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Having lived so long in the uncompromising sunlight of Hilo’s love, the absence of his affection was a lifeless and unending winter.
“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.”
She was the softest and most vulnerable creature; she was the strongest and most unyielding of his warriors.
“Sister Shae, when is life ever like a story where the characters get exactly what they deserve, good or bad?
“Don’t show off how much you hate a man until you’re ready to be his enemy,”
“Only children and gods are arrogant enough to judge what they can’t understand. There’s no point being afraid of their opinions.
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.”
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.
“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.”
Why not escape reality, when it was so unbearably cruel to wives and sisters and mothers?
Clans and jade, murder and vengeance, burdens and feuds and failures passed down from father to brother to son—none of it was a myth to Niko at all, but part of his lived experience, inescapable but malleable truths that it had taken him a world of searching to accept.
“Don’t you remember we once sat out here all night before New Year’s Day, thinking we might both soon be dead? And here we are. So many good things have happened since then, and also so many terrible things that it’s hard to be afraid of anything anymore. Whatever’s going to happen will happen, so the most important thing is that we appreciate what we have and the people we care about.”
“How do we do it?” Hilo sighed deeply. “You of all people already know the answer to that, Shae. We don’t handle this world. We make it handle us.”
“In my experience, as long as your friends have a high opinion of you, it doesn’t hurt when your enemies have a low opinion, the lower the better.”
The way to defeat a chess master was not with greater genius, but by forcing her to play a different game.
“The gods don’t care about people or nations.” The sudden roughness in Ayt’s voice hinted at a depth of pain she never let show. “We’re all the same to them. They don’t care who lives or dies, who wins or loses, who should lead and who should suffer. I do.”
She and Ayt Mada could never escape the rivalry of their clans, but they understood each other, as women who were green in a man’s world.
it was a bad idea to meet with one’s enemies before being sure of one’s friends
“In this family, you can be honest and still shrewd. Jadeless and still a warrior.”
Hours later, Wen emerged from the bedroom, dressed in white from head to toe. She said nothing, but went out into the garden where she had been married and sat under the cherry tree in the courtyard to mourn from the bottom of her soul.
The mind cannot adjust quickly to a fundamental change in reality without breaking. If the moon vanished from the sky, people would not believe it; they would think it was a trick of light or clouds.
There was an ache in his chest—some of the grief that had been arriving in pieces—but also relief, and love. Love for the life pumping through his heart and veins, love for those dear to him—the ones who were gone and the ones who remained, and love also for his city, for Janloon—a place as fierce and honest, as messy and proud and enduring as its Green Bone warriors.
