“Mahrree?” he called hesitantly.
There was no sound from the surprisingly quiet house.
He took a deep breath and shoved open the door the rest of the way. The sound of chairs tumbling to the ground behind it made him cringe.
On the floor he saw what had jammed the door: one of his work shirts was wedged in the gap. He worked it free and dared to examine the rest of the room.
“Oh, boy,” he groaned. “Or rather, boys.”
He took a step, felt something give way and crumble under his boot, and immediately chose not to look down. He had done that last week, and regretted it.
“Not that I don’t appreciate the effort,” he muttered as he picked his way through the mess, “but it really is a small house—”
Giggles stopped his forward progress. He froze in place to identify the sound.
“Now girls?”
The giggles floated to him again, from the kitchen.
He exhaled. “It’s about time!” He plowed through the rest of the gathering room, past the eating table that was buried under too many things for him to identify, and opened the door to the kitchen.
It was bursting with females.
Mahrree was just about to open her mouth to say something when she saw her husband. “Oh, is it that time already?”
“Yes,” he said slowly, looking at the two teenage girls who stared back at him uncertainly.
“Perrin, you remember Sareen and Teeria? They were my students when we first met.”
“I do,” he lied, but smiled at them anyway. “Don’t tell me they need watching after school, too?”
Sareen, holding Peto, giggled.
That’s right, Perrin thought to himself. The Giggler. The other must be The Smart One. There was a third one, The Hair Tosser, but she’s gone to some other village to spend a few seasons with her grandmother.
“No, Captain Shin,” Teeria rolled her eyes and she wiped Jaytsy’s runny nose. “We’re here to clean up and start dinner for Mrs. Shin.”
“You were right,” Mahrree sighed. “I do need help in the afternoons. So I hired me some.”
He looked around the empty kitchen devoid of any smells suggesting dinner. “Ah. And they’ve done an excellent job, too.”
Mahrree gently slapped his arm. “You’re such a tease. I haven’t seen the girls in many moons so we’re catching up first.”
“Understood,” he said, pulling up a chair and sitting down.
Sareen’s giggle strangled in her throat.
Jaytsy slid down out of Teeria’s tense arms and climbed up on her father’s lap.
“Oh, don’t mind me,” Perrin said cheerily to the shocked girls as he cuddled Jaytsy. “Since I have a daughter, I need to learn how women talk. Besides, after spending all day around only soldiers—”
Sareen got a dreamy look in her eyes, and Teeria actually sighed longingly. Mahrree looked at her former students with amused concern.
Perrin blinked a few times. “—I need something to entertain me until dinner’s ready.”
“I was going to start on that,” Mahrree promised him. “The girls will get to work on the gathering room. It’s not too bad, is it?”
Perrin’s eyebrows went up. “Ever see any twisters up here in Weeding Season?”
Mahrree chuckled and shook her head. “Too close to the mountains, I guess.”
“Well, I’ve seen the aftermath, north of Orchards,” he told her. “And in our gathering room, ten twisters touched down, didn’t they?”
“Only nine,” Mahrree told him. “Poe was ill today. Not that his mother was too happy about having to miss a day at the Edge of Idumea Estates to care for her son,” she said in a pinched tone. “She wanted to leave him here in our bedroom.”
“No Poe today?” Perrin nodded. “That explains why the ceiling was still relatively clean.”
“That wasn’t Poe’s fault last week!” Mahrree laughed. “That was Shem’s. I’m not taking any more of his ideas.”
“Just mine?” he grinned.
“I’m wondering if I should listen to you anymore now. Having the boys act out Terryp’s Large Man Who Holds Up the World? They tried to hold up everything, unsuccessfully.”
Perrin chuckled. “But they went home happy?”
“Very!” Mahrree beamed. “And guess what? All of them passed the Department of Instruction exam.”
“Well done, Mrs. Shin!” Perrin beamed back. “Told you they’d need only half an hour of instruction each day.”
“And then two hours of destruction?”
Teeria looked at her former teacher with alarm. “You spend only half an hour tutoring them? I thought they were here for two and a half hours!”