The Falcon in the Barn (Book 4 Forest at the Edge series) (100 page)

One thing was for sure: as a history teacher,
she’d been terribly inaccurate.

Eventually she whispered, “I never wanted to
leave this house. My father helped build it. My husband added to
it. Our children were born here. Every good memory is in this
house.”

The woman answered just as softly. “And you
take every good memory with you. Your life isn’t the house. Your
life is your family. Your parents are gone, but you carry them with
you, wherever you go. Things don’t matter. People do.”

“
Ask yourselves, honestly,
Mr. and Mrs. Shin—what do you have to keep you here?” her husband
said. “Things? Familiarity? Now consider this—what do you have to
gain by leaving? What kind of future could your children have? Mr.
Shin, you seem to be interested in explorers. Come on the greatest
exploration of all! Come find a new life!”

Mahrree smiled dimly. “We were just planning
to find Terryp’s ruins.”

“
Mrs. Shin,” he grinned,
“we can give you a fully guided tour of Terryp’s ruins. We send
tour groups there every year.”

Mahrree didn’t know how much more she could
take that night.

“
Please consider what we’ve
said,” the woman said. “I assure you what we have in Salem is what
you’ve always looked for. We know about your family and have for
years. We have what you have been looking for. It’s time to
come
home.
”

Mahrree felt those last words more deeply
than anything ever before. She was powerfully aware of the sudden
presence of her father, and her mother as well, sitting on either
side of her. They filled her with the same message:
It’s time to
go home!

The emotion overwhelmed her, and to avoid
anyone seeing her eyes brimming, she glanced blurrily around the
walls of her home and the rocks she loved so much. She focused on a
favorite smooth, flat rock her father had placed and replaced.
Tonight it looked different.

It was just a rock.

She shifted her gaze at her husband. His head
was down, his fingers interlaced. She wished he’d look up and show
her what he was thinking. But then she knew. As intensely as she
felt Cephas and Hycymum, she also felt Relf and Joriana on either
side of him.

At last he took a deep breath and released
it, then raised his head and gave her a new expression.

They were going to Salem.

Chapter 38
~
“My name is Shem Zenos. And . . .”

S
hem entered the
dark barn as slowly as he had approached it. While the trip to
Deck’s place usually took only a few minutes, Shem wasn’t about to
take any chances, not at this point of the plan.

He’d circled the area for an hour under cover
of a very dark night. Not even the cows seemed to hear his
footsteps. He stepped into the middle of the barn, slowly removed
the bag from his shoulder, and placed it on the ground. Carefully
he lit the small candle he brought and looked around.

“
Perrin?”

Shem knew he was there, even though he didn’t
respond. Thicker than the scent of manure was the tension that
filled the barn. This wasn’t going to be easy.

“
Can I just start by
saying, this wasn’t how it was going to be? It was supposed to be
me telling you, and I’ve had speeches and thoughts prepared for
years.” Shem sighed sadly. “I can’t imagine what you think of me.
And let me add that I completely understand if you’re feeling a bit
paranoid right now—”

“
Who are you? Honestly,”
the cold voice interrupted him from somewhere above.

He looked up to the rafters and cleared his
throat. “My name is Shem Zenos. I was born in Salem. My mother died
when I was two. I have a father and a sister that is ten years
older than me. And . . .”

He hesitated. When you’re used to expressing
one form of truth, finally admitting the real one tends to catch in
your throat.

But he’d been waiting for seventeen years to
do this.

“
She’s not my only sister.
My father waded through five more daughters before he finally got
his son. I do have two nieces, as I’ve told you,
and
twenty-nine more nieces and nephews, not counting Jaytsy and Peto,
and many great-nieces and nephews. The count changes every season.
I really did have more experience watching your children when they
were young than you did.”

“
Keep going,” the voice
said grimly.

Shem nodded. It felt wrong to be confessing,
especially this way, but it was only fair that he experience the
same vulnerability as his best friend.

“
I . . . I . . . I’ve never
been to Flax or Waves,” he began his ramble. “I took those names
off the map in your office the first day I met you. The first time
I rode south was when I was trying to catch up to you on the way to
Idumea. Remember that Guarder spy in the forest the first year that
I was feeding and getting information from? Well, there was no spy.
I was just trying to find a way to earn your confidence and find
excuses to come to your home. I was inexperienced and clumsy back
then and made a lot of mistakes—”

Which he felt he was doing again, but there
was no sense in holding back anymore.

“
I was initially supposed
to stay only two years to learn about you and to discover if we
could work around you. But I found more in Edge than I expected.”
He took an earnest step forward. “Perrin, I was never dishonest in
my feelings toward you or your family. Yours is my second family,
and I’ve never done anything to jeopardize you.”

Perrin’s tone could have frozen a fire.
“Anything else?”

“
I . . . I have some
records in this bag that—”

“
Anything else . . .
personal?
”

Shem looked up and around, trying to find the
location of the voice. He saw a glint of steel in the faint light
cast off by his candle.

“
Personal. All right. The
truth of everything. That’s what I’m here to give you.” He’d meant
to follow that up with a tense chuckle, but it stuck in his throat.
After a nervous cough he said, “Here we go. Well, Perrin, you
always make me nervous when you hold that knife of yours, because
no one ever seems to survive an encounter with your blades. I never
cheated in the Strongest Soldier races, but I was tempted. I had a
big crush on Mahrree when I was twenty-one, but I got over that
when I realized it could never be. I once tried on your jacket when
you were a lieutenant colonel. I loved sitting in your big chair
and practicing your ‘Come in!’ voice when you were away. Fooled
Thorne with it on more than one occasion. And, Perrin, I swore I’d
never tell you this, but you really should know. I’ve kept this in
confidence for quite a while, but . . .” He took a deep breath.
“Perrin, I find the way you say ‘No, no, no’ irritating. One ‘no’
is sufficient. Really. Why three times? I never understood
that.”

Then he braced for the impact.

A dark chuckle came from behind the glint of
steel. “You really had a crush on her?”

“
Most miserable weeks of my
life,” Shem sighed heavily. “Knew I had to try to get over it the
night of that Guarder attack when she thought I was unconscious and
held my hand, called me her
little brother
, and told me the
story of how she fell in love with you. I knew then it’d
always
be you.”

The rafters were silent.

Shem fought the desire to clench his fist in
defense. Whatever would come, he would take.

“
How did my jacket look on
you?”

“
Quite handsome,” Shem
dared a small smile. “Should’ve been mine.”

Silence.

“
I say ‘no’ three times
because I want to make sure people hear it.”

Shem scoffed in a way he hoped sounded
good-natured. “You really think people don’t hear you? Once really
is enough.”

“
You’re being
completely
honest
with me tonight?”

Shem knew this was going to be a rough ride.
He’d always pictured some scenario where he’d be sitting in the
Shins’ gathering room and would say something like, “About those
Guarders—there are a
few
things you don’t know . . .” He was
going to relish the look of absolute astonishment on each of the
Shins’ faces once he told them, after all these years . . .

But in his mind the grand disclosure never
involved dark barns or his best friend holding a long knife, with
Shem as the target.

“
Perrin, I think confessing
to someone that I had feelings for his wife is about as honest as
one man can be with another.”

A body dropped out of the rafters right in
front of Shem. All he saw was the flash of steel as its cold tip
pressed into his throat, and a strong arm wrapped around his torso,
restricting his arms.

The candle in Shem’s hand snuffed out. He
sucked in his breath at the touch of the blade, but he didn’t take
a defensive stance. Instead, he remained at the mercy of
Perrin.

“
So tell me this,” Perrin’s
voice was low and harsh, “was I the biggest fool in the entire army
that you could march hundreds of people past my fort without my
notice!?”

“
You were never a fool,
Perrin,” the steadiness of his voice surprised Shem. Almost as much
as the knife. “Quite the opposite. You were the only one we could
trust. The Creator placed you there so you could be the means of
saving
thousands
of people. Perrin, just put the knife away
please. I promise I’ll tell you everything.”

“
I went to Edge because I
chose to, not because I was sent there.” Perrin’s tone was thick
with paranoia.

“
You told me once you felt
drawn to Edge,” Shem reminded him. “Why do you think that
is?”

When Perrin didn’t answer, Shem said, “The
Creator put that desire in you, and you listened to Him. As you
should.”

“
Hogal wanted me to come
back. He kept writing me—” Perrin gasped as a new idea came to him.
“Shem, your contact told me that the rectors in the world were from
Salem! Was Hogal—”

“
No, he wasn’t. We had only
two or three from Salem at the time of Hogal. But Perrin, Hogal
knew about us.”

Perrin pulled the knife back a little. “Are
you sure?”

Shem nodded before he realized Perrin
wouldn’t be able to see him in the dark. “Just a few days before
that first Guarder raid he took me to his office after the Holy Day
luncheon. He said, ‘I know who you are, and why you’re in
Edge.’”

“
Maybe he thought you were
a Guarder?”

“
No, Perrin. Because then
he said, ‘I’ve done all I could to prepare Perrin for the
Creator.’”

“
Prepare me?” Perrin’s tone
was now doubtful and confused, with a healthy dose of
cynicism.

Shem knew it was going to be a long night,
and the knife still hovering near his throat wasn’t helping things.
“He told me the Creator had revealed to him who you were to
become,” he explained. “That was back when you were still a
teenager. So he invited you to Edge and said that you grew a great
deal in that time.”

“
I came to Edge for Weeding
Season when I was eighteen,” Perrin murmured. “Hogal changed the
way I thought about everything. He fixed everything in me, too,” he
added. “He and Tabbit always wanted me to come back, so I did when
I was a captain.”

“
The Creator has all kinds
of ways of nudging people in the right directions,” Shem said
gently, sensing that Perrin’s cynicism was fading. “Hogal told me
he thoroughly enjoyed the last few years he had with you, but he
was getting too old to keep up anymore. He told me to watch out for
you, and that you were now my responsibility.”

Perrin was quiet before saying, “Hogal
knew
he’d be dying?”

“
Yes, I’m sure he did.
Rather a lot for a twenty-one year old to hear, I have to admit.”
Shem chuckled sadly. “Remember, I was struggling with that crush on
Mahrree at the time, too. I think I just stared at him for a full
minute before he slapped me on the back, waggled those eyebrows of
his, and wished me good luck.”

Behind him, Shem felt Perrin scoff
lightly.

“
Ah, Hogal! He told Mahrree
and me to keep you close. We thought it was because he liked you.
Sometimes I think I learned so much from him, but I suppose he kept
far more from me than I realized. I’m beginning to realize
everyone
has been keeping things from me. I may have to
interrogate Mahrree later just to see what she knows that I
don’t.”

Shem didn’t say a word and didn’t move a
muscle, but stood as
sedately
as he could.

“
She was in the forest,
many years ago,” Perrin said. “Met Yung’s wife. Did you know
that?”

Shem swallowed. “Actually, I did.”

“
Figures,” Perrin scoffed
again. “I’ve been thinking; those two lieutenants who were found
dead in front of the guest quarters where my parents were staying
after that Guarder raid? Tell me the truth—they didn’t die fighting
each other all those years ago, did they?”

Shem looked down at his guilty hands as if he
could see them in the dark. “No, they didn’t. They were about to
kill your parents. I knew it wasn’t their time to go, so I . . . I
redirected their hands. The lieutenants killed themselves, with my
guidance.”

Perrin let out a low whistle. “We suspected
you.”

“
I know you did. Your
father’s interrogation is rather hard to forget. And it made me
sick to do it.”