The storm gathered over the Yorkshire moors like a bruise spreading across the sky. Reginald Ashworth stood in the drawing room of Blackwood Manor, his knuckles white against the mahogany mantelpiece. He could hear the wind beginning to howl through the cracks in the ancient stone walls, and it made his hands shake. He hated storms. He hated everything that reminded him of forces beyond his control.

"Thomas!" he called, his voice cracking like thin ice. "Where is that damned tea?"

Thomas Mercer appeared in the doorway as though summoned by the crack of thunder that followed. He was a tall man with a face carved from the same granite as the moors—pale, hard, and expressionless. He carried a silver tray with two cups of tea that had gone cold.

"Forgive me, sir," Thomas said. His voice was low, almost lost beneath the rising wind. "The fire went out. I was—"

"The fire went out?" Reginald turned on him with the speed of a man who had spent thirty years striking first. "You cannot keep a fire burning, you useless creature? What good are you at all?"

He struck Thomas across the face with the back of his hand. The servant staggered but did not fall. He did not raise his hand to his cheek. He simply stood there, looking at his master with those flat, dark eyes that Reginald had always found unsettling.

"Clean up this mess," Reginald said, turning back to the window. Outside, the first drops of rain began to fall, heavy and cold as bullets against the glass.

That night, the storm broke over Blackwood Manor with the fury of a thing that had been waiting a very long time. Reginald lay in his bed upstairs, listening to the thunder roll across the moors like the drums of an army he could not see. He pulled the covers over his head and tried to sleep, but his mind kept returning to the war in India, to the sounds that had followed him home across the sea.

Down in the kitchen, Thomas Mercer sat at the old oak table with a cup of tea he would not drink. In his right hand, wrapped in a cloth, was a length of oak branch he had broken from the old tree in the courtyard three days ago. He had sanded the rough edges with a knife. He had thought about it for three days. He had thought about it for three years, since the night his father had been found in the stable yard with his skull split open and the master had said, "Accidents happen."

The first peal of thunder shook the house. Thomas stood up.

He moved through the corridors like a shadow, his bare feet making no sound on the stone floors. He knew every creak, every draft, every narrow passage between the rooms. He had walked these halls for twelve years, carrying trays, polishing silver, sweeping up the debris of a man who had never once said thank you.

Reginald's door was ajar. He had always left it ajar—superstition, or fear, or both. Thomas pushed it open and stepped inside.

His master was awake, sitting up in bed, his face pale in the lightning flashes that illuminated the room through the tall windows. He looked small in the great four-poster bed, smaller than a man his size had any right to look.

"Thomas?" Reginald said. "What are you doing?"

"I heard a noise, sir," Thomas said.

Another thunderclap, closer this time, so close that the windows rattled in their frames. In that instant of noise and light, Thomas moved. The oak branch came down across Reginald's shoulders with a sound like a gunshot.

Reginald cried out and crumpled to the floor. He lay there for a moment, then pushed himself up with trembling hands. He pressed his palms against his head as though holding it together.

"Thunder," he whispered. "It struck me. The thunder struck me."

Thomas stood over him, the branch still in his hand. He looked down at the man who had broken his father's skull, and for a moment he felt nothing at all. Then he felt something worse than anger. He felt the hollow space where justice should have been.

"Get up, sir," he said quietly. "You'll catch your death on the floor."

Reginald scrambled to his feet, his legs shaking. He pressed his hands to his head again, checking for blood, finding none. "I'm alive," he said, almost to himself. "I'm alive. How lucky I am."

He climbed back into bed and pulled the covers over his head. Thomas watched him for a long moment, then turned and left the room, closing the door behind him.

In the kitchen, he set the oak branch on the table and sat down. The storm raged on. He could hear his master whimpering upstairs, a sound so small and animal that it made Thomas's stomach turn.

He would do it again tomorrow night. And the night after that. Not because it would bring his father back. Not because it would fill the hollow space. But because Reginald Ashworth needed to understand what it felt like to be small, to be afraid, to be at the mercy of forces he could not control.

And because Thomas needed to understand, each time he raised the branch, whether he was any better than the man he was striking.

The third night, Catherine came to the top of the stairs.

She had been staying at Blackwood Manor since September, since her husband died of consumption in London and her in-laws suggested she "find something to occupy her mind." She stood at the railing, looking down into the corridor where Thomas stood with the branch in his hand, his face illuminated by a flash of lightning.

"Thomas," she said. Her voice was steady, but her hands were gripping the banister so hard her knuckles were white. "What are you doing?"

He did not turn to look at her. He was listening to Reginald's breathing upstairs, counting the seconds between thunderclaps.

"Nothing, miss," he said.

"You're going to kill him."

"No, miss. I'm going to teach him."

"Teach him what?"

Thomas turned to look at her then, and she saw something in his face that made her step back. It was not anger. It was not hatred. It was something older and more terrible than either of those things. It was certainty.

"That he is not as safe as he thinks," Thomas said. "That the world does not bend to his will. That every night, he lies in bed and prays to a God who may not be listening."

Catherine looked at him for a long time. Then she said, "If you do this again, I will tell everyone. I will tell them everything."

Thomas nodded slowly. "I know, miss. That is why this will be the last time."

He went upstairs. He did not raise the branch. He stood at the foot of Reginald's bed and watched him sleep, his face twisted in some nightmare from which he would never wake.

At dawn, Thomas walked out of Blackwood Manor and did not look back. He had a father's skull to remember, and a life to live that was not defined by the man he had left behind.

Behind him, in the great bed upstairs, Reginald Ashworth woke from his sleep with a start. The storm had passed. The morning light was pale and grey through the windows. He pressed his hands to his head, feeling the tender spots beneath his hair, and smiled.

"Lucky," he said to the empty room. "I'm still lucky."

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