The Servant Queen

Akkey the Servant Boy

Ten Years Later in the Residency of the Towers

POV: Akkey (ah-key)

I stood motionless beside the opened door waiting for a command, wearing my new mask I carved. My clothes were newly made too. It was partially due to fact that there was an upcoming occasion where I have to accompany my youngest master to the Prince's ballroom party. He was looking for a noblewoman to become his wife. I'd hate to bring my youngest master there, but I'm just a servant without a say.

If a servant is well-dressed, it shows how prosperous a noble family is. However, my masters are all hiding the fact that they aren't prosperous. They're being reckless, spending like rich men.

My masters were three in total in this household: Mr. Towers and his two teenage children. The older was his son, Oliver, who was half-insane, according to the village people and the younger was his daughter, Maisie. They were both unbelievably beautiful people like their deceased mother.

Maisie has a weak constitution, so she would occasionally lay in bed for sometimes the entire day. And when Mr. Towers and her older brother leave for to town, she would call me over to stand beside her bed until she falls asleep. She disobeyed the Servant Code by giving me a name, "Akkey." Servants are suppose to be nameless. It came from her favorite variation of a well-known lullaby.

Akkey of the sea beyond,
Who smiles and waves
Before he's gone.
He promised me he'll never lie
He promised me he'll one day die
But, Akkey, of the sea beyond,
Could you promise me...

But in the end, she was my master and I was only her faithful servant, so I couldn't dare say I had feelings for her.

There was a new servant arriving today. Every time a servant gets sold, their value decreases. My brother and I overheard Mr. Towers speaking to his children about how they were lucky to find a servant girl with a low price a couple days ago.

I believe that there's a reason to why she was so cheap.

I was one of the two male servants in this household. I was raised here with my younger brother ever since my birth eighteen years ago. We never had any other servants here besides ourselves-- let alone a servant that was a girl. Our parents were the neighbor's servants. They moved away awhile back.

I was excited to meet someone new I could talk to since I could only speak to my boring kid brother for all these long years. This new servant girl could tell us her journeys across the different regions and her tales of the different people she came across since she was sold many times.

Mr. Towers waved at me without looking at me.

"Oi, servant. Come here," he said, sharply.

I walked to him and lowered my head waiting for him to speak. Mr. Towers' expressionless son played on the piano while he watched. The old piano was in the center of the lavishly decorated room. It was out of place and had many illegible words carved deeply into it. I can't read, but I definitely know that the words don't look like the Stoniean language. I believe it might be a language from the past.

Mr. Towers kept offering Oliver better and newer pianos, but he kept declining it. Overall, it was fine for everyone else. As long as he plays his piano, Oliver wouldn't act out of control. He would act...normal to everyone's standards. But normal to everyone is him showing nearly no expressions.

I know it's not my place to say this, but I don't believe it's healthy to be trapped in all alone in his own mind.

"My servant shipment, number 5601, was suppose to arrive this afternoon, and now it's nearly night," Mr. Towers whispered to me, with a hushed irritated tone. "Find out what happened and fix the problem, servant. The wagon should be traveling on the main road."

I nodded my head and swiftly walked away. The weak floorboards creaked loudly with every footstep. The five hundred years old mansion was finally falling apart and this noble family wasn't going to last. They were a lower-class noble family, and all of their hired farmers resigned because of they were paid too low by the Towers Family.

I can't blame them. If I were them and had a choice, I would've left too. But I'm not them. I'm Akkey, a faithful servant of the Towers. And Maisie is here, and she needs me as much as I need her even though I'm nothing.

The land was rotting away, and crops weren't growing anyways because it was winter. We didn't even sell a single grain this autumn due to a bandit incident. If the Towers go deeper into debt, their titles of nobility would be stripped away from them, leaving them with less privileges. Also, Mr. Towers wouldn't be able to even afford a doctor for Maisie anymore if money isn't raised soon.

That's what matters the most to me.

I went toward the Servant's Quarters at the back of the deteriorating mansion and snatched up the two heavy pistols on my desk. I then covered myself with an old cloak and walked toward the stables. I felt disappointed that the shipment didn't go smoothly.

Shipments are always on time whether it's agricultural produce or servants, so the only reason it wasn't was mostly likely because someone stopped it along the quiet countryside roads.

I could bet my life that it was one of those bandits again. Recently, they became more common in the Eastern Region because of the lack of Guards, who were similar to government Knights, governing this vast area. Eastern bandits rob shipments of not only servants, but other goods, such as massive cargos of grains, like ours last autumn.

The Towers are hitting on hard times because of them.

I climbed the horse and hit the reins. I hope I could find the wagon of servants before those fools who call themselves bandits take the servants to another region. The sound of the piano slowly faded away as the distance between the house and me increased.

I was really looking forward to meeting the new servant girl and listening to the story of her journey.

If the bandits really did attacked, I have a feeling I might just kill them.

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A/N: Hello, peeps! I'm Fal-ling and I just want to give you all a heads up. I'm not going to do the POV change frequently.

Please feel free to correct any of my grammar mistakes. I aiming to be a better, better, better writer and right now, this is more of telling than showing. I'm not going to promise, "it's going to get better, ya'll," because I don't know that myself yet. However, I can promise that I will try to get better in writing.

And last of all, thanks for reading. ¨̮