The Mansions of Idumea (Book 3 Forest at the Edge series)

by Trish Mercer

  They passed the surgeon on their way down the hall. He blinked several times at Perrin, who, by his calculations, was supposed to still be sleeping.

  “We may need your assistance in a few moments, Doctor,” Perrin said, ignoring his surprised look. “Please follow us.”

  They made their way down to the cellar where Perrin focused only on the three still forms on the other side of the room, and not on the two coffins on the ground ready to receive his parents.

  Perrin’s prediction that the surgeon would be needed was correct. When Brittum saw the first dead Guarder’s face, darkened with soot, she screamed out her husband’s name. Shem caught her as she collapsed, and carried her and her many skirts up the stairs. By now he knew the way.

  Ten minutes later Perrin and Shem sat in their room after having delivered Brittum to her sister-in-law down the hall. Both women were sedated to help “calm them down,” the surgeon explained.

  Perrin was agitated, not only by realizing that Kuman had been in the mansion, but by what the surgeon did to the women. He had protested their treatment, but to no avail.

  “When they wake up, the pain of what they feel is still there, Doctor. I know! The sedation doesn’t help solve the heartache. It only postpones it. They don’t need to avoid their grief; they need to face it—”

  Shem had dragged him out of the women’s room before the surgeon came after both of them with his suffocating cloth. Now they sat in their room, staring just beyond each other.

  “The burial is in an hour. We should be getting ready,” Shem hinted.

  “Kuman was one of them,” Perrin said impassively. “How many more Guarders know my family? Where’s Riplak? Was it Kuman or Riplak that knew the kitchen door didn’t latch properly? Or both? And they knew exactly which doors to try: the study and the master bedroom. The mansion has fourteen doors on the main floor, Shem. They knew which two to check. Who else—”

  A quiet knock came at the door.

  The men looked up to see two well-dressed women: one older and very round, the other younger and very tall. The older woman had uniforms draped over her chubby arm, and she sniffled.

  The younger woman, shapely and blonde but with a tear-stained face cried out, “Perrin!” and rushed to him.

  He stood automatically and she threw her arms around him.

  Shem got up too but stopped, astonished, when the beautiful woman kissed Perrin’s neck.

  “You poor man! I’m so sorry! What can I do for you?” She embraced him firmly and kissed his cheek, then kissed him again and again, moving closer and closer to his mouth—

  Shem’s eyes bulged. Idumeans had rather extreme ways of administering comfort.

  Perrin took her arms and pushed her away, holding her at a distance. “Versula, I’ll be fine. Really.”

  “That’s not the story we heard,” the older woman said, giving him a motherly kiss on his other cheek—actually, she had to jump a little to reach him—as Perrin released the blonde woman.

  Perrin glanced at Shem and nodded at the women. “Mrs. Cush and Mrs. Thorne,” he curtly made their introductions.

  Mrs. Cush didn’t seem to think anything unusual about his behavior, or her daughter’s excessive attempts to comfort him. “It’s terrible. Just terrible. We’ve been at the mansion all day, preparing a crate for you to take back of their personal things. But I think they stole all of Joriana’s dresses!”

  “Mahrree already took them to Edge, Mrs. Cush,” he said dully. “We need nothing else.”

  “But maybe your children do, Perrin.” Mrs. Cush gripped his arm. “They’d love to have remembrances. We can’t send any of the furniture, since it belongs to the mansion, but your father’s clothes, their writings, Joriana’s jewels and hats—all that should go to Jaytsy and Peto.”

  Shem stepped forward. “I’m sure they’d appreciate it, ma’am.”

  Mrs. Cush smiled. “And you are, most undoubtedly, Uncle Shem, aren’t you?”

  Shem blushed.

  “It’s lovely to finally meet you. I’m Mrs. Cush, and this is my daughter, Versula Thorne,” she made the proper introductions.

  Mrs. Thorne smiled and looked him up and down, noticing him for the first time. “I see the fort at Edge gets all the handsome, well-built soldiers. Baby tender indeed!”

  Shem was sure he was nearly purple under her intense gaze. He didn’t know a whole lot about Idumea, but he could see why Papa told him to stay away from the city. Something in Mrs. Thorne’s eyes made Shem want to wrap a blanket around himself.

  Mrs. Cush held up the uniforms, still unfazed by her daughter’s forwardness. “Perrin, you look terrible. Maybe you hadn’t noticed. We borrowed these from the tailor shop for you and the master sergeant for the evening. They should fit all right. You need to look presentable for—” Her lip began to quiver, and her daughter put her arm around her.

  “It’s all right, Mother,” but Versula’s voice quavered as well.

  Perrin was unmoved by their emotion. “No, thank you, Mrs. Cush. My parents won’t be buried in their best clothing, so why should I attend in anything else than this? Besides, they won’t see what I look like, and theirs was the only opinion I cared for, aside from the Creator’s.”

  Mrs. Cush turned to Shem. “Can you help him see reason?”

  He shook his head. “I haven’t had too much success with that recently, ma’am.”

  Mrs. Cush gave him a sympathetic smile. “I’ll leave these here, just in case. There’s a washing room with supplies down the hall.” Mrs. Cush ran a motherly hand across Perrin’s stubbly chin to remind him he was in need of a shave, but he recoiled at her touch.

  If she noticed, she didn’t act like it. “Come by the mansion tonight, after everything, dear,” she said pleasantly, either out of habit or amnesia. “There are many guards, and you and the master sergeant can sleep comfortably there. Show him around the place.”

  “Why?” Perrin said shortly. “It’s not my home. It’s not theirs anymore, either. It belongs to the High General of Idumea. I’m sure you and Cush will be most comfortable there.”

  Mrs. Cush flinched as if she had been struck. “Why, I . . . Perrin, no one knows these things—”

  “I thank you for your trouble,” he cut her off. “The master sergeant and I will stay in the guest quarters at the garrison. That’s my home now in Idumea.” He sat down and focused on the wall.

  Shem shrugged apologetically at Mrs. Cush, and the two women nodded back. After a half-hearted wave of farewell, Mrs. Cush left, but Versula Thorne hesitated.

  “Perrin?”

  She watched him earnestly, but he didn’t respond. After an uncomfortable moment, Mrs. Thorne followed after her mother.

  Perrin finally glanced at the door to see that they were alone. “By the way, Shem, Mahrree knows all about Versula Thorne. She does not, however, need to know about what just happened there.”

  Still stunned by ‘what just happened there,’ Shem nodded obediently. “Of course. I agree.” Besides, what in the world would he say to Mahrree about Versula Thorne?

  “And Shem—only you and I will touch the coffins. No one else. Are you up to it?”

  “Of course.”

  ---

  An hour later two men in filthy uniforms with disheveled hair littered with bits of straw and no caps—neither man was sure just when or where they lost them—and with cuts and bruises on their faces stood at attention as the carriage bier carrying the two coffins made its way to the garrison cemetery. A bright sword laid on his coffin, a branch of newly blossomed lilacs laid on hers.

  It was a short trip from the hospital, but by tradition the bier had traveled slowly the long way—up past the Administrator Headquarters, through the university, along the mansion district, and through the garrison.

  Every road was lined with thousands of people standing shoulder to shoulder to bid farewell to the High General and his wife. Women wept, men stood at attention even if they had never worn the uniform, and children q
uieted as the bier passed, feeling the suffocating gloom that came over Idumea.

  Soldiers, more than ten thousand, had come from the garrison and nearby forts to pay their respect. Each was in full dress uniform and lined the roads throughout the garrison, saluting as the bier passed them. There was no section of road that was not heavily protected.

  The significance of that coverage was not lost on Colonel Shin. If only it had been that fortified two days ago none of this would be happening now.

  A steady drum beat began from a soldier behind Colonel Shin and Master Sergeant Zenos. The bier drawn by the single massive black horse came into view over the slight hill to the waiting line of officers who blocked the road of the burial grounds and signaled the end of the procession.

  A large group of officers’ wives and other women stood glum and sniffling on the other side of the road. Mrs. Cush stepped up to the carriage, kissed her fingers, and touched Joriana’s coffin as it passed before stepping back into the huddle of women. Her daughter put her arm around her as she began to sob.

  The horse was stopped in front of the two rows of soldiers that lined the path from the road to the waiting graves. Tradition was that the coffins be handed down between the soldiers, so that all hands could help bring the fallen to their final resting places.

  But tradition was about to be broken.

  The colonel and the sergeant walked unexpectedly to the bier as the major in charge of the burial began to signal to a group of soldiers to retrieve the coffins.

  “My parents, my duty,” Colonel Shin told him. He stepped to the head of his father’s coffin, carefully removed the sword, and placed it on top of his mother’s box. He stood on one side while the master sergeant took the other.

  The line of officers looked at each other, and several began to step out of line. They had allowed the two men to put the coffins on the bier at the hospital alone—Colonel Shin laying the general’s sword and the flowers he cut from a nearby bush on their caskets—but this was too much.

  But Cush shook his head and held out an arm to stop the man closest to him. The officers reluctantly stepped back into line with pained expressions on their faces as they watched the colonel and the sergeant strain to pull the coffin partially off the bier.

  Colonel Shin crouched to take the front, and the sergeant positioned himself to take the back. In silence they dragged the rest of the coffin out and hefted it onto their shoulders. Slowly they walked the coffin to the rows of soldiers.

  The rows shifted uncertainly until, finally recognizing that the coffin wasn’t about to be handed off to them, all of the soldiers took a large step backward to allow the two men enough room to make their way down the gently sloping hillside. Shin and Zenos struggled visibly with the weight and the unpredictability of the soft, wet ground. Once the colonel slipped a little, then the sergeant, but they didn’t drop their precious load. More than once a soldier broke from the line to come forward to help, but was ignored.

  After passing more than two hundred men, Shin and Zenos reached the open grave. Still with no words, the two men awkwardly lowered the coffin to the ground and set it painstakingly on the ropes that would lower it in the hole.

  Master Sergeant Zenos stood back up, but the colonel kneeled next to the coffin. He ran his hand along it tenderly and paused. For a moment he didn’t move.

  Nor did any of the hundreds watching him.

  Eventually he kissed the coffin, patted it, got back to his feet, and looked up the hill at the carriage.

  As he and the sergeant trudged up the soggy slope together, most of the soldiers were no longer officially at attention. Sniffing and dropping a few tears, even if no one moved, were considered violations. But no one noticed because everyone was absorbed in watching the colonel.

  The scene at the bier played out again as the coffin of Mrs. Shin was dragged out, this time with less trouble than the general’s. Colonel Shin removed the flowers and sword, and placed them silently in the bed of the carriage.

  Even among the line of officers there was now a great deal of sniffing, throat clearing, and vague concealing coughs.

  Again Colonel Shin took the front and Sergeant Zenos took the back, heaved the coffin on their shoulders, and plodded carefully to the graves between the soldiers, some who began to weep.

  The colonel and the master sergeant set the coffin down by the first. Shin leaned over the wooden box holding his mother and kissed it. Then he kneeled between the two boxes, with a hand on each one, and bowed his head.

  Not even the birds that normally darted among the tall trees of the burial ground dared to make a sound.

  After a minute, the master sergeant came behind the colonel and gently put a hand on his shoulder. He squatted next to him and whispered something to Shin. After another moment Colonel Shin nodded, wiped his eyes with his dirty sleeve, patted both coffins and struggled to his feet.

  The sergeant put his arm around him, and the lines of soldiers took another step back to allow the two men, arm-in-arm, trudge back up the slope.

  When they reached the road, they didn’t stop or turn around to observe the lowering of the coffins, but continued on slowly away from the gathering, across the vast cemetery past the thousands of other fallen soldiers, and out of view.

  Chapter 25 ~ “So the Quiet Man is still our man.”

  It’d been an impossibly long day for Mahrree and her children. The plan had been to work. Just work. Not think, not worry, just work.

  Except that Edge didn’t get the message. The message they got was, Rush over to the Shins and tell them how sorry you are.

  It was nice to hear, Mahrree had to admit, but it always happened just as she was finally making some decent progress in loosening a stubborn timber from a pile of rubble, and the focus of her concentration made her temporarily forget the agony in her heart—

  That’s when the, “Oh look—it’s the Shins! We just heard, and I’m so sorry . . .” cut into her efforts. Each time she heard the wailing croon it sucked her energy and resolve nearly dry. She’d give up, take the embrace, and miserably wait until it was over so she could get back to something real and useful, such as freeing a timber.

  Four soldiers followed them around, on Karna’s orders, and in turn Mahrree ordered them to work. They could easily snatch up their swords in a moment’s notice if some brazen Guarder decided to attack the Shins in broad daylight in the middle of the village.

  But what they found when they trudged home that evening, exhausted and depleted, stopped Mahrree and her children in their tracks and wrenched out a new set of tears.

  Flowers.

  Flowers, everywhere.

  Wedged in the slats of the wooden fence, along the rock path to their front door, all over the porch, and even into the house. Every bulb that had sent its blooms bravely up through the last snowfall, every shrub that had dared to open its buds, had been cut and delivered to the Shin house.

  Mahrree sat down, right there in the road, and held her head to weep. Others had died in their village—over one hundred—but none of them had been given the entire village’s supply of flowers.

  “They wanted to do something,” said a gentle and familiar voice above her. Someone squeezed her shoulder kindly. “Relf and Joriana saved the village from starvation, and it seems it cost them their lives. Everyone asked me how they could honor their memories. This was all anyone had left to give.”

  Mahrree looked up into the peaked expression of Rector Yung. The poor man must not have slept in weeks, but here he stood again, ready to check on them, and ready with a shoulder to cry on.

  “It’s beautiful,” Jaytsy sobbed quietly. “Reminds me of the gardens in the mansion district. Rector Yung, you would’ve appreciated their gardens. Flowers, everywhere. Just like this.”

  Peto just sniffed and nodded.

  Hycymum stood at the front door; she hadn’t left all day, but waited for news about her son-in-law that never came. “There’s more inside,” she called softly. “The
y’ve been bringing them all day. Fortunately you have a lot of empty jugs I could use to arrange them. Your gathering room has never looked lovelier.”

  Mahrree chuckled pitifully. At least her mother had a pleasant time arranging the tribute to and for the Shins. She massaged her forehead, unable to release the pressure building there.

  “It is lovely,” she confessed as she allowed Rector Yung to help her to her feet. “Please send out the word that we’re most grateful and overwhelmed.”

  “I will,” the old man told her. “What more can I do, Mrs. Shin?”

  “Just keep praying for us, Rector. Pray that our men come home.”

  ---

  Two men sat in the dark office of an unlit building.

  “Not that I’m one for saying ‘I told you so,’—”

  “Oh, yes you are!” Doctor Brisack snapped at his companion.

  But Nicko Mal wasn’t about to be silenced. Not tonight, of all nights. “But I told you so! Not only did Perrin Shin show up, he barged unannounced into my Conference Room, jumped on my table, and tried to kill Gadiman!” He slapped the armrest of the chair in triumph. “Ha!”

  Brisack slowly began to smile. “I’ll admit it: when you’re right, Nicko, you’re really right.”

  Chairman Mal threw back his head and laughed. “What a marvelous day! Not only did I see my old irritant buried, but I also watched his son fall to his knees and writhe in misery—”

  “—then fall into a pit ten feet deep!” Brisack grinned back. “Should’ve seen him at the hospital, Nicko. Completely broken and destroyed. I went back to my office and spent an hour detailing every behavior, movement, and word I could remember. I’ll be studying his reactions for seasons.”

  Mal sighed in contentment. “The old weasel—Slag, I wished Perrin had killed him! Just one thrust,” Mal gestured to his own chest. “His sword was right in line with Gadiman’s puny little heart. I kept thinking, ‘Do it, Perrin! I dare you! Just do it!’ He could have, when Cush was pulling him off the table. There was that moment before the master sergeant took the sword, when Perrin could have just—”