Chapter 20

“Severo!!!” I practically shouted. My mouth hung wide open. After nearly ten years without a word, standing there before me was the man I’d come to think of like a father. And he looked older; that told me I wasn’t insane.

I stepped forward, tentatively – and a wonderful grin began to awaken upon my face, the first sign of life I’d felt all morning.

“Quiet!” Maiden Threwon hissed at me. “Do you want everyone to hear?? This is a most inappropriate meeting.”

Maiden Severo just continued to watch me, ominously. Though age had added more wrinkles to his face, and his hair was mostly white now, there was no doubt in my mind that my old nanny was indeed here, in the flesh, looking very much alive.

His mouth turned down in the beginnings of a scowl, however; that never happened on the face that I knew. Either something was horribly, horribly wrong, or…

“Lady” Severo spoke gruffly, addressing Threwon. “Are you even certain this is the same boy? Sure, a little bit of devil hangs in the air around him, almost like a misama – a nasty one, too – but I hardly see anything which resembles the squealing piglet who dumped a bowl of saffron-lime soup into my beard. Took me weeks to wash the color out, too.”

Now I did squeal a little bit, and I dashed forward to wrap Severo in a crushing hug. I was crying.

“Whoa! Ehh– EASY there, young one!! My bones aren’t– oww!”

I released him immediately, horrified. “I’m so sorry!!! Oh, maiden Severo, I just missed you so much!! You just vanished one day, and I heard nothing, and then we left the Ward – Dornell and I – and I thought maybe I’d see you again once we got there, but it was just Threwon and some other maidens we barely knew, and I– “

“What do you mean, just Threwon?” Threwon interrupted. But Severo merely grinned.

“I know, my lad, I know… It wasn’t a planned thing, I can assure you. I’ve been off working in… other parts of the Estate. Older parts. Probably better suited for a man of my age, at any rate.”

I wiped my nose. “What are you talking about?! You were the best maiden any of us could ever ask for! I can’t think of anyplace more suitable for you than looking after kids like you were.”

He raised an eyebrow. “That’s you, lad; my knees and back just might feel differently, you know.

“I’m glad the two of you are reunited after so many years” Threwon said briskly. “I’ll admit, I did not realize you were so close. Such bonds are… uncommon between children and adults within the Estate.”

I turned to glare at her. “Tell that to the clients who watched us dance.”

Okay, so maybe I still wasn’t feeling very well.

She frowned at me but did not argue. “Mr. Veille, I called maiden Severo here because he has some words that I believe can help you. I must now go and join the other maidens before I am missed. Lunch ends in ten minutes, do not forget.”

She turned to leave. “And Severo? Don’t you be late, either.”

We watched her hurry away across the tiled floor. Before long she turned a corner and vanished back into the Hall.

Severo shook his head, sighing. “Maiden Threwon was always rather hasty, to tell the truth. It’s something I liked about her.”

“You knew her from before?”

“Oh, yes. She worked in the Ward when you were just a child, do you remember? It’s understandable if you don’t; there were so many of us, and somehow it was never enough. Her shift over to Mannerly Hall just happened to coincide with your own, from what I’ve heard; they do that often enough when children age out and require further training.”

A lead weight settled into my stomach – and suddenly, the world felt a whole lot darker again. “Oh… That’s right. You also knew from the very beginning, didn’t you? About the Estate. About what it wanted to do… to us.”

Severo shut his eyes and didn’t reply for a long moment. When he opened them again, they looked gaunt, the whites almost pasty. I wondered if he was ill.

“Yes” he answered matter-of-factly, “I knew. I knew you were all destined to become living objects for sexual entertainment – that one day, some old turd or another would come by and hand-pick the best of you, never to return you.”

I stepped away from him, horrified. Not by his admission; that part was inescapable. Painful, yes – so painful that it cut me right to my soul – but I had already pieced those painful parts together. What agonized me the most was listening to him tell it all so calmly, so boldly, almost like reading an essay.

I fought with myself over the urge to vomit.

He made no move to invade my space while I struggled, for which I was both grateful and resentful. What would I even do if he tried to put his hand upon my shoulder now?

When I’d calmed down, I asked him “how? How did you live with yourself? Knowing what you knew. You played with… You read me bedtime stories. For years I lay awake at night, excited to hear the next one.”

He stiffened, then sank into his bones. “I lied, Veille. I lied through my teeth – to myself, to you, every single day. And I lied about what I said a few moments ago, too.”

He ran a hand through his aged hair, and groaned. “I wasn’t transferred away from the Ward by the Estate’s decision – I left. I asked to be moved somewhere else, anywhere really… Someplace I could throw myself into a stack of dusty old tomes and never think again. I couldn’t take it any more, Veille. Have you ever…”

Abruptly Severo bit his teeth down upon his lower lip; after a moment, blood began to flow. His eyebrows were knotted together with pain.

I stepped forward reflexively, meaning to offer assistance – but he merely waved me away, grunting.

“... Can you imagine how it feels to adore and to cherish generations of young piglets… to give each and every one of them names, knowing that all of them will one day be sent to the market for slaughter? I hoped that you would become a maiden like myself, Veille, I truly did. I hoped that you would fail; deeply, utterly. I hoped that you would grow up to be the ugliest creature alive, all so that you would be spared the fate of going off to the market… so that one day the two of us could meet again, and then, perhaps I could apologize.”

Somewhere inside my heart, I felt like I was bleeding…

I stumbled forward. My feet felt numb, hardly there. It wouldn’t have been long before I collapsed in a heap if maiden Severo hadn’t propped me up with his arm; he then gently cradled me to his chest, his old man breath whistling past my ear.

“There’s nothing to be done about all that now” she said softly. His voice was surprisingly calm; I still smelled blood on him. “I didn’t come all the way up here just to make you feel tormented, though a part of me hoped I might get to hold you again… just like this, like the old times. They were some of the happiest I’ve ever had, Veille, please remember that.”

He broke the embrace and looked me in the eyes, hard. One hand came up to brush away a lock of disheveled hair from my tired face. “I have a few things to share with you, my boy. They’ve been a long time coming… though I fear now that they can’t wait any longer. So tell me: do you and your friends want to get out of this place, forever?”