Angels of Darkness

and I learned a lot from her, and I explored every building and byway in Monteverde when I was making deliveries for her business.
    â€œWhen she got old enough to retire, she sold the bakery to her nephew and helped me look for another situation. The nephew and I had never gotten along,” I added. Not since I’d kneed him in the groin after he tried to slip a hand under my shirt. “I ended up taking a position in the household of a Manadavvi lord—a good job, anyone would have thought.”
    â€œBut it didn’t turn out that way.”
    â€œIt started out pretty well,” I said. “The pay was good, the work was no harder than I was used to, and I got along with most of the other servants.” I had become particularly friendly with a woman about my age with antecedents even fuzzier than my own. I always assumed Olive was the bastard child of a Manadavvi landowner and one of his housemaids. She had that Manadavvi look to her, all high cheekbones and flawless skin. All the grooms and footmen were wild for her, but she was good at holding them off. It was going to be marriage or nothing for Olive. She didn’t want to go her mother’s route, that was plain; she talked about saving enough money to start her own business in Monteverde or one of the river towns. Actually, we talked about pooling our resources and going into business together. It was the first time I could remember having a dream.
    â€œI can guess what happened,” Corban said quietly. “The lord took an interest in you, rather forcefully, and you protested.”
    I made a small snorting sound. “Oh, no, I wasn’t built to catch an aristocrat’s eye,” I said. “And I knew how to dress and how to behave so I didn’t get the kind of attention I didn’t want. But another girl—Olive. She was the one the lord couldn’t stop thinking about.”
    We developed the habit of working in pairs, and I at least always kept a knife concealed under my skirts. But Olive wasn’t afraid of him; she didn’t seem to realize he was dangerous. She avoided him when she could, but she didn’t lie awake at night and worry what he might do to her.
    As she should have.
    She also didn’t spend her free hours sneaking around the ancient, labyrinthine mansion, exploring which stairways led where and which servants’ doors opened onto private suites. As I did. There was a day I could have navigated that entire fifty-room house if I had been as blind as Corban. I knew passageways that I swear no one but me remembered. Even the mice had forgotten them.
    â€œWhat happened to Olive?” Corban prompted when I had been quiet too long.
    I didn’t want to say the words, didn’t want to remember the scene, didn’t want in my mind, again, those images of horror. So I spoke as quickly as I could. “He brought her to his room one night against her will. She struggled, he reacted, and by the time I found them, she was no longer breathing.” I took a deep breath, because I had somehow run out of air. “By the time I left them, he was bleeding so much that I thought he would surely die.”
    For a moment, the silence between us was absolute. Well, there’s the worst of it, I thought. There’s the truth that defines me. Try to hurt me and I will hurt you back. No matter who you are, no matter how much it costs. And I’m always on guard, waiting for the next blow to fall.
    I waited in some defiance for Corban’s expressions of disgust and outrage. I realized—much to my fury—that my attitude was tinged with regret. Now he will order you from the room. Now he will never wish to see you again. Who cared? He was an angel, self-absorbed and self-righteous and allying himself with power, like all the rest of them. My story would shock him, I was certain, but not because a Manadavvi lord had committed murder in the name of lust. He would be shocked because a servant girl had thought she had the right to fight back.
    I couldn’t even look at him as I waited for him to denounce me.
    His voice, when it came, was threaded with amazement. “That was you?” he demanded. “ You’re the one who cut up Reuel Harth?”
    I risked a quick look at him and saw nothing but astonishment on his face. “You know him?”
    â€œKnew him. Everyone did. You’ll be happy to know he’s dead now.”
    I took a quick breath.