A few reporters from the news trucks jogged after the Lumezza. “Kaul-jen,” one of them called out to Niko, “will your family follow the Mountain clan’s lead and brand clanless sympathizers caught in No Peak territories?”
“Don’t answer that,” Lott ordered Niko, finally clearing the jam and turning off Banya Street. He hit the gas and they sped out of the Stump, back toward No Peak turf. “That goes for all of you. There are four people who can make public statements on behalf of the clan—the Pillar, the Weather Man, the Horn, and the Sealgiver. You’re not any of them.”
“Neither is Ayt Ato,” Niko observed. He was angry, but the feeling was indistinct and shapeless, sitting in the pit of his stomach, inside that green shell of himself, now filled with black doubt.
Lott Jin snorted. “Ayt Ato wears the Ayt name like a crown, but he’s the prince of the Koben family. Prince of a troop of monkeys.”
Niko didn’t say anything further, but he thought, in a jarring revelation, Yes, that’s it. Ayt Ato knows he’s a prince. Lott Jin and Ayt Ato had one important thing in common—they understood who they were supposed to be.
Niko didn’t feel that way about himself. He had too many questions; he saw too many things that made him uncertain. He didn’t see how he was qualified to be the future Pillar of No Peak for any reason other than bloodline, nor why he should feel compelled to accept that destiny, when anyone with an ounce of logic would know that heredity was not enough. He often wondered what he was missing, what he didn’t know, what other possibilities lay behind doors that had been summarily closed for him when he was too young to know they existed.
Niko leaned his head against the window and watched the streets of Janloon pass by, filled with vague but intense curiosity and quiet, sullen despair.
CHAPTER
32
Passages
the nineteenth year, eighth month
The Temple of Divine Return was full of people, almost all of them Green Bones of the Mountain clan. All the cushions were already occupied; Shae slipped into the back row and knelt on the floor. She was wearing a broad summer hat and sunglasses so the lower-ranked clan members kneeling nearest to her at the back of the sanctum didn’t recognize her, and there were so many jade auras in the building that she expected one more to go unnoticed. Even so, across all the rows of heads, she caught sight of Ayt Madashi at the very front. As her gaze landed on Ayt’s back, the Pillar turned slowly over her shoulder to look into the crowd of faces behind her. Perhaps Shae only imagined that Ayt had Perceived her entrance, that with narrowed eyes she was trying to spot Shae in the shadowed corner of this room where they had faced each other so fatefully in times past. Ayt’s face was dusted white and a white silk scarf was tied around her neck, hiding the ugly scar that Shae knew to be underneath.
Ayt Mada turned back toward the front and took up the chant of the penitents.
Shae whispered along with everyone else in the temple, reciting the Scripture of Return’s promise that virtuous souls would one day ascend to godliness and reunite with their divine kin in Heaven.
Perhaps she should not be here. She was not a member of the Mountain or even a respectful outsider. She had not known or loved Nau Suenzen. She’d been his enemy and would’ve sent him to the afterlife herself if given the chance during his tenure as Horn. Nau Suen did not exemplify the four Divine Virtues of humility, compassion, courage, and goodness. He’d been the Ayt family’s most loyal and cunning assassin for fifty years; he’d slit the throats of Shotarian generals, of Ayt Mada’s brother Eodo, and all the men of the Ven family. And Shae was certain he’d murdered Chancellor Son Tomarho. After all that, he’d retired and succumbed not to the blade but to respiratory illness at the age of seventy, dying peacefully in his sleep despite all the lives he’d ended so violently.
Shae was not sure he deserved any prayers, but then again, she did not know who did. She prayed for the souls of men like her grandfather, and Yun Dorupon, and Maik Kehn, and surely if it were her or Hilo in the coffin there would be people who would judge them no more deserving of the gods’ recognition than Nau Suen. Even though Nau had been her enemy, she could not forget the look in his aged eyes that afternoon in Anden’s apartment as he held Ayt Mada in his thin arms. Shae had never before seen Ayt Mada bow in the temple, but now the Pillar of the Mountain touched her head to the ground, resting it there as the penitents raised their voices.
I hope you’re in pain. It gave Shae a certain savage pleasure to think that Ayt could feel loss, that she could mourn the death of a friend. Otherwise, it wasn’t fair; the scales could never be remotely balanced between them. “Let the gods recognize him,” she echoed in a murmur. And why shouldn’t they? On the day of the Return, the gods would never be able to sort the deserving from the undeserving without breaking apart families. They should recognize everyone, flawed as they were, imperfect in the Divine Virtues—or recognize no one at all.