The Midnight Lie (The Midnight Lie #1)(33)

I touched the red Elysium feather hidden below my shirt. I was safe for now.

“Go to the kitchen,” Raven said. “You’re late for the bread. Annin had to start the rising without you and serve an early customer, an important one at that. I need to be able to rely on you, Nirrim.”

I felt ashamed that I had just tricked her and strangely grateful that she was still not pleased with me. If she had shown me kindness I would have felt worse in my deceit. I promised myself that I wouldn’t let her down again.

In the kitchen, Annin’s eyes widened into blue mirrors when she saw me. “Someone came to be served breakfast. And so early!”

“Yes, I know. I’m—”

“I have never served someone like this. I was so nervous.”

Annin was easily made nervous, especially under Raven’s watchful eye, so I didn’t think anything of this. Then Annin said, “She was High.”

“Really?” My pulse fluttered in my throat. “Who was she?”

“Raven tried to act unfazed, but even she was impressed, I could tell. High Kith almost never come into the Ward. Of course you know that. You know how they are: too good for us. But this one was nice. I spilled the tea, and she didn’t reprimand me but”—her voice dropped to an astonished whisper—“helped me clean it up. Can you believe it? Thank the gods Raven didn’t see.”

I hated to feel so hopeful, yet I was. “What did she look like?”

“You must know.” Annin’s expression turned conspiratorial and inquisitive. “She asked for you.”

“She did?”

“How do you know her? Did you sell something to her? Do you think she might hire you to be a lady’s maid? Maybe you will receive a special writ to work in the upper quarters. Is that possible? Maybe so. Maybe she is connected to someone on the Council. I wouldn’t doubt it. She was so self-assured. Her clothes were so rich! Garnet silk and jeweled sandals and a pocket watch like a little sun. Nirrim, you could leave the tavern. You could go beyond the wall! Will you leave us altogether?”

“Please, you’re going too fast. You’re not answering my question.”

She withdrew a folded note from her gray skirts. It had a black seal stamped with an insignia I didn’t recognize: a pair of closed eyes with a little round mark where its forehead would be.

“I said, why don’t you give this to my mistress to give to Nirrim, but she seemed not to like that idea. She said she trusted me, and that it was our secret.”

With eager fingers, I cracked the note open along its seal. My darting eyes fell upon the first line of writing.

I hear you are looking for me, it said.





22


THE HONEY-STRIPED WOOD of the railing glided smoothly beneath my cold hand. Sconces lit my way up the winding stone stairs, and I could see parts of the Middling quarter through the diamond-paned windows that appeared at every floor.

The patched-quilt colors of the night-market tents.

A garden behind the wall of someone’s home, bushes and trees blurred together in the darkness, warped by a defect in the window’s glass.

The nearly uniform shapes of houses, the same rust-colored ceramic tiles, doors painted the same sage green as the door at the address Sid had given me.

It had taken me forever to find the house. She had included no map and no instructions. I had spent much of the night wandering, looking for street signs, not daring to ask anyone the way. I assume that if you were able to get into the Middling quarter once you can do so again, the note read. No one had answered my knock at the door of the tall Middling house, which even in the dark looked intimidating in its newness—rich red brick with an undertone of blue, shiny-painted shutters, carefully groomed flowers waving from their window boxes, petals sulfur yellow and soapy white. Flickering light from the oil-lit street lantern behind me wavered over the door. I knocked again. When no one answered, I tried opening the door, my pulse thudding. It unlatched easily, opening with the soft sigh of well-oiled hinges.

A warm breeze pushed me from behind, tunneling into the house, stirring my brown skirts. The empty room I entered glowed with the light of small lanterns that showed powder-blue painted walls, a soapstone mantelpiece that bore a brass bell fit for one’s hand. Old ashes lay in the grate, a sign that whoever lived here—was it Sid?—had had the comfort of a fire during the ice wind. A window was open. I could hear the muted cry of far-off seagulls. An uncorked bottle of wine and two delicate glasses sat at a little oval table. One glass was stained red at its bottom. A pink-striped chair looked dented in its upholstery, as if someone had recently sat there. I touched the silk. It was faintly warm.

A muffled thump, weirdly musical, came through the door at the other end of the room. I followed the sound.

Sid was lying on the floor under the belly of a piano, prying with a small knife at something I couldn’t see.

The floorboard creaked beneath my step, so she must have known I was there, but she continued at her task. I saw her face only in profile, brows furrowed, chin tipped up, lips bitten in concentration.

“You’re late,” she said.

“You’re rude. You didn’t even answer the door.”

“I was busy.”

“What are you doing?”

“Getting started without you.” She slid out from under the piano and stood, brushing herself off. She was dressed in Middling clothes, though without regard for how she would dress if she were in fact a Middling woman. The trousers were a tight fit, made for a man, and although the dark blue tunic had a feminine cut that nipped in at the waist, it was free of the simple embroidery that a Middling would normally flaunt as a sign of minor status. In the buttery yellow lamplight, I could see details that I hadn’t in the moonlight outside the prison: the fullness of her mouth; a freckle beneath her eye; her proud posture; the skin that was a few shades lighter than mine; the eyelashes surprisingly thick and black, a contrast to her fair hair. I could see that even in good light, it would have been easy to make the same mistake I had in the darkness. It would be easy to think she were a boy, if I only glanced once. But I couldn’t believe that anyone would glance at her only once.