Jade War

CHAPTER 47 Back to Work

Shae barely left her house for a week. She dressed and emerged to attend Kehn’s funeral, but the entire event passed in a blur of walking, chanting, and resentful silence. Hilo was devastated by his Horn’s death; he kept Wen’s hand tightly clasped in his own and their children within his sight at all times. Tar broke down at the side of his brother’s grave and wept like a child. Afterward, his eyes were vacant and lost, as if he was no longer present, except for one moment when Shae passed near him and she felt his gaze settle on her for a moment, his aura flickering with bitterness that she had executed Maro painlessly.

Shae couldn’t bring herself to speak to Tar and tell him that she, too, grieved for Kehn. She hadn’t known the Maik brothers well at first, for a long time thinking of them only as her brother’s lackeys, but the past few years had altered that impression. She’d seen Kehn grow into the role of Horn, had shared meals with him around the family dinner table, had come to know him as a loyal and dangerous but quietly dogged man who was at least half the reason for the productive cooperation between the two sides of the clan. Hilo had insisted that Kehn be laid to rest next to the grand Kaul family memorial instead of the small, disused patch where his ignominious father was buried, but from what Shae overheard, the explosion had not left much in the way of remains. Kehn’s ashes did not take up even a fraction of the steel casket. The Horn was a dangerous role, one in which a Green Bone might expect to lose his life for the clan—on his feet with a blade in his hand. Not like this.

Shae went back into her house. Woon once again took over the job of managing the Weather Man’s office in her absence. Kyanla brought meals over from the main house and left them in Shae’s fridge, where they remained mostly untouched. Within days of Lan’s death, she’d walked into the office tower on Ship Street and taken over Doru’s office as Weather Man. When her grandfather passed away, she’d mourned deeply, but had gone back to work. Those tragedies had broken her heart, but they had not torn out a piece of her soul. This time, she couldn’t function. She had no desire to get out of bed, to dress, or to eat. Nor did she care to know what was going on in the clan in her absence.

Shae had taken lives in combat before, but she had never thought of herself as a murderer, as she did now. Everything she had done to try to keep Maro at a distance from the clan and her unavoidable decisions as Weather Man had hurt and endangered him, had led to his death. She’d loved him; she wondered if he even knew that, if she’d ever told him. The world needed more people like Tau Maro, and she’d ended his life with her own hands.

At times in her isolation, she prayed to the gods, and at others she railed and cursed them bitterly. She questioned everything she had ever done; she thought about leaving Kekon again; when she closed her eyes, she saw Maro’s face, so sad and full of accusation, and in helpless horror and remorse, she relived over and over again the moment of his death. She nursed a growing, burning, unquenchable hatred for the coward Zapunyo and his barukan thugs.

Years ago, she’d argued with Hilo that they had more important things to worry about than a smuggler ensconced in the Uwiwa Islands. Now she realized she’d underestimated Zapunyo in a crucial way. The Kekonese took it for granted that even during an outright clan war, civilians without jade would not be targeted. Zapunyo and the barukan were not Green Bones. They had no sense of aisho and did not care if innocents were killed along the way.

On the eighth or ninth day, Shae was not sure which, she heard the front door open and footsteps come down the hall toward her room. She thought at first that it was Kyanla again, come to leave more food that would go uneaten, but when she roused her sluggish sense of Perception, she recognized that it was Wen. Her sister-in-law knocked on the bedroom door.

“Sister Shae,” Wen said. “May I come in?”

Shae considered ignoring the request, but felt as if she had no right to do so. Wen had seen her brother killed before her eyes and been terrified for her children’s lives. She had as much if not more reason to be incapacitated than Shae, and yet here she was. Shae dragged herself out of bed and opened the door. She realized that she must look terrible; she had been wearing the same old shirt and pajama pants for several days, her hair was uncombed, and she suspected that if she looked in the mirror, she would barely recognize herself.

Wen took all this in expressionlessly. She pushed past Shae into the stuffy bedroom and opened a window, letting in a gust of air. Wen turned to face her sister-in-law and sat down on the edge of Shae’s unmade bed. “Shae-jen,” Wen said, as if they were having a perfectly ordinary conversation, “I want to go back to working for you. Not right away, but soon; I was thinking once Jaya turns nine months old. We’ve done some useful things together, but we both became too busy. In the future we can do better. I’ve talked your mother into moving back to Janloon and into the guesthouse for her own safety and to help with the children so I can go back to work part-time.”

Shae felt as if Wen’s words were coming from some other reality in which the events of the past two weeks had not happened. She blinked and let out a noise that might’ve been a laugh of incredulity if her voice had been less disused. “Why are you asking me this right now?”

“Who else would I ask?” Wen exclaimed. “You’re the Weather Man, unless you’re planning to resign your position.” She looked at Shae shrewdly, her expression a question. “You were willing to die at the hands of Ayt Mada rather than step down. Has that changed?”

“Now’s not a good time to ask me anything, Wen,” Shae said.

“When would be a good time? When are you planning on coming back out?”

Shae felt a weak stir of irritation. “How can you be thinking about this right now?”

Wen crossed her arms. “I would like to hide in my room for a month as well, Shae-jen. But I can’t do that. I have to take care of my children; they don’t stop needing a mother just because I am suffering. I have to explain to Niko and Ru that their uncle Kehn is dead. And I have to keep up my strength for Hilo, so he can concentrate on managing the clan in this time and not worry about us.” She fixed Shae with a straight glare and spoke matter-of-factly. “Kehn is gone, Tar is inconsolable. You’re shut in this room. The Pillar is alone right now.”

“He has dozens of people to help him,” Shae muttered.

“He needs you. The family needs you, the same way we needed you after Lan was murdered, and after your grandfather died. Hilo needs you to help him lead No Peak. You didn’t disappear for a week after any of those times.” Wen’s expression softened but remained resolute. She took her sister-in-law by the arm and steered Shae into sitting next to her. “This isn’t the first time we’ve been hurt, but it’s the first time you feel personally responsible for what happened, because your good intentions turned into so much pain.”

Shae stared at the other woman. “I am responsible, Wen.” The backs of her eyes began to burn, and she closed them for a second before fixing them in accusation on Wen. “Don’t you blame me for Kehn’s death? For the fact that you and your children were nearly killed?”

“Why would I blame you?” Wen sounded exasperated. “I blame our enemies, Shae-jen, for twisting someone who was dear to you to their purposes, for using him like a tool to try to destroy us. You may have ended his life, but you didn’t cause his death. In our world, there’s a difference.”

“What does this have to do with you wanting to go back to work?”

Wen got up and went to look out the bedroom window. The sunlight hurt Shae’s eyes, but Wen stared out into the distance steadily. “A barukan rockfish working for an Uwiwan smuggler on an island hundreds of kilometers away got to us here in Janloon, at a park in our own neighborhood. The clan has enemies everywhere now. We’re not just fighting other Green Bones. We’re fighting the world, Shae-jen. Which means that aisho will not protect my children.”

She turned back to face the Weather Man. “Hilo has never wanted me involved in Green Bone matters. But the threats to the clan aren’t just Green Bone matters anymore.” Her voice was familiar in its soft and reasonable entreaty, but there was a sharp underside to it. “Our enemies are willing to use any angle to attack us. The clan has lost one of the Maiks, maybe two since Tar can barely function, but not all of them. So put me to work, Shae-jen.”

Wen went to Shae’s closet. She pursed her lips as she picked out a blouse and a skirt and threw them on the bed. “When you challenged Ayt Mada with a clean blade, everyone was shocked, even Hilo, but not me. We women claw for every inch we gain in this world, and you’d worked too hard for your place on Ship Street to let it be taken from you. It could still happen, if you don’t get dressed and leave this room. There are always people looking for signs of weakness, for chances to steal what we care about away from us.” Wen walked past Shae and out the bedroom door. “Your nephews asked if you would be at dinner tonight and I said yes.”