by Fonda Lee
“Yes,” she agreed. Ayt Mada might have bargained with Lan. After last night, after what Shae and Hilo had done, there would be no mercy. The Mountain would come down from the forest and would not rest until the remaining Kauls were dead. Their closest allies would be executed; this house would be burned to the ground. The remnants of the clan would be absorbed into the Mountain.
“I need you, Shae.” The strain on Hilo was showing at last; every line of his face looked sharper than before. “I know we haven’t always agreed. I know I’ve said things, gone too far at times—only ever because you’re my sister, and I love you. Even if you’re still angry with me, I know you care about the clan. Grandda built it, and Lan died for it, and now I need your help. I can’t do this without you.” His grip on her tightened; he bent forward and tilted his head to look up into her downcast face, his unwavering gaze a solemn plea. “Shae. I need you to be my Weather Man.”
Only a few days ago, she’d insisted to Anden that she’d put clan issues and the life of a Green Bone behind her. Don’t get involved, don’t worry, Lan doesn’t need help, these problems aren’t your problems. Selfishness. Hubris. Dispassion. The opposite of the Divine Virtues she’d contemplated when she’d knelt in the Temple of Divine Return and prayed for a sign. An unequivocal message. She’d gotten what she’d asked for.
The gods were often cruel, everyone knew that.
If No Peak held any hope of surviving, the Pillar needed a Weather Man he could trust. Who else in the clan could stand up to Hilo? Who else could moderate him, could keep him from getting himself killed and taking the clan down with him? Lan’s spirit would never be at peace if that happened. It’s not true that the dead don’t care, Shae thought. You owe the dead.
Shae slid slowly from the chair and knelt on the cold kitchen tile. She raised clasped hands to her forehead. “The clan is my blood, and the Pillar is its master. On my honor, my life, and my jade.”
CHAPTER
35
An Unexpected Reception
The one thing Bero was not short on was cash. There was an all-night clinic in the Forge, one of a few in the city where doctors of questionable training patched up wounds with no questions asked so long as one could pay for the service. In the early morning after the events at the pier, at roughly the same time that Kaul Lan’s body was being found, Bero sat on a steel table under a buzzing strip of fluorescent light while a wrinkled man with watery eyes and strings of hair like dirty floss pulled two shallowly embedded bullets from his arm and bandaged him up, unrolling the gauze with such slow deliberation Bero wanted to smack him. He’d spent hours huddled in the bushes under a freeway overpass and felt quite mad by now.
By the time he got out of the clinic, the news was raging through the city. Bero overheard it while standing in line to buy a meat bun and soda from the first convenience store he found. Kaul Lan, Pillar of No Peak, was dead—suspected to have been assassinated by the Mountain.
Bero’s pulse pounded wildly; he was confused, but a grin rapidly began to spread across his face and he had to force it down. It was only luck—the sweet, merciful luck of the gods—that he was alive at all while that dumb turd Cheeky was dead, but now Bero was certain that even more luck was showering down on him. It had been dark and he’d run in a panic. He hadn’t noticed it, but Kaul must have been hit by the barrage of gunfire after all; he’d just taken longer than usual to die. Which meant he—Bero—had killed the Pillar of No Peak! He began to grin again. No one else, not a single Green Bone in the city, could say that. He kicked himself for running, for not returning to the pier to check.
It took him the better part of the day to get all the way back to the Goody Too at the far south end of Junko. He bought new clothes and a hat and threw the old ones in a trash bin; then he walked, not trusting anyone, including cab or bus drivers, in case any witnesses had seen him last night and the clan was searching for him. This was loyal No Peak territory and many people were upset. Bero saw a lot of somber faces, crowds of people huddled at the windows of electronics shops to watch the local news on television, even weeping in public. The sight warmed Bero more, put a spring into his weary steps. These people on the street, they’d lynch him if they knew what he’d done. They’d string him up, cut him to pieces, light his remains on fire.
On his third attempt at knocking, Mudt opened the back door of the Goody Too. He stared aghast at Bero as if he were a ghost, then yanked him inside by the arm and shut the door. “Go out front and keep watch; shout if you see anyone coming,” Mudt yelled over his shoulder at his son, who put down the box he was carrying and hurried to do as he was told. Mudt turned back to Bero. “What the fuck happened?”
“I did it,” Bero said. “I killed Kaul.”
To his surprise, Mudt looked horrified. “Where’s Cheeky?”
“Cheeky’s dead.”
Mudt’s mouth moved like an airless carp’s. Finally, he said, “Fuck the gods. Fuck.” He paced back and forth a few times, shaky fingers pulling at his wiry mop of hair. He spun on Bero with suddenness. “You have to get out of here now.”
Bero grew angry. This was not the reception he’d expected. “What for? I spent the whole godsdamned day walking here. You don’t know what kind of night I’ve had. I did it; I killed Kaul. So pick up the phone and call him—that Green Bone. I did what he asked, and I want in now. I want my jade; I deserve it, no question now.”
“You dumb fuck,” Mudt spat. “No one told you to kill Kaul. You were supposed to shoot up the Lilac Divine and drive away. Give Kaul a scare in his own territory, ruin his car and one of his favorite businesses, piss him off, not kill him. The idea that you two half-wits could kill a Green Bone like Kaul Lan …” Mudt gave a derisive snorting laugh. Soberly, “We’re fucked.”
“The Mountain wants Kaul dead, don’t it?” Bero demanded, refusing to believe what he was hearing. “Make a big statement, that’s what the Green Bone said we were supposed to do. You telling me you never thought we could do it?”
“A man with as much jade as the Pillar? You’re not going to take him out with a Fully gun spray from two kids who can barely shoot straight! We figured you’d cause a panic, maybe hit a few bystanders, and be lucky to get away alive. I don’t even know how it’s possible that you did it, how you’re even here …” Mudt trailed off in disbelief, then seized Bero by the upper arm and began pulling him across the back room cluttered with boxes, papers, and cleaning supplies.
Bero yanked his arm away. “What’re you doing?”
Mudt opened a closet door. He pushed aside a wheeled filing cabinet and rolled aside a flap of carpet to reveal a trapdoor in the floor. “He already phoned once, asking if you’d come back here,” Mudt said, tugging on a big brass ring to pull the door open. “He’ll come back around here today, any minute now. If he finds you, you’re a dead man, keke. If you’re lucky, they’ll just kill you for screwing things up. If you’re not, they’ll hand you over to No Peak as an offering. Though it’s probably too late for any of that; they say No Peak’s Horn is already on the warpath …”
“So you’re saying I should run?”
“Gods, you really are missing some lights upstairs, aren’t you?” Mudt muttered. He pointed down into the opening in the floor. “I don’t think anyone saw you come in, and better not to take any chances on them seeing you leave. The tunnel goes all the way down under Summer Park and lets out near the water. Dead useful for smuggling, and it’ll be dry this time of year. If you’re lucky enough to have lived this long, maybe you’ll be lucky enough to get the hell out of Janloon.”
“Out of Janloon?” Bero exclaimed. “How?”
“I’m not helping you there, keke,” Mudt said. “This is as much as I’m doing. If the Mountain finds out I’m even doing this, they’d cut my tongue out for starters.” He paled. “Goodbye jade, goodbye shine, goodbye eating solid food.”
Bero squinted at Mudt. “Then why’re you doing it?”
The man paused and looked at Bero as if
he was seriously asking himself the same question. Then he grimaced as if he didn’t like his own answer. “You made me a shitload of money and never got caught even though most of the others got caught, and then somehow, by some dumb kind of miracle I can’t even fathom, you killed Kaul Lan and show up with nothing but a bandage on your arm. I don’t know what it is with you, keke, but you got some strange luck of the gods on you, and I’m not messing with that. No way.” He pointed at the set of stairs leading underground. “Don’t touch a thing down there. Now get—before I change my mind.”
Bero couldn’t believe this was happening. He’d done everything right, taken every opportunity presented to him, been daring where others had been meek—and this was what he got for it? Earlier, he’d felt near invincible, convinced his rewards were finally coming to him. Now he saw that it was nothing more than a horrible joke. He thought about refusing to leave. He’d wait right here in the back of the Goody Too until that goateed Green Bone bastard showed up and then he’d demand his due.
Mudt was right, though. There was some strange luck on him and it was best not to question it. Just as it had told him to chase after Kaul last night, it told him now that if he stayed, he wouldn’t live long enough for his fortune to turn again.
He started down the tunnel. “It’s dark down there,” he protested. Mudt handed him a flashlight and he switched it on. When he got to the last of the steps, Mudt slammed the trapdoor shut and Bero jumped. He heard Mudt rolling the filing cabinet back into place overhead and a sudden sick panic gripped him by the throat. What if this wasn’t an escape route after all, but a trick? What if Mudt had trapped him down here, to hand over to either one of the clans later, or simply to die?
Bero swung the flashlight around. The beam shook with his fear, dancing over unlabeled crates and boxes. This must be where Mudt kept his most valuable contraband. Under other circumstances, Bero would’ve been eager to open them up and take a look, but when the yellow circle of his flashlight passed over the nearby items and disappeared down a long, beckoning tunnel, relief opened into Bero’s veins and he hurried toward it, away from the hated sting of being wronged yet again.
CHAPTER
36
Let the Gods Recognize Him
At least, Hilo thought, it was not raining.
Lan’s funeral procession wound its long, slow way through the streets to the family’s ancestral burial grounds on a hillside cemetery in Widow’s Park, not far from Kaul Dushuron Academy. There was no threat of violence—it would be unthinkable bad luck to interrupt a Green Bone’s final death parade—but the tension was palpable, hanging as low over the ceremony as the thick late autumn clouds. Four days of illusory calm had descended over Janloon while the clans buried their dead. No Peak had returned the bodies of the Green Bones slain in the betting houses so the Mountain could hold rites for them. In the No Peak parts of the city, ceremonial spirit guiding lamps had gone up in the windows of homes and businesses to honor Kaul Lan, grandson of the Torch, Pillar of the clan—let the gods recognize him.
Hilo had been walking directly behind the hearse for hours. Shae and Maik Kehn, the newly appointed Horn, walked side by side behind him. After them came the heads of the other prominent families in the clan—all of them Fists, Luckbringers, or Lantern Men—and behind them, a long trailing crowd of other clan loyalists who’d joined the march to pay their respects. Wen was back there somewhere with Tar. Hilo would have liked to have her up here with him, but they were not yet married; the nuptials had been indefinitely postponed. Instead of planning his wedding, he was walking in his brother’s funeral.
It was customary for family members to hold two days and nights of silent vigil over the white cloth-draped coffin before the funeral, and Hilo had slept no more than four hours a stretch in the days before that, so his exhaustion had taken on a kind of hellish quality. Every few minutes, the funeral gongs and drums would raise an awful din from the front of the hearse, calling down the attention of the gods to observe Lan’s passage into the spirit world, and jolting Hilo to continue putting one foot in front of the other. It was said that one must not speak or sleep during the vigil because if the spirit of the deceased had any final messages to pass on, it would do so during that time. If nothing happened, that meant the loved one had moved on from the earthly realm and was at peace.
That was further evidence, in Hilo’s opinion, that spiritual sayings were full of shit. Lan’s ghost, if it was out there, was not at peace, and Hilo was certain it would have things to say to him if it could. You’re no Pillar, it would say. I was born for it, trained for it, and look at how it killed me. You think you can do any better? Grandda always said you were good for nothing but thuggery.
“Shut up,” Hilo murmured, though he knew it wasn’t really Lan he was speaking to, only his own fears speaking in his brother’s voice. Last night, in a moment of sleep-deprived, superstitious weakness, he’d laid his hands on the hilt of Lan’s moon blade and strained his Perception out so far that dozens of auras and hundreds of heartbeats chorused in his mind like white noise. He hadn’t felt the barest hint of Lan’s presence. No spirit had appeared or spoken to him during the vigil, not even to say, Don’t worry, brother, you’ll be joining me soon enough.
They reached the cemetery at last. The hearse climbed slowly up to the burial ground where a new plot had been dug next to the green marble family monument where Hilo’s father and other forebears were buried. Three Deitist penitents wearing white funerary robes were waiting to perform the final rituals. Hilo’s mother was standing by Kaul Sen, who sat in a wheelchair by the gravesite, Kyanla holding a shade over him even though it was overcast. They had been driven here ahead of the procession. Kaul Wan Ria, fetched from the cottage in Marenia, had the bent posture of someone who had long ago stopped questioning or fighting the world; her grieving eyes were as dull as those of an old doll. The patriarch was motionless, his gnarled hands gripping the arms of the chair like tree roots sunken into clay.
Hilo embraced his mother, though she returned the gesture with limp arms and barely seemed to see him. Lan had been the most dutiful of her children, more than her other two put together. “I love you, Ma,” Hilo said. She didn’t reply. The gray in her hair stood out more starkly than ever, and she looked lumpy in shapeless white funeral clothes. Out of the entire family, the shock was perhaps greatest for her. Hilo doubted Lan had conveyed much to their mother about the situation between the clans in the city. Complicit in her ignorance, she was now enduring the greater part of pain, and Hilo was forced to make a mental note to himself that she ought to be moved closer to the family, or help hired in Marenia to better care for her.
He went next to his grandfather and knelt respectfully, clasping his hands and touching them to his head. “Grandda.” He rose to his feet and bent to kiss the hateful old man on his forehead. As he leaned over, he half expected his grandfather to shoot out a clawlike hand and crush his windpipe in front of all the onlookers. Kaul Sen’s fingers twitched, but he merely glowered at his remaining grandson with vague disdain. Hilo moved aside, letting Shae step in to stand beside the chair and take their grandfather’s hand. “Where’s Doru?” he heard the old man grumble to her.
Hilo had been worried about his grandfather being here. Kaul Sen was even more unpredictable now. What might he say? Would he loudly denounce Hilo in public, or start ranting about how wonderful his son Du had been? Now, though, Hilo relaxed a little. It was good that Grandda was here; in the wheelchair he looked frail and confused. Clearly, just a broken old man—no longer the Torch of Kekon. There were those in the clan, Hilo knew, the old guard, who might’ve agitated for Kaul Sen to step back into the clan’s leadership position. Now they would see that it wasn’t possible.
Hilo took up a spot next to the coffin. As the other members of the clan arrived, he observed whether they came first to him to pay their respect to the new Pillar, or whether they went to offer whispered condolences to Kaul Sen. Most came to him, as custom dictate
d. Some did not. Enough for Hilo to know his position as Pillar was far from universally accepted.
He kissed Wen chastely on the cheeks when she came up with Tar. She was lovely even in the white face powder that signified mourning and washed out the normal glow of her complexion. She slid her hand into his briefly as his lips touched her face. “Don’t mind those old men,” she whispered, as if reading his mind, or more simply, noticing how he glanced at the cluster of guests who had not yet come and addressed him as Pillar. “They haven’t accepted reality yet.”
“Some of them are powerful,” Hilo replied quietly. “Some are councilmen.”
“Councilmen are useless in a war,” Wen said. “The Lantern Men don’t need regulations or tax breaks right now; they need protection. They need the clan’s strength. Look at all the Fists here, how they rally to you. Everyone else in the clan sees that too.” She squeezed his fingers, then went to stand by her brothers.
Hilo scanned the crowd until he spotted Anden standing off to the side. He caught his cousin’s eye and motioned for him to join the rest of the family. Anden hesitated, then walked over. He looked wracked with grief, the poor kid, his eyes rimmed and his face almost as drawn and pale as Lan’s drowned corpse when Hilo had first laid eyes on it.
Hilo said gently, “What are you doing alone over there, Andy? You belong over here with us.” Anden’s face twitched like it was being barely held together, but he nodded mutely and took up his place next to Shae.
The gongs and drums sustained a final crash of noise that made Hilo’s head hurt, and then fell silent, as did the crowd. The senior penitent, a Learned One, glided forward and began to lead the long, low chanting recitations that would usher Lan’s spirit to the afterlife, where it would reside peacefully until the long-awaited Return, when all of humanity would be admitted back into the fold of Heaven to reclaim their lost kinship with the gods.