Crewel

accuse.
    ‘We remove them from a conscious state where they would exist in pain. We’ve streamlined the burdens of old age.’
    My hand aches where my grandmother’s fierce grip clasped it, and I shake my head at his lies. There’s no way he’s younger than she was. The Guild’s interest lies in removing the unnecessary matter in the weave. ‘Have you ever lost anyone?’ I ask.
    ‘Not the same way you have,’ he admits, ‘but you should know better than anyone the pain of unexpected death.’
    ‘Unexpected death’ is such a political way to put it. ‘No, have you ever lost anyone to removal?’ I clarify.
    ‘We don’t lose in removal. We control,’ he says, his jaw muscles twitching. He’s a bit too fond of that word. ‘And yes, I had both my parents and my wife removed.’
    ‘Wife?’ I gasp. Cormac Patton: the ultimate bachelor. The idea of him settled down with one woman is incomprehensible.
    ‘I was married when I was very young,’ he says in a casual tone. ‘As you know, it’s expected that citizens form domestic units by age eighteen. I was no exception.’
    Except that he’s always been the exception. The man flashes across the Stream with a fresh new girl at every Guild event. He’s the guy my father half-jokingly referred to as a lucky bastard every time we tuned in.
    I try to picture the type of woman he’d marry. In my head, she’s a cross between Maela and one of the vapid rebound stewardesses. Insipid and evil – Cormac’s perfect cocktail. ‘What happened to her?’ I ask him.
    ‘She fell ill before renewal technology caught up with certain psychological ailments. I chose not to prolong her suffering.’ His tone is detached; he’s stating facts, but the muscles in his jaw tense and the veins from there to his shoulders go taut. This isn’t something he wants to talk about, which makes it the number one thing I want to discuss.
    ‘But she wasn’t dying,’ I say, my lip trembling.
    ‘No,’ he says, ‘but she was not a functioning member of Arras, and her condition prevented me from serving the Guild to my full capacity.’
    I turn my head, afraid my eyes will give away my burning disgust. He got rid of her so he could advance politically and enjoy the benefits of being a widowed bachelor. ‘I guess that’s why you enjoy casual relationships with so many women,’ I say in a cold voice.
    ‘That’s the thing, Adelice. The time has come for the family unit to be promoted again in Arras,’ he says, switching on his politician’s smile.
    ‘I wasn’t aware it had stopped being promoted,’ I say, thinking of the marriage profiles advertised in the daily Bulletin . By now I would be attending courting appointments and searching for a compatible match. The thought sends a tremor through my chest as I imagine the life I never had.
    My jibe only launches him into more rhetoric. ‘Our laws help us maintain the family, but there are an increasing number of unnatural threats to the traditional family dynamic.’
    Like Enora.
    ‘We contain these dangerous proclivities as best we can, but the fact is that a number of dismissed women have refused to marry according to age regulations. In the Eastern Sector, this trend is spreading, and now young men aren’t even advertising marriage profiles,’ he tells me.
    ‘And you let them?’ I say, not hiding my surprise. ‘When the Guild has such persuasive methods at its disposal?’ Is this the taint I heard him discussing, or just a symptom of a larger sense of discontent?
    ‘Frankly, after Enora’s stunt, I’m concerned about the safety of our current methods. The process may have damaged her. The remains of her thread barely held together when we removed them from the weave. It might surprise you to learn we don’t want to remap the entire female population.’
    ‘But you would, though,’ I accuse, my blood boiling.
    ‘Of course, there’s nothing I wouldn’t do for the good of Arras,’ he says, dropping his gaze to meet mine. ‘Someday you’ll understand this. Right now you can’t see past yourself. If girls stop marrying – if, Arras forbid, they live on their own – we can’t protect them.’
    ‘So you’re doing it to keep women safe?’ I ask.
    ‘Yes. When expectations are clear, they are easily met, but when we begin to bend the rules, we invite discord.’
    I actually think Cormac believes what he’s saying, but I’ve seen the effects of these stringent rules. My mother being refused more