The Midnight Lie (The Midnight Lie #1)(10)

I couldn’t keep this bird.

It wasn’t possible to hide such a secret. Everyone in the tavern would learn, and then it would be only a matter of time before the Ward did, and before people began to wonder whether the death of a soldier on the day the bird flew into the Ward had something to do with me. It would be only a matter of time before the militia learned who had the bird. Then they would come for me, if not for the crime of murder, then for the crime of stealing a High-Kith pet. When the Council could sentence you to years in prison for dressing like a High-Kith lady, what would it do to someone from the Ward who had kept an Elysium?

The bird nosed among the seeds, looking for its favorites, which were slender black ovals.

The only way to keep it, I thought, was to kill it.

If I were to wring its neck, I could sell the feathers. I could see whether the stories about its meat were true. Its hollow bones.

A dead Elysium bird held so much value. It could be parceled out secretly and slowly. That, perhaps, could be kept hidden when a living thing—with its song, its rustlings, its need for food and water, its excretions—could not.

The bird looked at me. Mine, it sang, and I was so startled that my hand sagged and the bird floated up, wings stuttering. But it settled back into my palm.

It would be easy to snap its fragile neck. I had just killed someone. The murder of a bird would be nothing by comparison. And there was so much to gain.

A treasure, Raven would say when I showed her the limp corpse, its feathers as bright as a bouquet. My treasure, she would call me.

Who knew what comforts we could bring into our home through the sale of the birds’ parts?

Who knew how many Half Kith we could save, with extra money to buy what we needed to make passports?

But the bird nestled into my palm, its feathers a warm cloud, its happiness thrumming into my skin. I had never felt or seen anything so beautiful, and it was only then that I realized how starved I had been for beauty. Its liquid green eyes studied me.

A thought came so slowly that it reminded me of Annin building a tower out of playing cards: the precision and care, the light touch, the slight shake of her hand lowering a card into place.

The Elysium closed its eyes and sighed. It grew heavy with sleep.

I could keep the bird, I thought, if I left the Ward. If I forged a passport for myself. If I went beyond the wall, beyond the city.

Fear flooded me. I couldn’t kill the bird. But I also couldn’t leave behind everything I knew.

I slipped the embroidered bread bag from my pocket.

I clamped the sleeping bird’s wings to its body, and thrust it into the sack.



* * *



When I was certain that no one was passing in the alley below, I climbed down a gutter pipe, the jerking, squawking bag swaying from my wrist by its drawstring.

Moonlight painted the street. The alley was a quiet, bright river.

I walked until I spotted a pair of soldiers. Dread pulsed inside me, but I couldn’t keep the bird and I couldn’t kill it. It must be returned. I had to hope that the militia would be so distracted by the Elysium that they wouldn’t think to link me to the soldier’s broken body—which, after all, would surely look like a mere accident, especially with the fallen gutter pipe.

“Here,” I said to the soldiers, holding out the bag. I remembered Helin holding out the apple and asking to be my friend.

One of them, staring, took the jolting bag. “Is that the Elysium?”

The other soldier seized my arm.

“But I’m turning it in.” Panic darted up my throat. “To be brought back to its owner.”

The soldier dragged my other arm behind me.

“It’s unharmed!” I said.

I was arrested anyway.





11


THEY CAN TAKE ANYTHING from you.

You hear stories of surgeries, of how a slice of liver had been taken, or a kidney. Surgeries allowed doctors who worked for the Council to heal the High-Kith sick.

Sirah’s missing eye.

Once I saw a woman whose eyelashes had been clipped to the lids. The lashes, I knew, would be crafted into fake ones for a lady to wear.

The pain of a lopped finger.

Sometimes it seemed that the tithe was not about physical pain or weakness or even shame, but fear. I was afraid that a judge might discover something I hadn’t known I couldn’t lose. Maybe I wouldn’t recognize it as valuable until it was stripped from me.

For resisting arrest (“But I didn’t resist”) and defiance before a judge (“I am not defiant. I was helping”), I was sentenced to a month in prison. For daring to touch High-Kith property, I must pay a tithe of blood, one vial to be drained each day of my prison sentence.

“I was returning the bird,” I said. “The property would have been lost if not for me.”

The judge shifted, his rich red robe rustling. The court was a narrow little room that housed him, the two soldiers who had arrested me, and myself. There was no need for a witness, and although I had always wondered whether a court would be grand, this was a mere room attached to the prison, probably because it was a foregone conclusion that anyone who was arrested would be sentenced.

“Do you think yourself special?” the judge said. “Perhaps you think yourself too good for your kith. Perhaps, indeed, too good for any kith. Would you like to become Un-Kith?”