CHAPTER
37
The Weather Man’s Pardon
Shae went to the Weather Man’s house, where two men kept Yun Dorupon under constant guard. The two men were junior Fingers who would be no match for a senior Green Bone, but they did not need to be, not when their captive no longer possessed any jade. One man stayed by the front door to keep people away, and one stayed inside to keep Doru from getting out. They carried handguns only, not even their talon knives, so their prisoner had no chance of getting his hands on a jade-hilted weapon.
When Shae approached, the sentry said, “Hilo-jen said no one’s to go in.”
Even these junior Fingers referred to Hilo in the familiar, as if they were his personal friends.
“This is the Weather Man’s house,” Shae said. “I’m the Weather Man, so this is my residence. The man in there is a temporary guest, and I intend to speak to him.” When the Finger still hesitated, Shae said, “It’d be better if you were to simply report me to my brother rather than get in my way.”
The Finger considered his position relative to hers and let her in. The inside of the house was dark even in the middle of the morning. All the blinds were shut, and the ceiling fan circulated warm, stuffy air that smelled of cloves and musty sweaters. Doru did not throw anything away; the house was filled with uncoordinated furniture, houseplants, and all manner of random gifts accumulated from decades as Weather Man—statuettes and little ornate boxes, colorful vases and carved paperweights, throw rugs and ebony
coasters. In one corner of the living room, by the window, the other guard sat in a chair, looking bored. Doru was lying stretched out lengthwise on the sofa, a wet, folded towel over his eyes. “Is that you, Shae-se?”
“Doru-je—” Shae caught herself. “Hello, Uncle Doru.” The former Weather Man was no longer entitled to the suffix he’d held most of his life.
Doru lifted the towel from his eyes and shifted his lanky limbs, sitting up slowly and gingerly, as if he was unfamiliar with his body and suspicious it might break. Without his jade, he looked gaunt and creaky. The former Weather Man licked dry, thin lips and squinted at Shae, as if making sure it was her. “Ah,” he breathed, leaning his head back and closing his eyes as if already exhausted merely from moving. “How did you manage, Shae-se?
Going through this by yourself, so far from home?”
She had been young and healthy, better able to endure the headaches, crushing fatigue, and panic attacks of jade withdrawal. Doru was nearly as elderly as her grandfather. She couldn’t help wondering if a quick death wouldn’t have been a kinder fate for him than this humiliating ordeal. “It gets easier, after the first two weeks,” she told him.
“I know, Shae-se.” Doru sighed. “This isn’t the first time I’ve been jade- stripped and imprisoned. At least this time I’m in the comfort of my home instead of a Shotarian torture cell.” He moved his fingers in a no matter gesture. “I don’t expect it to last as long, though. Come closer; I can’t hear you that well anymore. Sit down and do tell me why I’m still alive.”
Shae picked her way over to the armchair and sat down across from the man. “Lan’s funeral, Uncle,” she said. “It was yesterday.”
Water gathered under Doru’s papery eyelids and slipped out the corners of his eyes, tracing thin tracks down the sides of his face, like estuaries seeking a route through a landscape of wrinkles. “Why him? He was always such a good, thoughtful man, a dutiful son. Ah, Lan-se, why were you so foolish? So good, and so foolish?” Accusingly, “You could have let me come to the funeral. Hilo could have given me that one courtesy.”
“You know he couldn’t have.”
“How did it happen? Poor Lan-se, how did he die?”
“He was ambushed on his way home from the Lilac Divine. Drowned in the harbor.” Shae was surprised she could say the words.
Doru shook his head emphatically. “That can’t be. It must have been a terrible mistake. That was never the plan, no, never.”
A chill anger pumped through Shae’s veins. “Why did you betray us, Doru? After so many years, why?”
“I only ever did what I thought was best. What Kaul-jen himself would want. I would never betray him, for anything or anyone.” His face sagged with regret. “Not even his own grandchildren.”
“You’re not making any sense. Are you saying Grandda wanted you to conspire with the Mountain against us?”
“A good Weather Man,” Doru said, “can read his Pillar like his own mind.
Kaul-jen never had to ask me to do this thing or that, he never had to say, ‘Doru-jen, what should I do?’ I always knew what aim he was moving toward, even before he saw it clearly himself. If he said, ‘We must capture this town,’ I knew he meant to disrupt the shipping lines. If he said, ‘We should talk to so-and-so,’ I knew he meant to buy them out, and I should begin to make the preparations. I saw and did the things Kaul-jen did not ask.
Do you understand, Shae-se?”
“No,” she said.
“Kaul-jen only ever made a few mistakes in his life that he regretted.
When he and Ayt were partners, the One Mountain Society was strong— strong enough to liberate a nation! You were born after the end of the war, Shae-se; you cannot appreciate or understand what that means. It was peace, not war, that divided us into clans, turned us into rivals for territory and business and jade. Your grandfather, I can tell he is heartbroken that he and Ayt would leave such a legacy of strife. I tried to fix what he wished he could fix. I tried to bring the clans together again.”
“By covering for the Mountain while they mined jade behind our backs?
By colluding with their Weather Man to sell us out? I examined the KJA and Treasury records. You were lining your own pockets.”
“What do I need more money for, at my age?” His long face wrinkled in disdain. “Ayt’s daughter means to combine the clans. She will do it peacefully, or she will do it by force. She is a stronger, more ambitious, more cunning Pillar than Lan ever was—Heaven forgive me for saying so. Many times, I tried to convince him to negotiate for a merger, but he refused to consider it. He had pride riding on one shoulder and the voice of that wolf Hilo on the other.”
Doru’s voice was fading, as if his energy was leaving him. “I agreed to obscure the Mountain’s mining activities in exchange for money—money I
put back into the clan. I strengthened our position in businesses where we’re strong—real estate, construction, hospitality—and began to divest out of areas where the Mountain held the advantage—gambling, manufacturing, retail, and so on. They would grow wealthier and more powerful, but we would be stronger as well, a better fit, two pieces of a broken puzzle—Lan would see reason and realize a merger was the only peaceful, sensible solution.”
Shae closed her eyes for a long moment. “Did you know they would try to kill Hilo? That they would murder Lan?”
Doru’s head moved back and forth on the sofa cushions. “Not Lan, no— let the gods recognize him. Hilo, I could do nothing about him. He was working at cross-purposes, stealing back the businesses I surrendered to the Mountain, stalking the borders and escalating fights. Fists are like sharks, you know, it takes only a little blood in the water to stir them to a frenzy. The feud on the streets grew like fire; the Mountain became impatient. I knew they would decide Hilo had to die. I knew this, but I said and did nothing. So it doesn’t trouble me that it’s Hilo who will put me to death soon.”
When Shae looked at Doru, at the mottled, vellum-like skin of his hands and neck, she thought of her friend Paya, who she hadn’t spoken to in years.
It wasn’t Paya’s love of music, her skill with numbers, or her talent in Lightness that Shae remembered. It was the shock of a dozen filthy photographs spilling from a manila envelope that wormed into her mind.
Shae could not bring herself to speculate on what else she’d find if she searched this cluttered house. Doru had been a presence in the Kaul family for all of Shae’s life, he’d been like an uncle to the Torch’s grandchildren, but he’d abused his position as Weather Man in so many ways even before he’d begun secretly undermining Lan. Whatever pity she could find for Doru now, she didn’t disagree with what Hilo would surely say: “He went against the clan. A Weather Man doesn’t go against the Pillar. He has to die; there’s nothing to be done about it.”
Except that Hilo had not yet given the order to have Doru executed. He might be merciless to enemies, but Hilo was softhearted within the family.
Shae suspected he was putting it off, not eager for it to be one of his first acts as Pillar. With Lan’s funeral behind them, however, it would be soon.
Perhaps even today or tomorrow.
Shae made up her mind. She gathered the words she’d wanted to spit for
some time and shifted forward to the edge of the chair. “You disgust me, Uncle Doru. I don’t need to tell you why. In my opinion, you’ve lived too long already, protected by Grandda’s friendship no matter what you did. I wouldn’t shed a tear for you myself, but I’ll keep you from execution, if you’ll help Grandda.” Her words thickened, and she paused. “All he does is sit in his room. He was so frail at the funeral, and he’s barely spoken since then. When he does speak, he asks for you.”
Doru’s head had rolled back against the sofa, but he was listening. She could see his eyes moving under his thin eyelids, and his throat bobbed as he swallowed.
“His mind is going,” Shae said. “The doctor says he needs familiar people and routines. If you would play chess and have tea with him in the mornings, like you always used to, I know it would be of comfort to him. If you swear to take no further part in the clan business, I’ll talk to Hilo. I’ll convince him to let you keep your life, if you’ll agree to help Grandda now, near the end, when he needs you.”
She suspected she would have to fight Hilo hard for this, and so early on in their partnership, no less. But she was willing to do it. She was losing her grandfather, so soon after losing Lan. To all the solicitous clan members who’d crowded up to acknowledge Hilo as Pillar at the funeral yesterday, it had been obvious that Kaul Sen’s will to live was fading fast, even faster than his jade aura as he was slowly weaned off the stones he’d won and worn over the decades.
It was heartbreaking irony that she’d spent the last few good years of her grandfather’s life in a faraway country, and all she would get from now on were fleeting occasions of lucidity that came and went like flashes of tropical rain. He’d loved her most of all his grandchildren and wanted so badly for her to return to the clan, but now that she had, he didn’t even know it. She could accept that, but she wasn’t ready to let him go, to watch his body wither into a shell and his mind blow away like dust. “I want what’s best for Grandda,” she said to Doru. “That’s even more important than clan justice. Do you agree, Uncle?”
Doru lifted his head from the sofa. His skull swayed as if it was too heavy for his neck. The man’s eyes were sunken but still shiny and dark as marbles.
“I will always do what Kaul-jen needs of me.”
“We’ll tell Grandda you’ve had health problems—early symptoms of the
Itches. That’s why you’re without jade. There’ll be a guard present, and you’re forbidden to speak of any clan business. That’s the only way this can happen, and if you break the rules, I won’t protect you from Hilo a second time.”
“I can’t swear on my jade any longer,” Doru said with bitter humor, “but you have my word. I know my position, Shae-se. I did my best to steer toward a better outcome for us all, but I failed. Lan is dead, and Hilo is Pillar.
I live only on his mercy, and yours I see, and if I can be of simple company to Kaul-jen for the short time we both have left, that is more than enough.
You’ve nothing to worry about from me.”
Shae nodded and stood up. It seemed inappropriate to thank him when she was the one promising to spare his life, and also inappropriate to apologize for his situation, so she merely said, “Good, then.”
Doru laid his thin, fragile body back down on the sofa. “I get tired so easily now. I can’t tell if it’s this old jadeless body or the ache in my heart.”
He pressed the damp towel back over his eyes and went still, though his voice still rasped. “You may hate me for my weaknesses, as I know you do, but I could never wish any ill on you, Shae-se, and I never will. The only thing that makes me glad for my fate is seeing you—so strong, so clever and beautiful, with your jade on. It took murder and war to bring you back, but do you remember? I always said to your grandfather that someday you would replace me as Weather Man.”