Ru wasn’t sure if he actually liked Dano or not. He could be morally pompous, ignorant, and infuriating, but Ru had never had anyone challenge his worldview so regularly. It was invigorating.
He made the mistake of telling Jaya about his new friend. “He sounds like a fat-mouthed little shithead,” his sister declared. “Did he really say those things? I’m surprised the Kobens haven’t picked him up and burned his face yet.” She squinted at her brother with concern.
Jaya always had an insufferable habit of acting like they were the same age, as if her destiny as a Green Bone somehow promoted her up the natural sibling order. When they were in primary school, Jaya had kicked another girl to the ground during recess and dumped all her school books into a muddy puddle for pointing to Ru and tugging her earlobe. “If you do it again, I’ll come to your house and kill your pets,” Jaya had promised, as if she were the older sibling and had to protect Ru from bullies on the playground. The other girl had cried, which had mortified and embarrassed Ru beyond belief. He would’ve ignored the mild taunting, and he certainly didn’t need Jaya to stick up for him.
It was obvious from her expression now that she suspected Ru wasn’t keeping good company. “I wonder if any of these people you’re meeting in college are on Lott-jen’s watch lists. What did you say his name was again?”
“Forget it,” Ru said quickly. “He just likes to say provocative things; he’s not anyone to worry about.” Some of the things Dano said could indeed be interpreted as radical anti-clan sentiment, which might raise suspicion of ties to the Clanless Future Movement. Ru had been twelve years old at the time of the Janloon bombing. He would never forget being pulled out of school and waiting for over a day to find out if his father was still alive. He hated the violent anarchists and understood better than anyone why there was little tolerance for anti-clan attitudes.
Dano, however, was a college student like him, not a CFM terrorist. Ru was starting to think that the threat of clanless extremists unfortunately stifled worthwhile discussions about how the clans could or should change in ways that benefited more Kekonese, including those who could never wear jade or weren’t born into clan families. Dano didn’t have the insider’s view that Ru did. The Mountain and No Peak were vaguely malevolent monolithic entities to him. He couldn’t understand that Ru’s parents and his aunt Shae and his uncle Anden were real people. Good people. People were what made the clan.
Ru disagreed with his friend on many things, but he didn’t want anything bad to happen to him. He resolved to keep his mouth shut around Jaya from now on. His sister was a year-eight at the Academy but sure to take oaths as a Finger when she graduated. If Jaya thought Dano was a threat to society, or at the very least, a bad influence on her brother, who knew what she might do.
CHAPTER
40
Difficult Daughters
the twenty-first year, first month
Kaul Dushuron Academy had changed in notable ways since Shae had been a student. New buildings and facilities were dedicated to classes in firearms, surveillance, and computer programming, among other subjects. There was now a separate dormitory for adult foreign students, and additional training fields to accommodate trainees in the low-residency program, which had been instituted despite some concern from alumni that it could dilute the school’s brand and take away focus from the core full-time curriculum. One thing that had not changed in over twenty-five years, however, was the tradition of Pre-Trials.
Jaya’s year-eight Pre-Trials were held on a crisp but sunny late autumn day, and the entire Kaul family turned out for the event to support her. Even Anden and Jirhuya made an appearance, having jointly decided to endure their respective discomforts with attending. For Anden, any visit to the Academy brought up the memory of his humiliating graduation ceremony. Jirhuya might be one of the few Abukei to have ever set foot on Academy grounds.
In a rare show of fraternal support, Ru cheered loudly for his sister, and Hilo glowed with pride when Jaya’s name shot to the top of the ranking list after the Deflection event. Her Lightness scores in the afternoon brought her down to sixth, but Hilo said he didn’t care if Jaya was First of Class; he only wanted her to be happy with her performance. “This is where all the Green Bones of our family went to school,” Hilo told Tia, holding Shae’s daughter on his lap while Woon went to buy them all sodas. “You’ll come here too when you’re older.”
At the Massacre of the Mice, Jaya stepped up to her position, cricked her neck back and forth, and slapped hands with the girl next to her. She stuck her tongue out at one of the boys at the end of the row and blew a kiss to one of the watching year-sevens, which made Hilo’s eyes narrow with suspicion. The mice in their cages scurried around in circles, their tiny claws scratching against the wire mesh. The bell sounded. Jaya snuffed out two mice in one corner at the same time with her first blast of Channeling. She cursed out loud as she missed the next one, stunning the mouse but not killing it, but finished it off on the next try and killed the last two with successive pops of energy, beating out the next fastest time—the boy at the end of the row—by .85 of a second. The crowd cheered, Hilo loudest of all, and Jaya punched her fists into the air and danced around in victory.