Soldier at the Door (Forest at the Edge)

by Mercer, Trish

  She grabbed a clean piece of paper from a shelf and started for a chair.

  Mahrree . . . Mahrree—

  She knew the source of her name. Her father was still nearby, but she was too full of venom to heed him as she yanked out the chair from under the table.

  “What are you doing?!” Perrin demanded.

  “I’m going to teach the Administrators a little lesson of my own! I’m going to write to—”

  Mahrree, NO! Perrin, stop her—

  “Whoa, whoa, whoa,” Perrin said, grabbing her arm before she could sit down at the table. “The captain is due back any minute, Mahrree. You need to cool down.”

  “You said the other day that I needed to get to the bottom of this!” she said fiercely, wrenching her arm from his grip. “Well, here it is: Parents are stupid, Administrators are smart. Hand over your children to the Administrators with no questions debated so they can pour their own ideas into the children’s minds, while parents worry about nothing else except getting more gold! Gold which they then hand over to the Administrators in higher taxes. Ooh, very clever! The Administrators get richer while families fall apart!”

  Perrin’s mouth opened and shut several times, but he knew that when his wife was on a rant, there was no safe way to interrupt her.

  “And then what happens to the children?” she gestured wildly. “Give Idumea a few years, and I’m sure they’ll be telling the children what jobs they can have, so they make sure our children make them enough gold and silver!”

  Perrin lifted a finger, likely to try to interject that she had an intriguing point, but he pulled it back in a moment later when she began to froth. His contribution could wait.

  “Next they’ll dictate where we can live!” Mahrree exclaimed. “And what we can do, and where we can go—Oh, wait. They already tell us that! Can’t go to Terryp’s land or anywhere else on this vast sphere! Well, I’ve had enough. I’m going to give them a piece of my mind so they can see how intelligent mine really is!”

  Sensing the end of the rant, and possibly the beginning of something even more threatening, Perrin stepped up quickly and took her by the arms.

  “Mahrree, breathe slowly and think about this. If you send a letter to the Administrators expressing anything we just talked about, it might make it to someone,” he said darkly. “And if it did, it would not be comfortable for anyone with the last name of Shin.”

  “Who’s telling me that? My husband, or the captain?” she spat.

  “The captain’s at the door, Mahrree. So both of us, because we both love you.”

  “And you both fear the Administrators?” she accused.

  Perrin bristled, his eyes turning stony. “There’s twenty-three of them, Mahrree, and significantly fewer Shins. I’m only a mere captain in the smallest fort. And you’re only my wife. Not only are we powerless, we’re insignificant. I know how Nicko Mal thinks. He’s high-minded and superior, until someone challenges him. Then he focuses all his attention on demeaning and eliminating what he perceives as a threat. Trust me, Mahrree; we do not want to draw his attention! I did that too many times as an immature student. And Mal has a very long and spiteful memory.”

  Mahrree squinted. “You may think you’re unforgettable, Perrin Shin, but I sincerely doubt the Chairman of the Administrators sits up at night thinking about how much you irritated him when you were twenty!”

  The corner of Perrin’s mouth tugged upwards. “You’re probably right. He’s forgotten all about those childish outbursts we shared. But Mahrree, I’m also right. What would you hope to accomplish by sending a temper tantrum in another letter to the Department of Instruction?”

  Mahrree blinked a few times, slowly coming out of her rage. “Uh, I’m not entirely sure,” she confessed. “And I was going to address it to Chairman Mal.”

  “Ha!” Perrin barked. “Good thing the captain got here to hold you back, Mrs. Shin.”

  Good catch, son. Mahrree, listen to your husband. He’s right.

  Mahrree sighed hopelessly, at both her husband and her father, who seemed to stand very close to both of them.

  “There’s nothing we can do, is there?”

  Perrin exhaled. “No, not really. You can give your findings to Hegek, but other than that? Well, at least the Administrators don’t have any eyes or ears in this house. We can say and think whatever we want, as long as we keep it to the house.”

  Mahrree’s shoulders fell, completely deflated. “I don’t like the direction of any of this, Perrin.”

  “Neither do I, Mahrree. I escaped Idumea for a reason. But now it seems it’s expanding even to Edge. I guess that’s progress for you.”

  ---

  Mahrree did send a fourth letter, but to the Department of Instruction, as neutral, direct, and short as she could make it.

  As a school teacher, I am wondering if you can give me the reasons why, in the future, all children will no longer learn to debate.

  Surely something that short would elicit an original response.

  Chapter 9 ~ “There have been some changes . . .”

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

  “She did it!” Brisack breathed in a dazed monotone. “Incredible!”

  “And shockingly insightful in her brevity,” Mal twitched. “The only way she would’ve known about eliminate debating was if she read to the very end. Not even the Administrator of Education has bothered to accomplish that yet.” His voice grew louder and higher. “She’s not a teacher anymore, nor does she have any children in the schools, so why does she care?!”

  “Well, that’s one intelligent, independent, persistent—”

  “Annoying!”

  Brisack shrugged in reluctant agreement, “—annoying cat.”

  “Always hated cats,” Mal mumbled.

  “So what kind of response will this receive?”

  “Perhaps,” Mal said, holding up a finger, “she should receive a personal one this time.”

  Brisack’s eyebrows rose. “Are we now finding the north appealing again?”

  “He hasn’t conquered that forest, although I’m sure he believes he has. They need to learn who is truly in charge of this world. I am!”

  Brisack nodded slowly. “I suppose that’s the only answer. But . . .”

  “But what, Doctor?” Mal sliced into his hesitation.

  “I can’t stop thinking that all she’s done is send four letters. We’re going to eliminate someone because of four letters?”

  “We’ve eliminated some after only one letter, Doctor,” Mal said steadily. “Remember the pestering father of that captain in Grasses? The one who blamed the Administrators for losing his cattle herd to the new mandates on production? You’d think the man would’ve been grateful to move to the village and nearer to his son. His son’s quit the army, by the way. You may want to study his descent into depression after having lost all his family. Truly tragic. But here,” he gestured to Mrs. Shin’s final note, “here we have a woman who’s sent four letters, and we’ve let her go. Not only that, but she’s questioned your research methods, Doctor. She’s mocked the Department of Instruction—”

  “Well, if we’re going to target someone because of that,” Brisack chuckled nervously, “then I should be watching my back—”

  “She’s questioning our Administration!” the old man burst out. “The Administrators that discovered the return of the Guarders! That ordered the army to put a fort in Edge. That gave her a husband! And this is how she thanks us for such attention to an undeserving woman in a meaningless little village?”

  “As you just pointed out, Nicko,” Brisack said in his best calming voice, “she’s small and insignificant.”

  Mal jabbed his finger at him. “Everything big began as something small, Doctor! Perrin started that way, too, as a boy with an over-sized ego. Then you should have seen him when he was thirteen and already taller than Relf. Strutting around the garrison with girls trailing behind him.” His shoulder twitched more viol
ently. “By the time he was sixteen he practically had a horde of women. Then he came to the university and started Command School.”

  Mal stared off into the distance, his head nodding, then shifting into bobbling and shaking. “Suddenly he was all seriousness, all focus, all study. But I knew what he was up to. He was plotting, even then, as a nineteen-year-old. He analyzed and thought and argued about everything!” Mal began to massage his hands, not realizing that he was frothing around the corners of his mouth.

  The good doctor noticed, but wisely didn’t point that out.

  “He’s been plotting, that one has,” Mal continued. “I had him his second year, and beginning Day One he challenged something I said, countering it out of The Writings of all things! I promptly shut him down, but I saw something in the eyes of his fellow students. They admired him,” he said as if uttering the filthiest word in the world. “The next week he took me on again, with even more irrational and unproven arguments, and for even longer. And his fellow students? They were smiling.” Mal’s eyes squinted so severely he probably lost all sight.

  Brisack swallowed and calmly said, “He was an arrogant boy, Nicko. I heard the stories about him. Those students, they mistook his bravado for genuine bravery. They probably admired him because they—”

  “Saw him opposing authority?!” Mal spewed. “Saw him fluster me on more than one occasion in front of all of them?!”

  Brisack’s mouth formed a small o. “He embarrassed you? Nicko, he was only a boy—”

  “He hadn’t looked like a boy since he was thirteen!” Mal protested. “And he was never only a boy. He’s been a plotting egomaniac long before he ever came to Command School!”

  Brisack exhaled. He knew he’d regret asking, but curiosity was pushing him. “Nicko, plotting what?”

  Mal leaned closer. “To take over the world,” he whispered darkly.

  The good doctor would have snorted if it hadn’t been for the deadly serious look in his companion’s eyes that terrified him.

  “Nicko, you can’t really believe—”

  That was a stupid thing to say, and Mal’s glare made that very clear.

  Brisack swallowed again. “What evidence do you have that he’s trying to take over the world?”

  Mal scoffed. “Look what he’s done in the forests! Look how he’s defied the laws! Oh, there’s so much more to it . . . You never heard his arguments, but I did. He fully believes in the old prophecies that an end of some kind will come, that the wicked will be destroyed, that the followers of the Creator alone will be saved! He had entire passages memorized, and recited them in class! I’d go back to my office and look them up in a borrowed copy of The Writings to see how correct he was, and he never deviated. He acted as if he really believed that nonsense, and I promise you, my good doctor: only a man intending to be the one to save the world would pay such close attention to so-called prophecies telling him how! The weak minded of the world believe that twaddle, and they’ll throw their support behind the man that claims he believes it too!”

  Mal stood up abruptly and marched to a bookshelf, violently shifting pages and dropping a few on the floor in a frantic effort to find something in the dim light.

  “I’ll prove it to you,” he mumbled as Brisack remained in his chair, taking mental notes about Chairman Nicko Mal’s stability. “I’ve kept it, to remember, just to be sure that . . . ah!” He held up a snippet of parchment and waved it around like a small banner. “Allow me to read to you, my good doctor.”

  Mal stepped closer to a gap in the curtained window, where faint torchlight from the stables reached him.

  Brisack bit his tongue and continued to evaluate his companion, his current situation, and the level of his own involvement.

  He immediately went back to evaluating only the chairman.

  Mal squinted as he held the parchment he held close to his eyes. “‘Before the Last Day even the aged of my people will strike terror in the deadened hearts of the fiercest soldiers. On the Last Day those who have no power shall discover the greatest power is all around them. On the Last Day those who stayed true to The Plan will be delivered as the destroyer comes.’ Ha! There you have it!”

  “There I have it,” Brisack nodded once. “I’m not exactly versed in The Writings. What, precisely, do I have?”

  Mal stepped closer to his friend and breathed heavily. “He quoted this to me on more than one occasion. Some people read The Writings for comfort, but others read for anarchy!”

  Brisack glanced dubiously at the parchment clutched in Mal’s fist. “This is anarchy?”

  “Or so he’ll convince the world. He’ll convince them there’s trouble, such great trouble that even the soldiers are afraid! But then he’ll swoop down, as High General or something, and save the world before they’re destroyed.”

  “I’m . . . not entirely sure that’s what the passage means—”

  “Who cares what it means!” Mal ranted. “There is no ‘meaning’ except what we place on it! And the meaning he will construe is to make himself king and take away my power!”

  It made sense, really, Brisack considered. What’s the most powerful man in the world worried about? Another man becoming more powerful than him. People probably thought that having all power meant a life of security, but it’s exactly the opposite. You never know when that security will be compromised. Every man needs something to fight against, or he withers away. Even insanity is better than indifference.

  “You see it, don’t you?” Mal nodded at Brisack’s silence.

  “I’m beginning to see a few things,” Brisack said vaguely. “So this is what motivates you? The fear of losing your hold on the world?”

  Mal scoffed at the obvious and plopped down in his chair with impatient aplomb. “But it’s my world, not Perrin’s. He thinks that prophecy will be fulfilled, and it will be fulfilled—by me! Listen again. ‘Before the Last Day even the aged of my people will strike terror in the deadened hearts of the fiercest soldiers.’ Well, my friend, when Perrin meets his last day that fierce soldier will be terrified, because I will be the aged striking that terror! He won’t know it was me, but I will! Perrin Shin will face his destroyer and whimper like a whipped dog begging for mercy, but he won’t get it. He WILL die, and all of his plans with him, because Nicko Mal is in charge of the world!”

  Brisack sat as far back in his chair as possible to avoid the infectious spewing that flowed from Nicko Mal. There comes a moment in a man’s life when he realizes his course is set, his future cast in stone and that there’s no way to escape it, but to hope he can still duck at the right moments.

  Right now he was ducking so low he could inspect the wearing down of his boot’s heel.

  “I see,” was all he could think to say.

  Mal nodded once in satisfaction, his tight face relaxing ever so slightly. “I’m glad that you do. And now you see why anything that touches Shin is just as affected as he is. Including, obviously, his wife!”

  Brisack felt his mouth go dry. There was tragedy, and then there was outrage. But they were now somewhere so beyond that he couldn’t even recognize the terrain. When he got back home, he’d refocus his own research by observing one very determined, very paranoid, subject.

  The doctor was lost in his thoughts for too long.

  “Oh, I see what it is,” Mal sneered when he received no response. “You’re still intrigued by her, aren’t you?”

  Brisack could only shrug as his mind came back to the darkened room. “Never encountered a woman quite like her,” he admitted as he looked at the letter still in his grip, rereading the one sentence.

  Mahrree Shin was remarkable. Remarkable enough for Perrin Shin.

  Mal clasped his hands in front of him. “I think you’re failing to see exactly what’s happening here, my good doctor. But Gadiman even noticed this one when he brought me that letter this morning. That letter that you are now ogling as if you were holding Mrs. Shin herself—”

  Brisack blushed and set the
letter down on his lap guiltily. “She’s only a small voice.”

  “As Gadiman pointed out, the most violent of thunderstorms begin as a quiet rumble in the north,” Mal snarled. “The world’s attention must not be drawn to such rumbling, or it may begin to listen. Small things, Doctor, grow larger under the right conditions. We must change the conditions. As long as the world believes the sky is blue, it will disregard signs of approaching storms and even ignore the thunder that skirts the edges of their villages.”

  Brisack was already shaking his head. “They can’t ignore every storm, Nicko. Especially the ones hailing down on them!”

  “Oh, but that’s the fascinating part, my good doctor: they will. As long as the hail isn’t hitting them, they’ll go on about with their dull lives. Why run for cover when it’s the other village getting wet? The sky is blue above them, and if it’s not, it will be blue again, very soon. We can divert storms, Doctor.”

  Brisack remained back up against his plush armchair, but the cushioning behind him felt hard and cold. “Nicko, you can’t control everything!”

  “But I can create the illusion that I can,” Mal smiled thinly. “It’s the perception that matters, not the reality. We make the meanings. People believe what they want to believe, what they’re conditioned to see. Already children are being taught the sky is blue and that anything else in it is a passing anomaly that will quickly vanish and the true blueness of the sky will return once more. King Oren was taught that, as were his sons, by one of my more brilliant colleagues. Had he not died a few weeks after Oren, he’d be sitting in your chair, proving with me that the citizenry of the world is stupid enough to believe that the sky is always blue, the grass is always green, and it’s a lovely Weeding Season every day. Then we can do whatever we want to, and no one notices.”