Page 58 of The House of Quiet
Chapter Fifty
An Arrow Aimed
Arrow is midhop on her way to make sure Birdie is okay when an iron poker comes clanging down the spiral staircase. It’s nearly inaudible over whoever is screaming down the hall.
Arrow shifts toward the stairs, scalpel in hand. Cook and the driver are coming down. Behind them is the House Wife. They stop as soon as they see Arrow.
Cook holds up her hands, leaning against the stair railing. “Please. Let me explain.”
A single scalpel isn’t much against three grown adults, but most people are afraid of pain or injury. It’s an advantage for Arrow. She doesn’t like pain or injury, but she knows what’s survivable. And so far she’s surviving.
“Stay there. Don’t come down any farther,” Arrow commands.
Cook obeys, sitting on a step seven or eight up.
The driver stays standing behind her, and the House Wife crouches above him, looking longingly through the railing down the tunnel.
The screaming lessens, but it turns into something even more upsetting.
Like someone wordlessly pleading for their life.
“They don’t eat,” Cook says, her voice raised so it carries enough to be heard. “They don’t drink. They don’t sleep. They need this, or they die.”
“What is this ?” Arrow asks.
“The noise,” the House Wife says, her tone anguished like she, too, is in pain.
“Our Mouse,” Cook says, gesturing upward toward the House Wife, “is the same as the girl in there. Their ability almost never happens. That’s part of why they do the procedure on so many bog—” She catches herself and corrects.
“Children from the north. It’s a numbers game.
Every once in a great while, the procedure produces a gaping void in a mind.
The void echoes. It’s painful . They’re in pain all the time, but it’s worse around anyone with an ability. Mouse says they’re too noisy.”
“So noisy,” the House Wife sighs.
“People like our Mouse can pull energy right out of those noisy minds. Burn it out of them. It’s like the peat.
Dredged up, dried out, all that life puffing into smoke.
They need a place to put the noise, though.
They don’t want to hold on to it, just quiet it.
It’s an instinct. They can’t help it.” She looks up at her daughter, her own pain and longing written all over her expression.
“When someone like Mouse happens after the procedure, they’re sent here to become the heart of the house. ”
“So she’s the heart?” Arrow juts her chin toward the House Wife.
“She was.”
“It wears them down,” the driver says, his voice flat and emotionless. “All that pain, all that energy coming in and going out. After a while they aren’t good at the taking. But they can still hold it. So the heart gives it to Mouse, and she transfers it.”
Arrow goes cold. “Transfers it where?” But she doesn’t need to know.
She’s already heard the answer. That night the minister came with Sky’s father.
They’ve both visited the house, both benefited from it.
Those disgusting paintings along the hallways were a clue all along.
Old men standing on top of youth, improving as they get closer to the House Wife’s room.
They’re literally stealing life. Burning children like peat to warm their own blood.
“They transfer it to whoever can pay.” Cook doesn’t sound happy about this part, at least. “A burst of vitality. A sense of recaptured youth. It doesn’t last, but they come back again and again and again.”
Arrow feels sick. “You didn’t just come for our forests and our mines. You were stealing the north’s most precious resource so that, what, a few rich old men could have a little spring in their step?”
“It didn’t start that way,” Cook whispers. “It started as a way to help the children who couldn’t cope with their abilities.”
“But someone still benefited,” Arrow snaps.
“They charge poor families for the procedure even though the abilities mean the government then owns their children and can assign them to whatever job they choose. Then they charge wealthy people to visit the House of Quiet to benefit from suffering. And when that wasn’t enough, they started stealing from the north to fuel even more. ”
“We didn’t do this,” the driver insists.
“ You didn’t stop it ,” Arrow says.
She turns her back on them and limps toward Birdie. She doesn’t care about Cook and her husband and the House Wife. They don’t deserve so much as her rage. If Arrow has her way, she’ll forget they exist.
As she steadies herself against the damp rock wall, she tries to think about what to do next.
But she doesn’t need to think. Not really.
She already knows what has to be done. Cook said this ability is rare.
Rarer than rare. All those children from the south and the north, and they have only two.
The House Wife, and the new heart. The House Wife is all used up, which leavesthe otherone.
Take her out of the picture, and the House of Quiet falls.
There would be no reason to steal northern children to funnel through it.
It doesn’t solve everything, but at least it solves that.
And wouldn’t it be a mercy of sorts? The House Wife isn’t even a person anymore.
That’s not a life. That’s not a future for this heart.
She came to this house to kill someone in order to help her people. Even if Iron was lying the whole time, Arrow realizes that’s still her purpose. She won’t hesitate this time.
She peers inside the room. On a table in the center is a yearning, straining creature, barely human anymore. Birdie looks up at Arrow, tears streaming down her face. A face that is too similar to the one on the table.
Birdie found her sister.
“Did you hear what Cook said?” Arrow asks.
“I heard enough,” Birdie whispers.
“Magpie can’t live without it,” Hawthorn says, his voice cold. “She’ll die unless she can siphon off the noise.”
He’s on the other side of the room, keeping Magpie between himself and the two girls.
Next to him on the floor is a girl, twelve or thirteen.
Empty. Dead, just like Rabbit. That’s what Beetle was delivering the night they were all drugged.
Not just wood for burning, but a child for consuming.
That’s why there was a break after Sky’s treatments.
The house had something else to gnaw on.
Someone they didn’t have to be careful with.
Hawthorn shifts, wincing with pain, then clears his throat and speaks in his best tutor voice. “We find ourselves with aligned interests. Birdie wants to take care of her sister, and I want to restructure power in this country. I can do it in a way that protects your people, Arrow.”
Arrow ignores him. Magpie strains, bucking against the leather straps. She’s trying desperately to touch her sister. They all know what will happen if she does.
“That’s not Magpie,” Birdie whispers. “Not really.”
“We can take better care of her than they did,” Hawthorn insists. “It’ll be a kindness, even. We’ll go back to offering this as a treatment to make life easier for those with unbearable abilities. Like your friends upstairs. None of them wanted what was done to them.”
Arrow gives him an incredulous look. “That’s a strange way to say ‘ what we did to them .’?”
He scowls. “I didn’t perform the procedure on any of them. That was the doctor.”
“You tried to kill Birdie.”
“Yes, well, that was a misunderstanding! Which we can all move beyond, because now we have more information. Besides, what other choice do we have? Denying Magpie the energy she needs will kill her, and—”
“Don’t say her name,” Birdie snaps. “You don’t get to say her name.” She hasn’t looked away from Arrow. There’s something resigned and pleading in her expression. “I can’t do it. Please. I can’t do it.” Her eyes go down to the scalpel still grasped in Arrow’s hand.
Arrow doesn’t want to. It’s wrong, but it’s the only choice. At least Arrow knows exactly where to cut. The most painless target on the human body.
Target.
Choose a different target , Lake said.
Choose a different target.
Lake’s right. This broken, tormented girl isn’t the problem.
The House of Quiet isn’t even the problem.
The whole system is. If Magpie’s gone, if the house is gone, even if the procedure itself is gone, the same men who grew rich and powerful off both will still be rich and powerful.
They’ll find another way to grind people up and profit off the remains.
Arrows fly straight and true once loosed, so be careful where you aim.
That’s why her mother didn’t want her to join the termites, where she’d be aimed by other people.
It’s time for Arrow to make her own decisions.
And she knows what the first one will be.
It’s the decision her mother made time and again.
Save those you can.
Arrow shakes her head. “We don’t start this revolution with another sacrificed child. We start this revolution so there are no more sacrificed children, ever. We’ll find another way.”
Birdie lets out a sob, half relief and half despair. “But I don’t know what to do. I don’t know how to help her.”
“You should—”
Hawthorn lunges for Arrow, tackling her to the ground.