Jade War

She took several steps toward her brother. “I’m not leaving, Hilo.” She spoke unsteadily, but with no uncertainty. “I’ve given as much for No Peak as you have. I’ve worked and sacrificed and bled and killed. After everything we’ve been through, how can you believe that I don’t care every bit as much as you do? I’m guilty of having gone against you, but never against the clan.”

“Now you sound like Doru.” Hilo’s mouth moved in a half-hearted sneer when he saw how his words cut her. He leaned his head back against the cabinets with a light thud. He appeared bitterly defeated all of a sudden, in a way that she had never seen him, not even in their most dire moments when it seemed their enemies would destroy them. “Maybe I don’t believe in the gods like you do, but I do know that some things are the way they are for a reason. We’re Kauls. We were born for this life, whether we like it or not. The clan can claim everything I have—my time, my blood and sweat, my life and jade—but it can’t have my wife. She’s a stone-eye. She’s the one thing in the world that jade can’t touch. You knew that was a line I would never cross.”

Shae glanced the way Niko had gone. “We’ve both crossed lines we never meant to. We’ve made decisions that we’ll have to live with the rest of our lives. We have that much in common.” She touched her face gingerly; her jaw still felt numb and it hurt to talk. She went to where Hilo sat and looked down at him. “I never encouraged Wen, never forced her to do anything. She came to me years ago, Hilo. All you wanted was for her to stay out of clan affairs, and all she wanted was in. She knew you’d never approve, but she’s too green at heart and was willing to risk even your love. Without her, we wouldn’t have established jade sales to the Espenians when we most needed it during the war with the Mountain, we wouldn’t have gained valuable information from the spies she managed, or transported jade to the Green Bones in Espenia and created our alliances there. We wouldn’t have been able to get to Zapunyo and kill him.”

Shae lowered herself to the ground next to her brother and rested her bruised back against the splintered cabinet. “Hate me from now on if you have to, but you need me to stay, Hilo. And you need Wen and Anden. You said it yourself years ago: We have each other, and maybe that’s the one thing we have that our enemies don’t.” Hilo’s aura gave a dark pulse, like an angry sigh, but he didn’t move or open his eyes. Shae slumped back and closed her own eyes. “The clan is my blood and the Pillar is its master,” she whispered. “I have a lot of regrets in life, but those oaths aren’t one of them.”

CHAPTER 62 Still at War

Shae had been sitting in the sanctum of the Temple of Divine Return for some time when she Perceived the unexpected presence of Ayt Madashi’s dense, molten jade aura pierce the fog of her thoughts, intensifying like a heat source against her closed eyes as it approached. Ayt knelt on the green cushion next to her. “I’m told that you visit the temple every week at the same time,” she said, conversationally. “Unwise from a security standpoint.”

A sense of oddly poignant déjà vu kept Shae motionless for a moment. She imagined reaching back in time with her mind and looking down at herself nearly five years ago, meeting Ayt Mada in this same place, unsure of whether she or her clan would survive the encounter. She felt no fear this time, though the puckered scar across her abdomen prickled. She opened her eyes, and for a second, her gaze slid involuntarily to Ayt’s bare arms. The coils of silver encircling them were more densely set with jade stones—jade that had once been part of Shae’s two-tier choker.

She raised her eyes calmly to Ayt’s face. “You’ve had your chances to kill me.”

“True,” Ayt agreed. “We’ll both know when the real time comes.” The Pillar of the Mountain was as formidable a presence as ever, but a few fine lines were visible around her eyes as she turned them on the younger woman. Over the past years, with all her public speeches and television appearances, she had taken to wearing some makeup. Shae was all of a sudden self-conscious of her own appearance; her face was still visibly bruised from where Hilo had struck her.

She brought her gaze back to the front, to the mural of Banishment and Return and the circle of meditating penitents. “You don’t bow in the sanctum,” she observed. “Do you ever come here to ask forgiveness from the gods? Do you even believe in the gods, Ayt-jen?”