Rinah’s expression grew tender and sad. “Yes,” she said, “I want the baby.”
I wondered briefly why she didn’t ask Raven for a passport, but it was evident why: her family was large. It took a great deal of time and effort to produce even one passport made from authentic (or authentic-seeming) elements. Raven either bartered for the necessary items, like the leather, or shouldered the cost of them. And of course it was much riskier for a larger number of people to try to leave the Ward at once. “If even one of them is caught with a false document, we might be caught,” Raven had said. “And if we are caught, who will help others?”
“I must return to the tavern,” I said. “Raven might need me.”
“She’s lucky to have you.”
This compliment made me feel good as I walked through the stunning heat. If not for Raven, I might have never known a mother’s care. My own mother hadn’t wanted me.
The Ward’s walls were sunny mirrors with no reflections. I wondered what Sid was doing. Was she sleeping through the heat? I pictured her curled up like a cat. I felt a rush of eagerness. I couldn’t wait for night to fall. I couldn’t wait to see the cool dark pool into the sky.
You mean you can’t wait to see me, Sid’s voice said slyly.
But there was nothing wrong with that. It made sense, didn’t it? Everything about her was new. New things are exciting. Everyone knows that.
The word new clung to my mind. I thought about the dream of new I had drunk from the vial.
My pace slowed.
I thought about Rinah, who wanted her baby.
I thought about my newborn self, squalling inside the orphanage box.
I glanced around the quiet, white, deserted streets, remembering in my dream, the walls were lushly painted with colors.
It was just a dream, of course. But as my steps slowed to a halt and sweat oozed down my back, I considered how Sid made me question what I believed I knew.
It occurred to me that although for years I had believed my mother didn’t want me, I couldn’t know that for certain. Maybe something—or someone—had made her abandon me.
It occurred to me that I had never questioned why, every year for the moon festival, the men painted the walls freshly white.
How many coats of paint lay thick on the walls?
Had the walls always been white?
What if my dream had been somehow real?
Normally this last thought would have sent me scurrying home, shoving the idea away, because it was the sort of thought that had always meant confusion and grief. It had been so hard when I was younger to tell illusion from truth. I should have grown out of it by now.
I needed Helin to tell me what was real. I needed Raven.
Or, Sid said, you could always find out for yourself what is real.
I looked around me. The air was heavy with heat. There was no one. Nothing moved except the marching silver ants.
I slid the gardening knife from my pocket and opened it. I approached the nearest wall and its smooth expanse of white limewash.
I scraped at the paint with the knife. White flakes peeled away, sticking to my knife, my sweaty skin. Silver ants came to see what I was doing. They walked up my knife and over my wrist, biting me as I swatted them off.
I’m not sure how long I carved away at the years of paint until finally, just when I thought I had gone crazy again, like when I was little, when I was seduced into believing impossible things no one else saw, my knife stripped away one last layer. Beneath the white lay a bloody red paint.
* * *
I can only imagine how I must have looked when I walked into the tavern. Garden dirt smeared on my face. Sleepless hollows beneath my eyes. Sweaty clothes, sweaty hair. Ant bites in a lurid string of red bumps up my arm, even some on my neck and face. Dirt and white paint under my nails. A startled expression on my face that probably grew even more bewildered when I saw who was waiting at a table inside the tavern.
Sid looked up from her plate of sun melon slices. She saw me and laughed. Her skin was clean and pure, her thin, pomegranate-colored silk dress falling in elegant folds.
Annin, who had frozen in the act of pouring Sid iced lemon water, stared at me. “Nirrim! You look awful!”
“You really do,” Sid said. “What have you been doing? Rolling around in a rosebush? What are all those red marks? Tell me.”
A blush burned in my cheeks. “No, I don’t think I will.”
“Oh, come on.”
“You said I look awful.”
“No, she did.” Sid unfurled a lazy hand in the direction of Annin, who was glancing between us. “I merely agreed. Did you … tussle with squirrels? Dirty squirrels? Vengeful ones?”
“Shut up.”
Annin gasped. “Nirrim! She is High.”
“What are you doing here?” I demanded.
Sid’s laughter melted into a slow smile. “I got tired of waiting for you.”
24
RAVEN BUSTLED INTO THE ROOM, carrying a tray laden with all the delicacies we could offer: a small sugar loaf made by me, ice cherry preserves richly purple in a tiny glass jar, chilled indi flower tea, and goat milk custard glazed with amber caramel. She had eyes only for Sid. “My lady, we are so honored! You will not want for anything here in my home, I assure you. I shall serve you myself. Annin, why are you staring?” Raven, who clearly hadn’t noticed my arrival, finally glanced in my direction. Her eyes widened and her mouth firmed. “Nirrim. Your appearance is disgraceful. How dare you embarrass me in front of our guest.”
“I didn’t know she would be here,” I said.
“That is no excuse!”
“Why not?” Sid said mildly. “It looks like she was doing work in the heat. I’m not surprised by how she looks, only by the fact that someone let her—what, garden?—in the sun on a day like this.”
“She insisted,” Raven said. “I tried to stop her. Nirrim, you stupid girl. Shut the door. You are letting the heat in.”
Sid’s smile hardened. When I shut the door, her face was thrown into sudden shadow. Her eyes glinted. “Apologize,” she told Raven.
“Of course, my lady. I had no idea that one of my servants was capable of such bad manners. Forgive me, please. It won’t happen again.”
“Apologize,” Sid said, “to her.”
I could tell that Raven at first had no idea what Sid meant, but then she blinked. “Nirrim, dear girl, why don’t you have a cool bath. Help yourself to one of my soaps. You poor thing, you look exhausted.”
Sid said, “That is not an apology.”
Raven cut a startled look in Sid’s direction before glancing again at me. “Nirrim, I’m sorry. You know I am always sorry when I lose my temper.”
It had hurt the first time she had called me “stupid,” when she had discovered the lost heliograph. This time it hurt even more, because I had believed that she would never do it again, and now she had just done so in front of someone I wanted to think well of me. I swallowed and said, “It’s all right. I shouldn’t have left the door open.”
Raven nodded in satisfaction. Sid looked unaccountably angrier.
But Raven didn’t actually think I was stupid. I had done a stupid thing. I had humiliated her in front of an important guest. Her reaction, I felt, was understandable.
“You were dazed by the heat,” she told me, kind. The wobbly feeling inside me steadied. “And I was so hot and irritable! I was not myself—”
“I will be staying here for three nights,” Sid said, cutting through the tail end of Raven’s words—rudely, as though she would have preferred to clamp a hand over Raven’s mouth. “I require a maid to attend me. I will pay extra for the service, of course.”
Raven said, “Annin—”
“I want Nirrim.”
Raven studied Sid. Her expression wasn’t suspicious, exactly, but her curiosity was growing.
“She will also serve as my guide to the Ward,” Sid said. “I am a traveler from afar.”
“
There are no travelers.”
“There is one now.” She ignored Raven’s stare and Annin’s. “We have nothing like the Ward where I come from. I would like to see more of it before I leave this island.” Sid opened her purse and withdrew a handful of gold coins. She let them slide from her palm onto the table.
“Nirrim will do whatever you need,” Raven said. “Won’t you, my girl?”
* * *
“How do you know her?” Annin said in a hushed voice as she walked with me toward the kitchen, where a bath lay in an adjoining room.
“Know who?” Morah glanced up from her mortar and pestle as she continued to grind spices.
“The lady.”
“Why is she here?” Morah said. “High Kith never come to the Ward.”
“But she is not really High,” Annin said, then scrambled as if she had said something offensive for which she could get in trouble. “I mean, she is different. But in her country she must be whatever they call High.”
“Maybe she’s faking,” Morah said. “How do we know she is High where she comes from? Just because she acts like it doesn’t mean she is. How do we even know she is a traveler? There have been only Herrath people on the island of Herrath. Travelers only exist in stories.”
“She doesn’t look Herrath,” Annin said. “She looks like no one I have ever seen.”
Morah sniffed. “That much is true.”
“She is so elegant. Did you see her dress? I would die to wear something like that. She is beautiful.”
“She would be,” Morah agreed, “if her hair weren’t so short.”
“I suppose that’s the fashion where she comes from, but it is a pity. Such a pretty color!”
“What’s wrong with short hair?” I said. “I have short hair.”
“Not that short,” Annin said.
“You would grow yours if Raven let you,” Morah said.
“It looks like she paid a tithe!” Annin said.
“It looks like a boy’s,” Morah said.
“I like it,” I said. They looked at me in surprise. I gathered a large towel and a bar of soap from Raven’s store. My chest buzzed with annoyance. Ever since Annin had said beautiful, something had been pinching at my heart. I didn’t know who deserved my anger more: Annin and Morah for making such a fuss over something that had nothing to do with them, or me for being so affected by a simple word.
Annin and Morah seemed to feel my annoyance. They fell silent, but their silence was annoyed, too, because they could see no reason for me to be angry.
But I could see a reason, and was relieved that they didn’t.
* * *
“What are you doing here?” I demanded as soon as I shut the door to Sid’s room behind me. Her back was to me. She sat at a small table, writing what was perhaps a letter in her language. The page was covered with unfamiliar script. “We were supposed to meet in the Middling quarter.”
She set aside her pen but didn’t turn around. “This is better.”
“Why?”
“I wanted to see where you come from.” She turned around. Her gaze flickered over me. “You’re dripping,” she said, “from the bath.”
I ignored this. “I don’t know where I come from.”
Her attention, which seemed to have drifted, returned. “What do you mean?”
“I was newly born when I was left outside the orphanage in the baby box. I don’t know who left me there.”
“Baby box?”
“Yes, the metal box for unwanted ones. There are two boxes, actually, one on either side of the wall, so that anyone of any kith can leave a baby there.”
Her face was fierce in the lamplight, her black eyes almost feral. “That is barbaric.”
“Don’t worry. There are holes for a baby to breathe, and a matron checks the box every hour, except at night.”
“How comforting.”
“The Council says it is the best way to protect unwanted babies.”
“If the Council says so, I suppose it must be true.”
I thought her sarcasm was unfair. “If parents had no way to abandon babies in secret, they might murder them.”
“So you were raised thinking that if you hadn’t been left in a metal box, your mother would have murdered you? That if Raven hadn’t taken you in, you would have lived in the orphanage forever?”
“Not forever. When I turned eighteen, if I didn’t show promise as an artisan, and wasn’t apprenticed to a shopkeeper, I would have become Un-Kith and taken outside the city.”
Sid’s mouth was flat. “You say this as if it is nothing to you.”
“I am lucky. I owe so much to Raven.”
She stared at me. Then she shook her head in helpless dislike—which bothered me, since I had done nothing to earn it. I said, “Are you thinking that I am even farther beneath you than you’d assumed?”
“I am thinking that your life has been very different from mine,” she said, which was a politer way of saying yes. Then she said, “I could help you find out where you come from.”
I shook my head. “Impossible.”
“I’m good at finding things out. I want to do something for you. Tell me what I can do.”
I didn’t want to tell her. I didn’t want to choose yet how she would reward me for helping her. I had lived with so little choice behind the wall that it was as if I had never left the baby box. I liked that there was something undecided. I liked that Sid hadn’t yet made me decide.
“Start by explaining what a ladies’ maid is supposed to do,” I said. “I have no idea.”
She cocked a flirtatious brow. “You could always help take off my clothes.”
I flinched, startled by her daring. But it was just a joke, one made for the pleasure of seeing me squirm. She laughed. “I don’t need you to do anything. I asked for you to be my ladies’ maid so that we could talk in private. Though, to be honest, dresses are a pain. All those fastenings in the back.”
“I have never seen you in one before now. You don’t look like yourself.”
She glanced down at her deeply red dress. “Too much fabric. Too flowy. But it’s fine.”
She didn’t sound like it was fine. I said, “You don’t like it.”
She shrugged. “It’s what people expect. But it reminds me of my old life. It makes me look…”
I thought of Annin’s word: beautiful. “Like a prize to be won?”
“Let’s be honest, I am. Tomorrow will you show me the Ward?”
I thought about how it would be for the two of us to walk through the Ward. Everyone’s eyes would be drawn to her. I would look drab by her side.
“What’s wrong?” Though her back was still to me as she sat in her chair, her body had curved toward mine, her face tipped up, studying me. “Are you worried about your employer? She’ll let you go. I paid her well.” Sid’s mouth curled in distaste. “She will do anything for money.”
Defensively, I said, “Of course. She doesn’t have much of it.”
“I suppose that’s true,” Sid said slowly, maybe seeing my anger. She couldn’t possibly understand Raven’s life—or my own.
I said, “I don’t have money.”
“That has nothing to do with what I think about you. That’s not why I don’t like Raven. It’s because she is not kind.”
“Yes, she is.”
“She insulted you.”
“I left the door open.”
“So what?”
“She was anxious to impress you.”
“Why are you defending her?” Her eyes got narrow. “Wait. Is this the woman you mentioned in prison? The one you said was something like a mother?”
I didn’t like the disgust in her voice. I felt like a child caught pretending that a rag doll was a princess. I hated even more the way Sid’s expression was shifting into pity.
“There is no excuse for how she behaved toward you,” Sid said. “I don’t think you see things clearly.”
Which had always been exactly my problem, al
though after finding streaks of color beneath the white paint on the walls of the Ward, I was starting to wonder whether my judgment was really as bad as I’d always thought. “My life is none of your concern,” I said stiffly. “You and I have a bargain. I will help you, and when you have what you want you will leave. You won’t even remember this conversation.”
“Of course I will.”
I shook my head. How many times had someone forgotten a conversation that I remembered perfectly?
“I will take you anywhere in the Ward you want to go,” I said. “But there’s something important I want to show you.” I told her about the colored paint beneath the whitewashed walls. “I dreamed about it, after I drank a dream sold in the night market.”
“Tell me about this dream,” she said, so I did. I wanted to pull us away from the fact that she would leave here and go back to her old life. I didn’t want to hear her insist again that somehow, in the midst of a life that I couldn’t imagine, one far away from here, she would remember me. I told her everything about the dream, except that I had had a conversation with my younger self in it. That felt too personal—and too strange—to share.
She stood and reached for a gorgeously pink damask purse. Its lining was a shocking blue. When she reached inside the purse it looked like her hand was disappearing into a midday summer sky. She withdrew the prayer book of the gods and gave it to me. “Can you find the murdered creature from your dream?”
I sat at the edge of her bed and paged through the book. I’d had no idea that people had once believed in so many gods. The god of echoes. Of tunnels. Of unspoken words. Of lies. Of games. The wind. The lost.
There were illustrations, and when I found what I was looking for I paused, then continued through the book, glancing at each page only long enough to record the image of it in my mind.
“You read quickly.” Sid came to join me at the edge of the bed. The bell of her sleeve brushed my bare arm. A shiver traveled up the back of my neck.
The Midnight Lie Page 12