She followed her sense of Perception toward a familiar cluster of jade auras and found Lott Jin, the clan’s First Fist of Janloon, organizing a group of roughly fifty of No Peak’s Green Bones. They were all wearing work gloves, scarves wrapped around their faces, and red plastic whistles around their necks. “Vin and Tato are leading the two search teams starting at opposite ends of the collapsed area and working toward each other,” Lott shouted. “If you sense a survivor, don’t spend your own Strength; we need you to focus all your efforts on Perception and keep moving. Send up long whistles at ten second intervals and stay at the site until firefighters or someone from one of the digging teams reaches you. Batto, Yan, and Toyi—you have the best Lightness here. You’re going to carry water, medical supplies, and messages. Does everyone understand?” When the grimly assembled Fists and Fingers nodded, Lott said, “The Mountain is here too. Work with them, but remember: We search every square meter ourselves. If you Perceive Kaul-jen, or Woon-jen, send up three short whistle blasts in a row. For them and no one else.”
Lott’s men touched their clasped hands to their foreheads in salute and the group broke up into purposeful activity. “May the gods shine favor on No Peak,” several of them murmured in prayer. Shae went up to Lott, causing him to spin in surprise.
“Kaul-jen,” he exclaimed in angry surprise, forgetting his respect in the heat of the moment. “What are you doing here?”
“I wasn’t learning a godsdamned thing sitting in the house watching the news.” Shae wiped a hand across her brow, streaking it with dust. “What—” She put a hand to her chest and caught a tight, difficult breath. “What do you know about what happened? Who was responsible? Is there any . . .” She looked toward the destroyed building and the rescue crews swarming around it. “。 . . Any sign of survivors, yet?”
Lott shook his head. “It’s a confused mess right now,” he said. “Juen-jen is talking to the police. We know the blast came from a truck full of high order explosives parked in a permit-only zone on the south side of the building, directly underneath where the KJA meeting was taking place. The bombers had inside knowledge. They knew the layout of the building, its security measures, and when the meeting was taking place. There are witnesses who say they saw two men in the truck this morning. And some people swear they saw Ayt Madashi fall from a window right before the explosion. The Mountain’s people are searching the area, but they don’t have any more answers than we do.”
Shae coughed and said, “What can I do to help?”
Lott looked at her in concern. “Kaul-jen,” he said. “You don’t look well.”
“I’m fine,” Shae said. Lott did not appear convinced. Shae imagined how she must appear to him—a forty-one-year-old woman, lacking most of her jade, weak from childbirth—and she suffered a surge of frustration and resentment, more toward herself than Lott. She felt foolish and helpless, not at all like a Green Bone or a Kaul or a Weather Man. What had she imagined she could accomplish here? “I need to be here. I need to know.” She meant to sound declarative, but the words came out wretched. “My brother and my husband are in that pile of rubble.”
Lott said, with conviction, “I promise on my jade that we’ll find them.” The First Fist put a hand on her elbow and walked with her to one of the clan’s cars, parked alongside the line of emergency vehicles. “The clan needs you to preserve your strength. Only the gods know what’s in store for us after this.” He opened the passenger-side door for her and handed her a bottle of water from a flat of them sitting on the ground next to a pile of blankets. “It’s not my place to ask you to leave, but at least sit down and rest.”
Lott left her sitting in the car with the door open. Shae drained the bottle of water, then leaned her head back and put the heels of her dusty hands over her eyes. She felt dizzy and the tightness in her chest had progressed to outright pain. She was in no state to make decisions on behalf of No Peak, but she might soon have to. She watched the rescue efforts with sick fear in the pit of her stomach. Startled Fists and Fingers saluted when they passed her, but she was largely ignored. Injured people were seen to, others were driven away in ambulances. Whenever a whistle went up from the searchers, her heart leapt, but each time, it was a single long whistle, not the three short blasts she kept waiting for. More frequent than the survivors came the bodies, carried out of the rubble and placed in black body bags on the ground.