The Butcher

Laura Kat Young

Contents ( 27)

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Leave us a Review

Dedication

Part One: Bequeath

Part Two: Inherit

Part Three: Relinquish

Acknowledgments

About the Author

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The Butcher

Print edition ISBN: 9781789099034

E-book edition ISBN: 9781789099041

Published by Titan Books

A division of Titan Publishing Group Ltd.

144 Southwark Street, London SE1 0UP

www.titanbooks.com

First Titan edition: September 2022

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

For Violet, Ilsa, and James.
I love you always

PART ONE

BEQUEATH

1

When Lady Mae went into the kitchen to wash the dishes, she found that her mother had left her kit at home. It sat on her mother’s side of the old, worn table, inches from where Lady Mae stood. Though she had been taught from as far back as she could remember that inside the kit were her mother’s work tools—the ones for people in any case—lately, when Lady Mae found herself in the presence of the kit, there was a knocking at her breast and a speeding in her heart. The kit itself was small and ordinary, no bigger than the book containing Settlement Five’s bylaws. Alone, there on the table, the tools inside the kit remained harmless. But in her mother’s hands—and soon also her own—they commanded what Lady Mae had taken for respect. And that’s what it was, right? The bowed heads, the quiet that fell on the square when she and her mother walked into town. It was absolution, a kind of credence. Her mother had explained it to her over and over. It ain’t always like it seems. Right now it’s me, but soon it’ll be you. They don’t know no better. Maybe they didn’t, maybe they did. Maybe what they knew was so heavy and frightening, that to even look in the direction of it was impossible. And so when Lady Mae and her mother passed the other residents as they stood still on their porches with brooms in hand, their eyes stayed at the women’s feet lest they let it show.