The Midnight Lie (The Midnight Lie #1)(39)

“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.”