The Midnight Lie (The Midnight Lie #1)(26)

Using a finely pointed pen, I signed the name of a clerk for the Council, slanting his Ls and dotting his lowercase double Is with short, punctuated flecks that were more dashes than dots. He liked to sweep a complicated filigree below his name, and I remembered perfectly the true signature Raven had shown me, which I had replicated many times for other documents. I traced it on the paper. I glued the heliograph that Aden had made for me into a cardstock frame, which prefaced the pages that would show when and how many times I had passed through the wall’s gate, or had left the city. I stamped a handful of dates on those pages for over the past few years, using watered-down blue ink for the older dates, and strong blue for the newer ones. The stamp had been obtained by Raven, as were all the others among her supplies. I didn’t know how she managed to get them, whether through theft, money under the table, or favors owed.

Finally, I embossed the thin leather cover with a raised stamp. The pages looked and smelled too new, so I ran a whisk over each page—gently, to soften the paper—and buried the booklet in a bowl of sand to absorb the smell of ink. I kept the bowl under my bed, worried throughout the whole day it sat there that Morah or Annin—or, worse, Raven—would find it.

Raven would be hurt if she discovered what I was doing. I imagined her wounded eyes as she opened my passport. Was I not enough, she would say. What did I do, to make you want to leave?

I don’t want to, I would say.

All I wanted was one night.

Just to see.

I will always come back.

Her eyes, however, would glisten. Her sadness would rush through me like storm rain in a gutter. Eventually, her sadness would thicken into anger. I would understand. After all, I had betrayed her. But …

One night.

She would never know.

I took the passport from the bowl, shook off the sand, and slid it into the coat pocket. It was rigid and felt heavier than it was, and somehow fragile, as though it were a pane of glass. Anxiety sizzled in my belly. I remembered Sid’s words: You’ve been in prison your whole life.

I buttoned the last button. The coat would cover some of my drab Half Kith clothes, and with any luck the guards at the gate wouldn’t discern the color of my trousers in the dark. My body was taut with fear.

I imagined saying to Sid, I bet that you are never afraid.

You left your home.

You sailed to a region marked on a map as dangerous waters.

You let yourself be sent to prison without protest.

Do you know what this feels like? What I feel like?

Come find me, she said in my mind. Ask me for real.

I blew out the lamp. Darkness doused the room. My reflection in the window vanished into black glass.



* * *



“Name?”

I kept my eyes down. The guard at the gate wore boots and crease-free trousers, the fabric crisp and red and with blue piping. “Laren.” I had chosen a name with a common ending for a Middling woman.

“Occupation?”

“Merchant.”

“Wares?”

I brought Annin’s empty embroidered bag, the one I had used to capture the Elysium, from my pocket. “It’s just a sample. I hope to interest someone in ordering more.”

“That’s a man’s coat.”

“My brother’s,” I said. “I always forget how the temperature drops at night. He loaned me his.”

“Look at me.”

I brought my gaze up. In the lamplight, the young man’s expression was hardened into irritated boredom. “Green,” he said disapprovingly.

“Excuse me?”

“This passport says your eyes are hazel. They are not. They are green.”

Nervousness bubbled in my stomach. I had never thought of my eyes as green. I had glanced at them briefly, once, in Raven’s handheld mirror. The color looked murky and unstable: not quite brown but nothing else easily named. “Hazel,” Morah said when I asked.

I touched my chest, where the Elysium feather rested beneath the coat and my shirt. “It’s just a trick of the light.”

Perhaps the myths about Elysium feathers were true, because his expression softened as he lifted the lamplight to look more deeply into my face. “Pretty eyes,” he said. “What’s this?” He touched the burn on my cheek. I flinched in pain. “It’s not on your heliograph.”

“The burn is recent. It happened the other day.”

“It is fresh.” He kept his hand beneath my chin. His face was changing as he stared at me. I resisted pulling away. He said, “How did that happen?”

My mind raced through possibilities. “I was curling my hair.” The laws stipulated that only Middling and High-Kith women could have waves or curls in their hair. Usually I straightened mine as best I could, but tonight I had run water through my hair to bring out its natural wave. “The hot tongs slipped.”

He brushed a hand through my hair. Was this normal? Did all guards at the gates do this, even to Middlings?

The back of my neck prickled.

A Half Kith would let him touch her. Would a Middling object?

Could she?

I didn’t know, so I pretended I enjoyed his touch. I smiled.

“A pity,” he said, and his hand fell. He stamped my passport, returned it, and waved me through the gate.

A night market.