The Falcon in the Barn (Book 4 Forest at the Edge series) (93 page)

“
Seems I’ve been neglecting
your development, Peto. I apologize for that,” Perrin said as he
held his shoulders and shook them violently for no apparent
reason.

“
Did I ever complain?” Peto
asked. “Until now? They don’t come off, if that’s what you’re
trying to figure out.”

“
Just evaluating your
muscle tone. Your legs are well developed—no surprise there—but
your upper body could use some filling out. You’re at the perfect
age for doing so, and I have just the activity to firm you up
through here. And here. And here . . .”

And so Peto was assigned to moving bales of
hay which, he had to admit, was doing something to his muscles. It
made them scream.

But he willingly went to bed also because he
didn’t want to see his parents
watching
him again.

It was painful. His mother gave him looks of
pity, apology, and worry, while his father smiled drearily at him
with ever increasing lines around his eyes. They both felt guilty,
and he felt just a little bit better about things because of
that.

But then he felt even worse for them.

Edge had changed. Actually, it had been
changing for several years, but it finally reached a point where
that change was obvious.

However, the shock of the change was rather
invigorating, he decided. Almost adventurous, even though it left
him feeling as if he was standing on top of a tall fence, unsure
which way to go, and worried that he might not be able to balance
up there for too long. He found himself worrying more and more
about his parents each day rather than about his future.

The day after his father’s resignation when
he went to school for that last time, his friends surrounded
him.

“
They made him a
general?”

“
You’re going to Idumea!
You can try out for the teams.”

“
When are you
leaving?”

The only way he could respond was, “No . . .
it’s complicated.”

He was grateful when class started just
moments later.

Then the door opened, right after midday
meal. Peto didn’t bother to look up from his reading because the
way the air dampened he knew it was about him. His teacher cleared
his throat, and reluctantly Peto looked up. There stood Mr. Hegek
and Lieutenant Radan.

Hegek looked like he was about to cry.

Radan looked like he wanted to burn
something.

Peto slammed shut his book and leaned back in
his chair. “Well?” he asked cockily.

Mr. Hegek shook his head before saying, “Peto
Shin, because of incidents last night, I’m sorry, but—”

Radan had jabbed Hegek so forcefully that
Hegek coughed and took a step forward. Every boy watched him
keenly.

“
Congratulations, son!”
Hegek slipped into an awkward speech he must have memorized only
moments before. “You are hereby awarded this notification that you
no longer need to attend the Administrators’ School in Edge.” He
held out the parchment with a trembling hand.

Peto nodded once, gathered up his books, and
walked past the rows of desks to the front of the classroom.

“
That’s not fair,” one of
his friends whispered. “Why does he get—”

Lieutenant Radan loudly clearing his throat
shut Peto’s friend right up.

Peto took the parchment without opening it,
nodded to Hegek, and left the classroom without another word. He
noticed Radan and Hegek remained behind, probably to explain things
to his classmates.

Later that afternoon, when a few of the boys
walked past the Briters’ farm to go to an empty field to kick
around a ball, they didn’t look at him at all. Peto knew they saw
him. But what he didn’t know was what Radan and Hegek told
them.

And suddenly, that was that.

No more friends, no more kickball, no school,
and no universities. Just today a letter came from the University
of Idumea stating that they wouldn’t have room for Peto Shin that
year, should he be thinking of applying. It was accompanied by a
terse note from the head of kickball Mr. Flamafoul uninviting Peto
for tryouts.

Just that quickly, the world had changed.

And strangely, Peto was all right with
that.

Chapter 35
~
“I have an idea, a plan!”

M
ahrree hadn’t
realized the water was flooding the field until it stopped
flowing.

“
Oh,” she stared,
bewildered, at her feet.

“
And here I thought you
were doing better with watering,” she heard Perrin’s voice.
“Distracted?”

Mahrree rolled her eyes at the obvious. “It’s
been three weeks, Perrin. Shem should be returning—”

She stopped short.

She still couldn’t get used to it: Perrin, in
one of Cambozola Briter’s old floppy hats. Deck had pulled it out
for his father-in-law, and Perrin appreciated the loose weave of
the pale straw. But whenever Mahrree saw her husband, her first
reaction was always terror that a towering scarecrow was creeping
up on her.

“
Actually, Shem’s back
tomorrow,” Perrin said, and he put on what Mahrree was calling his
Farmhand Face to began his slow drawl. “Mr. Briter says we done
well today! We can go home for dinner now, Missus. The boy’s
already headed back, Missus. Jus’ me and you for a stroll?” He
waggled his eyebrows.

Mahrree cracked a smile. “Sometimes I just
don’t understand you. I think a bit of Cambozola’s spirit must be
in that hat. How can you be so cheerful when the village still
won’t even acknowledge we’re alive?”

He chuckled as he put his arm around her to
steer her to the far west side of the farm. While avoiding the fort
road meant their walk home took a bit longer, it was worth it to
circumvent the traffic. “I had a breakthrough today with someone
who used to shun us.”

“
Really?” For the first
time in weeks Mahrree felt a glimmer of hope. She was growing weary
of neighbors and villagers turning their backs to her, fleeing the
shops when she and Jaytsy arrived as they opened, and catching the
sidelong glares of soldiers. “Who’s tolerating us?”

“
Clover!” Perrin
announced.

“
Clover . . . wait. Isn’t
that one of Deck’s cows?”

“
It is!” he said breezily.
“We tried one of his experiments. While he was doing that sweet
talking to her, ‘Who’s a good milker? Who’s a good milker? My
Clover is!’ I snuck around behind her. Instead of Deck sitting down
at the bucket, I did. I nearly had the bucket full before Clover
turned and noticed it was me. She tried to stomp on my boot only
twice, but I got her milked.” He held up his hands. “We’re calling
it an
udder
success!”

Mahrree groaned.

“
Oh, come on. Even Peto
thought that was funny.”

“
It’s definitely the hat.
There’s no other excuse.”

“
I do like the hat,” Perrin
declared. “But primarily for the reason coming up.”

Mahrree looked ahead and sighed.

Soldiers.

It had taken them three days to figure out
that the Shins were no longer using the main road. Now there were
pairs stationed along the perimeter of the farm and the back alleys
Perrin and Mahrree took to get home. For the past week, however,
there had been fewer guards, and today the two positioned beyond
the gate had their heads bent down over something.

Perrin adjusted his hat, pulling it down to
his eyebrows. When he tipped his head down, the soldiers couldn’t
see his face—although they knew the brawny scarecrow was him—and
Perrin could spy on them through the gaps of the straw.

Today the pair on duty merely glanced up at
the Shins, then went back to studying what looked like a book.
Mahrree had seen the dark red cover in the window of Sareen’s book
shop, and thought it odd that soldiers were reading instead of
soldiering.

They passed in silence, and only once they
were twenty paces away did Perrin release a low whistle. “Our dear
Captain Thorne is
in trouble
,” he said smugly.

“
How do you know?” Mahrree
was tempted to turn back to see what her husband noticed, but knew
better than to draw attention to herself.

Grinning, Perrin pushed the straw hat above
his brow. “While I know the soldiers were never perfect under me,
none would have ever dared be so derelict in their duties. That
tells me a few things. One, the soldiers have no respect for
Thorne. Those sergeants aren’t even worried that someone may notice
their lax behavior.

“
Two, I didn’t recognize
those sergeants, which means they came recently from another fort.
And when fort commanders transfer soldiers, they always unload
their troublemakers. The sergeants probably don’t even know why
they’re on this route, or who we are. If Lemuel asked for help from
other forts, he didn’t get it. That means we’re no longer a high
priority, and I suspect that Thorne’s biggest concern right now is
that he’s losing men.”

Mahrree was mystified. “How did you put that
together?”

“
Early this morning when I
came to help Deck with the cows I spied four soldiers with their
full packs jogging from the fort. I knew those soldiers, and none
of them had leave coming. They were deserting,” he chuckled
darkly.

Mahrree couldn’t help but snicker as well.
“And the ones on duty are reading books about love!”

Perrin cleared his throat. “Uh, not exactly
reading. And not quite love.”

“
What do you
mean?”

He sighed. “In the brief, unfortunate moment
that I happened to focus on the page they were poring over, I
noticed that it was a woodcut. Of a woman. Without clothes.”

Mahrree stopped dead in her tracks.

“
Keep moving, keep moving,”
Perrin hissed as he pulled her along. “We’re now in view of a watch
tower, and a soldier is actually watching. Act natural.”

She forced to her feet to keep up with him.
“How can I ‘act natural’ when you tell me that Sareen is selling
books with woodcuts of—” She couldn’t bring herself to say the
words.

“
I know,” Perrin whispered,
keeping his gaze through the straw focused on the tower. “All
right, he’s no longer watching us. This is good, Mahrree. Better
than good. It’s turning out to be great—”

“
Great?” Mahrree wailed in
a whisper. “Great that Sareen has brought to Edge books of . . .”
Still she couldn’t say the words.

Perrin smiled as they turned east on the
alley that would lead to their back garden. “No, not about the
book, but about the soldiers. Look—the other pair that’s normally
posted here isn’t. Do you realize what this means?”

“
Sareen’s having a sale,
and all of the soldiers are waiting in line?”

“
Well, maybe. But it’s
working—Yung’s advice? Stay low and quiet until the soldiers get
bored? No one’s paying extra attention to us, Mahrree! That means
we can . . .
start doing something else
,” he whispered
conspiratorially.

“
Such as?”

“
Remember how a couple of
weeks ago I told you I was working on a new plan?”

“
Yes.”

“
Wanna hear it?”

Mahrree grinned at his boyish enthusiasm.
“Yes!”

He gripped her arm. “Wait till we get home.
And stop smirking. I see another soldier trying to hide in the
shrubs.”

“
You’re smirking, too,”
Mahrree pointed out. “Someone really should tell Thorne that no one
believes a shrub has undertones of blue and boots that stick
out.”

They couldn’t help but snicker together as
they passed the spying soldier. Mahrree hadn’t felt so
light-hearted in weeks, and guiltily realized it was partly because
all that her husband had built for the past nineteen years was
falling apart because he left it.

They went in the back door and found Peto at
the table, sleepily finishing off the chicken pot pie. Seeing her
weary son sobered Mahrree again. The poor boy had nothing—no
friends, no kickball, no future.

Perrin’s smirk had dissolved as well. “Leave
us anything to eat?” he asked his son.

“
Couple of crumbs,” Peto
yawned. “I’m heading to bed. When I die, I’m going to ask the
Creator why cows insist on being milked so early in the morning.
Surely He could have planned
that
a little better. Some One
all knowing should have known I hate early mornings.”

Perrin chuckled until Peto shut his bedroom
door, and Mahrree heard the contrived tone of it.

She sighed. “You know that message he got a
few days ago and threw in the hearth? I fished it out. It was to
inform him that the University of Idumea wouldn’t have room for
him, and that the professional kickball teams didn’t want him to
come for tryouts. I had been hoping our family troubles were
confined only to Edge, and that maybe Peto could go south—and that
you and I with him—until all of this died down, but now I realize .
. .” her voice began to break, “there’s no where we can go. The
whole world will shun us.”

Perrin pulled her into his arms. “I agree
that we can’t go on like this,” he whispered. “We have to do
something for Peto. He’s almost seventeen and has nothing to look
forward to.”

“
But Perrin, what can we
do? Maybe when Shem comes back, he’ll have some news—”

“
Mahrree, he’s already
back. He rode by earlier this morning.”

“
But you told me he
wouldn’t be back until tomorrow!”

“
Sorry, but I didn’t want
to worry you until we got home. Shem sent me a quick look—wasn’t
safe for him to stop and talk—and I could tell that he knows
something and . . . it’s not good.”