The Midnight Lie (The Midnight Lie #1)(52)

She dropped my hand.

“That’s a custom,” she said breezily, “in my country. It’s a way of saying thank you for being forgiven.”

It sounded believable. What did I know, anyway, of her country, except what she had told me? But something made me say, “Is that a lie?”

“Maybe,” she said. “Will you help me pack?”

So I did. Together we settled her gorgeous clothes into the trunk as though putting them to bed, tucking them in gently. I was glad to busy my hands. I needed to ignore my singing skin, to ignore that kiss, which had no meaning, or only the meaning that Sid gave it.

But:

She was staying in the city.

She was taking me up quarter, even if it was only because of what she thought I could do for her.





31


“YOU WANT TO LEAVE ME?” Tears welled in Raven’s eyes.

“No,” I said, “of course not. It is only for a month. Then I will come home.”

“Don’t you love me? How can you leave me alone?”

I knelt beside her chair. Sid, who had insisted on being present when I told Raven, looked on, her expression closed. I took Raven’s hands, which were folded limply in her lap. I pressed them to my cheek. A thick sludge of guilt bubbled up. I remembered what Morah had told me about her baby, but maybe Morah didn’t understand Raven like I did, how much emotion the older woman had within her, how important it was to hold her three girls close, as she would any children. She made mistakes, but no one could doubt her affection, not when tears were slipping down her face and loneliness aged her face. “I love you so much,” I told her. “You won’t be alone. You have Morah and Annin.”

“They are not you.”

Her words glowed within me. It was selfish, I knew, to be so happy to be her favorite. And it was wrong (I knew this, too), but I couldn’t help thinking that what had happened with Morah could never happen with me. I was Raven’s special girl. When I gazed upon her, I saw the worn face that I loved and the glint of a golden chain at her throat, half hidden by her dress, that reminded me of the moon necklace my mother had worn. Sometimes I would catch a glimpse of Raven’s delicate chain, and I would pretend that if only she untucked the necklace from her dress I would see the crescent-moon pendant dangling from it. I would pretend that she was my mother. Raven had always promised to protect me, to care for me, to make certain I wanted for nothing. “I will be back, Ama,” I said, using the word for mother, “I promise.”

Raven’s hand tightened hard on my chin. She forced my face up so that she could stare into my eyes. It hurt my neck and my jaw ached beneath her thumb, but I said nothing because Raven did this only because she cared so much and was scared to lose me. “You call me Ama, but you don’t mean it. How can you mean it, when you can leave me so easily?”

I heard the scrape of Sid’s boot. “Let go of her,” Sid said. “You are hurting her.”

Raven released me, her blue eyes bright with sadness and anger. “What about our project?” she asked me, with a cautious eye on Sid. My heart sank as Raven carefully chose her words to screen their true meaning from Sid. “Even if you care nothing for me, how can you abandon everyone who depends on you?”

It was true. Without me, Raven wouldn’t dare forge passports. She could trace officials’ signatures, perhaps, but she couldn’t remember the tricks of their various and different handwriting the way that I did, the quirks and squiggles that would occur in the longer textual portions of a passport, the sections that described the bearer’s family, background, and appearance.

“You know as well as I do,” Raven said, “that if you leave, lives will be ruined.”

“Lives will be ruined?” Sid’s voice was cool and incredulous. “Because she leaves the Ward for a month? What do you put in your breads and cakes, Nirrim, that the fate and happiness of so many will hang in the balance without them?”

Raven gave me a hard, warning look. Her hand twitched. I swallowed. “When I return,” I said carefully, “I will bake twice as many.”

“Three times,” Raven said, “to make up for lost time.”

“So you’ll let me leave?”

“I didn’t say that. Leave me? Oh, my girl.” Raven’s tears returned. She wiped them from her cheeks with the hem of her apron. “You are cruel.”

“Nonsense.” Sid’s voice was crisp. “Nothing can be so dire that a baker can’t leave her place of employment for a month without people languishing.”

“You don’t understand,” I told Sid.

Raven gave me a satisfied smile. Her smile warmed me. It made me feel less nervous. I was still capable of winning her approval, even if I was selfish enough to leave her alone with the task of helping the Half Kith who needed to leave the Ward. “Yes,” she told Sid, “you don’t know what it’s like to scrape by. To make do with so little. You don’t know what it is like to have a business to run, how hard I work for my girls. These hands.” She lifted one. It was gnarled and soft. “I work them to the very bone. With my best girl gone, what will I do?”

Sid rolled her eyes.

Her contempt made me angry. Whatever her life had been like, she had been so spoiled. A mother, a father, a trunk of luxurious clothes, a seemingly endless supply of gold. She couldn’t even begin to comprehend Raven’s situation. “Give Raven my earnings,” I told her.