Gallant(42)

The master of the house stands on the balcony, elbows draped over the rail, his black coat billowing in the cold night air, and even from here she can see his milk-white eyes, watching her. Even from here, she can see the smile that parts his ashen face, can see his hand drift up and his too-thin finger crook into a single, chilling gesture, wordless but clear.

Come here.

There is no moon, but down in the garden, silver light shines on a shoulder, a chest, a hand. The soldiers are coming. They amble toward her, wild but silent, stalking her through the dark, and Olivia decides she is not ready to face her fate. She turns to the door in the wall and slams her fists against it again and again, until debris flakes away from the surface, exposing the iron beneath.

Open, open, open, she thinks, pounding until she can feel the searing heat of the cut on her hand as it reopens, can feel the blood welling on her skin, the pain ringing through her palm as it hits iron, and then there is a sound, deep inside the metal, like the end of a music note, more hum than noise. A lock groaning free.

The door in the wall swings open, and Olivia stumbles through, out of one night and into another. Out of the dead garden and onto damp green grass that soaks her knees as she collapses to the ground on the other side, gasping for air. Air that tastes like summer rain instead of ashes. Air that tastes of flowers and life and moonlight.

Footsteps race through the garden, and Olivia drags her head up in time to see Matthew running toward her, knife in hand. For a second, she thinks he means to kill her. There is murder in his eyes, his knuckles white on the weapon’s hilt, but then she sees the blade’s damp edge, the blood already dripping from his fingers. He surges past her to the open door.

She twists round and sees the shadows coming, sees darkness spilling through the open door and over the ground like oil, staining the dirt, before Matthew slams the iron shut, metal clanging over his voice as he says, “With my blood, I seal this door.”

The door hums, the bolt groans home.

Olivia looks down at her aching palm, the cut split open, a fresh and angry line of red.

With my blood.

Matthew’s hand is pressed flat to the iron, head bowed against the door. He breathes heavily, shoulders heaving. Olivia stands, about to reach for him, when he turns and grabs her shoulders, fingers digging deep enough to bruise.

“What have you done?” he demands, voice shaking.

And Olivia looks from her cousin to the wall and back again, wishing she could answer.

Wishing she knew.

It is all so loud inside the house.

Beyond the wall, everything was made of whispers, the eerie quiet magnifying every breath or step. But here, Hannah crashes about the kitchen, boiling water and gathering gauze, and Matthew won’t stop shouting, even though he looks like he’s about to faint, and Edgar drags up a stool and orders him to sit. The noise is like a tide, and Olivia lets it wash over her, grateful for the sound after so much silence, even if none of them are talking about what she saw, about the fact there is another world beyond the wall.

“How dare you,” demands Matthew, and for once the words are lobbed at Hannah instead of her.

“I was only trying to help,” she snaps back.

“Sit down,” says Edgar.

“You drugged me.”

Olivia startles, realizes that is why his bedroom door stayed closed, why she didn’t see him.

“Better drugged than dead!” shouts Hannah, and Olivia cannot blame the woman. She saw his face the night before, the exhausted slump of his shoulders, the deep hollows beneath his eyes. “You needed rest.”

“There is no rest!” he screams. “Not in this house.”

“Sit down,” orders Edgar as Matthew paces, a dishtowel wrapped around his hand, the cotton soaking red. He cut too fast, too deep, a vicious wound across his palm, and despite the cloth, a few fat red drops still find their way onto the kitchen floor.

With my blood, he said.

Olivia’s own palm is in a sorry state, but Edgar has wrapped it in clean gauze (he would not even look at her), and her mind is not on the dull ache of her hand or the pain in the soles of her bare feet from running over gravel and broken earth, or the chill that lingers beneath her skin. Her mind is not here in the kitchen at all, but a hundred yards away at the garden’s edge. Behind her eyes, she sees the corpses of small creatures rising at her touch, feels herself dragged into the darkness by dead hands, watches two dozen dancers turn to ash, bits of bone rattling on the ballroom floor as they skitter back to their master.

Edgar finally gets Matthew to sit.

“You had no right,” he seethes at Hannah, but his eyes are fevered, his skin at once sallow and too pink, and she cannot help but think that despite his size, a decent wind would knock him over.

And Hannah is having none of it.

“I saw you born, Matthew Prior,” she says. “I will not watch you kill yourself.”

“You watched my father do it,” he says, such venom in his voice that Hannah flinches. “You let my brother—”

“Enough!” shouts Edgar, decent, soft-voiced Edgar, the word landing like a blow on Matthew’s cheek.

“Some days,” says Hannah, voice brittle, “you are still such a child.”

Matthew’s eyes go dark as pitch. “I am a Prior,” he says with a defiant scowl. “I was born to die in this house. But I’ll be damned if that death is for nothing.” He rounds then, leveling the full force of his anger at Olivia. “Pack your things. I never want to see your face again.”