The Falcon in the Barn (Book 4 Forest at the Edge series) (26 page)

The soldier on duty at the large oak doors
saluted before opening one. Lemuel almost smirked at the motion,
enjoying that the soldier was a decade older than him, yet was his
servant.

But the smirk died before it ever surfaced,
because standing in the foy-yay of the Grand Hall of the mansion
was General Thorne, waiting with his arms folded.

Lemuel hadn’t expected him. Surely there
would have been something for him to be doing at the garrison at
dinner time, then he should have traveled to his own stately home
several blocks away.

Lemuel immediately came to attention, as he
had learned to do when he was three years old.

Qayin Thorne nodded once. “Captain, you’re
late.”

Lemuel swallowed and said, “Yes, sir. There
were problems with some wagons above Pools. Seems a shipment was
stolen so the wagons were scattered and burning, creating a
delay.”

“
Did you stop to render
assistance?”

“
No, sir. I knew reaching
here at an acceptable hour was the priority. I told the driver to
go through the fields around the accident.”

“
Well done. I—” Qayin was
interrupted by a blur of a woman.

“
Lemuel!” Versula Cush came
running from the dining hall, her arms out to embrace her son. “I
thought I heard your voice!”

But he remained at attention. “Mother.”

Versula stopped suddenly, noticing the
unexpected presence of her husband. Still, she bravely stepped up
to her stiff son and hugged him anyway. “So glad to see you arrived
safely! A year is far too long.” Her eyes grew wide as she examined
him. “My goodness, what happened to your jaw? That’s a nasty
bruise—”

“
Tripped and fell,” was all
Lemuel responded.

Versula was a woman who knew about bruises
that one didn’t want to explain. “You must be hungry. Dinner’s just
about—”

“
Enough!” Qayin barked.
“We’re not finished here.”

Versula firmed her stance. “I just want to
feed my boy—”

“
He’s not a boy, Versula!”
Qayin reminded sharply. “Hasn’t been a ‘boy’ for many years, if his
bragging is to be believed.”

Versula flushed red and only glanced in the
direction of her son.

“
He’s an officer first.
Remember that. Being ‘your boy’ is so far down the list it doesn’t
even make the page. We’ll come eat when we’re ready.
Understood?”

Versula nodded submissively and sent her son
a quick look.

He understood it.
Just do whatever you
have to.

Without another word, she scurried back to
the dining hall where her mother was giving orders to the maids
about the seating arrangements.

Qayin cocked his head toward the study and
started for it, and his son dutifully fell in behind him. Qayin
threw open the door and promptly went to sit behind the grand desk
that was the High General’s, but apparently the Advising General
felt comfortable to take over whenever he felt the need.

Lemuel paused for the slightest of moments
before following. He’d been in that room a few times before,
tagging along with his grandfather when he went to visit Relf Shin.
The office had changed in the last year since the Cushes took over
. Gone were the sweeping red drapes that covered the tall windows.
Instead, dull planks of wood served as shutters on the inside,
rather than the outside.

Missing, too, was the large portrait of Pere
Shin. Lemuel was surprised at his disappointment of that. As a boy
he watched Pere’s eyes when he visited the mansion, feeling as if
Pere could see right through him. The portly man, while large and
threatening, also seemed to have a bit of mischievousness about
him, as if he held secrets. Maybe Cush moved the painting to the
Command School.

Qayin Thorne would have moved it to a rubbish
heap.

“
Sit,” Qayin ordered,
pointing to a plain wooden chair.

Lemuel sat between the cushioned and
forbidden chairs on either side of him.

“
Your biweekly reports have
been thorough, but you’ve left out some key information. I suspect
you did so to maintain discretion about certain people and
activities?” Qayin’s question was more of a restatement of what his
son should have already understood.

Lemuel was used to the questioning. It began
when he was four. “Yes, sir. I was as forthcoming as I could be,
sir.”

Qayin frowned at the vague response. “What
have you learned from Master Sergeant Zenos?”

Lemuel hadn’t expected that to be the first
item of business. He blinked and hesitated, even though he knew it
would annoy the general. “Uh, I’ve learned a few things from him.
What, sir, specifically do you wish me to learn? He just an
enlisted man.”

Qayin rolled his eyes. “
Just an enlisted
man
. . . how dense is this captain?” he muttered loudly. “What
have you learned?”

“
Uh . . . scheduling.
Training of new recruits. Uh . . .”

“
UH?” Qayin bellowed. “What
kind of response is that, soldier? I knew you were unprepared for
this assignment. I told them you wouldn’t be ready, but they
thought you could pick things up on your own.”

Lemuel couldn’t help himself. “Who, sir?”

Qayin ignored him, as he frequently did. His
son existed only when he was convenient. “Without the proper
training, what can he do?” Thorne lectured the desk. “He wasn’t
graduated early for intelligence, but because we needed an inside
man!”

This was the first time Lemuel had heard any
of this, and it smacked him with confidence-shattering force.
Before he could start to work out what all of what his father
meant, he realized General Thorne was staring at him.

“
Tell me, Captain: what
does Zenos do
besides
his duty?”

Lemuel frowned, not knowing.

“
Does he hang around the
taverns?” Qayin barked.

“
No, sir.”

“
Does he spend his free
time with a variety of women?”

“
No, sir.”

“
Then what
does
he
do?”

Suddenly Lemuel understood. “He spends all of
his free time with the Shin family, sir. He’s Colonel Shin’s best
friend, sir.”

Qayin held up a finger. “Exactly. And
why?”

It was then that Lemuel realized he had
wasted an entire year, and that horrible insight left his empty
stomach queasy. His father had told him he should be learning from
Zenos, but he had expected lessons and private discussions—

Now Zenos was making him look stupid.

He hated Zenos.

“
He acts as their best
friend so that he is closer to Colonel Shin,” Lemuel confessed
miserably.

Qayin nodded. “He’s Perrin’s confidante. I
recognized that last year. No other soldier would dare use Shin’s
first name in a public setting as he did. He attacked his
commanding officer, yet they left the garrison the next day as if
they were brothers. Zenos has been very careful to plant a most
extensive and deep root system, growing ever more closer to Shin.
When the time is right—and it will be sooner rather than later if I
have my way—Zenos will be able to uproot Shin in a most devastating
manner.”

Lemuel swallowed hard, understanding only
about half of what was said, but he’d never admit that.

“
And you, son—” it was only
on rare occasions that Qayin called him ‘son’—“will be by his side
when he does so. You need to be involved, and then I can involve
you in
many more things
. Do better, Captain.”

“
Yes, sir.” He made to get
up, but his father’s head tilting told him to sit back
down.

“
Now, about a certain young
lady whose affections you are to secure . . . have you done
so?”

A bead of sweat broke out on his brow. “Not
yet, sir. She’s still a bit immature.”

Qayin’s lip curled. “Why should maturity
matter?”

Lemuel had worried about this line of
questioning. “She’s not interested in courting yet, sir. I have,
however, made it clear that I’m always near, always watching, and
always present. Just as you instructed, I’m a veritable mountain
lion.”

Qayin’s jaw shifted. “You’ve been there
nearly a year. It didn’t take me that long to convince your
mother.”

Lemuel looked down at his hands and felt his
stomach wrench as it had the night Jaytsy demonstrated her ability
to kick with shocking accuracy.

“
Did you do
everything
I instructed?”

And there was the question he’d been
dreading. “I tried to, sir.”

“
Tried
to?”

Lemuel just nodded. “She, uh . . . wasn’t
receptive.”

Qayin sat back. “Then you did it wrong. Or
rather, didn’t do it at all!”

“
No, sir,” Lemuel
whispered.

“
Again, you need to do MUCH
better.”

I need to avoid her kicks
, he thought
bitterly to himself. But to his father, he said, “I will, sir.”

“
Learn from Zenos; be as
close to Shin as he is. Find your own way into his mind. Then when
Perrin admires you, he’ll persuade his daughter to accept
you.”

When Lemuel couldn’t think of any response,
Qayin sighed in annoyance. “You know why I have only one son,
right?”

Lemuel knew. He’d been told many times.

“
So that I could pour all
of my efforts into one select child. But I’ve come to the
conclusion that was the wrong approach. Your mother had begged to
have a second child, but I thought the competition would have been
bad for you. But I should’ve had a second son in case my first son
disappointed me, as he is right now.”

Lemuel knew he shouldn’t mention the
possibility that the second child could have been a girl. A female
hadn’t been sired by a Thorne for three generations. A daughter
would have been too great a disappointment, if it had the nerve to
show up.

Qayin stared at his son, who sat immobile.
Finally he said, “Go. Your grandparents will be expecting to eat
soon, and if you keep Cush waiting, he’ll get his revenge by eating
everything.”

It wasn’t a joke. Qayin didn’t believe in
those.

Lemuel stood up, saluted his father, and
headed out of the study.

His mother caught up to him before he reached
the washing room, and she pulled him aside into a recessed
doorway.

“
So good to see you!” she
said with a practiced smile. She got right to business. “Your
father was right about one thing,” she said as she wiped some road
dust from his silver buttons as a pretext for their secret
conversation.

Lemuel knew she’d been listening in. She
always was.

“
If her father admires you,
Jaytsy will feel obligated to accept you.”

Something dark opened up in Lemuel’s gut, and
he saw a flash of anguish in his mother’s eyes. He realized then
how she came to marry his father: obligation.

“
Also realize,” Versula
continued to fuss over her son, “that with a father like Perrin,
Jaytsy doesn’t wear two faces.” She gently fingered his bruise
which she wouldn’t ask twice about. “Now, go wash off the rest of
that road dust. You know Grandmother doesn’t like filth at her
table.” She turned to float elegantly back to the dining
hall.

Lemuel continued to the large washing room,
turning his mother’s words over in his head.

She doesn’t wear two faces.

As he ran his hands under the piping hot
water that Idumea’s springs generated, pouring out from the ornate
gold-plated spigot, he wondered: Didn’t everyone wear two
faces?

He scrubbed his face and couldn’t remember
the first time his mother instructed him how to find his second
one. But he knew, since he was very little, that the tears he shed
when his father beat him had to disappear before Lemuel left the
house.

“
Put on your second face,
Lemuel. The strong one,” she’d tell him.

His anger had to be tempered. “Second face,
son,” she’d remind as he left for school. “The proud one.”

And when he went to Command School
Preparatory Courses, where, if his grades weren’t perfect, his
father expressed his fury with his belt, he remembered himself.
“The defiant face, Lemuel.”

He’d made the shift so often that his second
face—the public one—automatically appeared since he was eight.

His mother perfected it as well. At home he
saw her pleading whenever Qayin dragged her upstairs. But she’d
come back later with a calm façade despite the redness in her eyes
and the bruises on her arms. In public she was sophisticated and
superior. But at home, Lemuel saw the anguish she revealed only
briefly as she had a moment ago. Living with a husband whose fury
and beatings made him seem more of an animal than a man had taught
Versula how to come across as even more than a woman. She was the
envy of all the other officers’ wives. Lemuel had heard them
gossiping about Versula Thorne, never suspecting that what they
admired was her second, perfect face.

Qayin Thorne, however, was the master—of his
family, of the army, and of the second face. He could be outright
charming and pleasant when it served him. Lemuel hadn’t quite
figured out how his father did it, but he would, eventually. It was
crucial to his own future success.

As Lemuel dried his face and hands with the
scented thick clothes, he remembered how his mother had said
“Perrin.” The fervor of her voice sounded like longing, and he
wondered why Perrin didn’t require his family to have two faces.
They could’ve used two faces last year, but strangely, they didn’t.
Their exhaustion, frustration, and even fear had been evident.
Lemuel was experienced in recognizing what was lurking in a
person’s eyes, despite what the rest of the face said. The Shins
had tried to hide some of it, but not effectively, as if they
really didn’t know how.