Prologue
After a busy day of cleaning for the family, thirteen-year-old Aza Gen walked through pleasing late-afternoon sunshine. She was on her way to the library on the second-floor mezzanine and the light angled dramatically from the wall of clerestory windows in the Komeh's grand entrance hall below.
Aza had many unfulfilled wishes: attention from her father, answers to all her questions about life in Maripesa, companionship—at least one real friend, please. For the moment, however, her needs were simpler. She wanted several uninterrupted hours with no more curses to clean for the rest of the day.
She heard voices, looked over her shoulder, and saw Mam Sior's eldest sons come up the wide staircase and turn in her direction. Backing against the paneled wainscoting to let them pass, she idly searched for faces in the veined marble beneath her feet. Sunlight warmed the toes of her slippers that peeked out from under a robin's-egg blue skirt.
Then Hasip, the younger brother, stopped and turned toward her.
Bats and rats! More work?
"Good day, Gen."
Aza gaped.
He placed a hand on the wall next to her and leaned in. "It's time we got to know each other. We have lived in the same house all these years." His thumb touched her upper arm.
On purpose?
"Eww," his older brother Ferjival said in a high-pitched voice, which then deepened as he continued. "What the Maripes are you doing? She's a servant. Get away from her."
"After all, Aza, you are growing up."
This was unprecedented. She had been the official Gen Clan cleaner of curses here in the headquarters and home of the Puraples Clan since she was eight. Ferjival and Hasip, her elders by five or six years, had always been in the house, too. But they only spoke to her when they wanted some Kruik-cursed object cleaned. She had no clue how to respond—or if she should.
Doors opened at the end of the hall to Aza's right. Mam Sior Puraples, ruler of the city-state of Maripesa filled the double doorway with her wide, black, floor-length skirt, overweight frame and overbearing presence. Taking in the scene, she strode forward as Hasip pulled back.
In an intense whisper that seemed to Aza to hold more force than all Sior's usual bellowing, the matriarch said to her son, "This young woman is, as all of our household help, off limits!"
Hasip gave a tiny nod. A bead of sweat ran down his temple into his patchy sideburn.
Sior said, "Tell me why."
"Clans do not mix…uh…intimately, on pain of death."
"Because?"
"It…it might, uh, would dilute each clan's Talent. And…or, well, mingle them."
"And that would…"
"Undermine our rightful place in Maripesian society."
"Do not ever approach her in this way again. Is that clear?"
"Yes, Mother. Perfectly." He nodded, skirted around her, and walked toward the council chambers. Ferjival, smirking audibly, followed.
Aza kept her eyes on the floor, aware of Sior's bulk blocking her sunshine, her toes growing cold.
"Stay away from my boys. All of them. And anyone else who isn't…of your clan."
Aza pulled at her skirt and curtseyed. "Yes, Mam."
After Sior disappeared behind closed doors, Aza remained against the wall. Of course people were put to death for breeding outside their clans, but that fact had never impinged on her life. Even more: Hasip noticed her? She could still feel the spot on her upper arm where his thumb had been. An involuntary movement somewhere between a shiver and a shudder went down her spine even though the sun shone on her once again.
Aza's wish for a calm few hours in the library wasn't going to happen. Her insides felt like jelly and her heart still thumped. She walked down the servants' hallway to an anteroom off the council chambers. The small space held a spindly chair, a sideboard for serving dishes, and a Gen cleaning table.
Aza lightly tamped down her skirt with gloved hands to keep her petticoats from rustling, bent at the hips and peeked through the ornate iron keyhole.
Mam Sior, at the head of the long table, leaned forward on her elbows. A sharp ray of sun reached the back of her head, its hard edge contrasting with and lighting up Sior's fluffy top-knot of greying hair.
Like a tarnished halo.
Aza felt at home in this room. Her breathing calmed.
In the council chambers, Ferjival and Hasip bickered over some detail of a Kruik Clan curse the council had been discussing before Aza arrived. Mam Sior cut in. "Enough! The Kruks have pushed me too far. If we let them befoul a seed, soon the whole orchard will rot."
Mam Sior isn't talking about growing fruit. Though a Kruik-cursed orchard would be a ruin. I'd hate to be charged with that clean up.
"Council Leader Droht, I want you to hit," Sior thought for a moment, "Kruik Leader Rodjo and—oh, I don't care—one of their other senior councilmen." She tapped a fingernail on the table, thinking. "Use lichlia. Time it for late night to increase the chance of prolonged discomfort. Make sure they know it's a present from me."
The Puraples' lichlia—one of various malady curses in their arsenal—produced an almost immediate painful, spreading rash lasting until the unlucky target could get to a Besin Clan healer for treatment.
Aza didn't know the soon-to-be uncomfortable Rodjo, or any other Kruik. She only knew their curses. They were not the maladies of the Puraples, but flux curses that manifested a variety of disgusting, disabling, gooey, sticky, sometimes smelly, spreading substances.
Their women wear pants, not skirts. Does that mean they are more like men? Are the Kruik people spoiled and rude like the Puraples I live with? Do they curse so often because they are awful or because the Puraples deserve to be cursed? Or both?
There were too many holes in what library books, news pages, and snippets of spied information could tell her. She wanted to take all the bits of overheard conversations and scraps of written notes she "happened" to find and piece them into an overview of where and how everything and everyone fit here in Maripesa. She wanted to understand.
Aza's belly heaved suddenly and seemed to flip-flop. Apparently, she hadn't recovered from what happened with Hasip after all. Dizziness followed. She put a hand on the door and breathed deeply, willing the discomfort to pass.
When it did, Aza could see from two perspectives.
She still saw Mam Sior through the keyhole, but she could also see herself in profile looking through it. This new envisioner leaned in close and Aza marveled at how transparently amber her brown iris appeared with light pouring into it.
She stood up abruptly, jerking her head around.
And: She saw herself doing this.
What is happening?
When it was clear that nothing stranger could possibly happen, something did: this other, invisible self, passed through the wall into the council chambers. Aza—no longer peeking through the keyhole—could see the whole room. At the far end, elderly Councilman Kalijal was saying, "…buying as much wheat as we can..." Other council members nodded or commented.
With another wave of nausea, Aza's viewpoint returned to normal.
A headache blossomed above her left eye and she felt sticky, hot moisture on her inner thigh.
Her first menses.
