“What were you even doing wearing jade off Academy grounds?” Hilo demanded. Jaya was still three months away from graduation and not allowed to wear jade without adult Green Bone supervision. “And wearing it hidden, no less, like some sort of thief,” Hilo added, his temper rising. “Hand it over.”
Jaya groaned and rolled up the cuff of her jeans, taking off the Academy-issued training bracelet she’d fastened to her ankle. She made a face at the discomfort of coming off jade, then smacked the leather band and its three stones resentfully into her father’s outstretched hand. “It’s a good thing for Hana that I was wearing it,” she pointed out. “What if he’d tried that shit with me?”
“He wouldn’t have dared,” Hilo replied. “Mal Ging is the only son of Councilman Mal Joon. You’re lucky he didn’t bleed to death. It would’ve been a lot of trouble to deal with, not to mention you would’ve gotten yourself expelled.”
Jaya rolled her eyes. “Da, no one is going to expel me from the Academy. What are you so upset about? You think this is the first boy I’ve screwed? Or the first one I’ve knifed?” She laughed at his staring face.
It occurred to Hilo that his daughter deserved a sound beating, but he’d never been able to find it in his heart to treat Jaya harshly. She was a girl, and his youngest. “She craves your attention and she knows how to get it,” Wen had said crossly on more than one occasion.
“What am I supposed to do about you, Jaya-se?” Hilo growled, more to himself than to her. “We have to make some amends to the Mals.”
“I’m not giving them my ear,” Jaya insisted, crossing her arms and sticking out her lower lip. “They don’t deserve it, and also I don’t feel sorry for what I did to that asshole. I don’t see why we have to do shit for the Mals. If anything, they should make amends to Noyu Hana and her family. Would you apologize simply for defending a friend? Come on, Da, I’ve heard all the stories about you.”
“At least I never stabbed a classmate in the groin with a talon knife!” Hilo’s eyes narrowed. “And what stories are you talking about?”
Jaya looked at her father with the particular cutting exasperation mastered by teenage girls. “You know, stories from when you were a Fist. Like what you did to Tanku Din. Or about you as the Horn. Or the ones about the war with the Mountain.”
“Don’t throw around examples you know nothing about.”
Jaya got to her feet and wandered around the study despondently. “No one will duel me, you know. Even if I offer them a clean blade, they’re afraid if they scratch me, you’ll tear them limb from limb. That’s why Ging didn’t try to rape me and went after Hana instead, the coward. How am I supposed to earn any jade after I graduate, much less become a Fist? It’s hard enough to be a woman who’s green, even for someone on the boring side of the clan like Aunt Shae.”
Hilo was so astonished he forgot his anger over the maiming of the Mal boy. Jaya had always been the child he’d found easiest to understand and love. He recalled that when she was a little girl, she could be exhausting; she rarely napped or stopped moving, wanting him to chase her or push her on the swing set for much longer than either of the boys, until she was near to throwing up. She was always open with her feelings and seemed to live in the moment. Hilo hadn’t known such anxious thoughts about being a woman Green Bone were on her mind, even though he realized now that it shouldn’t have been a surprise. He sat down, rather hard, in one of the armchairs.
“Jaya-se,” he said, “for the rest of the year, you should concentrate on Final Trials and earning your graduation jade without getting into any more trouble. And you’re absolutely not allowed to go to any more parties, or to wear your jade off campus, or to get involved with any other boys, or gods help me, I will tear them limb from limb like you said. I’ll handle things with the Mal family, but the next time you land yourself in jail—and there better not be a next time—I’m not going to pick you up, you can stew in a cell for a week like some common criminal.”
Jaya fell into the chair across from her father, pouting.
Hilo went on, “As for after you graduate, we should talk about that with your ma and with your aunt Shae. We shouldn’t have left it this long, that’s my fault, but it’s been busy and there’s still plenty of time, so don’t worry. There’re a lot of things you could do. You could go to college. You could study in Espenia if you want. You could spend a year or two as a Finger. Or there are plenty of tributary companies in the clan where you could intern.”