The Mansions of Idumea (Book 3 Forest at the Edge series) (17 page)

Sergeant Major Neeks cleared his throat.
Rarely had anyone ever heard Grandpy say something important
without clearing his throat first. “Lieutenant Colonel,” Neeks
started in his slow drawl, “with all due respect, the ‘inopportune’
time to leave would have been four days ago. But now your Rebuild
Edge Plan is in place, and we have plenty of work to keep each
soldier busy and out of trouble for a long time. The major has a
plan for doling out the grain reserves, Rigoff has organized the
effort to evaluate what food is left in the village, and we can
certainly hold down the fort until you return in three weeks. You
give my regards to the general, and get out of our hair.” He smiled
firmly.

“Sir,” said Lieutenant Rigoff, “I have a
concern about your house. Perhaps we should shift the schedule and
get yours completed as soon as possible. I can have a detail of men
here this evening to finish clearing it out, then begin rebuilding
the roof in the morning.”

“I appreciate the thought,” Shin told him,
“but there are other houses in greater need. If we can just span
the hole with a canvas tarp, we can close off the upstairs until I
return. Keep to the schedule. I don’t want anyone to think I’m
getting special privileges.”

“So let them think it!” insisted Neeks. “Your
family needs to be safe. Let’s get this house secured in your
absence, Lieutenant Colonel.”

“It’s the least we can do, sir,” Karna
agreed.

“Again, I appreciate the thought,” the
lieutenant colonel said evenly as Zenos appeared at the door to the
study, “but I think just posting a guard during the day and maybe
two at night, as allowed by the Administrators, will suffice.”

“You don’t have to do that, sir,” Zenos said.
“We’ve got it all figured out already.”

Perrin turned to him. “Who’s ‘we’?”

“Mahrr—Mrs. Shin and I,” Zenos corrected
himself.

One of Perrin’s eyebrows rose at Shem’s slip
of familiarity. Each of the soldiers knew of the closeness between
Zenos and the Shins, but still there were limits to be
observed.

Rigoff and Karna exchanged glances, and Neeks
shook his head reproachfully at the younger sergeant.

Zenos didn’t see it. “We discussed it when we
were in the bedroom,” he told his commander, “and I was helping her
with her clothes.”

Rigoff choked and Karna coughed
nervously.

The colonel’s other eyebrow went up.

Neeks’s head shaking increased.

Somehow Zenos missed it all. “You won’t need
a guard at night. I’ll sleep here while you’re gone,” he grinned
innocently, “and take care of whatever your bedroom needs.”

The lieutenant colonel went positively
rigid.

Neeks muttered, “Zenos, Zenos, Zenos . .
.”

Rigoff and Karna glanced at each other
anxiously.

“Sergeant Zenos,” Shin said in an eerily calm
manner, “exactly
what
are you planning in my absence?”

Zenos cocked his head, puzzled by his best
friend’s odd demeanor. “To do what you would do?” he squeaked.
“Take care of needs?”

The commander’s expression remained
wooden.

The master sergeant was still perplexed. “May
I . . . get the coach now?”

“Coach?” Shin spat. “What coach?”

“The fort’s coach?” Zenos shrank a little
under the furious glare. “Could use the airing out, really. Had it
for more than ten years and I don’t think it’s ever been used. For
Mrs. Shin to start loading?”

Shin squinted. “I don’t need a coach!”

Zenos swallowed. “But she and the children
do.”

Comprehension hit both men like the
sunrise.

On Shem’s face, it first glowed amused with a
smile, which turned into abject horror.

On Perrin’s face the effect was reversed. He
began to grin in relief as Shem paled.

“Ohhh,
sir
,” Sergeant Zenos said
tonelessly, a bead of nervous sweat breaking out on his forehead.
“You thought I was going to . . .
stay
with, with . . . your
family while you were away? Do what you would do in the bedroo—Oh
no, sir! No, sir!” He flushed redder than any man ever had.

Perrin began to chuckle and his men relaxed.
A few looks were exchanged along the lines of, Never was anything
to worry about, right?

“Sorry, Zenos. The suggestion that you were
going to stay with my family shocked me,” Perrin said. “But they’re
going with me? I think I need to sit down for a moment . . .”

---

An hour later, as the coach drawn by four
horses left the Shin house, the two sergeants watched it head south
meandering as fast as it could through the rubble-strewn roads.
When Neeks saw all that Mrs. Shin and her daughter had shoved
hastily into bags, he thanked the stars again he never married.

“Should be an interested two days’ and one
night ride,” Neeks said to Zenos as they walked back to the fort.
“Two teenagers locked up in the coach with their parents, and Mrs.
Shin insisting the lieutenant colonel would be more comfortable
down with them rather than up with the soldiers watching for
danger.” He shook his head and laughed softly.

Zenos chuckled as well. “None of his family
has ever been to Idumea, and he’s been avoiding going there for
years. I don’t know when I’ve seen him more anxious.”

“Oh, I do. When he thought you were planning
to move in with his wife!” Neeks elbowed him.

“Ah, don’t remind me,” Zenos agonized,
reliving the embarrassment. “That was terrible. I can’t imagine he
even thought I would consider such a thing. He’s probably just not
thinking clearly, certainly surprised about the news of his father,
and his mother requesting they go to Idumea. Yes,” Shem decided,
“he’s just a bit overwrought, imagined the worst—”

“Well, I suppose that’s how he got to be a
commander,” Grandpy said.

Zenos still shook his head.

Grandpy Neeks gave him a sidelong glance.
“You have to admit, though—you’re always over there. It’s just a
little unusual. People may . . . think things.”

The master sergeant furrowed his brow. “Think
what?”

What neither the lieutenant colonel nor the
master sergeant fully understood was that those who served for an
extended amount of time in the fort occasionally communicated about
the relationship. Not with words, but with
looks
, especially
when Shin sent Zenos to his house on an errand or with the message
that the commander would be coming home late. It was never more
than Karna exchanging silent questions with Rigoff as Zenos bounded
down the stairs of the command tower, or Neeks scowling after him,
then sending one of his meaningful squints to whoever was in the
tower with him.

Their eyes always said the same things to
each other: It’s all right, isn’t it? Have you heard anything
worrying? Something the lieutenant colonel should be told?

It wasn’t that they doubted Mrs. Shin. It’s
just that . . .

Well, there was something about Shem Zenos.
No one could put their finger on exactly what it was, but then
again his behavior was never less than exemplary. Maybe it was
because Zenos seemed to be so pure, and no man was
that
pure.

He never drank, never swore, never played
dices, and in his free time if he wasn’t at the Shins he was at the
Cottages hanging out with the widows, of all people. Not just Mrs.
Peto but all of her friends—fixing their fences, building them
sewing tables, and sampling their newest recipes. He even spent
many hours at Rector Yung’s, helping him to fix up the old place
and tending to his garden. Zenos was faultless: charismatic, sweet,
handsome, and seemingly perfect.

Which only meant that something was seriously
wrong, but they just hadn’t discovered what yet. It was almost as
if there was another side to him, but just like the back sides of
the moons, they could never hope to see what it was. So, like all
good soldiers, they kept a careful watch, waiting for him to
finally slip. No man was
that
good, without some secret part
of him being bad.

But on the other hand, all of this had been
going on for years, and no rumors of anything unsuitable had ever
surfaced, so the senior soldiers didn’t worry about it and
generally ignored their concerns.

Until awkward and unguarded moments suddenly
popped up, such as referring to Mrs. Shin by her first name, and
realizing that maybe Lieutenant Colonel Shin had his moments of
doubt as well. Otherwise, why would he have assumed the worst
intentions about his best friend?

The road the two sergeants walked was
relatively free of foot traffic, since most of the village was
moving rubble. Now was a perfect time, Grandpy thought, to maybe
get a peek at the other side of a moon.

Neeks smiled amiably. “Sergeant, how old are
you now?”

Zenos looked at him as they headed north to
the fort, not sure why he asked the question. “Thirty-four,
beginning of the season.”

“And you’ve been here for what, thirteen
years now?”

“Almost fourteen. At the end of
Planting.”

“Fourteen years,” mused Grandpy. “Lots of
time to see lots of things, right?”

“I suppose,” Zenos said, still sounding
lost.

Neeks almost chuckled. It was just that Zenos
was so . . .

Well,
naïve
wasn’t the right word. It
was if he simply didn’t notice things, or pay attention to what
everyone else did. And Neeks wondered that Zenos hadn’t married
yet. Mrs. Shin always had her eye out.

Poor Milo Rigoff hadn’t been at the fort for
five weeks when Mrs. Shin, upon meeting the lanky officer,
developed a gleam in her eye and told him she knew the perfect girl
for him. And Mrs. Shin was rather put out, Neeks assumed, that
Karna found himself an interesting young woman without her
assistance. More than once Grandpy had caught Mrs. Shin’s
attention, and the busybody was always ready to tell him about
another one of her mother’s lonely friends, but Neeks put an end to
that every time with, “If she’s not army issued, she’s not for
me.”

Mrs. Shin was likely still trying to find
Zenos a female. Or so Grandpy assumed.

Zenos noticed women, Grandpy was sure of
that. It was hard not to. There was a steady stream of them on the
road to the fort. Since the land tremor activity had gone down, but
not completely. Neeks had noticed the parade of women had grown
over the years. Maybe when the fort expanded to two hundred fifty
men, so did the hopes of the women, both young and not so young.
Edge may have been just a small village with only five thousand
people, but the soldiers never complained about lack of
company.

Even now as they walked to the fort Zenos
nodded politely to what Grandpy would consider a sultry and silky
young woman who approached from the opposite direction. Grandpy
surreptitiously watched Zenos’s eyes as they got closer. Neeks
definitely saw a spark, then Zenos’s eyes traveled down to the
low-cut neckline on the young woman’s dress which left little for a
healthy man to imagine, and Neeks was sure Zenos was a very healthy
man. Zenos’s face flushed with what seemed like shame at having
lingered at her ample cleavage, and he looked at the ground,
probably not even noticing the slit on her skirt that revealed her
leg all the up to her thigh when she walked.

The girl misinterpreted Zenos’s meaning and
grinned flirtatiously, but Zenos kept his eyes on the road as she
passed them. The young woman’s expression turned disappointed as
Zenos refused to look up, but Grandpy nodded courteously.

While she wasn’t interested in the older man,
she nodded politely back.

Grandpy’s thoughts churned. Maybe Zenos
thought he already found himself a woman . . .

When the girl was sufficiently behind them,
Neeks cleared his throat again. “How is it, Zenos, that after all
these years in the army, you . . .” He faltered, unsure of how to
finish his thought suitably, but still get his meaning across.

“Yes?” Zenos asked, looking at him
askance.

“Well, on your days off, you’re not in the
market enjoying a drink, or chatting to some beautiful young lady.
I have a hard time believing that what they might call a ‘ruggedly
handsome man’ like you can’t find someone to . . . talk with.”

Zenos smiled sadly. “None of the women here
are the kind I would like to talk with,” he said, missing Grandpy’s
insinuation that no conversation was implied. “I’m a little
particular when it comes to women, I suppose.”

“Doesn’t have to be a long-term commitment,
Sergeant. Many of these women aren’t looking for a long
conversation—”

Zenos sighed. “Well, maybe I am. Things have
changed since I first came here. It’s getting harder to find nice
women.”

“Nice women like Mahrree Shin?” Neeks said
with a hint of accusation.

Zenos’s eyes flared at him, then softened.
“Yes, like
Mrs.
Shin.” He took a deep breath. “Grandpy,
she’s so much like my sister. And the lieutenant colonel—he’s the
brother I should’ve had. They remind me a great deal of what I left
behind. I’m a family man, and they’re my family. That’s all.”

Grandpy had stopped walking, forcing Zenos to
pause and pivot to face him. Neeks didn’t say a word, but folded
his arms and gave the master sergeant
a look
.

Zenos knew what he was implying. “Even if I
wanted one, I’d never have a chance, Grandpy,” Shem said quietly.
“She’s completely devoted him. And so am I.”

Grandpy stared him down for another half
minute, but Zenos held the gaze intended to determine just how
honest the younger man was.

“You better be,” Grandpy said coldly.

“He’s the entire reason I’m in Edge, Grandpy.
I promise.”

Realizing that was about as clear an answer
as he would get, Grandpy nodded once. “Make sure it stays that
way.” Then, as if the last exchanged had never occurred, Grandpy
unfolded his arms and continued walking to the fort, Zenos falling
in next to him.