The Midnight Lie

by Marie Rutkoski

  I glanced around the quiet street and wondered if I could make myself see the sort of vision I had always tried to ignore. The more I considered the images I had seen in the Ward, the more I wondered whether it was not simply that I had a perfect memory.

  I could also see into the city’s memory.

  For years I had tried to harden myself against the illusions. It felt uncomfortable to invite them. But I imagined myself as tender and vulnerable: a downy chick out of its egg.

  And for a moment, I saw not a lamplit street before me, but an empty, grassy hill, the wind shivering in the green.

  I glanced behind me, toward the wall.

  There was no wall. There was only the Ward—defenseless, surrounded by nothing but hills and sky.

  “Hey there,” said a voice.

  I turned, and the vision vanished.

  “You,” I said. It was the brown-haired boy from the Middling quarter who had stolen the dream vials. A lamp-lighting pole rested against his shoulder.

  He whistled. “You are looking awfully fancy. I almost didn’t recognize you. Come up in the world, haven’t you?”

  I took a wary step back. “Are you planning to turn me in?”

  “Me? No. Honor among thieves and all that.”

  “I’m not a thief.”

  He squinted one eye shut, peering at me. “Aren’t you stealing a place in society that isn’t yours? Believe me, I’m going to do the same, given half a chance.”

  “Then what do you want from me?”

  “To give you a message. Your foreign friend says she’ll be late, so you should meet her at the party.” He handed me a scrap of paper with a map. “She says you are to use her card with the insignia to get in.”

  “It was you who told her I was looking for her in the Middling quarter.”

  “You’ve got no call to act so betrayed. It’s not like you asked me not to tell her. If she gives me a bit of gold to bring her interesting tales, who am I to say no?”

  Then he strolled away, carrying the pole lazily over his shoulder as if he were going fishing, the lamps glowing in the dark, the other Middling boys’ roving shadows ahead, disappearing into the night.

  * * *

  The map led me to a house so overgrown with ivy and fist-sized flowers that I couldn’t see the walls behind them. Hummingbirds darted in and out of the blossoms. Milling people waited in the courtyard to enter, their clothes extravagant, artfully constructed. Golden hoops around a waist trailed transparent lace that showed bare legs. Wire-and-satin petals bloomed around the green stem of a body. There was wild plumage. Slithering snake bracelets. The guests seemed inhuman, like strange creatures—part bird, part snake, part flower—or gods. Women had impossibly lush hair, left long in thick capes around their shoulders, or twisted into towering architectural wonders. A man blinked blue eyelashes fringed with lime-green petals at me.

  Sid stood in the shadows of the courtyard. She was dressed in a man’s fitted black dress jacket buttoned over a paper-white collared shirt, the chain of her watch trailing from her pocket, her golden hair slicked back. The corners of her tipped-up eyes crinkled as she smiled at something a lilac-haired woman whispered, her glittered lips a mere breath away from Sid’s ear.

  All my nervousness and wonder clumped into sick jealousy.

  I walked quietly up to them. Sid’s hands slipped into her trouser pockets. The woman touched Sid’s white collar, then rested her hand on Sid’s shoulder as if for balance. Sid’s mouth quirked, and she said something that looked like an easy admission. Then she glanced up and saw me. Her face went still. She murmured something to the woman, who frowned as I came close.

  Sid gave her a quick kiss on the cheek. “Do excuse me,” Sid said to her. “My companion is here.”

  The lilac-haired woman swept haughtily away, the feathered trail of her dress singing as she went, notes of birdsong rising from her dress and then fading as she went into the flowering house.

  “How surprising,” I said, “that, for you, being late to a party actually means showing up on time to get a head start on luring a girl into bed.”

  Sid started to protest, then stopped, staring at me. “Nirrim, what did you do to your face?” She lifted her fingers to my cheek.

  I resented the pleasure of it. “Don’t touch me.”

  Her hand fell. She looked embarrassed. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to. It’s just … the burn on your cheek is gone.”

  I touched my cheek. Where the skin had been new and tender, it now felt perfectly smooth. “How?”

  “You don’t know?”

  “Madame Mere rubbed cream into my face … maybe it’s cosmetic. Or her mirror? Maybe it was magic.” I remembered how I had looked at my own reflection. This is the pain of having a perfect memory: it was impossible to ignore how I had stared at every flaw, how I had felt filled with longing. “She shouldn’t have done it.” I was angry at the dressmaker for changing me without my permission, angry at Sid, angry at myself.

  It was for nothing, the silver dress I wore, the fringe of whispering glass beads that drifted over my bare arms like tiny bubbles.

  Sid was still frowning. “I am not going to sleep with Lillin.”

  “She clearly thought otherwise.”

  “Well, I did bed her once. But it was so long ago.”

  I made a sound of helpless disgust.

  “Are you—?” Sid stopped herself. Slowly, she said, “I didn’t think it would bother you if I talked with her.”

  “It doesn’t.”

  “All right, it doesn’t.”

  “You don’t think it’s wrong to lead her on?”

  “Is that it? I was quite clear with her that I wasn’t interested.”

  “You kissed her.”

  “Just a little bit.”

  “How does that show a lack of interest?”

  “It was a sisterly kiss. A good-bye kiss.”

  “You are impossible.”

  “I could say the same about you.”

  The number of partygoers in the courtyard had dwindled. Almost everyone had gone inside.

  Sid rubbed the nape of her neck, studying me. Then she stuffed her hands into her pockets, hunching her shoulders. Quietly, she said, “You are my favorite impossible person.”

  “Me,” I said, uncertain.

  “You are the only one I want to be with.”

  “Tonight.” I didn’t know what was worse: that she had seen my jealousy, that she was trying to soothe it, or that I knew—just as Lillin or any woman Sid had ever been with should have known—that nothing Sid said or did would last.

  “Any night.” She offered her arm like a man would. “Will you come inside with me?”

  I took her arm. The fabric of her jacket brushed my skin. I wanted to turn in to her, to press my face against her neck. I said, “We’ll look like a couple.”

  “Do you want that?”

  Truth can demand so much bravery. I did not feel brave. I would not have been brave, if her question hadn’t sounded a little hopeful. Yes, I wanted everyone to think she belonged with me, that I belonged with her. Yes, even if it was only for one night. My voice was small. “I do.”

  Her mouth twitched with surprise, then curled with inquisitive pleasure that I loved to see. Maybe this was a game to her, but it felt so good to be her game. “Nirrim,” she said, “I am really sorry that I am not late. May I tell you all the things I will do to make you forgive me?”

  I smiled as we went inside.

  38

  THE FOYER WAS OVERGROWN with branches. They twisted around oil lamps with green flames blazing in their glass cases. The ground was soft with dirt. I realized that the house wasn’t covered with vegetation: the branches and flowers and leaves were the house. “Someone grew this?” I said. “Who?”

  “No one knows. It grew overnight.” We turned down a hallway paved with acorns. “It will wither and fade soon enough. The magic always does.”

  “So you do think it’s magic.”


  “I think ‘magic’ is convenient shorthand for a mystery we haven’t solved.”

  “Why were you not late to the party?”

  “I couldn’t get into the Keepers Hall. It was too heavily guarded and, somehow, my ample charms weren’t working on anyone. So that didn’t take as long as planned. But Lillin’s brother is a councilman, and she thinks she can get me maps of the hall. You see why I had to be friendly with her.”

  “Do I?”

  Sid smiled. “Not too friendly, of course.”

  We passed a room shaped like an enormous bird’s nest, the kind mud larks make, spherical and entirely enclosed, with an oval entrance. I heard a joyful cry, accompanied by a crowd’s roar. I peeked inside. The entire interior of the round room was felted with thousands of little woven twigs. A table made of hardened mud occupied the center of the room. A woman with her skin dyed in butterfly patterns was scraping a pile of gold toward her while the other people at the table slapped cards down in irritation. Onlookers cheered. “They’re playing a card game,” I told Sid.

  “Oh?” she said, interested. She glanced inside. “Oh,” she said again, her interest gone. “They’re playing Pantheon. I already know that one.”

  “How do you play?”

  “There are one hundred face cards, one for each god. Each face card has a value, with Death being the highest and the Seamstress the lowest, since she was mortal before Death made her a god. God of games reverses the order of play. God of thieves is wild. And then there are the blanks. I don’t know what they represent. No one does, or if they do they won’t tell me. The dealer decides how many blanks to shuffle into the deck. Blanks don’t have value of their own but can augment the power of your hand or diminish your opponent’s if you play one against him.”

  Sid continued, describing the best combinations of cards and the most effective lines of strategy.

  “Do you want to play?” I asked.

  She shook her head. “Too boring. I always win.”

  Gently, she guided me down the hall toward the ballroom where Middling musicians played and High Kith were already swirling across the floor in dancing pairs.

  The ballroom was papered with birch bark. Tree frogs clinging to a bramble chandelier burbled along to the music. The ceiling above the chandelier was a gray mist. Two men stood close together in a corner of the ballroom. One stroked a finger across the other’s mouth.

  So easy.

  No one was looking at them. No one cared. The only one staring was me.

  Sid followed my gaze. She started to say something when a Middling servant gave me a crystal cup filled with sparkling liquid almost the same color as the mist, yet slightly pink. The servant hurried away before I could thank her. I lifted the cup to my lips.

  Sid placed her palm over the glass.

  “That’s rude,” I said.

  “It’s silver wine,” she said. “It will make you tell the truth.”

  “Oh.”

  “I don’t want you to say anything you don’t mean to say.”

  “We could always share it,” I dared her.

  Sid gingerly took the glass by its rim, her fingers pinching it as if it contained something dangerous, and made an exaggerated play out of setting it down on a nearby birch-bark table and backing away slowly.

  “So cautious,” I said, “so protective of us both.”

  “I am a hero.”

  “And yet you have that pocket watch.”

  Sid looped a finger around its chain. “This?”

  “Isn’t that another version of the silver wine?”

  “The watch doesn’t work anymore. I wear it because I like the style. Look, it’s still stuck on the same word from the last time I used it.”

  Desire.

  There was a crack of thunder. I glanced up. The mist gathered at the ceiling had condensed into a dark fist of clouds. Lightning flashed. Thunder rumbled again. Rain showered down. The music stopped. Frogs shrilled. Dancers shrieked and laughed and ran from the room. Sid and I followed, since it was that or get trampled.

  We pushed past dripping High Kith clumped together in the hallway, some giggling, others complaining about their ruined clothes.

  Sid’s sooty eyelashes were spiky with rain. Her mouth was wet with it. Her soaked white shirt stuck to her skin. I could see the ridge of her collarbone pressing against the cloth.

  “Your hair,” she said distractedly, “curls when wet.” She brushed away a lock of hair that was plastered to my face.

  For one mad moment I leaned into her hand, which was warm and steady.

  “Tired?” she asked, stroking her thumb across my cheekbone.

  I shivered. “No.”

  Her eyes searched mine. “Lonely?”

  I was lonely for her even though she was right in front of me. I worried that if I said no she would stop touching me, and that if I said yes she would pity me. “I’m cold,” I said, which was true, but the sort of truth that acted as a lie.

  Her hand fell. Her expression closed, and she nodded, not really in response to my midnight lie but as if to a thought in her head. She glanced up and down the hallway, which was emptying of people, and said, “Maybe there’s a blanket of moss somewhere. Or, I don’t know … a coat of feathers in a hollow tree wardrobe.”

  I missed her hand. I felt embarrassed that I missed it, that I had said the wrong thing. I shivered again, this time cold inside and out. I began to undo the tiny crystal buttons that ran down the front of my wet dress.

  Sid’s attention swiftly returned. “Are you … taking your clothes off? I hadn’t thought we had reached that stage of our relationship.”

  “It’s the whole point of the dress,” I said, glad that she was teasing me again. “It is many dresses.”

  “But I like this one. You look like you’re wrapped in starlight.”

  “It’s wet.” I shrugged out of the silver dress, revealing another one in pleated crimson faille.

  “Ohh,” Sid said, “I want to see the rest.”

  “You always want to rush everything.”

  “Actually, I think I show a lot of restraint around you.”

  “One more. This layer is damp, too.”

  “Wait. Stop there.”

  The dress was now a clingy emerald satin, simple and fluid. I paused in the act of undoing its ties.

  “Please,” she said.

  “Is it your favorite?”

  “Your eyes,” she said, low. Then her voice firmed. “I want this one, and you owe me a yes.”

  “Unfairly extracted from me when we were in prison.”

  “As I recall, you cleverly wriggled out of two other yesses, so I think one is perfectly reasonable.”

  “You would waste it on a dress?”

  “On you in this dress? Worth it.”

  I felt warm again. “Keep your yes. I’ll owe it to you another time. I want to wear this dress, if you like it best.” I glanced at the gold chain of her pocket watch. “There’s something else I want.”

  “Name it.”

  “To play you at Pantheon.”

  “Bad idea.”

  “Afraid?”

  “Yes, of you after I beat you.”

  “Is everyone from your country all talk and no action?”

  “Don’t say I didn’t warn you,” she said.

  39

  WE JOINED THE MUD TABLE in the bird’s nest, where several High Kith were already playing, some dipping fingers into tortoiseshell bowls full of glittery gray powder that they brought to their lips between rounds. “Pleasure dust,” Sid murmured in my ear. “Those players will do better than they should at first, but not for long.”

  There was a pile of gold and silver on the table, but random things, too, like mother-of-pearl earrings, an open enameled box with a tiny meowing clockwork cat inside, and a little metal stoppered vial. I pulled a green comb from my hair and added it to the pile as ante. Sid tossed in a coin.

  As we played, Sid was quieter than usual, eerily serene, produc
ing winning hand after winning hand. Several players dropped out. I added more green combs to the pile and lost them. I was not playing to win, at first, but to observe when Sid bluffed and when she didn’t, which was easy enough to tell, not from any change in her demeanor, but from the simple fact that I remembered where every single card went, and who had what. Even if I didn’t know each exact card in her hand of five, because the entire deck of one hundred plus four blanks hadn’t yet been dealt, I more or less knew what Sid had when she folded, her cards facedown, showing only their gleaming black-and-gold backs.

  Then, steadily, I began to win, which became easier as the deck played down. The first time it happened, Sid sweetly congratulated me. The third time, she cocked a wary brow. It was surprising to me how easy it was for people to forget what they knew, since it didn’t seem to occur to Sid that I had memorized the distribution of the deck, so intent was she on winning—and so confident, probably, with her history of dominating the game.

  Soon, everyone had dropped out but us. I had an enormous pile of winnings. Sid dealt the remainder of the deck.

  I glanced at my cards and knew instantly what she held. I pushed my winnings forward. “I bet it all.”

  “Oh, don’t do that,” Sid said, and it wasn’t bad advice, since she held the god of Death.

  “Match me,” I said. When she sighed and reached into her jacket for gold I said, “No. I want the pocket watch.”

  She slipped a finger around its chain. Thoughtfully, she slid the watch from her pocket and weighed it on her palm. “This?” she said. “Why?”

  A flush crept into my cheeks. In a way, I had already showed my hand. “Do you fold?”

  She turned the watch over in her fingers, inspecting it, yet did not open it. Understanding flashed across her face. “It’s not broken, is it?” she said. “In fact”—she tossed it onto the pile—“I believe it works perfectly well.” She turned over her cards and grinned.

  I turned over mine. I had mostly nothing … except the god of thieves and a blank, which was as good as two Deaths.

  “Ohhh.” Sid planted her face in her hand. She groaned again into her palm. When she lifted her face I saw that she had realized what she should have known about me for the entire game. She leaned across the table to put the watch in my hand. Her soft cheek brushed mine. “You cheated,” she said in a delighted whisper.