“Did you have to end it with kissing?” thirteen-year-old Vid sneered. He’d stopped pulling weeds some time ago, as did his cousin Hycy.
“I didn’t say anything about kissing,” Muggah pointed out. She’d never moved from her position in the pumpkin patch, but had pivoted in a circle in the dirt as the cousins moved around her, clearing the weeds.
But Hycy sighed and smiled. “Oh, they kissed! They always do.”
“Yeah,” Vid said, his sneer intensifying, “I know.”
Muggah smirked as laughter ringed her. More children had joined them in Jaytsy’s extensive garden, mostly teenagers but also some younger children, although they weren’t entirely sure why. The older ones knew what the story would be today, because this was how they’d learned it too, as thirteen-year-olds, and it had become a tradition to come sit and hear it again.
Of all the histories Salem’s official historian had written and lectured on, this was the version she had never formally recorded, with details only the family should know. And even then, some of those details were glossed over so quickly the younger children didn’t really catch them. Even the older ones, raised innocently in Salem, usually didn’t understand their Muggah’s insinuations, because she was deliberately vague.
But this was the way they were to hear about it—on a warm Weeding afternoon in the garden.
Muggah glanced around her. More than a dozen children. Some were weeding, one was cradling black and white kittens, another was nibbling on fresh green beans, a couple younger ones were chasing each other through the corn field and, in the distance, still others filled water troughs for the cattle in Deck’s field. Behind her she knew at least one more grandchild was counting peaches in Peto’s orchard, waiting eagerly for the fruit to ripen, and probably tossing a handful of berries in his mouth.
And beyond her were houses, weathered gray with window boxes growing herbs.
Surrounding them all were magnificently towering mountains, shielding them from the world and reinforcing Muggah’s belief that mountains were beautiful.
The complaining of her grandson brought her mind back to the garden. “They’re always kissing,” Viddrow Briter was saying with horrified contempt. “Old people. I mean, there should be limits, you know? Especially in front of impressionable grandchildren?”
It was all Mahrree could stand. She threw back her graying hair and laughed in the sunshine.
“So Muggah destroyed the world, and we all lived happily ever after,” said Hycy’s older sister Lori Shin.
Her cousin Salema Briter rolled her eyes. “It wasn’t that easy,” she said authoritatively. As the oldest grandchild, she took it upon herself to keep everyone else in line, even if they didn’t want to be. “It took a few more moons before the world destroyed itself. Or rather, the version of the world Puggah and Muggah knew.”
“That’s right, Salema,” Mahrree began, “because—”
But Salema wasn’t done. In a voice as loud as her grandfather’s she continued her own lecture. “It was nearly two years after they all left the world that everything finally fell apart—”
Mahrree made herself comfortable. Once Salema started, there was no stopping her. She had too much Shin blood in her.
“—Chairman Mal and the Administrators had put the commandants in the forts, but not all of the forts obeyed the commandants. Especially Puggah’s friends. Those three commanders, Yordin, Karna, and Fadh, scared their commandants away after only a few weeks. Villages started to go back to how it was before the Great War: fighting with each other and ignoring Idumea. They stopped sending taxes and goods, and started making their own laws. That made Mal and the Administrators mad.
“So Mal instituted curfews—everyone had to be inside once it became dark, and tax collectors went to every house. Some villages paid, but others didn’t. Yordin’s village even chased the tax collectors out of Sands and set up barricades not allowing anyone in unless they could prove they weren’t from Idumea. Other villages got word that Sands was rebelling, then other places started to rebel, too. Sometimes the soldiers supported the villagers, sometimes they supported Idumea. Everything turned chaotic.”
Salema’s siblings and cousins shook their heads in amazement. They’d heard the story before, but a society of anarchy was something they simply couldn’t wrap their sweetly naive minds around.
“Finally it all got out of control, even worse,” Salema said to her captive audience, while Mahrree listened to the washed version her grandchildren knew. “Soldiers started choosing sides. Some left Idumea for villages while others left their villages for Idumea. When Mal sent out notices that the entire army would be reorganized, and that villagers needed to pay yet another tax to fund the change, that was the end. Some people say soldiers and villagers everywhere began to fight, but most noticeable was what Gizzada did. He closed up his fancy restaurant, put on his old uniform jacket—”
“Although we got reports he had no hope of buttoning it,” Mahrree said with a small smile.
Salema went on, but Mahrree’s mind wandered. Over the years Salem had rescued hundreds of refugees from the world, and each of them had a version of what was going on. Mahrree interviewed all of them, even the several soldiers who, upon seeing her, were stunned—and then were furious—that she still lived, until they realized that Perrin Shin had survived too. Within a few weeks of arriving in Salem, all of the former soldiers gladly told to Perrin their version of what was happening in the world, while Mahrree sat quietly to the side, taking notes.
After those interviews, she and Perrin pulled out The World Book, as they referred to it, and updated details about its collapse.
Gizzada had indeed closed up his restaurant, after holding a meeting with enlisted men who packed his back room. He struggled into his old sergeant’s uniform, told his stunned employees to find other work, then left Pools with nearly four hundred enlisted men following him to Idumea.
Because in Idumea, the enlisted men were also plotting, thanks to Grandpy Neeks who had been exchanging letters for some time with Gizzada. Apparently they had been planning, even before Perrin’s remembrance ceremony in Idumea. Neeks and Qualipoe Hili had been reassigned to the garrison in Idumea, so they had a front row seat to the unrest.
Pinning down exactly what was the cause of the upheaval was as easy as catching one specific mosquito in a swarm. The commandants hated the officers, the officers hated them back, along with the enlisted men below them, and the enlisted men hated everyone above them. And, not to be left out, the citizenry hated the Administrators for imposing more controls, and the Administrators hated the army for not doing a better job in controlling the angry citizenry . . . well, it was a boiling pot of water just waiting for a splash of oil.
From what Mahrree and Perrin could gather, Grandpy Neeks planted ideas into the heads of the thousands of enlisted men at the garrison. He told them there was enough of them to walk away, and the outnumbered officers could do nothing to them. He reminded them that back in the Great War there had been several generals, and if the soldiers didn’t like one general, they defected to another leader.
Neeks also told his soldiers that the last great officer who cared about his soldiers had been Perrin Shin, but there was another colonel who was a great deal like him—Colonel Brillen Karna—and if they started walking, in just three days’ time they could be at his fort in Waves, and pledge their allegiance to him. Surely he, and Lieutenant Colonel Graeson Fadh, would also agree that it was time for new leadership.
There were whispers after lights out, there were nods during patrols, and one day during breakfast when the garrison mess hall was packed, someone whispered into Grandpy Neeks’ ear.
Friends from Pools were marching, with Gizzada in the lead.
Neeks looked at Poe sitting across from him, nodded once, and Poe nodded back. He stood up, packed his breakfast into his pockets, headed to the main aisle, and announced, “Friends of Perrin Shin—walk with me in honor of the Great War!”
&nb
sp; As far as battle cries go, it was an odd one, Perrin pointed out to the soldier who related the story. Perrin didn’t have anything to do with the Great War, and the phrase didn’t make a whole lot of sense.
But that was the state of mind at the time, the soldier explained. Not a whole lot made sense, and in the emotion that had been building for the weeks leading up to it, that statement, shouted by Poe at the top of his voice, resonated with the soldiers.
As one body, the enlisted men—hundreds of them—stood up and marched out behind Poe. In an adjoining room, a dozen officers, hearing the commotion, came out to see the mess hall emptying. Stragglers were filling their pockets with food, and a few snickered at the officers as they ran out behind the rest of the soldiers.
And that’s when the chanting began, which Perrin heard about later and was wholly embarrassed by. In fact, for weeks after he heard about it, he composed additional chants the enlisted men could have shouted as they marched through the garrison, gathering more to their cause.
But Mahrree told him to leave it alone, because it was now history that nearly four thousand soldiers, as they jammed the main road leaving Idumea in the south, called, “Friends of Perrin Shin—walk with me in honor of the Great War!”
An hour later, General Qayin Thorne ran through the garrison trying to find any enlisted men still left, but there were none. Even the soldiers who were ill or injured had abandoned him, and those out on patrols never returned.
But only the young men. Grandpy Neeks had wanted the army—and the world—to start fresh, and that meant clearing out the dead wood, as he put it. So while Poe gathered, then led out of the wide main gates all of the soldiers under age thirty, he saluted to the barracks where all of the enlisted men over thirty were gathering, those who were taking it upon themselves to “clean up.”
From the window Grandpy Neeks saluted back to young Poe, and after Thorne had run through the garrison screeching and shouting in fury, Neeks and his cramped group of five hundred slipped out the back door. Ignoring the officers who tried to stop them or command them, they marched in silent formation to the Administrative Headquarters, with another fifteen hundred older soldiers joining them along the way. Many had come out of retirement, like Gizzada, just to lend a hand, or a sword.
Thorne, in a panic, had taken his coach to the Headquarters ahead of them.
Neeks and company were only a few hundred paces away from the wide front entrance when they noticed the citizens of Idumea pouring into the green expanses before the Headquarters. They’d seen the thousands of younger soldiers leaving, and ran to the Administrators to see what it meant.
But the sight there startled them even more. The 2,000 Sergeants Army, as they were later dubbed, were standing in line, waiting . . .
And then they heard them, coming down the road from the north, Gizzada and his troops. They had hired dozens of wagons, procured many more horses—probably using all of Gizzada’s savings, Perrin guessed—and there they were, four hundred strong, seasoned and angry sergeants from Pools and surrounding forts, ready to join with Grandpy Neeks.
At that point, the citizens of Idumea drew back to give the soldiers a wide area in which to do whatever it was they were about to do.
Gizzada dropped off of his wagon, marched, or rather lumbered, up to Neeks, and the men saluted each other. Then they hugged each other—
And then they drew their swords.
The gasps and shouts from the growing crowd were loud enough to alarm those in the Administrative Headquarters. Besides, the two young pages on guard at the doors had already abandoned their posts and were running through the marble halls yelling that something was about to happen outside.
As Neeks and Gizzada strode up to the wide white stairs, with twenty-four-hundred soldiers behind them, Qayin Thorne rushed out of the front doors and stopped abruptly. Say what you will about the man, Mahrree thought, at least he caught on quickly. He drew his sword and demanded to know what was going on.
“The end,” Grandpy Neeks said as he continued to stride up the stairs. “In memory of Perrin, the only officer worth his weight.”
Qayin still had faithful guards, and they pushed out of the doors behind him, creating a perimeter of twenty.
It didn’t take long, another former soldier reported to Perrin and Mahrree, but it was messy. The battle on the front steps lasted all of two minutes. Apparently Neeks took down three of Thorne’s guard, although by the time he reached Thorne there were hundreds of soldiers trying to get in on the fight. But one of Qayin’s guards cut down Neeks before he got in a swipe at Thorne.
Gizzada got closer during the melee, though, and Thorne reportedly yelled at Gizzada that his restaurant was overrated and overpriced. Gizzada yelled back at him that Thorne was stupid to eat there and pay for it. That was all Thorne was going to take, and he stabbed Gizzada right there, a death blow to his ample gut.
It was only moments later that the swarm of enlisted men overpowered Thorne, dozens of men bragging later that they were the ones to end his life. Since he had dozens of stab wounds, it was probably true.
With Thorne and his guard slumped in pools of blood on the white stone steps, the rest of the Neeks-Gizzada Sergeants Army stormed the Administrative Headquarters. Someone respectfully propped up the bodies of Neeks and Gizzada against the columns where the rest of the sergeants could see what Thorne had done to them. Infuriated, the soldiers trampled Thorne’s body as they rushed through the doors.
Workers fought their way out of windows and other doors, but stayed with the growing crowd, which hung back at what they hoped was a safe distance, to watch while the soldiers took revenge. Later, people talked about the spectacle for weeks, calling it the best entertainment they’d seen in years.
The sergeants found the Administrators hiding under the grand teardrop-shaped oak table in their Conference Room. The guards outside of it had unlocked the doors for the sergeants before they fled the building.
It was short work, dispatching of the Administrators. Before they set fire to the room, they searched the corpses for Chairman Mal, but he wasn’t there.
He had run away, like a thieving teenager, to his mansion.
The sergeants headed over there next but were surprised to find that the anger which inflamed them had also leapt to the citizens, and from there to Idumea’s largest mansion. Idumeans, posted outside of every door and window, were waiting to flush out the Chairman, but no one ever came running out of the smoke before the flames, except for the maids and a cook.
When the smoke finally cleared and the glorious stone edifice was reduced to Idumea’s own ruin, they scoured the remains. They found a scorched skeleton surrounded by what had been crates of paper and parchments in Mal’s library, in what used to be the kings’ old throne room. Mal’s guards said he’d barricaded himself in the library, hiding behind his very flammable research, as if somehow those words had power to protect him. But Mal had been destroyed, along with everything he’d ever written.
When Perrin heard that news he said, “Nicko died in the same room where he had King Oren assassinated, and where I’m sure he plotted the deaths of many others. Fitting.”
In the meantime, Poe continued to lead thousands of soldiers south, and many joined from other forts. When he saw a captain ride up to him, accompanied by nearly two hundred soldiers, he became understandably nervous, until he saw the name patch.
Captain Jon Offra.
“Interested in a few more recruits for your army?” he asked Poe, and playfully saluted him.
By the time the new army reached Colonel Karna, having scavenged food from other forts and generous citizens along the way, it was eight thousand strong. Brillen had stood at the open gates of his fort watching with pride, and some worry.
It was a good thing Lieutenant Colonel Fadh stood with him.
“I can take about three thousand of them back with me,” he reportedly told Karna. They’d received word about the desertion headed their way
and had been scrambling to get ready. “But I don’t think I brought you enough extra supplies.”
“We’ll make do,” Karna assured him. “In the spirit of Perrin Shin, we’ll make do.”
When Perrin heard that, many moons later, he rubbed his forehead. “Except that the spirit of Perrin Shin was still in Perrin Shin!”
The former soldier who told them this part of the story chuckled. “Everything those days was done ‘in the spirit of Perrin Shin.’ Now that I understand about the Creator, I realize it was His spirit influencing those men and inspiring many of the local women to bring so much food. They realized that if they fed the massive army, the army would defend them from whatever Idumea would do next.”
What Idumea did next was call for reinforcements—immediately! General Snyd, now taking control of what remained of the army and the government, sent messengers to all of the outer lying forts demanding they send the bulk of their soldiers to Idumea to stop the looting. General Thorne’s mansion—which used to be the Shins and Dormin’s—had been stripped of every last item. Versa Thorne and her servants had fled just before the citizens invaded, and reportedly she wept far more over the loss of her possessions than she did over her husband.
In fact, the rumor was that when she was told Qayin had been killed, she said only one word: “Good.”
When the frantic messengers reached the forts, most of the commanders reacted in the same way as Karna and Fadh: they held the messengers for a week, and no one went to Idumea. Apparently Yordin, up in Sands, laughed at the messenger who burst through his doors, and immediately locked him up. Yordin then threw a huge party for his fort, supplying his men with as much mead as he could personally afford, and the celebrations lasted for four days.
In Edge, Commandant Genev sent only fifty soldiers to Idumea, and then . . .
“Well, then,” the soldier who told this part to the Shins hesitated, “Genev just vanished.”
Perrin had squinted at that. “Vanished?”
“The next day, Lemuel Thorne stood before what remained of Fort Shin and announced that he was commander again, and whatever Genev had done in the past two years, Lemuel Thorne was reversing. He promoted himself, too. Had on a new major’s uniform.”
“Genev would have been the last surviving Administrator,” Mahrree had pointed out.
“Apparently Thorne decided he shouldn’t have survived either,” the soldier suggested. “No body was ever found, but the forest above Edge was a violent, terrible place. Oh, wait,” the soldier corrected himself as the Shins chuckled quietly. “Offra’s stories grew over the years, didn’t they?”
And that’s what bothered Perrin and Mahrree the most about the latest history of the world.
Jon Offra wasn’t doing well. In fact, he had grown quite mad.
At least, that’s how he appeared.
Out of pity or out of guilt, what remained of the army loyal to Karna and Fadh had promoted him up to Lieutenant Colonel, and while he served sporadically in different forts devoted to the two commanders, no one could handle him for more than a year. Always the same pattern occurred: he’d come in solid and eager, and the younger soldiers regarded him as a hero for trying to find the Shins and surviving so long in the forests.
But then he’d start saying things. Worrying things, such as that the Shins were still there as angry spirits, and that the forest grew and shrank and spoke and taunted.
Within eight or nine moons he’d become more unstable, shouting in the dead of night that “They’re coming!” After a few moons of terrifying the younger soldiers, the commander would discretely move Offra to the next fort, hoping that a change of scenery or a better surgeon could help him, and for a time he improved.
But only for a time.
After ten years Salem sent scouts to Offra, trying to bring him back to Salem. He’d sacrificed enough, Guide Gleace decided. He’d terrified half the world, and fear of the forests had never been greater.
But Offra wouldn’t come. On three occasions scouts had caught up to him and told him his duty was over, that he was welcome to retire and come to Salem.
But he’d shake his head and say, “Oh, I can’t. You know I can’t, don’t you? My duty!” Then he’d wink theatrically, and something would come over his face and he’d run off, or punch a scout, or literally kick them away.
It was his manic smile that confused them. Was it real or an act?
Mahrree chose to believe that Jon was enjoying playing his part too much to leave it. Never before had he ever had so much attention, or so much respect.
But they were going to bring him home, one way or another. They had sedation now, too, and while Offra was a big man, Salem had a few even stronger who could carry him, unconscious, home.
Just in case it wasn’t an act.
“ . . . and that’s how the world turned into a mess.”
Mahrree heard Salema’s announcement, and she blinked out of her thoughts to smile in approval at her granddaughter’s lecture.
Salema turned to her. “Did the latest scouting group find Uncle Jon yet?”
Mahrree’s chest tightened. She still wasn’t sure how it was they came to think of Jon Offra as their uncle, but the families felt such a connection to him that there didn’t seem to be any other way to refer to the man none of the children had ever met.
“No, but he’s very sneaky, you know. Just a matter of time.”
“And Thorne got married too, right?” a Briter girl said. “You forgot that, Salema.”
“No, I didn’t, Sewzi,” Salema told her younger sister, with hand-upon-hip superiority. But little Sewzi always needed assurance that the man who was after her mama was no longer interested in finding her. “Thorne married Snyd’s niece, remember? To create some kind of cola . . . coal—”
“Coalition,” Mahrree supplied. “Pretend friends,” she added in explanation. “So they would fight other villages together instead of fighting each other.”
Her grandchildren could never understand that. Why pretend? Just be real friends.
Salemites were so innocent. How Mahrree loved them, and how she worried for them.
“But Thorne’s wife isn’t with him anymore,” Salema added, with just a hint of worry. “She birthed only girls, so he sent her away.”
Sewzi frowned. “What’s wrong with baby girls?”
Salema shrugged, along with her female cousins and little sisters. Her brothers and male cousins didn’t react because they had quit listening after the word “married.”
“The world’s still a mess,” Vid nodded as thoughtfully as a thirteen-year-old could. “Too many generals, too many borders, and it was all caused by our Muggah because she wouldn’t believe a lie, told the world it was all a lie, and Puggah resigned because he wouldn’t support lies, and then they ran away and the world thought they died and were really mad about that and blamed the Administrators and killed them all, and now different officers each thinks he’s in charge of the whole thing and everyone keeps fighting. Except for the few we rescue out of there every year. And then they all lived happily ever after.”
Mahrree was cringing during his entire explanation, even though several older children were chuckling. “Well,” she said slowly, “that’s one way to sum it up. I wouldn’t put it in such terms but . . . I suppose that’s it.”
“And why our Muggah is the most dangerous woman in the world,” said Hycy proudly.
“Well, not exactly—” Mahrree started, always uncomfortable by that declaration of her husband. “No, really what it means is—”
“Come on, Muggah,” Hycy said, tilting her head. “You don’t think you’re dangerous? You’re the only one who can make Puggah do what she wants. That’s dangerous.”
Mahrree threw back her head and laughed.
---
Leaning against the fence a few dozen paces away, and shielded by the shade of a peach tree whose branches were heavy with green fruit, a man in his late thirties chuckled quietly at the
scene before him. His brown hair had the first touches of gray on the sides, suggesting age and a bit of a burden, but his pale eyes were brighter than the color gray had a right to be.
Behind him he heard the approaching footsteps of another man too large to be silent, but still he attempted to creep quietly so as to not interrupt story time in the pumpkin patch.
Peto Shin turned to him. “You must have given a pretty good version this time. Vid and Hycy were positively gray. So what did you tell them, General?”
“Just the truth, Peto. Isn’t that scary enough?” Perrin grinned as he watched his wife laughing in the middle of the garden.
Peto nodded, keeping his father in his peripheral vision. The years suited him, turning his black hair gray, then recently into a shocking white. In a couple of years he’d be completely white, still imposing, still massive, and now with an almost ethereal quality that made the man who had hoped for a life of anonymity stand out even more among Salemites who held him in reverent awe.
The same went for his wife who, on the other hand, looked like every other older woman with iron gray hair. Until you looked into her eyes. Few women had such fires burning. Mahrree Shin was as well-recognized as her husband in Salem, especially since for the past seventeen years she’d been the head of the history department at the university, and every student in Salem had sat enthralled in Professor Shin’s History of the World class, fascinated by her stories, her interpretations, and her occasional sarcasm.
Peto nudged his father. “So tell me, honestly—do you think she’s the most dangerous woman in the world?”
“Well,” Perrin started analytically, “as far as women go, she’s right up there—”
“No, I mean really. Do you think Uncle Hogal got that right?”
Perrin sighed. “I’ve wondered that frequently myself. For a rector, Hogal Densal certainly told a lot of lies—”
“Really?”
A corner of Perrin’s mouth went up. “Oh, really. And always for good reasons. But as I was saying, he told a lot of lies, but Peto, he never exaggerated the truth.”
“I don’t think I understand.”
Perrin watched his wife. “Did I ever tell you that Hogal told me my second baby was to be a boy? It was right after I was injured, when the Guarder slashed my back. Your mother was expecting you, but you kept threatening to come early. I didn’t want to upset her with the news that she and your sister had been targeted, so I kept my going into the forest a secret.”
“Yes, I know that story,” Peto said. “There were fourteen Guarders that night. And if you were to head into the forest now in the snow, your hair would fit right in,” he teased.
Perrin smiled, running his hand through his shaggy shock. “I’ve thought of that too,” he said. “But the next day, as I lay on my stomach and Hogal tended to my stitches, he told me he had impressions about our family, that we were all in this fight together. My wife, my daughter, and my future son.”
“No, you never mentioned that before.”
“When you were born three moons later, and were obviously a son, I had to admit that Hogal was right about that. He was right about a few other things, too, and so when he told me that my Mahrree was likely the most dangerous woman in the world . . . well, maybe she is.”
Peto blinked. “Wait a minute—maybe she is? Not was? The world’s in chaos, controlled by warring generals right now, because years ago she couldn’t keep her mouth shut in the amphitheater at Edge. That’s why she was dangerous.” He hesitated. “Right?”
Perrin smiled at his son’s uneasiness, his dark eyes cavernous with possibilities. “I hoped that was why, but actually all she did was set into motion a collapse that was going to happen anyway. To suggest it’s her fault that the world has been warring with itself gives her far too much credit and blame. No, she may still be dangerous.”
“But she’s a gray-haired grandmother!”
“Don’t tell her all of her hair is gray,” his father warned him. “She still thinks some of it is brown in the back. But so what if she’s a grandmother?”
Peto gestured lamely. “How can a little old woman be dangerous?”
“Peto, Hogal once told me we were in this battle together. Battle suggests a war, doesn’t it?”
“Well, yes, I suppose it does,” Peto said reluctantly. “A war with the world, in a way.”
“And is that war over, son?”
Peto stared at his father. “I suppose . . . no?”
Perrin turned to watch his wife, whose hands were surprisingly free from dirt for someone who had supposedly been “weeding,” and was now holding a small child and a kitten on her lap as she chatted with her grandchildren.
“Then Peto, I don’t think she’s done earning her title just yet.” He cheerfully slapped his son on the back, which meant there’d be a red mark there for the next hour, hopped over the fence, and strode through the garden to his wife and grandchildren.
Peto stared after him. As Perrin bent to kiss Mahrree, with enough drama to make his granddaughters croon and his grandsons groan, Peto came to a conclusion about an old parchment envelope still secreted in his dresser, with a prediction from his grandfather that only he—and his wife Lilla—knew about.
“So if she’s not yet finished earning the title of ‘Most dangerous woman in the world,’” Peto murmured under the peach tree, “then Father, I don’t think you’re yet finished earning the title of ‘Greatest General in the world.’”
Peto vigorously rubbed his forehead.
###
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