The Midnight Lie (The Midnight Lie #1)(72)

“How do you see me?”

“You’re like those flowers that grow along the walls. The indi flowers. The ones that freeze and come back to life. They dig themselves into any little crack.”

“They’re destructive.”

“Yes. And beautiful.”

I slid my hand from hers. I didn’t like how warm her words made me, and how they felt, again, like bitter comfort, like the wound and the balm at the same time. She was trying to console me after she had rejected me, which was the very thing I had done with Aden the first time I broke things off with him: told him he was handsome, he was resourceful and talented and as good at capturing hearts as he was at catching people’s images on a tin plate. So many girls in the Ward loved him. He just wasn’t right for me.

“Your scar is back.” She lifted a finger to touch my burn, but then didn’t. “Where did you get that? You never said. You didn’t have it when we first met.”

“An accident,” I said. “Let me tell you what I discovered today.”

“I am not the only one who dodges,” she said, but she didn’t press, only listened to what the dressmaker had told me.

“We need to infiltrate the Council,” Sid said.

“You have used your status in so many ways. To get us out of prison. To live here and get invited to High-Kith parties. To get dresses made. Why can’t you be invited into the Keepers Hall?”

She shook her head. “The fact that I’m close to the Herrani queen will, in this case, make them only more unwilling to give me access to a place that might house what seems to be a state secret. And I can’t sneak inside, because I look like one of the very few foreigners who have been to this island. Nor do I have the right documents. Councilmembers have an extra page in their High-Kith passports that has a special Council stamp to show their status.”

“I could sneak in. I look High Herrath.”

“No. I don’t want to risk you. And we’d still have a problem regarding the documents.”

“Well,” I said, “not really.”

She gave me a narrow look. “Would the person who forged your Middling passport be able to get you access to a Council stamp?”

“That person,” I said, “is me.”

“You,” she said.

I explained how I used my skill at memory to forge passports. She stared. “Surprised?” I said.

“Yes, at how blind I’ve been. Why haven’t you told me this before?”

“I didn’t trust you.”

“And now you do?”

I thought about last night. How worried she had been a moment ago that I had left for good. Her flat dismissal of the idea of me sneaking into the Keepers Hall. “I trust that you wouldn’t denounce me to the militia. I trust that you don’t want me to get hurt.”

“I don’t,” she said. “You can’t. It would hurt me if you got hurt.”

“You are kinder than I have sometimes thought you to be.”

“Ah, yes. You did accuse me once of being heartless.” She studied me, then said slowly, “Is your forging … connected at all to Raven? She was entirely too anxious about losing you for a month. There was all that talk about a project you were working on. Was this it? I thought she was just being manipulative. That she was making excuses to control you and keep you by her side.”

“She isn’t manipulative. She was worried about how many people would have to wait for a passport because I was leaving the tavern. You’re right: we work together to give forged passports to people who need them. She has a good heart. She has helped so many people. Aden has, too.”

“Oh.” Her face closed. “Right. Your young man.”

“If you knew how much good Raven does—and Aden, too—you wouldn’t be so cold about them.”

“You might have decided that I’m kind enough to trust with your secret, Nirrim, and I suppose I am, but don’t expect me to warm suddenly toward your handsome young sweetheart.”

“I could forge a document that would let me into the Keepers Hall,” I said, “if I could see a councilmember’s authentic passport.”

“No,” she said flatly, “because then you’ll want to use it.”

“I recall you promising adventure.”

“I don’t want you to endanger yourself.”

“It’s too late for that.”

Sid persuaded me that we didn’t have to go into the hall, necessarily, to learn how the Council made that elixir, but that we could continue to attend parties to collect clues from the High Kith, as I had with the vial that contained the elixir. “And the Council is hosting a parade in two weeks’ time,” she said.

Two weeks. I thought about how short a month is, how little time I had with Sid, how quickly it would run out.



* * *



The parties—at least at first—showed us nothing but excess. A masked ball where, at the stroke of midnight, dancers ate their lovers’ sugar masks while I looked awkwardly on, Sid standing stiffly beside me, her own mask still on her inscrutable face. Probably at least in part to make no matter of how people around us were licking each other’s sugared lips, Sid busied herself as a pickpocket, filching a High-Kith passport from someone’s pocket and slipping it to me. I paged through it quickly, committing each part of it to memory. Sid then returned the booklet to its owner, who thought he had dropped it, with a slight bow. Later, at her house, I carved a block of wood to re-create a High-Kith stamp, taking care that it would make the exact impression on paper as the stamp I had seen. Sid brought me dyes and scraps of leather. I cut the heliograph from my Middling passport and set it into my new High-Kith one. I didn’t have the right stamp that would let me into the Keepers Hall, but having a High-Kith passport was a start.