CHAPTER
51
New Year’s Eve
Preparations for New Year’s week were muted in Janloon; the city expected few out-of-town visitors this year, and locals were not in a festive mood. The two major clans, which normally each donated a considerable sum to public celebrations and charitable events during this season, were too besieged to arrange anything except minor community functions in their largest and most securely held districts. On every New Year’s Eve day in Janloon that Shae could remember, the Kaul family, led by their grandfather and later by Lan, would be out in public in the Temple District, lighting fireworks, handing out candy coins to children, and accepting a stream of well wishes from Lantern Men. This year, she and Hilo sat alone at the patio table in the courtyard of the Kaul house, where they’d spent all night in discussion.
There was almost nothing left to talk about now. Shae watched the rising sun smear the clouds with streaks of red over the roof of the house. In forty- eight hours, she might be the short-lived Pillar of a clan in its death throes.
Her duties at that point would be relatively simple: see to the proper burial of her brother, the safety of her remaining family members, and a somewhat orderly transition of power in exchange for a swift and honorable death for herself. Minimizing further bloodshed would be the most difficult part. There would be those who’d rather fight on, no matter how hopelessly. She was in possession of sealed letters from Hilo to each of his top Fists in his own handwriting, should it come to that. She’d leave the more difficult
conversation with the Maiks to Hilo.
After a spell of silence, Hilo said, “I haven’t thanked you for giving Wen that new job.”
“It was no trouble,” Shae said. “She gave me a good idea of what she wanted.” Wen’s official new job was working for the Weather Man’s office as a design consultant on real estate development projects. It required a fair amount of travel.
“I’m glad to see the two of you getting along,” Hilo said.
“I’ve gotten to know her better.”
Hilo smiled faintly. Shae thought he looked weary and a little distant.
How these past months had eroded the boyishness of his face, damaged the ease and openness of his manner. He said, “The family was hard on you at the time, but now I’m glad for your Espenian connections. I don’t know how you pulled it off, but however you did, I’m grateful.” He squinted into the sunrise. “You said we needed two things to survive: money and a military victory. You delivered the first one, faster than I could get the second. You always were one up on me like that.”
She wished they could think of something else, some other way. Hilo’s decision was awful—she’d told him so several times. But in the end, he was the Pillar, and also the Horn, in spirit if not in title, and she had no basis on which to argue, no superior plan or more cunning ruse, like she’d had on Poor Man’s Road. She’d done all she could—more than she could ever in good conscience admit to either of her brothers—to diminish the Mountain’s advantage over them, but it was still not enough. This might be their only chance, and at last she agreed they had no choice but to take it. “This is a
terrible gamble,” she said.
“So was you meeting with Ayt.”
Shae’s face jerked up. When he saw that he’d unbalanced her, the smile on Hilo’s face broadened and he looked more like himself.
“Have you been spying on me?” Even now, he could surprise and aggravate her with his arrogance. “Having Caun follow me around again?”
Hilo’s smile fell off his face. “Caun Yu is dead. He was killed at the Twice Lucky when Gont and his men took it.”
Shae stilled. She tried to connect the face of her handsome young neighbor to Hilo’s deadpan words, and realized that the vague sorrow she felt was the barest portion of what Hilo carried; in recent weeks he had seen
many of his Fists and Fingers killed. “Let the gods recognize him,” she said quietly.
Hilo nodded, his eyes sad. “I haven’t had anyone following you,” he assured her. “Just a lucky guess, is all, though I see I’m right. I figured Ayt would contact you, that she’d try to convince you to kill me.” He shrugged one shoulder. “It makes sense. It’s what I would do if I were her.”
Shae sat back. “You never brought it up. You weren’t even worried?”
Her brother laughed a little. “Ah, Shae, if you decided to betray me, what could I do? What’s the point of life if you can’t even trust your own kin?” He kicked her foot under the table, a teasing, childish gesture. “For you to hand my head over to the Mountain, you must really hate me. I must be such a terrible brother that I’d deserve to die. So there was nothing to be done about it.”
That was the way it was with Hilo; it always came down to the deeply personal for him. Shae stood up. “I need to move; I’m stiff from sitting so long. Do you need to go, or will you walk in the garden with me for a few minutes?”
“A few minutes,” he said, and got up to accompany her.
Wen was right, the garden was the most beautiful part of the Kaul estate, and she’d never really paused to appreciate it. The morning light was slightly foggy, illuminating the still pond and the late winter blooms: bright pink cherry tree blossoms draped over dense shrubs laden with sprays of small white berries. Hilo crushed one of them between his fingers. “If you play your cards right, Ayt might let you out,” he said. “Exile wouldn’t be so bad for you. There’s plenty you could do elsewhere.” Faint bitterness in his voice.
“I’d feel better about it.”
Shae thought of the meeting she’d had with Ayt Mada in the sanctum and how it had ended. “No,” she said with grim confidence, “I don’t think that will happen.” By dramatic and inexorable steps, she’d given up her chance at that other destiny; she’d hovered, gazing through that open door, and then she’d turned away. She was surprised to find, even faced with the probability of ruin and death, that she felt no great regret. At first, her decisions had been about herself, then they had been about honoring and avenging Lan, and in the end, they had been about more than that. She could say to the gods on the day of the Return that she had finally been the Green Bone she’d wanted to be: seeking if never achieving the Divine Virtues, but true to family and
country and aisho.
She and Hilo kept walking, in a more companionable silence than she suspected they had ever before shared in their lives. She didn’t want to break it, but then she pictured Lan sitting on the stone bench in front of the pond, watching the lazy carp and the rainbow sparrows that flitted on the birdbath rocks. She might not have another chance to settle her mind on this.
“There’s one last thing I need to ask you,” she said to her brother. “Ayt told me she didn’t order Lan’s death. That no one in the Mountain has claimed responsibility.” She waited. “Hilo … where is Lan’s jade?”
Hilo’s gait did not break, but his steps slowed until he stopped and turned to face his sister. His face, bathed in shadow from a passing cloud, was suddenly unreadable. “I buried him with it.”
Shae closed her eyes. When she opened them again, she felt them prickling with unexpected tears. So Ayt had been telling the truth. No Green Bone would’ve left jade on the body of a slain foe. Her brother had not been killed by an enemy warrior. “His death was an accident,” she whispered in anguish.
“It was no accident.” Hilo’s voice was cutting. He took a step toward Shae, his aura flaring harsh and bright in a tempest of sudden emotion. She’d never seen him look more dangerous than he did in that single step. He spoke with slow, deathly intensity. “There were two machine guns on the pier, and a dead man, a teenager. Ayt and Gont sent at least two men after Lan that night. One of them got away, and if I’m still alive when Tar finds him, I’ll force a jade stone down his throat and bury him alive to die slowly of the Itches. Don’t doubt, not for a single second, that the Mountain killed our brother.”
“By sending a couple of jadeless thugs?” she cried.
Hilo’s breaths were growing hard, as if he’d run some great distance. He took hold of his sister by the arms, his grip fierce, though she didn’t resist, only stood limply, staring at him. “Lan was weak that night, Shae. He’d been badly hurt by Gam in the duel at the Factory, but he didn’t let on. He was carrying too much jade, trying to stay strong in front of the clan. I ordered an autopsy done, that I never told anyone about. There was shine in his blood, Shae, too much of it. Shine! Lan hated the stuff, he would never have taken it, but he must’ve thought he had no choice.”
He released her abruptly and stepped back, his eyes black coals of
implacable hatred. “The Mountain always intended to conquer us. They broke us down, threatened and hounded us, ruined a good peacetime Pillar like Lan. It doesn’t matter what happened that night, they’re the reason he’s dead. I’ll risk everything tomorrow to set straight that score.”
“You misled me that day,” Shae said, but there was no anger in her words, only bitter grief and acceptance. She felt, strangely, that it all made sense in a perfect and terrible way. It only confirmed in her mind that the will of the gods was a conspiracy of many things; people laid the tracks of their fate yet were helpless at the same time. They’d all played their part in this—them and their enemies. “The Mountain didn’t even know Lan was dead when we attacked Poor Man’s Road. We were the ones who came down from the forest first; we slaughtered twenty-one unsuspecting people.”
“Misled you?” Hilo’s eyes were pits. “Never. You came back on your own, Shae, without a word from me, and thank the gods you did. As for those people—they were Green Bones. No Green Bone is unsuspecting of death.”