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“A misunderstanding between friends is okay. A misunderstanding between enemies isn’t.”
The former Pillarman had left Lan alone on the evening of his murder. He had not gone home early in all his time as her Shadow.
Wen handed her husband two pieces of folded paper, dense with handwriting, and a photograph of a six-month-old baby. “What is this?” Hilo asked. “Your nephew,” Wen said. “Eyni was pregnant when she left Kekon.”
“People are born selfish; babies are the most selfish creatures, even though they’re helpless and wouldn’t survive a day on their own. Growing up and losing that selfishness—that’s what civilization is, that’s what sets us above beasts.
Hilo sat back and tilted his head slightly to one side. “You’re an unusual sort of person, Ayt-jen,” he said at last. “I wonder what it’s like, to think like a machine and not care about anyone.”
Wen’s late brother-in-law, Kaul Lan, had been a good Pillar, but dragged down by a senile grandfather, a treacherous Weather Man, and a faithless wife. He’d tried too hard to carry the clan on his own, hadn’t claimed help when he should have, had kept his sister and his cousin out of the clan at the time he needed them the most. He’d made every effort to be strong, and it had made him weak. Wen would not let that happen to her own husband.
Wen might be the wisest of them all.
Hilo’s lips twitched upward. “It’s nice to see that the two of you are happy together, even after such a big move and the addition of a child that you must’ve hoped was yours.”
“I know that I can’t understand what it’s like to be a Kaul, or the pressures you face as Weather Man. But you don’t have a monopoly on poisonous honor culture. Maybe the Green Bone clans sit at the top of it, but it goes all the way down.”
Anden slipped during a pass and landed hard on his back in a puddle of freezing slush. He’d never experienced such cold before in his life. He decided, as he rose with his teeth chattering, all his extremities numb, and his glasses too smeared and fogged to see through, that it was no wonder the Espenians were a people who’d sailed all over the world, if their homeland was so inhospitable.
“What are you so nervous about?” Hilo said, with a teasing smile that irritated her because she was not nervous, she simply wanted to set expectations.
For a moment, Shae could sense her brother assessing Maro coldly: What kind of a Green Bone, what kind of Kekonese man, would devalue jade and all that it represented, in front of the Pillar of the clan, no less?
Do you love him?” Shae was thrown by the sudden question. The contrast between Hilo’s bluntness and apparent reasonableness made her unsure. “I think so,” she answered, almost without thinking. Hilo said, “If you’re not sure you’re in love, then you’re not.”
“Green isn’t easily rubbed away.”
Hilo leaned forward and swept an unimpressed stare around the circle of men. “My grandfather kept his old crony Yun Dorupon in place as Weather Man for decades, long after he should’ve retired and no matter how many pubescent girls he fucked, and I didn’t see you putting up much of a stink about it. I made the decision to put my sister on Ship Street, and I’m not going to oust her now just because Ayt Mada is digging up shit and feeding it to the newspapers.”
“I could never forgive you if you decided to be so selfish. So how can you believe I would think any less of you for being responsible instead?”
“We’re always alone with our own decisions.”
no matter where you go, others will try to define you. Unless you define yourself.”
She stopped; the heartbeat of silence that fell was blistering. “Ayt Madashi, Pillar of the Mountain, I offer you a clean blade.”
Damn these books keep surprising me!!
“Out of small resentments, spring great wars.”
“I didn’t think you believed in the gods,” she said when he straightened. “I don’t,” Hilo said, “but the feeling’s mutual, so maybe they won’t hold it against me.”
Even when the mind is determined, the body objects vehemently to the possibility of injury and death.
No matter the public pressures, I would’ve reminded you of what you once said to me: that it’s brave to be true to who you are.” Shae said quietly, “This is who I am.” Maro reached a hand partway across the table but did not touch her. “It’s not who you are when you’re with me.” When she didn’t meet his eyes, he nodded sadly. “But I don’t really know you, do I? All the time we’ve spent together, I was seeing what I wanted to and what you wanted to show me. Your other side, the greener side—I don’t know that person at all.”
“Ayt Madashi is my enemy,” Hilo said, “but that doesn’t mean you’re my friend. I’ll deal with you and your government so long as it benefits No Peak. But you’re still visitors here. Don’t ask for too much, or presume to control Kekon. Other foreigners have tried before you.”
they’d line up to sell their own mothers just to see who could get the best price.”
Hilo had always found that when things were unclear, when he couldn’t immediately see the right action to take in a confusing situation, he needed to get closer. Talk to the right people, understand it all better. The solution was always there on the street, somewhere in plain sight.
No matter where you are in the world, the one thing that keeps men from killing each other is a fear of what’ll happen after they’re dead.”
Should we compromise our morals on account of foreign pressure?”
“Your friend Woon Papi must be very dedicated to the clan,” he said. “Your family threw quite the party for him.” “He was my eldest brother’s best friend.” And mine. “He deserves it.”
The No Peak clan was like a tiger, and this thief like a rat, but even the largest, most powerful creature would fear a plague of rats, moving in the dark with sharp teeth and carrying disease. It was an imbalance in nature, a sign of an accelerating fundamental wrongness in the world that even this moment couldn’t set right.
“I never imagined this, Shae. Dying by the blade—that’s for greener men. I would’ve been happy with books, and conversation, and… occasional silly romantic musicals. What we had together was real and perfect, for a while.”
“Why would I blame you?” Wen sounded exasperated. “I blame our enemies, Shae-jen, for twisting someone who was dear to you to their purposes, for using him like a tool to try to destroy us. You may have ended his life, but you didn’t cause his death. In our world, there’s a difference.”
“When you challenged Ayt Mada with a clean blade, everyone was shocked, even Hilo, but not me. We women claw for every inch we gain in this world, and you’d worked too hard for your place on Ship Street to let it be taken from you. It could still happen, if you don’t get dressed and leave this room. There are always people looking for signs of weakness, for chances to steal what we care about away from us.”
there was nothing to be gained from opposing Kaul Hilo’s rampage.
“If this is so important to you, then perhaps you have to be the one to carry it out.
But in my heart, I knew that even though the outcome was all for the best, the gods knew what I had done.
He’s my only son, the one who will carry the family’s jade when Sana and I are gone. I love him, but he is also my punishment, for the sins I committed as a young man.
What an awful thing to think about your child.
“That damned island is like a beautiful woman with a barbed pussy—very tempting, but not to be fucked.”
Anden had been indoctrinated since childhood with the idea that for Green Bones, the possibility of death was like the weather—you could make attempts to predict it, but you would likely be wrong, and no one would change their most important plans due to threat of rain.
Hilo liked being a father and found it suited him. Children were completely honest and lived in the moment; they were demanding, but also easy to please, asking only for simple love and attention.
“Let go of him, Anden,” Wen said. Zapunyo fell choking to the ground. He crawled to his knees and held his hands up, the blood draining from his face at the sight of his dead son and his slain men. “I’m a rich man, a powerful man,” he wheezed. “I can pay more than whatever you’ve been offered. Who sent you?” “I sent myself,” Wen told him, “from the Kaul family of No Peak.”
The clan can claim everything I have—my time, my blood and sweat, my life and jade—but it can’t have my wife. She’s a stone-eye. She’s the one thing in the world that jade can’t touch.
Change is inevitable, Kaul-jen; the only question is whether we control its direction or become victims of a landslide.
I know what it’s like, to not be the person your family expects you to be. And how hard it is to act for yourself after that.”
“You have to move back home, Andy,” Hilo said quietly. “I’ve missed you.” Anden had been waiting to hear those words come out of his cousin’s mouth for years. Now, however, he felt no great relief or happiness—only the sort of heaviness that comes from wanting something for so long that the final achievement of it is a loss—because the waiting is over and the waiting has become too much a part of oneself to let go of easily.
