Veyk
Veyk’s parents didn’t love him, so when he was three years old they left their son on the doorstep of a group of Scriptkeepers living just outside their village, figuring it would be easier to explain to the neighbors than if they took the kid out into the forest and didn’t bring it back. The Keepers didn’t really love him either, but at least they taught him to read, something he would always resent. The monks had a very specific idea of what a proper education entailed and made sure he received it. This meant that, by the time he turned eighteen, he had copied each of the nine major Scripts dozens of times and could recite each by heart, as well as some twenty-five of the minor Scripts, the five “worthwhile” commentaries, six non-religious histories, and five major poetry collections, not to mention the thousands of hours of discussions, debates, arguments, rants, yelling matches, and duel challenges he had witnessed or, occasionally but always reluctantly, participated in. It also meant he had exactly zero friends.
Of course, he had some relationships that could be described as friendly. Chief of all was Dosto, a mid-level monk who had been a seventeen year old assistant when Veyk was first tossed onto the monastery lawn, and was in fact the one who first found the child, convincing the Head Keeper not to immediately send Veyk back into the cold by cunningly emphasizing his value as free labor. The Keeper shrugged at this. “Very well,” he said, “but you’ll have to feed him yourself.”
In addition to Dosto, Veyk often got along well with the apprentice monks once he was closer to their age, but since the vast majority left for other territories after completing their educations these relationships never developed into anything permanent. Those who stayed seemed to undergo a strange conversion as soon as they passed their first-level examinations. Now having earned the right to assist in teaching, they began to view all the apprentices, who just a few days ago they might have happily exchanged dinnertime jokes with, as “layabouts” who “maybe could accomplish something if they ever spent some time in the library instead of the mess hall”, and their opinion on “Who? Oh, you mean that orphan brat who’s always getting in everyone’s way?” did not seem at all to depend on how much they had gotten along with Veyk during the previous years, or the fact that he had more experiencing working with the written collections than some people who passed their third-level exams. Within the older monks, there were a few who seemed to be able to tolerate a conversation with the boy, but most seemed to think there was no other way to interact with him besides slamming down a stack of papers and telling him to get copying.
As for the villagers… well, Veyk rarely went down there anyway except for when he was fetching supplies, and after every visit he marveled at his luck if all he received were dirty stares. The adults at least were polite enough not to show outright hostility. They knew who his parents were, and considered him “tainted blood” because of it, no matter how charming or well-behaved he attempted to be. They made sure to double check all the money he gave them and never handed over the nicer cuts of meat, but this was the limit of their judgement – wary disdain. It was the villagers his age Veyk had to be most careful of, especially one boy with overactive fists by the name of Gan, who travelled with a group of leering hangers-on that always jumped in if Veyk looked to be getting the best of a fight. While Veyk could tolerate the coldness of the adults and the mocking of other members of his generation, it was these encounters with Gan’s gang that he dreaded the second-most, because more often than not they meant he returned to the monastery empty handed.
Dreaded them only second-most, of course, because what truly made him keep his visits to the village as brief as possible was the possibility of encountering his parents. He had been just old enough to remember their faces when they abandoned him, and it was four years after, on a trip to fill some bottles of milk, that he caught a glimpse of them again for the first time. His father was arguing loudly with a radish farmer, demanding that the man “sell your wares with some urgency if you want to keep renting this spot,” his mother occasionally chiming in with a “Yeah!” or “Who do you think you are!”. Veyk at first did not understand what he found so fascinating about this couple, or why, as he stared at them, he felt such intense nausea threatening his stomach. When the realization struck him it was not even as an intellectual thought, but as a force that propelled his whole body forward before he understood why. “Momma!” he found himself calling, “Dad!” He ran up right next to them with a grin the size of which he’d never manage before or since and tugged on his father’s silken coat.
His father reacted with such immediate ferocity that when Veyk came back to consciousness several minutes later he still could not piece together what had happened. His vision was blurry, tears were pouring from his eyes, and his left cheek hurt. He reached up to touch it and felt something move slightly when he pressed his finger down. After blinking several times his eyes began to focus slightly, and the blob standing above him solidified into a concerned-looking radish salesman.
“Where’s my dad?” asked Veyk. Talking sent a spike of pain through his cheek.
“I’m, uh…” the salesman looked away, “I’m sorry, kid.”
Veyk managed to push himself to a sitting position and look around. There was a small crowd of people gathered by them, but no sign of his parents. He looked down at the hand that he had used to touch his father’s coat. It was still covered in ink-stains from the copying he had done this morning. As he stared at their patterns a knowledge avoided for the past four years emerged from within his mind like a lurking leviathan finally breaching to send waves of devastation towards the continents. Wordlessly he stood and began making his way towards the road leading to the monastery.
“Hey kid, wait a second,” he heard, and turned back. The salesman was approaching him with a handful of radishes that he stuck out as he reached Veyk. “Here,” said the man, smiling. “On the house.” Veyk took them, saying nothing, and continued walking. He managed to make it back to the monastery and into his room before collapsing silently onto bed. The radishes rolled into the corner, where they would remain until Dosto noticed them rotting several weeks later.
He saw his parents perhaps two dozen times over the next thirteen years, and never made another attempt to interact with them. If they ever noticed him, they never gave an indication of it. He did not see them when he made what he did not then realize would be his final ever visit to the village, and it was only much later that he realized the reason for this. He did, however, run into Gan, who was lounging outside the single tavern with some particularly ugly goons, and stood up when he saw Veyk approaching.
“I had a good feeling about today,” he said.
Veyk said nothing, but he placed the bag he was carrying on the ground and flexed his knuckles in anticipation. In truth, he had thought it likely that Gan would be sitting here but decided to take the route anyway. He’d received a lengthy tongue-lashing from a second-level monk before being sent to the village, the kind that wounded the pride he didn’t often realize was still there. Once awakened and bloodied, it found the idea of taking another injury by running from a fight intolerable.
It went as it usually did. For any given scrape the two were about even and when, as it went today, Veyk began showing the upper-hand, Gan’s goons would rush in immediately and give him the best drubbing they could. Usually when that happened Veyk would dart off, leaving whatever he’d been sent to the village for behind, but this time the same urge that had kept him on the path to the fight kept him from fleeing as well, and when the two other fighters stepped in they were shocked by a series of quick jabs that sent them stumbling back.
His first opponent was experience, though, and this single change of Veyk’s focus was enough for Gan to get an arm around him, pin his weight with one shoulder, and slam him down back-first to the ground. Veyk lay splayed out in the kicked-up cloud of dust, wheezing for air, while Gan grinned down at him.
“You give up?”
Veyk gritted his teeth and nodded. Gan took a step back to let him get up. Once on his feet, Veyk didn’t bother looking back at his attackers. He started limping away without bothering to pick up the bag he’d placed on the ground. When they were younger, Gan had possessed a more sadistic streak – often he wasn’t satisfied until he’d cracked a rib or two. Now he seemed primarily to want to be a nuisance to Veyk. Not hurt him, but just keep making his life more difficult whenever possible. Veyk spat a line of blood from his lip onto the dirt. I’m tired of this place, he thought, not for the first time. Seventeen years and this is all I get.
Last summer Veyk had gotten desperate enough to appeal to the Head Keeper, asking to take the test to become a first-level Keeper. “You know I could pass up to the fourth at least,” he told the man. “All I’m asking is for the first so I can get out of here.” Sitting his chair, wearing his loose-fitting white robes, eyes closed as he listened, the Head Keeper looked more like a collection of wrinkled, pale clothes draped over a few wooden towels than a human being. He rocked back and forth, saying nothing for so long that Veyk thought he had fallen asleep until he finally let out a whisper so light it couldn’t even have broken a cobweb.
“You are not an official student. You may not.”
“There are Keepers on the other side of the continent who only passed the exams because I helped tutor them,” said Veyk. “If being official is that important, then write my name down wherever it needs to be.” He could feel himself shaking as he spoke. The thought came to him, not for the first time in his life but certainly more tempting than it ever had been before, that he could reach out and bash the Head Keeper’s skull into the desk without anyone being able to do anything about it.
“There are other requirements.” The Keeper’s neck bobbed up and down. His eyes remained closed. “If you are so determined to leave this place, then leave. But it will not be as a Keeper.”
Veyk rushed out of the room before he did something that couldn’t be undone. Dosto, walking by his room 30 minutes later, heard a strange banging noise and opened the door to find Veyk repeatedly punching his bed. He watched for several minutes before tapping his ward on the shoulder. Veyk immediately ceased.
“Even if you’re not a Keeper,” said Dosto, “you’re a skilled writer and rhetorician. There are people I know who would pay more money than I have ever seen for a scribe with half of your abilities. I can send them notice, see who currently needs an assistant.”
Veyk sat down and his bed and did not look at the older man.