She sounded so dreamy that Niko suppressed a wince. At age twenty, he was already cynical about relationships. Mera was only the latest young hopeful vying to win the heart of the firstborn son of the Kaul family and marry into the leadership of the No Peak clan.
Niko blamed his parents. Everyone knew the romantic history of the young Kaul Hiloshudon falling in love with a stone-eye girl and elevating the formerly disgraced Maik family to the top of the clan. A few years ago, a cable network had tried to make a saccharine television movie out of the story, before the Weather Man’s office had intervened and shut it down. Even the tragic fate of Niko’s uncles, Kehn and Tar, had not significantly dimmed the tale, perhaps because Kaul Maik Wen played a far more visible role as the wife of the Pillar than any of her predecessors.
“I like spending time with you. You’re a sweet girl,” Niko said.
Mera stiffened at his patronizing kindness. “I’m not sweet. I’m the youngest of four and my parents couldn’t afford to send a girl to the Academy, but that doesn’t mean I’m a delicate flower. My brothers have dueled. My older sister’s a Lantern Man. My family’s middle class, but we’re green.”
“I never said anything against your family.” Niko turned over and lay on his stomach; the pressure of the bed against his back was becoming uncomfortable against his itching, healing skin. Mera sat up and turned off the television. She drew her legs up and looked down at him with silent, intense frustration, as if having discovered the jigsaw puzzle she was working on was missing a piece. Girls were certain that underneath Niko’s reserved demeanor there lurked a hotblooded, passionate young Horn in the making, and were at a loss when they couldn’t find that person.
Mera touched the tips of her fingers to the welts on his back and shoulders. “What happened?”
“I was whipped, what do you think?” he muttered into the pillow.
“Your father whipped you?” She sounded surprised, almost pleased, that the eldest son of the Pillar could be whipped for misbehaving, like any ordinary youth.
“He’s my uncle, not my father,” Niko corrected her. “And he whipped me for not behaving like a proper Green Bone.”
Mera trailed her fingers up the back of his neck. “You seem like a proper Green Bone to me,” she cooed, lightly touching the necklace resting against his skin. It was an intimate, daring gesture; there were Green Bone men who didn’t even let their wives touch their jade. Niko’s necklace had belonged to his father—his real father, Kaul Lan, a man he’d heard much about and never known. There were six jade beads on the chain. The others had been removed and safely stored away. They would be added back, his parents said, once he earned them.
Niko propped his chin onto his folded arms. “What is a proper Green Bone, anyway? Everyone seems to know what it isn’t—yet, it’s something we don’t bother to explain. We take it for granted that we can recognize greenness when we see it. But can we, really? People take one look at my face, my name, and my jade and they think they know me.” Niko chuckled absently and without much humor, then fell silent for some time. “You know what I think?” he mused out loud. “I think all they’re seeing is a shell. A bright green empty shell.”
Niko had been speaking mostly to himself and didn’t expect the girl to respond, but after a couple of minutes, he noticed she’d gone quiet. Mera hadn’t moved away from him on the bed, but her ardor had evaporated. She seemed closed off now, withdrawn.
Niko felt a crawl of irritation, then relief. He rolled away from her on the bed and got up. He began dressing—pulling on his pants, buttoning his shirt, strapping his talon knife to his belt and securing his pistol in a shoulder holster. Before he left the room, he sat down on the edge of the bed and placed a gentle kiss on Mera’s cheek. She didn’t move away, but she didn’t tilt her face toward him with the expectation of anything more.
“I meant what I said. I enjoyed spending time with you,” Niko said. “Sorry if I ended up being a disappointment.” He stood and left the room.
_______
The incident that had caused Niko’s uncle to punish him so severely had started out innocuously enough the previous week, in the Pig & Pig pub, as a bet between Fingers over some unimportant thing, perhaps relayball. The loser of the bet, a young man named Kitu, took offense at something Niko said and offered to settle the disagreement with a physical contest. Niko, who’d been nursing a cold all week, declined more rudely than he’d intended, by saying he thought the other boy wasn’t worth his time. Kitu offered a clean blade.