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They bury you at the bottom of the gardensâwhatâs left of you, pathetic and small and twisted so out of shape it hardly seems human anymore. The river, dark and oily, licks at the ruin of your fleshâat your broken bonesâand sings you to sleep in a soft, gentle language like a motherâs lullabies, whispering of rest and forgiveness, of a place where it is forever light, forever safe.
You do not rest. You cannot forgive. You are not safeâyou never were.
After your friends have gone, scattering their meager offerings of flowers, after the other archivists have left, itâs just your mother and your master, standing over your grave. Your mother looks years and years older, hollowed out by grief, but your master stands unchangedâtall and dark, with light shining beneath the planes of his face, his skin so thin it might be porcelain.
âWas ⦠was there pain?â your mother asks. She clutches your favorite dollâso well-worn itâs going to pieces in her hands. She doesnât want to let go because, when sheâs knelt in the blood-spattered mud of the gardens, she will have to get up, she will have to go back, to move on, as though everything she does from now on does not stand in the shadow of your death.
Your masterâs smile is a hollow thing, too; white and quick, perfunctory. âNo,â he says. âWe gave her poppy. She felt nothing.â
Itâs a lie, of course. There was poppy; there were opiates, but nothing could alleviate the pain of being torn apartâof the house gnawing at your innards; of claws teasing open your chest, splitting ribs in their hurry to lick at your heartâs bloodâof struggling to breathe through liquid-filled lungs, lifting broken arms and hands to defend yourself against something you couldnât reach, couldnât touch.
âI see.â Your mother looks at the earth again; hovers uncertainly on the edge of your burial place. At length she lays down the doll, her hands lingering on it, a prayer on her lipsâand you ache to rise up, to comfort her as sheâd always comforted youâto find the words that would keep the darkness at bay.
You are dead, and there are no words left; and no lies that will hold.
And then itâs just you and your master. You thought he would leave, too, but instead he kneels, slow and stately, as if bowing to a queenâand remains for a while, staring at the overturned earth. âIâm sorry, Charlotte,â he says at last. His voice is melodious, grave, as impeccably courteous as alwaysâthe same one he had when he told you what needed to be doneâthat it was all for the good of the house. âBetter the weak and the sick than all of us. I know it doesnât excuse anything.â
It doesnât. It never will. Beneath the earth, you struggle to push at what holds you downâto gather shattered flesh and glistening bones, to rise up like the dead at the resurrection, raging and weeping and demanding justice, but nothing happens. Just a faint bulge on the grave, a slight yielding of the mud. Voiceless, bodiless, you have no power to move anything.
âYou keep us safe,â your master says. He looks ⦠tired, for a moment, wan and drained of color in the sunlight, his eyes shot with blood. But then he rises, and itâs as if a curtain had been drawn across his face, casting everything in a sharper, merciless light; and once more he is the dapper, effortlessly elegant master of the house, the man who keeps it all together by sheer strength of will. He stares at the blackened water of the river, at the city beyond the boundaries of the houseâthe smoke of skirmishes and riots, the distant sound of fighting in the streets. âYour blood, your pain is the power we rely on. Remember this, if nothing else.â
You do; but it has no hold on you, not anymore.
He walks away, his swallow-tailed jacket