The Midnight Lie

by Marie Rutkoski

  “THE GODS DON’T EXIST,” I said, my mouth numb.

  “I don’t? And what do you think you are, half-one? I felt what you were trying to do to me. Tell me, Nirrim: What do you think I can do to you?”

  I stood, ready to run from the room. He smiled, and the strength left my body. I slumped to the floor, banging my face against the chair as I went down. It clattered on top of me as I lay, and he stood to look down upon me, the hem of his red robe brushing the skin of my arm. I willed myself to move. I couldn’t even twitch my fingers.

  “I am being a good god,” he said. “I haven’t stolen your sight, for example.”

  Though my eyes were open, they went suddenly blind. I cried out. The bird answered my call. I heard its wings rustle.

  Nothing was as dark as this. Not night, not the orphanage baby box, not even when I closed my eyes and light shone through my eyelids. The world looked entirely black and empty.

  The fabric of his robe skimmed over me. I heard him walk around my prone body, pausing by my head. He could do anything to me. He could crush my face beneath his heel. He could do worse.

  “Or I could steal your breath.”

  And it was suddenly gone. I strained for air. My heart panicked. I felt myself choking, dying, paralyzed and alone in the airless black.

  “That’s the fragile human in you,” he said, and air came rushing back into my lungs. I sucked it in, my breath a horrible keening rasp.

  “God of thieves,” I said.

  “Yes, little one.”

  “Let me up,” I begged.

  “No.”

  “Give me back my sight.”

  “No.”

  “Please, let me go. I’ll do anything.”

  “Anything?” His voice was ripe with amusement. “Such a dangerous word. I haven’t even yet caused you pain. I can slowly steal the blood from your body. The warmth from your skin. The tongue from your mouth. All the water within you, so that you desiccate into a tortured husk.”

  “There must be something I can do,” I sobbed. “Something I can give you.”

  “There is,” he said. “It happens to be the one thing that even I cannot steal.”

  “What? Tell me.”

  “You will lie there, and you will listen, and when I am done I will make you a bargain, my child.”

  One should never bargain with a god. But I did not know that then.

  “Should you accept,” he said, “you will leave here just as you were when I met you, save for one thing. Am I not merciful?”

  “And if I say no? Will you murder me?”

  His silence was thoughtful. “To whom do you belong?”

  To Sid, I thought. Then I buried the thought, terrified that he might steal it from me.

  “Perhaps you don’t know,” he mused. “Who bore you?”

  I blinked against the blindness. I wished I could see his face. I had no idea what his expression was as he stared down at me. “I have no parents.”

  “Of course you do.”

  “I was abandoned,” I said. “I am an orphan.”

  “If I give you to the god of death, there will be nothing left for me to steal. And to be honest, I am in trouble enough with my brethren without tempting their wrath by killing one of their favorites, whosesoever you are.”

  “Are there more gods hidden in this city? Where are they?”

  “Gone,” he said.

  “But you are here.”

  “As punishment.”

  “For what?”

  “I killed my brother.”

  “Why?”

  “Nirrim, why did you wish to read my book?”

  “Because I need to know what happened here.”

  “Why?”

  “So I understand why things are the way they are.”

  “Why?”

  I struggled to move my dead muscles. I strained to see. Yet, although blind to his expression, I sensed his curiosity, and sensed that this curiosity kept him, at least for now, from being cruel. It was hopeless to believe he would truly strike a bargain with me and let me go unharmed, but at least I could breathe; at least my life wasn’t slowly dwindling out of me as it had been a moment ago, my lungs burning with pain. So I answered honestly: “I want to know where magic comes from. I want to know why the Half Kith are walled off from the rest of the city, and anything can be taken from them at any time.” Like me right now, I thought, at the mercy of the god of thieves. “If I know, I can change things.”

  “How?” His voice was thoughtful.

  “I will explain the city’s history to the Half Kith so that we can seize the source of magic.”

  “Will you be believed?”

  Slowly, I said, “I don’t know.”

  “Revolution is a messy matter, and those who rebel may find themselves crushed under rebellion’s wheels. I was. Ethin is as it is. I warn you—against my own best interests, I might add—to leave it that way.”

  I wanted to shake my head, but couldn’t.

  “No?” he said. “Then hear my bargain. I will tell you your city’s history, and mine. But if you wish to leave this library with what you have learned, you must tithe something precious unto me.”

  At the word tithe, my skin crawled. “Will I be able to live without it?”

  “Oh, yes.”

  “What is it?”

  “Your heart.”

  I blinked rapidly against the darkness. “Impossible. I can’t live without a heart.”

  “Not that lump of muscle beating in your chest. I mean what humans mean when they say heart: your delectable mix of worry and awe and love. I mean what makes you you.”

  “Why?”

  “It is useful to me. With it, I may leave this wretched island, you wretched people. I have been cast out of the pantheon, Nirrim, for my sin. But I know of a god who would welcome me home, would help reinstate me among my kin, for the gift of a god-blooded human’s heart.”

  “Me, god-blooded?”

  “You.”

  “You mean … I am a god’s child? Are we called the Half Kith because we are half-gods?”

  He laughed. “The ignorant arrogance! Once, yes, the Half Kith were, before they were walled off and forgot their own powers. But that was long ago, and their god-blood has thinned since the gods forsook this island, and half-gods had children with pure mortals, and their children did the same. Now the Ward holds mostly ordinary humans. There are no true half-gods now, though the blood runs strong in you.”

  “If you take my heart, what will I become?”

  Lightly, he said, “Who can say?”

  As light as his voice might be, I heard eagerness beneath it. “Then my answer is no.”

  There was a silence. “No? I will force it from you, then.”

  “You said you couldn’t steal it.”

  “I can hurt you until you give it willingly.”

  “Then why haven’t you?”

  In the silence that followed, the answer to my own question occurred to me. “Because that would damage it,” I said.

  “Yes,” he acknowledged. “It would no longer taste so sweet.”

  “Tell me this country’s history, and then let me decide whether it is worth it to me to accept your bargain.”

  “I could kill you,” he said.

  “Will my corpse be useful to you?”

  The Elysium chirped. The god was silent.

  “Tell me,” I said, “did you give the first Lord Protector the idea for the wall? The tithes?”

  The god laughed. Once he started, he couldn’t seem to stop. The hem of his robe shuddered across my arm. “Nirrim. I am the Lord Protector. I have always been the Lord Protector. I was the first and the second and all the others that followed. When enough mortal years had passed that the city began to think I should be close to death, I pretended to die, and then stole the city’s knowledge of my appearance. I have done this so many times it wearies me, like a joke told and retold. It was amusing, the first time. And yes, I had the wall built. I
promised my acolytes that if they labored to build the wall, I would reward them and their children, and their children’s children, and so I have. The people you call High Kith once worshipped me, and now they worship the things I give them, and if they have forgotten me, why, it is because I have let them.”

  “But why did you build the wall? Why do you tithe us?”

  “The promise of a god must be kept. I promised my followers riches and delights. God-blood is delightful for them to drink. They revile your kith, of course, but oh how they love all the many parts of you. As for the wall, the half-ones deserved it, just as I deserved my punishment.”

  “Why?”

  “Murder.”

  I remembered my dream of people in the agora killing the god. “The god of discovery.”

  “Yes,” he said. “My brother.”

  I heard the rustle of feathers.

  “He lives on in Elysium birds,” said the god. “This one can sense the god-blood in you. It is drawn to you. I knew, when it called to you during the parade, what you were. You should see how it leans toward you. I must hold it back.” The god sighed. “The murder is my fault.”

  “You killed your brother?”

  “I may as well have. I, the pitying fool that I am, sought to help the half-ones. I admit Discovery irritated me. The tattletale. Always meddling in my affairs and exposing my schemes. Yet he was my brother, and though I sometimes loathed him, I loved him, too. And I was too clever. I had once stolen tears from the god of death. Take this, I told the half-gods, who had been marked by Discovery and thus had no freedom to scheme, to live, to hide, to be anything other than obviously what they were, and thus became the favorite playthings of the gods and hated and feared by humans. Anoint yourselves with it, and the tears of death will blind Discovery to you.”

  His voice grew quiet with intensity. “But one half-god, child of wisdom, took my gift and divined another use for it. He dipped a blade in the tears and thus made a weapon fit to kill a god. The half-gods spilled immortal blood in their agora, and the pantheon will never forgive them—or me—for it. Eradicate them, said Wisdom, or they will multiply through the ages, and one day bear someone fit to overthrow us all. Death lifted his hand. Then the weakest god, the least among us all in power, spoke. Still, the god of sewing said, they are our children. Death studied the Seamstress, whom he loved. The pantheon argued. It was decided that the gods would forsake this island … and that I, as punishment, would protect the rest of the world from it and its unruly god-children.”

  “I thought the Lord Protector was called that because he protected us.”

  “Lord, or nursemaid? Are you my subjects, or my wards? It was decreed that I must tend to Herrath. That I should clean up the havoc wreaked here, as if it were fully my fault that the gods could not help loving mortals, could not help giving them gifted children. And so I did what I do best. I stole. I stole the half-ones’ knowledge of their gifts. I bribed my acolytes to build a wall around the half-gods, then stole the knowledge of what they had done even as I kept my promise to them. And for many years, all was well. For centuries, I labored in hopes that the pantheon would see my efforts and welcome me home. Eventually I realized that there is no one willing to take my place, and I can never atone enough to be forgiven. Most intriguingly”—his voice came closer, as if he had bent down to look more closely at me—“travelers began to find their way to this island, despite the spell I had cast around it. They began to arrive a few years ago—around the time, I would say, that you began to mature, little Nirrim. Your gift is memory, is it not? Or so the taste of your blood says, and the tricks you tried on me.”

  I thought of Sid. I wondered what I would be if she had never come here.

  A stone, maybe.

  A cloud, floating over everyone, part of nothing.

  A gust of wind, trying to burrow into warm places.

  I said, “Why did you let the travelers come?”

  “I suppose,” he said, “that I longed for something new.”

  “Let me see you.”

  “No.”

  “Please.”

  And suddenly, I could. I blinked my eyes, which were stinging from the light. The god had stooped beside me. His bland face looked remarkable now, for its sadness. I said, “I am alone, too.”

  “Ah,” he said, “but not for nearly so long as I.” The Elysium bird chirruped. “Well, Nirrim, do you agree to my bargain?”

  The strength returned to my body. A little wobbly, I pushed myself up so that I was sitting beside the god.

  “Will you release me?” he said.

  “And if I say no?”

  “Then I steal back everything I have told you. If I let you live, you leave with nothing. I will be Lord Protector until I pretend to die, and then I will be Lord Protector again, and the Half Kith will stay behind the wall and the High Kith will continue to feast on them and the Middlings will serve as go-betweens, longing to be just like the descendants of my acolytes, and relishing their place above the imprisoned children of gods and the stray pure humans unlucky enough to live among them.”

  “And if I say yes?”

  “You might find,” he said gently, “that it is easier to live without a heart.”

  I longed for Sid. I wished she were here to help me. She would say, No. Don’t surrender yourself. Your goodness, your light, everything that makes me love you.

  But she was not here. She never would be. And I would miss her always, would reach for her in my sleep, would weep for never having told her that I loved her with all my heart. I make nothing too heavy to bear, she had once said, and I wanted her to take my loss of her and make me able to bear it.

  Time would heal nothing for me. Each kiss would feel fresh on my mouth.

  What good was a heart, if it hurt so much?

  “I want to make the city remember,” I told the god of thieves, “and then I agree to your bargain.”

  His bland face became suddenly beautiful, suffused as it was with joy. “Quickly,” he begged.

  Could I make an entire city remember its past? I felt how the memory shared by the god filled me, how if I focused on it, it swelled large enough to spill out of me like blood. And I became afraid of it, of its trembling size, how it bulged against my insides. How maybe releasing it would take all of me away with it. But I remembered how I had thought my sadness at Helin’s death was like a bowl always replenished, how my love for Sid was like that, too, how grief and love have a magic of their own because they can be never-ending.

  I poured the city’s memory out of me. I imagined it spilling out over its streets, its people.

  The face of the god looked pleased, even proud. “Well done,” he said.

  Then he leaned toward me, placed his mouth on mine, and sucked all the breath from me.

  EPILOGUE

  I SEE THIS STORY PERFECTLY, its moments cut crystal in my mind. I remember how this story, like a great, sheer bowl, bore a sea of emotion—my guilt, my loneliness, my longing. I remember little rivulets of delight, the warmth of love.

  But I do not feel it anymore. I feel light. Empty. Pure.

  Sid’s letter rests in my pocket, but it is mere paper. I carry its copy in my mind. I see its foreign script written in her hand, but what it might say, and how I will never understand it, is as meaningless as her absence.

  The god is gone, too, to wherever gods go.

  His bird is on my shoulder. I have no fondness for it, but I do not mind it. Its beauty enhances my own. Its talons pierce the skin a little, but when I hiss, it learns quickly to stop. It would be nothing for me to wring its pretty little neck.

  I remember the people who once troubled me, who wrung my heart, who stitched me up tightly with little black threads of guilt, who made me wish and cherish and smile and weep.

  I know they once touched me, but I no longer feel it.

  Wonderful. It is almost as good as having no memory at all.

  The Elysium bird on my shoulder, I walk through the stunne
d city. I stare back at the people who stare at me, daring them to cross me. None of them do. I wish they would. They call out questions as though it is evident by my face that I have the answers. Maybe they are not so stupid after all, yet none is worthy of my reply.

  I make my way through them and into the Ward.

  The Half Kith have come into the streets. They see me arrive and they are eager. Many of them know now what they are. I see Aden, sunlight dancing down his arms, ready to twist the light in his control and use it as he wills. I see Morah and Annin at the fringes of the crowd, how Annin starts toward me. Morah, wise to whatever expression is on my face, claws her back.

  Even the god-blooded ones don’t approach me. And I am not interested in the others, like Morah and Annin, who might as well be made from sticks and cloth. There is no power in them, not like there is in me.

  Finally a god-blood dares to approach me. It is one-eyed Sirah, creeping up on her feeble old legs. “Nirrim, child, look.” She holds out her hand. “I can make it rain.” A little thunderstorm erupts on her palm.

  A nice trick, and it could be useful to me, but she is weak and worn. I need powerful allies for what I want to accomplish. I push past her.

  “Nirrim,” she says, shocked, “who do you think you are?”

  I say it loud enough for all to hear: “I am a god,” I tell them, “and I am your queen.”

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  THANK YOU TO MY STALWART writing group members, Marianna Baer, Anna Godbersen, Anne Heltzel, Jill Santopolo, Eliot Schrefer, and other dear friends who read drafts: Kristin Cashore, Morgan Fahey, Donna Freitas, Drew Gorman-Lewis, Sarah Mesle, and Becky Rosenthal. You gave vital suggestions and encouragement when things got hard.

  This book wouldn’t have been possible without them, or without the kindness and generosity of Cassandra Clare and Josh Lewis. Many thanks also to Robin Wasserman for her ever-keen perspective, Holly Black for plotting with me while we wrangled with the Aga, Elizabeth Eulberg for not letting me die on a tiny, tiny plane, and Sarah Rees Brennan, who always had a ready answer for my worries and wrote alongside me in our bower until the very end. Many thanks also to Renée Ahdieh, Leigh Bardugo, and Sabaa Tahir for giving me advice when I needed it most.