by Fonda Lee
“Our blood for the Pillar!” someone shouted. A few other voices rose up as Hilo descended the stage. “No Peak! No Peak!” Anden began to turn to the crowd to see who’d started the chant, but Grandmaster Le, glaring disapprovingly, brought up his hands to demand silence. All the graduates, and many members of the audience, had grown up under the grandmaster’s strict rule, and instinctively fell quiet.
“Now,” said Grandmaster Le with more than a touch of reproof at both the overly dramatic oath-taking performance and the crowd’s reaction, “we must award these graduates the jade they’ve earned for their years of hard work, discipline, and training.”
At the back of the stage was a table with four separate groupings of small wooden boxes. Every set of eyes swiveled eagerly to Master Sain as he took a box from the first pile and opened it. “Au Satingya,” he read from the inside of the lid.
Immediately following final Trials, all the year-eights had turned in their training bands and the jade they contained. Now their jade would be returned permanently, possibly with fewer or more stones than they’d surrendered, depending on how they’d performed in the exams. Each pile on the table represented a level of accomplishment in the jade disciplines. Au Sati, who stepped onto the stage to polite applause, had earned one jade stone, strung onto a metal chain. Grandmaster Le lifted it from the box and placed it over Au’s head. Au would become one of the lowest-ranked Fingers, or if he was bright enough with numbers, an entry-level Luckbringer.
“Goro Gorusuto,” said Master Sain, calling up the next graduate as Au saluted and stepped back off the stage. So it went, until the first group of boxes was cleared, and a larger grouping of graduates began coming up one at a time to receive two stones of jade each. For some of the young men and women graduating, the jade they were awarded today would be the only green they would ever wear. For others, it was merely the first of more to come, with jade passed down through families, awarded by superiors in the clan, or most prestigious of all, won in duels and battles.
When the higher-ranked students who’d each earned three stones began filing across the stage, Anden found himself so nervous he could barely watch. Dudo received his jade, then Pau and Ton, all of them breaking into smiles once they’d gotten past the grandmaster and joined their fellow graduates on the other side. The collection of boxes on the table grew smaller. There were only a dozen or so boxes in the final pile containing the reward for the top students, the ones who’d earned the maximum of four jade pieces—as much jade as one would expect on a senior Finger or a junior Fist, more than most Kekonese and any foreigners could safely tolerate.
Putting on that much jade ought to be easy for Anden now, after what he’d been through. It would be a momentarily disorienting rush, like what he’d experienced during training, nothing like the powerful, crippling high he’d suffered in front of the Twice Lucky. Yet still, his fingers began to feel numb and chilled, and his stomach clenched in craving and visceral reluctance. The grandmaster began calling up the final students. An especially loud round of foot-stomping applause greeted Lott as he stepped up and bent his head for the grandmaster. Anden could hear his fellow graduates nearby, already chatting, congratulating each other, discussing how they’d have their stones reset, whether they wanted thumb rings or eyebrow studs or other, more daring piercings. There was only one box left on the table.
“Emery Anden,” said Master Sain.
The chatter died as Anden stood up. Suddenly he felt as if he was in a waking dream, a self-consciously fictive state in which he was doing something without believing that he was really there. His legs moved him forward, his shoes hit the steps, and when he reached the stage, he heard someone shout, “Kaul-jen!”
Applause broke out, and other voices echoed the first. “Kaul-jen!”
Anden paused, thinking the crowd was shouting for Hilo. When he realized they were cheering him, heat flowed into his face. They’re saying I’m a Kaul. A mixed-blood orphan like him, and they were placing him alongside Lan and Hilo and Shae. It was the greatest flattery he could imagine, and he was mortified. Because it wasn’t true; he wasn’t like them. As Grandmaster Le lifted out the four jade stones on a silver chain, Anden stumbled back as if the box contained a venomous spider.
“No,” he blurted.
Grandmaster Le frowned, his motion arrested. “What do you mean, no?”
“I don’t—” Anden choked out. “I don’t want to wear jade.”
In all his years at the Academy, he’d never seen the grandmaster entirely taken aback, as he was now, his gray eyebrows like two bristly arches, his lined face locked into place. Master Sain and the other faculty members onstage looked at each other in bewilderment, but none seemed to know what to say. A graduate refusing his jade? Such a thing had never happened.
Anden heard the stunned silence before the whispers of disbelief began to rise. He didn’t dare fix his eyes anywhere but at his feet; he was disgracing himself, disgracing Hilo and Shae. Burning with shame, he clasped his shaking hands and brought them to his bowed forehead in a salute of deepest apology before turning and descending the stage without speaking.
He had never seen Hilo so livid with confusion and rage. The Pillar came straight for him as soon as Grandmaster Le brought the graduation ceremony to a quick and awkward conclusion. The crowd of watching clan members parted before Hilo in fearful haste. Hilo’s fingers locked around Anden’s bicep like talons. He dragged his unresisting cousin away from his fellow graduates, around the back of the stage, putting several feet of distance between them and the silent stares of so many others. Hilo spun Anden to face him. “What do you think you’re doing?”
Anden tried to speak, but when he opened his mouth, he didn’t know what to say. There seemed to be no way to explain what he’d done. Hilo’s hand was still clamped around his arm, and through it, Anden could feel his cousin’s jade aura shrilling like a swarm of infuriated hornets. “I’m sorry,” he managed at last.
“You’re sorry?” Hilo seemed unable to find words of his own for a moment. “What’s this about, Andy? What’s come over you? You made a fool of yourself in front of the clan, in front of all your Green Bone brothers. You made a fool of me.”
“I’m not like you, Hilo,” Anden burst out, anguished. Everything he’d feared about himself, every doubt he’d tamed with strict training and faith in the clan, every nightmare involving bloody bathtub water and his mother’s screams had seemed in one instant to rise out of that small box on the stage, overwhelming even the horrible knowledge that he was ruining all that he’d ever wanted. “I’m not someone who should have jade, who was ever meant to have jade. If I start wearing it today, I’ll only want more and more, as much as I had when I killed Gont. I’ll become worse than my ma, the crazy Mad Witch; I know I will. I can feel it in my blood now, no matter what you say.” He could barely breathe enough to speak. “You could dope me up on shine, on that poisonous Espenian stuff that killed Lan, but that’s not how I want to live. I don’t want to be what you’re making me: a-a—”
“A what?” Hilo demanded angrily. “A Green Bone? A part of this family?”
“A weapon,” Anden finished in a whisper.
Hilo released him with a jerk and stepped back. His face contorted in a baffling mix of emotions, foremost among them hurt, his eyes widening in deeply wounded surprise, as if Anden had pulled out a knife and cut him across the cheek. Behind Hilo’s shoulder, Anden glimpsed Shae approaching, Kehn and Wen following her but stopping some distance away, holding back from intruding.
The Pillar took a step forward and raised his hands to seize his cousin by the shoulders. Anden flinched, certain for a second that Hilo would really hurt him now, but Hilo merely said, in a calm, forced voice, “This is my fault, Andy.” He gave Anden a firm shake to force him to look up. “That fight—it was too much, too quickly. And landing in the hospital afterward, that was a scary thing. You scared yourself. I’m the one to blame, but I had to do it, because we needed you. I co
uldn’t have done it myself, couldn’t have saved the clan without you. We still need you.”
Anden felt terrible guilt searing his face as Hilo said, in a quiet voice that was both entreating and reproving, “You humiliated both of us just now, but I know you didn’t mean to; I’m not going to hold it against you. Let’s go back out there together to find Grandmaster Le and get your graduation jade. It’s what you worked for all these years. We’ll forget this happened, and we’ll do it right this time, build you up slowly. You’re a member of this family, Andy. You were raised to be a Green Bone.”
Anden felt his resolve quaver, but then he shook his head vehemently. “I’m too sensitive to jade; it makes me too powerful. It makes me enjoy killing too much.” He swallowed thickly. “The Mountain knows how much of a threat I am now. If I wear any green at all, Ayt will do whatever she can to have me killed, and I’ll have to kill so many others just to stay alive …” His words were rushing out in a torrent of desperation. “And every time I kill, I’ll enjoy it, more and more, and earn more jade, and all the shine in the world won’t help me in the end, I know it.”
Hilo threw up his hands. “The Mountain’s wanted me dead for years! We live with death and madness angling for us, but we do what we have to do, we deal with it! You think I had it any easier than you last week? I had to go through fucking jade withdrawal when I was most of the way to being a corpse, and still wake up to be the godsdamned Pillar.” His voice rose; he forced it back down with visible effort. “Being powerful makes you a target, being a Kaul makes you a target, but a Green Bone never turns his back on his family or his clan.” The light in Hilo’s dilated pupils was dangerous. “Think about what you’re doing, Andy.”
Shae appeared next to them suddenly. She spoke in a voice that was low and resolute, and carried a current of cold reproach that she turned on her brother. “This is Anden’s decision, Hilo. He’s graduated and taken oaths; he’s a man now.”
“Who do you think those oaths are to?” Hilo demanded. “Those are clan oaths, made to the Pillar. They’re what we live and die by. If you do this, Andy, you’re betraying me.” The grimace on Hilo’s face was terrible. “How could you say I made you into a weapon? Like I didn’t love you and treat you like my little brother, like you were nothing to me but a tool? How could you say that?” He took a step backward, shoulders trembling as if it was physically painful to hold himself back from murdering his miserable cousin where he stood. His face and voice turned suddenly cold and remote with scorn. “You do this and you’re out of the family.”
“Hilo,” Shae hissed, looking as if she would strike him. “Stop this.”
“Hilo-jen …” Anden pleaded, his body turning cold.
“Get out of my sight,” Hilo said. When Anden didn’t move, he roared, “Get out of my sight! You ungrateful, traitorous mongrel, I never want to see you again!”
Anden stumbled backward, stricken, the force of Hilo’s flushed fury strangling whatever words might have tried to escape his throat. He turned and ran.
He ran until he left the grounds of the Academy. He tore off his graduation robes and threw them into the dirt and kept running in his dress pants and thin shirt, muddying them as he scrambled through the forest of Widow’s Park without regard for direction. He ran until tears blurred his vision and exertion scalded his lungs and legs. When he stopped running, he kept stumbling and pushing through the trees, as if he could escape what had happened, as if he could lose his shame in the woods.
When he emerged onto a main road, he saw where he was and he began running again. The cemetery gates were open for visiting hours, and he panted his way up the gravesite-cluttered hillside, half sobbing, until he collapsed in a heap in front of Lan’s headstone at the foot of the Kaul family memorial. “I’m sorry,” he gasped, trembling, the wind chilling the sweat-soaked shirt to his skin. Fat raindrops had begun to fall, streaking the lenses of his glasses and plastering the hair to his head. Rain splattered the marble slab, darkening it from a whitish green to a color almost like dirty jade. “I’m sorry, Lan.” Anden sat and wept.
When Shae showed up minutes or hours later, she was carrying a black umbrella, which she held over him, letting the rain fall on her uncovered head as she stood next to him gazing at the family’s final resting place. “He would’ve been proud of you, Anden,” she said matter-of-factly. “He was always proud of you.”
CHAPTER
57
Forgiveness
The letter that was delivered to the Weather Man’s office on Ship Street two weeks later held no return address, but Shae knew who it was from as soon as she picked it up and saw the tight, upright handwriting scratched across the outside in blue fountain-pen ink. She sat down at her desk, fingering the corners of the stiff envelope, then tore it open and read.
Dearest Shae-se,
I can’t tell you how much I regret having to betray your trust. I’ve always done as Kaul-jen commanded in all things, and I can still say that is true. I assume that you and Hilo are searching for me, and I expect no sympathy or mercy should we meet again.
Take care what you do now. Hilo may believe he has won, but a Mountain is not easily pushed into the sea. There’s nothing I can do to change the fate of your brother and poor Anden, but my heart aches to think of anything bad happening to you. So consider this a sincere warning from your caring uncle: Have a plan to escape Kekon quickly and on your own. Store away some money and use your Espenian connections so no one in the clan knows. A good Weather Man is always reading the clouds.
With fond regrets,
Yun Dorupon
Shae swiveled her chair around slowly to look out upon the city below. Springtime warmth hung in the thin smog over the steady hum of the freeway and the bustle of the harbor; the air conditioning in Shae’s office came on with a noisy chugging sound. She felt, suddenly, very aware of herself, of the flesh and blood, breath and aura that comprised her physical being, sitting here in this office that had for so long belonged to the man who had written the letter in her hands.
She and her family were alive on a day she had thought, a few weeks ago, they would not be. No Peak had suffered, and was suffering still, but it hung on, tenacious—as Green Bones and their ways had for hundreds of years. She read the letter through once again, then held the corner of it to a cigarette lighter and watched it burn down in the ashtray. I won’t run, Doru, not this time—and I’m coming for you.
Seventhday brunch service at the Twice Lucky was not as brisk as it had been in the past, but with the Docks back in No Peak control and violence on the streets having settled down, business was returning to the popular old waterfront establishment. Shae and Hilo sat across from each other in a booth situated away from the rest of the diners. Kaul Sen’s wheelchair was pulled up to the end of the table. Kyanla, sitting next to him, adjusted the napkin in the old man’s lap. Wen was not able to join them this morning. She was taking Espenian language classes several times a week at Janloon City College when she wasn’t traveling as part of her new job.
Shae placed some sausage and pickled vegetables on her grandfather’s plate next to hers. He mumbled something that sounded like appreciation and patted her hand. These were the moments she looked for now: small things. Reminders of the family patriarch she’d admired and loved, the man who’d insisted she be no less a Green Bone than her brothers. Kaul Sen’s remaining fragments of lucidity might be as illusory and brief as the appearance of peace in the city of Janloon, but she appreciated both all the more for their fragility.
The Mountain had retrenched, shoring up defenses in Summer Park, Spearpoint, and the other southern districts that comprised its core territories. Rumor had it that Ayt Mada had appointed a new Horn. Not Waun Balu, Gont’s First Fist, as Hilo and almost everyone else had expected. Instead, Ayt had traveled to Wie Lon Temple School outside of Janloon and recruited one of her father’s former warriors, Nau Suen. Nau had spent the last two years living an undemanding life as a senior instructor at Wi
e Lon—a clan reward, it was generally suspected, for giving Ayt Mada’s ascension as Pillar his full and vigorous support, including slitting the throat of Ayt Eodo with commendable alacrity. He was said to be a master of Perception.
Shae tried again to enjoy the meal and put the war out of her mind for a brief spell. Across the table from her, Hilo plucked at the plate of crispy squid balls. “These make it all worth it,” he said, a smile curving his lips but not reaching his eyes. He was trying to be cheerful, but Shae was not fooled. He had been beaten to within spitting distance of death by Gont and his men, and many weeks later, he still saw Dr. Truw regularly and tired easily from the injuries he’d sustained, but that was not what ailed him. Her brother carried a cloak of hurt over him, a sullen resentment that often flared into anger or self-doubt. He’d saved the clan but lost another brother.
“You should forgive him,” Shae said. “Even if he can’t forgive you yet.” She considered the irony of these words coming from her mouth. There had once been a time when she’d been certain she never wanted to see or speak to Hilo again, and here they were, Pillar and Weather Man of the clan.
She hadn’t been able to get Hilo to acknowledge any mention she made of Anden, and sure enough, her brother did not look at her or reply to this latest attempt. Shae kept trying; it was early yet. Lan had told her that after she left for Espenia, Hilo hadn’t spoken about her for six months. “Don’t you want to know where he is? Whether he’s somewhere safe?” She’d at least made arrangements for that.
“No,” said Hilo.