The Falcon in the Barn (Book 4 Forest at the Edge series) (43 page)

“
Sergeant Major Giggles,”
Perrin muttered.

Shem shook his head. “Doesn’t have the same
ring to it. Sorry.”

---

The kitten stayed through the night, somehow
wobbling its way out of Jaytsy’s room, struggling up the stairs,
wandering into Mahrree and Perrin’s bedroom, and climbing the
blankets up the mountain-like span to reach Perrin’s chest where it
exhaustedly curled up in the middle of the night and purred
loudly.

Mahrree didn’t hear it over her husband’s
snoring, but she
did
hear him bellow, “What is THIS?”

She sat up, alarmed and confused, until she
heard the purring. Trying not to laugh, she explained, “It’s a baby
animal that feels you can protect it.”

“
Get it off me,
Mahrree!”

She scooped it up. “It really is a sweet
little thing.”

“
It’s a cat!”

“
Just give it a chance, you
giant falcon.”

Perrin growled.

The cat mewed back.

In the morning it followed him everywhere.
Perrin almost put an end to the entire issue when the kitten
climbed onto the sofa just as he was about to sit down on it.

“
Stop!” cried Peto, pulling
his father away.

The two of them turned to see the tiny black
and white face meow up at them.

“
You nearly crushed it!”
Peto scooped up the kitten.

“
Yes. That would have been
a problem,” Perrin sighed.

When he came home for dinner the tiny cat was
still there. It hobbled up to him and began to climb his
trousers.

“
Get it off!” he yelled,
shaking his leg.

Mahrree extracted the kitten from his knee.
“Honestly. How can a grown man be so afraid of a tiny kitten?”

“
Afraid? That’s what you
think I am? Afraid!”

“
Yes! Give me another
reason why you run in terror from it.”

“
I don’t run.”

“
Well, you
shout!”

“
That’s
ridiculous!”

“
You’re shouting
now!”

“
So are you! Give it to
me.”

Mahrree clutched the kitten to her chest.
“What will you do?”

“
Prove you wrong,” he
beckoned. “Hand it over.”

“
Don’t hurt it!”

“
I won’t hurt it. Just hand
it over.”

Reluctantly, Mahrree gave him the kitten.
Perrin held it up to his face. It mewed in a manner that sounded
like a whimper of fear.

Perrin stared into its tiny eyes.

It stared back, then looked down at the
height at which it was dangling. It flailed in fright, so Perrin
cradled it in his other hand, and the thing began to purr.

“
Why does it do that?” he
asked, bewildered.

Mahrree’s mouth twitched. “Because it likes
you. I can’t imagine why, but it does.”

He evaluated the creature.

It didn’t resemble a Thorne—captain or
general—in any way. It was just a tiny, helpless animal. With
needle-like claws. And it made annoying sounds, although
quietly.

Still, those claws were unreasonably sharp,
snagging the wool on his uniform.

Still yet again, it was just a baby.

“
Hm,” he said eventually.
“Fine. It can stay.”

He handed it back to Mahrree who kissed him
gleefully.

“
But it doesn’t need a
name!”

Chapter 17
~
“He’s gone fishing, Thorne! He returns
tomorrow!”

I
n Idumea it was
impossible to not hear the news. Everyone was yelling it in the
Administrative Headquarters and at the garrison a few miles away.
And soon, everyone in the great city was shouting, “Did you hear
what happened in Moorland?”

Chairman Nicko Mal was sure the large sealed
folder that the messenger from Quake rushed to him late in the
afternoon was supposed to be confidential. But as the corporal
shouted through the vast halls of the Administrators’ Headquarters
it was apparent no one had told him that. “The commanders in the
north have killed all the Guarders in Moorland! The Guarders are
gone!”

His fellow messenger was also just as naively
vocal as he rode shouting through the garrison to deliver his copy
of the report from Major Fadh to High General Cush.

Mal heard later that there was a crowd of
officers and soldiers waiting impatiently outside the High
General’s door. Mal believed it, because when he finally opened his
office door—after staring dazedly for many minutes at Fadh’s
report—he was met by Administrators, assistants, workers, and
citizens who happened to be in the building. They clogged the hall
like starved mutts waiting for a bone.

The Chairman had to publically rejoice for
the wild success of the army and the increased safety of his
people.

But Nicko felt as if he’d been punched in the
gut.

He couldn’t quite catch his breath for the
better part of an hour, and desperately wished Dr. Brisack would
return a day early from his “fishing trip” to tell him what to
think about this unprecedented failure.

Success.

Whatever.

In the meantime, the world sat panting at his
door.

Once he finally opened it, he knew there was
only one possible response. “Citizens of Idumea and the
world—rejoice! A most remarkable thing has happened in the north .
. .”

---

“
But it’s a disaster!”
Qayin Thorne snarled at him hours later.

Nick massaged his temples, having seen others
do it and wondering what it was supposed to accomplish. His office
at the Administrative Headquarters had grown dark with the evening,
but he’d lit only two candles hoping the dim light would calm the
pounding in his head. Next he’d need to find a way to slow the
erratic beating of his heart.

“
Do you realize that?” The
general leaned over his desk.

Mal slowly looked up at him with a glare that
could have crumbled a boulder. “You really don’t think I don’t know
the severity of the situation, Thorne? Dead—267. Missing and
presumed dead—more than 40. Men we’ve been training for years, new
recruits we brought on for the onslaught of Edge using Brisack’s
mixture—you think I don’t realize the scale of the problem?
Hmm?
”

Thorne stood back up and straightened his
jacket. “So what are you going to do?” and he added a respectful,
“Sir.”

“
I’m waiting for Brisack,”
Mal told him, abandoning the useless head rubbing. Instead he took
a deep breath and blew it out of his mouth. Brisack had told him to
breathe slowly in instances like this, but there was no easing of
the stabbing pain growing in his chest and radiating down his arm.
At home he had some of that brew of the doctor’s, but he should
have kept some in his office.

“
Brisack will have a better
report. We had around 330 men, from our best estimates. That’s what
he was to discover, too: a full count. Along with doing other
things,” he added in a whisper.

Qayin rolled his eyes impatiently. “Mal, you
have to face the fact that Dr. Brisack
is dead
. One of those
267, probably blown apart by his own brilliant explosion,” he added
with disgusted head shaking. “He’s gone.”

“
He wouldn’t dare,” Mal
said stoically. “He alone knew the entire formula, but was going to
train some men up there in it. Many would know it now. According to
the sizes of the blasts described by Fadh, the good doctor got the
formula right.” Mal tried massaging his hands while his eyes darted
all over his desk as if in search of something he knew he’d never
find. “Exploding key sections of Edge can
still
happen, mark
my words. When Brisack returns tomorrow, he’ll bring me the
details—oh yes, he will—and we’ll begin again. I have complete
faith in him. You shouldn’t doubt him, Qayin.”

General Thorne leaned across the desk,
forcing an uncharacteristically timid Mal to look into his eyes.
“Chairman, it’s not that I doubt the Administrator of Family Life.
It’s just that I doubt that he’s
still alive
.”

Mal slammed his fist on the desk. “He’s gone
fishing, Thorne! He returns tomorrow!”

“
Just like Gadiman?” Thorne
pressed.

Something caught in Mal’s throat, making it
impossible for him to respond. That is, if he knew
how
to
respond.

“
Gadiman’s been missing for
a year now,” Thorne pointed out, and Mal was startled to realize it
had been so long— “and are you
still
expecting they’ll find
him in his office under all those crates? You know, he has a few
loyal assistants who have been collecting more names and
information that could feed your so-called studies, but you’ve been
too obsessed with one colonel in the north to notice. Yet
interestingly, all of your preoccupation with Shin hasn’t resulted
in his demise, but our own!” Thorne leaned in so close that Mal
couldn’t back out of his spitting range. “Are you
sure
you
really know what you’re doing with all of this, Nicko? Or is it
time for some new leadership?”

There’s only so many stabs in so many
sensitive places that one man can allow. Mal snapped. “General, I
am
thinking of some new leadership, in place of YOU! Get
out, before I strip you of command—
all of them
!”

General Thorne stood up, deliberately slowly,
and cocked his head. “Ask yourself this:
How
did the
northern forts know about what was going on in Moorland? Who tipped
them off? I believe you’re losing control of the world, Chairman.
Gadiman’s long dead—it’s obvious. Get over it because someone,
somewhere, knows about your secrets and is talking, maybe even to
Shin himself.”

“
Not Zenos the Quiet Man,”
Mal insisted. “He didn’t know about this.”

Thorne shrugged. “You need a new
Administrator of Loyalty with a heavy fist to pound the truth out
of a few people. Unfortunately I’m already overloaded with work or
I’d volunteer for the job. Then again,” Thorne said with such
smugness that it should have been a crime, “if you keep letting
things slide, maybe I’ll just take over your positions—
all of
them
.”

Mal didn’t rub his aching chest until Thorne
had slammed the door behind him.

“
Slag, I hate that man. Why
couldn’t
he
have been in Moorland?”

---

The Cat, as the tiny creature that invaded
the Shin household was immediately
not
named, followed
Perrin everywhere. It was supposed to be Jaytsy’s, but as soon as
Perrin appeared The Cat ran to him and climbed up his leg to perch
on his shoulder, digging into Perrin’s flesh with his—Shem
identified the gender—tiny claws that left needle-like gashes.
Every night in bed Perrin found himself pulling the kitten off his
chest. He tried once leaving it out of the room and closing the
door, but its constant high-pitched meowing disturbed him more than
its purring.

And in a way, Perrin admitted on the fourth
night, the purring did have a rather calming quality about it.

And the kitten purred only for him. And it
was needy.

And he was in charge of seeing to the needs
of those in the village . . .

In the end it took only a week for the kitten
to conquer the colonel. The world was completely upside down,
Perrin realized, because he now willingly owned a cat.

---

There were two chairs in a dark office of an
unlit building, but only one man. A week had passed since the
report arrived about the incident in Moorland, and still that chair
remained empty.

Nicko Mal stared dully at it. In his hand was
a note from Mrs. Brisack, begging to know if the Chairman had heard
anything from her husband.

Mal tapped his fingers on the armrest.

He leaned forward aggressively.

He sat back worriedly.

Then he crumpled the message and dropped it
on the floor on top of Major Fadh’s report.

Dr. Brisack was never late for a meeting
before. The world was completely upside down now.

And Nicko needed two new Administrators.

---

Perrin becoming a cat owner wasn’t the only
unusual thing that happened in the next few weeks. Two new
Administrators were named in an announcement that was delivered
first to the fort, then the next day to the public in general.

Mahrree and Perrin read and reread the
contents of the message, trying to find hidden meanings between the
lines.

“
Doesn’t seem right,”
Mahrree said on her fourth time through it. “Gadiman’s been ill for
over a year? And only
now
they’ve decided to replace
him?”

“
I don’t think he was ever
‘ill’,” Perrin told her quietly. “I suspect he’s dead. He wasn’t at
my hearing, and I wonder if anyone had seen him since. I asked
Thorne about it once. He said he hadn’t seen Gadiman the last two
times he was in Idumea, and usually he met with him as a formality
during Command School.”

“
Thorne would meet with
Gadiman?” Mahrree asked, immediately suspicious. “That doesn’t seem
right, either.”

“
That’s what I thought, but
he wouldn’t say anything more about it, nor did I want to continue
the conversation any longer than necessary. But
Brisack
—that’s even more mysterious.”

“
Presumed missing in a
fishing trip,” Mahrree reread the words. “He never told us he was
coming, did he?”