly like black thread. “We’re too young.”

  “You’re nineteen! Half the Ward is engaged or married by then.”

  “I…” I searched for a reason that would make him not want me. “I don’t want children.”