by Fonda Lee
It was some hours before Lott’s jade-stripped, bullet- and blade-torn body was recovered and reunited with his head. It was Maik Kehn’s job to go in person to pay respect and funerary money to Lott’s family, but this was one responsibility of the Horn that Hilo refused to relinquish. When the two of them arrived, Lott’s wife fell upon the ground with noisy sobs. To be honest, Hilo was not entirely sure if the weeping wasn’t as much relief as grief—he didn’t imagine Lott would’ve been an easy man to live with. Kehn pressed the white envelope into her hand, assuring her that her husband had given his blood to the clan, and the clan would always see to the family’s needs. She need not fear her children ever going hungry or homeless.
Hilo saw four children: a toddler, a six-year-old boy, a girl of about ten, and Lott’s teenage son—Anden’s classmate from the Academy, standing blank-faced with his younger siblings gathered around him, still in Academy uniform from having rushed home upon news of his father’s death. Hilo knelt in front of the small children.
“Do you know who I am?” he asked them.
The girl said, “You’re the Pillar.”
“That’s right,” Hilo said. “I’m here to tell you that your father’s dead. He died because he swore an oath to me, to defend the clan against its enemies. That’s often the way of our kind, to die in this way. I lost my father before I could walk, and I lost my older brother only a few months ago. It’s okay to feel sad or angry, but you should feel proud as well. When you’re older, when you’ve earned your own jade, you can say, ‘I’m a son or daughter of Lott Penshugon,’ and other Green Bones will salute you with respect, because of today.”
Then he stood and spoke to Lott’s son. “Are Trials over at the Academy?”
The young man roused his attention to Hilo slowly, as if emerging from a waking stupor. “Yes,” he said at last. “They finished yesterday.”
Hilo nodded. The graduation ceremony wouldn’t occur until after New Year’s Festival week, once final ranks had been determined and graduates had declared which oaths they intended to take, but excepting ceremony, the boy was a man now, the head of this Green Bone family. “I’m sorry you won’t be celebrating the end of Trials, or the New Year.” Hilo’s voice held an undercurrent of sympathy, but it had the rough tone he would take with any of his own men under formal circumstances. “A representative of the clan will be here soon, to help arrange your father’s funeral. If there’s anything you need from us, Lott-jen, anything at all, you call the Horn directly, and if you can’t reach him, you call the house and leave a message for me.”
The young man’s face moved in a brief contortion. He hadn’t missed the way Hilo had addressed him as a fellow Green Bone and a member of the clan. He glanced over at his collapsed mother and down at the small siblings huddled around him. Hilo watched the youth’s eyes, which had been full of scorn and resentment during their first encounter, slowly clear of their stunned confusion and resolve into dark acceptance, into blackness of purpose.
“Thank you for your generosity, Kaul-jen,” he said, speaking like a man, and he raised clasped hands to his head, bending deeply in salute.
As they left the house, Hilo said to Kehn, “That young man is our brother now. We have to take care of him and bring him up right in the clan, like his father would’ve wanted. Start thinking about how best to do it. Maybe put him under Vuay—he’s a good mentor.”
Hilo’s specific beliefs about what was required in a leader of Green Bones could be traced to a day some thirteen years ago, when the Maik brothers had been ambushed and set upon by a pack of six Academy boys and Kehn had had his cheek badly broken.
Hilo had not taken any special notice of the Maiks before then. Even though he and Tar were year-four classmates, they were not friends. The Maik brothers had few, if any, friends. They stuck together a great deal, as everyone was aware that they came from a shameful family. One day, a snide remark caused Tar to attack and beat another boy, and even though he was punished by the instructors, the boy’s friends, Hilo included, took it upon themselves to wait until they had a chance to catch the Maiks off Academy grounds.
The brothers put up a ferocious defense. Hilo hung back; the boy being avenged, Uto, would later become one of his Fists but was not at the time a close friend of his, so Hilo felt it was rightfully the place of others to take the greater share of the feud. After a while, though, he felt the Maiks had been through enough. The fight continued only because Tar had not suffered much. Kehn, two years older and larger, had taken the brunt of the attack and delivered impressive damage in return.
Kehn’s refusal to yield cost him; he was finally struck so hard that he fell moaning to his knees with his hands over his damaged face. Tar’s eyes clouded over with rage, and he pulled a talon knife from seemingly nowhere. This caused all the boys to stop. Up until now, unspoken rules had been followed—only fists and feet were involved and there’d been no pinning or beating on the ground. The appearance of a knife signaled that the fight had turned potentially deadly, and it put all of them at risk for expulsion from the Academy. A ripple of uncertain menace went through the group.
Hilo did not like how things were going, so he called out, “We’re done.”
At that time, he held sway with the group, but not so much that they obeyed him in the heat of a moment like this. “We’re not done,” Asei retorted. “We have to teach these two a lesson. They can’t be trusted.”
“Why do you say that?” Hilo asked curiously, for he admired the Maik brothers now after seeing how well they fought and how fiercely they defended each other. He envied the bond they had, and with a pang felt that it was something he lacked, not having a brother of a similar age. Lan had graduated from the Academy the year after Hilo entered.
“Everyone knows it about them,” Asei insisted.
“I’m not done either,” Tar snarled. Behind the upraised talon knife, his eyes were as wild as an animal’s. Hilo suspected he did not care if he was expelled for murder.
“If we’re here on account of Uto, then we’re done,” Hilo said, still speaking to Asei. “If you’ve got some other grief with the Maiks, you should’ve said so earlier. I don’t know of any myself, does anyone else?”
“That’s easy for you to say,” retorted another boy, who was cupping a hand to his bleeding nose. “I didn’t see you doing much of the fighting, Kaul; the rest of us did it for you, and we’ve still got grief, all right.” A moment passed before anyone seemed to realize that the boy, Yew, had said something wrong. A dangerous light had come into Hilo’s eyes.
“All right,” he said at last, and though his voice had gone quiet, he was easily heard in the alleyway’s sudden silence. “I can’t argue with Yew; I shouldn’t suggest what we ought to do if I haven’t suffered as much as the rest of you. And it’s also not fair that Kehn and Tar should have to keep fighting two against six when they’ve already been punished and can’t help that their family is hated by everyone.
“I’ll fight the Maiks; if the two of them can beat me, that’ll settle the matter for both Tar and Yew here.” Hilo shrugged out of his jacket and handed it to Yew. “No one else jumps in, or I’ll have words with you myself, another day.” Everyone looked skeptical, though also undisguisedly eager; this was a good matchup. The Maiks were fearsome and Kehn was large, but they were both tired and injured. Hilo was fresh, and he was a Kaul—no one who wanted to stay in the good graces of that family would dare to really hurt him, but the Maiks had no reputation to lose.
Hilo looked at Kehn’s battered face and Tar’s maddened one. “Put away the talon knife,” he said, as simply as if he were asking Tar to close a window. “I’ll give you three blows to even things up. I won’t answer the first three. After that, I will.”
The Maiks did not argue. The first three blows—two of Kehn’s huge fists to the stomach and a third to the face—nearly knocked Hilo unconscious. He climbed to his feet, wheezing through tears of pain, and began to fight back. At first, the circle of onlook
ers cheered and jeered, but they quickly fell silent. The trio of fighters were having a difficult time—all three were soon staggering exhausted as if drunk, and none of them bore real hatred for the other side—yet they kept battling on through a bullheaded, adolescent sense of perceived honor. In a matchup of jade powers, Hilo would’ve prevailed, but in a blunt physical contest, he could not hope to win. The Maik brothers had fought together too many times, and Kehn was too strong.
In the end, seeing Tar gasping and barely able to stand, but readying to hit him in the mouth again, Hilo broke into a bloody grin. He bent over, coughing with laughter that rattled his bruised ribs, and Tar, after staring at him nonplussed for a second, began to laugh himself, until he fell against the brick wall. Kehn scowled. As half his face was frozen from his injury, he looked like a ghoul as he went, not first to his younger brother, but to Hilo, and offered him a hand to help him upright. The three of them left holding each other up, the other five boys shuffling bewildered a respectful distance behind them, and returned to the Academy, where Hilo and the Maiks were assigned to clean the Academy’s toilets together every day for the next three months.
Looking back now, Hilo shook his head at the stupidity of fifteen-year-old boys, but after that, no one spoke badly of the Maiks to their faces, not unless they wished to challenge Kaul Hilo, which they did not.
With the death of Lott senior, Hilo was not optimistic about No Peak’s chances of holding Sogen. Most of it was already lost and the violence was spilling into Old Town, which only a few weeks ago he would’ve counted as a No Peak stronghold.
He strategized gloomily with Kehn in the car as they drove to the Cong Lady, which had become one of the clan’s primary meeting locations and was constantly occupied by the Horn’s men. Hilo personally preferred the food in the Double Double, but there was fire damage to the kitchen and no point in repairing it during a street war when they might lose the property again. They arrived to receive another terrible shock. One of the Fingers rushed through the door and down the front steps as soon as they stepped out of the Duchesse. “It’s Eiten,” the young man gasped, his face a sickly hue. Trembling, he led them into the betting house and down the stairs.
The silent crowd of Fingers in the hallway parted, pressing against the walls as Hilo and Kehn came through. Eiten was lying, moaning, on a black leather sofa in the basement lounge. Both of his arms were missing, chopped off, the stumps at the shoulders cauterized. Someone had brought Dr. Truw. The portly Green Bone physician was bent over, hands on the man’s chest, Channeling into him. Eiten wept, “No, stop, get off me,” twisting his armless torso to try to push the doctor off. As Hilo stared down, shaken at the sight, Dr. Truw stood and wiped his perspiring brow. “That should keep him alive until he gets to a hospital. An ambulance is on the way.”
“Hilo-jen,” Eiten sobbed, and Hilo crouched next to him. “Help me, please. He wouldn’t give me a clean death, wouldn’t even give me the respect he at least gave Lott and Satto. He sent me back alive to give you a message.”
Hilo bent near Eiten’s face. “What was Gont’s message?”
Eiten’s gray eyes burned with fury. He looked as if he’d spit if only he could sit up. “I don’t want to say it, Hilo-jen. It’s insulting, not even worth you hearing.”
“That disgraceful piss drinker crippled you for this message,” Hilo said. “Tell me what it is, Eiten. I promise on my brother’s grave I’ll take Gont’s jade for you.”
Still, the man hesitated, his bloodless face slick with sweat. “Gont says he’ll give you until the end of New Year’s Day to surrender yourself. If you do, he’ll grant you a death of consequence, on your feet and with a blade, and let your family bury you with your jade. The rest of No Peak will be spared if they can choose allegiance to the Mountain or exile from Kekon.” Eiten drew a difficult breath. “If you refuse, Gont promises to keep sending you the heads of your Fists, and he’ll do worse to Anden and Shae-jen than what he’s done to me. He means to burn the Torch’s house to the ground and destroy the clan completely.”
Eiten saw murder sweeping across the Pillar’s eyes, and he lifted his head in sudden urgency. “End my life, Hilo-jen, and take my jade for the clan. I’m useless to you now. I’m a Green Bone, a Fist of No Peak. I can’t live like this. Please …”
Kehn made an inarticulate noise of agreement behind the Pillar.
Hilo’s fog of wrath cleared long enough for him to lean forward and place a hand on the man’s brow. “No, Eiten. Right now, you’re humiliated and in pain. You shouldn’t make the decision to die in this state. All you’re missing are your arms. There are good prosthetics these days; the Espenians make them. You still have a sharp mind, and your training, and your jade abilities. And a wife—you have a beautiful wife, and a baby growing in her belly. You shouldn’t die if you can help it.”
“She can’t see me like this,” Eiten sobbed. “I can’t let her.”
Hilo turned to Pano, the Finger who’d brought them in. “Go tell Eiten-jen’s wife that he’s been hurt. Make sure she stays at home, until he’s ready to see her. Get her whatever she needs, comfort her that he’ll be all right, but make her stay at home. Go now.”
He turned back to Eiten as Pano rushed off to do as he asked. “You should live to see your child be born. And wouldn’t you like to be alive when I tear the jade from Gont’s body, on your behalf?” Uncertainty slackened Eiten’s face. Hilo said, “A new year is around the corner, so I’ll tell you what: Give it one year, so you can see these good things coming to you. At the end of this next year, if you still want to die, come talk to me. I’ll honor your wishes myself, without question. I’ll see that you’re buried with your jade and that your wife and child are taken care of.”
Tears rolled from the corners of Eiten’s eyes and pooled under his head on the black leather under the bright lights of the casino. “Do you promise, Hilo-jen?”
“On my brother’s grave, just as I said.”
Slowly, Eiten’s breathing eased. His jade aura calmed, the shrill spikes of desperation and pain ceasing. When the ambulance arrived, Hilo stepped away to let Dr. Truw and the paramedics take the man away. Kehn went out to speak to the ambulance driver to make sure the Fist was taken straight to Janloon General in the Temple District and not any of the lesser hospitals. When Kehn returned, Hilo asked everyone else in the room and the hallway to leave. They did so in a solemn hush.
Hilo poured two shots of hoji from behind the bar and put one of them in front of Kehn. “Drink,” he said, and downed his own glass. The liquor burned his throat and warmed his stomach, settling his taut nerves. When Kehn set his glass down, Hilo said, “Shame on you, Kehn. It was a good thing I was here.”
Kehn was taken aback. “What did I do?”
“You would’ve killed Eiten like he asked.”
“It seemed the merciful thing to do. It was what he wanted.”
“To make his wife a widow and for his child to be fatherless? No, what he wanted was his dignity. I promised him that. Now we don’t have to bury another Fist. We’ve lost too many people as it is.” He rested his forehead in his hands for a moment. Nine of his best Fists slain, and one horribly maimed. Dozens of his Fingers dead or crippled. Hilo looked up at Kehn. “I expect you to honor my promise to Eiten if I’m not alive to do it. You need to tell Juen about this, Vuay too, so one of them can honor it if you’re not alive.”
Kehn nodded, but he looked frustrated. It was unlike him; he was usually stalwart even in dire situations. It was Tar who would show his emotions, who would vent on behalf of both of them. Now, however, Kehn’s soldierly composure was visibly fissured. He understood all too well how badly the war was going and how that failure could in large part be laid at his feet. The elder Maik’s tired face was rigid with the baleful desperation that Hilo remembered so well from that first memorable encounter when they were both teenagers. “I wouldn’t have thought of saying what you did to Eiten just now,” Kehn said in a gruff voice. “I can’t do w
hat you do, Hilo-jen.”
“You have to learn to be the Horn. I’m giving you a hard time, I know. If Lan were here, he’d be tearing into me for everything I’m doing wrong as Pillar.”
“But he’s not here,” Kehn said, and Hilo heard the resentment, realized that Kehn saw the difficulty inherent in his position so long as every jade warrior in the clan still looked to Hilo as the true Horn when he entered the room. There was nothing to be done for it, though, not with the stakes so high. He had confidence that given autonomy and time to find his footing, Kehn would be more than capable as Horn, but Hilo was also grimly aware that he couldn’t afford to step away right now. A wartime Horn needed not only the respect but the love of his men, needed empathy in addition to cunning and resolve. As No Peak’s position became increasingly dire, it became more and more important that the Green Bones saw him among them and kept faith.
“Soon I may not be here either,” Hilo said somberly.
Kehn’s head jerked up, the frown on his face sharp. “You’re not thinking of giving in to Gont’s threats?” When Hilo didn’t answer, alarm began forming on the Horn’s face. “Like Eiten said, it’s an insult, not worth listening to. Does Gont actually think you’d hand yourself over like a sheep to the butcher? We’ve killed many of theirs, and he’s trying to scare our Fingers with what he did to Eiten.”
“Maybe,” said Hilo, but he didn’t think Gont was so superficial. No, the man must be aware of the important fact that Shae had told Hilo and that Kehn did not yet know: Based on respective clan resources, the Mountain would eventually win the war. But it would take time and be bloody and costly to both sides. The Mountain would be a weak and gutted victor by the end, perhaps unable to manage all its territories or maintain the support of its Lantern Men and the Royal Council. Smaller tributary clans might break away. The jade smuggling and SN1 manufacturing businesses Ayt had built would be at risk from takeover by criminals and foreigners.