The Falcon in the Barn (Book 4 Forest at the Edge series) (98 page)

“
Dear Creator!” was all
Mahrree could whisper as the words she forced herself to forget
reformed themselves clearly in her mind. She’d almost forgotten
that a day would come for her.

And now . . . ?

Mahrree gasped. “She was one of you!”

“
Mahrree?” Perrin asked
sharply, “What’s this all about?”

How could she tell him about the time she was
a naïve 31-year-old who thought her husband and father-in-law were
cowards? That she ran straight into a Guarder and shrank away from
the truth? That she found their massive black dog Barker bounding
through the forest, most likely acting as the distraction that had
frustrated her husband and the fort all day long.

The kneeling woman somehow knew it all. “It
means, Mr. Shin, that your wife is ready to hear the truth. And
whatever it is, and
wherever
it is, she’ll accept it.”

“
I will,” Mahrree breathed.
“But this is still all so unbelievable.”

“
Tell me a truth,” Perrin
demanded, his squint becoming cynical.

The visitor nodded. “Gladly. So well has your
Administrators poisoned your minds against us that rarely has
anyone set foot on your mountains beyond the forest. We know. We
watch. We always have. We were always ready to welcome your people.
But the lies were so readily accepted that no truth could enter
your imaginations.” She leaned closer to Mahrree. “We’re a simple
people who have a beautiful life. We’re not violent. We don’t raid
your lands, and we never have.” She turned to Perrin before she
dropped the next sentence. “Your own people do that.”

“
Possible,” he conceded.
“We’ve suspected for years that Guarders were living among us.
Riplak. Kuman. Maybe even old Wiles. But I imagine it’s more
widespread than I suspected.”

The woman nodded grimly. “It is. The Guarders
have always been a secret group, but secret among your own
citizens. An army needs an enemy, correct? The kings knew it, and
so do the Administrators. If you don’t have an enemy to fight, you
begin to fight among yourselves. I believe you’ve seen that in the
past year, ever since you eliminated the Guarders in Moorland.”

Perrin let out a low whistle. “Yes, yes we
have. With the land grab. You say the Administrators know? Who? How
many?”

“
Unsure,” she shook her
head. “If we knew we could have much more success in exposing them.
But we suspect at the top it’s a very small number. Maybe just a
couple.”

“
Maybe just Nicko Mal?”
Perrin said darkly.

The woman shrugged. “None of our people have
been able to get close enough to him to know, but that’s what we
believe.”

Perrin nodded, his jaw working in
thought.

“
But,” Mahrree said, trying
to organize the onslaught of information that was overwhelming her,
“You said
you
watch us from the forests?”

“
Yes, we have for years,”
she smiled again. “And not just from the forests. We live among you
too. We’ve always sent scouts. Some spend just a few seasons, some
a few years. We watch and help as we can.”

“
Who do you send?” Mahrree
asked, still in disbelief.

The woman beamed. “You met one just recently.
Mrs. Braxhicks, the midwife? She came to your daughter a few weeks
ago.”

“
She—, Why—, Yes—” She
remembered: Mrs. Braxhicks knew how to check the color of the
sky.

“
We have a midwife in every
village and even in Idumea now,” the woman explained. “We started
over twenty years ago. Some of our midwives have gotten themselves
in trouble by being too vocal, but we’ve never lost one yet. We’re
trying now to undo the Administrators’ damage. Mrs. Braxhicks is
hoping to convince them to change some things in their new
handbook. We have much better ways. And, I don’t know if you
noticed, there are very few of your women who want to be midwives.
Your people have so few babies now.”

“
I liked her,” Mahrree
considered. “She seemed to know what she was doing.”

“
She does. She has twelve
children herself.”

“
Twelve!” Mahrree
gasped.

“
And she’s delivered
hundreds more. Edge needs someone like her.
Your daughter
needs her. That’s why she’s here.”

Before Mahrree could question how the woman
knew about their daughter, Perrin fidgeted. “Who else has Salem
supplied?”

Mahrree heard the growing paranoia in his
voice. She was feeling a bit paranoid herself.

“
Idumea and the world no
longer have much use for midwives, and they also have little use
for rectors,” she told him. “So for the past few years, all rectors
have come from Salem as well.”

Perrin sat up with a small yet irritated
smile. “Did you have a little old rector . . .” he snapped his
fingers trying to remember the name.

The woman laughed lightly. “Are you thinking
of one who several seasons ago caused a ‘little disturbance’ in the
traffic of Edge? Before your attack on Moorland? Rector Chame?”

“
Yes!” Perrin slapped his
leg. “He’s yours?”

She nodded. “And he was mortified by it. When
he returned he told us all about it, and how it was all worth it
because he got to meet you. He’s still quite remorseful. Perhaps
you could let him know that you forgive him?”

Perrin nodded, the tension in his face easing
briefly. “He said he had known about me for years. I couldn’t
figure out what that meant.”

“
We
have
known about
you for years. We’ve watched you from the forests.”

“
So, is Rector Yung . . .?”
Mahrree began.

She nodded again. “One of us as well, yes. He
returned to us, with several other rectors, right after Mr. Shin
resigned and the Administrators said they were no longer
needed.”

“
Unbelievable!” Perrin
whispered.

“
And Mrs. Shin? That night
I just spoke of?” the woman said gently. “The woman you met in the
forest was his wife.”

Mahrree covered her mouth with her hand, but
Perrin jerked in surprise.

“
Mahrree? You? In the
forest?”

“
That was Mrs. Yung?”
Mahrree asked the woman, unable to face her husband just yet. “She
was . . . she was . . .”

“
One of our best scouts,
especially in the trees,” the woman explained. “She passed away
peacefully some years ago, in her sleep. But that night many years
ago she wrote down the words she spoke to you, so that we could
tell you them when the time was right.”

Perrin held his hands out, his patience gone.
“MAHREE?!”

She gulped.

His expression was dreadful.

“
I’ll tell you later. I
promise.” She turned back to their visitor who, strangely, seemed
safer for the moment. “Why are you all here?”

“
To bring home those who
should be with us, to Salem,” the woman explained. “There are many
in the world who feel disaffected by it. It no longer reflects
their beliefs or hopes. They’re alone and lost, and looking for
something more. The Creator plants in all of us a seed of hope.
Some people let it die. Some deliberately crush it. Some let others
destroy it. But there are those who protect it and help it grow.
They know something more is out there and they look for it. Does
this sound familiar to you?”

It was so familiar it was if she were reading
their minds.

Perrin cleared his throat roughly, forgetting
for the moment about his wife’s unexplained visit to the forest.
“Yes,” his voice cracked.

Mahrree nodded, tears trickling down her face
which she brushed away. She thought of Guide Hierum again, pleading
with the first families to not reject the society the Creator had
established for them. So often she had read his last words, uttered
just before he was killed by the six men who formed Idumea, that
she could hear them in her head again.

But instead of feeling sorrow for a lost way
of living, she felt . . .

“
We have what you’re
looking for in Salem,” the woman promised. “We follow The Writings.
We allow people to think, to grow, and to explore. We even allow
them to disagree and debate! But mostly we are of one mind and one
heart. We live after the way the Creator established the first five
hundred families. We even teach our children to notice the true
color of the sky.”

Mahrree knew what she was feeling: hope. For
the first time in weeks—
years
—hope.

“
Everyone has a place
there. Perrin Shin, Mahrree Shin—there is room for you as well. And
for your children.”

“
It’d be so
convenient
to believe you,” Perrin said, his voice still
shaky. “But also so difficult. This could be an elaborate hoax. I
gullibly surrender to you, and then what? I get turned over to the
Guarders, who you still may very well be. Perhaps they’ve sent you
here to take me so they can have revenge for what I did to
Moorland.
He
certainly looks like one of them!”

“
He? He who?” Mahrree
looked around quickly.

A large dark man emerged from a shadow next
to the front door.

Mahrree whimpered.

“
Please don’t be alarmed,”
he said in a deep voice.

“
I . . . I walked right
past . . .”

“
Yes, you did,” he chuckled
softly.

“
That’s why she’d never
make a good officer,” Perrin said dully. “She misses
things.”

Mahrree saw Perrin’s long knife in the man’s
hand, his arms crossed.

He unfolded them. “Would it make it easier to
believe me if I was no longer holding this?” He held up the
knife.

Until he passed in front of her on his way to
the table, Mahrree didn’t realize how massive the man was. He
seemed to blend into the shadows, making him appear to be part of
everything and everywhere. She tried to stifle another whimper.

The man stopped and looked at her kindly. His
dark face was far more pleasant than she expected. “You don’t need
to fear me. If I really wanted to kill you, I could have done it a
while ago. Besides, I never kill anyone unless I have to. I usually
try only to give people something to remember me by.” He turned to
Perrin. “I always thought that was excellent advice.”

He noiselessly pulled out the drawer next to
Perrin, whose mouth was hanging open.

The man placed the knife in and closed the
drawer.

“
Perrin,” Mahrree
whispered, “how did he know where . . .”

The man turned so that he could look at both
of them.

“
You’re right. I do look
like a Guarder. That’s because Guarders try to look like
us
.
They’ve copied our dress, our mannerisms, even our ability to
negotiate the forest. Not as successfully, though,” he added with a
satisfied smile. “They have no originality or creativity. They
steal everything, from your goods and security, to our techniques.
There have always been
two
groups in the forest, Colonel.
But you never saw us. You saw Guarders, but not Salemites. Well,
except for one more.”

Perrin let out a low breath, his shoulders
sagging.

“
Something to remember
me by
,” he whispered, shaking his head. “I’m so dense.” He
turned his gaze from the man and looked at Mahrree. He raised one
eyebrow at her and twitched his nose.

Mahrree would have returned a signal, and
perhaps she was, but she didn’t know what the meaning was
associated with a mouth agape. She did manage to nod slowly. They
said it together.

“
Shem Zenos!”

The man nodded and smiled hesitantly.

His wife spoke up. “I didn’t mislead you when
I said there was no Shem Zenos with us, Mr. Shin. He isn’t ‘with
us’ right
now
. But he did tell us how to enter your home and
where to find the knife, some time ago.”

Perrin stared hard at the dark woman’s
husband. “Where is he? I want to talk to him,
now!
”

“
I don’t know,” the man
confessed. “He missed our meeting last night. The first time it’s
happened in a very long time. Thorne must have a very tight hold on
him right now.”

“
You know about Thorne?”
Mahrree asked, slightly dazed, still trying to process what she was
hearing.

“
I know everything, Mrs.
Shin. Whatever Shem knows, I know.” He turned to Perrin.
“Everything. You can trust me.”

Perrin sat back and folded his arms, probably
feeling just as exposed as Mahrree did right then.

Mahrree shook her head. “So when Shem went on
leave . . . he didn’t go to Flax—”

The man chuckled. “The first time he ever
went
near
Idumea was when he was chasing the colonel almost
three years ago.”

“
You know about that?”
Mahrree asked in amazement. “Oh wait, you know everything.” She put
her hands to her head to rub her temples, as if that might put all
that she heard in some kind of order.

Perrin stared at the large man, trying to
understand just what all of this meant.

Shem Zenos
was
a Guarder, in a way.
Both Perrin and Mahrree had suspected that once, a long time
ago.

But he wasn’t really a Guarder, but a
Salemite
.

Mahrree could see in Perrin’s face exactly
what she was thinking.

Shem Zenos had lied to them. For years.

They called him brother. He watched their
children. He helped when the family was ill or injured. He ate with
them. Laughed with them. Cried with them. He slept in their home.
He rescued them. He knew
everything
about them, more
intimately than any other man.