The Falcon in the Barn (Book 4 Forest at the Edge series) (27 page)

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.”

---

The next day Perrin came out of his office to
see his three young officers sitting obediently at the large
forward command desk, wearing expressions of apprehension. This
was, after all, the first time since they’d come to the fort that
he held a weekly officers’ meeting. He was about fifty weeks late
to follow procedure.

Well, as they say: best now than never
was.

“
Thank you for coming,” he
said cheerfully and loudly as he dropped a stack of files next to
the open chair. The other officers, he noted, were seated about as
far away as they could be around the desk. “We’ll be doing this on
a weekly basis, by the way, so make sure your schedules are cleared
for this hour.”

“
An excellent idea,” said
Thorne, and Perrin had noticed that his sycophantic style from last
night was in full force.

“
You see, sir,” Thorne
continued eagerly, “we did something like this last year as well,
as per and in accordance to Fort Procedures, Section 3—”

“
Yes, yes, yes,” Perrin
interrupted as he sat down to the desk. But it was the manner in
which he sat that helped establish the mood of the
meeting.

He had a few ways of putting his body down;
subtly, normally, and a way that Mahrree called
big-ly
, as
if everything around him couldn’t help but lean toward his
direction, much as when he sat in the middle of the sofa.

Today, though, he made sure he sat
huge-ly
. That the chair made an audible creak when he
thunked his full weight on it only added to the effect.

“
Thorne,” he said, after
making quite a bit of noise scooching the chair closer to the desk
so that the three pairs of eyes were glued to him, “I frequently
skimmed the notes you took. But now we’ll be holding the weekly
meeting the
correct
way.”

There were three things Perrin picked up in
that moment; first, Thorne was so full of pride that it was easy to
insult him, as his affronted scoff, which he tried to keep in,
demonstrated; two, Offra
was
capable of smiling, and hiding
it in almost an instant; three, Radan was
incapable
of
holding in his snicker, for which he had to cover his mouth with
his hand.

And, as a pure bonus, Perrin also picked up
that Thorne and Radan had had some kind of arrangement, and that
one of the many strings that held them together was severed by
Radan’s snickering.

Perrin sat back in the chair. Oh this was
going to be fun.

“
Now,” he announced, “and
Thorne, take notes—”

“
But sir, that’s enlisted
man’s work. Now, while I do enjoy having only officers
here—”

Perrin twisted fully to face Thorne who
paused, unsure of why the commander was scowling at him.

“
There’s a space at this
desk next to me that will, in the future, be occupied by Sergeant
Zenos,” he told Thorne steadily. “He’d be here today if he wasn’t
south on leave visiting his father and sister. And as per
accordance to whatever section you were just trying to quote,
Beneff may also attend this meeting. However—” and this was where
Perrin was about to lie, “—because I don’t want us to be disturbed,
Beneff is manning the reception desk downstairs and will ensure
that no one comes up to the tower.”

He just couldn’t put up with Beneff’s
doddering, nor his recent habit to hum at random moments and dig
his finger into his ear.

“
Now, Thorne, you will do
as you are told by the commander of the fort, because that is,
actually, what I am, and while I concede that in the past year I
acted as considerably less than that, I’m done with my little break
and am back fully in charge. Pull out that quill and paper,
Captain. And follow standard procedures this time, not whatever
that little chart thing you came up with about seven moons ago.
That helped absolutely no one.”

Thorne, stunned, could do nothing but follow
the direct order.

Turning back to the other smirking young men,
Perrin began with, “A new year, and new projects. Lots of
responsibility to hand around, and we’re going to start today.
Gentlemen, the growing and collecting of the taxation last year was
a big success, for which I belatedly thank each of you. However, we
can’t sit back and think that Idumea will come to the rescue again
should another disaster hit us. Nor do Edgers, I’m sure, want to be
beholden to Idumea again.”

Perrin could tell Thorne wanted to say
something, but he wasn’t about to give him—scribbling frantically
to keep up with the deliberately fast rate in which Perrin
spoke—any chance of interruption.

“
So I’m instituting our own
‘reserves’ program. This year we’ll once again grow as much as we
did last year, but instead of sending it to Idumea, we’ll store it
here in Edge in barns which we’ll designate as storehouses, similar
to the one we have in the compound. Then, if there’s an emergency,
we can provide. We’ll continue this storing procedure each year,
restocking each Harvest, and distributing the old goods to those
less fortunate in Edge.”

Thorne’s lips were moving as he scrawled,
something on his mind that he couldn’t express until he was done
recording.

Perrin made sure he didn’t get that
opportunity. “This project will be in addition to our regular work,
so it will require a great deal of dedication for the next several
moons. There are two main components: securing land and
constructing the storehouses, and explaining the procedure to the
villagers and visiting families—”

“—
which I will gladly take
on, excellent ideas, Colonel.” Apparently Thorne could babble while
taking notes. “When Idumea hears of our plan, I’m sure they
will—”

“
No
,” was all Perrin
said, and
huge-ly
. He had a manner of speaking bigger than
anyone else, too.

Thorne’s quill stumbled on the page and he
looked up as if he’d been slapped. “No?” He seemed like he was
ready to slap back.

Oh the toady was already slipping, poor
captain.

“
No,” Perrin repeated more
easily, his focus solely on the two lieutenants. “This project is
for you two men.”

Radan and Offra both sat a little taller,
their eyes darting over at Thorne with hints of superiority.

Perrin pointed at Radan. “According to your
file, you did some construction down in Midplain. Therefore I’ll
put you in charge of securing land, timber, builders—everything we
need to build two storehouses, one on either side of Edge. You may
find an unused barn already available which we may be able to
convert. I want frequent updates, and we’ll meet once a week to
evaluate progress.”

“
Yes, sirrrrr!” Radan said,
enthusiastically adding even more r’s.

That had annoyed Perrin to no end, and if he
was going to work with this young man, something had to change.
“Radan, I appreciate the zeal, but ‘sir’ is supposed to be a quick
response, not take half the afternoon to get through. Work on that,
if only when you’re around me, all right?” He added a friendly
smile that relaxed Radan’s tense shoulders.

“
Yes . . . sir.”

“
Well done. Now, Offra,” he
turned to him, “I understand you helped Zenos with the collection
of the taxation, and I want you to resume that. Because Zenos will
initially be busy with other matters, I’m putting the project of
contacting villagers, plotting—”

It was Thorne’s prolonged throat-clearing
that caused Perrin to stop and look at the captain. For good
measure, Perrin slapped him, hard, on the back. “Something caught
in there, Thorne?”