The Falcon in the Barn (Book 4 Forest at the Edge series)

by Trish Mercer

  Mahrree watched Jaytsy walk down the alley, then turn on the main road for the fort. She may have been getting her husband back, but somewhere along the way she lost her daughter.

  ---

  Jaytsy strolled along the main road that led to the fort, glancing around to make sure Thorne was nowhere in sight. She was sure he was still in the compound somewhere, but she always checked. Too many times she’d run into him at the market or outside of her school. By the look on his face, she knew their brief and uncomfortable encounters were planned. But tonight, there was no mountain lion in sight waiting to pounce on her.

  She sighed, breathed in the cooling air, and grinned. She didn’t mind bringing Father his dinner. It was one of the few times she felt free. Free from her mother brooding; free from Lemuel Thorne staring; and free from the girls at school talking about people and activities she’d never know about.

  Along the road to the fort she could smile at soldiers and they dared to smile back. She memorized some of their names, too. It was much easier now that Grandmother Peto had stitched labels that decorated each of their jackets. Mother gave Father the idea, after worrying about how anyone could identify him if he were found lying on the side of the road, and Father sent the idea to Idumea. Now every soldier in the world had his last name stitched in yellow thread on a patch worn just above his heart.

  By the time Jaytsy reached the fort’s compound late that afternoon, she smiled easily and received easy smiles back. She decided her mood had something to do with being outside. The sun had done her father good, so maybe she was like him in that way. Somehow she’d have to confess it all to her mother. She seemed so worried lately, and it was time to explain.

  That she wanted to be a farmer!

  Jaytsy giggled as she made her way to the command tower. The smell of the dirt on her hands was soothing. Planting rows of peas with the hope of what might come made her feel connected to the world, the real world. Not the world of fancy dresses and strange music, but the real world that bubbled and quaked and grew and, if she listened hard enough, she was sure someday she could hear it exhaling. She loved leaving the house early every morning to see what else she could put in the dirt to watch grow. Why her mother wanted to hide inside poring over books when she could be outside submerging her hands into the dark soil, Jaytsy couldn’t imagine. Mrs. Briter taught her so much about soil, insects, seeds, sun, water—Jaytsy had no idea the ground was so alive.

  And this afternoon, as she had stared at the back garden, it wasn’t because she was intentionally avoiding her mother; it was because she was planning what to do to that pathetic garden, but didn’t have the foggiest idea of where to start. She was so caught up in trying to decide if all the weeds should go first, or the rocks, that she didn’t even realize her mother had come out of the house. Those green weeds poking up out of the ground were pleading—pleading—to be pulled, but Jaytsy didn’t want Mahrree to know just yet how she desperately wanted to fix up their yard. She worried about offending her mother, or even shocking her. In a way Mahrree still seemed to Jaytsy a bit fragile, needing of careful handling. It was the same emotion she experienced whenever Grandmother Peto handed her one of her porcelain cups; she loved it, she admired it, but she worried about breaking it.

  Not that Jaytsy thought she’d actually break her mother, she considered as she walked through the reception area, but she didn’t know what to do with her.

  But she did know it was time to confess a few things, such as her love of farming. That thought put a smile on her face as she climbed the stairs to the tower. Mahrree’s shocked expression would be worth capturing in a portrait, Jaytsy decided with a quiet giggle. She would have to make her announcement in front of Father, Peto, and Uncle Shem so they could all enjoy her reaction.

  Too wrapped up in her thoughts, Jaytsy hardly noticed that she reached the top of the stairs until she bumped into a soldier hurrying on his way down.

  “Oh!” she laughed as she collided into jacket that stopped her on the steps. “I’m sorry . . . Corporal Wen,” she read his chest, looked up into his face and smiled. “I’ve been daydreaming again.”

  Corporal Wen grinned back as he made his way slowly past her on the top stair. “Dream all you like, miss! And to think I was dreading coming up here. I wished I had known my trip down would be so pleasant.”

  He tipped his cap and Jaytsy giggled, turning to go to her father’s office.

  But blocking her path was Thorne: hands behind his back, feet apart, chest heaving angrily, and his cold blue eyes stern.

  “Thorne,” Colonel Shin called from his office. “Is that my daughter out there? I thought I heard a giggle.”

  “Yes, sir,” the captain said. His voice was calm but his face was furious.

  Jaytsy didn’t understand why.

  “Well then let her in—I’m starving!”

  Thorne stepped slowly away, never taking his eyes off of her.

  Jaytsy pushed past him and into her father’s office, slamming the door behind her.

  Half an hour later, after they’d finished eating and Jaytsy had told him of her plan to shock her mother—it was wonderful to hear him laughing again—Jaytsy peeked out his door to the outer office. It was empty except for a private in the corner, whose handwriting looked very similar to the colonel’s, painstakingly copying reports to be sent to Idumea.

  “What are you looking for, Jayts?” her father asked. “He’s gone, if that’s what you are wondering.”

  She turned back to him. “Actually, yes. Thorne.”

  Perrin left his desk, took a peek out the door himself, then shut it quietly. “I know I’ve said a few strange things the last year, but trust me on this one: stay away from Thorne. At least until you’re older. Much older. You’ll be sixteen in a couple of weeks and considered an adult according to some laws, but that’s still too young.”

  “Don’t worry, Father.” She tiptoed to kiss him on the cheek. “No man could tear me away from you. Especially Thorne. He’s so . . .” Not able to think of the right description, she shuddered instead.

  Perrin grinned. “Just the reaction I was hoping to see. I don’t want to visit my grandchildren in Idumea.”

  “Eww! Neither do I.”

  He kissed her on the head and spanked her playfully. “I’ll see you tonight before bed. I’ll bring home the dinner bucket.”

  Jaytsy ran down the stairs, grinning. The sun had just set, but she could still make it home before it grew too dark and cold. As she left the building she decided she had to tell her mother about gardening that night, after Father came home. That revelation would bring down a barrier Jaytsy feared had grown between them, and would be the first thing she wanted to weed away—

  “Miss Jaytsy, come with me!” a hiss said in her ear, and a hand gripped her upper arm.

  Frightened, she glanced to see who had captured her and was startled by the angry face of Lemuel Thorne. “Why? What do you want?”

  He didn’t answer her but marched her through the darkening compound and out the northeast gates.

  Jaytsy tried to catch the eyes of any other soldiers, hoping they’d see that something wasn’t right, but no one would look at Thorne, as if they were used to avoiding him.

  He steered her to the right, over to the feed barns on the side of the fort. Jaytsy’s insides squirm in fear and she tried to pull away, but Thorne twisted her arm into an awkward position.

  “Don’t do that, and stop drawing attention to yourself,” he insisted. “I will snap this bone in two. Don’t think that I won’t.”

  He kicked open the feed barn door and pushed her in. She fell on top of some of the large bales, and spun to face him, trying to catch her breath.

  He slammed shut the doors and lit a lantern posted nearby. After placing it on the hook, he analyzed her severely. “I want an explanation from you, Jaytsy!” he said bitterly as he unbuttoned his jacket.

  “About what?” she demanded, trying not to sound as startled as she felt.
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  He wrenched off his jacket and threw it on the ground. He stepped up to her, just inches from her face, his blue eyes steely and his broad chest heaving again, covered only by the thin white undershirt.

  She couldn’t back away from him without falling over the bales behind her.

  “About you and your lies. I’ve watched you. I know you’ve seen me,” he snarled. “Not ready for ‘walking and talking’?” He paced like an impatient mountain lion. “Yet I’ve seen you making eyes at every soldier in this fort!”

  “Making eyes?” Jaytsy cried. “I’ve done nothing but smile. There’s nothing wrong with that!”

  He lunged at her, forcing her to sit on the bale behind her.

  “Nothing but smile? What was that on the stairs back there? With a corporal!” he spat. “How many other men have you flirted with? My future wife shouldn’t be looking at anyone.”

  As terrified Jaytsy was, she was suddenly more angry. She pulled her legs up on the bale and stood up. “I’m NOT your future wife! I don’t want anything to do with you, Lemuel. Find some other animal to be the mother of the next general!” She climbed to the next higher bale, looking for a way out.

  He jumped on top of the bales to face her, and she scrambled back down them again. She knew she was going further away from the door, but hoped there was a way out the back. She searched either side for an escape but discovered only solid walls of hay. When she twisted back around she saw Thorne smiling, and realized that smiles could be ugly.

  “Oh, you’ll be mine. There’s no one else but you.” He jumped to a lower bale. “I’ve been patient.” His voice was strangely calm and measured as he dropped to the dirt in front of her. “But as my father has said, sometimes girls don’t know they want something until they have it.”

  Jaytsy’s mouth went dry, and her arms and legs felt floppy. She took a few steps back and found herself hitting another wall of hay behind her.

  She was trapped.

  Thorne took another step closer and undid the buckle of his sheathed sword. “You are ready, and you are mine.”

  ---

  Shem rode through the northeast gates and felt immediately that something was wrong. He looked up at the command tower where the light was still on in Colonel Shin’s office, but that didn’t seem to be the problem. He reined his horse to a stop and scanned the compound. Nothing appeared out of the ordinary as he slid off his horse.

  Feed barns. Now!

  The thought was undeniable. Leaving his mount, Shem jogged out of the gates and looked to the barns, but there was no smoke or flames. Confused, he turned to walk back through the gates.

  Feed barns. Now!

  Shem spun without further delay and sprinted. One of the barns had light shining through the cracks, and from it he heard a female shriek, “I said no!”

  Shem kicked open the door and saw no one immediately, but heard a commotion behind a few fallen bales. He hurdled over them and scrambled to the top of the next pile. What he saw in the dim light wrenched his gut.

  Captain Thorne was on all fours, looking as if he was about to vomit. His hair and trousers were disheveled and his undershirt was partially torn.

  The young woman crawling away from him frantically adjusted her tunic and skirt to cover her, and looked up at Shem.

  Shem groaned as he recognized her face in the weak light. Something clicked inside him as a dormant instinct sprang to life, filling him with rage and energy.

  “NO!” Shem leaped onto Thorne, flattening him to the ground. In a flash Shem flipped him onto his back, pressed his long knife against his throat, and crushed Thorne’s chest with his full weight. “Jaytsy, OUT!”

  Jaytsy yelped and scrambled over the bales, still trying to fix her tunic as she ran out of the barn.

  “Oh, what are you going to do, Zenos?” Thorne, clearly nauseated, still did his best to sound patronizing. “You certainly can’t kill me, or even cut me. You know that all I need to do is send one message to my father and he’ll have you transferred all the way back to Flax.”

  Shem firmed his grip on the knife and pressed the flat edge of the blade hard against Thorne’s throat. “Oh, I’d be perfectly justified in killing you right now, you sniveling piece of—” He couldn’t say the word. Someone as debased as Thorne wouldn’t make him say the word. “Don’t you ever touch that girl again. Do you hear me!?”

  Despite Shem’s knife pressing down on his throat, Thorne still managed a ragged chuckle. “Let’s get something straight here, Zenos: she’s too young for you—”

  “And you!” Shem bellowed, filled with a desire to turn that blade just a little . . . that’s all it would take, just a fraction of an inch and a tiny thrust would end the repulsive captain’s life.

  He’d killed before, and each time it left him sickened. But at that moment the thought of stabbing Thorne’s windpipe filled him with a hunger that it should have terrified him, but it didn’t until much later that night.

  Instead, he shouted, “She’s too young for you or any man!” Clinging to his self-control with a shaky grip, he let the knife’s angle shift slightly so that the tip repeatedly punctured Thorne’s throat as Shem’s arm shook.

  The captain winced each time it jabbed him.

  “She’s like a daughter to me!” Shem spat. “You should be thankful it was me who found you and not the colonel! You’d be dead right now! In fact, I have half a mind to drag you to him now—”

  Remarkably—or maybe stupidly—Thorne attempted another gasping chuckle. “Shin won’t care. He knows this is how it is—”

  “Shin would care, he does care!” Shem insisted.

  Thorne scoffed, and his belly dry heaved, but still he muttered, “Shin can’t get mad for something he used to do all the time. Ever heard the phrase, ‘Out to the barn for a roll in the hay’? Who do you think came up with it?”

  “Shut up!” Shem yelled.

  “He has a reputation, you know. All the Command School men know it, but no one has been able to match it—”

  “Shut up!”

  “Oh yes—Shin took many a young woman to the barns, when he was even younger than me. At least I plan to marry the girl, so it doesn’t matter when I take her—”

  “Shut up! Shut up!”

  “You should hear the women in Idumea talk, Sergeant. When my mother got around her friends, who had also been officers’ daughters—well, let’s just say they weren’t too discreet—”

  It took Shem a moment to realize it really had been his fist that punched Thorne in the jaw, and that was why he stopped talking, and why his mouth was bleeding, and why Shem’s hand was throbbing.

  Perhaps he wasn’t allowed to kill Thorne, but the cosmos did approve of hitting him.

  Slowly Shem growled, “Thorne, leave Jaytsy alone, and don’t you ever speak that way about your commander again.”

  Thorne spat out a mouth of blood. “Zenos, you’ll pay for that—” He gagged on his own blood and nausea.

  “Oh, I will pay,” Shem assured him as he repositioned the blade against his throat. “I will pay extra careful attention to make sure you stay far, far away from her. You’ll learn just how annoying and persistent I can be. Every day and every night I’ll be watching you.”

  The desire to stab Thorne was so intense that Shem’s hand nearly burned. But some influence from inside calmed the knife in his hands, and through a force not quite his own pulled it gently back.

  And then he heard the words, clearly in his mind: Not now. Not yet. Another day.

  He had to let Thorne go, he knew that.

  But knowing it and doing it are two different things.

  Then again, he could just let Perrin handle things, and that would be a most terrifying and yet satisfying death to witness—

  Shem shifted uneasily, shocked at his own thoughts, and again he felt his right hand pull away from Thorne’s throat. But it, too, desperately wanted to form a fist and punch that smarmy mouth.

  “You say a word of this to Shin,”
Thorne said, blood bubbling from his lips which he tried to spit away, “and I’ll have my father transfer you far away.”

  “I don’t have to say a word. Jaytsy will tell him, and then you’ll be the one packing up.”

  Thorne scoffed at that. “He won’t believe her. No officer believes his daughter. And if he did, he still can’t touch me, or he’d be the biggest hypocrite alive. Besides, taking girls really doesn’t matter, Zenos. That’s what they’re here for—our use.”

  The voice in Shem’s mind reacted before he could thrust the long knife, ordering him to, Release him—now!

  Shem knew from experience to listen to that voice, even if it went contrary to everything he wanted.

  Especially when it went contrary.

  Grudgingly, Shem slid off of Thorne’s chest, and the captain rolled over, gasping and coughing and spitting out blood.

  He scrambled to his feet, a bit unsteadily, and gave Shem a nasty smile. “You want me to stay away from Jaytsy? Well maybe she doesn’t want me to stay away, Zenos. What then?” Without waiting for a response he snatched up his jacket and sword, and stumbled into a run from the barn.

  “Why you little—” Shem shoved the long knife into his boot, his right hand eagerly forming a fist—envious of the left hand’s well-placed punch—and he ran to the front doors.

  But there he stopped, realizing that by the time he caught up to Thorne there’d be dozens of soldiers around, so beating up the captain in front of them could generate a few questions. Lemuel would have enough explaining to do about his appearance, but he’d probably just claim he was thrown from his spooked horse.

  Shem realized he had other options; he could go tell Perrin, which would doubtlessly result in spectacular retribution—

  Jaytsy.

  Her terrified face from a few moments ago filled his mind, and he realized he had plenty of time to tell her father. Right now, there was an almost sixteen-year-old girl in likely terrible condition.