Chapter Text
Vistri awakened to Jaheira patting her face with a cool, damp cloth. It felt so pleasant that a small, vulnerable noise involuntarily slipped from her parched lips, like a sick child being soothed. Rising, she stretched and immediately recognized the calming familiarity of her silk sheets. She was back at Harper House, tucked away in the security of her own bed.
Before Vistri could get her thick tongue in working order, Jaheira helped her to sit up and take a few small sips of tepid water.
Already knowing the question that her mistress was going to ask, the housekeeper explained, “You fell faint in the Shadowheart’s drawing room. Lady Hallowleaf and her cousin escorted you back here in her carriage.”
She groaned as the embarrassment settled over her.
“This is the second time, within only a week, that Lady Hallowleaf has served you something that kept you confined to your chambers,” Jaheira spoke warningly.
“Oh, what of it?” Vistri scoffed defensively, “Do not blame these misfortunes on my only true friend!”
Jaheira paused the dabbing of her cloth on Vistri’s forehead to raise a pointed brow.
“Besides you, that is!” Vistri grumpily clarified, “Don’t you start becoming jealous! Green doesn’t suit you quite as well as you think.”
Smirking, Jaheira asked, “What happened to you over there?”
The true answer to that question was horrifying. She’d put others into a situation that required them to take care of her, which was a truly shameful thing! Then, because apparently Vistri could do nothing right, including taking a bit of medicine, she’d passed out on the settee.
She bit her lip, took a deep breath, and paused before answering, “I fell ill.”
Her voice was so small. Her eyes grew as wide as they’d been when she was even smaller. It was the one weakness of her stubborn, lifelong companion. It was a look that rarely sat on Vistri’s face, but when it did, Jaheira was ready to burn down the world to avenge the cause of it.
The problem was, she never actually did.
Maybe that’s why the older woman always blamed herself whenever her mistress wore that look. It was a never-ending cycle; the shame from having failed to act before twisted through her veins, freezing her out of existence until it was too late to act again.
When Vistri was married off to the late baron, Jahiera had only been a lady’s maid, not the keeper of Harper House. Before that, she was Vistri’s governess. And even before that, she’d started as her nurse. Quite uncommonly done, they were well aware, but it suited them perfectly. Their bond was such that nothing in life could separate them.
When Vistri was married off to the late baron, Jaheira was confident she could protect her mistress from anything.
But the baron was her employer, and legally owned Vistri the same way one would a horse, or the land of a pig farm. So, when it was the baron who made her mistress’ broken heart scream through the expression in her eyes, Jaheira was powerless to do anything more than pick up the pieces of it.
She couldn’t do anything to risk getting dismissed. For if Jaheira was banished from Harper House, she would not even be able to pick up those pieces.
Vistri always insisted she did not blame her, but they both knew it was a lie. She couldn’t help but blame the woman who was meant to protect her, and Jaheira knew that, and didn’t hold that blame against her.
She soothed her mistress with a gentle, “Shoo shoo shoo,” followed by the relief of a newly-cooled cloth dabbing along her bare shoulder.
Then, for the first time since her late husband gasped his last breath and shat himself, Vistri cried. And Jaheira was there to pick up the pieces.
It might seem odd, to one who didn’t know the baron, that he allowed a lady’s maid to rise to the position of housekeeper. True, a housekeeper only had control over the women’s domain, and the baron employed a steward and butler who were loyal to his line and Harper House above all else; but it was odd for a man like him, who needed to exert control over everything, to allow someone so loyal to his wife to obtain such power over his household.
One might look at such a gesture and call it a rare kindness.
However, to Baron Hurzeth Harper of Reithwin, kindness was nothing more than a whetstone with which to sharpen his knives.
It wasn’t until he was thoroughly displeased with his young wife that he’d elevated Jaheira’s position. The news of it came as such a shock that the two of them thought that it was perhaps the beginnings of an apology; that things might get better from then on after all. Jaheira’s promotion gave her and her mistress a bit of hope to hold onto. Hope he then snatched from their fingers just to wrap around their necks.
He’d given Jaheira the illusion of power rather than anything real. And with the lie of greater agency, came a stronger sense of responsibility. When she’d failed to stand up to him as a lady’s maid, Jaheira felt like the lowest creature. She was convinced of it.
Until she failed to stand up as the housekeeper. It was then that she learned a higher ledge just made for a longer descent.
Raising Jaheira’s position wasn’t an act of kindness, but a means to torment his wife more effectively. The baron’s favorite pastime. Considering that his final act on this plane was to stink up the room, causing his brand-new widow to pinch up her nose and endure him one last time, he’d died doing what he loved.
When they lowered him into the dirt, where scum like him belonged, Jaheira swore a vow to never let anyone stand in the way of her protective instinct ever again. It was credit to her luck that, immediately after, Vistri dismissed all the members of staff most loyal to the late baron. With the old steward gone, and no need of a valet, housekeeper was now the highest position at Harper House aside from the lady of it.
As the effective steward of Harper House, Jaheira needed to know her domain was truly hers. That there would be no disrespect or mutiny was key, but her ambitions didn’t stop at household peace. She wanted something greater than that, perhaps to make up for her previous failures. A staff, as loyal to her as she was to her mistress, was exactly what she needed, and within that, she would cultivate her own network of spies.
Vistri needn’t ever know.
Jaheira didn’t view keeping such information from her as a deception. If her mistress ever asked, she would answer plainly. But why bother the lady with servant business? The spy network would not be for the sake of passing on information to which Vistri could then weaponize at will. It was solely for the sake of her protection! For Jaheira to better understand all the possible and very real threats that were ready to tangle her charge’s ankles and drag her down.
Nothing like that would ever happen again. Even after her own death, the network she’d spend her final years sustaining would be a way of watching over Vistri from the grave.
It was almost a relief for Jaheira to have her mistress breaking down in her arms again. Not only did she know in those moments who she was and how to be, it also gave her an outlet for releasing all the inappropriate motherly feelings she held secretly in her heart. A way for her to just hold Vistri and let her know that things would be okay.
After a fit and a nap, her mistress was almost right again. Seeing Vistri recover faster from Lady Hallowleaf’s tincture than her punchbowl would have satisfied Jaheira in previous years, but now the very fact that Vistri had to recover at all was enough to tempt her obsessive sense of foreboding. Jenevelle was a pleasant enough girl, and a true friend to her mistress, but something about her wasn’t quite right lately.
Jaheira needed to find out the what and why of it. Her gut was ringing alarm bells. So, she marched down to the kitchens in the servant’s quarters, and waited for the one she’d been told about to happen by. Like a spider perched in her web, she would remain seated at the table until they met by chance.
Luckily, that specific footman had a bad case of the late-night munchies and did not keep her waiting long.
“Having a snack?”
Not having seen her there, the man jumped, “Pardon, ma’am!”
“Cal, is it?”
With just a slight movement of her eyes, which he could barely see in the dim candlelight, she commanded him to take a seat nearby. He nodded and obliged, awkwardly sitting down somewhat across from her.
“Yes, ma’am,” he tipped his head respectfully.
“How’s your family?” she asked. Her voice was neither warm nor threatening.
“They’re fine, ma’am,” the footman answered hesitantly.
Catching his gaze and holding it, she lifted the corners of her mouth into a slight smile that did not reach her eyes, “I hear you have a sister who is looking for work.”
Jaheira watched excitement bloom over his face and an outburst form on his lips, but then he appeared to stop himself answering. Taking a moment to think over her intentions made Jaheira think that he must be less useless than he appeared.
The way he cleared his throat and boldly answered, “And a brother too,” made her decide he was the right tiefling for the job.
She smiled. It still wasn’t warm, but neither was it threatening.
“Ah,” she said, “How fortunate. For we are in need of a lady’s maid and a steward, and you have a brother and sister who both seem to be in need of a steady position.”
Understanding Jaheira through the squint in her eyes and the carefulness of her tone, Cal nodded.
“Rolan lives for libraries and balancing accounts—things like that, and Lia’s a quick study! Both are quite capable,” he confidently leaned forward and spoke his next words a little lower, “And if you were to take us on, that would be three of us forever grateful.”
Jaheira’s eyes sparkled, “Well, then Cal. How would you feel about sharing a workplace with your siblings?”
With those promises squared away, she sent him on a mission: Find out just what in the hells was going on with Lady Hallowleaf! And if it were possible, identify the mysterious laudanum that sent Baroness Harper off into a deep sleep in the middle of the afternoon.
As the person most loyal to Vistri plotted below in the depths of the house, she rose out of bed and walked over to her window. The room was unbearably stuffy, but Vistri couldn’t let in any fresh air, for the baron had the windows all sealed shut after about the tenth time she’d threatened to jump out of them.
She sighed and looked out at the dark. With the way she’d wept for hours in her housekeeper’s arms, Vistri felt emptied in the same way one did after they were sick. The poison was out, but just for a little while, and then it would creep back. But for a glorious few moments, one felt lighter than air instead of all murky. She wanted to take advantage of it and gaze at the moon, but there were not even stars out because the clouds were so thick.
There was only darkness. A great, vast darkness filled with the unknown.
And anything could be out there unseen.
Vistri pulled the shawl tighter around her shoulders although she wasn’t cold. She tried to force herself to think of pleasant things that could be out there, to stop her mind from racing with the opposite. But all she could picture was that man being out there, buried under dirt.
Harper House had its own cemetery, which now contained the entire proud Harper line. All the generations that brought the baron into her life were together now, feeding the same worms. Maybe they’d grow a rather twisted tree, poison fruit poised enticingly on its branches. Whenever she was on the property, Vistri could feel them all out there. When she looked out into the dark, her mind played tricks, and she could practically see them. If the dead were to rise, they’d all be waiting underneath her window. Standing in the lawn, looking up at the dim light with rotten eyes.
Maybe they would want to return home.
With her late husband in the lead, surely as the freshest of the lot, they would crawl in through the large, oak doors on dead fingers and disintegrating knees. And while the others roamed the servant’s quarters reaching for the thicker concentration of living flesh, Hurzeth would slurp up the stairs, climbing and moaning with death’s rattle. Just to punish her one last time.
A small crack in the shadows was enough to make Vistri jump with fright.
Her rapidly-beating heart tried to break free of her ribcage as she fought to calm herself. Surely it was just a maid in the other room. Or the old wood of the house, sharing a long-dead secret it had kept for decades.
Just a house sound.
Vistri suddenly shivered at the imagery of a frozen, greying hand brushing along her bare spine. She hugged her shawl so tight it would surely tear, and demanded to herself that she stop being so f*cking insane!
The baron was dead. He could not reach her from the grave.
Then why couldn’t she breathe?
Surely, this is what he really wanted. For her to suffocate with him. For her to watch her sanity bleed out through her pores until she was left entirely empty; practically as dead as he was.
Shutting her eyes, Vistri tried to picture anything else but the baron’s face falling from its decay. A scream stopped itself in her throat—Jaheira! She needed Jaheira. But the bell was so very far away, with so much darkness between her and any candle. She needed to stay where she was, protected only by the weak light, where the phantoms wouldn’t be able to reach her.
The only light in the room came dimly through the window, from the lanterns outside more than the sky. And the light coming from below, rather than above, was almost oppressive. It shrunk the world, trapped Vistri within a seal of darkness.
The ceilings closed in on the floors.
Tears streamed down her face as the urge to shout for Jaheira doubled in intensity and silence. Vistri felt like she was going to die if she were left alone another second—killed by a formless ghost that she couldn’t fight back. She shook and choked on her own breathing. And then another second passed.
And another second passed.
Vistri was no better, but also no worse.
Eventually, a voice in her head directed the animal she'd devolved into, to pull herself together.
It managed to pick up her weary bones from off the floor, simpering puddle of ego death that she was. Then it shuffled her towards the bed, where her body wearily collapsed.
Still frozen in fear, she tried to think of kind things as she hid under her sheets. There was some sort of undeniable presence with her in the room, and she tried to think of kindness in order to block it out.
Jaheira! She needed Jaheira!
Panic clawed at her throat, like that scream was trying to live after all.
Kindness! Think of kindness!
But all she could see in her mind’s eye was the baron causing her shame. His hands bruising her flesh. Surely, he was in the room with her right now.
He was in the room.
You have behaved rather abysmally this evening.
f*ck you! No!
Shame and misbehavior were easier to access than kindness. Vistri found a ledge there to hold on to.
There’s so many other ways I’d love to defile you.
The baron couldn’t stop her from bending over for a stranger in the woods. The woods of his precious Harper House. She clung to the memory of it with desperate hands, trying to wear her defiance like armor against the void in the room. The deeper she felt it, the less there was room for anything else.
The power she’d gained from relinquishing everything—She could be nothing whenever she wanted. Her stranger could f*ck her and then ignore her like the last time, and Vistri could be free knowing there was nothing left of her for anyone else to take.
Gasping her first deep inhale caused Vistri to shudder like she was frozen. She started to feel the stress in her veins, heavy as steel and thick like clotted blood.
Possessed by the need to disappear, she tried to feel her stranger inside her the same way she did whenever she closed her eyes and thought of him. But his touch wouldn’t come. She could only see her strang—Mr. Ancunín’s crimson eyes boring into her.
At the ball.
In the drawing room.
Even when he ignored her, it somehow felt more attentive than any other man. Under his bored, disdainful gaze from the corners of his eyes, Vistri could both fully exist and disappear.
Funnily enough, it was in the memory of Mr. Ancunín’s coldness that Vistri finally found kind thoughts.
The look in his eyes when he’d insisted on getting her tea.
The fact that he helped Lady Hallowleaf bring her back to Harper House.
These were actions contradictory to his character. Surely, there was some nefarious plot behind them, and she would not trust it. But those moments were enough to cling onto for now. During the baron’s haunt, which trapped Vistri under her sheets with his rotting stink stinging her nostrils, the image of Mr. Ancunín’s expression melting with concern was a ray of sunlight chasing the ghouls away.
She’d dispose of it later, when she no longer had need, and vowed to never tell him that once, he’d been her savior. That a small kindness of his had sustained her through a night of haunting.
Then came another sound. Like a floorboard creaking. Footsteps. His footsteps.
A rattle of death.
Vistri swore she could feel him breathing just above her blanket. Like the rot from his teeth was sinking in through the fabric, slipping past her lips, sitting on her tongue, climbing up her nose.
Fear gripped her worse than it had before. The late baron was here, hovering above her. Surely, if she were to rip off her sheets, they would be face to cursed face. Surely.
“JAHIEEERRAAA!!!!”
Vistri heard herself shrieking like a madwoman. Sobbing and kicking her sheets and screaming
screaming screaming screaming screaming screaming screaming
She couldn’t stop. A panic rose the whole house. Their mistress was surely dying.
Until the housekeeper arrived.
White-faced, she practically knocked over three housemaids scrambling to get to Vistri.
“Out of my way!” she shouted menacingly rather than apologizing.
Her ferocity melted into such tenderness, so rapidly, once at her mistress’ side, that those in witness found it more startling than their lady’s fit.
“He’s here!” she was screaming. The wildness in her eyes wasn’t abandon, it was possession.
Gathering the wreck in her arms, Jaheira cooed, “I won’t let him touch you.”
There was an eerily calm manner to the housekeeper as she rocked her mistress back and forth. One that contradicted the deep sorrow in her expression and the tears running from her eyes. Her voice, although shaking, was somehow steady, “Even if it means I have to bury him again, I will simply pick up a shovel.”
The other servants in the room just stood there, until one of the newer footmen cleared them out and shut the door behind him.
Vistri just kept shaking and muttering, “Don’t let him… Don’t let him… Don’t let him…” in a voice so broken it no longer sounded like her own.
“Shoo-shoo shoo-shoo!” Jaheira would sit with her, rocking and hushing her, for as long as this would take to pass.
Such a thing filled her heart.
Jaheira started to sing, one of those old songs in her arsenal from back when she was just Vistri’s nurse. She’d rock and sing. Filling her heart as Vistri broke hers over her shoulders.
“There, there now, little cub.”
No one would hurt her ever again.
No one would hurt her ever again.
