CHAPTER
53
Brothers-In-Arms
Anden arrived at the Kaul house late in the evening on New Year’s Eve.
The Academy had let out for the holiday week, and throughout the day students had been departing campus to spend the break with their families.
Anden had been slow to pack his bags and leave. The Pillar had spoken to him at length the day before, so he knew what to expect when he arrived, but for much of the day he hadn’t felt ready to face what lay next. Instead, he walked the grounds of the Academy, trying to soak in the feeling of the home that he would soon be leaving. For many years, he’d thought of the Academy as a place of necessary hardship and tribulation, of sweat and chores, of modest meals, little leisure, and unsympathetic masters. Now, though, he realized that it was a haven, a refuge where Green Bone honor was an untainted goal, the only place where a person could wear jade and practice the jade disciplines in true safety.
The two weeks of final Trials had passed in a blur. After so many years of preparation and feverish last-minute studying and training, the conclusion of academic and martial testing had seemed almost anticlimactic to Anden. He’d been most worried about his science and math exams, and they’d been the first ones in his schedule. After that, there were no major surprises. He improved marginally on most of his scores from Pre-Trials, especially Deflection. On the last day, he wore his jade and fought four of the Academy’s Green Bone teaching assistants in a row over thirty grueling
minutes. By the end, he was exhausted and battered but still standing, panting but ready to continue. It was not for nothing that Hilo had beaten him and taught him to always get up again.
The masters made notes on their clipboards and nodded in dismissal.
Anden had saluted them and walked out of the testing hall with barely more pride and triumph than he might’ve felt after completing a menial chore like washing the floor. At least that’s over with. He would graduate; that was the important thing. These tests weren’t real. The real ones were yet to come.
When he got to the Kaul house, Anden went straight into the courtyard where the Pillar was sitting at the shaded table with the entire family. They were finishing up a New Year’s Eve dinner, and the delicious smells made Anden’s mouth water: roast suckling pig, seafood soup, spicy shrimp in sauce, pea shoots with garlic, fried greens. Anden only got food that good once or twice a year, but it was a modest holiday meal for a family like the Kauls, who in the past had hosted expansive public New Year’s feasts.
Anden stopped to take in the scene. His cousin Hilo was sitting at one end of the table in a black suit, his back to Anden. Wen leaned close directly on his left, her hand on his leg as if to hold him in place in his seat. Shae sat at the other end. Between them on one side were the Maik brothers, and on the other sat Kaul Sen in a wheelchair with Kyanla poised nearby. There was an empty seat and place setting saved for Anden.
For a second, Anden stood, the poignancy of the moment burrowing into him with a pain that made it hard to take another step. The picture was incomplete; Lan was missing from it and so too was any sense of joviality.
The voices were muted, the postures tense. Even from a distance, the gathering had the feeling of a funeral vigil rather than a New Year’s family feast. Only Hilo seemed remotely relaxed or happy. He brushed aside Wen’s reach for the teapot and personally refilled the cups around the table. He helped himself to another serving of roast pork, said something lighthearted to Tar, who nodded but didn’t smile, and he wrapped an arm lazily around Wen’s waist.
Hilo looked over his shoulder at Anden. He smiled and rose from his seat to walk toward him. “Andy, you’re late. There’s barely any food left.” He embraced his cousin warmly, then led him to his place at the table, next to their grandfather.
“Sorry, Hilo-jen,” Anden said as he sat down. “It took me longer than I
thought it would to get out of the Academy. And the traffic was bad. New Year’s week after all.”
“You should have called me to send a car.” Hilo shoved Anden’s head in mock admonishment and doled food onto his plate. Contrary to what Hilo had said, there was still plenty of it sitting on the table. “The Trials are over; you’re not a student anymore. You don’t need to be riding around on a bike or taking the bus.”
“Congratulations on the end of Trials, Anden,” Shae said.
“Thanks, Shae-jen,” Anden said, not quite meeting her eyes.
Their grandfather seemed to rouse from picking at the small morsels of food on his plate. He turned his wizened head toward Anden, his eyes suddenly narrowed and piercing in their intensity. “So you’re one of us now.
Mad Witch’s boy.”
Anden froze with a spoonful of soup poised in midair. He set it back down in his bowl, sickly warmth climbing into his throat and face. Kaul Sen said, “I hope you carry jade better than your ma. Ah, she was green, all right, a green lady monster—but she went out worse than even her father and brothers.” He leveled a bony finger and shook it at Anden. “I said to Lan, when he brought you here: ‘That mixed-blood boy is like a cross between a goat and a tiger— who knows what he’ll be?’”
Hilo stared at his grandfather and spoke in a voice so lethal Anden cringed at the sound. “Kyanla, I think it’s past Grandda’s bedtime, don’t you?”
Kyanla sprang up. “Come, come, Kaul-jen,” she fussed, hurrying to pull his wheelchair from the table and take him back into the house. “Time to rest.”
“Mind your jade, Mad Witch’s boy,” Kaul Sen said in parting.
The table had fallen silent. Hilo let out a long sigh and threw his napkin onto the table. “He’s not well,” he explained to Anden apologetically.
“Losing jade tolerance does things to old people, up here.” He tapped the side of his head.
Anden nodded mutely. Kaul Sen had never been cruel to him. When Anden had been seven years old, the man had seemed like a god, and as recently as a year ago, he’d been strong and hale. He’d said to Anden, “You belong in this family, boy. You’ll be as powerful a Green Bone as my own grandsons.”
“Ignore him,” Hilo said now. “Go on, Andy, eat. The rest of you stop
looking so damned gloomy. This is a happy night: Andy’s finished the Trials.
I’m a married man. It’s warm, spring is on the way, it’s New Year’s Eve.
You know what they say about the first day setting your luck for the rest of the year. Don’t start it in bad spirits.”
Anden forced himself to chew and swallow. He felt terrible; he’d made things worse by arriving. Putting on a weak but heroic smile, he said, “Congratulations on your wedding, Hilo-jen. You look especially beautiful tonight, sister Wen.”
“Now that’s more like it,” Hilo said. “Thank you, Andy.”
Wen smiled thinly, but Anden thought she was studying him with a particularly anxious expression. Her brothers, sitting opposite Anden, seemed the most unhappy tonight. Kehn and Tar had not spoken a word since Anden’s appearance, and when they glanced at him, it was with something approaching resentment. Anden avoided meeting their eyes. It was the place of the Horn and the Pillarman to protect the Pillar with their own lives; they could hardly be faulted for begrudging Anden his part in what would happen tomorrow.
Hilo said, “You know what we should’ve had today? Candy coins. We always had candy coins on New Year’s Eve when we were kids, didn’t we, Shae?” And gradually, limp conversation returned. Anden ate as quickly as he could manage, not wanting to prolong the suffering around the table.
Kyanla returned to clear the dishes, and the family stood slowly, lingering for a minute, glad for dinner to be over, yet reluctant to leave. Shae came over to Anden and put a hand on his arm. It seemed a deeply apologetic gesture, and Anden knew what she was apologizing for. With Shae so close, he could feel the jade on her, the slightly brittle prickle of her aura, a sensation that had been absent when he’d sat across from her over dinner at the barbecue house a seeming eternity ago.
“I was wrong,” she said in a low voice. “I didn’t listen to you. I …”
“I know, Shae-jen,” he said. “You don’t have to say it.”
“What you’re doing now, I didn’t want Hilo to ask it of you. I argued with him about it, told him he was putting you in a terrible position, but he’s convinced it’s the best chance of saving the clan. I’m sorry I couldn’t talk him out of it.”
“I understand,” Anden said. “It’s my choice.”
Hilo whispered something to Wen, who nodded and departed with her
brothers. The Pillar said, “Come with me, Andy. Let’s talk inside.”
“Should I bring my bag into the guest room?” Anden asked.
“Leave it. We’ll bring it in later.” Hilo led him, not into the main house, but toward the training hall. When they got there, he flicked on the lights, and they blazed to life over the long wooden floor. A cramp took brief hold of Anden’s chest. He remembered the last time he’d been in here, the last time he’d seen Lan alive.
Hilo slid the door closed and turned to face Anden. The relaxed manner he’d displayed at dinner was gone, replaced with an equally familiar dangerous intensity. It amazed Anden that his cousin could move between the two states with such speed. “You’ve had a chance to think about it some more,” Hilo said. “You think you can do what I’m asking?”
Anden nodded. He felt, suddenly, as if this was the moment of true commitment, this was where his entire existence had been leading. The Pillar was counting on him, and him alone, in the clan’s time of need. “I won’t let you down.”
“I know you won’t, Andy.” Hilo looked stricken for a moment. “We need to prepare for tomorrow, but we should do this right. I’m asking you to act on behalf of the clan, on behalf of me, and that makes you a Green Bone of No Peak. The graduation ceremony hasn’t happened yet, but you’re through the Trials, so you can take oaths. Do you know them by heart, or do you need me to say them with you?”
“I know them,” Anden said. He knelt on the floor in front of his cousin and raised his clasped hands to his head. His voice came out strong and steady.
“The clan is my blood, and the Pillar is its master. I have been chosen and trained to carry the gift of the gods for the good and protection of the people, and against all enemies of the clan, no matter their strength or numbers. I join myself to the fellowship of jade warriors, freely and with my whole being, and I will call them my brothers-in-arms. Should I ever be disloyal to my brother, may I die by the blade. Should I ever fail to come to the aid of my brother, may I die by the blade. Should I ever seek personal gain at the expense of my brother, may I die by the blade. Under the eyes of all the gods in Heaven, I pledge this. On my honor, my life, and my jade.”
Anden touched his head to the floor near Hilo’s feet.
Hilo raised Anden to his feet and embraced him. “Brother,” he said.