by Trish Mercer
Two men sat in the dark office of an unlit building.
“Are you sure you’re up to it, Nicko?”
Chairman Nicko Mal sat up taller. “Why shouldn’t I be, Doctor?”
Dr. Brisack shrugged. “Oh, let’s see . . . heart palpitations, chest pains, numbness—I can’t help but wonder if the previous experiments didn’t lead to your heart problems. Since we haven’t been taking an active role in directing the Guarders these past years, you’ve become much healthier. You know, you’re not a young man anymore. You’re not even a middle-aged man—”
He ignored the sneer of Nicko Mal; Dr. Brisack was used to patients not being happy with the truth.
“Your heart’s nearing eighty, Nicko,” the Administrator of Family Life reminded him. “So too is the rest of you. Your mind’s certainly capable of restarting our research about the animalistic nature of man, but if you’re heart’s not in it, then—”
“I’m perfectly fine,” Mal sighed. “In fact, I haven’t felt this invigorated in years. The Guarders have been flailing aimlessly for years now, and I think it’s time to send a bit of direction their way, along with a bit of gold.”
Brisack nodded. “Yes, we’ve certainly amassed enough to fund some truly creative studies. My only concern,” he said slowly, “is that they may not come back completely under our guidance.”
Mal held up his finger. “For enough gold, anyone will subject themselves to another man’s guidance.”
“I can’t think of a single instance where that hasn’t been true,” Brisack agreed. “I must admit, I’m rather looking forward to this. And you’re planning a way to bring Perrin Shin to Idumea?”
“We need to establish some baseline. I haven’t even talked to the man in over fifteen years. How can I know where best to stab my test subjects if I don’t know what already hurts?” Mal folded his hands on his lap. “And a couple of moons ago I took the liberty of instigating some rumors around Idumea, that Guarders are living among us in disguise. Once people start growing paranoid, their imaginations fill in the rest. I do so enjoy priming the pump,” Mal smiled thinly. “Perhaps Relf will become antsy himself, and call for Perrin to come investigate to see if there is any truth to the rumors.”
After a moment’s hesitation Brisack asked, “And what about Perrin’s wife?”
Mal heard Brisack’s voice tremor when he mentioned Mahrree Shin. After all these years, the good doctor still had a faraway look in his eyes when he thought about the only woman in the world to question his studies and demand to know why children no longer learned how to debate.
Debate wasn’t needed; the sky was always blue, and the world had been quite accommodating to that and every other fact the Administrators had inflicted on it over the past eighteen years. Mal and Brisack even shut down their experiments for several years when it became apparent that the world was a timid mutt. Dogs were loyal, obedient, and willingly stupid.
Except for a few rogue dogs here and there. Well, actually one was a bi—
But even the Shins had been quiet for a surprisingly long time, and so the world had grown dull.
Yes, Nicko Mal was healthier for it, the stresses of directing the world and its enemy no longer taxing his heart—
But he had also grown bored.
Brisack would argue that boredom was an infantile response, but Nicko’s elevated mind needed his entertainment to be academic and cerebral. He wasn’t interested in asinine contests or predictable plays. He craved real drama, with genuine challenges and the possibility of suffering and death. That’s where you find honest edification.
And that’s why he called his old friend and research companion to join him again in his darkened library that, many years ago under the four King Queruls and King Oren, housed a throne. The vast room was accustomed to displays of power, and Mal could feel it yearning for the old days again. And the best way to demonstrate power was to attack those who thought they had some. Even if—
No; especially if they live in an unimportant village called Edge of the World.
Mal stared at Brisack for a moment longer than it took for the doctor to become embarrassed about mentioning Mrs. Shin before he answered his question. “I suppose she’ll want to come along, considering what I’m about to put him through. If she truly has feelings for him, she won’t let him suffer alone, now, would she?”
Brisack squirmed a bit at that. “What does he look like, anyway?”
“Rather hard to forget Perrin Shin, I assure you. It’s been many years, but—well, picture the High General, but taller, broader, stronger, and deeper in voice. Like the offspring of thunder and a bear,” Mal said with a mixture of disdain and reluctant admiration for his preferred test subject.
No matter what Mal sent after him—three Guarder raids, two lieutenants intent on killing his parents, and specially trained “soldiers” to keep an eye and a blade on him—the man sidestepped and survived it all.
But his luck couldn’t hold. Mal would make sure of that. There was still one soldier trained by and loyal to the Guarders under Shin’s command: the Quiet Man.
Communications had broken down years ago, but Mal was sure his soldier, serving for nearly fourteen years now, was still there, loyal, obedient, and conveniently placed to earn Shin’s trust. And soon, the Quiet Man would be required to make a little noise.
“Now,” Mal worked his shoulders deeper into his cushioned chair, “let’s begin devising a variety of scenarios by which our dear Lieutenant Colonel—and even his wife—may be forced down here to Idumea for a little visit.”
---
Lieutenant Colonel Perrin Shin looked at the report in front of him dated the 29th Day of Planting, 335, and groaned.
“Well?” Major Karna asked with a knowing smile.
“Chief Curglaff is an idiot. Still.” Shin cleared his throat and read in the nasally tone of the chief of enforcement. “‘The continued thieving problems in Edge are not a result of teenage mischief but may indicate a Guarder presence, therefore all thefts and concerns should continue to be under the jurisdiction of the fort.’”
In disgust he tossed the document on his large oak desk where it ruffled a few careful stacks of forms and reports. Sometime later Perrin would rearrange the disorganization he just caused, but not until he was more in control of his anger.
“We established the Guarder-theft connection years ago,” Perrin grumbled. “It’s just another excuse as to why his men aren’t going to do anything this season but pretend to direct traffic and drag home some drunks. Didn’t he promise he was going to retire this year?”
Karna, second in command of the fort, was smaller in stature than the lieutenant colonel. He was a bundle of muscle and fiercely accurate with a bow and arrow, but more frequently with the quill and a supply form. Against his light dirt-brown skin, his grin shone brightly, if not a bit mischievously. “Retires at the end of Weeding Season. Can you deal with him for that much longer?”
Perrin scoffed. “I’ve been dealing with that hard-nosed goat for fifteen years now! Where’s my medal for that?” He patted his dark blue uniform filled with patches declaring him to be the commander of the fort, the most frequently decorated Officer of the Year, and the most irritated lieutenant commander in the Army of Idumea.
Karna chuckled, and there was a knock at the command office door.
“Come in!” Perrin called.
The door opened and a tall, brawny master sergeant with light brown hair, gravel-pale skin, and sky-blue eyes leaned in. Instead of stepping into the private office, he cringed. “Oh, sir, I can see this is a bad time.”
“I still want to see you, Zenos,” Perrin waved him in.
Zenos closed the door behind him. “That look on your face says, ‘Curglaff’s an idiot and when’s he retiring?’”
“Very good, Zenos,” Karna said, “but even I could have read that expression.”
The master sergeant sat casually on a chair next to the major without waiting for an invitation. Had the
re been lower ranked enlisted men around, he may have stood at attention. But fourteen years of service at the same fort allows one a certain license.
“So Curglaff’s still not wanting to direct the patrols in the village?” Zenos said.
“Of course not!” the commander spat. “All the thieving this season is Guarder related, after all.”
“Where’s his evidence?” Karna asked.
“Since when has he ever needed evidence?”
Zenos sighed. “I’ve been through this with him before. The fourth time we arrested Poe Hili for thieving, he admitted he had buyers for the goods, but he’d never met any of them. And no one was more prolific than Poe.”
“Shem,” Karna turned to Zenos, also employing such a level of relaxed familiarity that it would have sent the Command Board in Idumea into fits of sputtering, “where’s Poe now?”
“Not around here, that’s all I know,” Shem sighed.
“Been what, two years since he was released from his last incarceration?” Perrin said. “The couple of times I’ve had the unpleasant accident of running into his parents, they didn’t mention him. I don’t think they even know what happened to their sweet-yet-misunderstood lamb.”
“Lamb in wolf’s clothing,” Karna breathed. “All of those boys. Your son excepted, of course, sir.”
“Thanks, Brillen.” Perrin addressed his second in command by his first name, because, after all, Brillen was his second mind, as well as his third and fourth hands, and you had to call someone that close to you by his first name. The math required it.
And also because, even after all these years, Brillen Karna still winced slightly whenever his commander called him by his first name and Perrin simply loved to make the man squirm.
“Peto’s so small and wiry he’d be an excellent thief,” Perrin acknowledged. “Just doesn’t have any muscle on him to carry anything.”
“But if he did,” Shem said, “he’d be stuck in your wife’s class with all the other ‘special cases’ she gets to teach.”
“And that’s probably the main reason he’s remained such a good boy—he doesn’t want his mother as his teacher.”
The three men chuckled, a bit sadly.
“At least Mahrree’s in a position to see if any of those boys are looking at Jaytsy,” Brillen said. He’d given up long ago referring to her as Mrs. Shin. Her husband ignored him whenever he did.
“Why should they be looking at Jaytsy?” Shem burst out. “She’s only fourteen!”
Brillen recoiled at the master sergeant’s emotion and held up his hands. “Sorry, sorry . . . it’s just that she doesn’t look fourteen. I keep forgetting her age.”
The lieutenant colonel nodded. “So do I, Brillen. And she’s almost fifteen. Doesn’t help that she’s taller than her mother. And . . . and more, uh—” His hands moved in an odd way as if trying to demonstrate the shape of a body that alarmed him. He was still struggling to articulate—or gesticulate—what happened to her when she turned twelve. He dropped his hands in disillusionment.
His men cringed in understanding.
“Yes . . . all that.” Perrin sighed.
“Better not be looking at her,” protective Uncle Shem mumbled, his shoulder twitching.
Perrin suppressed a smile and picked up the report from Chief Curglaff again. “In a way, Brillen and Shem, I almost miss outsmarting the Guarders. Chasing down and chaining up Edge’s sons is far less rewarding and far more disturbing. Home grown criminals. I don’t like it, and I never want to get used to it.”
“Agreed,” Brillen whispered while Shem nodded.
“So,” Perrin said breaking the quiet moment, “have the new duty rosters ready, Zenos?”
“Right there, on the corner of your desk. I put them there before Curglaff visited.”
Perrin picked up the pages he hadn’t noticed before and smiled faintly. “You already put the soldiers on patrols again in the village, hadn’t you?”
“It’s Planting Season again, after all. Weather’s warming up, so our lizard-like thieves will be coming out of their slumber. We’ve got 250 soldiers itching to get out and do something.”
“Very good, Shem.” Perrin handed back the duty roster. “Just continue like that for the next two and a half seasons, until it gets cold again and the boys go back into hiding.”
“Yes, sir,” Zenos smiled and stood up. Leaving the private office of the commander always reminded the men to adopt a more formal bearing. “Anything else, sir?”
“No, thank you, Master Sergeant,” Shin said, getting up too. “I need to make my daily sweep of the village. Can’t put it off any longer. Some of those new shopkeepers with the Idumean goods wanted to have a word with me about ‘security’ issues.” He rolled his eyes.
“Curglaff referred them to you?” Karna guessed.
Perrin grumbled back. “Few believe in hiring personal guards up here, I suppose. You have the fort, Major.” He put on his cap. “Headed to the stables, Zenos? I’ll accompany you.”
Out in the forward command office, the lieutenant colonel nodded at the older, gnarled sergeant major sitting at the large planning desk, painstakingly updating a soldier’s personnel file.
“Grandpy, I’m heading out for the afternoon. Karna’s on duty.”
Grandpy Neeks saluted and grinned his weather-beaten smile. At fifty-three, only ten years older than Perrin, his dried gray skin and white hair made him look like the last survivor of the Great War 135 years ago. “Lemme guess,” he drawled slowly, “them lovely shops in the center are getting their fine wools coming in. Worried about them being pinched.”
Perrin chuckled. “It’s Planting Season, Grandpy. The wools are going out, the silks and linens are coming in. More valuable, more anxiety causing.”
“A shame,” Neeks slowly shook his head, “that a man like you is reduced to having to know what kinds of cloth are in fashion.”
Perrin shrugged. “I know about the fashions only because I have a teenage daughter that’s been growing non-stop for the past two years.”
Neeks continued to shake his head in sympathy as the men trotted down the stairs.
“That’s probably why he never married,” Shem said quietly as they walked through the reception area, returning the salutes of the soldiers. “Doesn’t want a wife pestering him about fashion. A shame,” Shem drawled like the sergeant major.
“So is that why you’re still not married, Shem? A strapping not-so-young man of now thirty-four? Men will start calling you Grandpy soon, too.”
Shem elbowed his commander. “I look nothing like a Grandpy! And neither do you, I might add.”
“I thank you for that,” Perrin nodded formally. Larger and broader than any man in the fort—or the entire village of Edge for that matter—Perrin Shin had also made sure over the years that he remained the strongest, fastest, and most physically intimidating officer in the northern half of the world.
What that really meant was still being able to beat Zenos in the annual Strongest Soldier Race which, he was hated to admit, was becoming harder every year. In fact, last year he lost to Shem by a few dozen paces, but it might as well have been a mile for the amount of celebration that occurred. The enlisted man finally beat the officer, after ten straight losses. Perrin had to give him his little moment of glory, and even smiled obligingly at the enthusiasm of the enlisted men as they cheered their new hero.
The loss had made Perrin feel . . . more mature. Even though he still thought of himself as a man only half his age, not even Shem was that young anymore.
“And by the way, you now finally look like twenty-one,” he nudged the master sergeant. “I thought I saw a whisker on your chin the other day.”
Automatically Shem’s hand went up to his chin to feel it.
Perrin burst out laughing.
Shem shook his head but chuckled. “Not funny, sir,” he sneered as they marched across the compound. The last remnants of the Raining Season’s snow piled against the stocka
de fence was finally melting, and the men’s boots squelched in the mud as they passed the mess hall and surgery on their way to the northeast gates.
“Mahrree’s still on the lookout for you,” Perrin warned him. “Although I have to remind you again, single women your age are getting scarce.”
“We’ve been through this before,” Shem sighed as they walked out of the compound toward the stables, “when I’m ready, I’ll find the right woman. Or she’ll find me, and then I’ll know I’m ready. We’ve just never crossed paths yet.”
“That’s because you don’t walk on any paths except when on duty, Shem! You need to go out and find some new paths.”
Shem looked around to make sure they were still out of earshot. “So, what . . . you’re saying you’re tiring of my company, Perrin? You’re ready to find a new best buddy?”
Perrin smiled. It’d be impossible to replace Shem Zenos. He became so much a part of the Shin family that more than once Perrin had to remind himself that he wasn’t actually a blood relation. For Shem’s 26th birthday he gave him permission to call him Perrin—and found out then he’d been calling Mahrree by her first name for years.
But somehow that step past propriety had sealed Shem Zenos’s connection. If only Shem had black hair and nearly black eyes like Perrin, he would have been tempted to guess they were distantly related. There was no way to prove such a thing, however, since all the records of family lines had been destroyed generations ago. But since Shem was from between Flax and Waves, on the farthest reaches of the southern border of the world, and Perrin’s family had all come from Idumea, there were obviously no connections. Besides, Shem’s hair was the same color as Mahrree’s, his skin was hued a different gravelly color than Perrin’s, and his eyes were of such a pure blue that Perrin knew no one in his family could ever have produced something close to it. Black and brown were the dominant colors in the Shins.
“Look,” Perrin told his master sergeant, “what you do with your life is your life. But you know Mahrree. ‘Coax him a little, Perrin!’” he said in a high-pitched voice. “‘Tell him how wonderful marriage is!’ By the way,” he added with cheerful deviousness, “did she tell you she received a letter from Sareen?”
The moan of despair next to him made Perrin smirk.
“Apparently not, then. It seems things didn’t work out too well with her latest conquest, and since Sareen’s likely gone through the full gamut of men in Quake and now Mountseen, she’s thinking of coming back to Edge. She was wondering about you.”
“Dear Creator,” Shem mumbled in earnest prayer, “please no, please no . . .”
Perrin chuckled. “Mahrree wrote to her that you’re still wholly committed to soldiering.”
Shem’s shoulders sagged. “Thank you, Mahrree.”
“She’s not the only one interested in you, Master Sergeant,” Perrin warned him. “Mahrree’s had a few other inquiries. She’s given up trying to find Grandpy Neeks a wife, but there are a few out there your age still. And they are—shall we say—not as young as they used to be. A few of them are bordering on full-blown spinsterhood, although they can probably cook well, judging on the spread of their hips.” He cast a sidelong glance to Shem to see if he was taking the bait.
But Shem wasn’t.
So Perrin went on. “You can’t wait too much longer. You’re older than I was when I got married, by several years now.”
“I know,” Shem murmured. “I just . . .” He never finished those sentences about his reluctance to find a female. “Tell Mahrree thanks for fending them off for me.”
“Oh, but she’s not,” Perrin chuckled. “She’s feeling them out and I have to play along, you know. Do my duty to my wife, and all that. So, get married. Have a wonderful life.”
“Good man, Perrin,” Shem said solemnly. “I’ll tell Mahrree you did your duty, and I’ll take your words to heart.”
“You must be the biggest liar in the army, Zenos!”
“You really should be giving that lecture to Major Karna,” Zenos told him. “Brillen asked me to schedule him three days off in a row again. Seems he’s planning another visit down to Rivers.”
“I’ve already given him the lecture,” Perrin said. “It’s not as if their fort needs more training in his inventory projection procedures.”
A corner of Shem’s mouth went up. “So he’s still calling on that mystery woman?”
“She’s no longer a mystery,” Perrin smiled faintly. “Told him I needed some details as to why he’s been a bit distracted lately. Her name’s Miss Robbing. He met her when she was making a delivery to the fort’s kitchen and he was inspecting their paperwork. She’s their egg woman. Brillen seems quite smitten with her.” Perrin’s smile dimmed.
Shem frowned. “So what’s wrong? Sounds promising. He should bring her back here for a visit.”
“There’s a bit of a problem. Her parents are unwell. Something’s wrong with her father’s lungs and he can’t breathe properly, and her mother’s legs were injured many years ago, and she can’t walk without assistance. Miss Robbing is not only their sole support, she’s their caregiver. She’d never leave them or Rivers.”
“Ah,” Shem said slowly. “She could bring her parents here—”
“Doesn’t sound like that’s an option. They have other family that help from time to time, a good neighborhood that frequently assists—Rivers is their home.” Perrin sighed.
Shem cleared his throat. “Brillen’s long overdue for a promotion to lieutenant colonel, you know. Just like you’re long overdue to become a colonel.”
“So what?” Perrin said dully as his gait slowed. The stables were in view, but he didn’t want to get there just yet.
“Change isn’t all bad, Perrin. You’ve made a lot of changes to the forts, for example—”
“That’s not the same,” Perrin interrupted, and his shoulder twitched. “The changes I instigate are good—”
“He proclaims humbly,” Shem said in an undertone that Perrin tried to ignore.
“I came to Edge because I despised all that was going on in Idumea. But it’s followed me here. All good things change, Shem. Nothing wrong with fighting it, is there?”
The men had stopped walking now, and spoke just beyond each other’s shoulders, as if surveying the area for signs of trouble. Their ready stance kept younger soldiers away from their conversation.
“Bad things also change, Perrin, often to something better, and change is vital,” Shem said quietly as his gaze swept across the forest’s edge, a few hundred paces away. “As manifested by your improvements to the security of the world. But think about this: what if your children never grew? You and I have certainly changed, and I think for the better. So why fight that?”
Perrin grumbled quietly to himself. Shem was always far too logical. “Careful, master sergeant,” he said quietly as he watched passing soldiers who glanced back at him nervously, “you sound like you’re debating, and you know I’m not supposed to allow that.”
Shem scoffed. “Says the biggest hypocrite in the village.”
Perrin snorted, but kept his face still.
“Now consider this,” Shem said, pivoting as a signal that what he was about to say was going to end the illegal debate. “If Brillen were promoted and transferred to Rivers—you know the colonel there’s looking to retire soon—what kind of change would Miss Robbing experience? And think if she were married to a man who brought home an officer’s pay? She wouldn’t spend so many hours each day in a hen house now, would she? Even her parents would benefit, and Brillen Karna would enjoy all those ‘benefits of marriage’ you keep going on about.”
Perrin folded his arms and growled under his breath. They were robbing him of his major.
But he knew he was being selfish. Karna had been there with him from the beginning, chosen by his father specifically to be Perrin’s second in command, probably because he was so by-the-book Perrin could use him as a reference guide.
But over the years, P
errin had rubbed off on Brillen, so that he ignored the High General’s book of procedures nearly as often as Perrin did. Yet Karna was still an excellent officer, a careful planner, a most dedicated subordinate, and—worst of all—a friend who deserved to have a little bit of happiness, too.
Perrin rubbed his forehead in frustration.
“Lieutenant Rigoff’s a good officer,” Shem hinted. “He helped the major develop the new inventory procedures. He’s bright, willing to learn, and also overdue for promotion to captain. You know, I see those forms arrive in the messenger’s bag, but I think you lose them all on purpose. I’m sure Teeria would be happy to have her husband promoted to captain—”
“Yes, yes, yes—all right, I heard you! I heard you already,” Perrin finally snapped at his conscience.
A passing soldier hustled away to the mess hall to avoid finding out if the outburst was pointed at him, and what noise he may have made to set off the lieutenant colonel.
Master Sergeant Zenos just smiled smugly and folded his arms.
Perrin mumbled, “I’ll talk to Brillen after his next trip. See how things are going. See if he’s . . . interested in requesting a transfer.”
“I don’t want to see him go either, Perrin,” Shem whispered, “but how much longer should he sit under your shadow?”
Perrin blinked in surprise at that. The thought had never occurred to him.
Shem raised his eyebrows and tilted his head toward the stables.
Reluctantly Perrin nodded back. They’d pick up this conversation later.
As they neared the stables they found the group of ten new soldiers saddling their mounts for their training ride. Perrin and Shem both assumed a more reserved demeanor in front of the young men, which meant extending the distance between them another foot or so, as if to signal the familiarity all the soldiers knew existed wasn’t as close as it seemed. But it was a well-known fact that if you needed one man, just find the other.
Still, the expectations of the Army of Idumea simply couldn’t abide an enlisted man ever referring to an officer by his first name, not even in the privacy of the officer’s home, and with a family he considered his own. So it was a good thing that the village Edge of the World was about as far away from Idumea as one could get.
The men nodded to each other, took their respective horses, exchanged complicated facials expression that said, Mahrree’s expecting you for dinner, and I hope it’s steak, then headed out in different directions.
Master Sergeant Zenos, in charge of new recruit training, rode straight to the forest’s edge to monitor the orientation of the fort’s newest soldiers, while Perrin shoved the worrying thought of Brillen Karna and a hopeful Miss Robbing into a recess in his mind—
—But he didn’t shove them too closely together.
Feeling a bit guilty about that, he decided to let them be a little closer . . .
He prodded the horse chosen for him for the afternoon—a brown mare the stable master hoped would be the right combination of strength and speed Perrin was always searching for but never finding—and headed toward Edge to show the village that the Eyes, Ears, and Voice of the Administrators was there for them.
“Comforting the citizenry,” was what his father cynically called it. The daily ride was insisted on by the Administrator of Culture who thought the world would feel comfort, in spite of the increased thievery, if they saw their fort commanders out among them.
It was stupid, Perrin frequently thought, but mystifyingly it worked to make people feel secure, even though they weren’t.
“Lieutenant Colonel!”
Perrin heard the hopeful call of the owner of what he privately called the Useless Additional Collars and Cuffs Shoppe. The store sold little bits of fancy cloth to attach to clothing that already had enough on them. The place was actually called the Adornment Shoppe, and Perrin suspected the extra p and e at the end of shop was to represent the absurdity of the place.
But, he dutifully put on his How May I Be of Genuine and Sincere Service smile—one that Mahrree made him practice until it was genuinely sincere—and nudged his horse over to the squat man and his towering wife. “And what can I do for you this fine Planting Season day?”
“You can promise me,” began the woman with a terrifyingly hooked nose, “that none of those snotty teenagers will be raiding our Shoppe!”
Perrin could even hear the extra p and e, along with the capital s. The woman’s husband bobbed his head happily but added a nod of apology.
“We’ve been through this before, Mrs. Snobgrass; I can’t promise anything beyond my soldiers and myself working day and night to keep the entire village safe.” His smile stayed firmly in place the entire time, although he could feel it cracking around the edges. “You are, however, free to hire additional guards yourself. There are many former soldiers who hire out their services.”
“Why would I want to do that?” Mrs. Snobgrass exclaimed, her crossed arms getting tighter. “It’s not my job to prevent theft!”
Perrin shrugged casually. “It’s not my job to raise the teenagers of Edge better, either, but it seems we’re both stuck with the problem. And honestly,” he said with a tone dripping so much honey to coat his meaning, “I can’t imagine why anyone would want to bother your establishment.”
Mr. Snobgrass puffed in pride, and Mrs. Snobgrass frowned, trying to figure out if she’d been insulted or not.
Before she could, Perrin tipped his cap and continued on his survey of Edge. There’d be many more stops like this one, and he wanted to get them over with.
Except there was a hog in his way, and it wasn’t a shop owner.
The 250 pound beast grunted at Perrin, and to his horse’s credit, the mare snuffed back.
“Walter!” a man cried. “Get back here!”
Perrin never understood why people assumed food would comprehend what was yelled at it. But apparently Walter had some intelligence, because with a loud squeal the hog headed off into the village green.
“Sorry, sir!” a man puffed as he stopped in front of Perrin. He gestured helplessly at his fleeing pork chops. “He sort of got away from me.”
“Sort of?” Perrin asked, and noticed the man had come from the direction of the butcher’s.
“What do you know about catching hogs, Commander?” the man asked.
Perrin also never understood why people thought he knew everything. It wasn’t for the flattering reason that he had a Command School education, but likely because years ago the Administrators made all of the fort commanders their authorities in the villages. While Perrin never actually superseded the power of the magistrate or the chief of enforcement, still they and everyone else in Edge deferred to him. Occasionally it was useful; usually it was just irritating, assuming that Lieutenant Colonel Shin knew how to solve any problem.
Then again—and Perrin knew he was arrogant to think it—he felt he did know more than anyone else, and rather preferred his opinion was asked instead of anyone else’s. If nothing else, he was more logical than most.
“I know that you should probably remain in pursuit of your pig instead of chatting in the middle of a busy marketplace,” Perrin hinted.
The man nodded and obediently took off again.
There was something else Perrin could do for him. He glanced up at the village green tower, but already one of his soldiers was reading his mind and had his horn to his lips.
Two short blasts. One longer blast. Two more short ones.
The pattern signaled not an emergency of thieves or fire, but warned the citizens to keep an eye out for something unexpected. Such as a nervous hog barreling down on them.
Perrin smiled in approval as the corporal saluted him. The horns had been a logical additional to the tall wooden towers. Three soldiers manned this one, the busiest of the twelve constructed throughout Edge to look for Guarders or any other trouble. Each tower had been originally outfitted with colored banners the soldiers hoisted as a signal to the fort that help wa
s needed, or an official coach was on its way. But after a while Perrin realized villagers could use a bit of warning too. It didn’t take much to come up with some simple patterns soldiers could trumpet to neighborhoods to signal that a child was lost, someone required a doctor, or stray livestock needed to be corralled.
No, what took much longer was to get Major Yordin in Mountseen to come up with it all.
Perrin realized that if he kept coming up with innovations to improve the world, he’d also keep being promoted. While his parents thought it was now tradition that the High General of Idumea needed the last name of Shin, Perrin wasn’t one much for the tradition. So when General Shin sent out his son to all the forts in the world to bring them in line with his (a gesture that was met with a predictable amount of resistance and resentment), Perrin knew he needed to start scaling himself back.
When he met Major Yordin at Mountseen, a loud but personable fort commander, Perrin knew he’d found the perfect conduit. It was during his explanation of how the towers could best be placed throughout the village that Perrin began to hint at ways to make the towers even more useful. It took the entire afternoon, but by dinner Yordin had jotted down a variety of patterns and meanings, and had even sketched a crude drawing of a serviceable horn, modified by Perrin.
The next year when Major Yordin was named Officer of the Year for his contribution of the horn system, now adopted throughout the world, Perrin was more than happy to let him take all the credit.
It meant that Perrin’s promotion to lieutenant colonel wouldn’t be immediate, which meant his promotion to full colonel would also be delayed, and so too would be becoming general.
If Perrin stayed quiet enough, Idumea might forget about him altogether.
After Perrin helped corral the hog with a few other villagers, and the grateful owner said he’d later send over a few pounds of bacon as thanks, Perrin rode through the most expensive part of Edge: the Edge of Idumea Estates, with its appending Edge of Idumea Hot Springs Villas and Cottages for Citizens Over 50, where the name was bigger than some of the houses, or rather, cottages. Hycymum and many of her sewing group friends had moved over to the Cottages, lured by the promise that they could paint their homes in one of four approved colors to match each other.
The Cottages had their own private guards who were occasionally effective at catching the teenagers slipping into back doors while their owners were going out the front to catch the latest Idumea-imported entertainment at the amphitheater or the new arena. But more often than not it was Perrin and his men who nabbed the boys somewhere between their permanently borrowing baubles of gold and silver, and dropping them off somewhere down the slope that led to the marshes in the east.
Shem was the one who figured that out, many years ago now, when he spied a boy leaving a fine leather jacket under an old basket, then saw a man in black slip out of the trees to retrieve it. It wasn’t until Shem chased the man through two farms, tackled him in a pig sty, then watched, horrified, as the man used a jagged blade to kill himself that they had evidence: the Guarders were using the impressionable youth of Edge to do their thieving for them.
As Perrin peered hard into the concealing shrubs around the expensive houses, he took little comfort in the fact that Edge wasn’t the only village afflicted with raiding teenagers; the same thing happened in every village on the outer edges of the World.
“Yoo-hoo!”
Perrin cringed at the shrill voice.
“I know that’s you, Hycymum’s son-in-law! Over here!”
And Perrin knew it was his mother-in-law’s neighbor, again. The woman was frequently outside in the late afternoon on sunny days, and he suspected she was watching for him. He turned around, with his smile firmly in place, and nodded politely to the elderly woman standing just ten paces away from him but shouting as if he were one hundred. “Mrs. Reed. How are you, today?”
“Fine!” she bellowed back, oblivious to the fact that not everyone was as hard as hearing as she thought they were. “Just got back from my daughter’s! I’m two days early, but she said I needed to get home to . . .” She squinted in thought. “I don’t remember why she thought I should come home early.”
Perrin’s smile turned painful. He could think of a few reasons. “Well, then—glad you were able to return safely from Moorland. I really need to be—”
“Did you see the house?” she shouted eagerly at him. “Going up just over there in the Estates? Much larger than our little Cottages here, and Hycymum was saying just a few weeks ago that you were thinking of moving—”
“She’s trying to move us, Mrs. Reed,” Perrin said loudly, annunciating every word to, once and for all, put an end to this move-into-something-bigger-and-richer nonsense that his mother-in-law had recruited help with. “But we’re not coming down here, understand?”
She pointed a wrinkled little finger at him. “But your mother and father were here last year, and I remember them—”
“—touring the Estates and trying to find something they could coerce us into, yes, yes, yes, I remember. And no, no, no Mrs. Reed—we’re not moving. Now, I really must go—”
“Shall I find Hycymum for you?” she bellowed. “Wait, she’s cooking at Edge’s Inn today, right? I need to cook too,” she said, a hazy gloss coming over her eyes. “Your Shem Zenos will be wanting cookies again . . .”
Perrin’s brow furrowed in worry. Mrs. Reed often flowed in and out of clarity, and the thought of her starting a fire made him nervous. Usually her friends looked after her, but he had passed Hycymum’s Herd—her group of a dozen biddies—oohing and aahing at new hats in a window. They wouldn’t be back for some time to notice that their neighbor had come home early.
“Mrs. Reed, I think you should go in now and have a nice lie-down. I’m sure your friends will bring you by some cookies when they come back.”
“Good idea, Lieutenant Corporal!” she called cheerfully. “I missed my pillow. We have such good chats.”
Perrin tipped his cap and made sure she shut the door tightly behind her before he whirled his horse again.
Little surprise she thought Shem would be by for cookies, although lately he’d been bringing them to her. Shem was every widow’s claimed son. He spent his days off at The Cottages fixing their cabinets, building them shelves, and listening to the same stories again and again. Little wonder he couldn’t find an eligible woman to marry under age sixty: he had his own harem of the hard-of-hearing.
Perrin spurred his horse into a trot out of The Cottages and into the grander Estates. As he passed the enormous houses his parents and Hycymum wanted them to buy with all the gold and silver hidden in their cellar, and a sneer formed on his mouth. He nodded to one of the guards, a former sergeant of his who sat in a little shack with his feet up and his sword down. Small surprise that they rarely saw anything out of their tiny windows. Throwing dices was always more entertaining, as if practicing by himself would finally help him win more slips of silver from his friends.
Perrin saw only one person in the Estates at that hour, and even a lurking teenager would have been a more welcome sight than Mrs. Hili, Qualipoe’s mother.
She was walking up to her broad front stairs, her arms loaded with colored boxes tied in frivolous ribbons, likely packages from the Adornment Shoppe. She turned quickly when she heard the horse trotting on the cobblestones, but her enormous jiggling girth stiffened as she eyed the commander of the fort.
He eyed her right back, matching her glare for glare. That had been their customary greeting for the past eight years. Mrs. Hili didn’t even try to hide her disdain for him, as if somehow it was Perrin’s fault that he first caught Poe Hili stealing silver and sweetbread, crumbs of it still on his chin, and trying to escape clumsily from a neighbor’s back window.
And Perrin sent back daggers to her, not bothering to tip his hat. Everyone thinks they deserve respect, but respect has to be earned. He had none for a woman who claimed Major Shin had framed her son, and then didn’
t even have the decency to visit that son while he was incarcerated. Not her, and not her husband. And since Poe had been locked up on four separate occasions, the Hilis had ample opportunities to earn Perrin’s disdain.
He turned away from Mrs. Hili without a second thought. It’d be useless to ask her where Poe was nowadays. She didn’t know, and probably didn’t care, as long as it was far away from Edge.
Perrin rode on to the edge of the village, past the fields where adults labored while their children stayed home alone. He nodded to a large fat man sitting back on a bale of hay sipping from a mug while he supervised, although Perrin couldn’t understand why he wasn’t out there as planting in his fields; for some reason he felt he was needed more to just sit and watch.
Taking a short detour, Perrin headed along the road in front of the old rectory, where his Uncle Hogal and Auntie Tabbit used to live. Perrin grinned when he saw who he considered to be the antithesis of Mrs. Hili, and that was exactly what he needed.
Rector Yung, a tiny old man with mere slits for eyes but an enormous grin, looked up from his front herb garden. He playfully saluted Perrin, and Perrin returned it smartly. Shem had found the lonely widower in Flax and brought him back to be Edge’s rector a year ago after the last rector died.
While only a few dozen people still attended Holy Day services—everyone else was too busy at the amphitheater, and now the arena, to bother with the words of the Creator—Rector Yung delivered sweet and stirring lessons that reminded Perrin of Hogal. Looking at his faintly yellow skin, Perrin hoped he and the rector shared a common ancestor. The Shins invited him to dinner frequently, and he cheerfully came so that Mahrree could try to fatten up the skinny man.
Those meals were now the closest thing they had to the after-congregation-meeting midday meals the village used to share each Holy Day. No one sat and chatted about farms or children or the state of the world over chicken and dumplings anymore. In fact, Holy Day had now even changed its name to holiday—a day each week when people worshipped themselves instead of the Creator.
“Tomorrow, midday meal after the meeting?” Perrin called to Yung, as if the weekly invitation actually needed reissuing.
The rector held up some new sprigs of parsley. “Of course! Mrs. Shin told me she’s expecting this. She’s down to only her dried preserves in her cellar, and I promised to bring her a fresh supply.”
Perrin winked at the Shins’ personal supplier of herbs and faith, and kicked the mare into a steady trot, past the dull gray block building that was labeled with the equally bland name of School Building Number 3. There were five of those now in Edge, built by Idumeans for Idumean education. Perrin could barely stand to look at the structure that housed his wife and children for seven hours each day, forcing them to memorize the drivel the Administrators required them to regurgitate on tests twice a year.
At least Mahrree taught Edge’s special cases—the failing and likely thieving boys whom she had in her After School Care program years ago. She was allowed by Mr. Hegek to take great liberties with the scripts Idumea sent for teachers—
Actually, Hegek had pleaded with her to do whatever she wanted to make the class interesting enough to keep the boys in the building, because he was sure the commander of the fort wouldn’t report any of them for stretching the rules so far that they twanged. And since that was exactly what Mahrree was hoping for, she readily agreed.
Teaching also gave Mahrree access to the mundane scripts sent by the Department of Education so she knew what Jaytsy and Peto were being taught and could counter it at home. Perrin loved the delicious irony that the Administrators’ measures had only provided his family with even more topics to debate illegally at dinner each evening. That’s why Perrin’s perpetual sneer at the School Buildings always slid into a smug smile. Maybe the Administrators felt sure they were succeeding on the surface of things, but like a stomach ailment, nasty things they weren’t expecting still brewed under what seemed to be a calm façade. At least in the Shin family things were always churning.
Perrin led his horse to the outskirts of Edge and spurred it to a run north along the pathway that followed the canals. He slowed the animal only when the last of the neighborhoods flashed past him and before him lay the fallow fields and the forest beyond. He rode up to the border of the trees and peered in.
The forest was quiet, except for a steam vent about sixty paces in that seemed to be venting stronger than usual. Otherwise, there was nothing in the sulfur-scented trees.
He smiled, but without any real joy, as he saw the new recruits mounted on horseback approaching the fresh spring area. Right on time.
He nudged his horse into the darker shadows of the trees next to the cattle fence and watched from a distance. He knew the sergeant running the new recruits’ drill was describing the dangers of the forest, pointing out the features in the daylight so the young men could see them clearly. The soldiers respectfully nodded, some vaguely interested, but others obviously bored.
Perrin bristled. It used to be that all recruits were eager and appropriately afraid, but no longer. Over the past decade the young men of the world, probably hardened by their years of thieving, had become calloused and more violent, and eventually turned traitor to their Guarder benefactors to become soldiers. Perrin rarely got anything useful out of the boys about their time as thieves because they really didn’t know much except to leave the goods in one place and pick up a note about what to steal next. Each year the codes changed anyway, so last year’s thieves were nearly useless in harvesting this year’s crop. Their loyalties shifted easily because the army provided steadier wages for eighteen-year-olds than the Guarders ever did.
Even Shem had to alter his training methods for a physical, angry style which conflicted with his naturally gentle disposition. Later tonight these boys would be awakened from their sleep by Master Sergeant Zenos, ordered to dress and mount up, then given the same tour of the forest in the dead of night, complete with descriptions of how deadly and effective Guarders were in the dark. No one could beat Zenos for telling a story, and each of those ten soldiers would still be trembling by the time he stumbled into the mess hall for breakfast in the morning.
Perrin rested his hands on the horn of his saddle and silently counted down in his head. The sergeant led the soldiers directly to the fresh spring where the log cattle fence had another opening, and the horses and men were allowed to enter in just a few paces to drink the water. None of them noticed their commander further down the forest line.
Just as Perrin reached “one,” a hulking body dressed in black dropped from the trees in front of the recruits. Several of them shrieked like little girls, while two soldiers fell from their horses in surprise. The massive black figure remained crouched before them, glaring menacingly through the slits of a black knitted cap which covered his face almost completely, while another soldier bravely tried to draw his sword until it tumbled to the ground.
The sergeant on duty did nothing but smirk sadly at the lieutenant colonel, whom he had spotted some time ago.
It took about fifteen seconds for the recruits to realize there was no real danger, especially once Shem pulled off the woolen cap and shook his head slowly, an admonishing technique he’d learned from Grandpy.
Perrin stayed in the shadows to watch the show and chuckle, partly in amusement, partly in exasperation. These were their new soldiers, after all. It was one of the few jobs the Administrators deemed these kinds of young men worthy enough to fill, but Perrin always hated getting the last bits from the barrel.
“As first instincts go,” Master Sergeant Zenos began loudly as the two soldiers who fell off their horses sheepishly climbed back on, “that was significantly less than impressive. A man in black jumps out at you in the forest, and three of you scream, two of you fall off your horses, four of you stare at . . . what—a pigeon? And only one man tries to draw his sword? And Private, last time I checked you were right-handed, so why were you trying to draw that sword
with your left? From your left hip? That’s why it’s on the ground now, making you the perfect target!”
He shook his head and paced slowly in front of the soldiers as they squirmed in embarrassment.
“Pitiful. Weak. What will you be like at night? And several of you told me you were ready for the army . . . First instinct—DRAW YOUR SWORDS!” he bellowed.
Perrin smiled genuinely at that. Shem used the same words and cadence Perrin had used on him when he was a young corporal who hated to use the long blade. You don’t have to kill them, Zenos, he’d told him. Just give them something to remember you by.
“What good are your swords strapped to your bodies if you never use them?” Zenos shouted as he stopped in front of the now-trembling men. “At least with a sword in your hand you appear threatening.”
While Zenos was getting better at commanding, Perrin could still hear the apologetic undertone. No one else knew how much Shem hated to raise his voice.
“Appearances are deceiving,” Zenos continued, and Perrin knew the biggest example of that stood right before them, “—and in this case, a little deception is good since you obviously have nothing else going for you! Now all of you, dismount! Draw your swords! Show me some bravery!”
The soldiers—feeling humbled if not downright humiliated—scrambled to comply, each trying to be the first to hit the ground.
Perrin left the shadows of the tree line and rode his horse over to the recruits.
They jumped in surprise to see another figure arrive from what they thought was an abandoned forest. A few dropped their swords, and two young men bobbed up and down, unsure if they should retrieve their weapons or stand at attention before their commander. They tried to do both, cracking their heads against each other as one went down while the other went up.
Lieutenant Colonel Shin kept his face perfectly still. He would share the laugh later with his friend.
Master Sergeant Zenos groaned loudly and gestured for the men to first retrieve their weapons, and then acknowledge the presence of the officer.
Shin waited and nodded at the men who finally, all put back together again, saluted him with wobbly hands at their foreheads. One of the recruits subtly tried to rub a growing bump.
Shin returned their salute and with a grave expression said, “Zenos, what have we here?”
“Not much,” said Zenos with obvious disappointment. “But I’m working on it, I assure you, sir.”
“Indeed you have your work cut out for you, Master Sergeant. But if anyone can turn these boys into something resembling men, it’s you. You know,” he said in a tone that was simultaneously casual and threatening, “two weeks ago Sands was raided. Seems some of the Guarders actually dared to go back into the village, and they were rather successful. Injured four soldiers and killed a fifth. And just this morning I received a message that Moorland was hit again. Several head of cattle were taken. Someone hacked a hole in the cattle fence with a hatchet, and the animals’ tracks headed straight for the forest. That means, soldiers,” he was sure to add a layer of doubt on that word, “that the Guarders are heading east—straight for Edge.”
The young men shifted nervously, which was exactly what Perrin hoped to see.
“Now,” the lieutenant colonel continued steadily, “we haven’t had a successful raid in Edge for over ten years. I like to believe that’s because the Guarders are afraid of the might of our fort. However, if they have any spies sitting in the forest today—and I assure you, they’re out there—they’ll have seen today that our recruits are timid and ineffectual. They may assume the entire army is the same way. And if they do, they’ll cut you down before you can even find the hilt of your swords.”
He smiled easily as their faces tightened.
“Just something to think about, boys.” He sent his friend a twitch and a nod that said, Still on for dinner tonight?
Perrin and Shem had developed a whole system of facial signals, from silly to subtle, by which they communicated a variety of messages. A few years ago ago, they sat in these same trees listening in on the conversations of sloppy Guarders. But there were also many other long, boring nights where no one showed up below them to spy on the fort, so they had nothing else to do but come up with winks, twitches, and wriggles to say everything from This tree’s digging into my backside, to Is that a pack of wolves under us? It was ridiculous, as his daughter frequently reminded them, but immensely useful. They could silently convey all kinds of things about soldiers and villagers, except sometimes they looked like they were trying to get a swarm of invisible mosquitoes off their faces.
Zenos sent back a quick grimace. Give his apologies to Mahrree; he’d be out late with this batch of soldiers, but he’d be by for midday meal tomorrow after the congregational meeting.
Shin nodded. “Carry on, boys.”
Perrin returned his horse to the stables at the fort, told the stable master the mare was adequate but to keep looking, spent ten minutes finishing up his paperwork in the command tower, and jogged home to try to be on time for dinner for once.
He almost made it.
“Anything left for me?” he called as he came through the back door and into the kitchen.
Jaytsy was carrying a tray—Shem was missing steak—to the eating room. “Mother, he made it!”
“Really?” Perrin kissed her cheek.
“Yep, because we decided to eat half an hour later than usual.”
Perrin chuckled and followed his daughter through the door to the combined eating and gathering room. As she walked, or rather pranced—she seemed to bounce and flutter everywhere—he assessed her height. She seemed to finally have stopped growing, settling in at a stature between her father and her mother, making her taller than the majority of women in Edge.
Mahrree frequently said their daughter was a perfect blend of their traits, but all her facial features came from her mother. His contribution was her height, her nearly black hair which she pulled into a long ponytail, and her large eyes that were as dark as his.
In the eating room, Mahrree was just setting down the bread board on the table, and Perrin paused.
She’d told him that someday he’d realize his daughter was a growing—and even beautiful—young woman, but there was no way she’d ever match her mother.
Mahrree eyed him back, her gray-green-brown eyes—he’d given up trying to figure out their color—twinkling impishly at him. Occasionally people said a woman’s appeal faded after thirty, but that didn’t apply to his wife. Over forty now, she only seemed to intensify in everything appealing about her: thought, conscience, strength, humor . . .
Oh, and she was pleasant looking as well. Some men may not have thought her to be a stunning beauty, but she was much more than beautiful; she was attractive.
Her perfect pink lips that she pouted just to drive him to distraction, her light brown hair that she kept shoulder length because she knew he loved to run his fingers through it, and those eyes—those eyes that were as complex and clear as their color. It didn’t matter that she had a slender slip of a body, was shorter than most women, and weighed a hundred pounds less than her husband. Nudge in her in the wrong direction and she was fiercer than a belligerent badger, capable of taking out targets much larger than herself.
Maybe it was the soldier in him, but Perrin found that immensely attractive.
But Mahrree didn’t know how powerful she was, much to Perrin’s relief. Uncle Hogal had once told Perrin she was the most dangerous woman in the world, and a sliver of Perrin feared that may be true. But all she ever said about herself was that she was a small woman in a tiny village, and no one would ever pay any attention to her. Perrin prayed that was true.
He took a step toward her. “Where’s Peto?” he asked with a mischievous smile before reaching his wife.
“Here,” said Peto, coming out of his room. “About time, Father. I’m going to wither away to nothing if I wait for dinner any longer.”
Perrin had to adm
it that might’ve been accurate. The boy did look half-starved, even though he ate more than Perrin each day. When Perrin was that age he was already growing larger than his father, but Peto seemed destined to take after his maternal grandfather. While his face was an exact copy of Perrin’s, Mahrree said his gray eyes and brown hair reminded her of Cephas Peto.
“Then Peto, I have exactly what you need to kill your appetite.” Perrin pulled Mahrree into his arms and kissed her—
“Augh! Why do you always have to do that in front of me?” Peto wailed and covered his eyes dramatically.
Jaytsy just rolled her eyes and put the steaks on the table.
Mahrree laughed at her son once Perrin finally released her. She looked around. “Where’s Shem? Usually you save those ‘Advantages of being married’ greetings for when Shem’s here.”
“New batch of ten recruits,” he told her. “Full of bravado until ‘Shem the Guarder’ fell from the trees. At least two will need to change their trousers when he finally lets them run back to the safety of the fort.”
Mahrree winced. “Ooh, they must be very green if Shem’s missing dinner to start toughening them up.”
“He signaled he’d try to come by tomorrow.” Perrin took his chair at the table. “But that may depend on how well the recruits handle their middle-of-the-night training ride tonight.”
“I can’t wait until he takes me along,” Peto said as he sat and snagged the largest steak before Perrin’s fork could stab it. His ignored his father’s playful glare. “But Uncle Shem says it’s too scary and won’t take me until I’m seventeen or eighteen.” He sighed in frustration and dove into the bowl of potatoes just ahead of his father, who grumbled. “I know all the stories. I wouldn’t be scared.”
“Oh, yes you would,” insisted Jaytsy, buttering her bread in a less aggressive manner than her brother usually did. When Peto attacked sliced bread, it nearly regressed back into cracked wheat. “Besides, you’d have to go on horseback, and you’re too scared to even mount a horse. Peto the Puny,” she added in a mumble before biting primly into her crust.
“Jaytsy!” Mahrree admonished her.
“—the Giant!” Peto added with a wicked grin.
“That’s enough!” Perrin snapped at him. “What did we say about using those names?”
“I didn’t say, ‘Jaytsy the Giant,’” Peto pointed out, not one bit shaken by his father’s sternness. He’d seen him much worse. “Mother said ‘Jaytsy.’ I merely said ‘the Giant.’ You’re the one who assumed they go together.” He shoved a chunk of potato into his mouth.
Perrin looked critically at his wife.
Mahrree pressed her lips together—her expression that meant she was proud of her son’s recognition of the rhetoric, and disappointed that he was still calling his sister names. But Jaytsy still started it, this time.
“Don’t you two think you’re getting a little big for name calling?” said Mahrree sharply to her daughter.
Jaytsy batted her long dark lashes. “I may be getting too big, but . . .” She raised her eyebrows at her little brother and left the rest of the sentence hanging.
Mahrree squinted in disappointment that also tried to mask a bit of amusement.
But her husband glared at her. “And you had to start teaching them to debate when they were six and five.”
“I wouldn’t go so far to call it debating,” Peto said to his potato which he analyzed with great adoration. “Maybe arguing.”
His sister rolled her eyes. “Given the context, arguing is the same as debating. Have you still not figured that out? Now, fighting: that’s different—”
“So Jayts,” Perrin said to change the subject—and so that he wouldn’t have to report himself for insubordination by allowing debating in his house, “what’s new in the world of teenage girls?”
She blinked at him. “Sometimes you say the oddest things, Father.”
“So there’s nothing new?”
“There’s always something new!”
“Well?”
She shrugged and indulged him. “If boys like it when girls cut their hair short above their eyes or not. They’re calling them bangs.”
“Hmm,” Perrin said with a studious nod. He rarely knew how to respond beyond, hmm. But that always seemed to suffice to show he was concerned about his daughter’s life, yet had no idea what any of it really involved.
“Truly ground-breaking thinking,” Mahrree said. “They’re not worried about the boys thieving, or what kinds of work the Administrators will decide for them if they fail to improve their scores—just if they like shorter hair or not.”
“Girls are silly,” Peto said.
“I agree,” said Mahrree.
Perrin pondered that. “I don’t remember girls being that silly when I was fourteen.”
Jaytsy asked, “And how much of an expert on girls were you when you were fourteen?”
Perrin paused. “All right, probably not that much.”
His wife and daughter laughed. Peto ate some more.
“No, girls were silly,” Mahrree admitted. “Every time I hear you talk, Jaytsy, I find myself remembering more things from my childhood that I thought I finally forgot. But truly, I don’t think we ever fretted about our hair. I don’t think boys even notice that.”
“They don’t,” Peto said, gulping down his water.
“How would you know?” Jaytsy asked. “You barely qualify as a ‘boy.’ More like a pig-thing.”
“Oh, ha-ha.”
“Jaytsy!” Mahrree chided.
“Mother, I didn’t call him a name. I didn’t say his name is ‘pig-thing.’ I just said he is like a pig-thing. Big difference.”
“And you had to teach them to debate,” Perrin glared at his wife.
She glared back with a look that said, You and I will finish this argument later. Alone.
His saucy wink at her meant, You better believe we will.
“Back to the issue of the silliness of girls,” Mahrree started, biting back her grin that she knew her husband noticed, “now that they’re getting older, you’d think they’d be concerned more with truly worrying issues. Such as, will any of those boys be worth marrying in a couple of years?”
“Oh, don’t talk about marrying, Mother!” Jaytsy said. “I’m not even fifteen yet. Girls aren’t supposed to worry about marrying until they’re at least sixteen.”
“Or twenty-eight,” Perrin declared. It’d take him that long to figure out females. Peto was easy, as all boys are. They’re a mixture of a puppy and a colt: just feed them, let them run around, and rein them back in every now and then.
But girls?
Now Jaytsy rolled her eyes at her father. She was very practiced at it, exercising those muscles a few dozen times each day. “I don’t want to waste away until I’m twenty-eight, either! Practically a grandparent.”
Perrin and Mahrree glanced at each other and the stray gray hairs that each was beginning to sprout.
Distinguished on him, she frequently said.
Wiry on her, he never bothered to mention.
“I’m not marrying anyone off yet,” Mahrree promised. “I’m just saying they should start thinking about more important things, like . . . the condition of the world, the ideas from Idumea, the politics—”
Jaytsy scoffed. “Idumean politics—really, Mother? Teenage girls?”
“Well,” Mahrree said, slightly insulted, “you’re interested in what’s going on in the world—”
“Only because that’s all you and Father talk about! Only because you drill into our heads every dinner time what we should be worried about and how to fight it.”
“Hear, hear!” agreed Peto taking a bite of steak. “The Administrators this, the Administrators that,” he garbled as he chewed. “Good thing the Administrators don’t have ways to hear what goes on in this house, or you’d both be on that ‘watched’ list the Administrator of Loyalty supposedly has. Maybe the next time you punish me, I can threaten to write
someone a letter,” and he raised his eyebrows.
Jaytsy laughed as Mahrree and Perrin exchanged looks of amusement and concern. Mahrree had mentioned to them once that she used to send letters many years ago, and got nothing back in return but form letters. It was part of a discussion they’d had about the unresponsiveness of the Administrators, but Perrin saw the flickers of fear in her eyes when she admitted to possibly overstepping her bounds.
But her children mistook her apprehension as annoyance, and occasionally threatened to write their own letters, just to watch her eyes bulge.
Mahrree sighed. “I’m sorry. I know sometimes we pour it on a little thick—”
“You’ve raised us to look at everything with a sufficiently cynical eye—don’t worry.” Jaytsy said, her voice suddenly serious.
That always surprised Perrin: one minute she was a flighty girl, the next she was a sharp-tongued young woman. The fact that he was never quite sure which was about to show its claws kept him perpetually on guard.
“And I agree with what you say, really,” his daughter said earnestly. “It’s just hard to be around everyone else when no one else thinks the same as we do. Sometimes I just wished we weren’t so different.”
Mahrree sighed.
“I just sometimes wished . . .” Jaytsy began, then stopped.
Perrin noticed she had picked up her mother’s habit of not finishing thoughts out loud. He counted to three—if he counted to ten, she’d completely forget what she was talking about; she was only fourteen, after all—before he asked, “Wished for what?”
“I wished we could just be like everyone else. Or rather, that everyone else could be like us. Maybe the Creator could just, I don’t know, shake everyone up a bit. Make them see things the way you force us,” she smiled apologetically, “to see things. Notice all the problems, instead of ignoring them.”
“Ah, Jaytsy, that’s not really something you want, is it?” Mahrree said. “What would it take to ‘wake up’ the world? Whatever shakes them will shake us as well.”
Jaytsy exhaled loudly. “It’s not like I want everyone punished, Mother! Just . . . make them awake, that’s all.”
“But Jayts, some people can be as impossible to wake up as our Peto here,” Perrin told her, hoping to lighten the moment.
“Father, I have to tell you,” Peto said gulping down the last bits on his plate, “most of the time when you try to wake me, I’m just ignoring you.”
Mahrree sighed again. “That’s exactly what the world does—ignores the problems. No amount of shaking can fix that, I fear.”
Chapter 2 ~ “Did something happen?”