by Trish Mercer
“Unsure,” Perrin shrugged. “Some fall to it while others have no problems. You seemed to have got it from your mother. But so far none of us are showing symptoms, so that’s a good sign. However, last night I got a report that one-third of the fort at Rivers is down, and Karna was very bad a few days ago but he’s coming out of it again. But Mahrree, he’s lost forty men so far.”
“Lost? You don’t mean . . .?”
He nodded somberly. “In Quake, Fadh’s lost over thirty, and we haven’t heard from Yordin yet, but it’s just beginning there.”
“How many have you lost?” Mahrree asked, afraid to know.
“I visited our surgery wing last night, and two more had just passed away as quickly as Hycymum. That brings us to up to nine. Captain Thorne is now ill, too, but already broken out in pocks, so he’ll recover,” he added drearily. Then his tone cheered up, just a bit. “He insisted on showing me his pocks, although I don’t know why, and along his just-healed scar he has a few dozen blisters, itching and puss-filled.” He smirked, but tried to cover it.
Mahrree snorted at his failed attempt.
“By the way,” he added, “Versula is on her way here to be with him, and she’s expecting to eat dinner with us when she arrives.”
“What?”
Perrin smiled. “I guess it’s too early to tease you, isn’t it.”
When her breathing became normal again, Mahrree rolled on her back. “I just realized: what if you’d waited on your offensive? Didn’t Shem suggest putting it off until Weeding Season?”
Perrin exhaled. “It wouldn’t have happened, would it? I didn’t realize six weeks ago why it was so important that we attack when we did. I just felt strongly impressed that we should. Had we waited, it could have been disastrous. If the Guarders were still active and found out the soldiers were ill . . . Mahrree, we could have been wiped out by them! Their explosives, our inability to fight—”
Mahrree groaned at the thought. “The Creator knew what was coming. I’m just grateful you know how to listen.”
---
In the hot afternoon sun Perrin stood in the compound with his arms folded, waiting miserably for the arrival of the black coach.
Next to him Lieutenant Radan was agitated. “Sir, I don’t even know what to say to her.”
“Don’t worry,” Perrin told him. “She’ll say it all.”
“So what exactly am I to do with her?”
Perrin turned slightly to him. “Act as her liaison, of course. I’ve even cleared your schedule. You’ll see her to her quarters, escort her to Thorne’s, bring her meals—”
“But sir, that sounds like servant’s work!”
Perrin smiled slyly. “Officers are supposed to be the servants of the army, Radan. Didn’t anyone ever teach you that?”
Radan’s confused expression made that answer clear.
“No, of course not. Officers think everyone should be serving them,” Perrin said, watching the gates for the inevitable arrival. “But the reality is, we are to serve the citizens, the world—”
The four horses rumbled in, pulling a coach which generated a cloud of dust behind it.
Perrin sighed. “—and to serve the mother of the captain, and the wife of a general. Both of them your superiors,” he reminded.
Fitting punishment, Perrin thought smugly to himself, for going over Perrin’s head to send an urgent message to General and Mrs. Thorne. The next two weeks would be a lesson the overeager lieutenant wouldn’t soon forget.
When the coach lurched to a halt, Perrin didn’t move but elbowed the lieutenant at his side. “Get the door.”
“Bu sir, there’s a corporal acting as footman—”
“Get the door!”
When Radan swung it open, Versula Thorne stood there in her silk—silk? To her wrists? And dark red? Not cotton in this heat?
The only thing Perrin understood about fashion was that all of it was stupid and made the wearers unnecessarily miserable. Whoever decided the trends in Idumea either must be sadistic or the wealthiest jokester ever.
But there she stood in multiple layers of silk fanning herself so rapidly she could have taken flight. “Oh, Perrin! I’ve—Wait.” She stared at Radan. “You’re not the colonel.”
Radan offered her his hand. “No, ma’am. I’m Lieutenant Radan, the one who wrote to you about Captain Thorne falling ill? He and I are good friends, ma’am. I’m sure he’s mentioned me—”
“No. Never.” She looked up and saw someone who did make her smile. “Now, there you are, Colonel Shin!” She took Radan’s hand only to get down the steps more quickly. “What a horrible ordeal! A terrible drive! I do feel a bit faint . . .”
She tried to fall dramatically into Perrin’s arms except that he didn’t unfold them. Instead, he used his shoulder to nudge upright again.
“Yes,” he said casually, “the drive is a bit long and hot. Radan can show you to your quarters and get you something to drink. He’ll be at your disposal while you’re at the fort—”
“Fort Shin, as it’s been renamed,” she beamed at him, suddenly quite recovered from her ‘horrible ordeal.’ “What an honor,” she gushed. “You realize no one’s ever had a fort named after him?”
She took his arm, even though he hadn’t offered it, and turned him to the buildings. “Show me everything, Perrin—and I mean everything—about Fort Shin!” She squeezed his bicep and released a giggle that sounded appropriate coming only from girls younger than fourteen years old.
He unhooked her grip from his arm and tilted his head to Radan. “I’m sure you understand, Mrs. Thorne, that with the pox outbreak we are short on manpower, and I am needed in about three other places right now. Therefore Radan is to take care of your needs and see you to your son.”
“Oh, yes!” Versula exclaimed, as if remembering why she’d come all that way. “How’s our Lemuel?”
“Your Lemuel is recovering, slowly. The pox seems to take at least two weeks—”
“How about dinner?” she whispered, taking his arm again and ignoring Radan who stood on her other side, patiently waiting.
“The lieutenant will bring it to you—”
“No, Perrin, I meant you and me—”
“And my wife Mahrree? No, I’m sorry. She’s still recuperating. She fell ill last week, lost her mother to it . . . I need to stay by her side.”
Something in Versula’s eyes registered a slight level of panic, as if she were trying to communicate something else but it was being missed.
That’s because Perrin was purposely dodging it. He pried her hand, none too gently, from off of his arm and clapped it onto Radan’s.
“Captain Thorne’s expecting you, Mrs. Thorne,” and he strode back to the tower just as sweat began to bead on his forehead.
Chapter 19 ~ “Who will go next?!”
The next three weeks were unlike anything the Shins, Edge, or the world had experienced before, which was why each morning Mahrree forced herself out of bed, a difficult daily ritual.
“I’m healthy enough that I can help,” she reminded her weak muscles. At this point, she wasn’t sure if she felt drained every day because of the pox, the extra work, or because her mother had died. Anyway, lying around didn’t help. Moving, however, did.
This morning Perrin was already up, judging by the sounds coming from the kitchen downstairs. He was trying to make breakfast again which Mahrree wholly appreciated but needed to prevent. In his earnestness to get her strong again, he’d cook more bacon than the entire neighborhood could consume, then wondered why she didn’t finish it all. Peto did his best, but even a growing teenager had his limits.
Mahrree dressed and made her way down the stairs to find Jaytsy putting on a battered straw hat which—may Joriana’s spirit forgive her—a few years ago was a pricey piece of art from the hat district of Idumea.
“I was just on my way out,” Jaytsy told her. “Porridge is ready, but I think Father’s adding sausage to it.”
Oh dear, w
as what Mahrree was tempted to say, but instead she smiled. “Thank you, all, for helping. I think I can manage from here on out now.”
“Good!” Peto said, coming out of his room. “Let’s just say that Father and Jaytsy don’t have Grandma Peto’s knack for cooking.”
Jaytsy glowered at him. “If Mother would let me have Grandmother’s recipe file, I might!”
“Later, I promise,” Mahrree told her. “I just need to organize it a bit. With so many loose pages, I’m afraid something will fall out of it if I don’t sort them all first.”
But Mahrree wasn’t worried about losing a recipe. She’d sent Jaytsy to her grandmother’s as soon as she was coherent enough to explain where the recipe file was hiding—in a false bottom of Hycymum’s underwear drawer. So exhausted was Mahrree that it took her a few minutes to understand why her children thought that description was funny.
Hycymum’s recipes were her most prized possession—probably the only thing Mahrree wanted of her mother’s, along with a few good serving forks and a wide platter—and Hycymum never wanted anyone else to have her recipes but her family.
And Mahrree knew why. Secured in the middle of them, between some seemingly mundane descriptions of how to use herbs that everyone else would likely skip over, was a fragile, ancient piece of parchment written in a small, careful hand over 130 years ago.
Mahrree couldn’t let even her husband or children know she had forbidden documents that were to have been handed over to King Querul, then to be destroyed—accidentally, of course—in that great fire. Mahrree had already memorized the document in the middle of the day when everyone was gone, feeling the force of ancestors, and wondering where she should secure it next.
And she really did want to sort the rest of the recipes. Hycymum was a wonderful cook, but why she thought “pork” and “pickles” should be clustered together, Mahrree couldn’t fathom.
“There she is, up and about!” Perrin boomed cheerily as he brought a big pot of something steaming from the kitchen and set it on the table.
“My, but you’re in a good mood,” she grinned. He’d been quite chipper for the last couple of days, ever since Versula Thorne left.
“The message arrived last night; she’s arrived in Idumea and therefore we’re all safe!” he informed them.
Jaytsy sighed in relief. “So I don’t have to worry about running into her at the market again, where she can tell me all about how sitting next to her dear Lemuel all day is boring, books were boring, and how she’d still prefer to have my company.”
Perrin nodded. “Nor do I have to hear her hint for any more dinner invitations—”
“And I’m so sorry I kept having relapses,” Mahrree sighed dramatically as her children snorted.
“Oh, yes,” her husband said soberly. “And it was quite convenient that I had to run home to check on you the day she discovered there are a couple of inns in the village that could have fed us—”
“Just the two of you,” Mahrree clarified. “I’m sure that’s what she was thinking when she invited you.”
“Yes, subtle,” he rolled his eyes. “Eating alone with another woman in public. And guess what just opened up again?”
“The dress shops?” Jaytsy said. “Not that I wished for the owners to get ill, but it was good timing so that Mrs. Thorne couldn’t take me to buy ‘something decent’.”
“It’s because she saw you wearing that in the market.” Mahrree gestured to Jaytsy’s dress, another Idumean one-of-a-kind pale blue linen sewn specifically for Joriana Shin, now with a few mud stains and the sleeves shortened by removing several inches of ruffles.
But since it was created by Kuman, neither Mahrree nor Jaytsy had any qualms about letting it become Jaytsy’s favorite battered work dress. Jaytsy had earlier torn off the ruffles in order to tie up tomato plants in a neighbor’s garden—a phrase Mahrree still wasn’t too sure of, but didn’t feel like showing her ignorance about.
Peto merely shrugged as he peered into the pot. “I don’t know what all of you are going on about. I never saw the woman.” He gave the porridge and sausage mix an experimental sniff and bobbed his head. He’d eat it. He’d eat anything.
“Well, of course you didn’t,” Mahrree said, scooping out the slop for Peto that reminded her of something she used to clean up in his changing cloths. “She had no interest in you, and since none of us have any interest in Idumea, I think we can forget all about Mrs. Versula Thorne.”
Something in Peto’s gray eyes darkened when Mahrree said that none of them had any interest in Idumea, but he dug into his breakfast anyway.
“So where are you off to this morning?” Mahrree asked brightly.
Peto recovered, swallowing down his breakfast. “Rector Yung said a family on the west side needs someone to look after their goats. It seems today I’m learning how to milk them,” he grimaced. “Yung had a lot of other tasks and families needing help on that list of his, but no . . . I’m destined to be a goat milker.”
Jaytsy took her seat next to him. “They have a baby, Peto. She needs the milk. If you want, you can join me in gathering eggs at five different houses, and weeding at the Briters’, and—”
“All right, all right,” he sighed loudly. “Yung’s got a list all ready for me. I don’t need to share in yours.”
Mahrree sighed as well. “It’s become Needing Season this year, instead of Weeding Season. So many people ill, so many needing help . . .”
“And here I thought I was lucky for being immune,” Peto grumbled.
“You are,” Perrin said sternly. “People aren’t just being ill, Peto; they’re dying, too. I have soldiers digging mass graves in the burial grounds to accommodate them all. If this continues we may lose up to ten percent of the village. You can certainly milk a goat or two, and learn a few more tasks.”
“I know,” Peto murmured apologetically. “I was just—”
“—being your usual, obnoxious self, I know,” Perrin said, a bit calmer. “I was like you at your age, and I wished I hadn’t been.”
“Me too,” Mahrree confessed.
Peto looked up at them. “So I’ve inherited this? Thanks. Thanks a lot.”
“And today,” Mahrree announced, “I’ll try to get my mother’s house in order.”
Her husband winced. “That sounds like a lot of work, Mahrree.”
She shook her head. “I already took what I wanted. I was just going to throw open the doors and let the neighborhood have what they wanted.”
“A lot of those old ladies are still sick, though,” Jaytsy pointed out. “I think Grandma Peto infected a third of her friends.”
“She did,” Mahrree agreed sadly. “I’ll check with them to see which ones want her collection of carved painted bugs, who might want her stack of cloth scraps—may be a riot for that—who wants to claim her dish cloths—”
“First best, second best, third best . . .” Peto murmured.
Mahrree exhaled, realizing it did sound like a lot of work.
“Some people sell it all,” Jaytsy suggested.
“But we don’t need to take anyone’s silver,” Mahrree told her. “We have enough. Let others enjoy all the things my mother felt necessary to acquire over the years. I have no problem giving it away.”
“And I thank you,” Perrin said as he served himself breakfast, “that you’re not bringing home her collection of porcelain purple chickens that whistle when you blow into them.”
“We’re all thankful for that!” Peto declared.
Perrin shook his head sadly. “I never had the heart to tell her that chickens don’t whistle. And aren’t purple.” He hesitated and turned to Jaytsy. “They’re not, right?”
She giggled. “How is that my parents can be so smart and so ignorant at the same time?”
“I know,” Peto mumbled as he swallowed his breakfast. “Chickens whistle all the time. Parents know nothing . . .”
---
Jaytsy hurried over to the Briters after breakfast t
o get an early start on thinning the carrots before the day grew too hot; she’d take care of Yung’s list of families requesting assistance later.
When she approached the Briters’ farm she noticed unusual activity. Mr. Briter was hitching their horses to their wagon, and Mrs. Briter was rushing to put a basket in the back.
Jaytsy broke into a run to reach them. “What’s happened? Where are you going?”
Sewzi Briter set down the basket and turned to Jaytsy, distraught. “It’s our son,” she said tearfully. “We received word late last night that he’s been taken with the pox. Mr. Briter’s brother and his wife have been tending to him, but Jaytsy, they don’t think he’s improving.” She wiped away a few tears, and Jaytsy put a comforting arm around her.
“I’ll pray that he’ll be fine,” she said. “If my mother can beat it, surely your son can. Just don’t worry, Mrs. Briter.”
Cambozola Briter smiled at her as he finished adjusting a strap on one of the horses. “That’s what I keep telling her, Miss Jaytsy. Maybe she’ll believe you.”
“I’ll take care of the farm while you’re gone,” Jaytsy promised.
“Oh, you sweet girl.” Sewzi shook her head. “But it’s impossible for you to do alone. If you could just keep the fields irrigated—it’s been so dry lately. And thin out the carrots, and maybe harvest the beans and peas, then . . . the rest can just wait until we return.” She looked over at the massive farm and cringed, realizing how overgrown it could become in just a week.
“Don’t you worry,” Jaytsy assured her. “I’ll get some help from the fort—they eat this food, they better help take care of it. And I’ll even draw pictures to make sure they pull the right things. What about the cattle?” She hoped they wouldn’t ask if her father could assist.
“Spoke to a rancher west of here this morning,” Cambozola told her. “He has some laborers that will tend to them and the chickens.”
Jaytsy nodded. “Then go take care of your son. I’ll take care here.”