by Kate L. Mary
“There’s a new law,” the Fortis man at his side said. “It has been decreed that everyone will be stripped and searched before they leave the house. The Outliers cannot be trusted.”
A shudder moved down my spine and I found it impossible to remain where I was. I stepped back, but it only took me deeper into the mudroom. Asa blocked the door that led outside while the other man, whose name was unknown to me, blocked my way to the kitchen. My gaze moved from one man to the other, stopping on Asa, but I found speech impossible. They had to be joking. Surely not even the Sovereign would demean us in such a way.
“What is he saying?” I managed to get out as I searched Asa’s brown eyes for answers that I felt certain I did not want to hear.
“You are to be stripped and searched every day before you leave the house.”
Something flickered in his eyes, an emotion I had seen only once before, on the day Ronan was punished, after Lysander had groped me in front of everyone. It was a mixture of sympathy and rage, and it made no sense. Not in this man’s eyes. Not in the eyes of any Fortis man or woman.
“It’s the law,” he said, his voice much quieter this time, “and I’m charged with enforcing it. Do you wish to remove your own clothing or will I have to do it for you?”
Anger and shame heated my face as all the sympathy I felt for Asa slipped away. “You will not touch me,” I hissed, feeling suddenly like a lygan right before it attacked.
I balled my hands into fists and glared at the man in front of me, wanting to hit him, to scream. Wanting to destroy this whole city and every person living in it.
Only it was impossible for me to do anything. I was nothing but an Outlier, and a woman on top of that, and I was no match for any man. Especially not a Fortis guard.
“I will do it if you make me.” Asa paused and his eyes searched mine, and the pleading in them once again gave me a start. “Don’t make me.”
Despite my anger and confusion about the situation I currently found myself in, my voice was shaky when I said, “This is wrong. You know it.”
In my desperation, I found myself pleading with the man in front of me, begging him to help me the way he had that day three weeks ago. Except there was nothing he could do and I knew it. No matter how much I wanted to hate him for this, I knew he was powerless to stop this from happening. We all were.
“I’m only doing my job,” Asa replied.
He was telling the truth, but I needed to direct my anger at someone, and the man in front of me was a convenient target, so I flung words at him that I knew would cut deep. I wanted them to, wanted them to hurt him as much as I was hurting now, as much as Ronan was still hurting.
“You can tell yourself that all you want, but it does not absolve you of the things you have done.”
Asa visibly jerked at my words, but he held his ground. “I was born into this position just as you were born into yours. Do you have a choice in the things you do?” My anger waivered and began to sizzle out, and he saw it. “Neither do I.” His eyes darted to the other guard, who stood silently watching me. “Please. Make this easy on both of us. Do as you’re told.”
I lifted my chin, and it was the only act of defiance I could muster. “I will do this, but make no mistake. It is not for you. It is for me.”
I took a few steps back, putting more space between the two men and myself. Then I reached up and began to unbutton my dress.
Both men watched, but it was Asa that I focused on. Part of me wanted to focus on something else, to avoid looking into the brown eyes of this hulking man as I stripped myself bare for his inspection, but another part of me wanted to see his reaction. To know what he was thinking and feeling so I could understand him better and how exactly he fit into this world.
I kept my eyes on his even after I undid the last button and slipped the dress from my shoulders. The fabric slid down my body and dropped to the floor, pooling at my feet and leaving me in nothing but my undergarments. Heat flared across my cheeks and inside I was trembling with shame, but still I held his gaze.
Until now I had hated the silly undergarments Saffron forced upon us. The white fabric of the sleeveless shirt was thin, but it covered enough of my breasts that I tried to convince myself I was not naked. The skirt I wore under my uniform was made from the same material though, and when a shiver moved over my body, I found it impossible to hold onto the delusion.
Asa’s eyes were still focused on mine when the other man said, “Remove everything.”
A sob caught in my throat as Asa’s gaze moved to the other guard. “She’s fine. She can’t hide anything under that.”
The man scowled, but mercifully said nothing.
When Asa looked back at me, his gaze moved over my body for a beat before focusing on my face once again. He swallowed, and his Adam’s apple bobbed, and then he said, “Raise your arms and turn.”
I did as I was told, lifting my arms as I slowly spun in a circle. When I was facing him again, I captured his gaze with mine once more. The other guard stomped off, leaving us alone, and Asa finally looked away.
“I’m sorry,” he said, nodding to the dress at my feet.
I swiped it up and held it against my chest. Looking at him was impossible, so I focused on the floor. “So am I.”
For a beat neither one of us moved, and then he turned his back on me and walked from the room, leaving me to collapse on the floor.
I held my tears in this time, not like I had after Ronan’s punishment, but instead sucked in mouthful after mouthful of air until the shame had melted away and I felt steadier. I had nothing to be ashamed of, I knew that, but it was easy to allow the sensation in. Only, I was unsure if Asa had anything to be ashamed of either. I knew just from looking him in the eye that he carried the shame of what he had done with him, but he was not at fault. He played no part in making the laws, and he did not hold others under his thumb, and he had even stopped me from having to strip down to nothing. It seemed that like me, Asa was just trying to survive. It was all either of us could do.
When I had re-dressed and pulled myself together, I headed out. After what had happened in Saffron’s house, I felt as if every person I passed on the street was staring at me. Other Outliers because they knew what had just happened and felt bad for me, the Fortis because they were wishing they had been in Asa’s position, the Sovereign because they wanted to force me to strip down again. The once peaceful walk out of the city felt suddenly more treacherous than even passing the Lygan Cliffs did, and I was certain that if I did not get out of here soon, I would be attacked.
I practically ran through the streets, pushing people aside in my hurry to make it to the gate, but there was a line to get out, and it took only one glance in the direction of the gate to figure out what the hold up was.
The guards were taking advantage of the new law.
I watched in horror as an Outlier woman undid her dress and allowed it to drop to the ground, stripping in the middle of the street until she was in nothing but the thin undergarments. I had no doubt that she had been given a choice, and I knew why this was the route she had chosen. It was either strip in the street or the office, and we all knew what would happen in the office. It was not much of a choice, or at least that was what I thought, except that only a few moments later another Outlier woman followed a guard to the little room. Her head was down and her bottom lip trembled, but she went anyway. I found it impossible to understand how anyone could think what was going to happen in there was a better alternative to stripping down in the streets, but it was likely that she thought she could strike some kind of deal with the guards. Maybe she would be able to. Maybe sacrificing her body once would save her down the road. It was impossible to say.
Older men and women made it out of the city with no problem, but everyone else was treated to the same ultimatum. Woman after woman stripped for the male guards, but the Outlier men were no better off. While I watched, a Fortis woman forced a man to strip down to nothing, mocking his thin fram
e when he did. It was too much to handle, and I had to look away.
I knew I would be no different. I had already endured one strip, and I realized that as humiliated and angry as I had been, it was nothing compared to what could have happened to me. To what was about to happen. This would be a whole different level of humiliation. Suddenly, I understood what had actually occurred in Saffron’s house, and the realization made me see Asa in a new light. He had planned the whole thing. He had put himself in that position to ensure that nothing too traumatic would happen to me. Asa got off work at the same time that I did. He could have walked away, could have turned his back on me and left me at the mercy of the other guards in the house, but he had made sure he was the one in that room. He had watched out for me.
For a reason that was impossible for me to comprehend, this man felt as if we had some connection, and whatever it was and wherever it had come from was unimportant, because it had saved me. He had spared me, and instead of being thankful, I had thrown words at him that were intended to sting. And I had hit the mark.
The closer I got to the front of the line, the more my body began to tremble. I knew what I had to do, I could not go into that room, but I had no idea how I would get through being stripped in the middle of the street, was unable to imagine how I would ever be able to hold my head up after this.
“Come on, girl,” the guard barked when it was finally my turn.
I stepped forward on shaky legs and as steadily as I could muster replied, “I have already been searched by a guard working in the House of Saffron.”
The man at the gate grabbed my forearm and jerked me forward. “I don’t care. Strip.”
My fingers were trembling when I reached up to unbutton my dress for the second time today. I had no choice. I just had to get it over with and pray that it went no further than my undergarments.
“Stop,” a booming voice said from behind me, and even before I turned, I knew who had said it. Still, I found it nearly impossible to believe my eyes when Asa pushed his way through the crowd. “I searched this one already.”
“New protocol,” the guard in front of me barked.
Asa’s back straightened and he met the cold stare of the other guard with one of his own. “I read the law, Idris, and I say she’s already been stripped.”
Idris pushed me aside so he could get in Asa’s face and I stumbled back a couple steps, my fingers still on the button.
“Why are you always on the side of Outliers?” he growled.
“I’m on the side of the law,” Asa hissed in reply.
There was a pause, and then Idris’s top lip curled up in disgust. “Fine.” He took a step back, his eyes still on Asa, and waved to me. “Go, girl. Before I change my mind.”
My fingers redid the buttons on my dress while my legs carried me to the gate. Asa was at my side, walking as fast as I was. But I knew the gate would only protect him until Idris finished his shift. Then Asa would have to answer for what he had done here. For standing up for me. Again.
We made it through the gate before he grabbed my arm and pulled me through the village. The eyes of everyone we passed seemed to be on us and Asa’s grip was neither gentle nor rough. He was frantic, rushed. Like he was desperate to get me to safety.
His pace remained steady until we had left the village behind, and when he finally came to a stop, I was pretty sure it was the same spot I had left him in only three weeks earlier when I had ripped Ronan from his grasp.
Asa let go of my arm and his hand dropped to his side. “I’m sorry.”
“I can tell,” I said, looking up into his dark eyes, trying to see inside him and understand what was going on with this man. “Why? Why do you care what happens to me?”
“Because you’re a person. Like me.”
I looked beyond him, back toward the village we had just fled. “How many other people in your village feel that way? Not many I bet.”
“I only have to answer for how I feel.”
His words filled me with awe, and I dragged my gaze from his village so I could look at him again, whispering, “Thank you.”
Asa’s gaze moved to the dry ground beneath our feet as if he found it impossible to look me in the eye. “Don’t thank me. I forced you to take your clothes off. I degraded both of us.”
“You did it so no one else would,” I said, acknowledging the truth of the situation out loud.
“The other men in the house…” His eyes were still on the ground when he exhaled. “It’s wrong.”
“I have worked in that house for three years. Why do you suddenly care what happens to me?”
“I’ve always cared what happened to you.” His eyes flickered up, focusing on mine for only a moment before going back to the ground. “You just never noticed until now.”
A beat after the words passed his lips, he turned. I watched dumbfounded as he headed back to his village, leaving me standing in the street alone, just as I had done to him three weeks earlier.
10
That night in my village, just as the sun was setting over the wilds, Bodhi and I were married.
I made the decision to not tell him—or anyone else—what had happened to me inside the walls of Sovereign City. It would have been easy to say I did it to protect him from his own anger, or even because I did not want anyone to have to share in my pain, but the humiliation I felt over the experience told me those excuses would have been a lie. No, I refused to run the risk of Bodhi going into the Fortis village in search of revenge, and I hated thinking about what would happen if he made trouble with the Sovereign, but I also burned with shame at the memory of having to strip down for Asa and the other guard. It was unfair, the decision had not been mine, but I still felt as if I were somehow to blame. As if I could have done something to stop it from happening, not just to me, but to all the other Outlier women who had been stripped bare under the pretense of being searched. Because that was what this new law was. A pretense. The Sovereign in charge, women like Paizlee, did this to exert their power over us, to ensure that the Outliers were thoroughly put in their place. Worst of all, it worked.
As for the Fortis, like the guards at the gate, they were playing a different kind of game. One that made them strong and us weak, a game that they had been playing with the Outliers for as long as I could remember. Probably for as long as anyone could remember, and even beyond that.
It was because of these things that Bodhi and I started our marriage with a cloud hanging over us. One that was invisible to him, but one that I was certain he could sense. He asked no questions, just as he had not asked me about most of the things that had happened inside the walls for the past three years, but I could tell by the way he touched me, by the gentle caress of his fingers when he took my hand in front of our entire village, that he knew I needed our life to be a refuge from the atrocities I saw every day inside the walls. That I needed him to be my safe haven. I also knew that if anyone in my life could be that for me, it was Bodhi.
The ceremony was short, just Bodhi and me holding hands in front of the village and vowing to commit our lives to one another, and then receiving the passage markings that indicated we were now one. I had attended dozens of marriages during my lifetime, but never before had I thought about the markings married couples wore or what they really symbolized. Sitting at Bodhi’s side though, watching as his father used the tebori tool to etch the markings onto my new husband’s skin, I was overwhelmed by how beautifully significant this ceremony was.
His father began by carving the passage markings on Bodhi’s temples that indicated his son was now the head of his own household, which consisted of a half circle with another closed circle in the middle. When he had finished those, he moved the tool to his son’s forehead and began the markings that both Bodhi and I would receive, the ones that symbolized we were now husband and wife. I held my breath and watched it happen, feeling each tap of the tebori against his skin as if the very same lines were being carved on my heart. When the marks on Bo
dhi’s head were complete, his father took the bowl of black dye, made from a small beetle common in the wilds, and rubbed it into the scratches, revealing the design he had created. The result was beautiful. A single tear drop with two dots above it and lines extending from both sides, each one ending in another dot.
Then it was my turn, and Bodhi held my hand as his father repeated the process on me, tapping the tebori tool against my forehead over and over again in the same pattern he had just completed on his son. Just like before, it felt as if the painful pricks sank into me, as if they wrapped around my heart and added an extra cushion that would protect me from the rest of the world, and the thought made me feel suddenly stronger.
After we had both received our new passage markings, Bodhi and I were presented to the village. We stood in front of everyone, holding hands as we swore to be eternally faithful to one another. It was a promise the Winta took very seriously, one that would haunt us in the afterlife if we broke it, and there was not a single doubt clouding my heart or mind as I repeated the words.
When the ceremony was over, Bodhi and I retired to our new hut, a gift from the elders in our village. Then we were finally alone.
I was not ignorant in the ways of sex, I had been made brutally aware of every detail three years ago as a new employee in the House of Saffron, but it was something Bodhi and I had not yet participated in. Every Outlier tribe was different, but the Winta believed that the joining of a man and woman was a sacred act, one that if not preformed correctly could curse a person’s future. I had been happy to wait, and not just because it was our custom. Bodhi was not Lysander and I knew it would be different with him, but the memory of that day three years ago still caused me to tremble from time to time. Still made me hesitate.
