by Fonda Lee
“There’s no reason for them not to remain so. We can arrange things simply between us. Make it appear honorable. Kaul Hilo can fall in battle as the war hero he clearly wishes to be. There’d be no taint of treachery for you, no worry of vengeance from his followers. Afterward, you’d be acting with full legitimacy.”
Shae nodded. An ambush then, getting Hilo alone at a place and time of their choosing. This time the Mountain would see to it that the assassination plan was better, foolproof. How easily Ayt spoke of all this, as if necessary fratricide was no less difficult to arrange than any other business transaction. Truly, she doesn’t fear the judgment of either men or gods. Shae’s stir of unbidden admiration tasted acidic in her throat. Ayt was a stronger woman than she.
Shae glanced in the direction of the penitents, who still sat unmoving, their auras unperturbed by the content of the conversation they might be exposing to Heaven itself. Is anyone listening? Perhaps, Shae thought with sudden heaviness, the penitents meditated in vain. Jade-enhanced senses and the power of Perception endowed Green Bones with so much more nuance and clarity about the world around them, but it didn’t, in the end, offer up any great truth, any proof of the gods or hope that people could ever be anything more than what they were. Was Old Uncle Jenshu paying attention now? Did he grieve what had become of the legacy of honorable warriors? The Return couldn’t be further away than Green Bones plotting murder in the sanctum of the temple.
Ayt had seen clearly Shae’s ambition and resentment, had seized upon her rivalry with Hilo as an opening. Shae understood what that said about her: If the way to redemption was through the Divine Virtues, she was no closer to Heaven than the woman next to her. She turned to Ayt now. “You say you see your younger self in me,” she said. “I see in you the kind of Green Bone I don’t want to become. Jade meant something once. I’m not an oath breaker. I won’t betray the memory of a slain brother, and sell the life of another for power.” She stood up, wondering as she did so if she’d just sealed her own death. “I want no part of the Kekon you envision.”
Ayt remained sitting for a few seconds. Then she rose to her feet and faced the younger woman. Her expression was unchanged, but her aura swelled with unmistakably ominous intent, and despite herself, Shae took an involuntary step back.
“I despise it when my hand is forced,” the Pillar said, adjusting one of the coils of jade on her arm. “Ayt Yugontin brought me, a girl that should have died, out of a war orphanage and trained me to be the strongest Green Bone in the Mountain clan. Yet when he grew old, he couldn’t bring himself to name me his heir. He feared a backlash from the inner circle of men in the clan who would fault him for naming a woman his successor. The Spear of Kekon, who was never afraid to die fighting the Shotarians—he was afraid to name an adopted daughter to rule his precious clan.
“The man I call my father, the one to whom I owe everything—he forced my hand. Before his body was cold, I had to kill his closest comrades—Green Bones I valued and respected—for the position that should have been mine without question. With his dying breath my father could have prevented bloodshed, but he didn’t. Such is the cowardice and shortsightedness of even the most well-meaning of men.”
The expression of disappointment on Ayt’s face held a frightening calm as she said to Shae, “I’ve offered you an opportunity that you’ve spurned. Don’t worry, you naive and idealistic girl, I won’t kill you now. I want you to remember, when you see your brother’s jade torn from his mangled body, when your clan lies in ashes, that you could have prevented it but didn’t. You forced my hand. You’ll remember.”
Ayt turned and swept from the sanctum, the wake of her passing stirring the holy room like a hot wind carrying the promise of drought and punishing devastation. Then she was gone, and the temple was once again harmonious. The penitents sitting in the circle had not stirred. Alone now, the strain broke through Shae’s control. Her heart began racing and sweat beaded on her face. She sank back down onto the cushion.
Heaven help us. My clan, all Green Bones, all of Kekon.
CHAPTER
48
Reading the Clouds
Hilo was furious at his sister. He stormed into the main Kaul house and found her at the table in Lan’s study with Woon. Unlike him, she seemed to enjoy retreating in here, though he’d never seen her sit in Lan’s chair; he would’ve forbidden her from using the room if she’d done that.
Both Shae and Woon were waiting for him silently when he barged through the doors; it would’ve been hard not to Perceive his approach. He swept an arm across the table, scattering papers everywhere, involuntarily Deflecting Lan’s empty chair into the back wall and books off the bookshelves. Hilo placed both hands on the table and leaned over his Weather Man.
“Doru escaped,” he said.
Shae paled, understanding the disastrous import at once. The traitor would flee straight to the Mountain, taking with him everything there was to know about No Peak’s business secrets, not to mention knowledge of the Kaul estate and its defenses.
“You made me keep him alive, you convinced me he wouldn’t be a threat. I shouldn’t have listened to you. I should’ve killed that snake!” Hilo’s face was flushed, his eyes bulging. His hands clenched and unclenched as if desperate to wrap themselves around Doru’s absent throat.
Woon pushed his chair back from the Pillar nervously, but Shae merely stared at her angry brother in astonishment. “How did he do it?” she asked.
“Om’s knocked out with a broken jaw, and Nune is dead; the old bastard snapped his neck. They were just kids, those Fingers! New enough to jade that they could go without it. How that withered scarecrow Doru could’ve—” Sudden realization swept across Hilo’s features. A muscle in his cheek twitched. “Grandda.” He whirled and strode back out of the study, nearly dizzy with fury. “Grandda!”
Shae leapt to follow him. He ignored her as he prowled up the staircase and flung open the door to their grandfather’s room. Kaul Sen sneered at him from his chair by the window, a look of smug vindictiveness painted on his wrinkled face. His eyes, so often weary and vacant these days, danced bright and cruel. “Don’t you know how to knock, boy?” he demanded in a raspy bark.
“You.” Hilo’s eyes moved up and down, scanning the old man in disbelief. “You gave Doru jade. You gave him your jade.”
“And why shouldn’t I?” Kaul Sen shouted. “You’re taking it all away from me anyway, you impudent wretch! You think I don’t notice? This is all I have left.” The patriarch pushed his blanket to the floor and flung open his robe to reveal the sagging pale flesh of his torso over a belt now liberated of most of its stones. It looked like an antique item, the belt, weathered and empty, something that belonged in a thrift shop. “It’s my jade. I’ll give it away if I want, to whomever I want!”
Hilo was at a loss for words. He’d made sure there was no jade in Doru’s house and that neither of the guards had any on them that might be stolen. The former Weather Man might have betrayed the younger Kauls, but he wouldn’t take jade from the Torch any more than he would slit his only friend’s throat. The idea that Kaul Sen would give away his jade had never even crossed Hilo’s mind. “You’ve lost your senses,” he said. “You’ve no idea what you’ve done.”
“I set Doru free,” said his grandfather with a vicious smile. “He doesn’t have to stay trapped here, putting up with such humiliation. The way you treated him! The best Weather Man there ever was, a hero of the country! And you stripped him of his jade and locked him up like an animal, just like you’re doing to me. Disgusting.”
Hilo took several trembling steps toward the old man in the chair, too enraged to even give voice to all his patricidal thoughts. Shae went defensively to Kaul Sen’s side, her aura churning with agitation. She shot her brother a warning look. “Hilo.”
Hilo stopped a few feet away, the knuckles of his fists white. His voice, when he spoke, was a whisper of loathing. “No one in this family could be Pillar after you, could the
y, Grandda? Not Lan; certainly not me. No one but the great Torch of Kekon. You dragged at and questioned Lan’s every step, and you’d laugh to see Ayt Yu’s daughter claim the jade off my body. Stay in this room, then, until you die.”
He spun and left, slamming the door behind him. He came across Woon standing at the bottom of the stairs, and forgetting, in his aggravation, that Woon was no longer Pillarman, he said, “Call Dr. Truw. I want that man sedated and the rest of his jade locked up. When Om’s awake, tell him he’s to guard Grandda’s room from now on. No phone calls or messages—if Doru tries to contact him, I want to know.”
On the front steps of the house, Hilo sat down and lit one of his remaining Espenian brand cigarettes. They were getting hard to find. The upsurge in crime and violence was disrupting the flow of imported goods. Business was bad overall.
Why had he been so stupid? So softhearted? And Shae, always standing up for the old fiend. Dr. Truw had told them that Kaul Sen was sliding into dementia as his jade tolerance waned, that he was no longer cognizant of all his actions, but Hilo thought his grandfather’s spiteful personality was simply more transparent now.
He draped his arms over his knees and felt weariness slowly crawl over the lingering anger. It had been a bad couple of weeks since he’d made his stand in Wisdom Hall, since No Peak had declared peace to be impossible and committed the city to war. There had been some visible victories: The release of the KJA audit results had reflected badly on Ayt, and with Chancellor Son leading the charge in publicly condemning the Mountain and wielding his influence, No Peak’s most important Lantern Men were maintaining their allegiance, waiting to see what happened next.
What was happening was that Gont was winning the street war. The Mountain had apparently decided that there was no point holding back now. It didn’t matter if No Peak held political or public sympathy if all its soldiers were dead. Even with his own network of spies, Hilo had underestimated both Gont’s genius for urban warfare and the extent to which the Mountain had dug into No Peak territory by cultivating street gangs and mercenary agents that rose up to attack the clan within its own districts.
Shae came out of the house and stood behind him. “I’ll find Doru.” Her words were stiff. “You’re right. It was my mistake. I spared his life, and it’ll be my responsibility to correct that.”
“He’s long gone,” said Hilo. “And he won’t be easy to get to again.”
“I’ll get to him,” she promised.
Let her try. He would set Tar to the task, and he wagered his man would get it done first. “It’ll be too late in any case,” he said without turning. He couldn’t muster the energy to maintain his anger at her. “We have to assume everything Doru knows, the Mountain now knows. They’ll know which of our businesses are most valuable, which ones are weak, how much money and jade we have, how long we can hold out in the war.” He ground out his cigarette.
“Then they’ll soon know it’s not long.”
He looked over his shoulder at her, then turned back around. “So it’s bad.”
Shae said, “Tourism is down over fifty percent, and that’s hurting us far more than it’s hurting the Mountain. Some of their strongest sectors, like retail, are actually doing better in the war—people are stocking up on supplies, and they’re motivated to buy things now instead of waiting, in case a business isn’t there tomorrow.”
Woon, who’d joined Shae by the door, added, “With the KJA suspended, mining and jade exports have stopped, so we have no income coming in there.”
The Mountain would be feeling the loss as well, but they’d been hoarding jade and would have greater reserves. Shae said, “We’re trading jade in the street war, but if they keep taking more from us than we’re taking from them, we’ll deplete our supply. We still need to make Fingers out of the Academy’s graduating class in two months.”
“What about the minor clans?” Hilo asked. “Can we get anything from them?”
Shae said, “The Short Tent clan and Six Hands Unity have lined up behind the Mountain, no surprises there. Stone Cup has sided with us—they hardly have a choice, given their dependence on the construction trade. The Jo Sun clan and Black Tail clan have made noises of support, for all the good that’ll do us. Lip service is appreciated, but you can’t wring much juice from a grape.” There were roughly a dozen smaller clans on Kekon; some held sway in certain towns elsewhere on the island or were entrenched in specific industries, some were independent and some were tributaries of the major clans, but none were even a sixth the size of either the Mountain or No Peak. “The rest are acting like Haedo Shield and staying clear, no doubt waiting to send bouquets of dancing star lilies to whoever prevails,” Shae added.
Hilo stood up reluctantly and said, “Talk in the house.” They went inside, and though it still wasn’t his favorite room, he went into Lan’s study because it was private. Shae and Woon came in after him. The books and papers he’d scattered were still strewn all over the floor. Hilo stepped over them and fell into one of the armchairs, motioning for Woon to shut the door behind him. “Tell me how long we can last.”
Shae said, “At this rate, we’ll be in the red in six months. That’s even if our Lantern Men stay with us, which they’ve done so far. It could be a lot less than that. It doesn’t matter what Son Tomarho says, and it doesn’t matter if people think Ayt is a crook. Once they sense we’re bound to lose, they’ll blame No Peak for dragging out the suffering of the city. They’ll start reneging on tributes and looking to the victors.”
“And the Mountain? How long can they stay at war?”
“We don’t know, but longer than us,” Woon said. “If they’re producing shine in Ygutan like they say, that’s an entirely separate and lucrative income stream.”
“It’s worse than that,” Shae said. “They’re smuggling jade to the Ygutanian government through secret contracts. That’s how they’re using some of the supply they’ve spirited away from the mines—to get in bed with foreigners on the other side. Between that and the shine factories, my guess is their coffers are just fine.”
Hilo raised a puzzled expression to Shae. “How do you know the Mountain has secret contracts to sell jade to Ygutan? Is this for sure?”
Shae sat down in the chair opposite him and crossed her legs, lacing her fingers over one knee. “The Weather Man reads the clouds,” she said. It was an old saying, meaning it was the Weather Man’s job to know things, to cultivate secret sources of information in order to stay one step ahead of everyone else. A smile crept to Hilo’s face upon hearing his younger sister cite such a hidebound clan adage, reminding him that a good Pillar did not question his Weather Man’s methods or sources too closely. Like a duck to water, as he’d always suspected.
Shae did not return his smile. “We need two things, and we need them soon, Hilo. We need money. And we need to turn around the street war. If I can get us the first, and you and Kehn can get us the second, we might survive the year.” Her gaze dropped for a second, then rose again. “We also need to plan for what happens if we don’t.”
She was right to bring it up, but Hilo slouched farther down in the chair, leaning his head back and closing his eyes. “Not now, Shae. We’re not there yet.”
“We may be soon,” she said.
“I said not now,” Hilo repeated. “Leave me alone for a while.”
After a long moment, he heard his sister rise. She and Woon collected the spilled papers from around the room, then exited wordlessly. The door clicked shut behind them. Hilo remained motionless with his eyes closed.
He considered, with a dispassionate calm that was quite unlike him, the possibility that he was outmatched. If he failed and was killed—they were the same thing, as one would lead to the other—No Peak would likely perish with him. He would be the last Pillar of his clan.
If there had been a more fitting leader upon Lan’s death, he would’ve stepped aside—kept the position of Horn, for which he was better suited, and done his best to win the war
in that way. But there had never been any choice. Shae could not be the Pillar. Certainly she was smart and carried her jade well, but the clan would not accept it. She was the youngest, a woman, and she was no Ayt Mada, who had been the eldest and still came to power only by slaughtering all potential rivals. Shae would not do that, nor did she have the necessary common touch, a force of character or charisma that would compel other Green Bones, the powerful Fists in particular, to gladly offer their lives to continue fighting the war under her command if Hilo were dead. No, Hilo thought despondently, his sister was a study in aloof and self-sufficient competence, an able business leader but not a Green Bone Pillar. She would want the position even less than he did.
There were no other heirs to the clan leadership. Anden was a Kaul by adoption, but he was too young, not even jaded yet, and of mixed blood. Ayt would probably have him executed nevertheless, to be on the safe side. The Maik brothers were the sons of a disgraced Mountain Fist—they’d never be accepted as the head family of No Peak, if there was a No Peak clan to be head of by that point. Kaul Sen had had an older sister, and Hilo’s mother had two younger siblings of little note, so there were some second- and third-removed family cousins scattered throughout the clan, none of them with the name or upbringing of a Kaul, none prominent or accomplished enough to lead.
Hilo was accustomed to the idea of death, but contemplating the extinction of his family, of his entire bloodline and the clan it had built, shook him deeply. He thought about how he might join Lan in death knowing he’d left unfulfilled the vengeance he’d sworn, and despaired that he hadn’t had enough time to marry Wen and give her any children. He thought about these things, wallowed deeply in the pain of them for a short spell, then slowly turned his mind back to the present.
He wasn’t dead yet. A man could be shot or stabbed, he could be fatally wounded, spurting his life out upon the ground, and still have a few precious minutes to bring down his enemy. Hilo had seen it before. Adversarial, opportunistic cunning was a Horn’s strength, and Hilo was a natural Horn. Anything could happen in a battle. The right person with the right opening and the right weapon—that meant everything.