Jade War

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.