Escaping Exodus Read online

“That’s the one.” He laughs. “You know, we’ve spent all this time together, but I feel like I should know more about you by now. But it’s tough with you-know-who always looming over us.”

  “I was thinking the same thing. But maybe we could get to know each other a little better now . . .” I say, and for some reason, I’m ready to bare it all to this near stranger. “Tell me a secret. Something you’ve never told anyone before.”

  He looks at me, blanking, mouth gasping for words.

  “Fine. I’ll go first. I slept with a crib worm until I was twelve years old.”

  He raises a brow, takes a long moment to think it over. “Okay, I’ll play. Once I got a cowrie shell stuck up my nose. So far up there, I almost needed surgery to remove it.”

  “Good start. But if we’re just going to talk about stupid stuff we did when we were little kids, we’ll be here all night—”

  “I was sixteen.”

  I smile at that. “Fair enough, then. I’ve done beastwork. Dressed up in a leather tunic and went to work on the doldrums of our old beast. Every day for a week, and no one batted a lash.”

  “Eesh, well, that’s something . . .” he says with a scowl. “So, we’re really doing this? Right now? Spilling all of our secrets to each other?”

  I cross my arms, my stare firm. “When we’re married, we shouldn’t have any secrets. Might as well get them all out now.”

  “Married? Is this a proposal? Are we making this official?”

  “Doka Taylian, you will know it when I propose to you, I promise. This is a hypothetical.”

  “Okay,” he says. “Here’s a big one for you: I once took my will-mother’s place in the Senate when she was sick. She sent me on an errand to tell them she was too ill to attend. I decided the spirits were tempting me out of my station, but if I was going to fail them, I would fail them in the most spectacular way. I wore my mother’s robes, borrowed her credentials, and faked her naxshi with some blue and gold patina. I watched the Senate proceedings closely, and for all the decorum the Senators project in the public eye, they certainly leave it as they enter the chamber doors. There was yelling, swearing. Pettiness. One Senator even decided to hold the floor for nearly an hour, not conceding until she received a formal apology from the Senator who had bad-mouthed one of her proposals. It was so amazing. I even cast three votes. No one noticed.”

  “Impressive,” I say, noticing how proud Doka seems for defying the ancestors’ will. “No wonder you know so much about the Senate.”

  “That, and I sneak down into my mothers’ studies almost every night.”

  “So you’re good at sneaking?” I ask, tossing a glance at the honor attendant, arms crossed over her chest, head cocked back, still snoring. “How long do you think she’ll stay asleep?”

  “She usually naps for a couple hours easy,” Doka says, a grin spreading across his lips. “What do you have in mind, Seske Kaleigh?”

  “A small excursion.” I smudge my thumb through the patina on his cheek. It’s so thick, it just kind of glides across his skin. “We’re going to have to do something about this, though.” I gesture at his entire ensemble. “I’ll go fetch you some women’s clothes. You go wash up. Let’s see what you’ve got under all of that patina.”

  Doka balks. “Do you know how long it took to put this on?” he says, gesturing at his face. “Hours!”

  “Well, we can’t go sneaking about with you looking like that.”

  “So it seems.” He leans forward; our noses nearly touch. That honor I’m supposed to be keeping away from, I can practically smell it radiating off him. A throb of tension. A palpable wanting on his breath.

  I think this is the part when I’m supposed to say something risqué. To invite him to my room, just for a look around. To accidentally brush my hand across the smoothness of his abdomen. I look back over to Kiravi and see one of her eyes cocked open. She quickly shuts it, then begins snoring loudly.

  Ah. Games, then. What better way to seal a marriage than under threat of stolen honor? He needn’t worry about that. I take the rules of honor very seriously. The rules defining the proper behavior for a matriarch in training, not so much.

  “Come on,” I whisper, taking him by the hand, and as his clammy palm presses against mine, all manners of mischief fill my head. “There’s something I want to show you.”

  I lead him down the hall, past my bedroom, to my bapa’s dressing room. I pick the lock and open the door to reveal men’s silks and wraps hanging upon hooks. A full display of patinas sits out upon an intricately carved bone vanity. It’s yellowed and smoothed over, unlike the pristine white of the furniture that surrounds it.

  “Seske,” Doka says, his hands running along the vanity’s surface. “How old is this?”

  “I don’t know. Old as me at least.” I pull one of the silks down and wrap it around my shoulders. Then I dip my finger into a warm orange patina and rub it onto my face. “If you won’t dress up as a woman, I’ll dress up as a man. You’ll help me, right? And then we can see what mischief we can get into.”

  “Seske, we can’t be in here. Don’t you realize how priceless this is? How many favors your father and your grandfather must have pulled to have this vanity put through exodus? Even this patina, it’s way too old to be from this beast.”

  “Sounds to me like you’re uncomfortable sneaking around . . .”

  “No, I . . .” Doka fumbles for words. He tries to relax, but political calculations are spinning around in his head for sure. “I’ll help. But be careful, not like that!” And he pulls my hand away from the patinas and goes for a big, fluffy brush. “Sit still,” he says, and bites his lip, looking at my face like it’s an empty canvas, then begins covering up my naxshi with a thick layer of patina.

  Being a man, it’s like magic. A shield of invisibility. No one talks to you. No one looks at you. We’re in the central market, caught among the bustle of women scurrying from one bone-white storefront to the next, buying clothes, food, medicine, and gifts to appease the ancestors. For the most part, we go unnoticed, but I catch them risking glances at us now and again. Some of them even dare to ogle our foreheads—a man’s most sacred place of honor. It is there that his wife’s matriline will be set in ink on the wedding night, a fine brush tracing the celestial claims of her ancestors upon him.

  I blink. My eyelids are so heavy, holding up to a dozen tiny gemstones each. My whole body feels like I’ve been dunked in slime, but my, how I glisten. I’ve never felt so bold, so beautiful. Doka made me practice my walk while mimicking his gestures. He spoke of calling upon the honor of my patriline, and now I am enjoying the fruits of my toil, no longer Seske Kaleigh, but Sesken Pmalamar, son of fathers. My temples bear the stark black markings of my pai’s line, my forehead blank for when I am taken into matrimony.

  “Here,” I say, looking up at the Muirabuko Emporium, tugging Doka toward the front door. “I love this place. Or what this place had been on our last beast.” I glance through the window and see nothing has changed. The purple paint on the ceiling detailing the family’s celestial lines in glittering gold, the copper bead wall separating the cheap trinkets from the more expensive novelties in back, and there’s even the old puppet theater, with a show going on right now in fact! I’d watched the gel puppets perform when I was a kid, mesmerized with how those moldable waxy figures moved and shook on their own. Completely lifelike. Seeing these familiar things is more of a comfort than I realized . . . a little stability in the volatile state of our clan’s existence.

  “Come on,” I say, tugging at Doka’s elbow. “Let’s go see what’s playing.”

  “We can’t just walk in there!” Doka whispers at me. “We use the men’s entrance.”

  Right. He leads me around the side. Not so grand here, not so spectacular. The section is about a fourth of the size of the main part, selling mostly scarves, patinas, and hobby kits for carving the custom bone beads young lads like to adorn themselves with.

  “I don’t see any gel
puppets,” I tell Doka. “I’m pretty sure they have them all up front.”

  “We’ll ask a clerk to fetch them, then,” he says.

  “I’ll go. I know exactly where they are.”

  “Sesken,” he says, using my fake name. “Remember your station.”

  “What? My fathers and I come here all the time. We never have a problem.”

  “Seske wouldn’t. Sesken would. If Kiravi were here to supervise us, we’d be fine.”

  I nod, taking his point. “But if Kiravi were here, we’d be in trouble.”

  Two women enter the back with us. Doka and I look down, pretending to shop. It’s the Muirabuko head-mother—matron of the family—and in at least a dozen layers of silks, she definitely looks the part. Their son had married right before our last exodus. They were progressive and let him work a few days a week at the counter.

  “Matron Muirabuko,” says the other woman, and it takes me only a moment to place the voice. I glance over in shock. It’s Sisterkin. “Your son’s marriage has strengthened your business’s supply chain, and now a political move could help strengthen your solvency. Imagine your taxes being lifted.”

  The matron nods along, but I can tell by the cinch of her lips that her heart will not be swayed. “We are progressive, Sisterkin, but the moves we make are seen by all . . .” Then her voice trails off among the laughter coming from the front of the store.

  Doka nudges me closer to them. We keep our heads down, speak in whispers. They’re discussing this delicate information not five feet away, and they’ve yet to pay us any notice. We truly are invisible.

  “. . . would just be too much!” Matron Muirabuko is saying. “Giving names to someone who is nameless. It’s just not done by someone in our position. But just because we won’t doesn’t mean no one will. Perhaps ask the Atirans or the Roushans?”

  “I’ve asked them already,” Sisterkin says with a hint of bitterness. “And the Bulwards and the Ranyanks, and the Cruszans and the Pleletans. I wouldn’t dare bother you, Matron Muirabuko, if you weren’t my last hope. I can see to it that your shop is always profitable. That any shop you open will be profitable and favored by Matris.”

  This gets the matron’s attention. She stops shuffling baubles and stands straight up. “Are you saying that you could get Matris to grant me another shop site?”

  An involuntary noise escapes my mouth. Sisterkin looks at me, locks eyes with me for a brief moment, but there is no recognition there. She looks away just as quickly. “Maybe there’s a more private place we can speak?” she asks the matron.

  Matron Muirabuko agrees, and then they’re gone, completely out of earshot.

  “Sisterkin is trying to get a line name!” Doka says. “This is bad, Seske.”

  “She’s been trying to steal my line name since we were kids. Nobody wants to shame their ancestors by giving her theirs.”

  “Most won’t. But all she needs is one. And she’s promising people store space. That doesn’t come around often. This iteration of our city is less than a year old, and at the same time, nothing about it has changed for centuries. My great-great-great-great-grandfathers probably once stood upon this very spot, in this very store that’s been replicated and replicated again and again. If Matron Muirabuko doesn’t take that offer, then someone else will.”

  “That’s just like Sisterkin, going through all that trouble, and for what? Just to have a line name to rub in my face? She doesn’t even have a given name!”

  Doka stares at me, like he’s giving me a chance to go back and correct something that I’ve said wrong, but it’s not coming to me fast enough.

  I try harder, remembering the time Sisterkin had made up a name for herself. Khasina, she’d said, because it sounded pretty and regal. She’d asked me to call her that, but I’d said no. What’s the problem? she’d asked. It’s just a made-up name tied to no family line.

  And I’d given in to Sisterkin’s persuasions. And the first and only time I’d said it—Khasina—oh, how Sisterkin glowed. That was the first time I realized how powerful names were, and soon after that, I realized the magnitude of my mistake.

  She had played with the name for nearly a week, though I mostly ignored her. But then I’d heard her playing tea with all her dolls. Only now in hindsight do I see how finely her dolls had been dressed, thirty-seven dolls. Thirty-seven women in the Senate. But then, I hadn’t noticed it . . . only her singing “Khasina! Khasina! Khasina!” over and over again, and one time she said “Khasina Kaleigh!” She’d stopped her singing and dancing and turned to look right at me. Had it slipped out? Or was she challenging me then? I hadn’t stuck around to find out. I’d run straight to my pai and told. I didn’t see Sisterkin again until a week later. For months, she’d barely looked at me. Nearly a year passed before she’d spoken to me again. Whatever power there was in giving a name, there was something darker and much more powerful in taking it away.

  “She’d need a line name to challenge for the throne,” I say to Doka, my voice a rasp with the onset of too many emotions for me to process at once. “And if she’s found the power to bribe someone with a storefront, she must be serious about it.” Maybe she’d played at having a name when we were kids, but this isn’t a game anymore.

  “Maybe she’s found a loophole.”

  I nod. “She’s always holed up, studying the Texts. Well, we can’t let her do this. We have to figure out what she’s up to.”

  “Seske, we’ve been gone close to an hour already. We need to get back before Kiravi wakes up.”

  “Don’t pretend, Doka. She was awake when we left. I get the keen feeling she wants you up to no good.”

  “Maybe a little frolic in your bedroom! Not espionage against Matris’s daughter.”

  “I’m Matris’s daughter . . . Sisterkin is just Sisterkin. You want to marry me, you’ll have to get that straight, first of all. And second, you’ll have to get used to taking risks, because honestly, marrying me is a risk the way Matris’s reign is going. If Sisterkin is planning something, it’s in both of our interests to know about it.”

  Just then, Sisterkin exits the private office of the matron. I steal a glance at Doka, and reluctantly he nods. Yes. We are invisible, and I intend to use this power for my own good.

  We trail behind her several paces, following her from the posh streets of the central market down alleyways to a less pretentious area, and watch as she enters a jewelry store. Doka and I make our way around the back and pretend to browse necklaces, when the women enter. It’s quieter here and we get the whole conversation this time. Here Sisterkin speaks ill of me, saying she’s worried about the decisions I’m making and is unsure she wants to stay aligned with me. It cuts, I won’t lie. I may never have accepted Sisterkin as family, but I’ve always tolerated her presence. Sometimes, I’ve even enjoyed it. She’s ready to be done with me, however. Completely. She whines about how it was unfair, how I shouldn’t even be alive, much less in line for the throne. She doesn’t come outright and say that she wants it, but she alludes to it a lot. She claims Matris will support her decision fully, then makes promises of shop space and favors in return for the shop owner folding Sisterkin into her matriline.

  I’m feeling so sick, I can’t stay a moment longer. Doka helps me out, leads me back toward my home. If Matris approves of this, it certainly can’t be good. Had I pushed Matris too far, embarrassed her so wholly at the coming out party that she’d rather deal with the drama of announcing Sisterkin as her successor?

  We climb back through the scaffolding leading up to my bedroom window, then we’re alone up in my room. I wipe my patina away, wishing Doka would do the same so I could see the man who might have just exposed the coup of the century. I hand him a wet cloth. He looks down at it, then wipes. He needs three more cloths before I can see him. Really see him. “You’re beautiful,” I say, and he flushes.

  “I’m sorry you found out about your family like that,” Doka says. “I feel weird for being mixed up in it.”


  I shake my head. “No, thank you for wanting to get tangled up in this. I need an ally. I need a friend.” When I’d chosen him as my suitor, I’d imagined I’d do everything I could to sabotage the relationship and leave it dead in the water. Just another mess for Matris to mop up. But the more time I spend with him, the more I see him as something else. It takes a moment for the words to make it to my lips, but finally, I say them. “A husband.”

  He looks up at me through those thick, natural lashes, more beautiful than they’d been when they bore so many jewels. I touch his forehead—a spot so sacred, I might as well have taken his honor right here in the middle of the floor. He shivers at my touch.

  “I think we are a very good match,” I say.

  The door bursts open; Kiravi stands there, taking up the entire doorway, and sees my finger upon Doka’s forehead and nearly faints. “Your honor, my Doka,” she says, crying into her sleeve, an act she has obviously been building up to for some time. “It was my only duty to protect it, and here, I have failed. We must tell your mothers immediately so that I may take my lashes.”

  “No,” I tell her, grabbing her by the arm. Am I going to do this? Fast-track our marriage. I mean, I like Doka. He’s quick-witted, up for an adventure, and unapologetic for his quirks. He’s everything I want in a friend. But I’d be getting much more than a friend. I’d be getting a lover, too, and that part scares me quite a bit. I won’t be able to avoid it forever, and at least Doka and I get along. Chemistry will come—he is quite pleasing to look at. And I can’t even imagine the fit Matris would have if she found out I’d taken Doka’s honor. She’d disown me for sure. “No, there’s no need. Honor has not been taken. I was just . . . proposing.”

  Kiravi throws her hands up, then pulls both Doka and me into an enormous embrace. She presses her hands upon his cheeks, looking perturbed by the naked state of his face. “Oh, no no no. We can’t have you looking like this in front of your future wife! We have to get your patinas!”

  Then she tugs him away, big goofy grin on his face. I wave at him. And then they’re gone. I suppose I’ll have to tell my parents.