by Trish Mercer
Peto offered an apologetic wince.
Thorne’s mouth was wide open as he automatically took the sword in his other hand. His jaw worked up and down before it remembered how to form words. “General, you can not be serious. When we accompanied you here tonight I thought it was because you were finally ready to . . . to . . .” He looked at Mahrree and stopped in mid-gesture with the sword.
Mahrree gave Thorne a worried sidelong glance and sidled away.
“My mind has always been the same as hers,” Perrin stated firmly. “And my name is Perrin Shin, not general. You and your men are free to leave. Including the ones hiding behind my woodshed.”
Thorne, realizing there was nothing left to say or do, stumbled out the door, his arms filled with the former general’s effects, and was followed by the other stunned soldiers.
Except for Sergeant Major Zenos who stood straighter than he ever had and saluted, with a tear sliding down his face.
Perrin cleared his throat roughly and gave him a look only the two of them understood.
Shem dropped his arm, nodded at the family—his eyes brimming with what seemed oddly like joy—then left the house, shutting the door behind him.
Outside, Shem noticed the other soldiers were back in formation, but bewilderedly. Captain Thorne stood at the head of them, staring blankly at the cap and insignias in one hand and the sword in his other, as if he’d never before seen such things.
“Time to go home, Captain Thorne!” Shem ordered.
Thorne looked up at him as if coming out of a dream, and nodded dumbly. He started for the fort, the soldiers following reluctantly.
Zenos paused before bringing up the rear, a small smile forming on his face that no one in the dark could see.
“The wait is finally over, Shin family,” he whispered. “Time to go home!”
---
Inside, Deck rushed to the kitchen to check on Jaytsy.
Peto still sat on the floor, staring at his father who tossed his army jacket sloppily on the table and seemed chagrined that he did so.
“I can’t believe you did that,” Mahrree whispered, holding on to the table for support, but not quite yet daring to hold on to Perrin. Just a moment ago he was a general she hated. Her emotions were having a difficult time catching up to the events of evening, and something about him still seemed so distant.
Perrin grunted, still focused on his crumpled jacket that he never set down unless it was properly. “A part of me can’t believe I resigned either,” he said. “But it was the right thing to do,” he added.
He turned to Mahrree. “You’re a little pale,” he said, concerned.
She hadn’t dare look at him yet, worried about what she might see in his eyes. Still watching his jacket as if it would jump to life at any moment, she exclaimed, “Why shouldn’t I be! After everything that just happened, and—” Her chin waggled.
He took her gently by the arm, and she finally looked up into his eyes. His dark brown eyes that still—still—had the effect of disrupting her breathing. Something in them smoldered in the old familiar way, but his eyes were ringed with worry.
“Mahrree, Mahrree, what did you think was going to happen?”
She opened her mouth to speak but nothing came out. When she finally formed words, they hardly made sense. “You just stood there, and didn’t say anything . . . and then you were forcing me off the platform, and the mountain lion pin, and ‘general’ and . . .” The tears started. “I didn’t know what to think!”
Perrin, never quite sure to do with her on the rare occasions that she cried, pulled her into him, which was an appropriate move. “Did you really think I could go along with any of this?”
“But you were!” Her voice was muffled against his chest. The same chest that just minutes ago wore a uniform that designated him as General Shin. Who was now gone . . .
It was going to take awhile to sort it all out in her head.
“You didn’t tell me anything, or look at me about anything.”
He surprised her by chuckling sadly. “What look is there that I could possibly give you that says, ‘By the way, our entire way of life is now completely undone’?”
She almost chuckled back. “Why didn’t you give us a hint?”
“When? It’s been a rather full day, Mahrree!” He sighed. “The messenger that came up this morning handed me the mountain lion pin, said that Chairman Mal insisted I put it on immediately, and then announced that Cush had died yesterday, and that I was to report for Idumea as soon as possible. I’d barely received that information when the coaches arrived with their ‘findings.’ Mahrree, even you have to admit that all of that was a little much for just one look. I had no idea what to tell Shem, except that you shouldn’t come to the fort until I had everything sorted out.”
“Doesn’t seem like it sorted out very well,” she whimpered.
“Actually, I think the general thing sorted out quite well.” He sounded genuinely cheerful. “Except for you and me. What happened to you at the amphitheater?”
“To me?” she pulled away to look at him, and noticed his expression was still anxious despite his effort to appear confident. “What happened to you? You turned into a general! I thought my husband was gone forever and . . .” The stupid tears started again.
“Didn’t we work this out in Idumea?” Perrin whispered, taking her face in his hands and brushing away a tear with his thumb. “When you start spouting off, I need to shut off. With as angry as you became tonight, one of us had to stay calm. If I agreed with you up there in front of everyone, Thorne would have killed us both, I’m sure of it. Or we would have been incarcerated by Genev’s assistant. But fortunately for this family I’ve learned some self-control.” He smiled drearily. “You silly woman. I remembered my vows. All of them—including the one to not kill you,” he chuckled. “That’s what you thought was going to happen here, isn’t it?”
Mahrree felt utterly foolish. Yes, she thought he had abandoned them. Instead he abandoned the army and everything he’d known and lived for his entire life.
Now he was only Perrin Shin.
No general could have been greater than Perrin Shin.
“I did,” she confessed, “and I’ve never been happier to admit that I was wrong.”
He grinned. “I definitely want that in writing!” He leaned in to kiss her, but stopped just as his lips brushed hers. “Wait a minute. I just remembered.” He pulled away from her. “You called me a son of a sow?”
“But I didn’t mean it!” she insisted. “The general—he was the son of a sow!” There she was, saying it again, and all she could do was slap her hand over her mouth.
But her husband was already grinning. “I didn’t realize you even knew that phrase.”
“I teach teenage boys, remember? I know all kinds of things.”
“I’m learning all kinds of things as well,” said Peto cautiously, standing up behind his father.
Perrin kissed Mahrree before turning to his son. “I don’t know whether to praise you or punish you for what you tried to do today.”
Peto bobbled his head back and forth. “I could say the same thing about you, you know.”
Mahrree wondered when her son had become so brave.
Perrin cracked a smile. “Agreed. But Peto, what did you think you were going to do with my old sword?”
His son squirmed. “I, uh . . . was hoping to stop you . . . from whatever it was I thought you were about to do.”
Perrin released a low whistle. “I don’t really want to think on any of that.”
“Neither do I!” Peto said. “Sorry, about everything. I just wasn’t sure, and Deck and I were worried, and—”
Before Peto could finish his rambling apology, Perrin caught him in a brief but fierce hug.
“Just don’t ever do something like that again,” Perrin said as he released his son. “However, I’m proud of you for trying to defend your mother against my resignation.” He picked up his old sword and examin
ed it. “Needs a bit of polishing, but still sharp. I’ll put it away in a better hiding spot later.”
“Father?” Peto cleared his throat nervously, “when I charged you . . . you dropped Grandfather’s sword on the table.”
Perrin continued to examine the tarnished blade. “I did.”
Peto swallowed before saying, “You didn’t mean to, did you?”
Mahrree had been wondering that herself. It was almost as if Relf’s sword had slid itself out of Perrin’s gloved grip. Maybe the gloves hadn’t been such a bad idea after all.
Perrin was silent, pretending to rub at a smudge. Eventually he said, “No, I didn’t.” He shifted his gaze to his now-pale son. “I was acting on instinct. For twenty-five years I’ve been conditioned how to respond when I see someone coming at me with a blade. I don’t even think; I just react. For that reason alone I should never take up another sword.” He threw it on the table. “I’m sorry, Peto. The gloves are stupid, but tonight they saved your life.
“But I don’t think that was entirely everything,” he said as the three of them watched his old sword slow its vibration. “As ridiculous as this may sound, I don’t think my father’s sword would have tolerated its use in taking an innocent life. I know it’s an inanimate object, but I think somehow it would exact revenge for someone using it wrongly. It’s as if it slipped out of my gloves to avoid harming you.”
“Perhaps it still carries part of Relf Shin’s spirit?” Peto said.
Perrin looked up from the table, nodded at his son, and blinked away the wetness in his eyes. “Maybe it was Relf himself.”
Mahrree sniffed and put an arm around her husband’s waist, realizing it was safe again to touch him.
Peto nodded once, the color slowly coming back to his face. “I’m just glad I didn’t have to knock any sense into you, Mr. Shin. I never thought I would be so upset about you becoming a general.”
Perrin turned to him. “That struck me as odd, too. Care to explain?”
“No.”
Perrin studied his son, as if he could find more of an answer in him somewhere, but instead called out, “Deck? How’s my daughter?”
“Jaytsy!” Mahrree cried as she remembered she had another child, and rushed to the kitchen with Perrin behind her.
They found their daughter on the floor, still weeping.
Deck was cradling her and rocking. “She’s all right. She’s just a little emotional again,” he said, visibly concerned. He looked up at Mahrree. “You know, cows just don’t behave this way when they’re expecting. A little extra mooing maybe, but not like this . . .”
“I do know,” Perrin said. “Remember, we talked about ‘the condition?’” He winked at Deck.
“I can’t tell you how good it is to see you back, Perrin!” Deck said. “Sorry about the whole long knife thing. I see why pitchforks are better, though.”
Perrin chuckled and crouched next to him. “I never intended to run you through, by the way. Peto, yes. But you? Never.”
Perrin put his hand under Jaytsy’s chin and lifted it. “And I’m sorry I worried all of you today.”
Jaytsy sniffled and giggled. “I’m all right, really. I’m just more relieved than anything, Father. And I still get to call you Father!” She reached up to hug him. “And Grandpy!”
“How could I possibly leave my grandbaby?” he said as he embraced her and sat on the floor by her. “Just . . . just not Grandpy, all right? We’ll find another name.”
Mahrree sat down on the floor by Jaytsy, which left Peto standing all by himself.
“Well that was an exciting evening,” he said. “Now what?”
Mahrree exhaled. “Good question . . . now what?”
Perrin’s brow furrowed. “We’ve just started a high stakes game of dices with Idumea, I’m afraid.”
“What’s dices?” Deckett asked.
“A dumb game where soldiers throw dice, pretend they know what numbers will come up, and bet against each other,” Peto said, sitting down on the wood floor across from his brother-in-law. “You know, we do have a sofa and stuffed chairs out in the gathering room,” he pointed out as he leaned against a cabinet and a knob caught him on the back of the head.
Mahrree shuddered. “A few too many raw and recent memories out there right now. They’ll fade by morning, though. This is nice, all of us together in a circle on the floor.” Realizing how odd that sounded, she added, “Glad I swept thoroughly before we left for the amphitheater,” and recognized, as Jaytsy giggled, that sounded even more ridiculous.
Everything about the evening had been ridiculous.
Perrin smiled at his family. “Yes, this is just fine. Deck, Peto’s version of dices is a bit abbreviated, but accurate enough. We just threw a set of dice, then declared what we think the next roll will be. Now we have to wait for Idumea to see if, and how, it will bet against us.”
Deck frowned. “Sounds like a mere game of chance.”
“It is,” Perrin agreed. “But fortunately that’s really not what we’re playing right now. We’ve created a very complicated situation that will take Idumea several weeks to unravel, if they don’t get frustrated and give up all together.”
Mahrree twisted to look at him. “Exactly what have we done?” she asked, worriedly. She hadn’t yet stopped to think of long term consequences to any of this. A few minutes ago she was just trying to get through the night alive.
Perrin tried to put on The Dinner smile, which told Mahrree the situation was indeed bleak. “The initial plan was for you to accompany me to Idumea tomorrow to be questioned about your protests by the Administrator of Loyalty. Genev’s assistant was on the platform and insisted that you be reined in for your behavior.”
Mahrree went paler than milk, and Peto whispered, “Reined in? Oh my.”
“I took a quick walk around the green to come up with a plan,” Perrin told them. “You see, it’s one thing for a regular citizen to speak out as you did, but as the wife of the new High General—”
Mahrree gasped. “Were you to be the High General?”
Peto didn’t have a smart comment for that as Jaytsy whimpered and Deck swallowed so hard all of them could hear it.
But Perrin merely shrugged. “That’s what Mal’s message implied,” he said off-handedly. “And that was another thing I was trying to figure out: how to get out of the appointment safely. Qayin Thorne would be furious he wasn’t getting the position. I’m not even sure we would have arrived in Idumea alive.” He rubbed his forehead. “Ah, Mahrree—so much was happening so quickly that I could hardly think!”
She grabbed his arm and hugged it, the only belated comfort she could offer.
“By the time I came back from my walk to ask Genev’s assistant some questions,” Perrin continued, “he already had a new understanding. It seems Rector Yung had spent a few minutes with him explaining how we are ‘cornerstones of the community’ and how anything that happened to Mahrree would most likely generate a great deal of ill-will toward the Administrators. Yung told the assistant that the last thing the Administrators needed, after the disappointing news about the ruins, was an all out riot. And,” Perrin smiled, shaking his head, “he reminded the assistant that I was still considered a hero. Even though the play finally ended last year, the Administrators certainly wouldn’t want a new play surfacing about the untimely downfall of everyone’s favorite colonel’s wife! That Yung—he’s something else, isn’t he? I need to thank him—” He stopped when he noticed Mahrree was horror-stricken.
Worse than that—she was paralyzed, unable to breathe or think.
Her children eyed her worriedly.
“Mahrree, it’s all right!” Perrin took her shoulders and gently shook her, causing her to remember how to breathe again. “We’ve got time, and now we’re regular citizens. The law is a little easier on citizens than for officers. The worst that can happen is that Genev’s assistant will start a file on you. And probably me, now, as well. But they need pages of evidence before they
can take us to trial for sedition. There will be only one entry so far.”
Mahrree melted on the kitchen floor.
Perrin put a bracing arm around her to prop her up again. “We’ve created a good and complicated problem here. You spoke as the general’s wife, but I wasn’t officially a general yet—not until I swore the oath in front of Nicko Mal and the garrison. You were still the colonel’s wife, but with my resignation occurring the same day, we’re now both regular citizens, and the law takes into account what you were at the end of the day. And as much as the Administrators like to argue, they’ll take weeks before they come to any consensus about us, if at all. No one would be able to claim that what you and Kori engaged in on the platform was anything like a reasoned debate. And, last but not least, Yung was right—the Administrators can’t risk doing anything to us because I’m loved too much.” He batted his eyelids and Mahrree somehow found the strength to chuckle.
“Besides, now that I am no longer in the army—” he stumbled on the words, which panged Mahrree’s heart, “—the road is wide open for the Thornes. This should make Qayin and Lemuel very happy. I really don’t think anyone will care about me or you, or anything we say or do, ever again. We can now fade away and become as anonymous as everyone else.”
“And as unprotected as well,” Mahrree reminded him.
Perrin sighed. “Well, I’m not so sure about that. I still know a few things, I still have my old sword and long knife. We still have Shem. And a few friends in forts . . .” His voice faltered as he began to wonder about the veracity of that statement. He shook his head and put on a determined smile. “But it’s best we prepare for anything, right? That means training you two—” Perrin pointed at Peto and Deckett “in how to do a thing or two.”