The Midnight Lie (The Midnight Lie #1)(59)

“Me?”

“I always want to know what you are thinking. What do you think”—she swept her hand at the agora—“of this?”

My heart felt hot and hard with resentment. “I think it must have cost a fortune. I think it’s not fair that the High Kith should have so much beauty when we get so little.”

“Sounds revolutionary of you, Nirrim.”

“The tiles made in the Ward are pretty but … ordinary. They don’t glow. I think someone is purchasing things cheaply from the Ward and … improving them somehow.”

“An interesting idea. Worth investigating. But your thoughts are very different from mine. I am thinking that shade of green light suits you, but I prefer your beauty without it.”

“You are not really thinking that.”

“I am.”

If someone stole her voice, she would still find a way to flirt, even silently, with whomever was nearest.

“I suppose I can’t be believed even when I’m telling the truth,” Sid said. “It’s the liar’s curse.”

As much as she claimed she was a liar, I could not recall, now that I thought about it, an actual lie she had told—which meant she never had, at least not to me … or she had lied, and I didn’t know it yet.

We left the colored lights of the agora, which narrowed to a path carpeted with pink and white petals. Tree branches laden with flowers arched overhead. As we walked, buds opened and bloomed in soft bursts, petals cascading down onto us, floating onto Sid’s shoulders, catching in my hair. The branches instantly grew tight new buds. They, too, flowered open and shed their petals. My sandaled feet sank into the petals up to my ankles. Their fragrance wafted up. More petals came down like snow. “Why,” I asked, “would I fascinate you?”

“I want to know,” Sid said, “how someone who has so little can be so brave.”

I thought about how much I liked the way she walked, her hands in her pockets yet never slouching, her shoulders straight. I thought about how I had liked her leg tangled between mine. Her light weight on me. I thought about how terrified I was of ever admitting any of this. “I am not brave.”

“And yet you are here, with me—and with a forged Middling passport. Don’t think I didn’t notice. Where did you get that?”

She smiled at my silence.

It occurred to me that it was a special person, a gentle one, who allowed another to keep her secrets.

Or it was the sort of person who had secrets of her own.



* * *



Most of the homes in the High quarter looked like miniature palaces separated by swathes of lawn and low marble walls. But Sid led me to a hilltop square with an elegant yet skinny house much smaller than the rest. The eaves dripped with decorative trim that looked as fragile as icicles. Roseate windows had stained glass and the balconies had been wrought with gleaming green metal that curled like a living thing, with finials spiraling into themselves like new-sprung fiddlehead ferns I had seen in one of Harvers’s botanical books. Twilight was gathering on the rooftop. Duskwings called, each with a different song. I instantly remembered each one’s call, and as they swooped through the silky pink sky, the pattern of where each one was rearranged itself in my mind, their map of song constantly shifting.

Sid unlocked the door. “There are not many homes for rent, but this one suits my stature well enough. Plus, I like the view.”

“What exactly is your stature?”

She pushed open the door. “Well, I’m not the most important person in Herran. Merely the most charming.”

The inside of the house was dark and silent and smelled of roses. “Where are the servants?” I asked.

“There are no servants.”

“Only me?” my voice squeaked. “You expect me to take care of an entire house on my own?”

“Nirrim, no.” My eyes had adjusted to the darkness, and I could see from the fading light coming in from the windows that Sid was insulted. “You are not my servant. You are my partner.”

“But”—I sputtered—“who will clean?”

“Me.”

“Who cooks for you?”

“I do.”

“I am confused,” I said. “Everyone thinks you’re a high-bred lady. What exactly are you?”

She shrugged. “Someone who likes to be self-sufficient.”

“But you hired me.”

“Oh.” She waved her long hand. “All that business about paying for your services was just to get you out of that awful woman’s clutches.”

“She is not awful.”

“You are too kind and too loyal to see it.”

“She is the only one who has ever taken care of me.”

Sid paused at that, and more quietly said, “I’m sorry. Maybe I’m wrong.” She beckoned me toward the stairs. “Before the light fades.”

She lit no lamps along the way, so the home was nothing but heaps of shadows around us. The stairs were soundless beneath my feet. I had never walked up stairs that didn’t creak. At the top of the landing, she opened a door to a little bedroom that smelled like her—like her dusky perfume, her skin. And brine. The glass-paneled doors to the balcony were full of pink sky. Sid opened the balcony, and the scent of the sea rushed in.