The Falcon in the Barn (Book 4 Forest at the Edge series) (12 page)

Jaytsy squirmed in her chair. “Uh, I really
didn’t have a question about broccoli, except to wonder why people
eat it.”

To her relief, both Briters laughed. She
joined in a moment later, not used to the sound.

Sewzi Briter squeezed her hand. “Well, you
come on over and chat about any vegetable you want, at any time.
Ah, how I miss the garden on nights like this!”

“
I know,” Jaytsy said
wistfully. “I never realized how fun it is to dig through the dirt
finding potatoes, and realizing that just as you thought you were
done, there’s another one hiding from you. Or pulling the corn from
the stalks and banging them against my knee to see how many bugs
fall out. Or the taste of a green bean, straight off the vine! I
can’t believe I spent almost sixteen years of my life never knowing
the wonders of plants—” She stopped, suddenly realizing she’d been
rambling, and blushed at the Briters.

But they just beamed back at her. “Oh, how I
understand you, Miss Jaytsy,” Sewzi said. “You truly have brown
fingers!”

Jaytsy refrained from examining her stubby
nails as she had several moons ago the first time Mrs. Briter told
her that. She was now a proficient enough gardener to know that
“brown fingers” was a compliment.

Cambozola Briter elbowed his wife. “Now why
didn’t we have a child like her?”

Sewzi playfully slapped her husband.

“
I mean it,” Cambozola
exclaimed. “But at least our son gets to be with
his love
all year long.”

“
His love?” Jaytsy
asked.

Cambozola leaned over. “Cattle. The boy’s
obsessed with them. Oddest young man you’d ever meet.”

Jaytsy giggled and Sewzi swatted her husband
again. “Don’t listen to him, Jaytsy. He thinks our Deckett is a
little crazy just because he appreciates cattle.”

“
Oh Sewzi,
I
appreciate
cattle,” Cambozola said, his face becoming vibrant,
and Jaytsy knew it would be another one of his overly energetic and
lively discussions.

No wonder he made Perrin Shin nervous.

“
But our Deckett? Sewzi, if
he just
appreciated
cattle, that would be one thing. But
what Deckett does . . .” and he made his eyes as big as the moons
and fluttered his eyelashes.

Jaytsy covered her laugh with her hand and
Sewzi smacked him yet again, this time a bit harder. “Cambo, now,
stop! Jaytsy, our son is a very smart, thoughtful young man. This
is just what they do,” she glared at her husband. “In Mountseen
they
study
cattle to improve production. Or something.
That’s what a university is for, Cambo.” To Jaytsy she whispered,
“They never would have let Mr. Briter in. They have
standards
, you know.”

He scoffed over Jaytsy’s giggles. “I already
know cows! But what those professors have those boys doing . . .
Miss Jaytsy, they do talking and treats and music and massages—it’s
only a matter of time before those cows agree to marry those
boys.”

Jaytsy laughed, easily and lightly, as Sewzi
scooched her chair away from her husband.

“
Oh, honestly, Cambo. It’s
nothing like that, Jaytsy. Deckett’s always had a very good sense
for cattle, that’s all. Someday he’ll come visit us,” she promised,
“and I’ll introduce you to him.” Her eyes lit up with too much
planning.

Jaytsy blushed. “Yes, well, we’ll see,” she
said, worried that Deckett may be as loud and engaging as
Cambozola. She liked the man, but in small doses. To keep from
saying anything else, she sipped the marvelous vegetable broth and
felt a warm Weeding Day slide down to her belly.

Over her mug, Jaytsy noticed Mrs. Briter
watching her closely. “Bad day?”

Jaytsy shrugged. “Avoiding a certain
captain.”

“
Ah,” Sewzi said. “The same
one who frequently scoured our fields in Weeding Season looking for
you? Rides a gray horse?”

“
The same,” Jaytsy sighed.
“Was I relieved when the tomatoes grew tall enough to hide
me.”

Cambozola smiled mischievously. “So . . . not
too interested in soldiers, then?”

“
I don’t know who I’ll be
interested in,” Jaytsy said honestly and sipped more broth as Sewzi
smacked her husband once more.

“
Hush, you! Don’t you go
scaring off my best weeder.”

Jaytsy grinned. “Would take a lot more than
that to scare me off. This place . . . it’s like Paradise.”

Sewzi squeezed her arm. “It’s Paradise when
you come to visit us. I hope your father doesn’t mind?”

“
I convinced him moons ago
that you aren’t really Guarders in disguise,” she assured
them.

“
How’d you do that?”
Cambozola wanted to know.

Jaytsy squirmed. “Actually, he came to that
conclusion himself. He said that
you
were—” she hesitated as
she looked into the hopeful eyes of Mr. Briter, “—too loud and
obvious to be a Guarder. Sorry.”

His wife burst out laughing as Cambozola’s
face twisted in dismay. “Too loud?! Obvious? Me!”

Jaytsy shrugged in apology. “You make him
nervous. You could take that as a compliment?”

Cambozola’s dismay dissolved into despair as
he watched his wife laughing.

“
I make
him
nervous?!”

Sewzi wiped away a tear. “See? It wasn’t just
people in Moorland! Ah, Jaytsy,” she said, “you come here whenever
you want, on the pretense of sorting seeds—”

“
But we already did that,”
Jaytsy reminded her.

Sewzi blinked meaningfully. “My husband makes
me nervous, and I drop the baskets. Frequently.”

“
Hey!” he protested, but
Jaytsy grinned in understanding.

“
What about your brother?
Does he have a place to go?” Sewzi asked.

“
To hide, you mean?” Jaytsy
said with a sad scoff. “Yes, he does. I never thought my mother
would agree to let him play kickball, but when my father handed him
the slips of silver, there wasn’t much she could say.”

“
Kickball?” Cambozola
frowned. “Still? In the snow?”

“
My parents don’t know the
season ended several weeks ago. Peto kept leaving each afternoon
anyway, and I followed him once. Turns out he was helping Rector
Yung with the peach harvest, and he still sneaks over there almost
every day.”

Cambozola sat back and smiled. “So that’s why
Yung said he didn’t need help with his woodpile when I offered.
Said he had reliable assistance.”

Sewzi sighed. “You children are remarkable.
Someday, your parents will notice again.”

Jaytsy blushed. “Thank you, but I don’t know
. . .”

“
Don’t talk like that!”
Sewzi squeezed her again. “I saw your father at the taxation
collection. He was actually smiling.”

“
And laughing,” Cambozola
added. “I’m sure that was him, sounding like deep
bells?”

Jaytsy nodded and stared at her mug. “He was
so close to being better, back in Harvest,” she murmured. “This
stupid season, these stupid snows, the stupid gray sky.” She
sniffed.

Cambozola cleared his throat. “So they always
run that Strongest Soldier Race, he and Zenos?”

Jaytsy knew why he brought that up: to make
her smile. She obliged him. “Usually they hold it later in the
season, but Shem thought it’d be a good idea to hold it with the
taxation gathering. Everyone had to bring their donations to the
village green that day anyway—”

“—
So why not turn it into a
village party?” he chuckled. “Your grandmother makes excellent
cake, and I’ve never seen so many different kinds of cookies. And
that Hegek— Did you see the sign he put on the basket of apples he
donated from the old school orchards? ‘Iris, accept these apples as
a token from the schools of Edge. And those little black things in
the middle? Seeds. Try planting some and see what happens.’”
Cambozola laughed, and Jaytsy and Sewzi chuckled with
him.

“
Yeah, that race,” he
continued, grinning, “Karna sure looked sheepish when they finally
finished it. He ran those poor men fifteen miles through the
village, and still your father had a smile on his face when he
lumbered in a minute behind Zenos.”

“
He
was
smiling,”
Jaytsy remembered wistfully. “And then he kissed my mother, in
front of everyone. Grandmother Peto started bawling,” she murmured.
“I started to as well. To see him again running and laughing
and—”

Next to her, Sewzi sniffed and dabbed at her
eyes. “He seems like a very good man when he’s not . . .
troubled.”

“
A few more moons. That’s
all he needed. But then the sky became dark again, and . . .”
Jaytsy rubbed the handle of her mug.

Cambozola, uncomfortable that the two females
seated with him were sniffling, said, “So Karna was responsible for
all those soldiers as well?”

“
The fifty he brought as
additional guards for the caravan? Yes, he didn’t want any threat
to the twenty-five wagons. And after they left the village green,
Captain Rigoff took over command.”

Cambozola chuckled darkly. “I’m sure Captain
Thorne wasn’t too pleased by that.”

Jaytsy smiled genuinely. “From the reports we
got back later, he was furious! Here he’d made that droning speech
all about service and duty—”

“
The only reason people
cheered him,” Cambozola told her, “was that he had finally shut up
and was leaving!”

Jaytsy grinned. “I hadn’t realized that so
many in Edge don’t like him much either. Nothing was better than
knowing I wouldn’t have to avoid him for two weeks while he was
taking the caravan to Idumea. But then Rigoff insisted he was in
command, since he’d lived in Edge at the time we used the surplus,
and he did outrank Thorne, so Thorne was relegated to the end of
the line to watch for lame horses.”

“
Edgers hate him,”
Cambozola confided. “Thorne tried a few times to ‘motivate’
villagers to meet the donation quotas, but couldn’t understand why
no one responded to his name-dropping and threats. Edgers did,
however, react whenever Zenos and Yung came around with their
little cheer parties. Those two were so enthusiastic and convincing
that even I donated one of my better milkers, and I didn’t even eat
any of the food from Idumea!”

Sewzi shook her head. “You never liked that
cow, and you know it. She hated you too, and sending her to Idumea
was the best thing for everyone involved.”

Jaytsy giggled.

“
It’s good to hear you
laugh, Miss Jaytsy. You need to have some fun,” Cambozola decided.
“What about those dances they hold down in the south side
of—”

The frantic head shaking of his wife shut him
up, for once.

Jaytsy sighed. “Mr. Briter, my parents won’t
let me attend. From what I hear they’re nothing like the dances in
Idumea. There’s just loud drums with teenagers and soldiers
bouncing into each other.”

Cambozola scowled. “No, not like the dances I
knew in Sands.”

“
Besides,” his wife said
quietly, “Jaytsy told me her dance instructor in Idumea was a
Guarder who later came back and . . .”

Her husband caught on. “That’s right. Heard
about that. Sorry. Nothing good at the amphitheater either,
anymore. Not unless you like strange contests, or plays where
everyone ends up either dead or mating or both—”

“
Cambo!” Sewzi
exclaimed.

Jaytsy smiled dimly. “It’s all right. My
parents feel the same way.”

“
So Game Day not that
exciting either?” he probed.

Jaytsy rolled her eyes at him. “Mr. Hegek
started it up again, and playing with eleven-year-old girls
obsessed with puppies isn’t exactly my idea of an interesting
evening.”

The Briters nodded in grim agreement.

“
But visiting us is? My,
Miss Jaytsy—I wished I had something more interesting. Wait,” he
brightened up. “Did you know I played the harmonica?”

“
Cambo, please—no!” his
wife pleaded.

Jaytsy grinned. “Really,
this
is
wonderful.”

“
Poor girl,” he sighed.
“Don’t know what you’re missing.”

She spent the next hour with the Briters
talking about nothing and everything. When she left she felt as if
she’d been bathed in sunshine. The Briters walked her home, and she
impulsively hugged them both before she went into the house.

“
Thank you,” she whispered,
hoping they understood that she was grateful for more than just the
escort home.

Mr. Briter only cleared his throat, but Mrs.
Briter squeezed her back. “Anytime, Jaytsy. You know that.
Anytime.”

---

Peto snipped the leaves with the tiny
scissors and looked up to see if he’d done it right.

Rector Yung beamed at him. “Perfect,
Peto!”

Peto shrugged. “But it looks like a miniature
tree.”

The old man chuckled. “Well, that’s the point
now, isn’t it?” He slid a box over to him.

Peto took out a dried piece of peach and
examined the shriveled but tasty fruit. “Still can’t believe we got
only twenty peaches from that entire orchard.”

Yung smiled. “Actually, I was quite impressed
we got an entire twenty peaches from that orchard.”

“
Yeah, but all that
work!”

“
You say that as if we did
more than just an hour of tree trimming each day for a week.” Yung
nibbled on a peach ring.

Peto bobbed his head back and forth. “Well,
true . . . but I still hoped for a better harvest.”

“
The orchard had been
neglected for a decade, Peto. A harvest of even just one peach is
better than nothing at all.”