Niko looked up. He’d been avoiding meeting his uncle’s eyes, but now he said, “I mean it. I’m not going to be a Fist, and I’m not going to college either. I got a job offer outside of the clan and I’m taking it.”
Complete silence fell over the dinner table. Even Jaya was too astonished to comment. Hilo blinked as if Niko had spoken in a foreign language. In disbelief, “You made this decision without telling anyone? Without discussing it with your own family? Instead, you spring it on all of us like this?”
“What was there to discuss?” Niko said. “I knew you wouldn’t agree.”
Hilo wanted to smack his nephew, but Wen put a hand on his arm and he forced himself to take a deep breath. “Despite what you seem to believe,” Hilo said slowly, “I’m not unreasonable, Niko. If you really wanted to work outside of No Peak you should’ve talked to me and your ma about it.”
Niko didn’t answer, but his jade aura boiled like a storm in a bottle. Niko had once been an easy child—calm and thoughtful, curious and quick to learn, caring for his younger siblings, not the type to act out. Hilo wondered unhappily where he’d gone wrong as a parent, how his capable nephew had turned into such an aimless and uncertain young man. Hilo mustered every remaining fragment of his paternal patience. “Growing up as a Kaul, maybe it’s only natural you’d get restless and want to explore and I haven’t been sensitive enough to that. A job outside of the clan could be good for you for a couple of years, give you some additional perspective. Your uncle Andy’s a doctor, after all. It’s not a decision you should make without talking to your parents, though. What’s the job, anyway?”
Niko dropped the crumpled napkin on his empty plate and pushed away from the table. “I’m joining Ganlu Solutions International.”
Wen drew in a small, sharp intake of breath, the only sound anyone made before Hilo’s arm shot out across the dinner table and seized his eldest child by the hair, yanking him bodily out of his chair. A plate crashed to the floor; everyone jumped in their seats. Hilo was on his feet. He shoved Niko away from him into the nearest dining room wall, knocking a framed family photograph to the ground.
“You signed up to work as a mercenary?” Hilo let out a guttural noise. “You’re going to tromp around in places you don’t belong, with thinblooded, shine-addicted foreigners, whoring your jade abilities to the highest bidder?” He cuffed the side of Niko’s head and shoved him again, towering over him even though the young man was as tall as he was. His eyes and aura bulged as he shouted. “What kind of a Green Bone are you? What kind of a son?”
Ru jumped to his feet. Koko leapt up with him, barking. “Come on, Da,” Ru pleaded, trying to defend his brother. “He made a mistake, it was a whim.”
“It wasn’t a whim,” Niko growled, rubbing the sore patch of his scalp and squaring to face Hilo with his spine straight, shoulders back, and his hands curled into fists at his side. Cold defiance burned in his eyes. “Why do we have to pretend we’re different or better than anyone else who wears jade, even if they’re foreigners? Just because of race or genetics? I talked to some recruiters at GSI, and the work sounds interesting. They’re doing something that hasn’t been done before. All I’ve ever known is the clan, and the only thing I’m qualified to do is be a jade warrior. Why shouldn’t I explore what else is possible? I could travel the world while being paid for my jade abilities.”
Wen said, with a quaver in her voice, “This is what you do to your family, after your own brother’s graduation?”
Niko winced but didn’t drop his gaze. “I’m sorry, Ma,” he said. “I’m sorry, Ru. I wasn’t going to say anything about it tonight.”
Wen stood, her mouth in a straight line. “I have nothing to say to you until you come to your senses.” She turned her back and walked out of the dining room.
Jaya was the only one still in her chair. She whistled low. “Shit, you really did it this time, keke.” None of them wanted to face their father when he was angry, but their mother leaving the room was unheard of.
The tone of Hilo’s voice would’ve cowed any of his men. “Tomorrow morning you’re going to call Jim Sunto or whoever you’ve been talking to, and say that you acted without thinking. You’re not going to become a soldier-for-hire and disgrace yourself and all of us. You’re going to work directly under the Horn. You’re going to go to all of your scheduled training, and you’re going to make Fist by next year. If you do all that, then we’ll talk about finding you some new opportunity, inside or outside of the clan, because obviously you aren’t going to be Pillar.”