The Midnight Lie (The Midnight Lie #1)(83)

“I don’t want any.”

“More for me, then.” She poured herself another cup. “Why don’t you lie down in your bedroom, dear? The sheets have been laundered with that soap you like, and I’ll have the maid bring you a cup of cold, honeyed milk. You’ll have a nice rest, and when you wake we will plan our future together.”

“My room,” I said.

“There you go again, repeating things like one of those pea-brained ithya birds. Yes, your room. Nirrim, I always planned to bring you here one day. You are my best girl.”

“Why should I believe you? You have done nothing but lie.”

Her smile was small, hard, appraising. She set aside her cup. “That is the question of someone grown. Not a child anymore, are you? Follow me, and you will see what I’ve done for you.” She took my hand. Hers blazed with heat. Mine must have felt like a block of ice as she led me upstairs and unlocked a door with a porcelain handle painted blue, in a pattern of one of my printed breads. She pushed open the door.

The bed was sweetly made, the counterpane embroidered with sprays of roses, a flower I had never seen before I left the Ward. The wardrobe, when I opened it, was full of dresses tailored to my size, the cotton soft. A beveled mirror set inside the wardrobe door showed my pale face. There were sandals, the leather stiffly new.

“And see.” Raven opened a jewelry box that sat on the vanity. Inside was a necklace of seed pearls. She lifted the strand of tiny beads from the box and strung them around my wooden neck. The pearls were luminous drops of moonlight, but all I could think of was the tortoises I had skinned for their nacreous shells, their thick bodies trying to blunder out of my grasp.

“There,” Raven said, satisfied. “And we shall have better than that, when we come up in the world.”

I touched the cool little beads. Pansies nodded at me from the green window box. This room was all I could have wanted. It was a room not for a servant, but for a daughter.

“Nirrim, I understand that you are surprised, but my generosity warrants some thanks, I think.”

“What about Morah and Annin? Do they have rooms here?”

“That’s hardly necessary, is it?”

“So you want me to live here with you.”

“Of course, my girl.”

“Without them.”

“Someone must manage the tavern.” She saw my face and leaned forward to clasp my hands. “You have always known that you were my favorite. Look at everything I have built for us. Imagine everything we can do together. Why do you think I allowed you to go to the High quarter with that imperious foreigner? Because I trusted my clever Nirrim. I knew you would gain access to a High-Kith passport and forge one perfectly, and you have, haven’t you? If I turned such a tidy profit on Middling passports, just think what I could get for selling High passports to Middlings. And you’ll forge one for me, of course.”

I understood, then, why she had had Aden make a heliograph for her, the one I lost the night I was arrested. She continued, “Eventually, we will move to the High quarter. We shall live like queens!”

“No,” I said.

Her nails dug into my hand. “I’m sure I didn’t hear you. Speak again, Nirrim, with the respect due to your loving ama.”

“No. I won’t forge any more passports for you. You don’t care about me any more than you do about Morah and Annin. I’m just more useful to you.” Her nails drew blood. I tugged my hand away.

“You have me all figured out, do you?” she said. “Then tell me, girl. If you won’t forge for me, what good are you? I’ll denounce you to the militia. It will break my poor old heart, but your selfish ways force me to do it. You are a criminal. It was your hand that forged those documents. Do you think the Council will be pleased to learn that someone has disrupted the most important law that governs this country, the strict lines that keep our kiths in place? The Council will relish your punishment. They will torture you until you show them exactly what I will tell them you can do: copy perfectly. They will break every bone but the ones in your hand so that you can show them how you sign their names with the exact flourish. They will cut out your tongue yet leave your eyes so that you may see the stamps you will need to copy. They will discover my truths in your performed skills, and they will tithe you until you are whittled down to the bone, dear one, and you will weep at your lost chance to be with me.”

“You won’t do that.”

She smiled. “Will I not? We know each other quite well, after these many years. One way or the other, I always win, and you always lose.”

“There is nothing you can accuse me of that doesn’t also implicate you. I will drag you down with me.”

She waved an annoyed hand. “You have no proof.”

“I will tell the militia about your heliograph.”

She lost her smile. “What heliograph?”

“The one still in the lapel of the coat taken from me in prison.” I was bluffing—I had no solid knowledge of where the original heliograph was, but I remembered how anxious she had been about its loss.

“You found it in the cistern. You gave it back to me.”

“I gave you a different heliograph, which, if you look closely, will show that you weren’t wearing the same beaded earrings you wore on the day you requested the one that was lost from Aden. Once the militia finds the original heliograph in the coat, it will be proof that you sought a passport even if it’s no proof you were involved in forging them. You’ll be punished.”