Jade War

The waitress returned with their order. Anden tried one of the pastries. It was sweet and flaky. Hilo took a sip of coffee, made a face, and looked at Anden sternly. “I worry about you being here. Anywhere people hide their jade isn’t a good place. You know the saying, ‘Too dark to see green’?” Anden nodded; the idiom usually referred to locations or situations so evil and desperate that even Green Bones did not feel safe entering. These days, it was also commonly used to describe books or movies with especially grim themes in which there was no morality and the protagonists died in the end—the opposite of the traditional adventure stories with victorious Green Bone heroes. Anden felt a stab of resentment at the irony: Hilo had banished him from the clan in a rage, had refused to speak to him for so long, but now that that had passed, the Pillar was full of brotherly concern.

“You should phone home more often,” Hilo said. “Call collect; don’t worry about the money.”

“Hilo-jen,” Anden said. He wasn’t sure how to broach the topic that was sitting so heavily on his mind and decided he had no choice but to bring it up directly. “I’ve been working hard and my grades are pretty good. I’ll graduate from the IESOL program next summer with an associate’s degree in communications and a language fluency certificate. Shouldn’t we talk about what happens afterward?”

Hilo was silent for a moment. Then he turned to the window next to them and tapped the glass. “You see that building over there?” Across the street, a new condominium complex was under construction. “We own it, through one of the clan’s Lantern Men. And it’s not the only thing we have. There are a lot of changes going on, Andy. Shae is setting up a branch of the Weather Man’s office here in Port Massy. It’ll manage our interests in this country and help Lantern Men who want to expand into the Espenian market. She’s tapped Hami Tumashon to lead it, but they need more people—people who’re familiar with both cultures. Relationships with the local Kekonese-Espenian community will be important to us; that’s one reason I came here, to make some of those connections in person.” Hilo said, “When you’ve gotten your degree, you’ll work in the new office.”

A dull roaring was building in Anden’s head. “When you sent me to study here, you said that I could come home after two years.”

“I said we’d talk about your options. That’s what we’re doing now,” Hilo said.

“We’re not talking about options. You’re telling me what I’m to do, and that’s to stay put.” Anden’s hands clenched under the table, twisting the cloth napkin in his lap. “How long do you expect me to stay here? Another year? Five years? The rest of my life? You want me to be of use to No Peak but stay in exile, so you don’t have to see or speak to me more than once every couple of years?”

Hilo’s eyes flashed with a sudden, dangerous light, and even from across the small table, Anden felt the hot surge of the Pillar’s jade aura. Anden could not help but flinch, but he did not lower his gaze nor apologize for what he’d said. He’d applied himself diligently during his time here, had done everything that his cousins had asked of him. Hilo had embraced him in the airport and called him cousin, had sat him on the Kaul side of the table in the Dauks’ dining room, had made an effort to spend time with him and shown him pictures of his nephews. All of these things had raised Anden’s expectations, made him anticipate the clan’s forgiveness and a place back in Janloon. Now he did not know what to think.

A painfully long, grudging minute passed as the two men glared at each other, flaky pastries forgotten, coffee cooling. To Anden’s surprise, it was Hilo who sighed loudly and broke the silence first. “I should’ve made Shae explain this to you. It was her suggestion, not mine, but she leaves it to me to be the bad guy. Still, I don’t disagree with her. Learning Espenian is only worthwhile if you apply it. You don’t want the last two years to be a waste. What could you do in Janloon that would be as useful to the clan as what you could accomplish here?”

“There must be something,” Anden insisted.

In a cold voice, Hilo said, “Tell me you’ll put on jade, and I’ll book an airplane ticket for you to fly home tomorrow.”

Anden swallowed but did not say anything. He should’ve known it was still about this.

Hilo closed his eyes briefly and rubbed a hand across his forehead. In that instant, he looked far older than he had been just a few years ago, when he’d been the powerful young Horn of No Peak and it seemed that nothing could dent his cheerful ego. When he looked up again, he said, in a voice that no longer held any anger, “You think I’m being stubborn, that I’m punishing you for longer than necessary, still trying to force you to be a Green Bone.” When Anden still didn’t answer, Hilo nodded a little glumly, and said, “I can see why you’d think that, but it’s not true, Andy, at least not anymore.