Jade Legacy (The Green Bone Saga, #3)

by Fonda Lee

“What are you planning to say?” Shae asked, a bit apprehensively. “Only what the Clanless Future Movement is going to find out soon enough.” Hilo swallowed two pills with his water. “Anyone who thinks they can get rid of us so easily deserves what’s coming to them. The clans are the spine of the country. We’re not going fucking anywhere.”

Anden came up on Hilo’s other side and looked down at the casket. His face was drawn with regret, his voice muted and uncertain. “I understand if you blame me, Hilo-jen.” Hilo didn’t reply at first. Then he said quietly, “Tar was the best, the only one who could’ve done it. I don’t blame you any more than I blame myself.” He put a hand on Anden’s shoulder and leaned against it heavily, so that he nearly sagged against his cousin. “I was angry at you for a long time after you refused to wear jade. Of course you remember. Now, though… I’m thankful you’re not a Fist, Andy. I need—” Hilo’s voice faltered. “I need one of my brothers to live.”

Jade was her armor and her weapon, but it was not a part of her, the way it was with Hilo. She missed her abilities, but she was not empty, not any less of a person than she would’ve been if she’d lost an arm or a leg or an eye. It was strange, Shae thought—Green Bones revered jade, but it was not the gems themselves that were worthy of reverence. Jade had meaning because of the type of person one had to become to wear it. Jade was the visible proof that a person had dedicated their life to the discipline of wielding power, to the dangers and costs of being a Green Bone. She did not require proof anymore. She was past needing to carry her green as a coveted mark of status and credibility, one that declared to everyone that she was equal to her brothers and worthy of being a Kaul. She had two decades on the top floor of Ship Street to do that for her. She had work to do now, to rebuild from their losses, to guide the clan and the country toward growth and progress, to keep it safe from outside threats but also from the perils of its own worst impulses. “What will I do?” she asked quietly, turning to her brother and touching her hands to her forehead in salute to the Pillar. “My job. As Weather Man of No Peak.”