The Midnight Lie

by Marie Rutkoski

  “I won,” I corrected, and dropped the watch to the ground to crush it beneath my heel.

  * * *

  We had scooped my winnings into one of my damp dresses, twisting the cloth to form an impromptu sack, and were walking down the acorn hall when a fight broke out. A man drinking silver wine threw the contents of his glass in the face of his friend, who punched back, dropping his own glass. In the tussle, one shoved the other against the dirt wall, which exploded into a brown spray that completely covered a nearby woman.

  The men fell through the wall. The woman, her face a mask of dirt, screamed at them. Their fight, accompanied by thumps and shouts, got farther away.

  The dirt-covered woman looked down at her filthy dress and burst into tears.

  “You are being silly,” a woman with wire wings told her.

  “I loved this dress!”

  “Who cares? No one wears the same thing twice anyway.”

  All of my glee at winning Pantheon slid out of me. I looked at the High Kith in the hallway and the atrium ahead, at their colored eyelashes and heaps of hair, and realized that even I, who remembered everything, was capable of ignoring what I knew.

  The hair and lashes were false. They were tithes. They had been taken from the Half Kith.

  The tortoiseshell bowl filled with pleasure dust had been made by orphans.

  The woman’s wings were not, like Madame Mere’s, made from silk, but from skin. I shuddered.

  “What’s wrong?” Sid said.

  “It’s not fair.” I felt near tears.

  “What isn’t? Tell me.”

  I thought of the men who leaned into each other in the ballroom, how I had been jealous and yet still afraid for them, tensing for some blow that might fall, because no one in the Ward could do what they did.

  I thought of Annin, who was starving for just a little bit of beauty.

  I thought of Morah, who hadn’t even been able to keep her own child, and Raven, who had to live with the guilt of taking Morah’s baby from her because she had thought it was for the best, because the Ward was no place to raise a child.

  I thought of everyone who went to prison and never came back. Of all the parents whose children had vanished.

  Of me, so used to being trapped that I was afraid of being free.

  Of me, laughing in my dress that was many dresses, enchanted by everything that I had never had.

  “Do you want to leave?” Sid’s voice was anxious.

  I nodded.

  We pushed our way out into the courtyard. The stars were fading. Dawn was creeping into the sky.

  “You are worrying me,” Sid said. “Please talk to me.”

  “They have everything.”

  Her face grew quiet. “Yes,” she said.

  “I want to take it from them.”

  “Of course you do.”

  “I will. Promise me you will help.”

  Sid paused. “We don’t know what it is.”

  “I don’t care if it’s magic or science. You said that if I helped you find its secret, you would give me what I want. I want you to help me take it from the High Kith and give it to the Ward. Will you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Promise me.”

  “I swear by the gods.”

  “You don’t believe in the gods.”

  “I believe it means something to swear by them.”

  “That’s not good enough.”

  “What is?”

  “Swear by your parents. Swear on their lives.”

  Sid’s face got tight. She shook her head. “I swear on my own.”

  40

  A COOL MORNING BEFORE A hot day holds a sweet freshness. The gray dawn gave in to the coming sun as we walked home, the wind gentle in my hair, slipping over my skin like water. Pink heated the sky. I could feel the promise of a blazing day, and the breeze, like a friend, giving me what it could.

  I was so tired. My feet were sore. I leaned into Sid as we walked, my head on her shoulder, half asleep. I felt, through my sleepiness, that she was wide awake. Whatever she was thinking seemed to whir inside her. I let myself feel safe, not caring if I’d discover, later, that the feeling had been a mistake. The skin of her throat felt too soft against my cheek, and her arm around me felt too good. She wouldn’t hold me like this if she didn’t feel at least part of what I felt. She wouldn’t have smiled when she realized that her watch had always worked, that my desire had been for her. She wouldn’t have loved my green dress, or touched my cheek, or kissed my palm and pretended it was an apology, or have grown suddenly distant and cold when I said I loved Aden. She wouldn’t have made me a promise. My memories were clear, and what I hadn’t understood before now seemed obvious.

  I knew she would leave me. She had always said she would.

  Whatever she felt for me wouldn’t last. But I wanted it for as long as it did.

  She got her key into the front door of the house. We went up the soundless stairs, the steps so quiet it was as though they were dreaming beneath our feet.

  Sid pushed open the door to my bedroom. A draft tugged open the balcony doors, which I hadn’t properly shut. The glass panes rattled in their frames. The wind lifted and swirled the sheer curtains. A breeze skimmed over the bed, swinging the tiny tassels on the creamy toile covers. I turned and shut the bedroom door behind us. The wind died.

  Sid’s back was to the bedroom door. I curled my fingers into her undone white collar, hooking down, the heel of my hand against the rise of her breast beneath the stiff jacket, her skin hot to the touch, her pulse fast against my palm.

  “You’re half asleep,” she said.

  “I’m awake.”

  Her hand lifted to cover mine and press it against her chest.

  “I owe you a yes,” I said.

  Her dark eyes were shadowed. My palm was flattened now, the tips of my fingers against her throat, her hand firm on mine.

  I said, “Ask me to kiss you.”

  She kissed me. Her mouth was hungry on mine, on my neck. Her hand fisted in my hair. I pushed off her jacket, found the jut of her ribs beneath her shirt, the sweep of her belly, the leather strap of her dagger belt. I tasted her mouth. My heart was thrumming in my throat, and I was greedy for her. I loved her gasp, her teeth on my lower lip, her thigh hard between mine. I tugged her by her belt toward me. I wanted the bed; I wanted her to press me down into it.

  “Wait,” she murmured. “Too fast.”

  I felt flushed all over. “You like it fast.”

  “Not like this.” She pulled away. Her hair was wild, mouth swollen. She looked down at me, at her disheveled shirt. She rubbed a hand over her eyes.

  “Sid.” My voice was full of yearning.

  She straightened her shirt and tucked it into her trousers. “You have a life here. One that you want to keep. One that doesn’t involve me.”

  “It already involves you.”

  “Not this way.”

  “But why?” My voice cracked.

  “You’ll regret it.”

  “I won’t.”

  “I will,” she said, and turned away, shutting the door softly behind her, leaving me alone, my breath quick and harsh with hurt in the rising light.

  41

  WHEN I WOKE, THE SUNLIGHT was a hot blade on the bed. The hour was late and the still air felt like wet fur. I had cast off the sheet in my sleep.

  Faintly, from downstairs, came the scrapes and clinks of someone busy at a task. There was the burnt scent of that foul eastern drink Sid liked so much.

  I turned my face into the pillow. The pillow didn’t smell like Sid anymore. It smelled like me, and I was glad, because it was painful enough to want her, painful enough to remember exactly the shape of her mouth beneath my tongue, without having the specific scent of her perfume and skin pressing against my face.

  Would there have been any words that could have made her stay last night?

  I could have said, I know it’s not forever.

  I could have said, I s
till want this, even if it vanishes like sugar on my tongue.

  But I didn’t, and maybe even if I had, it wouldn’t have made a difference.

  * * *

  The second time I opened my eyes, the house had an empty silence. I was relieved.

  I went through my Pantheon winnings, dumping them onto the bed. I set aside all the money for Raven, the jewels and the box with the meowing cat for Annin, and a little knife for Morah, mostly because it reminded me of her. It had a strong and appealingly simple blade, with an edge to reckon with, and a hilt so intricately wrought with gold over steel that it was difficult to follow the path of the pattern. I uncorked the little metal vial, noting the slosh of its contents, and sniffed. It smelled like water. I didn’t see why anyone would bother to put such a small quantity of water in a vial—this was no canteen or flask. It fit in the palm of my hand. After encountering silver wine and pleasure dust at the party, I wasn’t about to taste anything I couldn’t identify. I took it to the bathroom and dribbled some of the vial’s liquid into the sink. It was a faint pink.

  I remembered where I had seen something like that before.

  I glanced into the mirror. The faded burn on my cheek had returned. It wasn’t a cream or the dressmaker’s mirror that had made the burn disappear for a night. It had been Madame Mere’s pink tea.

  * * *

  “Well?” she said when I entered her shop. “Was it a triumph? Which dress did she like best? Was it the final dress, right before it came off?”

  I held out the little metal vial. “Is this yours?”

  She looked at it, then at me quizzically. “No.”

  “Is what’s inside yours? What is this liquid?”

  She took the vial, opened it, and sniffed. “Oh, that,” she said, and smiled.

  “Why are you smiling?”

  “Because if I didn’t already know before that you were Half Kith, I would know now.”

  My pulse stuttered. My face must have betrayed me. Madame Mere said, “Only someone raised behind the wall or a traveler like Lady Sidarine would ask about elixir.”

  “You knew?” Fear coursed through me. “Why did you pretend you didn’t?”

  “My little kithling. I run a business.”

  “You’re saying that you stayed silent in order to keep Sid as a customer.”

  “No. I have plenty of customers. I turn many away, and dress only those who intrigue me.”

  “Do you intend to blackmail me? I have nothing to give you.”

  “I know you don’t. That is why I said nothing, and never will. Have you not noticed that most High Kith do not work, and that I do?”

  I felt foolish for having thought she was blind to the obvious—that I was Half Kith—because of her assumptions. I had been the one to miss what was in front of my face.

  “I work because I enjoy it,” Madame Mere said. “Everyone loves beauty, but what I love more is making it. I like to map out someone’s desires in pattern and cloth. I like to stitch them together. And if some of my kith think it’s strange for me to do it, they overlook my strangeness for the privilege of wearing my clothes. You, my dear, want more than what life has given you. What is so wrong with that? This is what I want, too. It is what everyone wants.”

  “So you won’t tell the militia?”

  “That would be a very boring outcome to your unusual situation.”

  I was not at all reassured. “That doesn’t sound like a good reason to trust you.”

  “I disagree. You have been to one of our parties. Surely you saw how, beneath all the finery, everyone is hungry for something different, something new. You, my dear, are exactly that. Why would I give you up?”

  “So I am … your entertainment.”

  “You are a story whose end would come far too soon in prison.” She busied herself pouring pink tea. “Would you like some? I can’t tell you what the elixir in that vial does, but it’d be best to pour it out if you don’t know. It could make you weep golden tears, or make what you imagine come to life, though usually only for a brief time. My elixir is very benign. It heals. It repairs scars, as you’ve seen. It fills in the cracks left by age.”

  I realized that I had never seen a truly elderly looking High Kith. If I had thought about it, I would have assumed it was because I had been to places only young people frequented, but it seemed that no one here needed to look their age.

  I refused the tea. The burn would return anyway. This elixir didn’t strike me as healing, but as an addictive respite from the truth. “Did you make the elixir?”

  She took a sip from her cup. “No. It is supplied by the Council. There are many varieties. The price is high, but most are willing to pay, through either gold or pledges.”

  “Pledges?”

  “Yes. Many parents pledge one of their children to the service of the Council, which is always in need of new members. Few people actively want to serve the Lord Protector, though there are always some who enjoy the thrill of being close to the center of power and voluntarily induct themselves into the Keepers Hall.”

  “Why is it called that?”

  She shrugged delicately. “I suppose because they keep and control the supply of elixirs. And they keep order in the city. They oversee the militia, who are Middling, and appoint members of the Council to be judges. But I don’t really know why the hall is called that. It has always been called that.”

  I was startled to hear these words coming from the mouth of a High Kith, uttered in that same blank tone I had heard Morah use, and Annin, and even myself. I had always assumed that only people behind the wall talked like that, and that everyone who lived beyond it had the answers to all our questions, just like they had everything else, even the ability to defy age.

  “It is as it is,” said Madame Mere, settling her empty cup in its saucer.

  But nothing is as it is. Everything comes from something. There is nothing and no one without a past. I thought about the fortune-telling tree. It had not always been a tree. Once, it had been a sapling that threaded greenly out of the dirt. Once, it had been a seed.

  “I don’t believe you,” I told Madame Mere, not because I thought she was lying, but because I wasn’t sure that anyone in Ethin knew the truth.

  * * *

  Sid looked tired when I returned to the house. She wore a marigold silk dress as she busied herself in the kitchen, taking no care to protect the delicate cloth from the oil she rubbed into a shank of lamb, or the spices she liberally shook all over it, or the fresh red currants she plucked from their frail stems. It was as if she secretly—or not so secretly—wished to ruin the dress. Her face was drawn and unhappy, her eyes avoiding mine.

  “Where have you been?” she asked.

  “Upholding my end of our bargain.”

  “Oh.” She looked at her oiled hands, at the mess on the table.

  “You left the house first,” I pointed out, since she seemed inexplicably dissatisfied with my answer. “Why are you wearing that?”

  She looked down at the stained dress. Her mouth curled in distaste. “I thought I should.”

  “Why?”

  “‘Why?’” she repeated. “You are asking none of the questions I thought you would.”

  But I didn’t want to talk about last night. I didn’t want to talk about how the only way I’d been able to sleep was to keep my hands beneath my pillow, so that I wouldn’t be tempted to touch myself, which would only remind me of how I wanted her hands, not mine.

  She said, “I am wearing this dress because I thought it would be an appropriate choice when I attempted to use my status to get into the Keepers Hall.”

  “It didn’t work,” I guessed, based on her general mood.

  “No.” She glanced again at the seasoned meat. “There’s only enough for one.”

  Affronted, I said, “I don’t expect you to cook for me.”

  “I mean, we will have to share.” She looked up at me. “I thought you weren’t coming back. I found the house empty when I returned.
I thought you had left for good.”

  “I’m not going to do that.”

  “But I will.”

  “I know you will.”

  She got very quiet. “I didn’t like the thought that you had left. I was afraid I had made you go.”

  “But I’m here,” I said. “You are here.”

  “For now.”

  “Everything is for now,” I said, and didn’t know how to explain to her the feeling I had always lived with, which was as old as the memory of the cold orphanage box: that anything could be taken from me at any time. I said, “We want the same thing.”

  “Do we?”

  “We want answers,” I said, because it was true but also because I wanted to turn the conversation to the reason we were in this house together to begin with, and away from last night and her rejection, which she seemed to be trying to explain, with an awkwardness unlike herself, and which I didn’t feel needed any more explanation. Things were clear. She would regret taking me to bed. She was trying to explain that anything between us would bring me pain, because she was not someone who stayed. That she cared about me, which I could see, plain on her worried face, and which was a bitter comfort. I didn’t want her to worry. I put my hand on her oiled and bloodied one, the grit of the spices and salt like sand against my skin. “I haven’t changed my mind,” I said. She looked at me, and I faltered, because I didn’t want last night to happen all over again, to ask for what she didn’t want to give, or to think about how her wet mouth had skimmed my neck. I said, my voice clear, “I haven’t changed my mind about our plan.”

  She nodded. “All right.”

  “And I have some information for you.”

  She lifted a brow. She looked more like herself. “Do you?”

  “Doesn’t it embarrass you to find that a lowly underling has discovered something a queen’s spy hasn’t?”