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It was easy to slide backward in one’s jade proficiency, in the same way that it was easy to gain weight—slowly and insidiously.
“Strong men don’t fight for weak men.”
there’s a difference between a dog that picks garbage outside your house, and one that jumps through your window to steal from your table. One is a nuisance you can ignore; the other is a problem and has to be killed.
“Money is money—all if it is dirty, and anyone can be bought.”
“Anden-se, the Crews aren’t like clans. All they care about is money. They never give, they only take. That store owner pays and pays, but gets nothing.”
Flowers grow even in the desert; so too there is nowhere love cannot happen.’”
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.
She had forgotten how quickly Hilo could put other men in their place—with a glance or a word, and without even trying—and
One of the many qualities that makess him hot
“Out of small resentments, spring great wars.”
This contest would not be a joke. Shae and Ayt Mada would be making history, no matter the outcome. Social progress, Kekonese-style, Shae mused. Equal opportunity to die by the blade.
Even when the mind is determined, the body objects vehemently to the possibility of injury and death.
If Shae fell under Ayt’s sword, Hilo would not allow their enemies to leave the grounds alive. He would break the immutable law of the clean blade; he would take forbidden vengeance on her killer and plunge the clans, and the entire city, back into all-out war.
Love him
“My grandfather taught me that if a friend asks for your forgiveness, you should always give it.”
“He also taught me that if you have to give it again, then they weren’t a friend to begin with.”
He felt as if he were a small planet caught in the gravity of a star, circling at a helpless distance from its radiance.
He was not smiling, but as Anden watched, a reluctant softness came into Hilo’s eyes. His mouth moved in an indecisive way, as if torn between a painful grimace and a grin of pleasure. Hilo crossed the rest of the space between them and greeted Anden with an unrestrained embrace. “Andy,” he said, and kissed his cousin firmly, once on the cheek.
I would've literally started bawling if i was Andy
Hilo leaned back in his chair. “My friend, what do you think I’m planning to do? Kill all the Bosses myself?”
Lowkey would be hot if he did
There was nothing more important than personal relationships; they were what made clan oaths real and not merely words that could be spoken by anyone.
“A dog that was once starved will bark at anyone who comes near his food, no matter how much he has now.
Kromner’s men follow him out of greed or fear, but no one loves a leader who cares only for his own meal.”
You know the saying, ‘Too dark to see green’?” Anden nodded; the idiom usually referred to locations or situations so evil and desperate that even Green Bones did not feel safe entering. These days, it was also commonly used to describe books or movies with especially grim themes in which there was no morality and the protagonists died in the end—the opposite of the traditional adventure stories with victorious Green Bone heroes.
They were cordial, friendly—but they circled each other tentatively, as if the other person was a fire whose warmth they craved but knew might burn.
Some people believed that with SN1, jade could be worn by anyone—but that could never be true. Because if any lowlife could wear Lan’s jade, then jade meant nothing. The world of Green Bones meant nothing.
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.
“He can’t have fruit juice; he’s diabetic,” Shae pointed out.
Shae pls
“Can you think of a way to sneak fatal amounts of sugar into him? No? Then we need to find another way to whisper his name.”
If you want to lead, you can’t wait for everyone to line up behind you.”
You picked a path that you can’t turn away from. You have to follow it all the way now, or I’ll push you off
“That damned island is like a beautiful woman with a barbed pussy—very tempting, but not to be fucked.”
Having been trained at the Academy and raised in the Kaul family, 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.
Even after more than a year, there were times when Hilo heard Juen’s voice on the phone and wondered, for a second, why Kehn had sent his First Fist instead of phoning himself.
:(
“Rumors are as common as rats; what’s so special about these ones?”
“Maybe I don’t believe in the gods like you do, but I do know that some things are the way they are for a reason. We’re Kauls. We were born for this life, whether we like it or not. 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. You knew that was a line I would never cross.”
We have each other, and maybe that’s the one thing we have that our enemies don’t.”
“The clan is my blood and the Pillar is its master,” she whispered. “I have a lot of regrets in life, but those oaths aren’t one of them.”
“I believe in them,” Ayt said, “but I don’t need to explain myself to them. When I was eight years old, they destroyed my town and killed my family and everyone I cared for. In the orphanage, I was told that it wasn’t the gods that caused the landslide; it was the Shotarians and their bombs. Which goes to show that the gods don’t determine fate. People do. Powerful people.”
Janloon was warm and dangerous, it throbbed with life and hot-blooded movement, it knew that it was special, that there was no other place like it in the world. Other places deceived; in other places, people hid their jade, they exchanged money under the table, and they killed in the dark. Janloon wore its savagery on its sleeve; it was a proud Fist among nations, it did not hide what it was. Janloon was honest.
“You have to move back home, Andy,” Hilo said quietly. “I’ve missed you.”
