Soldier at the Door (Forest at the Edge)

by Mercer, Trish

  Then it would all be over.

  Shem would have saved the High General’s life, but also would have failed in saving them.

  Stay anonymous, keep a low profile, connect with no one . . . that’s what Tuma Hifadhi had told him to do. He had failed in all of that, too.

  He was definitely in over his head.

  ---

  “General,” Mahrree said circumspectly as they walked down the hall, “why were you speaking to Shem?”

  “Just asking questions, Mahrree. I’m full of questions today.”

  She firmed her grip on his arm. “Surely you don’t suspect that Shem—”

  “Right now I suspect everything and everyone. Even Perrin’s dog.”

  Well, that would’ve been too convenient, Mahrree considered briefly. “I realize you don’t know much about Shem beyond what we tell you, but you have to believe me—he’s innocent.”

  “And why should I believe that? Because he willingly changes the soiled cloths of your children? Because he has the face of a child himself? Because he goes with you to the congregational meetings? None of that means anything. He’s a skilled, strong young man. He was exceptional in the race I saw him run yesterday, and you told me yourself that he barely lost to Perrin last week. Only a man equal in power to Perrin could come that close to besting him. I’m telling you—he’s not what he seems.”

  Mahrree scoffed at that. “Why, he may be strong, but he barely touches his sword! Perrin’s still trying to get him comfortable with a blade. Shem Zenos is a sweet boy that’s no more capable of killing anyone than . . . than I am! And you know how squeamish I am. I pay the butcher extra to debone my chicken. Shem may be even worse!”

  “Which would explain why—had he killed two men—he was in the surgery wing vomiting last night,” the general said with a slight edge to his voice.

  Mahrree’s mouth dropped open in surprise, and she stopped walking until her father-in-law pulled her along.

  “Surely not, General! Why—why would he do it? No. Absolutely not. Ridiculous. I think the other story is more plausible. They got in an argument, and they both were deadly at the same time. It seems unlikely, I agree, but certainly not impossible. And there’s no evidence of bloody footsteps leaving the scene, according to what Grandpy Neeks told me. Perrin said only yesterday that four of your guards were new soldiers you don’t even know—”

  “And you don’t know Shem Zenos!” the general interrupted her sharply.

  But it wasn’t sharp enough to shut her up. “Sir, I know him better than you! Right now you’re grabbing at any possibility, which means you’ve lost your impartiality. You don’t want the truth. You only want convenient answers!”

  “Truth?! I’ve lost MY impartiality!” he bellowed.

  Just as the general was about to round on Mahrree and let her know exactly what he thought, she stopped him with, “Did you trust Hogal Densal?”

  General Shin blinked, startled out of his fury by the odd question. “What?”

  “Hogal Densal—did you trust him?”

  The general sighed, slightly calmer. “I did. We didn’t see eye-to-eye on many things, but Hogal was an excellent judge of character, and noticed things no one else could.”

  “Hogal trusted Shem,” Mahrree told him. “So do we. He told us repeatedly to keep Shem close to us, and said he was the finest young man he ever knew, after Perrin.”

  General Shin looked down at the ground for a moment. “Hogal said that?”

  Mahrree nodded. “High praise coming from him, wouldn’t you agree?”

  The general was quiet for half a minute, staring at the floor, and Mahrree shifted in worry for her favorite soldier.

  “Come, Mahrree,” the general eventually said. “Joriana needs a woman’s presence right now.”

  Mahrree smiled primly as the general led her to their guest room.

  Changing the subject was as close as the general would get to conceding defeat in anything.

  ---

  That afternoon a bleary-eyed Perrin came home and sat down at the eating table. Mahrree was glad the house was quiet, because he looked like he needed it. She’d sent her After School Care boys to join with another group for the day, just in case there were more surprises for the Shin family.

  That morning Mahrree had brought a fretful Joriana to their home—along with two guards who stationed themselves at either door—and shortly before midday meal Hycymum came over, curious as to why her daughter’s house was “soldiered.” Hycymum came up with the wonderful idea to distract Joriana from the events of the night by taking her to the market so she could help her find the latest Idumea fashions, and Joriana decided her two grandchildren needed new clothes, too. The soldiers gave each other passing looks of dread as they followed the party of four to the markets. Mahrree couldn’t think of anything more distracting for Mother Shin than to try to shop with Hycymum and their two grandchildren.

  When she finally returned, she would need a very quiet place herself.

  Perrin supported his head in his hands and sighed as Mahrree put a plate of late midday meal in front of him. He hadn’t eaten since last night. He never ate when he was absorbed in a problem.

  “Anything new?” she asked.

  Perrin shook his head. “Nothing. Absolutely nothing. All evidence—well, what there is of it—points to a fight between the two men. Maybe that’s all that happened.”

  Mahrree sat down across from him. “You don’t sound as if you believe that. Why?”

  His hands came off his face. “Shem was sick last night. I spoke with him for a few minutes this morning. He suggested the most extraordinary thing.”

  “What?” Mahrree bit her lip.

  “That the lieutenants may have been Guarders, trying to kill my parents.”

  Mahrree gasped. “Why . . . why that’s . . . that’s . . .”

  “Pretty much my initial response too,” Perrin agreed with her stammering. “But all morning I’ve been thinking about it. And then my father revealed to me one detail.” He shook his head again. “Mahrree, when he opened his door to discover the two officers on the ground, the door handle had already been unlatched, as if someone was about to enter his room, but stopped.”

  “Meaning?” Mahrree breathed.

  “The lieutenants may have already had their knives drawn. Perhaps they were going into my parents’ room. Perhaps . . . someone stopped them from whatever they were planning.”

  Mahrree held her hand over her mouth. “But if someone stopped them, wouldn’t that person tell you what happened? He’d be quite the hero, you know. Recognizing a plot to assassinate the High General then stopping it—”

  “Unless,” Perrin whispered, “whoever saved the High General is not someone who enjoys attention.”

  Mahrree’s chest tightened. “Perrin, when I found your father, he was in the hospital interrogating Sh—”

  “Don’t say it, Mahrree,” he cut her off. “Don’t put his name with this.”

  That puzzled her. Normally Perrin would be the first to analyze every possibility. And not so long ago, he interrogated Shem himself and concluded he wasn’t a spy. Shem proved to be a hero in the Guarder raid, and if he had now stopped an assassination, he certainly would be looking at another round of applause at the amphitheater.

  “But why not? Perrin, if he did do this, then—”

  “Mahrree, think it through,” he said steadily. “If it is who we suspect, then how would he have known they were Guarders? How would he have known what they were up to?”

  Mahrree paled with realization.

  “No,” she said shortly, as everything she thought of her claimed little brother threatened to unravel in her head. It was worse than the notion that Guarders infiltrated Command School. Was Perrin actually hinting that a Guarder may have even infiltrated their family?! “No. No way that he is. He’s not one of them, Perrin! I would never believe that. NO!”

  “Mahrree, Mahrree,” he reached over and patted her hand, “I
agree. He’s not one of them, and that’s why I refuse to put his name with this. But Mahrree, for one moment, consider this question with me: if he did this, how did he know to do it?”

  “But he didn’t! He—”

  “The surgeon said only a very strong man could have plunged in those long knives to their handles.”

  Tears filled Mahrree’s eyes. “Stop with this game and TELL me what you suspect about Shem Zenos!”

  “He did it, Mahrree,” Perrin whispered bleakly. “He saved my father and mother, and he doesn’t want anyone to know. Because he’s hiding something more from us.”

  Mahrree closed her eyes briefly and whimpered. “No.”

  “When I look into his eyes,” Perrin continued, his voice growing husky, “they’re like deep blue pools. But my father taught me how to read people. His ‘pools’ are very shallow. He blocks me, quite subtly. But Mahrree,” he said now with a more optimistic tone, “Shem is on our side. I’m sure of it. I don’t know where he came from, but he’s ours now. I still trust him, just like Hogal. And as Hogal said, we best keep him very close. He may be our only chance to survive.”

  “But we have to find out the truth of who he is,” Mahrree whispered.

  “Are you sure you want to know the truth?” he prodded.

  “What kind of question is that?” she scoffed. “Of course I do!”

  “But Mahrree,” he said with sudden sharpness, “with truth comes responsibility, too. You can’t live in the existence you’ve crafted for yourself if the truth conflicts with it.”

  She recognized his debating voice, and she developed a dangerous gleam in her eye. “But if that existence is a lie, then isn’t it better to find the truth?”

  “I really don’t know,” he muttered, abruptly giving up. “This may sound juvenile, but I like the world we’ve created with our favorite soldier. I don’t want to lose any of that. Do you?”

  She lost her debating energy too. This wasn’t an academic argument; this was about their little brother.

  Then again . . .

  “Are you sure the truth would ruin it?” she whispered. “I’m not. We have to find out, Perrin!”

  “So what are you going to do?” he challenged. “Ask Shem Zenos who he really is? If he knows something more than he’s letting on to? My father’s interrogating him right now. If he endures that and comes out clean, there’s nothing more you’ll get out of him.”

  “I’ll just wait for the right moment,” she decided. “When his guard’s down. My little brother doesn’t keep secrets from me.”

  “What if he does to protect you, Mahrree?” he asked. “To protect all of us?”

  She pondered that for a moment. “Lies don’t protect,” she declared. “The truth is always better.”

  “Oh really?” Perrin raised an eyebrow. “Remember telling me that had you known the Guarders had you and Jaytsy marked almost two years ago, you probably would have been so terrified you might have birthed early and we wouldn’t have Peto now? My lie kept you and our son safe.” He folded his arms and waited for her retort.

  She pursed her lips. “You may have a point,” she had to admit. “But you didn’t keep that secret for long, and I also suspected something more was going on than simply a dare gone wrong. Shem’s smart, but not that clever. We would’ve caught him by now.”

  He sat back and studied her. “You’ve already made up your mind about him, haven’t you? Just listen to you. You’ve already decided he’s innocent.”

  “No, I haven’t,” she defended, her tone not nearly as convincing as her words. “And just listen to yourself! So have you!”

  “I didn’t say he was innocent, only that he’s . . . not . . . ” he fumbled for the right words, “only he’s not against us.” He shrugged hopelessly. “Oh, I don’t know. All I do know is that I want to follow my heart and believe Hogal and trust Shem, but my head keeps getting in the way with too many questions about his involvement. Or lack of.”

  He closed his tired eyes and rubbed them. “Just when I thought I was on top of everything again . . . Just yesterday, when I showed my father all our improvements, and watched him grin—I’ve never seen him so happy. So when I think I’ve got a handle on everything . . . suddenly I can’t seem to grip anything.”

  Mahrree reached across the table and squeezed his arm. “You’ve done remarkably well, Perrin,” she said earnestly. “You do have a handle on things. This was all completely unexpected. But think about this—if they were Guarders, just how desperate have you made them to try something so daring? You’ve got them on the run, Major Shin!”

  “Wonderful,” he said drearily. “My extreme measures have pushed them to insane measures, which means at some point they’re going to succeed insanely as well.”

  “No it doesn’t!” she insisted. “Because they’ve failed! And this failure’s going to hurt them—”

  “Or make them even angrier,” he countered. He massaged his eyes again. “And we don’t even know if they were Guarders. Likely never will. But if they were, how does a certain young soldier fit into all of this?”

  Mahrree exhaled and shook her head. “I don’t know.”

  “Math,” Perrin said dully.

  She blinked. “What?”

  “It’s like a complicated math problem,” he intoned. “When you have symbols instead of numbers and you have to figure out what numbers are supposed to be there.”

  “Oh, I hate those,” Mahrree mumbled.

  “I love them,” Perrin smiled feebly at her. “Still do. It’s a challenge, defying you to solve it while it keeps its secrets to itself. But you poke it and test it and experiment until it begins to fall apart, and you get one number, and then another, and suddenly it all becomes yours. You know its secrets, and you’ve conquered it!”

  She looked at him appreciatively. “That’s how you see the world, isn’t it? As one big equation that you have to solve?”

  “Frequently. It used to even be fun,” he admitted, but then his smile faded. “Until recently. Until the equation eliminated Tabbit and Hogal, and tried to smudge out my parents. And now there’s a variable it’s tossing around named Shem Zenos, and I’m afraid to stick a number there, in case I hate the way it all turns out. Ah, Mahrree,” he sighed as he stared at his untouched meal, “there are too many unknowns, too many variables, and this time . . . I’m afraid it’s beating me,” he confessed in a whisper.

  Mahrree was struck dumb. She hadn’t seen him so despondent since the Densals died. And he’d come so far, accomplished so much, struck a blow to the Guarders in so many ways, and now he feared—feared?—they were striking back. The world really was out to get them.

  She realized then, as he now held his head in his hands again, that she’d never before heard him use the word “afraid” to refer to himself, and it unsettled her. How was it that he could accomplish so much, yet then despair so easily?

  For a moment she glimpsed a solution to it all, but it was a solution High General Shin had already dismissed. Yet there was no other alternative—Perrin had to go into the forest and find out, once and for all, just what all of this was about. There was simply no other way to end it.

  But, as she watched the man she adored, that nasty word starting with a c—and that word wasn’t cautious—popped into her head again. She clenched her fist in frustration, angry that the world, the Guarders, the events of the previous night, and even her favorite soldier were somehow conspiring to turn her husband into something less than he was.

  Even though by all accounts he was a successful commander, he was afraid, and he wore it miserably.

  ---

  Normally they would have been in a dark office of the unlit building.

  That’s where they began but, upon reading the urgent message from Edge about a bizarre incident that ended with two dead lieutenants, Mal found himself unable to speak. He also could no longer breathe regularly, but clutched his heart and began to sweat profusely.

  Brisack rushed him, with
the help of two of his guards, to his immense bedroom formerly belonging to kings.

  “Get to my house!” he shouted at the guards. “My emergency bag. Tell my wife the heart one. Run!”

  It was fortunate for the chairman that Dr. Brisack lived only three houses down, because the guards came running back with the correct bag in only minutes.

  “Empty the bag on the table,” Brisack shouted, still pushing rhythmically on Nicko Mal’s chest as he had ever since they left, “then retrieve two of my assistants.”

  The guards quickly dumped the bag spilling out bandages, small glass bottles of various colors and sizes, along with leaves and berries wrapped in white cloth, all of which disrupted papers scattered over the bedside table. They left the room even faster, shutting the large oak double doors behind them.

  “Stupid, stupid man!” Brisack mumbled as he snatched up a smaller uncorked bottle rolling in a slow circle on the table, gripped the cork with his teeth, spat it out, and held the bottle to Mal’s gray lips. “Drink this—it’ll calm you. Of course, had you not pursued this course—which I TOLD you not to—you wouldn’t be needing this, now would you?!”

  The weakened Mal dribbled some of the brownish liquid on his chin, but Brisack was satisfied enough went down his throat.

  He set down the bottle and tore open Mal’s ruffled white shirt. Then Brisack grabbed another larger bottle before it rolled off the table, uncorked it, and poured some of its contents on the gasping man’s chest. The thick brew which bubbled from the bottle packed with leaves, bark, and shriveled berries smelled simultaneously like an herb garden and a rotting forest.

  “And where’s Gadiman right now? Probably hiding in his office again with the doors locked? Is he here helping save your pitiful life? No, of course not! No one will see him for days, probably. The weasel hiding in his hole. No wonder.”

  He straddled his patient and massaged the liquid into his chest over his heart while the old man could do nothing but gasp and perspire.