And Hilo was right about something else: She did not know how Ayt was winning, or how to stop her.
The restaurant staff had closed off the area around the dining room. Tar and Iyn carried Fuyin’s body out the back of the building without disturbing the other diners, and Mr. Une came in with Juen to inspect the damage to the light fixtures and walls, which the clan would compensate him for. Waiters efficiently cleared away the bloodstained tablecloth and cleaned up the spilled food.
“We should get back to the office.” Shae forced herself to stand. “Hami is probably waiting for us.”
_______
Hami Tumashon was different from how Shae remembered him. After three and a half years abroad, he’d put on some weight and adopted a few Espenian affectations; he was wearing an athletic shirt under his suit jacket and drinking from an oversized travel mug full of nutmeg spiced coffee when he came into the Weather Man’s office. Most noticeably to Shae, he had not yet put his jade back on, and the absence of his usual sturdy jade aura made him seem like a splitreality version of himself.
Shae had taken off her jade as well, years ago, then reclaimed all of it, then violently lost much of it again. She wondered if, at each of those traumatic turning points in her life, reality had indeed fractured. Perhaps in some alternate timeline, a different Shae had continued on in another way, and the woman that remained had seemed to other people to be a disconcertingly altered replacement.
While she and Woon had been in the Twice Lucky, lunch had been catered into the main conference room so the office could celebrate Hami’s triumphant return to Janloon. The former Master Luckbringer had grown the clan’s branch operations in Port Massy to a staff of twenty and recently moved it into a larger downtown office. Revenue out of Espenian holdings had expanded to an impressive eight percent of the clan’s total, even before taking into account the uplift to No Peak’s tributary businesses in Kekon as a result of the clan facilitating import and export activities. For a man to have been executed today over the backlash to this one bright spot in No Peak’s fortunes was a sour irony.
“Terun Bin works like an ox and has a mind as sharp as a talon knife. He’ll do fine over there,” Hami declared, settling across from Shae in the sitting area of her office. Terun Bin would be Hami’s successor. He was already a highly regarded senior Luckbringer at the age of twenty-eight, but unfortunately, his jade aptitude was poor, perhaps because he was one-quarter Abukei, although he did not appear to be of mixed blood at all and the fact was not common knowledge. He’d been educated at a competitive academic school instead of a martial academy, earning only a single jade stone through private training. At Woon’s suggestion, Shae had promoted Terun and sent him to Port Massy, where his lack of green would not drag down his reputation, and Hami had spent the past two months transitioning him into the top role there.
“You’ve accomplished even more than I expected,” Shae said. “Terun will have a large shadow to fill.” She motioned for her secretary to bring tea into the room. Her nerves were still frayed, and she was glad that without his jade, Hami could not Perceive the lingering jitteriness in her aura. Woon probably could, but he would never let on.
One thing that had not changed about Hami was his candor. “The problem we have in Espenia is that jade is still illegal in that country. That’s something Terun can’t solve, no matter how smart and hardworking he is. As long as that remains the case, everything we’ve built there is at risk and could drag the clan down in the long run.”
Woon was sitting between them in the armchair to Shae’s right. “We’ve kept our businesses in Espenia completely separate from any activity involving jade on the Horn’s side of the clan, and taken precautions to insulate them legally.”
“All of that is extra effort and cost to the clan,” Hami pointed out. “I’ve hired Luckbringers from Janloon into the Port Massy branch over the years, but several turned down the opportunity because they or their family members were Green Bones unwilling to take off their jade to move to Espenia. And the problem extends beyond the Weather Man’s office. Many of our tributary Kekonese companies would like to grow internationally, but it’s too difficult for their staff to travel to and from Espenia when every Green Bone has to go through the trouble of securing a visa with extra paperwork documenting their jade upon entry and exit, and even so, they’re only allowed to stay for twenty days out of the year.”
Shae sighed. She knew it was a problem. “We’re hiring more lawyers to handle the work, and looking for ways to streamline the process.”