The Midnight Lie (The Midnight Lie #1)(17)

“I just want to go home.”

“You mean the Ward.”

“Yes.”

“The Ward is as large as a small city,” he said.

“Yes.” I didn’t see what its size had to do with anything.

“Is home a home if you can never leave it? You think you’re in prison now, but you have been in prison your whole life. It’s just big enough that you’re able to forget what it really is. Don’t you want to see more?”

“I don’t want to leave.”

This time his silence sounded disappointed. I got the sense that he had thought better of me, and now had no choice but to consider me a coward.

But what did it matter what he thought?

“I like leaving,” he said. “It feels wonderful. The newness of what will come next. Like fresh, cool skin beneath my fingertips. Waking upon my last day somewhere, eating my favorite foods, burying my face in my favorite scents. Honeyed half-moons. A bay papered with ships. A song sung in my language. I love everything more when I leave it. Maybe, then, it’s the most I’ll ever love it.”

“What’s a language?”

“Pardon me?”

“A language.”

There was a pause. “It’s what we’re speaking now. The words we’re using. I’m speaking in your language, Herrath. There are many others in this wide world. I have a gift for learning them. Yours is especially easy for me because it so closely resembles Herrani. Your language … seems like an ancient version of mine.”

“Say something in Herrani.”

He murmured a stream of sounds that were soft but gently pointed in places, like meringue. “What did you say?” I asked.

“Tadpoles become tadfrogs.”

“Tadfrogs?”

“It’s what I called frogs, when I was little. My mother still teases me about it.”

“A mother.” It was good, probably, that I would never see Sid again, since every minute in his company only confirmed my impression of him as wholly different from myself: a young man from nowhere I’d ever seen, who knew things I didn’t, who had a mother. “What is she like?”

“The worst! Always in my business, always telling me what to do.”

I thought of Raven. “I have someone like a mother.”

“I’m glad. I don’t like to think of you alone in the world. It’s good to have a mother to resent.”

I chafed my bare arms. What would I do with a mother? I found myself longing to be asked to do a chore. To bring a glass of water. I imagined myself as a toddler and placing a hand on her knee, balancing the way I had seen children do, fingers curling for support. I could not envision her face.

“Nirrim?”

“I wish the ice wind would break.” I didn’t want to talk about mothers. “The guards stole my coat.”

“Take mine.”

“Then you’ll be cold.”

“I am made of stern stuff. Very strong. Stoic. What need have I of warmth?”

“Or sleep.”

“Exactly.”

“You can do without all pleasures and comforts of life, I’m sure.”

“Well, not all pleasures.”

“Let me guess which kind.”

“Oh, we both know. Nirrim, come take my coat.”

By the light of the lantern, I saw the shadow of his coat pushed through the bars. His face was still in darkness, but I could see his long, slender fingers dangling the dark coat.

“No, thank you.”

“So proud,” he said, “and so cold.”

Well, and what could he take from me? I’d snatch the coat from him. He’d never see it again, and I’d be warm.

As soon as I approached the bars, however, I drew my reaching hand back, startled. He was still cast in shadow, the lines of his face blurred like pencil beneath my smudging thumb. Yet the orange glow of the corridor’s lamp showed that he was not a liar in at least one respect. He was handsome. A quirked smile on his lips said that he knew I had seen it. Dark eyes that tipped up at the corners. A smooth sweep of his cheek. Mouth twisted with mirth. He was taller than me, though not greatly, and narrower than I had expected. It was easy to forget he was behind bars. It was easy to believe he could tempt a married woman into bed. Any woman.

I grabbed the coat. “Happy with yourself?”

“Always.”

I shrugged into the coat. It was only a little too big, and warm. It was a color Middlings were allowed to wear, cobalt blue. If the blue were any brighter, only a High Kith could wear it.

“You smell like bread and sweat. And something green,” he said musingly. “Like crushed grass. What have you been up to?”

I didn’t want to think about clinging to the flowering indi vine while the soldier fell. I buttoned the coat. A fine perfume lingered in its fabric. “Well, you smell like a woman.”

“Hardly surprising.”

I tried to imagine the woman he had been caught with. Frail features. Long auburn hair. Exquisitely pretty. Yes, he would enjoy someone like that. I thumbed the coat’s last button into its hole.

“Ah, better,” he said.

I lifted my head, shaking hair out of my eyes. “What is?”

“My view of you.”