SL Huang - Up and Coming - Stories by the 2016 Campbell-Eligible Authors

The family comes level with us just as the heaviest of the three men behind them shouts a challenge. The father turns and the woman grips the shoulders of what I now see is a bi-gender child. My hands clench into fists reflexively; the taunt and the setting evoking old habits.

"They’re new here." I hear sorrow in Dallu’s voice and an anticipation of the inevitable.

Though not all bi-gender couples can reproduce, mono-genders have been giving birth to bi-genders more frequently in recent generations. When a high-born child shows the signs—at birth, or later, when puberty reveals the androgyny that external characteristics had not—the family is cast down to live among the lowest classes. The hatred visited upon those both high-born and bi-gender is fearsome.

The child presses close to the mother’s body and the father steps in front of them. Memories of my own childhood howl as I watch. It was many years before I grew strong enough to dissuade individuals, old enough to discourage those younger than me, and before every detail of my body was common knowledge among the brutes of Sabanach.

The heavy fellow snatches at the child but the father loops his forearm under the man’s and draws a large circle, leaving him surprised and open. The father kicks, first to the belly and then to the face. He is trained in military arts, then. A shame, for he is outnumbered and will suffer for it. We have, most of us, learned when there is a chance of fighting our way free and when there is not.

The mother, and even the child, struggle, scratch, do what they can to fend off the arms of the other two that snake past the father. The fight boils nearer and my horse shies, forcing Dallu and myself away from his rear and into the street. I tell Dallu to get inside. I will follow once I retie my horse.

Suddenly, I hear the unmistakable ricochet of thick bone breaking. The heavy man cradles one forearm in the other, bellowing his anger and pain. The older of the three, a feral-looking man, draws a knife that is half a sword and lunges for the father. Dallu steps closer, an impotent desire to help writ clear in eyes that are wide with concern.

"Get inside!" I hiss again. I grasp for Dallu’s sleeve but miss.

The child wriggles from the mother’s grip and lifts a broken cobble from the alley just as the father ducks under the attacker’s arm. Before the child can throw, the father steps back to counterattack, stumbling over the child’s shoes.

I refuse to believe this will go so far as killing. Thugs torment and abuse us—the lowest of the low—with impunity, but murder of any citizen is no mean thing. It would bring down the wrath of the soldiers. Many in Sabanach, participants or not, would suffer.

Dallu must see a different outcome. My co-parent grabs the collar of the off-balance father and pulls the man onto his ass. The knife’s trajectory is unchanged and Dallu stands now where the father stood a moment before.

The blow is indeed lethal. An upward strike, sinking the long knife nearly to the hilt.

The feral man freezes like one of the stone statues in the palace gardens. It is Dallu who removes the blade by sliding lifelessly to the ground.

The alley suddenly erupts in pushing, jostling panic. My eyes are fixed on the still face of Dallu, and the last flicker of recognition in those brown eyes, as I kneel beside my co-parent. I don’t see the cowards run.

Someone grips my shoulder hard.

"Get out of here," the father is saying to me, "before more people see you."

I hear the words but they wash over me like tepid water, eliciting no reaction.

"I’ll help you carry him," he says.

I distantly register the arbitrary pronoun he uses for my co-parent. The man squats and slides his arms under Dallu’s back, lacing them around the still and bloody chest. My mind and body are frozen in the moment of the knife strike, unwilling to move forward into the present.

"Soldiers will come soon," he repeats slowly.

When I move my joints are wooden, as if a puppeteer controls what I cannot. I lift Dallu’s legs. The father gives me a look like I have done something praise-worthy. He shuffles back and indicates the open door with his head. "This one?"

I nod.

We set Dallu on the sleeping pallet in the far corner. I try to still the torrent of emotions threatening to burst from my chest by arranging Dallu’s slack limbs. I brush the high, aristocratic cheekbones with my fingers. I wonder if the fact that Dallu once lived in the upper terraces somehow prompted this fatal rashness.

"What’s your name?"

I’m shaken from my thoughts by the man’s unexpected question. His wife and child stand behind him, mute with fear and shock.

"Jerusha," I reply, and close Dallu’s eyes as gently as possible.

"Was he your father?"

Co-parent and father are a world apart, but I have no strength to teach this man his new language. He will learn it soon enough, if he lives so long. "Yes," I say, standing.

"I swear to you, on my name, Finagor of house Aruldon, I will do anything in my power to repay his sacrifice."

I want to snort at the man’s belief that he possesses any power at all now that he is here among us.

Dallu’s still body draws my eyes back to the corner. I am overwhelmed anew that I will never again feel my co-parent’s embrace. The insurgents, if they exist, are right in seeking to tear the hierarchy apart. And if they don’t exist, they should.

The hatred I carry for our lot in life pushes out at my ribs, making my hands shake and my head pound. My life-long fear angers me even more. Like a tether under too much strain, something breaks. I move so suddenly that Finagor steps back, and I storm outside like Abab confronting the Lashans.

The streets and alleys are as vacant as I have ever seen them. People have gone to hole like the small prairie animals before a great thunderstorm. I strip my saddlebags from the horse with a jerk.

Back inside, I pull open one flap and yank the purple velvet package from within. Opening that, I remove the cream-colored paper, folded twice and perfect in its squareness. In my anger the entire seal tears from the paper below the flap as I open the message I have borne these past many suns. The reading skills needed to carry out my duties are sufficient to understand the words written within.

The rumors are true. My knees go weak at the verification.

There must have been an earlier communication from Alawea to my tetrarch in Zasna saying that Alawea’s spies discovered the insurgent army. The message I hold is my tetrarch’s answer. She advocates that both cities should unite their forces and strike at dawn on the day after the coming full moon. The location to join forces and the location of the rebels are both mentioned.

Finagor’s skin has blanched to the color of yellowed bone. "What have you done?" he asks.

The answer is so large I can no more distill it into words than I could distill the salt from the wide sea. I have taken action on my own behalf. I have confirmed my greatest hope. And I have ensured my own slow death by opening the tetrarch’s private message.

The paper drifts from my fingers to the dusty floor and still I make no answer. Finagor stares at the message lying in the dirt as he might at a deadly porah snake. At last he bends to lift it from the ground. His breath hisses between his teeth as he reads.

"They do exist."

In an unsteady voice his wife asks, "Who?"

He hands her the note. The child watches her read it.

"I planned to take my family east," Finagor says, a slow wonder in his voice, "as soon as I could secure food, weapons and mounts. We would have gone on no more than the hope, but you have given us the certainty. And more than that, the location."

And as suddenly as that, the rumors make sense.