CHAPTER
43
New White Rat
As usual, it was past midnight when Shae returned to the Kaul house from the Weather Man’s office. Woon dropped her off at the front, then drove the car around to the garage. He truly was the Weather Man’s Shadow—never leaving the tower on Ship Street any earlier than she did, acting as her near- constant bodyguard as well as her Chief of Staff. She’d manipulated him in a time of grief to secure his loyalty but could not regret it, being too grateful for his expertise and the unflagging ethic he now displayed. She wouldn’t have made it through a week as Weather Man without him.
Shae took the front steps slowly and tiredly, feeling, as she had before, a mixture of strangeness and homecoming. She’d broken the lease on her one- bedroom place and moved into the Kaul house before Hilo even asked her to.
It was the only sensible thing to do given the war and her position as Weather Man. The Horn could no longer spare the manpower to give special protection to her apartment in North Sotto. The Kaul estate was secure, and living here was the only reliable way of finding the Pillar when she needed to.
So she’d packed her belongings, told her landlord to keep the furniture for the next tenant, then taken a last walk around the neighborhood. She’d bought a meat bun from the corner bakery and lingered to enjoy the smell.
She’d admired attractive window displays along the street. She’d noticed the subtle tension and slightly faster stride of pedestrians as they passed the
newspaper stand with headlines about the clan war.
Then she’d gone back to her apartment one final time and called the regional director at Standard & Croft Appliance to explain that, due to family circumstances that would no longer allow her to travel abroad for work, she was regretfully declining his offer of employment.
She’d found that apartment herself. She’d gotten that job offer herself.
They had been small but deeply personal victories. She hadn’t lived in her apartment for long, nor had she mustered much excitement for the job, but she felt the loss of both.
She couldn’t move into the Weather Man’s house; Doru was still imprisoned inside when he wasn’t spending time under guard with her grandfather. She didn’t think she could ever live in that place, unless it was torn down and rebuilt to eliminate any lingering presence of the man. So, ironically, she was back in her old bedroom. Not that she spent much time in it.
Shae paused with her hand on the front door. Stretching out her sense of Perception, she could tell that her brother was not home. He had also moved into the main house so the Maiks could live in the Horn’s residence. It felt to Shae sometimes, when she and Hilo were both present, that they were children again, sleeping down the hall from each other, passing each other in the kitchen, their auras buzzing up against each other like live wires. Neither
of them touched Lan’s room.
“Shae-jen.”
Shae turned to see Maik Wen standing on the driveway behind her. Wen was wearing a fleece robe over a loose shirt and lounge pants, and beach sandals on her bare feet. She must’ve hurried down the connecting path when she’d seen Shae’s arrival from the window of the Horn’s house.
“Wen,” Shae said. “Is something wrong?”
“No.” The other woman came up to Shae with swift, graceful steps. “I couldn’t sleep and wondered if you’d be kind enough to join me for a cup of tea.”
Shae said, “Another time maybe. It’s been a long day, and I don’t think I’d be very good company right now.” She turned back to the house.
Wen put a hand on her arm. “Not even for a few minutes? I always see you come home late, then sit in the kitchen with a stack of papers for another hour before going to bed. Wouldn’t you like a change of scene, for once? I’ve
been redoing the house and have been desperately wanting to show it to another woman.”
Shae had seen Wen come to the main house. Sometimes she was there waiting for Hilo, sometimes she seemed to be leaving when Shae was arriving or arriving when Shae was leaving. The two women exchanged nods or niceties in the kitchen or the hallway, but hadn’t yet had a conversation of more than twenty words. More often than not Shae found herself resenting Wen’s presence. She’d squirmed while trying to fall asleep at night, struggling to block out Perception of the blazing energy spill from her brother’s lovemaking down the hall.
The idea that Wen paid any attention to Shae’s habits at all surprised her enough that she hesitated and turned toward the other woman. Wen took this as acquiescence; she gave Shae a warm, enigmatic smile and looped a hand around her arm. She seemed a physical sort, just like Hilo—always connecting through touch.
“Our brothers aren’t home yet. I wouldn’t be surprised if they’re having a drink together right now. Why shouldn’t we do the same?” Wen asked.
Shae told herself to be polite. “All right, since you insist.” She let Wen walk her over to the Horn’s residence. They looked odd together: Wen in her robe, feet slapping in her sandals, Shae in conservative business attire, black pumps crunching on the pebble path through the garden between the houses.
Wen said, conversationally, “This garden’s my favorite part of the entire grounds. It’s so well designed—full of variety but not at all cluttered—and there’s always something blooming no matter the time of year. At night, it smells heavenly. Of course, the houses are impressive, but the garden is particularly beautiful.”
Shae, who’d never paid much attention to the garden, nodded and said, “Yes, it’s nice.” Lan had enjoyed it, she knew. She kept walking, allowed the thought of her brother to run its familiar, brief course through grief and anger, before she urged it to dissipate.
Wen glanced at Shae. “I didn’t want to move here at first either. Hilo and I had arguments over it. My apartment in Paw-Paw wasn’t much, but I’d set it up the way I liked it and I was paying the rent myself every month. To be honest, it was romantic to have Hilo coming to me in my place. I was afraid of feeling like an intruder here, worried that the family would look down on me.” She straightened slightly, lifted her chin. “But what’s the value of silly
pride compared to doing what’s best for the people one loves? Moving here was the right thing to do. I don’t regret it at all. Though it’d be nice to have company—everyone is out most of the time.”
It was the most Wen had ever said to her, and Shae was surprised by how personal the woman was being, and how perceptively she’d picked up on Shae’s own reluctance to live on the family estate. She wasn’t sure if Wen was trying to empathize with her or advise her. She decided to respond simply. “I know Hilo appreciates having you here.”
They reached the lit front stoop of the Horn’s house. As Wen opened the door and stepped inside, Shae couldn’t help tugging her right earlobe behind the woman’s back. Stone-eyes weren’t really bad luck, she scolded herself.
They were merely genetic recessives, like albinos. Jade immunity wasn’t a karmic punishment, even if Wen was a bastard, like everyone assumed she was. Nevertheless, the stigma persisted. Shae believed there was a more logical explanation for why Green Bones shunned stone-eyes: No one liked to be reminded that jade ability, like life itself, was a crapshoot. It was possible to have a Kekonese Green Bone bloodline behind you and still be born no better than an Abukei.
Wen had indeed transformed the house. Shae remembered it had been a sour-smelling place with green shag and outdated wallpaper. Hilo’s fiancée had put in bamboo flooring and bright lighting, woven rugs, and new furniture and appliances. The walls had been redone in light colors that made the space seem much larger. Shae could still smell the lingering odor of fresh paint mingling with rose oil fragrance. The throw pillows and drapes were color coordinated in rich burgundy and cream tones. There were decorative black rocks and white silk flowers in a glass dish on the kitchen table. Wen went into the kitchen and started the kettle boiling.
“I can’t believe it’s the same place.” Shae was genuinely impressed.
“I can’t believe Hilo lived in it for so long, with it as hideous as it was,”
Wen said. “Now that it’s presentable, he doesn’t even come over because he says it’s Kehn’s house and he doesn’t want to disrespect my older brother.”
She measured rolled tea leaves into a pot, then glanced around with a shrug.
“Kehn and Tar are barely here anyway, and they wouldn’t care if it was a cave with straw on the floor.”
Clearly, Wen had put a great deal of time and effort into renovating this house for no one’s enjoyment but her own, even though she’d be moving out
of it as soon as she and Hilo were married. Shae’s first, snidely envious thought was, She must have a great deal of time on her hands. And then, with chagrin, she remembered she’d promised Hilo that she’d find a new, more challenging job for Wen somewhere in the clan. She hadn’t done that. Not being a high priority, the task had slipped her mind.
No doubt Hilo had promised his fiancée it would happen. That must explain Wen’s eagerness to talk to her this evening. Shae sighed inwardly as she took off her shoes and slid onto a bar stool at the kitchen counter. “Hilo told me you’re hoping for a job change. I’ve been meaning to ask around the clan to see what’s available. Things have been chaotic, as you know, but I’ll get to it this week. Is there anything in particular that you’re looking for? A secretarial position in a different company?”
To her surprise, Wen appeared indifferent. “My mother told me that a stone-eye needs to have practical, useful skills, like typing. That way, I’ll always be employable.” She warmed the teapot and cups with boiling water, poured off the first infusion, then poured again and steeped the tea. “Most people aren’t terribly concerned about bad luck when it comes to low positions in the office that don’t involve customers or large sums of money. I can type a hundred words a minute, you know.” A droll smile lifted the corners of her mouth. She turned to search in the pantry.
“I take it that’s not what you want to do,” Shae said.
Wen turned back around with a bottle in hand. “Espenian cinnamon whiskey,” she declared. She poured tea into two cups and added a splash of liquor into each. “It goes remarkably well with the smoky flavor of this gunpowder tea. I wondered if you’d developed a taste for Espenian drinks while you were there.”
Dirt-cheap keg beer was more the speed with the student population in Windton, but Shae nodded her thanks as she took the cup and sipped, finding that Wen had been right about the flavors. What does this woman want from me? It was clear Wen had something on her mind; she’d thought about Shae a lot more than Shae had thought about her. Or was Wen this perspicacious with everyone?
She’d never been comfortable with Maik Wen. She could put aside the fact that Wen was a stone-eye. More difficult was admitting that she harbored lingering resentment that it was acceptable for Hilo to be with a stone-eye woman but intolerable for her to date a foreign man. If anyone had bothered
to see past Jerald’s Shotarian blood and Espenian uniform, they’d have learned he came from an honorable family. The Maiks, though, had a bad reputation.
The way Shae had heard it back at the Academy, years ago Wen’s mother had caused a scandal by getting pregnant and running away from her No Peak family to join her boyfriend in the Mountain clan. Some years later, Maik Bacu was accused of a grievous offense against the clan and executed. No one in No Peak was certain what had happened over there, but rumor was that he’d murdered an influential Lantern Man he’d suspected of sleeping with his wife. The widow took her two young sons and the daughter in her womb, and fled back to her relatives in No Peak, begging them to take her back in. They did so with Kaul Sen’s grudging permission, but the Maik sons were pitied and fatherless, and when Wen proved to be a stone-eye, the family’s disrepute was cemented. You can’t trust the Maiks, Shae had overheard her grandfather say. Impulsive and faithless on both sides of the bloodline.
Hilo dismissed all that: “Fatalistic bullshit. No one’s destined to become their parents.” Befriending and trusting the Maiks when others wouldn’t had turned out to be a great boon for Hilo. It frustrated Shae that she could never tell if her brother was calculating about these things. Did he think that marrying Wen would cement Kehn’s and Tar’s loyalty? Or had he fallen for her without considering any of that?
Shae regarded the other woman. Wen was not exactly beautiful, but Shae could see why Hilo found her alluring. She had a soft but inscrutable poise, an understated presence that drew the eye without ever appearing to be asking for attention. In conversation, she had a gentle intensity, and apparently few things escaped her notice.
Wen came around the counter to sit on the bar stool next to Shae.
Touching Shae’s knee, she asked solemnly, “Shae-jen, you’re the Weather Man. What job can you give me that would be the most helpful to the clan right now?”
Shae had not been expecting the reversal. She pressed her lips together; she didn’t like being caught by a question she thought she probably ought to know the answer to. “Helpful in what way?” she asked.
“Helpful to you and Hilo,” Wen said. “Helpful in winning the war.”
Shae swirled the tea in her cup. “The war is between Green Bones.”
“That’s what Hilo says,” Wen replied. “Though it makes no sense to
shield me by saying that. If the Mountain wins, they’ll kill my fiancé. My brothers are his Horn and his Pillarman, not to mention the sons of a Mountain traitor—they’ll die as well. I may be a stone-eye, but I have everything to lose in this war, everyone I love.
“Should I waste the Weather Man’s valuable time by asking her to find me an inconsequential job photocopying and typing memos in some minor Lantern Man’s office?” Wen raised her eyebrows. “Should I take such a job happily?”
Shae thought of other women who’d inhabited the Kaul house—her grandmother, her mother, Lan’s wife Eyni. “You’re going to be the wife of the Pillar,” she said to Wen. “No one expects you to work, much less be part of the clan business, especially since you’re a stone-eye.”
“Expectations are a funny thing,” Wen said. “When you’re born with them, you resent them, fight against them. When you’ve never been given any, you feel the lack of them your whole life.” Wen had finished her tea.
She took the bottle of whiskey, poured a straight shot into her cup, and tipped it back. Shae glimpsed in the single, swift motion a hidden sharpness to Maik Wen. She realized she did not know the woman at all.
The Pillar’s future wife said, “Let me work for you, Shae-jen. On something that’ll help us win this war.”
“There are positions in the Weather Man’s office,” Shae said slowly.
“However, I don’t think you have the educational background I’d need for them …”
“What’s the most useful role a stone-eye can play in the clan?”
Shae knew the answer; indeed the disquieting thought had already occurred to her, but it was a long moment before she met Wen’s eyes and replied. “White Rat.”
Wen said, “Could you use a White Rat, Shae-jen?”
The woman was leading her into dangerous territory, Shae could see that now. She followed cautiously, as if stepping through a bog. Stone-eyes could safely and discreetly handle and transport any amount of jade without exuding an aura. Unlike the Abukei, who were suspect and discriminated against, stone-eyes blended in as ordinary Kekonese civilians. As a White Rat, a stone-eye could be very useful indeed, as a spy, a smuggler, a messenger, or a thief. Another reason to distrust them.
“You’re too well known,” Shae said.
“Only by my name, and only in No Peak. No one in the Mountain knows who I am or would recognize me. They know my brothers, but I don’t look like my brothers.” She was unflinching about her uncertain parentage.
“Hilo would never allow it.”
“Never,” Wen agreed. “He couldn’t know. I’d have to have another job as well, a simple one, as cover. I’m sure you could come up with something.”
“You’re willing to lie to your future husband,” Shae said, not able to mask her astonishment. “And you’re asking me, as Weather Man, to go against the wishes of the Pillar. I’d be putting you in danger if I did this. Aisho would no longer protect you.”
Remorse gathered in Wen’s full lips and dark eyes. “Shae-jen, did you become Weather Man to please the Pillar, or to save the clan?” She smiled sadly to say she knew the answer and turned her face away, her voice falling slightly. “Hilo’s brilliant as Horn. He’s honest and fierce, and his men revere him. If heart alone could win the war, we’d already be victorious. But he was never meant to be Pillar. He’s not farsighted or politically shrewd, and all the jade in the world won’t change that.”
She turned back to Shae, who sat nonplussed by Wen’s flat assessment.
“He knows he needs your help. If I can be of use to you as a White Rat, I’ll be doing everything I can to help the family survive. He insists he loves me too much to let me get involved in the war in any way … and I love him too much to obey.”
It must’ve been at least one o’clock in the morning, but Shae was wide awake and her mind had begun chewing at fearful possibilities. She looked around the renovated surroundings again, slowly. It had taken Wen a few weeks to completely change the house, to put together a skillful artifice of sights, smells, and textures, all working together to create a pleasing, polished appearance for the formerly ugly but honest residence of No Peak’s most savage men. She realized now that she had misjudged Maik Wen, had seen her warm, pliable, sensual demeanor and overlooked the Green Bone core beneath the stone-eye stigma, forgotten that she was sister to the ferocious Maik brothers. She’d resented Wen before; now she was uneasy.
She thought, Two strong-minded women in a man’s world, if they do not quickly become allies, are destined to be incurable rivals. Going around Hilo was something Shae was accustomed to, but this, she knew, he would not forgive.
She’d have to think about this more and proceed carefully.
Wen took Shae’s empty cup from her and stood. “I’ve taken enough of your time and kept you from sleep tonight, Shae-jen.” Without shoes, Shae realized, Wen was taller than her, with curves that years of hard training had sloughed off Shae.
The Weather Man stood up. “Thank you for the tea, Wen. We’ll talk again soon.” She made her way to the door and put on her shoes. The delicate fragrance of winter-flowering plum blossom swept in from the garden when she opened the door. She paused in the doorway, turning back for a second as the light in the hall elongated her shadow across the stoop of the Horn’s house. “I think,” she ventured, “that it’s possible my brother has better taste
than I’ve given him credit for.”
Wen smiled. “Good night, sister.”