“He wrote, ‘Captain Shin, a dozen will be awaiting in the shadows to assist in the care of your wife and daughter.’”
Mal pondered that while Gadiman puffed and bounced from one foot to another.
“Don’t you get it? He told Shin! About the twelve men you’re going to send!”
Mal nodded slowly. “I could tell that he couldn’t let this happen. He knows he can’t stop it, but thinks he can send a warning.”
“So can I bring him in for questioning?!”
“No! Of course not! What has he done wrong, as an administrator? Nothing. I can handle him—if there’s anything to handle. Shin may understand the warning, but he won’t know when, or how, or what. In fact, it will make him all the more edgy.” His smile sucked all the warmth out of the room. “Indeed, Brisack just made this more intriguing. How will a paranoid man behave if he knows that an attack is imminent, but doesn’t know when? Oh, how I wished I had eyes in Edge right now! Hmm. That’s not a bad idea, is it now?” he muttered to himself. “My own set of eyes in Edge . . .”
Gadiman scowled at the Chairman, following only half of what he was saying. “Sir?”
Mal looked up.
“What should be done?! Shin will know!”
Mal’s smile frosted the windows. “He’s been warned there are twelve. That’s why I already sent word that fourteen will be on this mission.”
Chapter 22 ~ “Do I look like I’m about to do something stupid?”
“And so that resolves the concerns about soldiers patrolling along the canal system, but we’re still having some complaints from farmers in the east. It seems that—” Captain Shin’s face began to contort.
Karna started to smile and glanced over to the new staff sergeant and master sergeant who were sitting with him in the forward command office. The master sergeant glanced over at the sand clock on Shin’s bookshelf, nodded in admiration, and winked at the lieutenant.
Shin’s face continued to twist until he could no longer fight it.
He yawned.
The rotund staff sergeant smiled. “Well done, sir! Nearly time for dinner, and that’s your first yawn.”
The three men chuckled as Shin glared good-naturedly at them. “You said you weren’t doing that anymore.”
“There’s so little to entertain us now, Captain,” Karna sighed in feigned sadness. “Quiet forest for over a year, and now that it’s the Raining Season again—well, Guarders hate the snow. Nothing will be happening for at least another moon until Planting begins. We keep ourselves sharp by guessing how much sleep you lose each night.”
“And it’s only going to get worse when that second baby comes, sir,” the gnarled master sergeant drawled. “Why, we can take bets for at least another three seasons!”
Shin smiled reluctantly as the men laughed. “Grandpy Neeks, knowing you there’s a chart somewhere in your quarters. You know how I feel about gambling.”
“No slips of silver—only bragging rights. And being right is better than being rich around here. We all accept that, sir,” he said with a smile in his eyes. “So far, I’m the rightest one around.”
“You always are, Neeks.” Shin couldn’t help but chuckle.
For as long as Perrin knew Neeks, the man had been called Grandpy. His red hair went prematurely gray when he was twenty, and he had a naturally weather-beaten look as if he were a decades-old stockade fence. He also had a monotonous way of slow-talking that said, “Don’t interrupt me boy, or I’ll take you out to the woodshed after I finally finish this story and make you chop four cords of wood then make you build another shed to hold it all, so help me, now sit down, shut up, and show some respect because I’m not gonna take no mouth from no one.”
He was perfect for whipping the new recruits into shape.
Perrin had requested him specifically as Wiles’s replacement, and was stunned to realize that, when he opened Grandpy’s file from the High General, Master Sergeant Neeks was only forty years old. Perrin wondered if he would seem as ancient and gnarled in ten more short years of serving in the army. Maybe the weathering effect only occurred to the enlisted men.
The other new addition to the fort, Staff Sergeant Gizzada, replaced the master sergeant who retired right after the forest raid, and was almost a complete opposite. While Neeks was as pale and gray as the strongest mortar, Gizzada was as dark and brown as the richest soils. And even though he was six years older than Perrin, he looked more like an overgrown boy with a round face that matched the rest of his body, dark cheeks that were hued a deep red, and a tongue that was always licking his lips as if knowing dinner was on the way.