“This is a wonderful pillow!” Sareen giggled as she sniffed it.
Mahrree looked away, unable to watch anymore. She took her cloak from off the hook by the front door and put it on. “Well, Sareen . . . Sareen?”
Her face was buried in the pillow, and Mahrree thought she may have heard a kissing noise come from it. Sareen’s head popped up, flushed with embarrassment.
“I’m not sure how long I’ll be gone,”—and Mahrree worried briefly about in what condition the pillow would be when she came back home, “—so keep the doors locked, and if you hear something at the back door, it’s likely Barker.”
“He’s not here?” Sareen appreciated the smelly beast even less than Mahrree.
“Yes, his daytime wanderings have turned into nighttime ones as well.”
“Well, with all the female dogs in the neighborhood,” Sareen giggled.
Mahrree groaned. “Most of the neighbors don’t mind his presence. They seem to think his size means he’s actually a guard dog. But that litter of puppies down the road?” She shuddered, and so did Sareen. “Tragic.”
“Maybe as they get bigger they won’t look so much like drowned rabbits,” she offered in a giggle.
“I hope so. We promised to help find homes for half of them. Anyway, just leave Barker outside. He won’t mind. And don’t open the doors, whatever you do. If it’s me or Major Shin, you’ll know us by our secret knock.”
Sareen nodded soberly. “And if the major returns before you, I’ll tell him that your mother is ill.”
“Yes, please do,” Mahrree smiled. Her lie would be better coming from Sareen anyway. “Feel free to read anything in the study, and Sareen, thank you again.”
She hugged the pillow close to her chest. “No, thank you!”
---
If she were a more honest woman, she would be feeling more guilty about telling Sareen a lie so that she could find out the truth.
“Yes, Perrin—I know,” Mahrree muttered in resigned annoyance as she walked as quietly as possible down the darkened road. “Sometimes lies are necessary.”
She glanced up at the tower as she passed it, purposely waving to the guards so that they knew she was a villager and not something worse. She couldn’t tell if they noticed her, but the towers remained dark and bannerless. Even with the activity in the forest, no warning banners had gone up anywhere in the village. Only those with farms adjoining the barren strip of land left before the forest knew anything was happening, and even then it looked more like a full exercise rather than a possible threat.
Mahrree headed east, away from the body of the soldiers that were in the west. Should anyone see her she could say that she was on her way to her mother’s, but she had put up her hood hoping no one would recognize her.
The roads were quiet, as they usually were for this time of night. She didn’t feel her stomach knot until she had passed the turn off for going to her mother’s. Now she really did feel like a teenager skipping out on school, sure that at any moment she was about to get caught. But she wasn’t doing anything wrong, not breaking any rules, and she was even doing Sareen a favor, who was undoubtedly hugging Shem’s pillow with a passion no one should be around to witness. Everything was just fine.
So why did she feel so dreadful?
“I need to stop the secrets and find out the truth,” she whispered to herself. “Just to know that at least I tried! I’m the brave wife of the major, after all.”
She cut between two houses without fences and headed north towards the darkness. Passing the last road on the rings that surrounded Edge, she made her way across a farm and slipped between the still-standing dried corn stalks. The cold wind coming down from the mountains rustled the crinkly leaves, making a surprisingly loud and disquieting noise. She picked up her pace to get through the corn field as quickly as possible. Seeing the end of the row, she ran to reach it, stopping only once she was several paces beyond the stalks. Then she paused and oriented herself.
She was gripped with a sudden panic that nearly dropped her to her knees. To her left, further to the west than she anticipated, was the fort, brightly lit with torches to illuminate the activity. And directly in front of her, across the canal, was the forest. She took several deep breaths, creating little clouds in front of her, and calmed her pounding heart.
Still doing nothing wrong, she reminded herself. Still legal. Still safe. She took a few steps back to conceal herself in the rows of corn stalks and watched the perimeter of the forest.
The soldiers rode so silently she was impressed, but of course, they’d been trained to do that. Even the horses’ bridles and saddles were muffled with bits of rabbit fur so as to not rattle or jingle. The soldiers rode in twos, threes, fours, and occasionally as a lone soldier along the border.