Jade War

She felt as if she wanted to cry, but the sensation was too indistinct, everything was happening too far away. If she were with her family, it would feel more real. She thought, My son is a stone-eye. She imagined Ru lying in a hospital bed, calling out for her, and with a surge of instinctive maternal desperation, she wished she was there to hug him tightly and comfort him. But she was also strangely relieved she was not there, that she did not have to look into his trusting face and lie to him by telling him everything was fine, because of course it was not fine. She felt herself detaching in a way, pulling away defensively from all the unkind thoughts that came to her: Ru could not attend the Academy, he could not be a Green Bone like his father and his uncles, he could not hold any significant rank in No Peak. He would be like his mother, ignored and dismissed, fighting the stigma of bad luck his entire life, only he was a boy so it would be even worse for him, because men needed to command to be respected, and who would follow a stone-eye?

With painful, revelatory honesty, she admitted to herself why, from the moment she’d seen Niko’s baby picture in the letter among Lan’s papers, she’d been so invested in bringing him back to Janloon, why she’d insisted that Hilo go in person to Stepenland to retrieve the boy so he could be raised with their own children. Perhaps she had suspected it all along; certainly the possibility had troubled her during her first pregnancy: Her son, Ru, could not be his father’s heir.

Niko was the child she couldn’t bear herself; he was the true first son of No Peak. It was an irony that he’d been born to a woman as ungrateful and faithless as Eyni, but the gods had a cruel sense of humor, that was something even Hilo and Shae agreed on. All that mortals could do was accept the lot they were given, and yet still fight to better their own fate and that of their loved ones. Alone in the hotel room far from home, Wen was overcome with such a baffling mixture of pride and shame that her vision finally did blur with tears.

She dried her eyes and began to think clearly again. She understood that her value in the clan, her value to her family, to Hilo, and most of all, in her own mind, lay not in what she could accomplish herself—because a stone-eye was always something of a blank space amid the strong auras around them, a void where gazes and expectations slid off like oil—but in what she made possible for others. She was unable to wield jade herself, but as a White Rat for the Weather Man, she had taken jade to those who could and would use it for the clan’s gain. She had not borne the Pillar a son who could follow in the family’s footsteps, but she had ensured that Niko was brought back to be raised in his rightful place. She could never be a Green Bone herself, as much as she felt she was one at heart, but she could think like a Green Bone. She was an enabler, an aide, a hidden weapon, and that was worth something. Perhaps a great deal.

Wen picked the phone back up and called the Weather Man’s office.

* * *

Shae was silent for a long minute after Wen finished speaking. “I can’t agree to that.”

“You want Zapunyo dead as much as I do,” Wen said. “You’ve spent months preparing for this opportunity and you know it’s the best one we’re going to get. If we don’t take it, Zapunyo will disappear back into his fortress.”

The arguments were not dissimilar to what Shae had said to Hilo over the phone less than an hour ago, but now Shae made excuses. “We don’t have time to change the plan.”

“Have you canceled the interview yet?” Wen asked. Shae had not. She had been delaying, trying to think of a way to handle the situation that would salvage the cover identity that had been so painstakingly crafted for Anden.

Wen said, “We still have five hours before the interview. I can be on a bus to Port Massy in less than thirty minutes. It takes three hours to get there. That leaves an hour and a half to spare.” Wen paused. When she spoke again, her voice was calmly entreating. “Have I let you down before, Shae-jen? When I first told you I would be your White Rat, did you not believe I could do anything that you asked of me?”

Shae closed her eyes and leaned her head back, the phone cord pulled taut. “Wen,” she said, “this is more dangerous than what you’ve done before. Even if it succeeds, there will be no way to hide it from Hilo. You would be risking your marriage, as well as your life.”

Wen was silent for a minute. “I’m prepared for that.”

“I’m not sure that I am,” Shae admitted. “You have your children to think of.”

“I’m thinking of them now. As long as this man breathes, as long as the family’s enemies go unpunished, I’ll fear for their lives.” Wen asked, “Do you trust this man that Anden has told us about, this Rohn Toro?”

“Anden trusts him. And Hilo said that he was the greenest man he met in Port Massy.”