I suppose I should be grateful to the 14th Autarch, more than a century dead, who decreed that all messengers would be bi-genders, giving many, if not most of us, a profession. Perhaps I would be grateful if he’d also allowed us to climb out of the slums. Or if his incentive had been loftier than devising a means for bi-genders to access his palace to satisfy his well-known perversions.
Past the outer ring of beggar’s camps and temporary shelters lies the interior of Sabanach, where many of the short, boxy shacks flaunt strips of bright cloth hanging across low roofs or along either side of the doorways. The extravagant use of cloth is not as wasteful as it seems; it transforms the bleakness into a riot of rich reds and bright yellows, deep blues and emerald greens. It proclaims the uniqueness of the inhabitants and shouts to all who pass by, "I have not been conquered."
That my parents still make their home here gives me the opportunity to remove the dirt of my travels in private before presenting myself to the tetrarch. A rare respite from performing the duty under the eyes of palace servants.
I stop before a squat hovel with faded strips of cloth lovingly stitched into a rainbow of familiar colors. The open door indicates that at least one of my parents is in residence. Horses are rare in Sabanach, but to steal a horse with the trappings of a messenger would be to steal from the messenger’s master, which none would dare. I tie him without hesitation to the iron stake hammered to the left of the door.
My eyes fight for focus as I step over the threshold into the dim interior. Against the far wall of the single room a figure crouches on the dirt floor upon hands and knees, folding blankets at the foot of the sleeping pallet.
"Dallu?" It’s been three seasons since I was here last and I say the name more to identify myself, knowing I’m silhouetted by the light at my back.
"Jerusha." Dallu drops the blankets and comes to embrace me. My co-parent’s small breasts press against me, our cheeks rub roughly. I am bestowed a light kiss on the forehead. "You’re here on business." Dallu holds me at arm’s length to examine the brown breeches and shirt of a messenger that I wear.
I nod. "I thought to wash before going to the palace. I hope to visit afterward, but one never knows."
"Of course."
I strip off my dusty shirt and find a pitcher of water on the table and a cloth and bowl where I know they’ll be stored.
"Where’s Beldala?" The last two times I passed through Alawea my birth-parent was away, making it nearly seven seasons since we last saw each other.
"Gone."
Dallu’s tone implies deeper meaning than one syllable should possess. Turning with the dripping cloth in my hand, I wait for more.
"Beldala left to deliver a message to Glendower. That was half a season ago."
"Half a season?" The water from the cloth plops drip by drip on the toe of my boot as the news sinks in. "To Glendower and back should take no more than a fortnight; a fortnight and a half at most."
Dallu’s voice drops to a hush so low, even standing two arm spans away I strain to hear the words. "I think Beldala left to look for the insurgent army."
"You believe the rumors?"
"Beldala did."
I hope more than I can say that Dallu’s suspicion is true, but an attack on the road is far more likely. When the autarch decreed that bi-genders would be messengers the excuse used was that, being neither men nor women, we were safer from the violence men encounter on the road and the other sorts of brutality more often visited upon women. In truth, we’re more vulnerable to both. Mono-genders, both men and women, prove their superiority to all but a fortunate few of us in a variety of ways. It happened to me often enough in these very alleys.
A hard knot in my belly forms around the fear for my birth-parent’s safety. "What makes you think Beldala wasn’t waylaid?"
"I tracked down the one who should have gone to Glendower," Dallu says. "The messenger was not ill as Beldala told me. The errand was traded and the trade requested as a favor."
I digest this in silence. The wet cloth, gone from cool to cold in my hand, pebbles my skin in gooseflesh as I touch it to the back of my neck and face, to the warm skin under my arms. Lastly, I lower my breeches and rinse the rest of the stink of twelve suns' travel from my body.
Dressed again, I nod for Dallu to follow me to the back of the room. Leaving the chair for my co-parent, I take the three-legged footstool Beldala fashioned when I was a child.
"I’ve heard that insurgents gather to the east of the Barrier Wall," I say, my voice low. "I’ve also heard they welcome bi-genders to fill their numbers."
"Fantasy," Dallu snorts. "Why would they accept us when no others do? I tried to convince Beldala that what people wish enough for they will invent."
"Or create," I say.
The rumors excite me and I wish I possessed the fortitude of my birth-parent, risking all to seek the truth. I think not only of the lot of bi-genders, but the starvation in our quarters while those above us feast. The torture of innocents on the merest suspicion. The quashing of the old religion for the new. It makes me feel as the great prairie cats held captive in the palaces must feel, pining for the plains where mates and prides roar their defiance and freedom. I want the rebels to be real, the freedom to be real, so that I might someday roar my own defiance.
"My tetrarch has seemed nervous of late," I say. "Perhaps when the tetrarch opens the message I carry I’ll learn more. Maybe it holds proof we need."
"Do not say we!"
Dallu’s words are too loud and I look to the door, though I see no one lingering there.
"My mate left to chase dreams," my co-parent continues, standing so suddenly that the chair rocks twice before settling on four legs again. "I’ll not lose a child to them as well."
The conversation is over and I have made a poor homecoming, but ideas, no more than seeds before, have taken deep root. What if I could someday leave the service and the hatred? Make a new life among equals?
"I don’t wish you gone," Dallu says into the awkward silence, the words ironic in light of my thoughts, "but you should go. You’ll be punished if it’s found that you delayed delivering your message."
We both know this for truth. Dallu follows me from the dimness of the shack into the sharp, dusty sunlight.
"I hope to see you again before I leave," I say, pulling the reins loose and continuing to the rear of my mount to re-buckle the croup.
Despite a man, woman, and child walking toward us and three men close behind them, Dallu reaches out suddenly, taking me in a quick embrace. There’s no law against public affection between bi-genders; like campfires in the high grasses of the prairie one simply knows better. Perhaps Dallu thinks I mean to go looking for the insurgents that very moment. As if I’d know where to start, or have the nerve to try.
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.