Tia burst into sobs.
Shae and Woon tried to comfort her. “They’re only mice,” Woon said. “They have to die for people to practice Channeling.”
“Why do people cheer when they die?” Tia wept.
“We’re not cheering because they died, we’re cheering because Jaya won,” Shae explained.
“She won by killing them! Does everyone in school have to kill mice? Did you kill them?” When they both admitted they had, Tia cried harder.
Shae and Woon left Pre-Trials before the awards ceremony and stopped Tia’s tears by getting fried bread from a Hot Hut drive-thru on the way home. While Woon settled their daughter to bed later that evening, Shae went over to the main house. “She’s already six and a half,” Shae said worriedly to Hilo. “Is it something I’ve done wrong? I don’t think I’ve shielded or coddled her.”
Today was not the first time Tia had been so easily upset. She refused to watch cockfights. Even sparring matches on the lawn made her anxious. Of course, compassion was one of the Divine Virtues, but violence was also a part of life in a Green Bone family. Where had Tia gotten such softness? “Maybe it’s because she doesn’t get enough of my time and attention.”
She and Hilo were alone in the living room and the rest of the house was quiet. Ru had gone back to campus, Jaya was with her classmates at a Pre-Trials after-party, and Wen, tired from the long day, had already gone up to bed. Jaya had come in third in the final rankings, a great showing.
Hilo pulled out two glasses and a bottle of hoji from the cabinet and poured them each a serving. He picked up his glass and held the other out to her, grinning. “Inside, I’m crowing with laughter that my tough little sister is sitting here moaning and asking me for parenting advice.”
“I’m not moaning or asking you for advice,” Shae retorted reflexively before admitting to herself that perhaps she was. She snatched the glass of hoji.
“Shae,” Hilo said, turning serious, “if there’s one thing I’ve learned in life, it’s that you can’t make people turn out a certain way no matter how much you try, including your kids. Especially your kids.”
She knew he was thinking of Niko, wherever he was. Shae couldn’t condemn her nephew for turning his back on the family and the clan, not when she’d done it herself in the past, but now she understood, in a way she hadn’t before, what it was like for those left behind to feel the weight of an empty chair at the table. She hoped Niko was doing what he wanted to do, finding whatever it was he wanted to find. All she could do was pray to the gods to keep Lan’s son safe.
Hilo gazed morosely for a long moment into his glass of hoji, then swirled it and drank. “Not everyone is suited for this kind of life. And I don’t mean wearing jade. I mean all of it.”
Shae drew her feet up onto the sofa, tucking her legs under her. She sipped the hoji and leaned her head back against the cushions. “It’s not that I want my daughter to follow in my footsteps.” She’d made many mistakes in her life, but when she examined her own decisions, she couldn’t even say which ones had been right or wrong. “But it hurt a little today, when Tia looked at me with tears in her eyes. I could see her coming to the realization that maybe her mother isn’t such a good person.”
Hilo’s jade aura expanded then contracted in her Perception, a deep mental sigh. “Only children and gods are arrogant enough to judge what they can’t understand. There’s no point being afraid of their opinions. Don’t worry about Tia. She’s only six and a half years old, like you said. Still too young for you to worry.”
They sat in silence for a few minutes. Outside, Shae could hear workers painting the Horn’s house and expanding the garage to suit its new occupant. The Juens had moved off the estate and were spending a year traveling the world. Shae was happy for them. Not everyone at the highest level of the clan had to be like her and Hilo. Not everyone had to be a Kaul.
Shae considered all the motivations that had fueled her efforts as Weather Man over the years—duty, vengeance, rivalry, personal pride and achievement, the hope and belief that she could make No Peak into a stronger, better, more modern clan than the one she’d grown up with and wanted as a young woman to put behind her. Greater than all those desires now was the overwhelming bone-deep need to keep Tia safe, to secure for her sweet-tempered child a future where she would not have to fight the way her mother had.
Shae said, “I want to set up a No Peak office in Shotar.”