The Midnight Lie (The Midnight Lie #1)(42)

25


MAYBE IF I HAD BEEN able to keep the Elysium bird, people in the Ward would have looked at me the way they did with Sid beside me: in disbelieving wonder. The heat was as bad as it had been the day before, but people came out into the streets when they heard the gossip about a High lady visiting the Ward. They saw the gold-embroidered indigo batiste of her simply cut dress, her easy yet perfect posture that made everyone else look like they were slouching, and how the sunlight caught her short hair. Sid refused to carry a parasol.

“You’ll burn,” I warned. Her skin was too pale.

“You, I notice, are not carrying a parasol.”

“I’m darker than you. Anyway, I’m not allowed. It’s not my kith.”

She glanced at me as we walked. I liked having an excuse to meet her gaze.

“I want my hands free,” she said. She made a face, as if a parasol in her hand would be a burden, and even the idea were an itchy cloth irritating her skin. She spoke as if she were a worker who used her hands all the time. It was true that her hands didn’t look like a lady’s hands. She wore no rings. Her nails were cut to the quick. Little scars marked the fingers. A long, narrow scar crossed the back of her right hand.

“Where did you get that?” I asked.

“This? Fighting a tiger.”

“I’d like a real answer.”

“A lovelorn girl who just couldn’t let me go.”

“Sid.”

“A duel to the death. I won, of course.”

“Is it possible for you to tell any story in which you’re not the hero?”

“So you would like a boring lie?”

“I’d like the truth.”

“No,” she said cheerfully, “I don’t think you actually do.” She ran a hand along the white wall as we walked toward the artisan workshops. “So the whole Ward is painted white? Show me the spot you found, with the colored paint beneath.”

I shook my head. “Later. I don’t want anyone to see us do it. Everyone is staring at you.”

She lifted her brows. “And you.”

I had never before had so many eyes on me. I tried to do my usual trick of pretending everyone on the streets had forgotten me, but I found that I couldn’t, maybe because I couldn’t forget myself. I felt too aware of my body: the sun in my face; the narrow distance between Sid and me; the swish of her dress; the scuff of my sandals; the prickle down the back of my neck as I realized that it wasn’t just that people were staring at Sid, at her strange beauty, or at me, the little shadow walking beside her. It was her and me, together, that captured their attention. Gazes darted from her face to mine.

I showed Sid the workshops of the makers in the Ward. She appreciatively examined each item, praising the maker, but I could tell from the slight furrow between her brows that she was disappointed, that the carved jewelry box with its cunning secret compartment held no real interest for her, that the pink blown-glass vase that she claimed was gorgeous was in fact useless. Although she flattered every artisan, who seemed to grow a little taller with Sid’s expressed admiration, I knew she hadn’t found what she’d hoped.

I worried that she wasn’t easy to please, despite whatever words she might say to the contrary.

I worried that I was too attuned to what she wanted.

She shut a compact mirror. We were in Terrin’s shop, the two of us reflected everywhere in the mirrors surrounding us like facets of an enormous, hollow jewel. I saw Sid’s dissatisfaction.

“What is it?” I said. “What are you looking for?”

She tugged me gently in the direction of the door and the streets outside the shop. I saw her hand on mine from all the angles of all the mirrors as she drew me toward the door. Terrin’s eyes widened at such an unexpected, even shocking, gesture between someone of Sid’s kith and someone of mine. I wondered what my face showed as my fingers tightened around Sid’s hand, the one with the long scar.

“Everything is just … normal,” she said when we’d left the cool of the shop. A wind had picked up, but it was so hot it felt like the breath of a dog. “There are mirrors like that compact beyond the wall, but one half shows yourself and the other shows how you want to look. If you stare at that half long enough, your face will change to match what you see, at least for an hour or so. But there is nothing unusual about Terrin’s mirrors, or any other goods in the Ward. The objects are inert. Dead. If there is magic, it isn’t here.”

Something dwindled inside me. “Does that mean you’ll leave?”

But she didn’t answer, because a man called my name. She dropped my hand.

It was Aden, striding toward us.





26


“NIRRIM, I NEED YOU,” he said.

“Need?” Sid’s mouth curled.

“Excuse us,” he told her, just barely polite, with an expression that betrayed frustration that he needed to be polite with her. “Nirrim, now.”

Sid’s face showed disbelief but also a knowing look that I didn’t understand and didn’t like. “Just a moment,” I told her, and pulled Aden across the street.

“What is wrong with you?” I demanded.

“With me? What are you doing with her?”

“I’m working.”