by Fonda Lee
CHAPTER
21
Family Talk
Shae sat next to her grandfather, her hand over his knobby one. After the commotion of her brothers’ departure, the house had fallen incongruously quiet. She wondered where Doru had gone, whether he was still in the house or if he’d departed to make phone calls or do whatever else it was that he did. She thought about going to check but didn’t want to leave her grandfather. He seemed shrunken and frail in a way she had never seen. Underneath his liver-spotted skin, she still felt the thrum of his powerful presence, a weighty jade aura anchored by an iron will, but the way he sat now, there was deep resignation in his slack posture, a bitter understanding that he was no longer the beating heart of the clan. No longer the Torch of Kekon.
Kyanla brought Kaul Sen a bowl of cut-up fruit on a tray and fussed over his blanket and cushions, making him more comfortable in his chair by the window. He swatted her away and turned clear but weary eyes on Shae. “Why don’t you come live at home? What have you been doing all this time?” Shae tensed, but her grandfather’s questions were less angry than perplexed. Sad. “You want to live in Janloon but not be with your family? Are you seeing another man? Another foreigner you don’t want to bring home?”
“No, Grandda,” Shae said, irked now.
“Your brother needs you,” he insisted. “You should help him.”
“They don’t need my help,” Shae told him.
“What is wrong with you? You don’t know who you are anymore,” Kaul Sen declared. “I used to say you were my best grandson. You remember that?”
Shae did not answer him.
She tried not to keep watching the front drive the way one might watch a pot of water on the stove. She realized with dull despair that she’d become what she’d sworn she’d never be—a woman like her mother, sitting at home worrying while the men went off to meet danger and mete out violence. Her younger self would be disgusted. She was a daughter of Kaul Du, a grandchild of Kaul Sen—indeed, his favorite. Growing up, the idea of being any less than her brothers had been anathema.
Somewhere at the bottom of a drawer in her childhood bedroom, there was a journal she’d kept as a teenager at the Academy. If she were to set it on its spine, it would fall open to a page with a vertical line drawn down the center, dividing it into two columns. On the top of one column was her name; on the other was Hilo’s. For years she’d recorded every score and rank she received as an initiate. Without his knowledge, she did the same for Hilo. He was more talented in some areas, but she practiced more consistently, studied harder, wanted it more. She graduated at the top of their class, despite being the youngest in their cohort. Hilo came in sixth.
She’d been a more highly ranked Green Bone than her brother, and proud of it. It had taken her a few more years to realize how little it meant. The demerits that had pulled down Hilo’s scores—reprimands for skipping class, sneaking off campus, instigating street fights—had won him the admiration and following of peers. The countless hours Shae had spent alone, obsessively studying or practicing, had isolated her from the other students, especially the other women. Hilo had spent that time idling with the wide posse of friends who would become his most loyal Fingers and Fists. Looking back on it now, Shae could almost laugh at her teenage naïveté, her hopeless earnestness, her inevitable disappointment.
One day, Hilo had discovered her journal and the two-column page meticulously comparing their ranks. He’d laughed so hard tears came to his eyes. He’d told his friends, and they’d teased her about it mercilessly. Shae had been furious and humiliated by how amused he was, how utterly nonchalant he felt about her mission to best him. Her anger only baffled and entertained him further.
“What’re you saving this for?” He’d waved it in front of her. “So you’re better than me at school, sure. Are you planning to lord it over me ten years from now?” He tossed it back to her, smiling, and this infuriated her further—how he didn’t even bother to take it away or rip it up. “What do you need to try so hard for all the time, Shae? Lan will be Pillar someday; I’ll be the Horn, and you’ll be Weather Man. Who’s going to care about our grades then?”
It had almost turned out that way. Lan was Pillar now; Hilo was the Horn. She was the one who’d ruined the triumvirate. She was the broken piece. Hilo had been so furious when she’d left, not because he hated Espenians, or Jerald, or even the things she’d done and the secrets she’d kept. It was her refusal to fall into proper place in his vision of the world that had enraged him. In the hotel, he claimed he’d forgiven her, but she found that difficult to believe.
She tried to interest her grandfather in the bowl of fruit, but he wouldn’t have it, so she ate it herself. “The war was an easier time,” Kaul Sen muttered all of a sudden. “The Shotarians were cruel, but we could resist them. These days? Espenians buy everything—our jade, our grandchildren. Green Bones fight each other in the streets like dogs!” His face twisted as if in pain. “I don’t want to live in this world anymore.”
Shae squeezed her grandfather’s hand. He might be an old tyrant, but it disturbed her to hear him talk like this. She tugged on her right earlobe, remembering that Jerald had always teased her for the superstitious Kekonese habit. “Don’t say that, Grandda.” She glanced back out the window and stood up so quickly she nearly knocked over her grandfather’s tray. The gates were opening. Cars were driving through and parking in the roundabout.
Shae called for Kyanla and hurried down the stairs. Her brothers were walking through the front door together. Relief swept over her, weakened her knees; she put a hand on the banister to steady herself. Lan gave her a smile that looked thin around the edges. “Don’t look like that. I told you we’d be back, didn’t I?”
Hilo said, “You missed all the fun, Shae.” He threw a proud arm over Lan’s shoulders and called back to his First Fist. “Kehn, get these guys sorted. I need some time for family talk. Don’t let anyone else in.”
They went back into Lan’s study and shut the door. “What about Grandda?” Shae asked. “And Doru?”
“They can wait,” Lan said.
Shae was astounded; to her recollection, Lan had always included Kaul Sen and Doru in the clan decisions. Shutting out the patriarch and the Weather Man was an affront. It sent the unmistakable message that the winds in the clan had shifted dramatically.
More disturbing—she was in here. Her brothers had included her, even though she wasn’t wearing jade. People might begin to think she was replacing Doru. She didn’t want that at all, but she couldn’t leave now. Even as she told herself she ought not to be in here, she sat down in one of the leather armchairs. Lan lowered himself gingerly into the one across from her, and she realized he was hurt. He wasn’t bleeding, but he looked pale and drained, fragile in a way she’d never imagined her older brother could appear.
“Lan,” she said, “you need a doctor.”
“Later,” he said. Shae noticed his left hand moving, rolling beads of jade in his palm—new jade, she realized. Jade he’d won.
“What happened?” she asked.
“We sent two of theirs to the grave.” Hilo remained standing. He was still armed to the teeth and hadn’t relaxed. “Lan took one of their best Fists with a clean blade, and we executed the other. The Armpit’s ours.”
Shae said, “You’re not smiling.” Walking through the door ahead of his men, Hilo had been grinning and triumphant. Alone with Lan and Shae, he wore a scowl.
“This is just the opening move,” Lan said. “They’ll try again.”
Hilo paced a short line in front of Lan’s neatly ordered bookshelves. “Ayt had men ambush me last night. Gont sent out his Fist to challenge Lan today. The Mountain’s shown they can hit us hard at the top and not even show their faces. We might look like we’re ahead for now, but they came too close. They hurt us. People will talk, and it’ll be bad for us.”
Shae said, “You killed four of their men.”
“Ten Fists don’t matter n
ext to the Pillar,” Hilo said.
Lan shifted his attention to Shae. He seemed to be trying to move as little as necessary. “Tell us what you found out. From the Treasury.”
Involuntarily, Shae glanced around the room, almost expecting to see Doru hovering in the corner. “I told you about the new equipment that Gont Asch signed for. Well, it’s being put to use. Production at the mines is up fifteen percent this year, the biggest increase in a decade,” she said. “So I wondered, where is the extra jade going? I examined KJA financial statements and there’s no accounting for the increase. Foreign sales haven’t increased; you told me yourself the vote to raise the export quota didn’t pass. Allocation to the martial schools, temples, and licensed users is only up six percent. That leaves an awful lot of jade that’s been mined but not distributed.”
“So it’s sitting in the vault,” Hilo said.
“No, it’s not,” Shae said. “I went to the Kekon Treasury and checked the last three years of records. There’s no increase in jade inventory that matches the growth in production. Somewhere between the mines and the vault, jade is going missing.”
“How’s that possible?” Lan asked. “The Weather Man’s office audits—” He stopped himself. His back teeth came together, flexing his jawline.
“Doru.” Hilo spat the Weather Man’s name. His head swung toward the closed door. “He’s in on it. The Mountain is producing extra jade and smuggling it away under our noses, hoodwinking all the other clans in the KJA and the Royal Council too. That ball-less old ferret has been covering for Ayt and keeping us in the dark.”
A shadow fell heavily across Lan’s face. “Doru has always been loyal to the family. He’s been like an uncle to us since we were children. I can’t believe he would betray us to the Mountain.”
“It’s possible he doesn’t know about the discrepancies,” Shae suggested. “Someone under him could be tampering with the reports that he sees.”
“You believe that?” Hilo asked.
Shae hesitated to answer. As repulsive as she found Doru, she had to agree with Lan that it was difficult to imagine the veteran Weather Man ever undermining the clan. When it came to war and business, her grandfather had trusted him absolutely for decades. How could the Torch himself have been such a poor judge of character? “I don’t know,” Shae said. “But he has to go. If he’s not a traitor, then he’s a negligent Weather Man.”
Lan exchanged a glance with Hilo. “We’ll find out which it is. We keep this to ourselves for now.” He turned back to Shae. “You’re certain you have proof of everything you’ve said?”
“Yes,” Shae said.
“Document all of it and send three copies of your findings to Woon Papidonwa by tomorrow. Woon and no one else.” Lan paused. “Thank you, Shae. I appreciate what you’ve done, finding this out for us. I hope it didn’t inconvenience you too much. I’m sorry if it did.”
That was it. As quickly as they’d brought her in, she was being shown out. “It wasn’t a burden,” she managed to reply. Weeks of traveling, sitting in the Treasury’s records room, combing through files, studying ledgers and reports until her eyes ached and it was dark outside. She could feel the weight of Hilo’s stare following her as she stood up and went to the door.
“Shae,” Lan said. She paused with a hand on the door, and he said in a gentler voice, “Come for dinner at the house sometimes. Whenever you want. No need to call ahead.”
Shae nodded without turning, then let herself out. The heavy door clicked shut behind her. She leaned against it and shut her eyes for a moment, fighting down the same bewildering mixture of emotions she’d sat with in the taxi this morning. Why was she upset at being dismissed, when a few minutes ago she hadn’t wanted to be in the room in the first place? She felt like slapping herself hard across both sides of the face. You can’t have it both ways!
It was well that Lan had made her go. With shame, she admitted her grandfather was right after all; she didn’t know who she was anymore.
CHAPTER
22
Honor, Life, and Jade
Once the door closed behind Shae, Lan said to Hilo, “Have someone you trust watch Doru. Someone with little enough jade that he won’t notice. You have a nose in the Weather Man’s office?” When Hilo nodded, Lan said, “I want to know if he’s had any contact with the Mountain. If he’s really a traitor.”
“Seems we could bring him in here and find out pretty quick right now.”
Lan shook his head. “What if we’re wrong? Then again, what if we’re right? Doru is like a brother to Grandda. He’s the only one Grandda has left from his glory days. You haven’t seen them together every morning, those two. I have; they still drink their tea and play circle chess under the cherry tree in the courtyard, like an old married couple. It would kill the old man to see Doru accused of treason.” Lan closed his eyes for a moment, then opened them again. “No,” he said. “We have to know for sure, and if it’s true, we have to handle it quietly, so Grandda never knows.”
“Doru will suspect we’re on to him,” Hilo said, “and everyone else will ask questions. How are you going to explain the fact that we shut him out just now?”
“I’ll smooth it over,” Lan said. “I’ll say we were talking privately with Shae, brother to sister, trying to convince her to come back into the clan.”
Hilo sat down finally, in the seat Shae had vacated. Lan had to edge back in his own chair slightly. With new jade in his hand and in his pocket, Hilo’s aura seemed too bright in his mind.
“What about Shae?” Hilo asked.
“What about her?”
“You told me not to push her. You said we’re to leave her alone and let her walk around embarrassing herself with no jade on, if that’s what she wants to do.”
“That’s right,” said Lan.
“Then you send her to dig into clan business. You didn’t even tell me. If I’d known she was working for you, I would’ve been nicer to her.” Hilo tilted his head. “Don’t get me wrong, I’m not disagreeing. But which is it? You want her in or out?”
Lan exhaled slowly through his nose. “I wouldn’t have asked her to do anything for the clan, but I needed someone with a brain for numbers, someone not in Doru’s control, to follow my suspicions. Considering what she found, I don’t regret it, but it doesn’t mean I’ve changed my mind.”
“You’re going to need a new Weather Man soon,” Hilo pointed out.
“No,” said Lan, sharply now. “If she decides she wants in, that’s one thing. I’m not going to guilt, order, or threaten her back into the clan. She especially doesn’t need any pressure from you. She gets enough from Grandda as it is. Shae has an Espenian education now—something neither of us has—so she has other options in life that we don’t. Janloon’s not just for Green Bones. You can choose to live without jade, an ordinary citizen with an ordinary life, like millions of other people.”
Hilo held his hands up. “All right.”
“You’re not kids anymore. The two of you can make your own choices. I don’t need to wipe bloody noses and tell you to show some respect to each other.”
“I said all right.” A moment of silence passed before Hilo said, “Lan. I didn’t notice until I was sitting closer to you, but your aura doesn’t seem right. It’s …” He squeezed his eyes shut and turned his face aside, concentrating his Perception. “It’s flaring, pulsing, kind of. It feels off. Not like you.”
“It’s all the new jade,” Lan said. “It’s taking a little getting used to. You know how it is.” He was sitting still, but his heart was beating fast.
Hilo opened his eyes. “I don’t think you should wear it.”
“I won this jade.” Lan was startled by his sudden defensiveness. “It’s mine by right. You wear all the jade you’ve won, don’t you?”
His brother shrugged. “Sure.”
“What did you take last night?”
Hilo leaned back and shifted his hip off the chair so he could reach into his pockets
and pull out his spoils. “The rings, bracelet, and pendant. I’ll get them reset, obviously.” He held them out for Lan’s inspection. “The watch and these studs belong to the Maiks. There’s a belt in my car that’s theirs by right too.” He returned them to his pockets and sat back. “It’s not as much as Gam’s.”
“You still have more overall.” Lan blinked; had he just said that?
Hilo’s eyes widened, surprised as well. “Is that what this is about?” He ran his tongue over his lips. “I’m the Horn, brother. People don’t expect me to be smart. They do expect me to carry a shitload of jade. Everyone’s different.”
“Some people are better. Thicker-blooded.” Lan wondered what was wrong with him, that he was sounding so bitter and testy. The fatigue from staying up for more than thirty-six hours straight, the fight in front of the Factory, and now the jade—it was all getting to him. Too much, too quickly. “It’s been years since I’ve dueled, Hilo,” he said. “Ayt killed her father’s own Horn, and two of his Fists. Today I had to fight in front of our men, and I had to win. Tomorrow people will be paying attention, to see if I’m wearing the proof that I’m thick-blooded enough for No Peak to stand up to the Mountain in a war. You know better than anyone that it’s true.”
Hilo’s gaze was straight. “You’re right. It’s true.” He glanced down at the carpet, lips pursed, then back up again. “You don’t have to do it right now, though. After what Gam hit you with? You’re hurt. Put it down, Lan. Give yourself a break.” He got up and held his hand out, offering to take it.
In a surge of possessiveness, Lan’s fist tightened around the jade. His jade; how dare his little brother think to take it from him? Hilo’s aura was too harsh and close, mentally blinding. He kept standing there, though, hand extended, and Lan Perceived no greed, only concern.
In a burst of clarity, he knew the jade was doing this: setting him on edge, skewing his emotions. He’d been taught the early warning signs of jade overexposure since he was a child—every Green Bone had. Severe mood swings, sensory distortion, shaking, sweating, fever, a racing heart, anxiety and paranoia. The appearance of symptoms could be sudden or gradual. They might come and go for months or years, but were exacerbated by stress, poor health, or injury. If left unaddressed, they could progress into the Itches, which were almost always fatal.