The Midnight Lie (The Midnight Lie #1)(56)

“All right, all right,” I said.

“Took your sweet time,” she said.

“Let’s go.”

“And was it? Sweet, that is?” She flicked a lock of hair away from my neck and saw a mark that Aden’s kisses had left. “Ah, I see it was.”

I batted away her hand.

“Ooh, touchy,” she said. She looked me over, noting the knapsack I carried. “That’s it?”

“Not all of us need an entire wardrobe of women’s and men’s clothes.”

“May I peek?” She reached for the knapsack.

“No.” I pulled it out of reach.

“What’s in there?”

Two dresses. A set of tools for forging. Sid’s letter written in her language. And a little packet of poison.

“You don’t want to say?” Sid said. “Keep your secrets then, dear Nirrim.” She closed the pocket watch with a quick clasp of one hand, but not before I glimpsed that the watch’s face looked bizarre, containing no numbers, but rather words. Though she closed the watch too quickly for me to read the words in that very moment, I could see the watch’s face in my mind, and realized with wonder—and then, quickly, extreme embarrassment—that she had not lied in the prison. There was a watch that could read someone else’s heart. Words for different emotions ringed the dial. The word that had glowed as the watch’s hand pointed to me was desire.

“He must be very special to you,” Sid said, and I didn’t know how to correct her mistake without telling her the truth.

What if she guessed that what I felt for her grew stronger every day? That my desire was for her, not Aden?

She might laugh at me, like she did at everything else.

I strode ahead of her toward the gate. She tagged along at my heels, strolling with deliberate ease.

“Do you know the way?” she asked.

“To the gate right in front of our faces? Yes, I think so.” I reached into my dress pocket for my passport.

“Hmm,” she said. “Well, the gate would work, if you wanted to go to the Middling quarter.”

I stopped midstride. “Don’t you have to go through the Middling quarter to reach the High quarter?”

“Some people do.”

“And other people?”

“Other people—let us say, very important people—get to take the shortcut. Why don’t you let me go through the gate first?”

I swept an exaggerated hand in front of me to indicate that she should go ahead. When she did, she approached the guard and showed him a tiny gold key on the palm of her hand. He barely even glanced at my passport after that, but stepped aside and gestured at the blank stone wall behind him, the thick spine of the wall. As I watched in wonder, a glowing outline of a door appeared. The stone door slid aside, revealing a tunnel.

The wall, which looked so thick on the outside, was hollow inside.

The gate to the Middling quarter disguised another gate. There was the gate through the wall, and then the gate into the wall.

Sid looked over her shoulder at me and grinned.

“You’re going to have to stop that,” I said.

She made innocent eyes. “Stop what?”

“Being so smug.”

“Why would I,” she said, “when you love it?”

She disappeared into the tunnel, and I followed.





33


THOUGH AT FIRST THE TUNNEL appeared almost entirely dark, a greenish-blue fluid ahead of us glowed from the tunnel’s floor, flowing like lovely sewage into the darkness.

“You have to walk through the river,” Sid said. “Are you squeamish? Easily frightened? Maybe you should hold my hand.”

I gave her a flat look and unstrapped my sandals, carrying them as I stepped toward the little river and then, defiantly, without testing it with a tentative toe, stepped right into the luminous sludge.

I nearly fell. As soon as my feet sank into the water—if it was water—cool pleasure traveled up my calves, creeping up under my dress. I heard Sid’s laugh but didn’t see her, because the river was already carrying me forward, though I took no further steps. Its current pulled me, the strong tide flowing around my ankles as thick as velvet.

“Do you like it?” I heard Sid beside me as the river carried us through the darkness. The liquid caressed my feet, tickling my toes. It smelled floral, though not like any flower I knew. “Don’t drink the water,” she said. “Some people do, and wander through the tunnel for days, drunk and giddy and singing.”

I couldn’t see Sid, but my hip brushed her side. I felt a warmth that had nothing to do with the river. I asked, “Have you tasted it?”

“Of course.”

The tunnel slid past. The current grew stronger. Her fingers curled into mine. “I don’t want to get separated,” she said. The river grew loud with its rushing. I nearly lost my footing. I held more tightly on to Sid.

“Here,” she said, and pulled me toward a door whose outline glowed up ahead on the right. She wrenched it open and spilled us into sunshine.

Then I did fall, blinded by the sudden brightness. Sid came down with me, her limbs tangled with mine, the weight of her on me, the hilt of her hidden dagger jabbing into my side. She slid to my side onto the grassy lawn beneath us, one leg still trapped between the sodden skirts of my dress, laughing, lying back on the lawn, her eyes closed against the sunlight but her face tilted up toward it, luxuriating in the light.