“Ma’am! Major Shin here?” said one of the corporals breathlessly. In the alley Mahrree saw a third soldier arrive on horseback with an additional saddled horse ready for her husband.
“I’m right here!” Perrin announced as he hurried through the door, his sword ready at his side. “News?”
“Something moving in the forest, sir!” the soldier told him, and Perrin jogged out the door without a word to Mahrree.
Jaytsy toddled into the kitchen, her long tunic bed clothes nearly tripping her as she rushed after Perrin, but the door was already closed. Disappointed, and with her wild brown hair in disarray, she said, “Where Fodder go?”
Mahrree waved half-heartedly and unnoticed at the windows as Perrin rode off in a puff of dust. “Had to go to the fort early, Jayts. Something’s come up.”
“What?”
“I don’t know.” Mahrree smiled at her. “I rarely do. Guess it’s only you, me, and Peto for pancakes.”
“Only you and me, Mudder,” Jaytsy said. “Peto sleeping. He can’t eat. He’s messy wif pancakes.”
Mahrree chuckled. “Your brother gets to eat too, Little Lady! Even pancakes.”
“No, just keep the pancakes a secret. Give him apples.”
“Jaytsy, we don’t keep secrets from your brother.”
“Why not?” Jaytsy asked, her big Perrin-brown eyes looking up at her, truly wondering.
“Why we don’t keep secrets? Because . . . it’s not nice.”
“Why?”
Mahrree sighed. “That really was an inadequate answer, wasn’t it?”
Jaytsy nodded soberly as if she understood what ‘inadequate’ meant.
“Because people deserve to know. Because even if we don’t like watching Peto eat, with his mouth all open and syrup dribbling down his chin, he gets breakfast too, even if you don’t think he deserves it—”
Mahrree stopped, a variety of ideas flashing in her mind too quickly for her to keep up with them all. “Even though you think he doesn’t deserve to know the truth, he does,” she said slowly, trying to put all her thoughts in some kind of order as if they were more obedient than her children and the dog. “Every person needs to know the truth of everything.”
Jaytsy just blinked at her.
But Mahrree was looking past her. “And it’s up to us to find out that truth. We can’t expect someone to give it to us, we have to go out to find it. Even take risks to find it, if necessary. No . . . no, that’s it exactly! The truth brings great responsibility because it takes great risk to actually find it! Few people dare to take those risks, but there’s no great reward without great struggle. Oh, Jaytsy.” She looked out the wavy window at the large dark smudge that was the forest and mountains.
A plan was forming in her mind.
A most ridiculous, incredible, and brave plan.
And the timing was absolutely perfect.
“We have to find the truth ourselves!”
Jaytsy blinked again and shrugged. “So I hide Peto’s pancakes. If he finds them he eats them?”
---
All day long Mahrree felt like a rebellious child sneaking out of school, but she tried to convince herself there was nothing wrong with what she was going to do. Yes, her plan was daring and risky, but it was also completely legal and didn’t break any rules of the Army, the citizenry, or the village.
So why was her stomach in constant knots, and why did she keep feeling the need to relieve herself in the washing room every fifteen minutes?
At midday meal she boldly walked up to the fort, her children in the wagon that she pulled, merely to see what was going on. She stopped about a hundred and fifty paces away from the tree line and gazed at the action across the barren strip of land. Extra soldiers patrolled along the forest’s edge, but the movement back and forth from the fort to the trees wasn’t frantic. While there wasn’t a direct threat, something unusual was happening, that was for sure.
She heard a familiar voice. “Mrs. Shin!”
“Zadda!” Jaytsy called back, and Peto began to squirm in his seat to get out.
Staff Sergeant Gizzada always meant that two little children would be given sweets from a hidden pocket in his uniform. If they noticed the lint stuck to the morsels, they didn’t care.
Sergeant Gizzada started patting himself down as he approached Mahrree. Every disappointing pocket in his blue uniform etched a deeper line of apology in the large man’s face. He pulled out bits of papers, a long knife, lengths of string, and finally eyed an unusual bulge in his jacket pocket that he didn’t retrieve because he couldn’t immediately identify it. Worried, he bit his lip.