by Trish Mercer
“In the hospital you said you already felt nothing,” Shem reminded him. “But you wanted to feel better. You won’t feel better, or feel your parents, unless you release that bitterness. It’s consuming you. There’s no room for anything else. Let it go.”
“Let it go? How can I ignore what happened?”
“Forgiving isn’t ignoring the act; it’s moving past it.”
“But my parents deserve justice!”
“That’s the Creator’s domain, Perrin. It’s up to Him to give justice or mercy. Do you think the Creator won’t be fair? Or that maybe He’ll go too easy on whoever did this?”
Perrin’s breathing slowed. He dully straightened his chair and sat back down. “I’ve known many evil men. And I think I’m beginning to find more. They sit in large, beautiful homes and do whatever they please and suffer no consequences. How’s that justice?”
“It’s not justice yet,” Shem said. “But their success cannot last. The Creator watches all, and rewards and punishes accordingly, but not until the end of the Test. Perrin, it’s not up to you to exact revenge or justice. You’re not the Creator’s destroyer. It’s your duty to move on.”
The two men sat in silence. Shem couldn’t see anything on his friend’s face but deadness. Finally he said, “Perrin, eat. We have a big day ahead of us tomorrow. Depending on how long the Administrators take with you in the morning, we could be on the road by midday meal. Let’s find out your punishment for the ‘stolen’ wagons of food and your little show on their table, and go home.”
Perrin still sat listlessly.
Shem sat up straighter. “You’re not going home, are you?”
Perrin looked up at him.
Shem leaned forward. “You’re planning to stay, to investigate this!”
“No I’m not.” He was very convincing. But not enough.
“Yes, yes you are!”
“What makes you say that?”
“Your father! He’s just told me. Perrin, he knows what you’re planning and he doesn’t want you to stay. You want to send me back to care for Mahrree and your children until you find your answers. Well, what if you never do? Perrin, your father wants you to forgive, leave Idumea, and go home!”
Perrin’s jaw trembled. “Stop it, Zenos. Just stop it! It won’t work. Besides, who else could do investigate this properly? Everyone else will think like Cush and believe Riplak was merely derelict instead of a Guarder. But I can get to the bottom of this, Shem. I’ve figured out so much already, now I just need to figure out who gives those bags of gold, then I—”
“No, you can’t! They don’t want you to do this!” Shem pleaded, nearly crawling on the table in earnestness. “Feel them! Just release the burden! At the burial, could you have carried their coffins alone? No, you needed me to help. I carried half the weight. Now it’s enough. Now give all the weight to the Creator. Let Him exact justice in His time. You can’t move on unless you release this. It’ll crush you, Perrin, just as trying to carry them to their graves would’ve crushed you. You don’t have to feel this way. Choose to release it! Give Him your burden.”
Perrin stared at him.
After a long silence he said, “Sometimes I think I still hear my uncle Hogal Densal. You sounded just like him there. Years ago he said something similar, but he was talking about how to start again when you need to change your life.”
“Repentance and forgiveness go hand-in-hand, Perrin,” Shem told him softly. “No one may ever ask your forgiveness, but you still need to forgive. It was your parents’ time to go, Perrin. The Creator allowed this. He also allowed it to be done by . . . whoever, to seal that murder’s fate with your parents’ blood. Now the Creator can punish him not only for the darkness of his thoughts, but also for the darkness of his actions. In the meantime, your parents are enjoying themselves with their friends and family in Paradise.”
Shem leaned forward and, to Perrin’s cynical scowl, said, “All is well—truly. You must be well, too. Only you can choose to live again. Stay here to investigate and you will die, crushed under the weight of this anger and grief. Your parents don’t want that. They can’t feel complete joy until you release this burden. Choose to keep living, for them if for no one else.”
Perrin’s eyes grew wet. “I wished it was that easy. I wished I could just let it all go, but you have to have a heart to do that. I buried my heart this evening. I’m going to bed, Shem.”
---
The fog was thick again, likely because of all the melting snow, Gadiman concluded as he made his way to the usual spot. Something about water on the ground becoming water in the air . . . Oh, he didn’t care about the tedious explanation. He was in too good a mood.
It was brilliant—all of it!—from beginning to end. They wouldn’t be able to deny him now. He patted the pockets of his trousers filled with two bags of gold. He was even paying for it himself. Granted, the gold was originally destined for Edge, from Brisack’s coffers, but now it was to pay off the most effective lieutenant Gadiman had ever trained.
It wasn’t revenge that motivated lieutenants; Gadiman now had hard evidence of that. It was greed. Sonoforen/Heth failed years ago likely because . . . well, Gadiman never did work that out, but Mal had said he would succeed because he was angry about his father’s execution.
But anger’s not the right motivator. Riplak wasn’t bitter about the High General. He actually respected the man. But he respected two bags of gold even more.
The young officer was clever. It was his idea to leave behind his jacket, to make it appear as if he was derelict in his duty and allowed the Shins to be stabbed. But it was also Riplak who stuffed a camouflaging black shirt into his trousers, along with a jagged dagger he left behind as evidence, and had no qualms about smashing in the face of his convenient upstairs friend. He was growing bored with the dull girl anyway.
Now if Gadiman could only find Riplak.
He didn’t locate the lieutenant last night to pay him, but realized the timing may have been off. In this part of Idumea one can’t sit around waiting for long before someone mistakes you as one of them and decides you look too rich in that coat or those shoes. Then they relieve you violently of your burdens.
Gadiman picked his way through the heavy cold, wishing he had worn his warmer overcoat. But it didn’t matter. The glow of his victory heated him, head to toe. He didn’t even have to deal with that creepy Kuman, either. Once again, greed triumphed as Riplak made sure he killed Kuman, along with the other two, before they left the mansion. Not only did he get their share of the gold, but he also left behind the prime suspects dead. Any investigation would be over by tomorrow morning, when the Administrators dealt with that other piece of annoying slag.
Gadiman was going to insist Perrin Shin be tried for attempted murder, although he knew that was the last thing Brisack wanted. He argued against that most vehemently at the little gathering Colonel Thorne organized in the afternoon.
There still needed to be someone, Brisack told them again and again. Why destroy it all? Now that it was finally becoming interesting again? Why be so quick to take out the wounded falcon?
Gadiman didn’t quite follow all of that, but Thorne seemed to take that peculiar falcon reference as some kind of code and reluctantly agreed no execution squad would be convened in the morning.
But Gadiman had access to prisoners in the garrison. And when Shin was imprisoned, he could send Riplak, disguised with longer hair and a beard, to finish off what the others were oddly hesitant to.
If only Gadiman could find Riplak.
He’d reach their meeting place along the banks of the Idumean River West in mere moments, just below where the homeless people sat in wooden crates mumbling to themselves.
“Stupid crazy people,” Gadiman muttered as he walked passed one of them. He made his way warily along a path sloping down the river banks. The water was unnecessarily noisy tonight, more so than he ever remembered.
“Must be the fog. Traps the noise of the ri
ver or something. Where do those smelly men live when the river banks are flooding? Ridiculous . . . Ew, and now I’ve got muck on my boots! How can a man walk properly along here with muck on his boots?”
He didn’t notice two men sitting nearby on large rocks watching him trek further down the bank. Probably because their layers of filth and tatters of clothing made them look like wind-ripped vegetation.
“Should pave it or something. For those wishing to enjoy the water . . .”
The two men looked at each other and smiled about the crazy man going further and further.
“Should we tell him?” one asked the other.
“Mebbe. But would he tell us?”
The first man shrugged.
It was becoming harder for Gadiman to see, and even harder to hear himself. “Riplak!” he hissed to the foggy banks. “Where are you? I’ve got your payment! I couldn’t find you yester—”
There was a slip and a splash, but the sound was quickly swallowed up by the roar of the swollen river.
The only ones who noticed were the two scruffy men.
“What’s wrong with them fancy suits?” the first man asked his companion. “Can’t none of them tell the river’s flooding?”
The second man shook his head. “They’re too full of nice coats and blue uniforms and whispers and shifty eyes and wandering about and secrets. Mebbe when you’re too smart, you don’t notice the real things. You think you already know it, until you walk right into it and it eats you.”
“Good entertainment, though, you must admit,” the first man nodded. “First there’s that young officer last night. Gave a proper fight against the water, that one did. Then some stuffed suit tonight? Sounds like he went down much faster.”
“Mebbe his pockets were lined with gold,” the second man drawled. “Nice coats full of nice gold, dragging him down to the nice rocky bottom. They’ll find bits of him by the southern sea in a few days, mixed up with that splashing young officer.”
“And when the river’s gone down, we’ll nose about the bottom and find a few pockets?”
“Mebbe. If we’re lucky.”
“Maybe tomorrow we’ll hear a proper lady drown.”
“Mebbe. If we’re lucky.”
Chapter 26 ~ “Snakes, cats—I know you hate them all.”
Going to bed and going to sleep are two different things.
Sleep wouldn’t be coming for a very long time. Especially since Perrin had awoken from a long forced nap just a few hours ago.
He sat on the narrow bed in the small adjoining room and tried to think of what to think. He couldn’t concentrate on anything for any length of time because a little old man kept butting into his thoughts.
Hogal Densal kicked away Guarders, pushed out the Administrators and officers, and gently nudged his parents to the side so he could stand in the middle of Perrin’s mind with his mischievous smile and his eyebrows waggling.
Perrin couldn’t put out of his mind his first trip to Edge. The memory nagged him, insisting on being revisited, so Perrin indulged it just to have something different to think about, and to be rid of it.
He’d been eighteen when he was sent to Edge, and he remembered staring glumly at the little old man and woman he was to stay with. They’d shrunk in the years since he’d seen them last, and were more wrinkled. He folded his brawny arms across his broad chest as he evaluated them in front of their small stone house, in that ridiculously tiny village, against those ugly rocky mountains. He’d been hoping for a season at Waves, or even Coast, but was stuck at the Edge of Nothing.
Hogal Densal had smiled at him and said, “Plan to serve the world as a general, I understand?”
“Of course,” he replied arrogantly. Everything that came out of his mouth in those days was smug, prideful, disdainful—any variety of haughtiness, he had it mastered.
“Good, good.” Hogal eyed him in a way that seemed to pierce straight through his conceit and into his soul. “Then you’re here to learn how to do the first part of that sentence, while your father will train you to do the second part at the end of the season.”
“The first part?” Young Perrin had asked, trying to remember what it was.
Rector Densal smiled kindly, but his eyes were on fire. “The ‘serve’ part. No leader is truly great that doesn’t know how to serve. Service first, leadership later. First rule of leadership.”
“No it’s not,” Perrin retorted. “First rule of leadership is to identify the rival and eliminate it through defeat or feigned friendship.”
Hogal sighed. “A true product of the king’s educational system. Learned your lessons well, I see. We do things differently here in Edge. No king has been here for many years and we like it that way. Trust me; to be a great leader, you need to be a great servant. You’ll begin tomorrow at a widow’s house not far from here. She has a large herd, no children, and lots of feed to gather in.”
“Baling feed? The son of the High General of Idumea, baling feed!”
“Don’t worry. No one here knows your parentage. I told everyone my nephew from Quake was coming for Weeding Season, and he’s a little daft.” Hogal smiled and tapped his head. “Tell the village whatever you want. No one will believe who you think you are.”
“I’m not standing for this,” Perrin had huffed. “I’m going home!”
“My wife’s niece is adamant that you stay,” Hogal said pleasantly. “You have no choice. Steal a horse to go home, they won’t let you in the army. I’d report you as a thief. Tell a lie to get out of here, I’ll send lies back to your home ahead of you. Who are they going to believe more, a teenage boy or a revered rector?” He was more wily than anyone realized.
“I won’t work,” Perrin had threatened.
“Then you won’t eat,” said Hogal simply. “Everyone works for what they get. So will you. In fact, there are still a few hours of daylight. We’re going to that widow’s house right now to let you get a start.”
“What!?”
“Are you hungry? Is that the problem?”
“Yes, part of it!”
“Then you’ll work for your dinner. And your great aunt makes a wonderful berry pie. You really don’t want to miss that.”
Older Perrin sat on the bed remembering that walk to the widow’s house. Ten years later he had looked for her when he came back to Edge as the captain, but she’d already died, and she wasn’t even that old.
He tried to picture her now. When one is eighteen everyone older than twenty-five might as well be grandparents.
No, she wasn’t a grandmother. She was probably not even forty-five. Close to Mahrree’s age. A widow.
He gripped his head and rubbed it. “Hogal, what do you want from me? What’s the purpose of this?”
The memory wouldn’t leave, not without being attended to.
Perrin had been working for about two weeks on the farm when he realized the cut hay never seemed to end. He was sure that when he baled and moved the feed, Hogal had sent other farmers to throw more in the field at night just to keep him busy. There wasn’t much else to do while working in the hot sun. No friends to ride with, no girls to chat up—
It was the lack of girls that bothered him the most; finding women had been the reason he wanted to see the world to begin with. Yes, there had been something between Versula Cush and him, more than just false accusations and scars from sticks. Their teenage years had run cold and hot, dangerous and stupid, back and forth. It was during one of those cold periods that the sixteen-year-old Versula caught the eye of an older third-year cadet named Qayin Thorne.
Only years later did Perrin suspect that Versula pursued Qayin to make Perrin jealous, but sixteen-year-old boys simply don’t notice such games. He was too busy realizing there were many other officers in the world with daughters, and all of them quite happy to visit Idumea with their fathers and be shown around the garrison by the strapping and, he was loath to admit, rakish son of the High General. They eagerly accepted his invitations to see the
secrets of the garrison he told them he only knew. It was a stupid line, to offer them his private tour, but it always worked. He couldn’t even remember how many girls there had been in those years. At least a dozen, but likely many more. All of them were quick to swoon, then just as quickly were conquered and crushed. He didn’t even remember their names. They were just silly girls who were too willing and vulnerable for their own good. And in those days, Perrin was up to no good.
Before he entered Command School he wanted to do a little exploring, that was true. But he wasn’t interested in scenery or villages, only in finding a challenging conquest.
Instead he found only mindless repetition in baling hay. And, he reminded himself with recurring gratitude, not an eighteen-year-old Mahrree Peto. Any relationship they would have had then would have been disastrous.
The only female he had contact with besides his great aunt was an older woman—no, a woman still in the prime of life—bringing him cool water and smiling gratefully at him every day.
Then older Perrin remembered something else. Every night Hogal kept him there in his little house and read out loud to him, usually from The Writings but also from some older books. A few times Perrin had tried to sneak out to see the action down in the village green, but his uncle always blocked him, and only out of politeness—and dread of punishment by his parents—did he not push the old man away.
“You said you were too tired to help me milk the cow, so you must be too tired to see any of the village. Besides, they all think you’re mad and no one wants to be seen talking to you. But I’ll talk to you. Tell me, Perrin, what’s life like in Idumea? Tell me everything, and I mean everything, I’ve been missing.”
So Perrin did, trying to prove to Hogal Densal how dismal Edge was in comparison. Hogal listened attentively, as did Perrin’s aunt Tabbit, and asked thoughtful questions.
“I’m afraid I don’t understand about the houses near the pools, Perrin,” Auntie Tabbit once asked. “Why do people want to be so close to something that could destroy them?”