CHAPTER
14
Gold and Jade
As the Pillar, Lan had a handful of personal staff headed by his longtime Academy friend, Woon Papidonwa, who were part of neither the military nor business halves of No Peak, and did not answer to either the Horn or the Weather Man. They managed Lan’s schedule in addition to administrative and household tasks such as the maintenance and security of the Kaul estate and other clan properties, including the beach house in Marenia. Although they held little formal authority in the clan, these individuals were not to be disregarded; the lead Pillarman was often a confidant of the Pillar and oftentimes went on to hold more influential positions.
His grandfather’s stubborn lack of cooperation notwithstanding, Lan was more intent than ever to transition Yun Doru into retirement and appoint his own Weather Man within the year. Given recent events and the tension between the clans, however, it would be unwise to lose the current Weather Man until Lan had a new one that he had complete confidence in, ready to take over. Woon was secretly one of his leading candidates to replace Doru, but Lan had doubts as to whether his ever-stalwart aide was clever enough to step into such an important role in the clan. He resolved to include Woon in more substantive tasks over the next few months to see how he handled them.
In the meantime, perhaps Kaul Sen would soften his stance.
So he took Woon along with him to Wisdom Hall to meet with Chancellor Son. A wide and imposing structure of dark brick and red tile, Wisdom Hall
housed the legislative chambers of the Royal Council of Kekon, the official governing body of the nation. It sat a stone’s throw away from the Triumphal Palace, where Prince Ioan III and his family lived in state-funded ceremonial leisure. Both buildings were in the Monument District, which, despite being less than fifteen minutes away from the Kaul estate, was the most clan- neutral territory in Janloon aside from the Temple District. The driver pulled Lan’s silver Roewolfe roadster right up to the long reflecting pool in front of the imposing tiers of marble steps. Lan and his Pillarman got out and crossed the stone pathway that bisected the still, glass-like water, both of them stopping, as was tradition when one reached the end of the walk, to salute the Warrior’s Memorial.
The Warrior’s Memorial was a pair of large bronze statues. The smaller one was of a boy holding up a lantern, presumably illuminating the face of the other statue, a nameless Green Bone warrior who knelt in front of the child. It looked as if the man had come across the child alone and was kneeling down to bring him to safety. Or it might have been that the child had come across the warrior, bereft in the darkness, and was holding out the lantern to light his way. Either interpretation would be suitably nationalistic.
The inscription on the base of the monument read:
OUT OF DARKNESS IN MEMORY OF THE MOUNTAIN MEN WHO FOUGHT
FOR KEKON’S FREEDOM AND THE BRAVE CITIZENS WHO AIDED THEM
Lan tried to picture his irascible old grandfather as the young warrior captured in bronze, one of the patriotic freedom fighters who opposed fifty years of Shotarian rule and eventually forced a powerful empire, weakened by the Many Nations War but still possessing far superior numbers and weaponry, to relinquish Kekon to its people. It struck Lan as remarkable that it had been only a generation ago that Green Bones were persecuted as bandits and criminals, secretly abetted by a populace that celebrated their superhuman exploits. Now here he was, walking into Wisdom Hall to meet with the highest-ranking politician in the country. In some ways, Lan thought, it must have been simpler—dangerous but more heroic—to be a
Green Bone back in his grandfather’s days, when the enemy had been a cruel foreign power.
The statue of the kneeling fighter was depicted with a moon blade carried at his waist, and the armbands he wore had settings for many small gems.
Walking past the memorial, Lan noticed that the settings were empty; vandals had stolen the memorialized warrior’s jade, even though they were nothing more than inert decorative green rocks.
The foyer of Wisdom Hall was a splendidly wide space with pale marble tiling and thick green columns stretching up to the elaborately painted ceiling. Lan and Woon were met by a young aide, who saluted them respectfully and escorted them to the chancellor’s office. “Son is bound to ask for something,” Lan said to Woon in a quiet aside as they walked. “Think on what that might be and what we ought to grant him.”
They were shown through a set of double wooden doors. As they entered, the chancellor came around his massive desk to salute and greet them. Son Tomarho was a powerfully built man of about fifty with a dimpled chin and bushy eyebrows. He must have been a physically formidable man in his youth, but years of good living in middle age had melted the cords of muscle into rolls of fat. The chancellor beamed a broad politician’s smile at Lan.
“Kaul-jen, come in, come in. How are the gods favoring you?”
“Well enough, Chancellor,” Lan replied, exchanging a few minutes of pleasantry before settling himself into the seat in front of Son’s desk. Woon positioned the other chair properly behind and to the left of Lan’s before seating himself.
The chancellor sank into his high-backed leather chair, which gave a protesting sigh. Lacing his hands over the curve of his generous paunch, he regarded Lan with nodding attentiveness. “What troubles the Pillar of the clan that I can help with?”
Lan gathered his thoughts. “Chancellor Son, I’m afraid I’m paying you this visit out of a sense of great concern.”
Unlike his siblings, Lan remembered his father. In the last year of the Many Nations War, some months before Kaul Dushuron fell in one of the final battles against the beleaguered Shotarian army, Lan asked his father, “Who
will be in charge of Kekon when the Shotties are gone? Will it be you?”
“No,” said Kaul Du indulgently. “It won’t be me.”
“Will it be Grandda? Or Ayt-jen?”
“It won’t be any of us. We’re Green Bones.” His father was copying a list of names, a train schedule, and a map onto three separate sets of paper and sealing them in unmarked envelopes. “Gold and jade, never together.”
“Why do people say that?” Lan had often heard the phrase in casual conversation. “Gold and jade” was a Kekonese idiom that referred to greed and excess. An inappropriate level of overreach. A person hoping for too much good fortune might be warned, “Don’t ask for gold and jade.” A child who demanded a custard tart after already having had a sweet bun was, Lan knew from personal experience, likely to be scolded, “You want gold and jade together!”
Lan’s father glanced up at him with a squint. For a moment, Lan was afraid that his persistent questions had annoyed his father and he would be sent out of the room so the man could finish his task in peace. Kaul Du was not a regular presence in the house; he and Lan’s grandfather were gone for long periods of time on secretive missions, and when they were back, Lan’s grandmother and mother treated the occasion like a personal visit from the gods—a great honor, an unnatural disruption, something to be celebrated but best gotten through quickly. Kaul Du kissed his children but did not know how to relate to them. He spoke to Lan as he would an adult. In the other room, Lan’s infant brother Hilo wailed as their mother tried to comfort him.
“A long time ago, many hundreds of years before the Shotarians came, there were three kingdoms on Kekon.” Kaul Du spoke while directing half of his attention back to his lists and maps. “The kingdom of Jan along the northern coast where we are now, Hunto in the central basin, and Tiedo on the southern peninsula. Hunto was the strongest, but the Hunto king was thin- blooded and obsessed with jade. One night, he went horribly insane from the Itches and swept through the palace murdering his family, including his own children.”
Lan’s eyes shifted to the ample jade his father wore around his neck and wrists. Noticing this, Kaul Du grinned and snatched Lan by the arm, pulling him close with rough affection. “Does that worry you, son?” Kaul Du yanked his talon knife from the sheath on his belt and held it up between them. Lan could see how fine the edge was, how the hilt was weathered to his father’s
hand. “Are you worried about your da? What might happen to him?” Kaul Du asked.
“No,” Lan said, his voice calm. At the age of eight, he knew that all the men of his family were Green Bones, and this meant they wore jade and swore oaths to a secret clan that fought against the injustice of the foreigners.
“Good,” said his father, his arm still tight around Lan’s shoulders. “You needn’t be. Some people are meant to carry jade, and some aren’t. You are, and so is your little brother, same as your da and grandda. Here, hold the talon knife—don’t you have one of your own yet? Gods, you should, I ought to have seen to that already. Go on, it’s only a few stones; it won’t hurt you.”
Lan held the weapon and spun it in his grip the way he’d practiced with a toy knife. The jade pieces in the hilt were smooth to the touch and made his chest buzz in a warm and pleasant way, as if he’d taken a great gasp of air after holding his breath for a long time. His father looked on approvingly.
Lan said, “So what happened, after the king killed his family?”
Kaul Du took his talon knife and returned it to its sheath. “With the Hunto royal family all dead, the kingdoms of Jan and Tiedo invaded and carved it up between them, then went to war with each other. Eventually, Kekon was united. From then on it was decreed for the safety of the country that those who govern would not wear jade, and those who wear jade would not govern.”
In the other room, Hilo’s colicky screams, which had blissfully abated, started up again with renewed vigor. “Curse that howler demon of a baby,”
Lan’s father growled, but a smug smile crept over his exasperation. The oft- quoted Kekonese old wives’ tale was that the more unmanageable the infant, the better fighter he was destined to become. In the distance, a new sound pierced the night: air-raid sirens over Janloon, shrieking atop Hilo’s bawling.
Lan’s father ignored the noise and continued in a calm undertone. “A man who wears the crown of a king can’t wear the jade of a warrior. Gold and jade, never together. We Green Bones live by aisho. We defend the country from its enemies and the weak from the strong.” Kaul Du held his son out at arm’s length. His left eye narrowed and his expression grew thoughtful.
“After this war is over, after the Shotties are defeated, the clan will have to rebuild the country and protect the people from disorder. Ah, I don’t think I’ll be alive to see it, Lan-se, but you’ll have to be a different kind of Green Bone than me.”
“I want you to pass a law,” Lan said to Chancellor Son. “One that prevents any one clan from gaining majority shareholder status of the Kekon Jade Alliance.”
The chancellor pursed his thick lips. “Interesting,” he said slowly, “considering that ownership structure of the KJA has remained largely unchanged for the past fifteen years, with the two largest clans in the country each holding roughly equal ownership.”
“Thirty-nine percent held by the Mountain, thirty-five percent by No Peak, with the rest divided among the minor clans,” Lan clarified. “And if I might correct you, Chancellor, the most recent shift occurred last year, when the Mountain increased their ownership by two and half percent after annexing the Three Run clan. Which they accomplished by killing all the jaded members of the Run family.” Chancellor Son grimaced, and Lan suppressed a wry quirk of the mouth. It never hurt to remind politicians that Green Bones operated on a different standard of speed and violence.
“Is this law you’re proposing a … defensive move, Kaul-jen?” Son’s voice was coolly probing now. An indent formed between his thick gray eyebrows as they drew together. Lan could guess at what the man was thinking: Did he have reason to fear that the Mountain might conquer the smaller clans, or gods forbid, take No Peak itself?
“It’s a defensive move for the country,” Lan said firmly. “The KJA was formed after the war under the reasonable assumption that Green Bones should be in charge of managing the country’s jade supply. The thinking was that naturally all the clans would have a vested interest in cooperating to restrict and protect the supply of jade. But that was before the invention of SN1, before money from foreign exports started rolling in, and before … certain changes of leadership in the major clans.”
Son was blunt. “Do you think the Mountain is seeking to control the KJA?”
“I think it’s in the national interest to remove that temptation.”
“The national interest, or No Peak’s interest?”
Lan dropped a strong hint of reproof into his voice. “I’m not seeking an advantage for No Peak. Any law the council passes regarding the KJA would
apply equally to my clan as it would to Ayt Madashi’s.” He leaned forward so his elbows rested on Son’s desk. The motion tugged up his shirt sleeves, and for a second the chancellor’s eyes flicked down to the glimpse of the jade-studded cuffs on Lan’s forearms. “Jade is our national resource; it should never be controlled by any one person or group. There needs to be a balance of power.”
Chancellor Son scratched the side of his face and said thoughtfully, “It would be difficult to word such a law to prevent circumvention. A determined party could work through subsidiaries or intermediaries to gain a controlling interest.”
“I’m sure the government has clever people who could figure it out.” Lan relaxed his tone, realizing with satisfaction that they were moving from the if into the how. “Trigger an automatic redistribution of ownership among the other shareholders if any one clan and its affiliates reaches a forty-five percent ownership threshold. Or create a provision that nationalizes the KJA if it falls under single-clan control. I don’t think there would ever be need to take such an extreme measure,” Lan added, upon seeing the chancellor’s incredulous expression, “but it would dissuade any clan from thinking it can control the country’s jade by eliminating rivals.”
Son breathed out heavily through his nose and drummed his sausage fingers on the desk. “A law isn’t made and enacted by magic or by my will alone, of course,” he said with a smile. “It would need to pass the Royal Council; for that, we would need the support of every No Peak–affiliated member and nearly all the independents.”
“It’s a good thing, then,” said Lan with an equally meaningful smile, “that I came directly to someone whose friendship to the clan is so old and strong.
A man who has the influence to make these things happen.”
The chancellor grunted and gave a little wave of his hand but looked pleased. Before entering political life, Son Tomarho had been a reasonably wealthy Lantern Man in the No Peak clan. His daughters now ran the family textile business and still paid their clan tributes in the proper amounts and on time. Son was the highest No Peak man in government; everyone knew that.
Nearly all the councilmen and their staff in Wisdom Hall were affiliated with one of the Green Bone clans; the council treasurer, in the office down the hall from Son, was a well-known Mountain loyalist.
Gold and jade, never together, Lan’s father had told him more than
twenty-five years ago. The axiom had not turned out to be as simple as that.
After the war, the Green Bones, led by the examples of Kaul Sen and Ayt Yu, had indeed faithfully acted in accordance with aisho, eschewing political power and retiring to private life. But they were out of the shadows for good.
They no longer hid and trained in the mountains, but lived openly in the cities they’d fought to liberate. In the years of postwar chaos and rapid growth, the common people continued to look to them for protection and favors just as they had under decades of oppressive foreign rule, and they provided it. Their secret network of affiliates—the Lantern Men—became a vehicle for business instead of war. They wielded influence and granted appointments and contracts to comrades and loyal allies from the occupation days. Those that the Shotarians had branded as criminals had become the ruling class of the island. And while not formally a part of the Kekonese government, the clans were so enmeshed in its workings that the two had become, in many ways, indistinguishable.
It was why, coming to this meeting, Lan had had no doubt of its eventual outcome—Son Tomarho would do as Lan had asked. It was only a matter of how quickly, how enthusiastically, and at what price. Now the chancellor sat back and said, with the practiced friendliness of a senior statesmen, “Kaul- jen, you know me. I want what’s best for the country, and I agree with you one hundred percent. We are in full accord on this issue. But I anticipate that it might be difficult to get all the votes we need. Loyal to the clan as they may be, some of the councilmen would be wary of publicly supporting something that appears to deliberately single out the Mountain’s behavior. It would be much easier to garner support for your proposal if the clan gave some sign that it was eager to take other substantial steps in the public interest.”
“Didn’t we agree that creating this law is itself a large step in the public interest?” Of course, Lan had anticipated that Son would push for more, but secretly, he was annoyed all the same. The chancellor ought to realize that protecting the KJA from one-clan rule was within his civic duty to pursue regardless of whether No Peak granted him other patronage requests. But Lantern Man habits died hard.
“We did, we did,” Son conceded amiably, “but the common citizens also have more immediate, more tangible concerns. The smooth functioning of our city port, for example. As you surely know, there was a workers’ strike in the Docks some months ago that dragged on to the city’s detriment. My
family and several others asked for assistance from the Horn of No Peak but were, unfortunately, not granted it.”
“I leave the Horn’s decisions to the Horn,” Lan said, “and in this specific case, I agree with his judgment.” The Son family and other Lantern Man petitioners had wanted Hilo to send his men to intimidate the union bosses and break up their gatherings, rough folks up if needed, force them back to work. Hilo had snorted. “What do they think we are? Hired thugs?” The workers in the Docks were No Peak constituents, too. The union bosses paid tribute. Lan had been impressed by his brother that time. Hilo was never hesitant to show force, but at least he was calculating about it, and he knew not to let Lantern Men think they could get away with asking for too much.
Now, though, Lan needed Son’s cooperation, so he said, “I appreciate your concerns and understand the burden it must have been to take those business losses. I’m sure there’s something we can do to ease the strain. The Weather Man is especially busy these days, so I’ll ask Woon-jen to make sure this is prioritized.”
In saying this, Lan communicated that he was giving Woon permission to speak. As was expected of any subordinate member of the clan in this situation, he had remained entirely silent as the Pillar alone did the talking, betraying no emotion but carefully observing the opposing party so he could later corroborate or dispel his boss’s impressions. Now, though, the Pillarman leaned forward and Lan waited, with some nervousness, to see how his test would go.
Woon said, “Chancellor, I understand that some industries, textile and garments for example, are facing stiff competition from foreign imports.
Perhaps a clan-enforced tariff at point of entry would help level the playing field for our Kekonese producers?”
Lan was pleased. It was a good thing to offer: Increasing dock taxes on imported foreign textiles would bring in revenue for the clan, would be fairly easy to implement and enforce, and would benefit the Son family’s business handsomely without granting too much for nothing to other Lantern Men.
The chancellor was pretending to ponder Woon’s words, but Lan could see the satisfied smile he was holding in check. “Yes, that would indeed be beneficial.”
Lan stood up, straightening his cuffs. “We’re agreed, then.”
The chancellor heaved himself to his feet and walked them to the door of
his office. “Your grandfather—may he live three hundred years—how is he these days, Kaul-jen?”
“Sadly, age steals from all of us eventually, even Green Bones,” Lan said mildly, recognizing the seemingly considerate question for what it was: a prying into how much Kaul Sen still ran No Peak from behind his grandson.
Son wanted to know if he could count on the agreements he’d made with Lan to be the final word from the clan. “My grandfather is not his old self, but he is still well, and enjoying his much-deserved retirement.”
Son touched his soft, meaty hands to his forehead in salute.