Two men sat in the dark office of an unlit building.
“She did it,” Brisack breathed in a dazed monotone. “Incredible!”
“And shockingly insightful in her brevity,” Mal twitched. “The only way she would’ve known about eliminate debating was if she read to the very end. Not even the Administrator of Education has bothered to accomplish that yet.” His voice grew louder and higher. “She’s not a teacher anymore, nor does she have any children in the schools, so why does she care?”
“Well, that’s one intelligent, independent, persistent—”
“Annoying!”
Brisack shrugged in reluctant agreement, “—annoying cat.”
“I always hated cats,” Mal mumbled.
“So what kind of response will this receive?”
“Perhaps,” Mal said, holding up a finger, “she should receive a personal one this time.”
Brisack’s eyebrows rose. “Are we now finding the north appealing again?”
“He hasn’t conquered that forest, although I’m sure he believes he has. They need to learn who is truly in charge of this world. I am!”
Brisack nodded slowly. “I suppose that’s the only answer. But—”
“But what, Doctor?” Mal sliced into his hesitation.
“I can’t stop thinking that all she’s done is send four letters. We’re going to eliminate someone because of four letters?”
“We’ve eliminated some after only one letter, Doctor,” Mal said steadily. “Remember the father of that captain in Grasses? The one who blamed the Administrators for losing his cattle herd to the new mandates on production? You’d think the man would’ve been grateful to move to the village and nearer to his son. His son’s quit the army, by the way. You may want to study his descent into depression after having lost all his family. Truly tragic. But here,” he gestured to Mrs. Shin’s final note, “here we have a woman who’s sent four letters, and we’ve let her go. Not only that, but she’s questioned your research methods, Doctor. She’s mocked the Department of Instruction—”
“Well, if we’re going to target someone because of that,” Brisack chuckled nervously, “then I should be watching my back—”
“She’s questioning our Administration!” the old man burst out. “The Administrators that discovered the return of the Guarders! That ordered the army to put a fort in Edge. That gave her a husband. And this is how she thanks us for such attention to an undeserving woman in a meaningless little village?”
“As you just pointed out, Nicko,” Brisack said in his best calming voice, “she’s small and insignificant.”
Mal jabbed his finger at him. “Everything big began as something small, Doctor! Perrin started that way, too, as a boy with an over-sized ego. You should have seen him when he was thirteen and already taller than Relf, strutting around the garrison with girls trailing behind him.” His shoulder twitched more violently. “By the time he was sixteen he practically had a horde of women. Then he came to the university and started Command School.”
Mal stared off into the distance, his head nodding, then shifting into bobbling and shaking. “Suddenly he was all seriousness, all focus, all study. But I knew what he was up to. He was plotting, even then, as a nineteen-year-old. He analyzed and thought and argued about everything!” Mal began to massage his hands, not realizing that he was frothing around the corners of his mouth.
The good doctor noticed, but wisely didn’t point that out.
“He’s been plotting, that one has,” Mal continued. “I had him his second year, and on the first day he challenged something I said, countering it out of The Writings, of all things! I promptly shut him down, but I saw something in the eyes of his fellow students. They admired him,” he said as if uttering the filthiest word in the world. “The next week he took me on again, with even more irrational and unproven arguments, and for even longer. And the other students? They were smiling.” Mal’s eyes squinted so severely he probably lost all sight.
Brisack swallowed and calmly said, “He was an arrogant boy, Nicko. I heard the stories about him. Those students, they mistook his bravado for genuine bravery. They probably admired him because they—”
“Saw him opposing authority?” Mal spewed. “Saw him fluster me on more than one occasion in front of all of them?”
Brisack’s mouth formed a small o. “He embarrassed you? Nicko, he was only a boy—”
“He hadn’t looked like a boy since he was thirteen!” Mal protested. “And he was never only a boy. He’s been a plotting egomaniac long before he ever came to Command School.”
Brisack exhaled. He knew he’d regret asking, but curiosity was pushing him. “Nicko, plotting what?”
Mal leaned closer. “To take over the world,” he whispered.
The good doctor would have snorted if it hadn’t been for the deadly serious look in his companion’s eyes that terrified him. “Nicko, you can’t really believe—”
That was a stupid thing to say, and Mal’s glare made that very clear.
Brisack swallowed again. “What evidence do you have that he’s trying to take over the world?”
Mal scoffed. “Look what he’s done in the forests! Look how he’s defied the laws! Oh, there’s so much more to it . . . You never heard him debating, but I did. He fully believes in the old prophecies that an end of some kind will come, that the wicked will be destroyed, and that the followers of the Creator alone will be saved. He had entire passages memorized, and recited them in class! I’d go back to my office and look them up in a borrowed copy of The Writings to see how correct he was, and he never deviated. He acted as if he really believed that nonsense, and I promise you, my good doctor, only a man intending to be the one to save the world would pay such close attention to so-called prophecies telling him how! The weak minded of the world believe that twaddle, and they’ll throw their support behind the man that claims he believes it too.”
Mal stood up abruptly and marched to a bookshelf, aggressively shifting pages and dropping a few on the floor in a frantic effort to find something in the dim light. “I’ll prove it to you,” he mumbled as Brisack remained in his chair, taking mental notes about Chairman Nicko Mal’s stability. “I’ve kept it, to remember, just to be sure that . . . ah!” He held up a snippet of parchment and waved it around like a small banner. “Allow me to read to you, my good doctor.”
Mal stepped closer to a gap in the curtained window, where faint torchlight from the stables reached him.
Brisack bit his tongue and continued to evaluate his companion, his current situation, and the level of his own involvement.
He immediately went back to evaluating only the Chairman.
Mal squinted as he held the parchment he held close to his eyes. “‘Before the Last Day even the aged of my people will strike terror in the deadened hearts of the fiercest soldiers. On the Last Day those who have no power shall discover the greatest power is all around them. On the Last Day those who stayed true to The Plan will be delivered as the destroyer comes.’ Ha! There you have it!”
“There I have it,” Brisack nodded once. “I’m not exactly versed in The Writings. What, precisely, do I have?”
Mal stepped closer to his friend. “He quoted this to me on more than one occasion. Some people read The Writings for comfort, but others read for anarchy!”
Brisack glanced dubiously at the parchment clutched in Mal’s fist. “This is anarchy?”
“Or so he’ll convince the world. He’ll convince them there’s trouble, such great trouble that even the soldiers are afraid! But then he’ll swoop down, as High General or something, and save the world before they’re destroyed.”
“I’m . . . not entirely sure that’s what the passage means—”
“Who cares what it means!” Mal ranted. “There is no ‘meaning’ except what we place on it! And the meaning he will construe is to make himself king and take away my power!”
It made sense, really, Brisack considered. What’s the most powerful man i
n the world worried about? Another man becoming more powerful than him. People probably thought that having all power meant a life of security, but it was exactly the opposite. You never know when that security will be compromised. Every man needs something to fight against, or he withers away. Even insanity is better than indifference.
“You see it, don’t you?” Mal nodded at Brisack’s silence.
“I’m beginning to see a few things,” Brisack said vaguely. “So this is what motivates you? The fear of losing your hold on the world?”
Mal scoffed at the obvious and plopped down in his chair with impatient aplomb. “But it’s my world, not Perrin’s. He thinks that prophecy will be fulfilled, and it will be fulfilled—by me! Listen again. ‘Before the Last Day even the aged of my people will strike terror in the deadened hearts of the fiercest soldiers.’ Well, my friend, when Perrin meets his last day that fierce soldier will be terrified, because I will be the aged striking that terror! He won’t even know it was me! Perrin Shin will face his destroyer and whimper like a whipped dog begging for mercy, but he won’t get it. He WILL die, and all of his plans with him, because Nicko Mal is in charge of the world!”
Brisack sat as far back in his chair as possible to avoid the infectious spewing that flowed from Nicko Mal. There comes a moment in a man’s life when he realizes his course is set, his future cast in stone and that there’s no way to escape it, but to hope he can still duck at the right moments.
Right now Brisack was ducking so low he could inspect the wearing down of his boot’s heel.
“I see,” was all he could think to say.
Mal nodded once in satisfaction, his tight face relaxing ever so slightly. “I’m glad that you do. And now you see why anything that touches Shin is just as affected as he is. Including, obviously, his wife!”
Brisack felt his mouth go dry. There was tragedy, and then there was outrage. But they were now somewhere so beyond that he couldn’t even recognize the terrain. When he got back home, he would refocus his own research by observing one very determined, very paranoid, subject.
The doctor was lost in his thoughts for too long.
“Oh, I see what it is,” Mal sneered when he received no response. “You’re still intrigued by her, aren’t you?”
Brisack could only shrug as his mind came back to the darkened room. “Never encountered a woman quite like her,” he admitted as he looked at the letter still in his grip, rereading the one sentence.
Mahrree Shin was remarkable. Remarkable enough for Perrin Shin.
Mal clasped his hands in front of him. “I think you’re failing to see exactly what’s happening here, my good doctor. But Gadiman even noticed this one when he brought me that letter this morning. That letter that you are now ogling as if you were holding Mrs. Shin herself—”
Brisack blushed and set the letter down on his lap guiltily. “She’s only a small voice.”
“As Gadiman pointed out, the most violent of thunderstorms begin as a quiet rumble in the north,” Mal snarled. “The world’s attention must not be drawn to such rumbling, or it may begin to listen. Small things, Doctor, grow larger under the right conditions. We must change the conditions. As long as the world believes the sky is blue, it will disregard signs of approaching storms and even ignore the thunder that skirts the edges of their villages.”
Brisack was already shaking his head. “They can’t ignore every storm, Nicko. Especially the ones hailing down on them!”
“Oh, but that’s the fascinating part, my good doctor: they will. As long as the hail isn’t hitting them, they’ll go on about with their dull lives. Why run for cover when it’s the other village getting wet? The sky is blue above them, and if it’s not, it will be blue again, very soon. We can divert storms, Doctor.”
Brisack remained backed up against his plush armchair, but the cushioning behind him felt hard. “Nicko, you can’t control everything!”
“But I can create the illusion that I do,” Mal smiled thinly. “It’s the perception that matters, not the reality. We make the meanings. People believe what they want to believe, what they’re conditioned to see. Already children are being taught the sky is blue and that anything else in it is a passing anomaly that will quickly vanish and the true blueness of the sky will return once more. King Oren was taught that, as were his sons, by one of my more brilliant colleagues. Had he not died a few weeks after Oren, he’d be sitting in your chair, proving with me that the citizenry of the world is stupid enough to believe that the sky is always blue, the grass is always green, and it’s a lovely Weeding Season every day. Then we can do whatever we want to, and no one notices.”
Brisack sighed, took up the letter again, and clutched it securely. “But Nicko, she was right. My research was flawed. I’ve been thinking about it, and I should go back and look for volunteers—”
“NO!” Mal bellowed. “There’s no ROOM for that! And no room for HER! Not in our world! The Shins will not take my power nor dispute my work! Time to eliminate the anomalies!”
There was no reasoning with that adamancy. Brisack could only keep ducking. His back was beginning to ache. “So what are you planning?”
“A massive storm of our own,” Mal said. “One that I control.”
Brisack shook his head slowly. “Keep this to tragedy, and you can continue it for years. But once it evolves into outrage, people will notice—”
“There are storms brewing everywhere, my good doctor,” Mal said in genial tone.
“What are you talking about?”
“There are rumors that Guarders are infiltrating the villages. So much success recently in the south? Because of inside help.”
“Oh,” Brisack whispered. The next step. He’d likely already taken it. “Are you suggesting—”
“We can’t trust the magistrates and the chiefs of enforcement, my good doctor. One or two of them may be enemies to our world.”
Brisack suppressed a moan. It was too much, too soon. Too tight a hold on the world. Someone else might balk. “But Nicko, the world will not tolerate—”
“The only way to truly secure each village,” Mal continued on with the sturdy determination of an overweight boy laying hold upon every piece of candy in the sweet shop, “is to give the forts complete control over the villages. The few where there are no forts yet, the army will send representatives to help secure their areas.”
The transformation was already taking place. Brisack envisioned a caterpillar growing into a massively repulsive and sticky creature no one expected, with rows of teeth no one anticipated. “But Nicko, electing their local leaders has always been—”
“The people believe they knew who they could trust,” Mal plowed on as if no one else was there except for a few cockroaches scuttling around the shelving, “but soon they’ll see that they can’t. There are spies living among them whose knowledge is so intimate that even entire families could be wiped out with one massive, calculated, Guarder attack in the north.”
Brisack could only swallow.
“And when the Guarders hit with full force—three villages at the same time targeting specific families—the world will realize how dependent they are upon the Army of Idumea and the Administrators who foresaw such a terrible outcome. Only the Administrators, directing the army, can ensure the sky always remains blue.”
“You still have Wiles’s map of Edge, don’t you?” Brisack whispered. “The one marked with Perrin’s house, his mother-in-law, and his great aunt and uncle?” He clenched Mrs. Shin’s letter protectively in his fist.
“I do,” Mal’s smile transformed into a sneer. “As well as a few other maps. Terrible storm on the horizon, one that none of them will see coming, correct Doctor? Because, you see, I know where you and your wife live, too.”
“Are you threatening me?” Brisack breathed.
“No,” Mal chuckled humorlessly. “I wouldn’t do such things. But Gadiman would.”
Brisack closed his eyes and nodded once, his thumb caressing
the letter. He knew this time he couldn’t send a warning to its author, unlike over a year ago. Indeed, now he felt to be in more danger than the Shins.
“Don’t be so worried, my good doctor!” Mal said in a sickly sing-song voice. “If Shin is as skilled a commander as you suppose he is, all will be well in Edge. And if he isn’t, then you’ll have a great deal to analyze about how people deal with extreme grief.”
“But if all of the Shins are dead,” Brisack whispered, his eyes still shut, “who will grieve them?”
The doctor heard the smile in Mal’s voice. “Besides you? Why, the High General and his wife, of course! I’ve always wanted to watch an alpha wolf crumble.”
Brisack’s eyes flashed open.
“I do believe this is one of my most brilliant plans. We’ll be sorting information for years . . .”
---
A week before Peto’s first birthday, on the 84th Day of Planting Season 322, Mahrree went back to Mr. Hegek with her list in hand.
He appreciatively studied it. “This is a bit different than the shortened version they sent to the teachers, Mrs. Shin. I read that thoroughly—”
His tone suggested someone who was hoping to appear as responsible as possible for someone of such small stature burdened by the Administrator of Education to carry the entire weight of the Department of Instruction. Just the titles alone were exhausting.
“—but some of these future changes aren’t in there. I wonder why . . .”
His voice trailed off as he sat behind his desk. He put her paper down on an untidy stack and tapped the list. “Hmmm.”
Mahrree didn’t have to see her notes to know what part he’d reached.
“No need for debating? I can see how it would save time, but still,” he looked up to her, “seems kind of a let-down, doesn’t it?”
Her faith in the little man began to increase.
“I think my favorite debate in school was about who created Nature’s Laws, and why.” Mr. Hegek got a faraway look in his eyes. “True, we got a little silly at times. One of my friends nearly had the class convinced it was our teacher who devised them, and she created the law, ‘All things want to be on the ground’ to keep us in our seats. She said she would’ve rewritten it more forcefully to keep us flat on the ground!” He chuckled at the memory. “But even so, it really got me thinking about forces and who’s in charge.”
A smile grew on his face.
Mahrree felt one reluctantly growing on her face, too. The man wasn’t as bad as she wanted him to be. Despite all her efforts not to, she almost felt some compassion for him.
“You know, Mrs. Shin, these are only guidelines—not mandated, yet. I know they’re trying to be progressive, but for now do you think Captain Shin would have a problem if we continued to allow debates?”
Mahrree was a mixture of relief and confusion. “I think continuing the debates is a wonderful idea, as long as you still cover everything on that test,” irritation snuck into her tone. “And Captain Shin was a great debater himself, but why would his approval be needed?”
The director’s face went from pleased to looking as if he’d accidentally uttered a very nasty word. “It’s only that he’s the authority here and—”
“Captain Shin’s the authority?” Mahrree chuckled. “Mr. Hegek, I thought you were. And the authority for the village is the elected magistrate. Captain Shin merely keeps the Guarders away, and he’s done that quite admirably.”
The director chewed nervously on his lower lip. “I see, Mrs. Shin. Of course.” He sat up and straightened some papers which only disrupted several stacks in front of him. “And I’ve heard about your After School Care program,” he said brightly, changing the subject. “I’m suggesting to the Department of Instruction that they consider implementing similar programs.”
“I already did, many weeks ago,” Mahrree sighed. “I received form letter number two. But maybe you’ll have better luck. I’ve sent two more letters simply to see if anyone bothers to read them. Chances are I’ll only collect more forms. People in Idumea don’t care about the opinions of little women in tiny villages like Edge.”
---
Perrin came home much later than expected that night. Mahrree panicked briefly before remembering that he’d send Shem or another messenger should anything drag him away for an extended time again.
Jaytsy waited impatiently by the door calling for “Fodder!” and Peto dragged his at-home boots around the gathering room in anticipation.
When Perrin did finally come home, he greeted his little ones with a grim expression. “Mahrree,” he called to her in the kitchen where he heard her washing up. “There have been some changes . . .”
“Does it have anything to do with you being the ‘authority’ in Edge?” Mahrree called back casually.
His mouth dropped open. “How did you know?”
“They should have told you before they told the director of schools.” She came out of the kitchen with a plateful of food, grinning.
But he didn’t return it.
That’s when Mahrree felt a cold heaviness in the house. It was if Perrin brought it with him as a wave and it just now hit her, dark and menacing, as she clumsily put his dinner on the table. “Perrin, what’s wrong?”
He sat down at the table and couldn’t seem to get comfortable. “Did you, at all, tell anyone about our discussion the other night?” his voice became very low and terrifyingly serious. “About your theories as to why the Administrators would not want debates? Or why they wrote the documents as they did?”
“Of course not!” Mahrree whispered. She looked around, but wasn’t sure why. She thought briefly about her last letters but couldn’t see how there was anything dangerous in those.
Annoying, possibly. But dangerous?
“Perrin, what’s going on?”
He absent-mindedly picked up Jaytsy who tried to get his attention by blowing on his face. “An edict came this morning from Idumea stating that all villages that don’t yet have a fort will have one built in the next two seasons. I’m supposed to send temporary reinforcements to Moorland immediately. There are eleven forts so far, but each village is now required to have one.”
He paused.
“So . . . ?” Mahrree tried to draw him on, wondering why more forts was so troubling. On the south side of the world there were weekly Guarder incursions and murders of citizens.
He pursed his lips before continuing. “Each fort is to have a commanding officer that will not only supervise the soldiers, but also act as the eyes, ears, and voice of the Administrators.” He looked solemnly at Mahrree to see if she understood.
“Eyes, ears, and voice?” she whimpered, remembering how only last week Perrin said the Administrators didn’t have any eyes or ears in their house.
Maybe, maybe not.
“The local magistrates will now be accountable to the commander of the forts,” he continued tonelessly, “and all legal and criminal issues will be ultimately under the commander’s jurisdiction.”
Each of his words fell like cold buckets of water in the house. Even Jaytsy sat quietly now in his lap, and Peto stopped dragging his father’s boots.
“The commander of the fort will now be, essentially, in charge of the village as well?” Mahrree asked incredulously. She felt like she was beginning to drown.
“In a sense, yes. The magistrate still does his job, so does local law enforcement, but the commander can override their decisions. And if the Administrators demand it—or the commander sees a need—he can take control of any situation to the extent of a complete army takeover,” he said.
Mahrree tried to comprehend the magnitude of that phrase. She wasn’t sure what it meant, except that the issue of debating suddenly seemed trifling.
“And the commander of the fort of Edge . . .” she began, hoping the rest of that sentence would not be, is Captain Shin. It seemed too much authority for a lowly captain.
“Must hold at least the rank of
major.”
“Ah,” Mahrree said, feeling a little bit of breathing room.
With the same heaviness Perrin added, “I’ve been promoted.”
The words seemed to suck the remaining air out of the room.
“Congratulations, Major Shin,” Mahrree choked out. This moment hadn’t come as she expected it. She’d planned it to be accompanied by cake.
After a moment, she asked, “Why?”
Perrin slowly shook his head. “I’m not entirely sure.” He sighed deeply as if he hadn’t breathed properly all day. “It came from the Administrators, not the garrison. The Administrators believe that members of the village may pose future threats. The reason Guarders have so much strength in the south might be because of inside help. Even local authorities in some areas are suspect. Only the commanders in the forts seem to be above suspicion, for now.”
“What’s your father have to say about this?”
“I haven’t heard from him,” said Perrin worriedly. “He’s been inspecting forts. This wasn’t his doing, Mahrree.”
Mahrree felt a chill, followed by a sudden sense of panic. “Perrin, I’ve sent only four letters! No one reads them. I talk only to you! I didn’t cause this,” she gasped. “Is that what you think? Somehow this is my fault?”
Perrin shook his head quickly. “No, no, no, not at all! No one’s going to be concerned with someone like you. You know what I mean,” he said in reply to her hurt look. “The only reason I asked is because that’s precisely the kind of talk I’m supposed to be listening for!” he said in an earnest whisper. “Anything that might suggest anyone is considering opposing the Administrators. I didn’t want it to come back to me that I should start keeping a file on my own wife!”
Isn’t that what she predicted three years ago in that second debate where she shouted at an army captain about the Administrators taking away their freedoms? She’d been right. And back then, she would have gloated.
But tonight?
Tonight that army captain—major—tightly cradled his little girl who played quietly with the shining buttons on his uniform’s sleeve. He didn’t notice her lick them, because his gaze darted around the table in deep, troubled thought.
And tonight, Mahrree didn’t feel any sense of triumphant anger, but instead was absorbed by a sense of dread—a foreboding that told her that what she didn’t understand now she’s wasn’t going like once she did.
“I don’t know what all of this means either,” he said quietly as if he could read her mind. “And now I’m the eyes and ears of the Administrators!” He shook his head at the absurdity of it all.
“And voice,” she reminded him feebly. “Gadiman’s private army? How progressive. I talked to the director of schools,” Mahrree suddenly remembered. “Perrin, Mr. Hegek asked if you’d approve of his allowing debates.”
“What’d you tell him?” He continued to stare at the table while his daughter rubbed his silver buttons with her finger.
“I told him I thought you’d approve, but that I didn’t know why he needed your permission. Oh, but now I do. Will everyone need your permission to do anything?”
He dropped his head into his hands while Jaytsy wriggled off his lap. Other buttons on his jacket needed shining up, and her tongue was out and ready. “I’m praying no. I’m late because the magistrate and the chief of enforcement were in my office all afternoon. Mahrree, it was pathetic—two panicked men, old enough to be my father, trying subtly to find out if I was about to oust them.”
He looked up, exasperation on his face. “I didn’t sign up for this! I want to teach boys how to channel their aggression into something useful. I don’t have all day to assure a nervous magistrate and his furious chief of enforcement that I’m not about to take over their village. And I told them that, repeatedly. Just keep everyone in the village in line, and I’ll keep myself happily to the fort. I hate politics!” he boomed.
“Major Shin!” Mahrree hushed him. “Stop or you’ll have to start a file on yourself!”
She had meant it seriously, but the ridiculousness of it all caught them both by surprise.
Mahrree cracked a smile.
Perrin began to chuckle.
Then he laughed.
Then he shook his head.
Then he pounded his head on the table so that his plate rattled.
Finally Perrin groaned into the table, whether out of pain or aggravation or both, Mahrree wasn’t sure. She didn’t know what to do as she sat helplessly across from him.
But Jaytsy giggled and patted his head. “Fodder funny!”
---
“Tell me the color of the sky today, Dormin,” Rector Yung asked over their late dinner.
The last son of King Oren smiled at the nightly routine that he never grew weary of. “It began as solid black, because of the cloud cover. When the sun rose, the black faded to a dull gray which remained until midday meal. Then the clouds parted, the white sun shone, and sections of the sky were a deep blue. By late afternoon most of the long stretched clouds were gone, replaced instead by big fluffy white ones. At sunset, many of those clouds hovered at the horizon. The sky behind them was a washed-out blue with hints of green, while the sky in the east was so deeply blue it bordered on purple.”
He took a deep breath and plowed on.
“Then the sun dipped behind the clouds, darkening them but blazing all around, like a pillow on fire, but warm and relenting, like mashed potatoes lined with bright white. Then it all faded to pale blue, and is now becoming black again, with white stars beginning to show.”
The rector and his wife beamed at each other.
“He could be an artist, with an eye for color and detail like that,” Mrs. Yung said in approval.
“Certainly not a poet,” the rector commented. “Clouds like burning pillows? Mashed potatoes?”
“I’m tired and hungry!” Dormin declared, digging into his dinner.
The three of them laughed.
“Besides,” Dormin said after he swallowed down a mouthful, “I could never be an artist. I can’t draw a straight line.”
“Oh, Dormin,” Mrs. Yung chuckled, “that’s not a problem. No one wants a straight line in a painting. You see very well now, more than you ever did.”
“I must confess, once I quit assuming I already knew the truth, the truth was much easier to recognize.”
“With a mind like that, you could do about anything, Dormin,” the rector said.
“You keep saying that,” he bobbed his head. “But I still think you have too much faith in me.”
“Well, someone has to,” Mrs. Yung said, sliding him the basket of biscuits. She nodded once to her husband.
He nodded back. “Dormin, did you hear what happened today? About the fort commanders?”
“How could I not!” Dormin took three biscuits. “Everyone was talking about it while we were clearing out the debris from the collapsed bridge. Even the soldiers redirecting carts were surprised by the change. And everyone has a different theory of what it means.” After a moment he asked, “What does it mean?”
“We’re not entirely sure ourselves,” the rector admitted. “I was actually hoping you might have an insight or two.”
Dormin shook his head. “Sorry. I was clueless during my years in Idumea. I never paid attention to the politics of anything.”
Rector Yung exhaled. “Then we should probably anticipate the worst. Mrs. Yung and I discussed it and, Dormin, it’s time to explain a few things to you.”
“All right,” he said, not too concerned as he took a big bite of his biscuit. “You’ve explained so much to me in the past year—” He stopped when he saw the grave expressions on the couple’s faces.
“Dormin,” Rector Yung began quietly, “you’re aware that we know about the so-called servants that your ancestors held, right?”
He nodded slowly.
“Your grandfather Querul the Fourth freed them,” Mrs. Yung reminded him. “Thirty-three of them. T
hen they were moved, by High General Shin. The older one, not the one now.”
Dormin stopped nodding. “I didn’t know that,” he whispered.
“They were moved here, to Winds,” she explained.
Dormin swallowed. “Oh . . . no. Are, are . . . are you two—”
Mrs. Yung shook her head. “No, we’re not their descendants, Dormin.”
He sighed in relief. “For a moment there, I thought—”
“Dormin,” Rector Yung cut him off gently, “they were brought here to Winds and taught by some teachers how to do what everyone else takes for granted. How to buy things at the market, how to earn gold and silver, how to read and write. And they did learn, very well.”
“That’s good,” Dormin said, perplexed as to where this was going.
“Dormin, have you ever wondered where they are now?”
He hadn’t, and he didn’t know what bothered him more: that he didn’t know where they were, or that he’d never given them a second thought. “I . . . didn’t,” he admitted.
Mrs. Yung leaned toward him, her blonde locks streaked with gray falling onto her face. Seasons ago Dormin decided she was what his grandmothers would have looked like—the ones who, had they lived, would’ve snuck him sweets and read him stories when he was a child.
“Dormin,” she said intently, “would you like to know?”
Chapter 10 ~ “I know who you are--really are--and why you’re here in Edge.”