Jade Legacy (The Green Bone Saga, #3)

by Fonda Lee

“No matter what my official title is, my real job is always helping you in whatever way I can, Shae-jen.” The walls of Shae’s throat felt as if they were thickening. She moved closer to her friend and put her arms around him in an embrace.

“It wasn’t long before being your Shadow wasn’t a duty, but what I selfishly wanted to do. It hasn’t ever been easy, and there were times I was afraid I’d fail you—but if I had to do it all over again, I wouldn’t hesitate. The clan is my blood, but for me, the Weather Man is its master.”

Then the space between them vanished. Woon’s mouth was pressed over hers, or her mouth was on his—she had no idea who’d moved first. All she knew was that a flimsy wall they’d been holding up from opposite sides had collapsed between them. She was on her toes, arms wrapped around his neck. Woon’s hands were buried in her hair, cupping the back of her head as their lips and tongues sought each other with a trembling, desperate abandon that lit every square inch of Shae’s body.

“Sometimes,” Wen said as she took the lid off the fish plate, “it’s more beautiful afterward, when you… realize you have a second ch-chance.” She fumbled the spoon; nerves.

“Sometimes I think liars are almost as bad as thieves,” he said through a tight jaw. “They steal away trust, something that can’t be returned.” Before she could even rise from her chair, he left the house, his quick, sure movements and long strides easily outpacing hers. Hilo stormed out the door and got into the Duchesse, only to realize that in the heat of the moment, he’d left his car keys in the house along with his jacket, weapons, and wallet. He howled in frustration and banged the steering wheel, then rolled down the window and smoked

It had once been an effortless thing to tell his wife he loved her—three simple words in a single breath. A goodbye at the end of a phone call, an invitation to make love, a whisper before sleep. Now it seemed an impassable emotional mountain.

head feel as if it were on fire. So that was not an option. He wasn’t sure he could forgive his wife, or his sister—but Anden had once said that understanding was more important than forgiveness. His kid cousin could be canny, in his own way.

She was the softest and most vulnerable creature; she was the strongest and most unyielding of his warriors.

Luto was not as thoughtful and experienced as Woon. He didn’t have Woon’s calm presence and he didn’t anticipate her thoughts the way Woon seemed to. Luto couldn’t Perceive when she needed him to appear in her office to discuss a difficult issue, he didn’t know when and how to challenge her decisions or poke holes in her logic, he didn’t wait to drive her home at the end of every workday.

On his way out, the Horn of the Mountain took a moment to pick out one of the unbroken bottles of aged hoji left on the shelf. He turned over his shoulder, his penetrating gaze falling back onto Shae with a touch of cold sympathy. “I’ve known her for twenty-five years. You have no choice but to fight, of course. But you can’t win.” Nau’s boots crunched on glass as he left the room.

Shae’s face was growing hot. “I’m sorry. It was an emergency. I rely on your husband to do important work for No Peak; there’s no one more trustworthy or dependable. I needed him. I still do.” “I needed him more,” Kiya shot back. “I’m not a Green Bone like you, yet I’ve been forced to give four years of my life for the clan, years that I’ll never get back.” She got to her feet and turned to leave. “Kiya.” Shae despised the sound of her own voice. “Is there anything you need? Anything I can do for you?” Woon’s wife paused and turned back around slowly, as if the question surprised her. “Kaul Shaelinsan, Weather Man of No Peak,” she said, “you can fuck off and die.”

You would never even know who your real father was. You’d never go to the Academy or become a Green Bone. Would you have wanted that?”

“No one is destined to become like their parents. In fact, we can learn from their mistakes and be less likely to repeat them. Your real ma is the one who raised you. She, and

your uncle Tar, and your uncle Kehn—who was killed when you were young so you might not remember him as much—their own father was executed and their family was disgraced. They turned that around, and now the name Maik is at the top of the clan and spoken in the same breath as ours.

Hilo said quietly, “but I can’t lose another brother. I’ve lost too many already.” He put his hands on Tar’s shoulders, and pulled him close. He dropped his forehead against Tar’s. “I could always count on you. That’s why I’ve always asked for too much. I’m asking you for one more thing now, the last thing I need from you. I’m asking you to live.”

“Wen, will you be my Pillarman?” Wen cupped her trembling hand against his jaw. “The clan is my blood,” she whispered, her voice thick with emotion, but perfectly steady. She bowed her head and pressed her mouth to the hollow of his throat. “And the Pillar is its master.”

“I’ll be remembered not for who I was, but for what I wasn’t. Perhaps it’s for the best. Let the gods judge me for what I did not do.”

“Sister Shae, when is life ever like a story where the characters get exactly what they deserve, good or bad? You’re not used to being afraid, but every new mother is afraid. What you’re feeling is only natural.”

Shae thought that was a touch unfair. She was no stranger to fear. Who else in the family regularly prayed to the gods? The most honest prayers were inspired by terror.

“Jade is a part of everything in Kekonese culture—our myths, our history, our way of life,” she mused aloud. She touched the bracelet on her wrist. “Being green has greater significance than the abilities a person gains.” Was it possible, she wondered, for anyone who was not Kekonese to understand that?

“Not nearly as exciting as Kaul Shaelinsan against Ayt Madashi twelve years ago. Now that was a real duel. Haven’t seen a better one since.” Ru smiled with pride for his aunt, and when he and Niko were away from the plaza, he told his brother what he’d overheard.

see. In his own life, nothing he’d ever done truly added up to anything greater. There was no bigger picture; his runs of fortune and failure canceled each other out. Sometimes he skimmed above the water and sometimes he floundered below it, but still he was just a fish in the unknowable and merciless ocean.

Kaul Hiloshudon would stand in front of the door, triumphant, doing nothing, watching her die, and everyone else in the room would stand by quietly and do the same. She had been the strongest of them all, the most cunning, the most feared, but she was without true friends in this room. Hilo saw this horrible understanding in her eyes, and as eager as he was for Ayt to die, in that instant, he felt pity for her, too.

Hilo had time only to register disbelief, to think of his wife and children, before the force of the blast reached him and the third-floor boardroom collapsed, bringing hundreds of kilograms of concrete rubble down on him.

Shae’s legs swayed. She put a hand out and braced herself against the back of the nearest chair. Perhaps she was having a feverish, postpartum nightmare. Perhaps she was mistaken about the date of the KJA meeting. Was it really Thirdday today, not Secondday? The phone in the kitchen rang. She staggered toward it and picked it up. It was Juen Nu. “I can’t reach the Pillar.” The Horn’s words, and the awful pause that followed them, shattered her denial. “Do you know if he was inside that building?” Shae heard her own shallow breathing, and her voice, alarmingly weak. “I think so.”

the floor seemed intrusive, deafening. That dense red jade aura—she would recognize it anywhere. It was muted, thinning, the heat of a black coal evaporating in the cold. Ayt Mada lay with both hands pressed over the wound in her neck, her arms and shoulders caked with drying blood, her chest barely rising.

Ayt’s voice was a slurred, dry, acidic whisper. “It wasn’t enough for Ven’s daughter that I die in the bombing. She wanted me to know it was her. I made the error of underestimating another woman.” The Pillar wetted her lips and fixed her eyes on Shae. “I’ve only done that one other time.”

The murder of her brother Lan, the clan war, the loss of much of Shae’s jade and her near death in a clean-bladed duel, the car bombing that had killed Maik Kehn, Tau Maro’s treason and execution, the death of her short-lived chief of staff Luto. The list of everything that Ayt had inflicted upon No Peak went on and on, each one an ugly scar on Shae’s soul. She glanced at the empty platform

Today, of all days, there were no penitents present to witness what happened in the temple and report the deeds to Heaven. Her hand moved to the small of her back, to the talon knife that she carried sheathed there. She drew it with the bone-deep certainty that the gods had turned their faces away on purpose, like sneaky relatives slipping a child a gift they should not be approving. The weapon settled in her hand, warm and solid with purpose. Her clan, her family, her life might be in ruins—but she had this. It was up to her now, to finish what her brothers could not, to finally end the war between the clans. Perhaps Lan was watching. Perhaps Hilo was as well.

Crying

Shae crouched warily. Ayt might be fatally wounded and close to death, but a tiger in a trap could use its dying breath to rip out one’s throat.

Ayt shifted painfully. “I congratulate you, Kaul-jen. By tonight, you might be the only Pillar left standing in Kekon. I don’t envy you.” The scornful smile was gone from her face. She sounded weary and angry. “A word of advice: Don’t ever make the mistake that I did. Don’t show mercy.” Shae stilled. Ayt’s words, filled with grim portent, seemed to add weight to the knife in her hand. You might be the only Pillar left.

Was this how Hilo had felt, she wondered, on the night of Lan’s death? She’d never truly spoken to him about it. It would be even worse for her, trying to lead No Peak, and perhaps the country itself, in the aftermath of a national disaster, with the other Green Bone clans in chaos and the people howling for retribution, while outside powers crouched, ready to sweep into the turmoil.

Don’t show mercy. “It would be a mercy to cut your throat, Ayt-jen,” she hissed, “and spare you from being the Pillar at this awful time when you’re most needed.”

cousin Kaul Shae emerging from the back of the Temple of Divine Return with Ayt Mada’s arm over her shoulder, both of them staggering, covered in Ayt’s blood.

television. He could not bear to see the photographs of Kaul Hilo and Ayt Mada on-screen with the words MISSING underneath them, not when the one lying on his sofa, the one whose life he might be able to save, was not the right one.

“Did I choose wrong?” He whispered the question to himself. Shae slumped against the wall. “I have no idea.”

deluded. The old bitch will be worse than Grandda—let the gods recognize him—hanging on to power until it’s pried from their withered claws.”

The big clans were getting bigger. We’re still two tigers, Shae thought grimly, eating all we can before we have to face each other again.

killed. So in the short term, this decision may be good for you. But I won’t forget that you threw away our friendship and took my own son for your gain.” The jade energy coming off the Green Bone seemed too bright to be human, though he’d gone very still. “I promise you that sooner or later, I’ll answer that offense.”

“Lan would never turn his back on any of us. You executed Niko’s mother when he was a baby. Everyone in the clan knows it, even if we don’t talk about it. He deserves the chance to hate you and leave No Peak, if that’s what he needs to do. You owe it to him.” Anden drew in a hard breath and let it out again. He straightened. “If you disown Niko, then I’m gone too. I’ll leave, Hilo.”

“My apologies, Mrs. Kaul, I’m not sure how to translate the meaning into Kekonese. In Shotarian, the words are, ‘Marry the devil, get the devil’s mother.’ It means… It’s a saying that’s used to describe an agreement or relationship that you can’t escape from.”

Hilo did not share Shae’s stalwart belief in the gods, but he was not above praying. All his power as Pillar of a great Green Bone clan could not guarantee him anything in this moment other than the promise of vengeance, and that was far less comfort to him than it had once been.

stranger to seeing others pay for her mistakes. Lan, whom she’d failed as a sister. Maro, dead by her hand. Luto, her chief of staff for only a few months. Wen and Anden, ambushed in Espenia. The unborn child she’d aborted. Woon’s first wife, Kiya. Dudo would be the next. Was this what it truly meant to hold power, Shae wondered, almost detached from her own sense of ballooning fear. Passing on the worst consequences of your failure to others, whether you wanted to or not? The chains pressed into the skin of her wrists. The white ceramic was cold against her bare legs.

You’d think it would be easier to face death as you get older, but it doesn’t work that way. You get more attached to life, to people you love and things that are worth living for.”

Lan looked at his younger brother with a resignation that Hilo would not understand for many more years, not until he was Pillar himself.

Fists. Hilo didn’t know much about Ayt Mada, but she’d inadvertently done him a great favor by eliminating the one man Hilo feared would be his most dedicated enemy. Not long after, the Torch of Kekon wearily retired at last. Within a year, Lan named his younger brother as his Horn. At age twenty-five, Hilo was the youngest Horn anyone could recall.

“It’s been my experience,” Ayt replied, “that no measures are excessive when it comes to dealing with you, Kaul Hiloshudon.”

“No,” Hilo said. “I’ve come to ask for your help.” For the first time in Hilo’s memory, Ayt Mada was too surprised to give an immediate reply. She stared at him for some time. “Why on earth and under Heaven,” she asked with the slow, deliberate rasp of drawing a rusted blade, “would I help the man who stood by when I had a knife in my neck, happily watching me die?” “You would’ve gladly done the same if it were me,” Hilo said. “I should have you killed where you stand right now,” Ayt declared. “After you’re dead, the barukan will kill your sister, and that will be the end of the Kauls. The end of this long and hateful war between the clans, with the Mountain victorious.”

Times had changed. Ayt Madashi was in her sixties and no longer viewed as indispensable to the Mountain clan. With a strong, popular thirty-year-old man waiting to succeed her as Pillar, she needed the complete confidence of her clan if she was to remain in power. She would make compromises she might not have considered earlier in her reign in order to uphold her leadership and delay the inevitable rise of her own heir. Just like Grandda, Hilo thought.

“You’re not a machine after all. As much as you’d like to see me feeding worms, you would feel something after the Faltas torture Shae to death for information that they’ll sell to you. I don’t know what kind of a human being can imagine facing the gods with that on their soul—and we’re all human, even you.”