Jade War

CHAPTER 3 Exile

Emery Anden sat on the bench under the cherry tree in the courtyard of the Kaul estate, nursing a bottle of lime soda and avoiding eye contact with the other funeral reception guests. The long tables laden with food were adorned with garlands of white heart blossom flowers, and a harpist installed in the garden strummed melodiously sentimental and uplifting music. The courtyard was crowded, but the ongoing murmur of conversation remained respectfully muted. The only thing that marred the tasteful event was the temporary blue plastic fencing on one side of the courtyard that cordoned off the construction site where the Weather Man’s residence was being stripped down to its frame and renovated.

Anden could not claim to have been close to Kaul Sen, but the man had been his adopted grandfather and had given him everything: made him a part of the Kaul family and sent him to be educated at Kaul Dushuron Academy in the same manner as the Torch’s own grandchildren. Ever since he was a child, Anden had assumed he would one day repay the patriarch by becoming a first-rank Green Bone of the No Peak clan. Now Grandda was dead, and Anden’s debt to him would remain unpaid.

The late-afternoon shadows thickened and the crowd thinned and still Anden waited. He got up to get another soda from the beverage table and was aware of all the shoulders and chins that turned, all the interested and unkind eyes that followed him. Most of the upper echelon of No Peak was here. They knew who Anden was and what he had done last year: helped to save the clan from destruction, then on the day of his graduation, refused to wear jade and been publicly disowned by the Pillar.

With a jolt, he recognized a few of his classmates from the Academy—Lott, Heike, and Ton—standing together near their families. They were speaking to each other and casting glances in his direction. An echo of old feeling, numb with disuse, stirred in Anden’s chest. Lott Jin was leaning casually against a table. He had not lost his slouchy, restlessly idle manner, but he appeared to have been working out over the past year; his shoulders were broader, filling out his gray suit jacket, and he’d cut his hair so that it no longer hung in front of his hooded eyes.

Anden averted his gaze, heat climbing into his face. There were times now, after living in Marenia for over a year, that he enjoyed his day-to-day life and could push away the memory of his disgrace. Being back in Janloon, in this house and among the clan again, dragged him back to the days and weeks after his exile and reminded him of everything he’d given up.

Anden returned to his seat on the bench by the tree. To his horror, Ton crossed the courtyard. Lott and Heike stayed behind, watching but not approaching. “Anden,” Ton said, touching his forehead in informal greeting. He cleared his throat. “It’s been a while. I’m glad to see you looking well.”

Anden reluctantly raised his eyes to his former classmate’s face. “It’s good to see you, Ton-jen,” he said. Ton nodded and fiddled with the two jade rings on his left hand in nervous habit. He was a Finger in the clan now, answering to the Horn and his Fists, patrolling and defending No Peak territory, maintaining the clan’s tenuous advantage over the Mountain. Ton looked as if he was fishing for something else to say to break the awkwardness, but Maik Tar appeared and bent to speak quietly to Anden. “He’s ready to see you.”

Anden got up, set his empty soda bottle on the bench, and followed the Pillarman into the house. At the entrance to the study, he paused, wanting another second to prepare himself, but Tar pushed the door open and Anden had no choice but to step inside. Tar closed the door behind him, shutting out the background sounds of the people still mingling outside.

The Pillar was sitting in the largest of the leather armchairs. Kaul Hilo seemed both the same and different from the last time Anden had seen him. He still possessed a youthful appearance, still exuded the casually insolent charisma that Anden had seen manifest as generous warmth with his friends and fearsome menace with his enemies. But the mantle of Pillar left no man unchanged; there was a stiffness to Hilo’s eyes and mouth now, a grimmer, more controlled aspect to his manner that Anden had seen little evidence of before.

Anden looked for Shae, but she was not in the room. She was the only member of the clan that Anden had been in regular contact with over the past year. He’d hoped that she would be here. Anden swallowed. He brought his clasped hands up to his forehead and tilted into a formal salute. “Kaul-jen,” he said. “I’m sorry for the loss of your grandfather.”

There was a time not long ago when Hilo would’ve risen and embraced his cousin warmly, kissed him on the cheek, and smiling, led him to the nearest chair. “Andy,” Hilo would’ve scolded, “don’t act like that; take the pole out of your ass and come sit down.”

The Pillar did not do that. He remained seated and said, with cool remonstration, “He was your grandfather too, Andy, in every way but blood. He brought you into this family.”

“I haven’t forgotten that,” Anden said quietly.

“Haven’t you?” Hilo sat forward and picked up the package of Espenian-branded cigarettes lying on the coffee table. He tapped one out for himself and put it in his mouth, then to Anden’s surprise, held the box out to his cousin. Anden sat down and took a cigarette without meeting the Pillar’s eye. Hilo lit his smoke, slid the lighter across the table to Anden, then leaned back in his chair again. “What have you been doing with yourself, Andy?” His voice was soft and reproachful. “Shae tells me you’re living in Marenia. A nineteen-year-old man trained as a Green Bone, living in a village with jadeless fishermen and seniors.”

Anden hid the flush of his face by looking down as he lit his cigarette. “I have a job there,” he answered. “It’s steady work and I can support myself. In another month, I’ll have saved up enough money to rent my own place so I won’t be a burden on your ma anymore.”

Hilo’s eyes blazed with sudden ire. “And what about the guards set to watch over you? Will your salary from working in the furniture shop cover the expense of them as well?”

Anden flinched at Hilo’s tone. “Kaul-jen, the clan shouldn’t make any special allowance for me. You need every Green Bone you have in the war against the Mountain. No one’s come after me in Marenia, and if they do, it’s only right that I bear that risk myself.”

“Don’t be stupid,” Hilo said. “You killed Gont Asch; you turned the war last year. You think Ayt Mada will ever forget that?” Hilo sat forward again. “She knows you could become one of the most powerful Green Bones in the country.”

Anden muttered, “Not if I never wear jade again. It would be against aisho to—”

“Ayt will find a way around aisho if she wants to. She doesn’t need to send Green Bones with moon blades against one jadeless man in a fishing village. She hasn’t whispered your name because there’s no gain in it for her right now. Who knows, maybe she thinks that if she waits awhile, she can turn you.”

Anden’s head shot up. “I would never turn to the Mountain, not if my life depended on it. I may not be a Green Bone, but I wouldn’t betray the clan to our enemies.”

“Did you say that to the man who approached you last month?”

Anden did not reply, but the hand that held the cigarette shook a little. A stranger, a bald man, had come up to him in the supermarket and said, with a confidential smile, “I admire what you did, refusing to put on jade and become one of those Green Bone killers. You’re obviously a young man with integrity. Even in this small town, people know who you are. If you ever need help finding a job or a place to stay, or could use a favor from a friend, you should feel free to call me.” The man had handed Anden a business card with a phone number.

“Shae looked into it. He has ties to the Mountain,” Hilo said. “They’re being patient, but sometime soon, they’ll make sure you have some unexpected trouble, and maybe you’ll call the number on the card. And if you don’t, you’ll have some worse trouble down the line.”

Anden took a quick drag on his cigarette and ground it out. He saw now why he’d been asked here at last: The Pillar might not have forgiven him, but neither did he want a member of his family, disowned or not, to be left vulnerable and potentially manipulated by the enemy.

“Andy,” Hilo said, and though his voice was still hard, there was a pained edge to it that made Anden finally meet his cousin’s eyes. The Pillar’s mouth twisted as he ground out his own cigarette. “You’re my brother; if you’d come to your senses, if you’d asked to return at any time this past year, if you’d spoken to me and admitted you made a mistake—the way I admitted I was at fault too—I would’ve forgiven you at once. I’d have welcomed you back; how could I not? But you never did that. You stayed away from the family and wasted a year of your life.”

“You said you never wanted to see me again,” Anden mumbled.

“Who doesn’t ever say the wrong things when they’re angry?” Hilo snapped. “You humiliated yourself that day, humiliated the clan, and insulted me in doing it.”

Anger and resentment rose and dispelled Anden’s guilt. “Would you have welcomed me back even if I refused to wear jade? Or am I only worth anything to you as a Green Bone?”

“You were meant to be a Green Bone,” Hilo said. “You’re fooling yourself if you think otherwise. Shae took off her jade and went away; she tried to pretend to be someone else and look what happened. If she hadn’t done that, maybe everything would be different. Maybe it would still be Lan sitting in this room instead of me. Refusing to wear jade, you’re like a goose that won’t go near water.” Hilo blew out a harsh sigh. “Don’t try to tell me that you don’t think about it.”

He did; of course he did. The memory of jade, of the power it had given him, the ecstatic terror of that last battle when he’d killed one of the most powerful Green Bones in Janloon—sometimes it stirred in him a longing that was almost sexual in its intensity, in its sheer animal hunger. Anden’s eyes dropped involuntarily to the top of Hilo’s shirt, the first two buttons left undone as usual. Looking at the long line of jade stones studding his cousin’s collarbone, Anden felt conflicting fear and yearning pull his insides taut. He still wanted to be a Kaul.

Yet stronger than the craving loomed the specter of madness and a life lived in constant terror of himself. Whenever he contemplated the idea of putting on jade again, black memories forced themselves into his mind: his mother’s screams of insanity before her death from the Itches; Lan on the last day Anden had seen him alive—worn down, volatile, and weakened from carrying too much jade and drugging himself with shine; and Anden himself, after the battle with Gont, waking up in the hospital parched and feverish, half-mad with a thirst for jade and killing.

He shook his head. “I won’t do it, Hilo-jen. Jade will turn me into a monster. I’m still grateful to the family and loyal to the clan; I’ll do anything you ask of me—except wear green.”

Hilo did not reply at first. Anden did not dare to say anything more, and the silence stretched between them. When the Pillar spoke again, his voice was resigned, devoid of the anger that Anden realized had been a sign of how much he’d wished for a different outcome between them, how dearly he’d hoped it would not come down to what he was about to say. “I’m sending you to Espenia. Shae’s made all of the arrangements. You’ll leave next week.”

Anden stared, not believing it at first. “Espenia?”

“You’re no use to me here if you won’t be a Green Bone. You can’t stay in Marenia; I won’t have you guarded day and night so you can carve rocking chairs and pick seashells on the beach while the Mountain decides when to make a move. If you won’t wear jade, you’ll need to do something else with your life. You’ll go to Espenia and get an education there.”

“I’ve never been to Espenia,” Anden protested.

“You’re half-Espenian. You should learn about that country, learn the language,” Hilo said. Anden was so astonished he couldn’t speak at first. Hilo had never pointed out his foreign side, never suggested that Andy was not truly Kekonese and a full member of the Kaul family.

This sudden change, perhaps more than anything else, was so hurtful that Anden lost the rest of his composure. “You want to be rid of me,” he choked out. “You’re exiling me.”

“Godsdamnit, Andy,” Hilo snarled, “for the last time: Will you kneel and take your oaths again to me as Pillar, then put on your jade and be a Green Bone, a part of this family?”

Anden clutched the arms of the chair, his jaw so tight he could feel the pressure in his eye sockets. If he opened his mouth, he wasn’t sure what would come out of it, so he didn’t let himself speak. Hilo stood up. He walked over to the side of Anden’s chair and stood over him, his spine tense and his shoulders angled slightly forward, as if he wanted to reach down and grab his cousin, to embrace him or hurt him. Anden felt tears pricking the backs of his eyes. “Please, Hilo-jen,” he whispered. “Don’t send me there. I hate those people and that country.”

“You might like it when you get there,” Hilo said. “You won’t be all alone; the clan has connections, and they’ll take care of you while you’re away from home. After a couple of years, you’ll have options, and we’ll talk about them then.”

He supposed he could refuse. He could disobey Hilo a second time, insist on staying in Marenia. Even if a dull, routine life was all he could hope for there, at least he would be on Kekon and not in some foreign country. But he was certain that Shae could not help him further if he did that. He would truly be out of the family. Kekon was ruled by the clans; as a pariah, his future prospects were slim. With Hilo standing so close to him, he could sense the edges of his cousin’s jade aura, could Perceive the reluctant determination behind his words. Hilo had made his decision. He was the Pillar and, with the death of Kaul Sen, the indisputable final word in the Kaul family.

Anden got up and touched his clasped hands to his forehead in salute. “Whatever you say, Kaul-jen.” His voice was dull. He didn’t dare to look at Hilo again as he turned and left the study.

In a daze, he walked down the hall and saw Shae sitting on the steps of the main staircase in the foyer. She looked strange sitting there by herself in the near dark, still in her business clothes, hands around her knees. She stood up when she saw him. Out in the lamplit courtyard, workers were bringing the leftover food into the kitchen and taking down the tables. They could hear cars departing from the driveway. “Anden,” she started.

“You said you would talk to him,” Anden blurted in accusation. “You said you’d find a way for me to come back home. But it was your idea to send me to Espenia, wasn’t it?”

Shae blew out a breath. “It’s what we decided was best. You’ll be safer there, you’ll gain some experience and skills. Espenia is our largest military ally and trading partner; it’ll be an advantage in the long run for you to have spent time living and studying there. Afterward, when it makes sense for you to come back—”

“Did you think about what I want?” He was certain now that Hilo wouldn’t have done this to him without the Weather Man’s urging. “Maybe going away was something you wanted to do, but I don’t want to leave Kekon. I don’t care about Espenia or an Espenian education. I was never much good at studying anyway, only—” Only jade. He’d been a prodigy when it came to the jade disciplines.

Shae reached out and laid a hand on his arm. “You’re still young. You don’t know what else there is yet.”

Anden jerked away. “I wish I’d died that day in the fight with Gont.”

Shae dropped her hand. “Don’t say that.” Her reply was sharp, but Anden didn’t care that he’d upset her. He spun and left the house. He heard his cousin take two steps after him before she stopped and let him go.