More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
But fate makes us who we are and can’t be changed.”
“You’re exactly as people say you are, Kaul Hilo,” said the amused voice of the man he was going to kill. “You could be burning in hell and have some arrogant thing to say to the devil.
At times, when faced with difficult decisions, he would think back to the duel that had dramatically earned him his jade and reputation, and he would remind himself that sometimes the most obvious solution required only the willingness to take the most unreasonable of actions.
If there was anything she had faith in besides the gods, it was her brother’s cunning vindictiveness.
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.
And he did understand, with an uncommon clarity that made him want to laugh himself to death and spit in the faces of the gods on his way to hell. It wasn’t a purposeful and powerful fortune that had always swept him along in its inexplicable currents, that trapped him in suffering yet in the oddest moments protected him. It was insignificance.
Niko lowered his gaze to his hands. “I thought I could escape and find some other meaning in my life. But if the clan crumbles, either quickly or slowly, if it becomes as obsolete and irrelevant as people like Jim Sunto believe, then everything that made me, including my father’s murder and my mother’s execution, would be meaningless. Every drop of blood spilled, every sacrifice made, every child ever trained to wear jade as a Green Bone warrior of Kekon over centuries of history… That’s what the Pillar carries. That’s our power, and ours alone.”
Shae was filled with a nameless, foreboding fearfulness for her nephew. Niko was still young—too young, she thought, to be so clear-eyed and grim of character. Yet he’d already contemplated the legacy of the clan and the weight of leadership far more than Lan or Hilo or herself at his age.
Niko had grown up with his eyes open to war and cruelty. He’d stepped away from everything he’d known to find an even more dark and tangled wilderness beyond, and his return was an unflinching choice, made without the sentimentality of love or honor. Shae thought, He is more like Ayt Mada than any of us. At least Niko has us. People who loved him, who reminded him to be human.
