"Where's your mother?"
It is a question he can never escape here. He ignores it and folds freshly laundered silks and linens in the corner, a quiet corner, away from biting words and stinging switches.
"You there. Boy." The voice is more insistent this time. It slurs with drink and drips with something else, something Zevran doesn't quite understand. Something that makes the hairs at the back of his neck prickle with unease. "I said, where's your bloody mother?"
Zevran takes a deep breath. His mother. He thinks of the gloves he keeps tucked under his pallet beneath his smallclothes, Daelish made hand stitched leather, intricate designs he would trace at night when he hugged the gloves close and prayed to whichever elvish god would hear him. They were soft and supple, with an earthy scent that makes him ache for a home he has never experienced. They had been hers, the girls told him, the only fine thing she owned.
A hand grabs him by the shoulder. "A bit simple are we?" Too scared to move, he resists the urge to touch his hair, his poorly braided unruly locks he can never seem to fix like the pictures in the page he stole from an elvish history book one night, a silly, sentimental prize from a mage too deep in his cups to notice the scrawny elf boy rummaging through his satchel. How badly he had wanted the entire thing, countless pages filled with pictures of people who looked just like him. Knife ears, they would call him sometimes, to put him in his place. Knife ears, knife ears pretty little head. Knife ears, knife ears, make my bed. These pictures, though...they never bowed to anyone, he imagined, with their finely crafted armors and silken robes dressed with lace. Their proud faces, eyes full of defiance and determination. Knife ears, he decided that day, was a title he would hold proudly in his heart even with his nose pressed to the floor in subservience.
"Put that back, are you stupid?" Nadia had hissed when she discovered him leafing through the pages. He had never really liked Nadia. She lined her eyes dark with kohl and smelled of sour ale, and she hadn't spared for him a kind word as long as he could remember. Her hair was astray today, a strand or two of grey beginning to show through her thick black curls. She swatted at him with an empty market sack. "Idiot boy. Do you understand the trouble you'll bring on our heads if he discovers his belongings tampered with? I'll not go down on account of you feeling homesick."
Had he begun to cry then? Yes, he thought, he had. It was Sophie, the petite Orlesian dancer with kind eyes and a rose tattooed on her right cheekbone, who came to his aid. "Maker's mercy, Nadia!" Her hands were gentle on his face, her fingers soft against his damp cheeks. "Leave the poor child be. Can you fault the boy for wanting to learn about his own people?" Sophie was the one who guided the knife in his hands, the one that deftly carved a single page from the book he would have to leave behind. "Fold this away in your pockets, Zevvy love. We'll tuck the book back in his pack, like so, and he'll leave no more the wiser." He remembered how she had turned her head to observe the man in disdain, snoring away with his face half drenched in roast gravy. "I danced for him tonight, and truth be told this half wit probably doesn't even know how to read anyway. Now off to your room, petit chou, before Matron Terissa discovers you're out past your bedtime."
No one asked him where he learned to braid his hair after that night, a fact he was certain Sophie had made sure of. They were so much more difficult than the pictures made them look, and he was painfully aware of the snickers from the other children, but the daily ritual of combing his fingers through his hair, twisting and knotting just so, to the best of his albeit poor ability, made him feel closer to the pictures that looked like him.
A rough shake of his shoulder snaps him from his thoughts. "I won't ask again, elfling. Pretty little head like yours, the apple can't have fallen that far from the tree."
"Fell down dead," he says dully. The man who smells like spirits and some other unidentifiable but unsettling thing releases his grip and pushes him to the floor.
"Suppose you really are simple then. I've half a mind to-"
"My Lord, may I escort you to the gardens?" floats a sweet voice from outside the parlor. Sophie, he thinks distantly. Safety. Zevran brushes the dirt from his clothes and scrambles back, almost tripping over his feet in his haste.
"Of course darling," the man slurs. "Shall we be taking the boy?"
"He's to get to the kitchens to help prepare tonight's meals, my Lord," she croons, stroking the drunk's hair in manufactured adoration. "The boy makes truly awful company anyhow, but he does have such a talent for making sweet pies. Trust me, my Lord, your belly will thank you for this come nightfall."
Zevran watches Sophie take the man's hand and lead him through the ornate curtains. She turns and meets his eyes with a sad smile before the embroidered velvet fabric falls in front of her with a dull thud. He sinks to the floor, back against the wall, trembling fingers clutched in his loosely fitted tunic, and beside him, a pile of unfolded linens, now forgotten.