the Master's bowl, and I wasn't going to bother with it. They certainly did not own my sympathy that far.
I continued on, counting the stairs to the landing. I skirted a mouse hole that I knew by habit, and turned into the equally-dark hall. On the left was the locked door to the library. In its prime, it had been that warm glow of a room, teeming with old books just waiting to be cradled in the hands that loved them. Now, it was as good as empty. It was locked because we shut off all the rooms we didn't need, hoping their disease would not spread, that we could starve out the disease in the small places we used – but we kept the key for when we needed books to burn. We had orders to always burn the ones I looted first, but supplies often ran low. The library had slowly dwindled to a devastated shell, with a scant few victims lined up on death row.
Next, on the right, was Victoria's room. Respectively, her old room. The Masters kept themselves all safe inside a single chamber now – the master bedroom at the end of the hall. But a decade ago, in the first years of the mischief that crept into the woodwork, they had maintained a civilized arrangement as a family. Back then the incidents had been fewer and farther between – stories, mostly, or nuances that caused concern, but nothing to obsess over.
How swiftly that way of life had changed and become consumed was astonishing. How quickly the symptoms had evolved.
I passed Lesleah's room next, the jealous middle sister, and then Christopher's. He was the little brat of the family, or had been last I had seen him. I hadn't laid eyes on him in six years.
Aunt Felicity's room passed next. As far as I was concerned, she had infected this poor house herself. She was the sternest of them all – the one who whipped us when we erred, who slapped Christopher cold on his cheek when no one was looking, who spoke down to Lesleah like she would never compare to her sister, who uttered terrible grievances to Victoria's suitors in secret to chase them away. Whether or not I was fond of the family, the latter of these things grated on me like nothing else. To hear Felicity dishing out offenses in Victoria's oblivious name, or bad-mouthing Victoria herself, almost undid me as a docile slave. The injustice boiled up inside me where I eavesdropped. When you were an invisible slave, you could do that. Eavesdrop, that is.
But that's what stayed me, in the end: that I was an invisible slave. I had no authority. I had no conviction. I didn't exist, except to do as I was told. Victoria would never take my word for it. After all, a slave and his master were not on favorable terms. So why would I warn her of treachery, unless I had ulterior motives? I would not be trusted to look after her interests.
So I maintained that I was a creature of silence.
And became a tormented creature of silence.
It was maddening, now, knowing they cohabited behind the same door. I longed to reveal the beast in their midst. Whether or not that particular urge was aimed at their best interests, I couldn't rightly say. In a sense, it felt purely mischievous. A way to see to wicked Felicity's humiliation and downfall, or simply a way to stir something up.
Stirring things up was the last thing one should dream of dabbling in at a time like this, but when there was scandal abroad it was human nature to meddle, to put in my two cents. To tip the balance because I knew something. It made me feel important. The unexpected informant, rather than a mere slave. Someone who could become a friend to one of them, instead of a nobody.
It was all fantasy, though. They stayed behind that locked door, only communicating as a voice through the crack. When I delivered food, I was to lay it by the door and rap a code on the old wood, and only after they heard my footsteps recede would someone throw back the latch and open the barricade long enough to whisk in the offering.
We had phantoms for masters.
Good riddance, though, really. Who missed that wicked aunt, that bratty child, that jealous sister, and that brooding Mr. and Mrs. Dorn? Victoria was really quite agreeable, but the irony