3.
 Shur was the single large moon of a gas giant planet that sent up a greenish luminous tinge in Shur’s lower sky. The high road had never seen daylight because, as Shur orbited the gas giant, it turned synchronously with relation to the star, so that Oba Island was always twilit, while on the opposite side of Shur a steaming sea pushed clouds and winds with rain and humidity toward Oba.
Also visible in the sky, on this bustling night when the disheveled and breathless young man stumbled along the road, were Shur's twelve moons, the largest blood red and big as one's thumb held at arm's length, the smallest just specks like swollen silver-blue stars. The night sky was black in one direction, carpeted with stars like the lanterns on the Obayyo, but glowed milky green jade in the other direction. The Shurian natives called it their eternal daylight, while their human slaves called it perpetual twilight.
The young human, Jory O'Call, often looked back in a whirl of emotions that seemed timed with his sharp, ragged sobs for breath—terror because the Lord Ramyon's soldiers were hot on his trail, regret that he had been betrayed and would never see the lady Ramy Ramyon again, worry at what might happen to her, and shock that one's life could be so drastically altered in one ill-fated moment.
Jory O'Call dodged right and left, earning angry shouts from hurrying cargo bearers, and the occasional glancing blow of a walking stick from a puffy gentleman. Eya! they called after him, 'filth!,' or nah!, 'rat!'
Jory's mind was a muddle of flashing images: the last moments of sweet enjoyment—then the door's breaking under ax blows, the retainers' shouts as they burst in waving swords, Ramy's screaming as she covered her face with trembling fists and realized her own end was near. Jory knew he would relive those moments forever, but nothing could bring her back. He would likewise remember, with dread, the looming third gender in Ramy's marriage, whom the Shurians called their baba, but whom humans distastefully called a wasp. Jory had caught a brief glimpse of Ramy's baba—a hulking copper-colored shape who was actually Ramy's sister—capable of the most terrible vengeance.
Something more had happened, Jory guessed as he tried to figure out why he was still free and on the run. His lungs made sawing sounds, and the thick, moist, plant-scented air scraped over his open mouth and throat. Not just the betrayal. Something more that caused the Lord Ramyon's retainers not to kill Jory and Ramy instantly. The retainers, as they were called, were petty nobles without land, who dwelt in a lord's castle and acted as officers for the ordinary Shurian soldiery, those being peasants and riffraff not far above the despised human slaves.
For some reason Lord Ramyon's men had let him escape. Were they expecting him to lead them somewhere? Ah! It came to him in a flash of insight. A conspiracy! They were always looking for a plot, a conspiracy, a plan to topple the lawful lord and replace him with some senior warrior. Oba was a closed society ruled with an iron fist, more by the cruel rigidity of its laws and customs than by a weak emperor or hundreds of petty quarreling warlords.
“Disunity is strength," said the long-ago sage.
That sage, however, lived centuries ago before the arrival of space travel.
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Copyright © 2018 by Jean-Thomas Cullen, Clocktower Books. All Rights Reserved.
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