The Midnight Lie (The Midnight Lie #1)(63)

She roughed up her hair. “I think this conversation makes me uncomfortable.”

“I want to know what you think I should do.”

“High clothes would be the safest choice for you. That doesn’t mean it is the best one.”

“I want to feel safe tonight.”

She slid a card from a trouser pocket and passed it to me. The front showed a symbol I had already seen her display: the face of a man with closed eyes and a mark on his brow. The back of the card had a map drawn in Sid’s hand. “If you go to the dressmaker’s shop marked on that little map, Madame Mere will see to it that you’re taken care of. Get whatever you like. This won’t be the last function we attend, so you will need an entire wardrobe. While you are choosing what you want, I’ll see if I can enter the Keepers Hall and find out why one of their members might be night gardening.”

I gave the card back to her.

“But you need this,” she said.

“I remember the map.”

“You’ll need this insignia.” She placed a finger on the sleeping face. “So the dressmaker can be assured I will cover any costs.”

“What is that image, exactly?”

Sid shifted uncomfortably. She glanced again at the sea. The harbor was in sight, its ships a cluster of toothpick masts and tiny scraps of sails. “I took the card from the queen of Herran.”

“You stole it?”

“Sort of.”

“Sid, are you looking at the harbor for your ship?”

“Maybe.”

“Are you planning on running up high bills on a false line of credit associated with your country’s queen and then setting sail as soon as the truth catches up with you?”

“No! I just like to look at my ship. I like to know that it’s there. My crew better be, too, or there’ll be hell to pay.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“Oh, they would pay, trust me.”

Exasperated at her deliberate misinterpretation of my words, I said, “Did you steal this house?”

“I am a thief only of hearts.”

“We agreed. We agreed about the bragging.”

“That wasn’t bragging. That was true.”

I took the yellow pot and poured all of its coffee out over the balcony.

“That was cruel, Nirrim.”

“Answer at least some of my questions.”

“Listen.” She turned serious. “I always pay my debts. I have plenty of money. My family is swimming in it. That card … gets me some necessary respect. Should I have the card? Debatable. Should I use it? Definitely not, and doing so will definitely catch up with me. But money isn’t enough here. You know that. Class matters. Gold isn’t going to get us into that party tonight. Prestige will. My association with the queen will.”

“You said you work for her.”

“Worked.”

“What did you do?”

“If I tell you, will you trust me, and stop thinking that I’m a horrible person out to cheat people of their honest work?”

“How will I know you’re telling the truth?”

“You will have to trust me.”

“You are asking me to trust you in order to trust you.”

“I am asking you to trust yourself. To believe in your instincts. Do you think I am a horrible person?”

I looked at Sid: her skin was amber in the sunlight, her few freckles stark, her eyes worried in a way I had never seen before. It meant something to her, I realized: what I thought of her. I looked at the breakfast, at all the sweet things she hadn’t touched, which she had cooked or fetched while I was sleeping, and which must have been for me alone. “No,” I said. “I think you have a good heart.”

“Well, we don’t have to go that far.”

“Tell me what you did for her,” I said, “and I’ll believe you. For now.”

“I thought I wanted you to trust me, but I confess that now I am enchanted by this new, suspicious side of you. It makes me feel like I had better live up to your expectations of me or I will be in really big trouble.”

“Sid.”

“Nirrim, I was her spy.”

I stared.

“Why is that so surprising?” she said. “Kings and queens have spies. It is common knowledge. How else does one run a country?”

“I don’t think spies admit they are spies.”

“Ex-spy.”

“I don’t think spies reveal the identity of their spymasters.”

“Well, really, who else would it be? The king is too noble. The queen, however, is perfectly willing to get her hands dirty. Everyone knows she is the mastermind of the monarchy. It’s an open secret. Really, the queen wants her people and foreign dignitaries to know exactly what she is. It makes them wary of her.”

“You told me you ran her errands.”

“Which in a way is very true. And it so happened that on one of those errands, I heard rumors about a magical island. I decided to do a bit of research in the archives. I found accounts dating back hundreds of years that described this region of the sea as notorious for the disappearance of ships. It seemed worth investigating.”

“So you sailed to an area known for shipwrecks.”