The Midnight Lie

by Marie Rutkoski

  I hesitated. “Will I hurt it?”

  She smiled a little. “Sweet Nirrim. Go ahead. It’s just bark. The tree is healthy. Its leaves are thick. And as you see, a gardener has gilded the patches of missing bark. High Kith can’t bear to see anything ugly and mangy, even a tree.”

  I stepped toward the tree, curiosity overcoming my hesitation. I found a split in the bark and peeled a narrow strip away. It came off in my hand, as thin as paper, and instantly curled up like a little snake. I uncurled it and looked at its inner skin. My stomach turned to stone.

  “What is it?” Sid said. “Will you tell me?”

  “Has it told your fortune?”

  “Yes.”

  “Has it come true?”

  “I don’t know,” she said, “yet.”

  “Tell me yours,” I said, “and I’ll tell you mine.”

  She wagged her finger no. “Secrets all around”—she smiled—“and truths for none.”

  She led the way out of the park, telling me we weren’t far from the center of the High quarter and her lodgings. When she wasn’t looking, I crushed the bark in my hand and let its flakes fall to the grass. I didn’t need to look at the fortune again. It was written on my mind.

  You will lose her, it said.

  34

  THE PARK LED TO TERRACED stairs chiseled into the hillside, which gave way to a path. A musician in Middling blue played an instrument that I had seen in Harvers’s books, a many-stringed lute held on the man’s lap. Soap bubbles from a source I couldn’t see drifted past the man and seemed to swallow notes as he played them, their iridescent spheres suddenly silencing parts of the tune. I saw one float ahead of us to a man and woman walking arm in arm, her lace parasol as fine as spun sugar, her perfect face tipped up toward his, coral lips smiling as he reached to pop one of the silent bubbles. I could hear, faintly, as it burst into a few stolen strummed notes.

  The path opened into an enormous agora. A few lavishly dressed people sat at the fountain’s edge, its colored waters tumbling and crashing. A councilman passed, his red robe trailing. I had never seen a councilman before. I had been taught about them in the orphanage, their importance in decreeing and overseeing laws and advising the Lord Protector.

  Sid followed my eyes. “We should steer clear of the Council,” she said. “I don’t think they’d appreciate my plan to swindle their country out of its magical secret and run off with it for my personal profit.” Sid squinted at the glowing agora. “So flashy. Honestly, it hurts my eyes.”

  Instead of stones, the agora was paved with translucent glass tiles arranged in patterns of colors, pink and red and green—the colors of the Elysium bird—most dominant. I stared at the tiles. “I know who made these,” I said. “An artisan in the Ward. I have seen them heaped in baskets in her glass-blowing workshop, but I never guessed they would be made to walk upon. It’s so impractical. Don’t people slip and fall?”

  “No one here moves very quickly,” Sid said. “They take really delicate steps. Or they are carried in palanquins by Middlings.”

  I stepped onto the tiles. They lit up beneath my weight. My skin was bathed in green light. Sid walked along beside me, different shades of light coloring her skin, shifting from one color to the next, her cheeks pink, her mouth green, her hands bright red. She sighed, glancing down at her crimson hands. “It’s fun the first time.”

  I said, “What a surprise to learn that you are easily bored.”

  She paused, her face and neck a gold-sprinkled blue. “Games bore me, eventually. They are too easy to master, which is why I constantly need new ones. People are different. People always fascinate me. Or,” she amended, “at least you do.”

  “Me?”

  “I always want to know what you are thinking. What do you think”—she swept her hand at the agora—“of this?”

  My heart felt hot and hard with resentment. “I think it must have cost a fortune. I think it’s not fair that the High Kith should have so much beauty when we get so little.”

  “Sounds revolutionary of you, Nirrim.”

  “The tiles made in the Ward are pretty but … ordinary. They don’t glow. I think someone is purchasing things cheaply from the Ward and … improving them somehow.”

  “An interesting idea. Worth investigating. But your thoughts are very different from mine. I am thinking that shade of green light suits you, but I prefer your beauty without it.”

  “You are not really thinking that.”

  “I am.”

  If someone stole her voice, she would still find a way to flirt, even silently, with whomever was nearest.

  “I suppose I can’t be believed even when I’m telling the truth,” Sid said. “It’s the liar’s curse.”

  As much as she claimed she was a liar, I could not recall, now that I thought about it, an actual lie she had told—which meant she never had, at least not to me … or she had lied, and I didn’t know it yet.

  We left the colored lights of the agora, which narrowed to a path carpeted with pink and white petals. Tree branches laden with flowers arched overhead. As we walked, buds opened and bloomed in soft bursts, petals cascading down onto us, floating onto Sid’s shoulders, catching in my hair. The branches instantly grew tight new buds. They, too, flowered open and shed their petals. My sandaled feet sank into the petals up to my ankles. Their fragrance wafted up. More petals came down like snow. “Why,” I asked, “would I fascinate you?”

  “I want to know,” Sid said, “how someone who has so little can be so brave.”

  I thought about how much I liked the way she walked, her hands in her pockets yet never slouching, her shoulders straight. I thought about how I had liked her leg tangled between mine. Her light weight on me. I thought about how terrified I was of ever admitting any of this. “I am not brave.”

  “And yet you are here, with me—and with a forged Middling passport. Don’t think I didn’t notice. Where did you get that?”

  She smiled at my silence.

  It occurred to me that it was a special person, a gentle one, who allowed another to keep her secrets.

  Or it was the sort of person who had secrets of her own.

  * * *

  Most of the homes in the High quarter looked like miniature palaces separated by swathes of lawn and low marble walls. But Sid led me to a hilltop square with an elegant yet skinny house much smaller than the rest. The eaves dripped with decorative trim that looked as fragile as icicles. Roseate windows had stained glass and the balconies had been wrought with gleaming green metal that curled like a living thing, with finials spiraling into themselves like new-sprung fiddlehead ferns I had seen in one of Harvers’s botanical books. Twilight was gathering on the rooftop. Duskwings called, each with a different song. I instantly remembered each one’s call, and as they swooped through the silky pink sky, the pattern of where each one was rearranged itself in my mind, their map of song constantly shifting.

  Sid unlocked the door. “There are not many homes for rent, but this one suits my stature well enough. Plus, I like the view.”

  “What exactly is your stature?”

  She pushed open the door. “Well, I’m not the most important person in Herran. Merely the most charming.”

  The inside of the house was dark and silent and smelled of roses. “Where are the servants?” I asked.

  “There are no servants.”

  “Only me?” my voice squeaked. “You expect me to take care of an entire house on my own?”

  “Nirrim, no.” My eyes had adjusted to the darkness, and I could see from the fading light coming in from the windows that Sid was insulted. “You are not my servant. You are my partner.”

  “But”—I sputtered—“who will clean?”

  “Me.”

  “Who cooks for you?”

  “I do.”

  “I am confused,” I said. “Everyone thinks you’re a high-bred lady. What exactly are you?”

  She shrugged. “Someone who likes to be self-sufficient.”r />
  “But you hired me.”

  “Oh.” She waved her long hand. “All that business about paying for your services was just to get you out of that awful woman’s clutches.”

  “She is not awful.”

  “You are too kind and too loyal to see it.”

  “She is the only one who has ever taken care of me.”

  Sid paused at that, and more quietly said, “I’m sorry. Maybe I’m wrong.” She beckoned me toward the stairs. “Before the light fades.”

  She lit no lamps along the way, so the home was nothing but heaps of shadows around us. The stairs were soundless beneath my feet. I had never walked up stairs that didn’t creak. At the top of the landing, she opened a door to a little bedroom that smelled like her—like her dusky perfume, her skin. And brine. The glass-paneled doors to the balcony were full of pink sky. Sid opened the balcony, and the scent of the sea rushed in.

  I followed her out onto the balcony. The sea spread before me. It rumpled darkly against the coast. The sun was drowning on the water. I heard the muted calls of gulls. And nowhere could I see the wall.

  I had never seen the sea.

  I had never not seen the wall.

  “Do you like it?” Sid asked.

  “I don’t think I believed the sea was real,” I said. “I mean, I accepted that it was there even though I couldn’t see it. But it’s only now that I do see it that I realize that I didn’t really know what it was. My belief was half pretend. But I didn’t know, before now, that I was pretending.”

  She nodded. “I think I understand, though it’s hard. The sea is one of my earliest memories. I grew up escaping to the harbor every chance I could get. The sailors would drag me home to my parents.” She peered at me through the rosy light. She lifted her hand to stroke my hair.

  I flinched in surprise.

  “Just a petal,” she said, pulling a white one from my hair. It curled like a thin shell in her fingers.

  “Oh.” I tried to ignore my stuttering heart. “Thank you.”

  Her nonchalance changed to amusement. “Well, yes, and you should thank me, for accomplishing such an arduous and unpleasant task as removing a stray petal from your hair.”

  “No,” I said. “Thank you for everything. For this.”

  “I am a gift from the gods, but I confess that I didn’t create the sea.”

  “Don’t do that.”

  The light was dimming. Her eyes were shadows. “Do what?”

  “Praise yourself.”

  She drew back a little. “Do you think me arrogant?”

  “No,” I said, though I had thought it, up until that very moment. “You sound like you’re bragging, but really you’re just making fun of yourself.”

  She opened her mouth, then closed it.

  I said, “Why would you do that?”

  “Maybe,” she said slowly, “so that you won’t make fun of me first.”

  “I would never.”

  “Then I won’t do that,” she said, “if it bothers you.” She rubbed the petal between her finger and thumb. “Take this room. It has the best view. I’ll be in the one next door.”

  “This is your room.”

  She looked at me.

  “It smells like you,” I said.

  She winced. “Maybe I don’t clean all that well. Since we’ve decided I’m to be more honest and not lay claim to skills and attributes I don’t have. Do you want the other room? It might be less, ah, fragrant. It’s unused, though maybe”—she cringed again—“a little dusty.”

  “I want this one.” I hoped she wouldn’t ask why.

  She nodded. “There’s a spare key to the house on the nightstand, so you can come and go as you please.” She must have seen my surprise. “Did you think I would keep you prisoner here? You’ve had enough of living in a box.”

  She moved to leave the room, then paused, her hand on the door. “Don’t thank me yet, Nirrim. I expect you to uphold your end of the bargain. Tomorrow night I plan for us to do a little investigative work at a party. That night will be as late as dawn, so get your rest.”

  I waited long after the door had shut to do what I wanted, which was to slip into the bed. I drew the sheet up over me, the fabric so fine it felt like air. The salty breeze pushed against the curtains. It was cool at night, this high up in the city.

  I pressed my face against the pillow. It smelled like Sid.

  She had taken the petal with her when she left the room. I had seen it, thin and white, between her fingers.

  * * *

  I couldn’t fall asleep. I imagined Sid sleeping in this bed, which was softer than I knew beds could be. The bed felt like sleep itself, the best kind of sleep: plush and buoyant. But my body was fully awake. It was pretending to be under Sid’s body. It was pretending to be that white petal between her fingers. It was as if my mind had nothing to do with this imagining, as if it weren’t my brain conjuring images of her mouth on mine, or remembering the exact shape of her hands. It was my skin and my needy bones. It was my heart going too hard.

  Think of something else.

  Think of something that is not like her.

  Something reliable. Safe.

  I thought of the wall.

  But the pillow smelled like her. The sheets smelled like her.

  Thinking about the wall wasn’t enough to soothe me. I needed to see.

  I put on my sandals and took the key, and left the dark house.

  * * *

  The city was lively, windows blazing in every room of the enormous houses. People spilled, laughing, into shadowy gardens. In the agora, men and women shouted and ruined their finery in the fountains, drinking from crystal glasses they smashed on the glass tiles, whose colored light surged dizzyingly in the night. I kept to the shadows. I retraced my steps back toward the wall, following the map in my mind.

  I would just look at the wall. Place my palm against it for a moment. It would steady me.

  But that was not what I did, because I saw the fortune-telling tree first.

  The missing patch of bark where I had torn away my fortune was already painted gold. I touched the slick, gilded surface. I touched the papery bark. I thought about my fortune, which was only what I had already known. You will lose her. And yet I hadn’t fully known, until I saw those faint amber words, written as though with the sappy blood of the tree, how much I hoped they would never come true.

  A tree is an astonishing thing. So much of it you will never see. Not its roots: a whole secret life spreading out in the blind earth, drinking from unknown sources. Not its core: the sapling it once was, clad by each successive year of growth.

  Does a tree know how deep its roots go? Can it locate its original seed?

  I thought about how all seeds are necessarily lost things, dropped and abandoned.

  This tree, I thought, felt familiar. It felt like me.

  It had been stripped like me, like anyone who had ever been tithed. The difference was that someone had taken care to gild the tree’s wounds. I was luckier than so many in the Ward—I had lost only blood. But I didn’t move through the world the way Sid did, as someone who fully owned her body. I had always been afraid. I never knew what would be taken from me or when, and although I didn’t always think about it or fully feel that fear, it was as much a part of who I was as my light brown skin, my sturdy hands.

  It was so tiring to be afraid all the time.

  So I decided I wouldn’t be. I wouldn’t go to the wall and touch it the way children touch their mothers. I decided it didn’t matter that I was afraid of heights. I chose not to be.

  I began to climb the tree. I ignored how sweaty my hands got, how my breath rattled in my throat, how my mouth got dry. I didn’t dare look down.

  I went as high as I could, working my way up into the branches, then settled into a crook that was almost comfortable, though my rear ached and my leg eventually fell asleep.

  The ground stretched below. The ground feels like such a safe thing … until you get t
oo far above it.

  But the leaves rushed and played around me. My breath calmed. I listened to the leaves. Their whispers almost made sense. I realized that was a strange thought, the kind that means sleep is coming, but as soon as I knew it was coming, it was already there.

  * * *

  I didn’t know how much time passed before I woke in the darkness.

  I heard the hush of someone walking over grass. The sound below grew closer, and then there was a musical glug and slosh of a large quantity of water flowing from a metallic bucket or can.

  Someone was watering the tree.

  Carefully, as soundlessly as I could, I shifted to peer down through the branches.

  The man emptied his tin watering can. It thumped hollowly against his thigh as he walked away, the smell of wet earth strong in the air. His red robe trailed behind him.

  It was a councilman.

  35

  “HMM,” SID SAID THE NEXT DAY, dipping a thin, buttered slice of toast into the soft yolk of an egg. She had knocked softly at my door before bringing in a tray with breakfast for both of us: soft-boiled eggs encased in pale blue shells, pink pastries clouded with cream piped between wispy wafers, spongy pancakes dotted with holes and sopping with butter, a dish of amethyst-colored jam, a lily-yellow pot filled to the brim with steaming black liquid that scalded my tongue and made my heart race. “A councilman.” Sid squinted as she stared from our little table on the balcony out over the bright sea. I had slept until midday. The sun was high. It honeyed Sid’s skin and made the freckle beneath her eye stand out like a star. In this light, I could see other, fainter freckles on her cheekbones, and even one near her upper lip. She sipped the hot black drink. The sun shone through her peacock-blue porcelain cup.

  She caught me staring and held out her cup for me to drink from it, even though my own full cup remained untouched after my first sip. I refused. “You don’t like it?” she said.