Escaping Exodus Read online

  Dedication

  To Katie and Laika,

  across all space and time

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Part I: Excavation Seske: Of Old Friends and New Awakenings

  Adalla: Of Solid Heartbeats and Dented Pans

  Seske: Of Lost Lines and Found Texts

  Adalla: Of Slow Beats and Fast Women

  Part II: Expansion Seske: Of Soiled Cloths and Pristine Dances

  Adalla: Of Silent Girls and Loud Mothers

  Seske: Of Unseen Men and Overheard Plans

  Adalla: Of Sharp Knives and Blunt Messages

  Seske: Of Given Names and Stolen Lives

  Part III: Extinction Adalla: Of Strange Fruit and Familiar Signs

  Seske: Of Questionable Crimes and Undisputed Punishment

  Adalla: Of Secret Sisterhood and Public Apologies

  Seske: Of Lively Puppetry and Deadly Lace

  Seske: Of Higher Learning and Lowered Expectations

  Adalla: Of Unborn Souls and Unanswered Questions

  Seske: Of Open Space and Closed Hearts

  Part IV: Exodus Adalla: Of Hard Plating and Soft Lies

  Seske: Of Shoddy Lists and Perfect Planets

  Seske: Of Full Plates and Empty Wombs

  Adalla: Of Damp Slips and Dry Buckets

  Seske: Of Infinite Pain and Null Gravity

  Acknowledgments

  Announcement The Prey of Gods: Sydney

  Temper: Doubt

  About the Author

  Endorsements

  Also by Nicky Drayden

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  Part I

  Excavation

  Our histories lie in rubble, buried upon a dead rock spinning under a forgotten sky. Our futures lie in waiting, buried within this magnificent beast traversing the stars we now call home.

  —Matris Otoasa,

  438 years after exodus

  Seske

  Of Old Friends and New Awakenings

  Our family’s stasis pod seems impenetrable as I rub my hand over the inner surface, looking for the exit seam. I’d underestimated the depth of the darkness that would saturate the pod, and without vision, without hearing—and with my mouth and lungs and stomach filled with sleep balm—touch is the only tool to help me escape.

  I feel the flesh of my mothers and fathers beneath me, bodies limp and near lifeless as they await the construction of our new world. Me, I am not that patient. This is my first excavation, and I don’t intend to miss it. Matris, my head-mother and our clan’s matriarch, had been raised from our pod well before my sedatives wore out, probably as soon as the herd was in sight. My fingers twitch, imagining Matris as she took aim and dealt the crippling final blow to the spacefaring beast. At our next exodus, Matris promised that she would let me drive the helm, but that is still some twelve years off.

  I can’t wait a moment longer, though, knowing all that is going on around me.

  Beneath my desperate hands, the soft nap of the stasis pod goes to partially healed scar tissue, smooth and thin. I pull the bone shard I’d smuggled in here, my laugh a silent jiggle of liquid-filled lungs. If Matris knew her accountancy guards had missed it during their oh-so-thorough inspection, she’d have them strung up by their thumbs for a week.

  The incision I make is slow and precise, matching the original hair for hair. I can’t leave any evidence of my excursion. A gentle blue light seeps through the cut. I push apart the layers and press my head through. Air hits my face, and the instinct to cough catches me by surprise. Sleep balm spews from my mouth and my nose, as sweet air fills them, quickly washing away a metallic aftertaste.

  “Daidi’s bells,” I curse upon the memory of every heart-father there ever was. I quickly recoil, covering my mouth with balm-slick hands. I’d imagined my first words on this new world would be something more profound, something graceful and fitting of the clan’s future matriarch.

  The cargo hold feels more like a crypt, half-full oblong sacks just large enough to house the families who opted to sleep through the construction. In a few months, they’ll wake up to a perfect replica of their former homes, detailed down to every chip in their countertops, every scuff upon their sickle-scaled floors, right on down to the creak of the boneboards beneath. Matris says they have forgotten that we are nomads and that it is for the best. It is better for them to focus their efforts on infusing the economy and advancing technology than worrying over the droll trivialities of beastwork . . .

  Beastwork. The promise of seeing our new beast before the excavation work begins thrills me to my core. I don’t know why anyone would opt to sleep this time away when they could be witnessing the workers sinking their siphons into the first artery. I’d practically begged Matris to be woken early, but she insisted that this was a delicate time for her, and she didn’t need the distraction of family as critical decisions were being made.

  I hope I’m not too late. I hurry, pulling my body through the incision that I now realize is too narrow for my hips. I twist, trying to finesse my way through. My feet find purchase on the familiar ripple of my bapa’s abdomen and the indistinguishable arm crook of one of my mothers. The delicate seam tears, running jagged this way and that. I ignore the pit in my stomach. It is still early. Maybe it will heal in time. Maybe I can bribe the accountancy guards to look the other way instead of tattling to Matris.

  “Psst, Seske!” comes a voice from inside the hold. Adalla’s voice for sure, but I don’t see her.

  “Where are you?” I whisper.

  “Here,” Adalla says. She peeks out from a stack of deflated pods and smiles at me, her hands and face already darkened by the beast’s blue-green ichor.

  I clench up, my stomach raw and sore with disappointment. “I’ve missed the first letting.”

  She shrugs. “You slept two days too long.” Adalla looks around the cargo hold.

  She approaches along the wall, slipping in and out of shadows until she’s upon me. She frowns at the seam rip and the steady burble of sleep balm wasting over the edges. Then, with a beastworker’s strength and grace, she hoists me up and out of the pod like my bones are made from mad vapors.

  “Why didn’t you wake me?” I ask Adalla.

  “This beast has spirit. Your Matris called all hands to steady it. But it’ll last us fourteen years, the Senate agrees already, and you know how often they agree.”

  “Great,” I grumble. That’s two extra years I have to wait to see the next first letting.

  “Don’t be mad.”

  Adalla pulls a stiff roll of fabric from her pack, the iridescent blue of a beastworker’s suit. The natural creases of beast hide still run through it. She hands it to me, and I slip out of my nakedness and into my disguise.

  “We’ve got two hours before we need to get this back. And you back. Lash counters are on edge. My amas say they’ve never seen them so flighty, especially during excavation.”

  I bite my lip. Adalla’s amas—may the ancestors soothe their sweet little hearts—are older than anyone I know and have been through seven beast cycles. Two of her amas had begun their courtship as teens but didn’t take on their third until they were well past their childbearing years. They bucked convention, and some had even dared to call them a “couple,” though they fervently denied it, claiming they were just taking their time searching for the exact right woman. They were every bit as sharp as they were eccentric, though, and if the amas say something is amiss, then something is amiss.

  “Don’t pout,” says Adalla, tugging me forth. “I’ve got something even more exciting to show you.” She offers me her re-breather, but I push it away. The air is still thin, but they’re boiling icho
r as we speak, filling the beast’s insides with breathable atmosphere and all the scents of home. I’ll be fine.

  “What is it?” I ask, pressing my hand in hers, and in an instant, I’ve forgotten all about the late wake-up call. “Are we going to the gills?”

  “Seske, are you crazy? Do you know what Your Matris would do to me if she found out I’d gotten you gaffed on mad vapors? She’d have it out on my hide, and my mothers would be sure to tear up any pieces she overlooked! This is way better anyway.” Adalla reaches into her work satchel and retrieves her knife—sharp, long, and metal. A family heirloom, three hundred years old, or so Adalla claims.

  “Beastwork?” I grunt. This had better be good. I didn’t risk being raised from my stasis pod early to get stuck boring holes in the beast’s body. I want to see something exciting. The more reckless, the better.

  “Nuh-uh. This,” she says, raising her knife, “is for protection.”

  I perk up. “Protection? From what?”

  “Some of the workers think this beast is full of spirits,” Adalla whispers.

  “Of course it is. Matris took great care to bring the spirit wall—”

  “No, not those kinds of spirits. The kind that torment people. Like Quiet Medla. She’ll steal your voice if you skip your prayers. Or Halli the Mangler, who’ll turn a girl babe into a boy if you don’t braid her hair before she cuts her first tooth. Or Ol’ Baxi Batzi, who’ll smother you in your sleep, unless you . . .” Her brow tightens. “What?” she asks me.

  I must be making a face. “Nothing,” I say. “Go on . . .”

  “You don’t believe in them,” she says, not a question.

  “I . . . uh . . . I don’t not believe in them. It’s just a lot to take in all at once.”

  “And how many times has your family dragged you to the spirit wall? How many times have you left offerings for your ancestors?”

  Too many times. And I see her point. Who am I to say whose spirits are real and whose aren’t?

  “So, what do we do if we see one of these spirits?” I ask.

  “Well, I’ve got a plan,” Adalla says, slipping her knife back into her satchel and pulling out a small ley light, some candles, a jar of brown grease, a length of twine soaked in something that smells sickly sweet, and a shiny copper disk, just like the one she keeps next to her bed. Or maybe it’s one and the same. Adalla shakes the ley light, the chemical solution inside filling the space between us with a warm red glow. She starts explaining how each of her spirit wards work, but my mind gets lost, just enjoying the cadence of her words, as I think about all the adventures we’d had on the old beast. But when the light hits Adalla just right, and those old memories fizzle out of my head, I notice how she’s filling out her beastworker’s suit; where she used to be long and lean, now she’s got muscles straining the fabric.

  I could kick myself when I realize why. She’s been training hard in hopes of getting promoted from the ichor vats. Ideally, to the beast’s primary heart, but any major organ would do. Or so she said. The heart is the only place Adalla belongs, and we both know it.

  But just as I open my mouth to ask her how her training is going, we hear the steadfast footsteps of an accountancy guard echoing through the hold. Adalla stuffs her spirit wards in her satchel, grabs the ley light, then nudges me behind a pile of flattened stasis pods, our bodies caught between it and the wall.

  My lips are upon Adalla’s ear. “Maybe she won’t notice the rip,” I murmur.

  “You must have already taken a sip of mad vapors, Seske. You know lash counters notice everything.”

  I do know. The members of the Accountancy Guard, or lash counters as the beastworkers call them, are renowned for their heightened senses, which have landed me in trouble more times than I’d like to admit. They’d noticed the mere sip of blood wine I snuck from Matris’s bone chalice during the first inhumation ceremony I’d attended. They’d noticed the faintest bruise I’d left upon Sisterkin’s arm the time we’d fought—really fought—over whom Matris loved most. And most recently, they’d tattled to Pai, my head-father, that I hadn’t actually memorized the Lines of Matriarchy but instead had written all 118 names in the teeniest of scripts up and down my arm with brown ink a half shade darker than my skin, which maybe was true, but that accountancy guard should have had the decency to bring my shame upon Matris and not my poor trodden pai, who’d wept for a straight month.

  This would be much worse.

  Folklore has it that back in the day, under Matris Otoasa’s rule, every gram mattered during exodus . . . when our whole clan crams into our original ship, leaving behind the exhausted carcass of our beast in search of a new one. They say space aboard the ship was so precious that Matris Otoasa’s accountancy guards could count the exact number of lashes on your eyelids within a fraction of a second, and if you had too many, you were pulled out of line to receive a proper grooming. I don’t know if it’s entirely true, but it’s true enough. So we’re as good as caught. For me, I’m used to dealing with Matris’s wrath. She’ll scold me and tell me how disappointed she is. Tell me how I should behave more like a matriarch in training. How I should be more like Sisterkin.

  But Adalla . . . she’s got much more to lose. A demotion to boneworks, if she’s lucky. A thumb hanging, if she’s not. I can’t let either happen.

  “Stay here. Stay quiet,” I say, wriggling my body back out into the openness of the hold.

  “Where are you going?”

  “Turning myself in. No use in both of us being caught.”

  “My hero.” Adalla giggles, then catches herself. “You don’t have to do that. I’ll stand by you. Proudly. Besides, I’ve got strong thumbs. I could hang for days.”

  My stomach cramps up at the thought of Adalla suffering through that punishment. I mean really cramps up, worse than it ever has before. A moan escapes my lips.

  “Are you okay?” Adalla asks. “Please, allow me to come with you.”

  Finally, the ache subsides. “No—stay here,” I tell her. “Consider that an order from your future matriarch.”

  She sighs, rolling her eyes at me as I gather myself and prepare to face the bane of my existence. The accountancy guard’s footsteps are already headed my way, and when I turn to face her, my jaw drops.

  It’s worse than I feared. Way worse.

  “Wheytt,” I say with a pained exhale as my eyes stick to the sculpted flesh beneath the sensory-dampening layers of his uniform. Matris’s new male accountancy guard—mothers’ mercy—looks down upon me through bone-rimmed goggles. I cannot see his eyes through the darkened lenses, but his scowl line is more than obvious. Accountancy guards are bad in general, but Wheytt is the worst, out to prove to himself and to Matris that he’s more than capable of working outside the family unit. Because of his insecurities, he tattles like his livelihood depends on it. And that means that there’s no talking my way out of this one. Matris already knows.

  “Matriling Kaleigh,” Wheytt says to me with due respects, though it is a sloppy wave of obligation and not the stiff salute of reverence he gives to my head-mother.

  “Call me Seske,” I grate at him. “Better yet, don’t call me anything at all.”

  “Mmm,” he says dismissively. “Matris wishes to speak to you. And your beastworker friend can come along too.”

  My gut shifts yet again. “There’s no one else here. I escaped on my own,” I say, willing my eyes not to dart in the direction of Adalla’s hiding spot.

  “I smell ichor,” Wheytt says.

  “Perhaps one of your fellow accountancy guards tracked it through here, too busy prying into everyone else’s business to watch where they’re stepping.” I cross my arms over my chest.

  “Perhaps,” he says, unconvinced. “But I heard whispers. A conversation.”

  “I like to talk to myself. Is that a crime?”

  “We can keep playing these games if you like, Matriling Kaleigh—on our way to see Matris Paletoba.” Wheytt lays one of his pristine white glo
ves around my wrist, the finest beast hide I have felt upon my skin, even more luxurious than Matris’s raiment. We both look at his hand upon me, and he snatches it away but does not apologize for the offense. “Beastworker Adalla,” he shouts into the hold. “In the name of Matris Paletoba, reveal yourself.”

  Adalla slinks out and stands beside me, fingers clasped, tumbling her thumbs over and over each other.

  I cringe, admitting defeat. “How did you know it was her?” Best to know my enemy’s strengths, so maybe next time we won’t get caught.

  “Your naxshi,” Wheytt says. “They always brighten two and a half shades when you share her company.”

  I touch my cheeks, feeling the warmth budding where my ancestral tattoos sit. The heat-sensitive pigments in the naxshi ink have betrayed me. “You think you know me so well?” I hiss, though I can feel my tattoos brighten even further from a new kind of heat brewing within me.

  “I know that you have ripened and you are ready for womanhood. I have sent word of this ahead to Your Matris as well.” Wheytt bends down on one knee, wipes his gloved index finger upon the floor, then turns it up so I can see. A small dollop of blood stains the tip of the glove, and the undeniable smirk of menses envy sits upon his lips.

  The cramping. The taste of iron in our sleep balm. All at once, my emotions cram up into my throat. The pride I should feel for finally catching up to my peers is squelched cold by the fact that Wheytt had discovered my first menses before I’d even known myself. As if I needed one more reason to hate him.

  From a pocket in his uniform, he pulls out the little black ledger that has haunted me since my early childhood and apparently will follow me right into womanhood. He presses the blood drop upon the ledger’s sensor, then types something onto the keypad.

  “Take me to my mother!” I yell at him, the archaic term more of a cuss than generic maternal designation, though there’s definitely no need for me to specify which mother.