Later, Hilo would recall, as if in a disjointed dream, the frantic rush to collect Tanku’s jade and get all three of them back to the car, followed by the madcap drive with one hand on the wheel and the other staunching his wounds with wads of cloth that Tar tore from his shirt and handed to him from the back seat. The amount of jade Hilo claimed in that one day made him the most heavily jaded junior Fist in all of Janloon.
Kaul Sen was apoplectic. He harangued his youngest grandson for being an impulsive lunatic and had him whipped so severely that Hilo was bedridden for three days. Even lying around in pain, Hilo was rather satisfied with himself. His grandfather could whip him all he liked, but he couldn’t put his plans back together, he couldn’t bring Tanku Din back to life.
The only problem, as Kehn wisely reminded Hilo, was that he’d now made a mortal enemy of Tanku Ushijan, the slain Fist’s father and Horn of the Mountain clan. A clean blade notwithstanding, the man was not going to forgive the disingenuous murder of his only son and would surely find some justification and means to kill Hilo in the future.
Hilo was secretly and profoundly relieved a year and a half later, when Ayt Yugontin died from a stroke and his adopted daughter, Ayt Madashi, shocked everyone by immediately killing Tanku Ushijan and his closest Fists. Hilo didn’t know much about Ayt Mada, but she’d inadvertently done him a great favor by eliminating the one man Hilo feared would be his most dedicated enemy.
By that time, Kaul Sen’s wife had passed away, and Shae had fallen out with the family and fled to Espenia. A few months later, weary and despondent, the Torch of Kekon retired at last. Within a year, Lan named his younger brother as his Horn. At age twenty-five, Hilo was the youngest Horn anyone could recall.
At times, when faced with difficult decisions, he would think back to the duel that had dramatically earned him his jade and reputation, and he would remind himself that sometimes the most obvious solution required only the willingness to take the most unreasonable of actions.
_______
Two Green Bone guards of the Mountain clan escorted Hilo through the front doors of the Ayt mansion. It was not a place Hilo had ever expected to visit, and he couldn’t help but look around curiously at the expansive entryway with its inlaid wood flooring, mounted antique weapons, and landscape art. It was precisely the sort of home Hilo expected from a wealthy, powerful, unmarried and childless tycoon—stately and well-designed, everything in its proper place but lacking any human warmth.
The two Fists motioned Hilo to a stop in the foyer, where he waited, Perceiving the approach of that long-hated dense red aura. Two other men pulled open a pair of wooden sliding doors and Ayt Madashi stepped inside from the garden. The doors shut behind her. Hilo glanced left and right as an additional pair of Green Bones appeared silently from the hallways that stretched to either side, bringing the total number of Ayt’s bodyguards in the room to six.
“A little excessive,” he commented wryly. He’d come completely unarmed, with no blade or knife or gun.
“It’s been my experience,” Ayt replied, “that no measures are excessive when it comes to dealing with you, Kaul Hiloshudon.” Ayt was more paranoid than she used to be. Hilo recalled that she used to go around without bodyguards at all, as if to make a public statement of confidence in her own jade abilities. She did not do that anymore.
“I’d like to speak alone,” Hilo said. “As one Pillar to another.” When she regarded him with deep incredulity, he spread his hands. “I didn’t come here by myself to commit suicide. And I think you’ll prefer that what I say remain private.”
Ayt’s mouth flattened into a line. “One would think that your arrogance would at some point cease to surprise me.” She spoke to her Fists. “All of you, wait outside.” Jade auras humming with suspicion, the other Green Bones in the room reluctantly withdrew, although Hilo had no doubt they were lurking just out of sight and would return in less than a second if they so much as Perceived him sneezing aggressively.
The Pillar of the Mountain crossed her arms expectantly. She was wearing a gray woolen dress and a long black scarf that covered the puckered scar on her neck. Ayt never hid the disfigurement of her left ear, which she had sustained in battle with Shae, but ever since the Janloon bombing, she’d concealed the reminder of how one second of carelessness had nearly ended her life.
Hilo came straight to the point. “Shae’s a prisoner of the Faltas barukan. They captured her, my wife, and two of my Fists in Leyolo City.”