Yang looked different after he’d began to bathe regularly.

His skin was pale beneath all the dirt, not as bronze as Maya’s but not as fair as her brother Isaiah’s either. Indeed, there was the slight tint of yellow to his skin, and the slant of his dark eyes was unmistakeable. He had sheared the overgrown locks of hair from his head – they barely touched his ear now. He would never be handsome here, he realised, his ‘foreign’ – as the cook put it – was too pronounced. And he had a penchant for gobbling all the rice in the house. He spent his time tottering after Maya – perhaps because he felt a kinship with her, or perhaps because he felt a gap between him and the other Englishmen – nevertheless, it was a practise that isolated him from the rest of the servants. He consoled himself with the thought that they would have never befriended him anyway. Because of his nationality.

“You look charming in gold,” Maya had told him when he’d first appeared before her in livery. He thrived on the compliment in a world where he was considered strange and ugly. He remembered her face when he’d told her he loved the length and texture of her hair – a smooth black that fell to her waist. She let it run open when she was alone in her receiving room, and he longed to catch her like that, en déshabillé.

She’d brightened when he told her, and he’d noticed she started leaving it loose more often when he was around.

Yang’s room in the servants’ quarters was tiny, with only a bed, a mirror and a nightstand. Maya had gifted him with a child’s book when he’d revealed to her he couldn’t read. She never reacted when he told her and he thought she hadn’t heard him – he’d been too embarrassed to repeat it. That night, he’d come back to his room, and the thin book was there, with colourful illustrations of children playing in meadows and on swings that hung from trees. He never mentioned the book, and neither did she. But he saw her name, on the first page, and with stick in the sand, he began to practise writing her name in the sand. His first word. Maya.

Then his second: Yang.

He liked his work as a footman – he had a hot meal every day, a place to sleep and he spent time with Maya. Granted, a lot of it was opening doors for her and helping her into carriages, but it was a step above being laughed at because of who he was.

The Colington Estate in Grosvenor Square was not one of the grandest. Certainly grand enough – it was on Grosvenor Square – but not the most fanciful of all. Of course, the silver was polished daily, the marble floors waxed bi-weekly, and even the chambermaid’s uniform was not allowed a loose thread. The house still did not welcome Yang. There was always a foreboding servant around a glistening corner or fashioned shrub. The garden – especially after nightfall – frightened Yang. No amount of fleece could keep the shiver from his bones when he was forced to fetch the evening firewood and re-enter from the servants’ quarters. There was something in the garden, Yang knew, that turned a man’s head the wrong way, and Yang hoped he never found out what it was. Perhaps the only thing shinier in his life than the golden thread of his footman’s attire, was Maya.

Maya Colington was intriguing when he didn’t know her, but the more he learned, the more he realised: she was simple. And that made her all the more fascinating.

Working at the Colington residence for over two months, and stealthily avoiding contact with the butler named Mr. Harland, Yang had fallen into a familiar pattern. He arose before dawnlight to light the fires in the kitchen and shovel coal into the ovens. He ate breakfast with soot on his face, and helped the wary eyed cook with chores – clean the chimney, sweep the ash from the hearth, oil the hinges on the doors – afterward, he would return to his room, clean himself, and prepare for Maya’s summons. The first week she had only ordered him to speak, and he did. He told her of China – despite the pinprick to his heart with his word – of the glowing blue skies and endless valleys one would see if they ventured even a little out of Canton. He told her of the foods, basic and exotic, and how he missed the explosion of spice and sweet. Once he had settled in, his orders were more menial – haul the bathwater up the stairs, fetch the mail, stand ceremony when guests visited (although, Maya quickly noticed his discomfort with that particular task and assigned him to kitchens).

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Looking away from the mirror, Yang was about to ready himself for bed when he heard a crash from the outside, following by a stream of cussing. The sound, sudden and compelling, forced his heart to miss a beat.

Yang peeked out of his room. No one else seemed to have heard – the servants’ hall was ‘quiet – the sound of the cook’s snoring drowning any semblance of silence. Slipping out the room, Yang crept into the gardens. Immediately, he was accosted by a sense of unease – there was something wrong with the gardens; something that set off an eerie atmosphere coupled with the subtle odour of grotesque. If it was nothing – Yang assured himself – he could go to sleep with peace of mind. If it was something…he prayed it wasn’t. Two months, it seemed, was sufficient for an inkling of strength to return to his body – he could run through the house, bounding up and down the stairs, and carry sacks of flour and potatoes – but in a fight? He didn’t know how he would hold up and he wasn’t anticipating finding out.

“Hurry up!” a man whisper-shouted to another beneath the cover of night. Yang struggled to make the shapes out in the darkness.

A stench infiltrated his nostrils: rot and death. Bile rose to his throat, and Yang pressed a hand to his nose. What was that?

Yang inched closer. Two men stood over a cart that was loaded with – Yang swallowed vomit – corpses.

There were seven in total, stacked upon one another as though they were crates of vegetables. Their skins were a pallet of white and blue, dirt smeared across limp limbs.

Worms and maggots gathered in the mouth of the body first and foremost – dead blue eyes stained red bored into his. Yang’s stomach heaved.

“I’m not taking that one,” a strong, aristocratic voice said.

No, thought Yang, please no.

“But sir,” protested one of the men. “You could do all sorts of things with this one –”

“She’s rotted,” the voice said. “Take your silver and leave.”

It was – the body. Slimy black holes dotted her blue skin. A white worm wiggled out and plummeted into the dewy grass – the moonlight illuminating its sheer skin.

The man – dressed in a large overcoat smelling of sea salt and rotted wood – pocketed the silver and the other carried the other bodies down into cellar. How did Yang miss that entrance? He placed a hand on his churning stomach. A few minutes later, the two men rolled the cart with only the rotting woman off the estate but the stink of death, lice and grave lingered in the night.

Isaiah re-entered through the secret cellar entrance.

What was going on here? During his time here, Yang didn’t wander too close to Isaiah. Something about the man frightened him. The vibe Isaiah exuded was too similar to that of his haunted garden. Isaiah was rumoured to be only twenty-eight years of age, but something in his face spoke of centuries. Something haggard and dangerous. Yang’s heart lurched. Something sinister was at play here.

He moved closer to the cellar door, trying not to make a sound, made his way inside, shutting the wooden door as silently as possible. There were bars on either side of the door, and once inside, a long, narrow staircase descended into darkness. Fear felt sharp on Yang’s tongue, and he was transported, for a moment, back to that second on the ship just off the coast of Canton, when the captain was planning to toss him overboard. The fear was familiar. Too familiar.

He didn’t have to do this. He could go back to his room and pretend he hadn’t seen anything. But as much as he could, he couldn’t. He descended the stairwell.

The atmosphere became colder with each step, the air becoming heavy with dampness, and the salty tang of blood filled the air. What was Isaiah doing? Did Maya know? Betrayal hovered close, ready to strike.

A figure moved – shadow in the candlelight. Yang dodged behind the archway; the wall was covered in dry moss that made his fingers itch. When the dancing flame stilled, Yang peered around the corner. It was a part of the cellar Yang had never seen before. It didn’t smell of wine and cobwebs. It smelled of poison and soap. Isaiah stood, dressed in a white lab coat, with gloves on his hands, next to a table. One of the bodies was lay upon it, naked, and a tray of knives beside it. Was Isaiah going to…?

Yang ripped his gaze away. He regretted it. The rest of the cellar was lined with shelves, and on those shelves stood jars of green and white goo with…human parts inside them. Yang tasted bile for the second time that night. His head felt heavy. He had to get out of there. He turned to leave, and then he saw it. In between the shelves opposite the table where Isaiah stood, lovingly caressing a silver blade, was a cell. It had steel bars and a pallet of dirty cotton. And…and a man inside. There was a live man inside, stark naked, castrated. The man was dirty and bloodied, and when Yang squinted, he saw the man had only one arm, and in the place where his other arm should be, raw muscle and vein protruded. On the arm he did have, his fingers were missing, but the skin had healed over to form lumps.

The man was staring at Yang.

Help me, the man seemed to mouth, and when he opened his mouth, Yang saw that he had no tongue.

Yang ran.