by Trish Mercer
“Did you stop to render assistance?”
“No, sir. I knew reaching here at an acceptable hour was the priority. I told the driver to go through the fields around the accident.”
“Well done. I—” Qayin was interrupted by a blur of a woman.
“Lemuel!” Versula Cush came running from the dining hall, her arms out to embrace her son. “I thought I heard your voice!”
But he remained at attention. “Mother.”
Versula stopped suddenly, noticing the unexpected presence of her husband. Still, she bravely stepped up to her stiff son and hugged him anyway. “So glad to see you arrived safely! A year is far too long.” Her eyes grew wide as she examined him. “My goodness, what happened to your jaw? That’s a nasty bruise—”
“Tripped and fell,” was all Lemuel responded.
Versula was a woman who knew about bruises that one didn’t want to explain. “You must be hungry. Dinner’s just about—”
“Enough!” Qayin barked. “We’re not finished here.”
Versula firmed her stance. “I just want to feed my boy—”
“He’s not a boy, Versula!” Qayin reminded sharply. “Hasn’t been a ‘boy’ for many years, if his bragging is to be believed.”
Versula flushed red and only glanced in the direction of her son.
“He’s an officer first. Remember that. Being ‘your boy’ is so far down the list it doesn’t even make the page. We’ll come eat when we’re ready. Understood?”
Versula nodded submissively and sent her son a quick look.
He understood it. Just do whatever you have to.
Without another word, she scurried back to the dining hall where her mother was giving orders to the maids about the seating arrangements.
Qayin cocked his head toward the study and started for it, and his son dutifully fell in behind him. Qayin threw open the door and promptly went to sit behind the grand desk that was the High General’s, but apparently the Advising General felt comfortable to take over whenever he felt the need.
Lemuel paused for the slightest of moments before following. He’d been in that room a few times before, tagging along with his grandfather when he went to visit Relf Shin. The office had changed in the last year since the Cushes took over . Gone were the sweeping red drapes that covered the tall windows. Instead, dull planks of wood served as shutters on the inside, rather than the outside.
Missing, too, was the large portrait of Pere Shin. Lemuel was surprised at his disappointment of that. As a boy he watched Pere’s eyes when he visited the mansion, feeling as if Pere could see right through him. The portly man, while large and threatening, also seemed to have a bit of mischievousness about him, as if he held secrets. Maybe Cush moved the painting to the Command School.
Qayin Thorne would have moved it to a rubbish heap.
“Sit,” Qayin ordered, pointing to a plain wooden chair.
Lemuel sat between the cushioned and forbidden chairs on either side of him.
“Your biweekly reports have been thorough, but you’ve left out some key information. I suspect you did so to maintain discretion about certain people and activities?” Qayin’s question was more of a restatement of what his son should have already understood.
Lemuel was used to the questioning. It began when he was four. “Yes, sir. I was as forthcoming as I could be, sir.”
Qayin frowned at the vague response. “What have you learned from Master Sergeant Zenos?”
Lemuel hadn’t expected that to be the first item of business. He blinked and hesitated, even though he knew it would annoy the general. “Uh, I’ve learned a few things from him. What, sir, specifically do you wish me to learn? He just an enlisted man.”
Qayin rolled his eyes. “Just an enlisted man . . . how dense is this captain?” he muttered loudly. “What have you learned?”
“Uh . . . scheduling. Training of new recruits. Uh . . .”
“UH?” Qayin bellowed. “What kind of response is that, soldier? I knew you were unprepared for this assignment. I told them you wouldn’t be ready, but they thought you could pick things up on your own.”
Lemuel couldn’t help himself. “Who, sir?”
Qayin ignored him, as he frequently did. His son existed only when he was convenient. “Without the proper training, what can he do?” Thorne lectured the desk. “He wasn’t graduated early for intelligence, but because we needed an inside man!”
This was the first time Lemuel had heard any of this, and it smacked him with confidence-shattering force. Before he could start to work out what all of what his father meant, he realized General Thorne was staring at him.
“Tell me, Captain: what does Zenos do besides his duty?”
Lemuel frowned, not knowing.
“Does he hang around the taverns?” Qayin barked.
“No, sir.”
“Does he spend his free time with a variety of women?”
“No, sir.”
“Then what does he do?”
Suddenly Lemuel understood. “He spends all of his free time with the Shin family, sir. He’s Colonel Shin’s best friend, sir.”
Qayin held up a finger. “Exactly. And why?”
It was then that Lemuel realized he had wasted an entire year, and that horrible insight left his empty stomach queasy. His father had told him he should be learning from Zenos, but he had expected lessons and private discussions—
Now Zenos was making him look stupid.
He hated Zenos.
“He acts as their best friend so that he is closer to Colonel Shin,” Lemuel confessed miserably.
Qayin nodded. “He’s Perrin’s confidante. I recognized that last year. No other soldier would dare use Shin’s first name in a public setting as he did. He attacked his commanding officer, yet they left the garrison the next day as if they were brothers. Zenos has been very careful to plant a most extensive and deep root system, growing ever more closer to Shin. When the time is right—and it will be sooner rather than later if I have my way—Zenos will be able to uproot Shin in a most devastating manner.”
Lemuel swallowed hard, understanding only about half of what was said, but he’d never admit that.
“And you, son—” it was only on rare occasions that Qayin called him ‘son’—“will be by his side when he does so. You need to be involved, and then I can involve you in many more things. Do better, Captain.”
“Yes, sir.” He made to get up, but his father’s head tilting told him to sit back down.
“Now, about a certain young lady whose affections you are to secure . . . have you done so?”
A bead of sweat broke out on his brow. “Not yet, sir. She’s still a bit immature.”
Qayin’s lip curled. “Why should maturity matter?”
Lemuel had worried about this line of questioning. “She’s not interested in courting yet, sir. I have, however, made it clear that I’m always near, always watching, and always present. Just as you instructed, I’m a veritable mountain lion.”
Qayin’s jaw shifted. “You’ve been there nearly a year. It didn’t take me that long to convince your mother.”
Lemuel looked down at his hands and felt his stomach wrench as it had the night Jaytsy demonstrated her ability to kick with shocking accuracy.
“Did you do everything I instructed?”
And there was the question he’d been dreading. “I tried to, sir.”
“Tried to?”
Lemuel just nodded. “She, uh . . . wasn’t receptive.”
Qayin sat back. “Then you did it wrong. Or rather, didn’t do it at all!”
“No, sir,” Lemuel whispered.
“Again, you need to do MUCH better.”
I need to avoid her kicks, he thought bitterly to himself. But to his father, he said, “I will, sir.”
“Learn from Zenos; be as close to Shin as he is. Find your own way into his mind. Then when Perrin admires you, he’ll persuade his daughter to accept you.”
When Lemuel co
uldn’t think of any response, Qayin sighed in annoyance. “You know why I have only one son, right?”
Lemuel knew. He’d been told many times.
“So that I could pour all of my efforts into one select child. But I’ve come to the conclusion that was the wrong approach. Your mother had begged to have a second child, but I thought the competition would have been bad for you. But I should’ve had a second son in case my first son disappointed me, as he is right now.”
Lemuel knew he shouldn’t mention the possibility that the second child could have been a girl. A female hadn’t been sired by a Thorne for three generations. A daughter would have been too great a disappointment, if it had the nerve to show up.
Qayin stared at his son, who sat immobile. Finally he said, “Go. Your grandparents will be expecting to eat soon, and if you keep Cush waiting, he’ll get his revenge by eating everything.”
It wasn’t a joke. Qayin didn’t believe in those.
Lemuel stood up, saluted his father, and headed out of the study.
His mother caught up to him before he reached the washing room, and she pulled him aside into a recessed doorway.
“So good to see you!” she said with a practiced smile. She got right to business. “Your father was right about one thing,” she said as she wiped some road dust from his silver buttons as a pretext for their secret conversation.
Lemuel knew she’d been listening in. She always was.
“If her father admires you, Jaytsy will feel obligated to accept you.”
Something dark opened up in Lemuel’s gut, and he saw a flash of anguish in his mother’s eyes. He realized then how she came to marry his father: obligation.
“Also realize,” Versula continued to fuss over her son, “that with a father like Perrin, Jaytsy doesn’t wear two faces.” She gently fingered his bruise which she wouldn’t ask twice about. “Now, go wash off the rest of that road dust. You know Grandmother doesn’t like filth at her table.” She turned to float elegantly back to the dining hall.
Lemuel continued to the large washing room, turning his mother’s words over in his head.
She doesn’t wear two faces.
As he ran his hands under the piping hot water that Idumea’s springs generated, pouring out from the ornate gold-plated spigot, he wondered: Didn’t everyone wear two faces?
He scrubbed his face and couldn’t remember the first time his mother instructed him how to find his second one. But he knew, since he was very little, that the tears he shed when his father beat him had to disappear before Lemuel left the house.
“Put on your second face, Lemuel. The strong one,” she’d tell him.
His anger had to be tempered. “Second face, son,” she’d remind as he left for school. “The proud one.”
And when he went to Command School Preparatory Courses, where, if his grades weren’t perfect, his father expressed his fury with his belt, he remembered himself. “The defiant face, Lemuel.”
He’d made the shift so often that his second face—the public one—automatically appeared since he was eight.
His mother perfected it as well. At home he saw her pleading whenever Qayin dragged her upstairs. But she’d come back later with a calm façade despite the redness in her eyes and the bruises on her arms. In public she was sophisticated and superior. But at home, Lemuel saw the anguish she revealed only briefly as she had a moment ago. Living with a husband whose fury and beatings made him seem more of an animal than a man had taught Versula how to come across as even more than a woman. She was the envy of all the other officers’ wives. Lemuel had heard them gossiping about Versula Thorne, never suspecting that what they admired was her second, perfect face.
Qayin Thorne, however, was the master—of his family, of the army, and of the second face. He could be outright charming and pleasant when it served him. Lemuel hadn’t quite figured out how his father did it, but he would, eventually. It was crucial to his own future success.
As Lemuel dried his face and hands with the scented thick clothes, he remembered how his mother had said “Perrin.” The fervor of her voice sounded like longing, and he wondered why Perrin didn’t require his family to have two faces. They could’ve used two faces last year, but strangely, they didn’t. Their exhaustion, frustration, and even fear had been evident. Lemuel was experienced in recognizing what was lurking in a person’s eyes, despite what the rest of the face said. The Shins had tried to hide some of it, but not effectively, as if they really didn’t know how.
And now, for the past few weeks, their eyes were brighter and clearer, almost deceptively so. But then again, perhaps . . . perhaps it was real. Maybe the delight and strength that exuded from Jaytsy was genuine, and not a performance.
He laid down the cloths on the sink basin, careful to fold them just so to please his grandmother, then inspected himself in the wide mirror. He removed his cap, quickly combed his short-cropped hair to lay smoothly—his father would take note of any slips of imperfection—and regarded his face. He was the most handsome and perfectly proportioned male ever in Idumea or the army, even with the manly bruise. Surely Jaytsy could see that, and wasn’t that what females of any species worried about, the appearance of the father of their offspring? He had it all. She just didn’t see that yet, because of her immaturity.
Lemuel nodded to his reflection. Now that Perrin was improving, so would everything else. He needed to be more obliging to Perrin, slide under his wing so Jaytsy would see him there. Already Perrin was treating Lemuel as a son: shouting at him and striking him, just as Qayin always had.
Lemuel had to keep the correct balance, though. Perrin knew that he was a future threat, so he had to revise his two faces; one had to be as endearing as a son to the colonel, and the other had to demonstrate he was still a strength to be relied upon.
Command was complicated.
At least he had a week to think about how to work the colonel to get his daughter. And then, he’d get everything else he deserved.
---
Knock-knock . . . knock-knock-knock.
It had been a wonderful week. Perrin was more firm than the mountains before him, the fort was running smoothly, the soldiers were responding to him again, and that blasted “knock” had been gone to Idumea for The Dinner.
Just like bad things, all good things come to an end.
Perrin took a deep breath and said, after a longer-than-necessary pause, “Come in.”
Captain Thorne opened the door as if he had been rehearsing to do so with measured gusto. It was good to see him so unsure, as if he had been thrown down and was now trying to find his feet.
Perrin tried on him his most threatening glare.
Thorne swallowed hard.
Internally, Perrin grinned. Oh yes. He still had it. Let the power struggle begin.
“Sir?”
“I see you’ve returned from The Dinner, Thorne,” Perrin intoned. “Enjoy yourself?”
“It was good to be home again, sir. But to be honest, I enjoy Edge even more.”
So that’s how he was going to play it, Perrin thought. Ingratiate himself to the authority. So life in the tower will now be nauseating.
“Check the duty roster on your way out. Zenos didn’t scheduled you until tomorrow morning. You have time to settle in from your trip.”
“Thank you, sir. I trust Zenos’s duty roster meets with your approval? I realize how insightful and perceptive his approach is.”
It took all of Perrin’s will to not groan out loud. A duty roster that’s insightful? Perceptive? He almost preferred the undermining captain to this sniveling, groveling excuse for a man. Boy.
“I’m sure you’re hungry, Thorne. If you hurry, you can catch dinner in the mess hall—”
“Sir, there’s something else,” Thorne said. He looked behind him to make sure no one was listening in, and shut the door. “Sir, I want you to know my father and grandfather tried to keep the news quiet, but it seems that the Administrators heard about what happened
here. About the chant for you to be a general?”
Perrin sat back and folded his hands on his lap. It was the only way to keep them for forming fists. “And exactly how did they learn about that, Captain Thorne?”
Thorne paled slightly. “Sir, there must have been over eight thousand people here! Surely someone is going to say something.”
“Yes. They would.”
Thorne swallowed again. “Anyway, sir, my father and grandfather felt you should be released from your probation now. They even made that recommendation to Chairman Mal, but you see, the chant has made the Administrators nervous.”
“Nervous,” Perrin repeated dully. He hadn’t expected his probation to be lifted. Likely not ever. And that was fine by him.
But Thorne was trying to use it. “Sir, it’s Mal who won’t lift your probation. My father and grandfather are petitioning—”
“There’s no need,” Perrin told him. “I don’t want either of them doing any favors for me. Is that understood, Captain?”
Captain Thorne blinked in surprise. “Of course, sir.”
“Anything else, Thorne?”
Thorne licked his lips anxiously. “Just that . . . I’m sorry, sir.”
Really? Perrin nearly blurted out. Finally? Sorry for attacking my daughter? For trying to supplant my authority? For being a roach that begs for my boot to stomp on you?
But he only said, coolly, “You are?”
Thorne nodded. “You really should be released by now, sir. It’s been almost a full year.”
Perrin’s glare sharpened to a piercing point.
Thorne didn’t know what to do with it. He tried to catch it, match it, evade it, then after ten uncomfortable seconds cleared his throat. “I’ll go get dinner now, sir. Unless there’s anything else?”
“No.” Unless he was ready to hand over his resignation, but the captain’s hands were disappointingly empty. “Dismissed, Captain.”
Perrin clenched both of his fists as the captain went out the door. “Well,” he said after a minute of deep breathing to calm himself. “Now that he’s back, I suppose it’s time to start burning down the barn. But first, we have to build a couple of others.”