Page 19 of The House of Quiet

Chapter Fourteen

A River Diverted

River’s pacing in front of the door to the stairs, waiting.

Minnow looks surprised to see her when she finally unlocks the stairway and steps out.

It’s baffling how maids assume no one is ever watching them.

The maids were the same at her house, getting up to more mischief than anyone, all under the guise of being invisible.

She always envied them that. River’s been watched her entire life, but made to know it.

“It’s Nimbus,” River says, even though Minnow didn’t ask anything.

“He started hyperventilating, like something was upsetting him. He was so sad and scared, and there was nothing I could do. I couldn’t help him.

” River angrily wipes away the tears threatening to spill.

It’s not fair, being powerless. She’s seen how Birdie looks at her, how Minnow responds to her.

She knows they think that privilege is the same as power.

But for girls in families like hers, it never is.

“I could really use that walk outside right now. I have to get out of this house.”

“Sorry,” Minnow says. “I have to scrub the bathtubs.”

River narrows her eyes. She and Minnow are the same height, but she tilts her chin up so it gives the impression that she’s looking down on the other girl.

She might not like people from her station in life, but she knows how to be one. “Scrub them until they’re golden ?”

Minnow freezes. River watches as a cascade of emotions flow over the other girl’s face upon hearing her own casual usage of northern slang thrown back at her. But after a heartbeat, Minnow raises a single eyebrow, just as imperious as River. “You’re not using ‘golden’ correctly.”

River cracks. She likes Minnow so much. She knows Minnow is a liar and is vaguely afraid of her, but she can’t help it.

The fact that Minnow’s eyes want to swallow her whole and Minnow’s lips look as soft as a lie-in on cold mornings, well.

River has never claimed to be immune to beautiful girls.

And she’s never met someone like Minnow, who sparked something deep inside her from the moment they first spoke.

“You’ll have to teach me the proper usage, then. On our walk. Outside.”

River stomps ahead of Minnow to make it clear she’ll brook no argument, but steps quietly once they get closer to the kitchen. “If we’re lucky,” she whispers, “we won’t even have to ask permission.”

Sure enough, in the kitchen they’re greeted with snores.

Cook is passed out at the table. Just as River was hoping.

Cook was already hitting a bottle during breakfast. River knows the scents of all the main spirits, thanks to her father and his friends.

Cook’s spirit of choice is both cheap and potent.

“Keys,” Minnow whispers, pointing to Cook’s apron. Apparently Minnow isn’t opposed to going outside after all.

River beams at her, shakes her head, and walks into the pantry. At the far end of the pantry, where it’s too dim to see much of anything, there’s a narrow wall with bare shelves. River reaches beneath one, then another, searching with her fingers.

“Yes!” she hisses as the pantry wall swings open into the dirty cotton fog outside.

Minnow follows her, carefully checking the latch and the other side of the door to make certain they won’t be locked out. Clever girl. “How did you know that door was there?” she asks.

“If you haven’t noticed, there’s absolutely nothing for me to do in this wretched house. I’ve had to make my own entertainment. My first day here, I wanted to steal eggs.”

Minnow frowns. “Why? Weren’t they feeding you yet?”

“They were for hiding in Sky’s room. So they’d rot and make him miserable with the stench. I knew him before. He was bad; now he’s worse. Be careful. Don’t ever be in a room alone withhim.”

“I can handle myself,” Minnow says with such casual confidence that River knows it’s true. Intriguing.

“Anyhow, there I was, lurking, waiting for Cook to go into her bedroom. She stayed in the pantry so long I worried she’d died. When I peeked in to check, though, it was empty. Thus, there had to be a door.”

River walks briskly around the side of the house. The wet, heavy air is cold and refreshing. She doesn’t mind the peat bog scent. It’s better out here where it belongs than trapped and burning inside.

“In your boredom,” Minnow says, hands clasped behind her back, tone absurdly innocent, “have you discovered a second staircase in the house?”

River shakes her head. “I haven’t even made it onto the stairs you use. Not for lack of trying. Why?”

“Birdie says sometimes big houses have secret staircases. It sounded exciting.”

Minnow’s lying. It’s thrilling, not understanding who Minnow is, why she says the things she does, what she’s here for.

Everything about her is diverting and distracting and delicious.

“Mm,” River says with her most dazzling smile, the smile that could fool any leering older man into thinking she believed everything he said.

“An exciting staircase! I’ll let you know if I stumble uponone. ”

“You did already find a secret door,” Minnow points out, and River feels a rush of triumph for having impressed Minnow.

“I did.” River tips her head back and lifts her face, searching for the sun. It’s a doomed attempt. Full light rarely breaks free of the oppressive gray shroud clinging to the earth here. She steps toward the landscape, wanting to take a proper walk for the first time in what feels like forever.

“Careful!” Minnow snaps. “Peat bogs are dangerous. Plants and even trees grow on top of the water. You’ll fall right through what looks like solid ground. Stuck at best, drowned at worst.”

River eyes the ground around them with new suspicion. The house is like her station in life. A beautiful trap. “How can you tell what’s bog and what’s not?”

“With practice. And even then, not always. But judging from the smell, we’re completely surrounded.”

“It’s nice, though, I think. The smell.” River breathes in as deeply as she can. “It’s living, if that makes sense.”

“It’s mostly decay,” Minnow says with a contrary frown.

“Exactly. Life is mostly decay. But with little spots of beauty on the way to the grave making it all worthwhile.” River bends down and plucks a tiny purple flower, twirling it between her fingers.

“Are all rich girls like you?” Minnow asks, exasperated.

“According to my mother, I’m the single worst daughter ever to curse a womb, which I think means I’m exceptional.”

Minnow snorts a laugh, and River feels another rush of triumph. She wants to break through Minnow’s playacting as a maid and get to know the real girl. But Minnow is distracted. She’s stomping on the ground with a frown on her face, then taking a few steps and stomping again.

“New dance?” River asks.

“Someone found the one solid foundation in the middle of this infinite slog and built a house on it.”

“Impossible to get to, impossible to leave. Did they drug you on the way here, too?”

Minnow’s alarmed expression makes it clear they did, but she wasn’t expecting it to have happened to River, too. River knows sleep. She’s an expert at sleeping. And she knows when her sleep isn’t natural.

Minnow changes the subject. “How do you know northern slang?”

River perches on one of the pieces of jutting rock in front of the house. Her slippers are soggy, and the hem of her jewel-green dressing robe is dark with moisture, but she doesn’t mind. “That’s an interesting story. I was in the process of being courted by the minister of defense.”

Minnow tenses. Because she knows him, or because she hates the idea of River being married? River hopes the latter.

“He is,” River says, “a man with all the charm and allure of a particularly aggressive foot fungus.”

Minnow chokes on another laugh.

River continues her story in an airy tone to belie the horror of it all.

“On one of my father’s stays at the minister’s estate, I was dragged along to remind the minister how beautiful and desirably young I am—men like the minister simply abhor a woman with experience or wisdom, as both are too close to power for their tastes.

I was bored. A constant theme in my life.

While exploring, I discovered several northerners. ”

“Don’t you mean boggers?” Minnow asks, an edge to her voice as she uses the slur thrown at northerners. Is the edge because Minnow hates the term, or because she hates northerners? River hopes the former; otherwise she’s disappointed.

“I don’t use that word. Anyhow, they were being held in a hidden outbuilding on the grounds.

I visited whenever I could slip away and talk with them.

But toward the end of my stay, one of the guards died in his sleep.

The prisoners all escaped. I was shocked— shocked!

—to hear of it. A minister of defense who couldn’t even defend his own estate.

I informed my father that I could never marry someone so incompetent at their job. ”

River looks up at the house to hide her feelings. She saw what happened on that estate. Torture. Death. And River, powerless. Until she wasn’t.

“What’s interesting to me, though,” River says, “is Minnow is a southern coastal name. So how do you know northern slang?” She means to push more, but they’ve come around the side of the house to the front at last. River never got a good look at it, drugged as she was.

She freezes in horror.

The house is grand and beautiful, designed to look more like a house of worship than one of healing. The imposing front door, the decorative windows, the towers.

But that’s not what River can’t look away from.

Stone angels stand sentry beneath the top floor, looking not up but down.

Their wings draw closed, as though to shield themselves from what they see.

And in the dead center, guarded by those terrible angels with black water stains weeping from their eyes, there’s an enormous red window.

It’s perfectly round, like the sun seen through a bloody haze.

River knows that window. A pit forms in her stomach, and she’s falling. Into the dread, into the window, into that burning red circle.

Minnow points upward. “Have you been in that room? With the big red window?”

River wipes the cold sweat beading on her forehead.

“I told you I haven’t made it onto the stairs,” she snaps.

She turns and looks out at the blank landscape.

It’s just a window. It’s the same as any other window in the house.

But having it at her back isn’t any better.

She feels like it’s watching her, waiting.

Knowing it’s been above her this whole time makes her sick.

Minnow steps around so she’s blocking River’s line of sight. And so she can watch River’s reaction to whatever she’s going to say next. “What’s your ability?”

River flashes a practiced, coquettish smile.

“Why, Minnow. Haven’t you figured it out yet?

” She takes a step closer. Too close, her face right in front of Minnow’s.

The alarm on the other girl’s face isn’t because River’s closer than she wants her to be.

It’s because River’s exactly as close as Minnow wants her to be.

River smiles and drops her voice to a low whisper. “I can make anyone fall in love with me.”

Minnow leans in, their lips a heartbeat apart. River’s breath catches; she wants this. She wants this more than she’s ever wanted anything.

“Tell me,” Minnow whispers, “why you’re afraid of that window.”

River flinches, then turns and stalks back toward the secret kitchen door.

“Better hurry before Cook wakes up and realizes we’re gone.

” But the truth is, she can’t tell Minnow why she’s so afraid of that window, because she has no idea.

All she knows is that she has to do everything possible to avoid wherever that window is.

If she doesn’t, she’s quite certain she’ll die.