Page 15 of The House of Quiet

Chapter Eleven

A Bird Observed

Birdie wakes up slowly. Something is different, but she can’t quite tell what. The maid next to her is breathing in a deep, even rhythm, no other sounds disturbing the night.

The maid next to her. She’s in the House of Quiet, and she sleeps alone here. Birdie freezes and cracks one eye open.

The House Wife looks down at her with a peaceful smile. Birdie sits up, heart racing. How long has the woman been standing there? What is she doing in here?

“Do you need help?” Birdie asks.

The House Wife’s smile doesn’t shift. It’s less an expression of happiness and more one of vacancy. Like Nimbus’s mother once her sleepy tea started taking hold. She wasn’t present enough to be truly happy.

“It’s quiet up here now,” the House Wife says.

Birdie waits, but nothing is added. The House Wife just stands there, breathing, for so long Birdie wonders if maybe she didn’t really wake up. Maybe this is still a dream. And she very much wants to wake up from it.

At last, the House Wife tilts her head to the side. “Shhh,” she cautions, though Birdie hasn’t said a word since her question. And then, with a sigh, the House Wife nods. “She needs me.” With a whisper of her skirts, she slips out of Birdie’s room and into the hallway.

Is Birdie supposed to follow? How long was the House Wife in here, watching her? And is this the first time, or does she come up every night? It must have been her in the hallway, that first night.

Birdie envies the residents downstairs in their locked rooms. They might not be able to get out, but at least no one else can get in without making noise.

Birdie climbs out of bed. Either the House Wife is expecting her to follow, in which case Birdie will at last have time with her, or the House Wife isn’t, in which case Birdie can snoop with a perfect excuse of already having been awoken.

Though she would dearly love to sleep more.

Last night she and Minnow staggered to bed late, having stayed up to finish the deep cleaning of the bathrooms and kitchen that would make maintenance easier.

Minnow isn’t actually a maid—Birdie’s sure of that—but at least the girl knows how to work hard.

Unlike Rabbit, who was half-asleep through dinner and then stumbled right up to bed.

Rabbit’s going to get in trouble, and Birdie’s worried it’ll reflect on her, too. But hopefully Birdie will be the House Wife’s assistant today. She can’t imagine Rabbit was all that effective cleaning whatever’s behind that locked door.

Speaking of locked doors. Does Birdie dare risk it?

She knows she should rush down to make certain the House Wife isn’t expecting her to follow.

But this is too good an opportunity to pass up.

And surely the House Wife will expect her to take a few minutes to get dressed, not knowing Birdie can get dressed in mere seconds.

Birdie picks one of the doors at random, halfway between her room and the stairs.

She crouches in front of it and pulls the simple tools out of the side of her worn leather boot.

Lock picking is easy with enough practice; she used to work on her friend’s door every night, while she told stories and they sat on the other side, silently listening.

Whenever she got it unlocked, though, her friend would slip another drawing under the door.

Always a bottle of poison. A warning that if Birdie broke the unspoken house rule that no one could go into that mysterious room on the third floor, she wouldn’t survive.

And she had to survive, for Magpie. So Birdie stayed on one side, and her only friend in the world stayed on the other.

But they kept each other company in their isolation, and she got very, very good at picking locks.

This one isn’t difficult. With a few deft twists, it clicks open.

Birdie pushes the door, heart hammering.

But inside is disappointing. Illuminated by the wan moonlight creeping in through a window too narrow to climb out of, there’s a cot, not much different than hers.

The thin mattress is slightly off-center, like someone stripped it quickly and never came back. Nothing else.

Birdie closes the door, disappointed but not surprised. This isn’t where she’s going to find information about where Magpie went.

But…something nags at her. The bedroom isn’t at all like her maid’s quarters. She pushes the door open once more. It’s an empty bedroom. Empty, but bad . Bad in a way that makes her want to step back into the hall and not look closer. Magpie isn’t in here, so Birdie doesn’t need to know.

She steps inside anyway.

There, scratches where someone would have lain in the bed and dragged their fingers down the wall, over and over. There, metal loops on the bed frame for chains to be run through. Maybe it’s just this room, though.

Birdie closes the door and opens the next one. This tiny bedroom— cell , Birdie’s mind whispers to her—has a poem gouged into the wall next to the bed, the only place someone chained to the frame could reach.

I pray for death

Before I wake

That way there’s naught

For them to take

Birdie’s hands tremble with horror. This was a hospital.

A place of healing. Her tools clink to the floor and she crouches to retrieve them, grateful to look away from that terrible poem.

One of the picks has rolled beneath the bed.

Birdie’s fingers feel marks on the floorboards.

Someone’s written down here, too. The metal bed frame’s legs shriek in protest as she moves them, and Birdie freezes, holding her breath and waiting.

It’s so dark she has to press her face almost into the wood to see what’s written. There’s a date. More than a year ago, so before Magpie would have come here. Beneath it, a list. Fox, Badger, Turtle. But then Birdie frowns. Because the next names are Stone, Hammer, Obsidian, Silver .

Those are northern names. The list goes on and on, more northern names than anything else.

They don’t have the procedure in the north. They’d never risk giving it to such a rebellious and violent group. So these can’t be the names of children staying in the house for treatment—can they?

Between the northern names and the wealthy children downstairs, Birdie’s beginning to wonder if anything she knew about the house and the procedure is correct.

“Magpie,” she whispers firmly as a reminder to herself of the only thing that matters.

She closes the door without bothering to relock it.

No one is using these rooms anyway. Maybe they haven’t been used in ages.

Or maybe this was briefly used as a detainment space for northern rebels.

They hear rumors of them in Sootcity. The occasional explosion, a robbery, a boat of coal sunk so no one can benefit from it. Mindless destruction.

It’s not her concern. Birdie tiptoes down the stairs and hurries into the central hallway that runs from the foyer to the House Wife’s room.

She expects that door to be left open, a light burning beyond it.

But the only lights are the dim gas lamps on the wall, barely flickering from when Birdie and Minnow turned them down before going to bed.

Just in case, Birdie tries the House Wife’s door. Locked. And she knows better than to pick a lock if she’s not certain the room beyond is empty.

Maybe she should have just gone back to sleep. Now she’s downstairs, cold and hungry and frustrated. And haunted by what she saw in that room. She can’t help whoever wrote those things, but it’s not her job to, anyway.

Judging by the marginally softer quality of darkness coming from the greenhouse, it’ll be dawn in an hour anyway.

Birdie steps into the kitchen. Cook startles, dropping several buns.

She eyes them grouchily, then wipes them with her apron.

Birdie doesn’t bat an eye—why waste good food?

—but it’s clear Cook isn’t used to serving in a big house.

Something like that would guarantee she’d never work again.

Another inconsistency. The grand rooms paired with a cook who has none of the skills required for someone catering to that level of wealth and privilege.

Birdie wants to ask who used to stay in the bedrooms down here and who stayed in the ones upstairs.

Why did the House Wife say they used to be noisy?

That detail hits Birdie in a different way now that she’s seen what was behind the locked doors.

Were those children screaming? Crying? Begging for help?

Maybe they got the help they were begging for. Maybe they were so upset by their overwhelming abilities that they were in constant agony. Maybe they were locked up for their own protection, until they could be treated.

Maybe, maybe.

You’re always trying to maybe the world into a kinder place , her mother had once said to her on a cold morning in the sleeting rain.

A carriage had passed by and splashed them rather than offering to let them hop on.

Birdie had consoled herself by listing reasons why it wasn’t cruel.

Maybe the person inside was sick and being rushed to the doctor.

Maybe the driver didn’t see them. Maybe it was a minister inside on a very important mission for the good of the country.

There are no maybes. The world isn’t kind.

Birdie knows it isn’t. If the world were kind, families like hers wouldn’t have to save for the procedure, since the government claimed rights to all abilities anyway.

If the world were kind, she wouldn’t have had to go to work at ten years old and could have been with Magpie on the day she went into that terrible building.

If the world were kind, she wouldn’t have had to lie and cheat in order to have any hope of finding her sister again.

If the world were kind, rooms like the ones she saw upstairs wouldn’t exist.

There’s no point in wondering about maybes. Birdie needs to put her head down and work. “Would you like me to unlock the doors while you prepare breakfast?” she asks.

Cook’s hand immediately goes to the front right pocket of her apron. “No.”

At least Birdie knows where the keys are now. Too bad she learned to pick locks, not pockets.

“Why did the previous maids leave?” Birdie asks, thinking of Minnow’s suggestion that they fled rather than risk infection.

A look of frustration mingled with—pain?—flickers across Cook’s face before she turns away. “Maid. Only one. She knew how to mind her own business; you’d do well to follow her example. Also, there’s no need for you to come down before the sun. There’s nothing for you to do this early.”

Birdie shrugs, pretending she doesn’t care about what happened to the maid before her.

“Didn’t get the floors yesterday. I’ll start now.

” She reaches for one of the dropped buns but hesitates, asking silent permission.

Cook gives her a gruff nod, and Birdie shoves it in her mouth before going back out to the hallway to retrieve her supplies from the linen closet she tucked them into.

She pauses, staring at the locked door to the House Wife’s room. Is she in there, or is she looming over some other sleeping person?

“I have a question,” Minnow says.

Birdie startles, practically leaping in the air. She puts a hand over her racing heart. “Where did you come from?”

“The coast,” Minnow says with that same flat affect.

“No, I mean, right now. Never mind. What is your question?”

Minnow’s enormous round eyes drift casually around them. “In big houses, are there usually more than one set of stairs? I worked in a much smaller house before.”

No, you didn’t , Birdie thinks. Why is Minnow lying? Why not tell the truth that she’s never been a maid before, like Rabbit? Is she embarrassed, or is there another reason?

Birdie answers the question. “Yes. A grand one for the owners, and hidden ones for the servants.”

“And the stairs we use here? Those are the servant stairs? That’s why we have to keep them locked?”

Birdie frowns, not paying much attention to the conversation. Her eyes are glued to the House Wife’s door. She’s getting through it at some point today, but it’s agony waiting in the meantime.

“They’re much wider than most servant stairs,” Birdie says. “But it’s not the same as a manor. This isn’t a real residence.”

“What do you mean?”

“No storage. The bedrooms don’t have closets. They aren’t meant for long stays. Don’t forget the seams of the foyer chairs when you clean them; dust can gather there.”

Birdie’s hoping that their strange encounter earlier will lead to the House Wife choosing her today.

But Birdie can’t leave anything to chance.

The surest option is to go up and make sure Rabbit doesn’t appear at breakfast. Birdie can lock a door as easily as she can unlock it.

No one would hear Rabbit’s cries for help, and Birdie could rescue her at lunch after she’d claimed her place working in the House Wife’s room.

Given the layout, that door leads to the entire back end of the house.

It must be where they treat the afflicted.

Which will also be where they keep their records.

After all, this is an official part of the Ministry of Health and Progress, and they keep records on everything.

Even though Birdie knows guaranteeing Rabbit won’t be available is the best idea, she feels sick just imagining doing that to another maid. Maids protect each other. They step in to cover when someone needs help, because they all know what it costs to lose a position.

She’s not like her mother. She knows most of the world isn’t kind, but she also knows kindness is a choice. It’s one she always tries to make. But can she afford to make it here?