The Midnight Lie

by Marie Rutkoski

  “Take me to her,” I said, and she led me through elegant rooms to Raven, who was drinking a pot of pink tea, her skin smoother than I had ever seen it, her hair a rich dark brown. A porcelain plate bearing sugared flowers rested on a frail table. She had just placed a flower in her mouth when she saw me enter the room. Her face slackened in surprise. A hand went to her throat, touching the gold chain of the necklace that disappeared beneath her batiste dress fringed with simple lace. She looked caught in the middle of a crime.

  “Oh,” she said.

  “You used me,” I said quietly.

  She ordered her expression into one of delight. “My dear Nirrim!” She stood and embraced me, kissing my cheek, and pulled me down to sit beside her on the lilac jacquard sofa. “I have no idea what you’re talking about. Never mind. We will sort it all out, you and your ama. So that arrogant foreign lady has released you from her service, has she? Well, good riddance! I never liked her. But what a fine dress she has given you. This blue makes your green eyes so brilliant. You are not allowed to wear such a hue, you know that, but here”—she leaned forward with a conspiring whisper—“we can do as we please, you and I. You there,” she snapped at the maid. “Why are you standing about? Leave at once. My daughter and I wish to speak in private.”

  “Daughter?” I said numbly as the young woman scuttled from the room.

  “Well, no, not really, but in a manner of speaking, are you not? Didn’t I raise you and make you everything that you are? Look at how lovely you are. High living suits you, I must say. It would suit me, too, with a bit of your help. But no more of that! Pleasure before business! Have some of these sugared flowers. I know my girl has a sweet tooth. I’ve kept these on hand, just for you, for the day that you would finally see your new home. I wasn’t quite prepared for today to be the day, but no matter.”

  Feeling as though I were made of stone, I put a flower into my mouth. Obedience was a familiar act in a deeply unfamiliar situation. The flower crumbled and melted. I felt an urge to spit it out, to vomit it onto my lap, but Raven was looking at me so expectantly, so proudly. “Thank you,” I managed.

  “That is my good girl. I don’t suppose that High lady gave you what she promised me.”

  “Promised?”

  “Now, Nirrim, don’t be daft. The gold, my girl.”

  “I have this.” I offered her the small purse of gold. “I won it for you.”

  “This is but a fraction of what she promised! That sneaking foreign cheat. She had best have left Ethin already, or we shall have our revenge, shall we not? No need to tell me how it was in her service, my lamb. I will never ask. No, no. I respect your privacy. I understand what we must sometimes do for money. If she made you do things you did not want, why, how could you refuse? Forget it all. You are with me now. I will take care of you.”

  “You will?”

  “Of course! Nirrim, what is wrong with you? You are acting like someone has knocked all the brains out of your head. Do try to keep up.”

  “You lied to me,” I choked out.

  “Lied? I did no such thing.”

  “You told me we were helping people.”

  She spread her hands in helpless impatience. “We did help people.”

  “You took their money.”

  “Well, of course. I have to live, don’t I?”

  “You don’t have to live like this.”

  “I don’t like your tone. Who are you to judge me? You never had to worry about anything. Without me, you would have become Un-Kith. Who raised you? Me. Who put food on your plate? Me. Who saved you from the orphanage? Me. I didn’t expect such a lack of gratitude from you.” She placed a hand on her heart. “It cuts me to the quick.”

  “Stop,” I said. “Stop it! You’re acting like you didn’t make me believe for years that we were forging passports only out of kindness.”

  “It was a kindness, and we got paid for it. I see no wrong in that.”

  “There is no we. You have been taking the money.”

  “Oh, I see. You want a cut of it. Well.” She busied herself pouring a cup of pink tea. “I can’t say that I am pleased by your greed. My plan was always to share everything with you. There is no need to be so demanding. Here.” She offered me the cup.

  I dashed it from her hand.

  “Nirrim!”

  “That’s blood. You are drinking someone’s blood!”

  “You are completely hysterical. Calm yourself right now, or you will answer to my hand. Blood! Nonsense. It is simply a drink that will make you prettier. I am being nice to you, and this is the thanks I get.”

  “I am telling you the truth.”

  She sighed impatiently. “Need we worry about everything? Am I supposed to never eat, out of pity for all the poor animals and plants that must die to feed me? Am I supposed to give everything I have to people who have less? Am I supposed to work for free? If there is blood in the tea, it surely can’t be much, given the color. It’s not as if someone died.”

  “I don’t want any.”

  “More for me, then.” She poured herself another cup. “Why don’t you lie down in your bedroom, dear? The sheets have been laundered with that soap you like, and I’ll have the maid bring you a cup of cold, honeyed milk. You’ll have a nice rest, and when you wake we will plan our future together.”

  “My room,” I said.

  “There you go again, repeating things like one of those pea-brained ithya birds. Yes, your room. Nirrim, I always planned to bring you here one day. You are my best girl.”

  “Why should I believe you? You have done nothing but lie.”

  Her smile was small, hard, appraising. She set aside her cup. “That is the question of someone grown. Not a child anymore, are you? Follow me, and you will see what I’ve done for you.” She took my hand. Hers blazed with heat. Mine must have felt like a block of ice as she led me upstairs and unlocked a door with a porcelain handle painted blue, in a pattern of one of my printed breads. She pushed open the door.

  The bed was sweetly made, the counterpane embroidered with sprays of roses, a flower I had never seen before I left the Ward. The wardrobe, when I opened it, was full of dresses tailored to my size, the cotton soft. A beveled mirror set inside the wardrobe door showed my pale face. There were sandals, the leather stiffly new.

  “And see.” Raven opened a jewelry box that sat on the vanity. Inside was a necklace of seed pearls. She lifted the strand of tiny beads from the box and strung them around my wooden neck. The pearls were luminous drops of moonlight, but all I could think of was the tortoises I had skinned for their nacreous shells, their thick bodies trying to blunder out of my grasp.

  “There,” Raven said, satisfied. “And we shall have better than that, when we come up in the world.”

  I touched the cool little beads. Pansies nodded at me from the green window box. This room was all I could have wanted. It was a room not for a servant, but for a daughter.

  “Nirrim, I understand that you are surprised, but my generosity warrants some thanks, I think.”

  “What about Morah and Annin? Do they have rooms here?”

  “That’s hardly necessary, is it?”

  “So you want me to live here with you.”

  “Of course, my girl.”

  “Without them.”

  “Someone must manage the tavern.” She saw my face and leaned forward to clasp my hands. “You have always known that you were my favorite. Look at everything I have built for us. Imagine everything we can do together. Why do you think I allowed you to go to the High quarter with that imperious foreigner? Because I trusted my clever Nirrim. I knew you would gain access to a High-Kith passport and forge one perfectly, and you have, haven’t you? If I turned such a tidy profit on Middling passports, just think what I could get for selling High passports to Middlings. And you’ll forge one for me, of course.”

  I understood, then, why she had had Aden make a heliograph for her, the one I lost the night I was arrested. She continued, “Event
ually, we will move to the High quarter. We shall live like queens!”

  “No,” I said.

  Her nails dug into my hand. “I’m sure I didn’t hear you. Speak again, Nirrim, with the respect due to your loving ama.”

  “No. I won’t forge any more passports for you. You don’t care about me any more than you do about Morah and Annin. I’m just more useful to you.” Her nails drew blood. I tugged my hand away.

  “You have me all figured out, do you?” she said. “Then tell me, girl. If you won’t forge for me, what good are you? I’ll denounce you to the militia. It will break my poor old heart, but your selfish ways force me to do it. You are a criminal. It was your hand that forged those documents. Do you think the Council will be pleased to learn that someone has disrupted the most important law that governs this country, the strict lines that keep our kiths in place? The Council will relish your punishment. They will torture you until you show them exactly what I will tell them you can do: copy perfectly. They will break every bone but the ones in your hand so that you can show them how you sign their names with the exact flourish. They will cut out your tongue yet leave your eyes so that you may see the stamps you will need to copy. They will discover my truths in your performed skills, and they will tithe you until you are whittled down to the bone, dear one, and you will weep at your lost chance to be with me.”

  “You won’t do that.”

  She smiled. “Will I not? We know each other quite well, after these many years. One way or the other, I always win, and you always lose.”

  “There is nothing you can accuse me of that doesn’t also implicate you. I will drag you down with me.”

  She waved an annoyed hand. “You have no proof.”

  “I will tell the militia about your heliograph.”

  She lost her smile. “What heliograph?”

  “The one still in the lapel of the coat taken from me in prison.” I was bluffing—I had no solid knowledge of where the original heliograph was, but I remembered how anxious she had been about its loss.

  “You found it in the cistern. You gave it back to me.”

  “I gave you a different heliograph, which, if you look closely, will show that you weren’t wearing the same beaded earrings you wore on the day you requested the one that was lost from Aden. Once the militia finds the original heliograph in the coat, it will be proof that you sought a passport even if it’s no proof you were involved in forging them. You’ll be punished.”

  Rage snaked across her face. “You are a wicked, deceitful girl.”

  “Then don’t cross me, or I will cross you. I am not who I was. You expect that as soon as you threaten me, I will do what you want. No more.”

  “It’s true,” she said after a careful pause. “You are not who you were. But tell me, my lamb: Who are you, really? Little Nirrim, come from nowhere. Another orphan left to dirty herself in the box. No one special. But I know where you come from. I know just how special you are.”

  My heart kicked against my ribs. “What do you mean?”

  “You have changed, I can see that. But would the girl I raised truly betray her kin? No, she would do anything for her family. I suppose I won’t denounce you, even if you deserve it. After all, you are my own flesh and blood.”

  I stared.

  “I named you,” she said. “I pinned your name to your swaddling clothes. I placed you in the orphanage box.”

  “You … are my mother?”

  “Such a little lamb! So eager for mother’s milk! Me, your mother? Wouldn’t you love it if it were true. Your mother is dead, girl, and you killed her.”

  “You must tell me what you mean.”

  “Oh, must I? Do I have something you want now? Let’s make a bargain, my lostling. I will tell you the beginning of a story, and you will tell its end.” She withdrew the gold necklace that had been tucked into her dress. From its frail chain dangled a crescent moon carved from a pale jewel that shone even though no light was near, even though the windows had darkened.

  My bones felt tightly knit, my arms crossed over my chest as though I were again in the baby box, my body swaddled, the scrap of paper that must have been pinned to me while I slept quivering under my breath. Babies see badly at first, their vision blurry. They can see only what is right in front of them. I remembered that necklace wavering in and out of focus when my mother nursed me.

  “Where did you get that?” I demanded.

  “From my younger sister, my joy. You look like her, though she was far more beautiful. She never recovered after she gave birth to you. You drained the life from her. Yet she made me promise to take care of you, and so I did.”

  Shock settled over me like a heavy cloth. “You abandoned me.”

  “Oh, come. It’s not as if I exposed you to the elements to starve. I left you in good care at the orphanage. They fed and clothed you. I kept my promise. And I continued to keep it. I was informed on your progress through the years. When the headmistress said you had a gift for writing and art, I knew I had been right when I named you after a cloud that predicts good fortune. You certainly made mine! I came to the orphanage to reclaim you. I took you in. Now I am giving you everything you could ask for. And what do you do? You spurn me. Me, your aunt, your only living relation, who has always taken care of you.”

  My eyes stung. “You let me believe that I was alone. That I had no one.”

  “You had me.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “Did you deserve it? Wouldn’t my sister be alive today, had you not come tearing out of her, killing her with your greedy little life? If she hadn’t given birth to you, she would still be mine.”

  “It is not my fault I have no mother. You have been punishing me for my own loss.”

  “I warned her,” Raven said, looking not at me, but into the past. “I told her she would regret her dalliance. But no. She would have her way. If people would only listen to me, everyone would be better off.”

  “Who was he? Who was my father?”

  “Nirrim, it is time to uphold your bargain. You have some moral horror, it seems, at helping me build my business. But won’t you, dear girl, do it for your family, now that you know who I am?”

  “I always loved you. I always thought of you as family.” Tears spilled onto my cheeks.

  “Now, don’t cry. There is no need. Why, I love you, too!”

  I pulled away from her. The pearl necklace felt like a thin snake around my throat. I snapped it beneath my twisting grasp. Beads sprinkled the floor.

  “How dare you,” Raven said. “After all I’ve done for you.”

  I made for the stairs.

  “Don’t you leave me,” she called. “If you do, you will never see me again.”

  My feet gained speed, rattling down each step. I heard her following behind me.

  “You will never know anything more about your mother. How you were born. Who you are! You will be nothing to me. Is that what you want?”

  Yes, I thought, and shoved my way out the front door.

  * * *

  The sun had set when I returned to Sid’s home on the hill, and although I had mastered my tears, when I saw her sitting on the steps and how her face eased into gladness to see me, they came rushing back.

  “What is it?” She drew me down to sit beside her. Duskwings flurried in the sky like black confetti. I buried my wet face against her. “Tell me,” she said, and I felt the words vibrate through her. “Tell me who has made you like this, and I will kill them.”

  I laughed a little, the sound garbled by a sob, because of course Sid would try to lighten the situation by saying something extreme and obviously not meant. But then I pulled away from her to wipe my eyes and saw her hardened face. Her black eyes were cold with fury. “Say that you want me to,” she said.

  I had never seen her use her dagger, but I had touched her rangy body. I had felt the muscle that spoke of work despite the luxury she lived in.

  Was a queen’s spy trained to kill? />
  I believed, suddenly and surely, that Sid was ready to make good on her threat.

  “No,” I said. “Don’t.” I still loved Raven. I couldn’t strip the habit of years from me.

  In a halting voice, I told her everything. I told her about Aden and Raven, about the heliographs and the crescent-moon pendant, about the Elysium bird and everything that had happened that night. About the smashed lantern and the burn. My words unraveling, I explained how I used to think Helin was right that I couldn’t understand the truth before my eyes, and then I changed my mind, and found strength in a newfound belief in myself. I told her how arrogant that belief was, because in the end I didn’t know anything at all. My mother’s sister had made me her apprentice, and I hadn’t known. I had seen glimpses of the necklace at her throat for years, and although the pendant had been hidden beneath Raven’s dress, it had nonetheless reminded me of my mother’s necklace, and even then I didn’t guess. I told Sid that I was a murderer, a criminal, a fool, a fool, a fool.

  “You are not a fool.” She kissed my tear-wet mouth.

  I tightened my fingers in her shirt. “You warned me that you are a liar.”

  “I am not good with the truth. But I am not lying to you now.”

  “Promise you won’t deceive me.”

  Softly, she said, “I won’t deceive you.”

  But she already had.

  47

  ON THE DAY OF THE COUNCIL PARADE, perfumed blue vines with heavy blossoms lined the edges of the main thoroughfare through the High quarter. The vines seemed to have sprung up overnight. Muslin canopies covered the walkways as they had in my visions of the long-ago Ward: brilliant patchworks of color glowing with the setting sun, embroidered moons and stars that released a refreshing, cool mist that made my skin shiver.

  “I see that,” Sid said. “Don’t make me jealous of mist.”

  “You, jealous? Never.”

  “Not of mist,” she acknowledged, “though that little shudder of yours looked uncannily like something I did to you this morning, and I confess I am feeling challenged right now, to be so easily usurped.” She purchased a spun-sugar bird’s nest from a Middling vendor and passed it to me. It had a pink egg that hatched, an illusion of an Elysium bird coming wet from the shell. It trilled, hopped to my shoulder, spread its wings, and vanished. Sid put a shell fragment in her mouth. She made a face. “Too sweet. But you will like it.”