Times had changed. Ayt Madashi was in her sixties and no longer viewed as indispensable to the Mountain clan. With a strong, popular thirty-year-old man waiting to succeed her as Pillar, she needed the complete confidence of her clan if she was to remain in power. She would make compromises she might not have considered earlier in her reign in order to uphold her leadership and delay the inevitable rise of her own heir.
Just like Grandda, Hilo thought.
Nevertheless, Hilo could read the black calculation in Ayt’s eyes, one that he could entirely understand: Perhaps it would be worth any risk, to finally win. “After all these years,” she intoned with all her usual cold scorn, “is there anything you believe I won’t do if I have to?”
“No,” Hilo replied. “I half expected you’d kill me as soon as I walked in the door. But you didn’t, which means my suspicions were right.” His stare was steady and honest. “You’re not a machine after all. As much as you’d like to see me feeding worms, you would feel something after the Faltas torture Shae to death for information that they’ll sell to you. I don’t know what kind of a human being can imagine facing the gods with that on their soul—and we’re all human, even you.”
He saw the nearly imperceptible shift in her posture—a subtle defensive stiffening of the shoulders and neck, a shadow of doubt. Hilo lowered his voice. “You have far more men on the ground in Shotar than I do. You have power over the Matyos. You can intervene. You can condemn the Faltas. If the men who took Shae realize they have no one to defend them, that we’ll hunt them like animals, then the situation becomes very different for them.”
With long strides, Ayt walked to the window and looked out at her garden with the willow trees drooping over the gazebo. “I don’t control the Matyos,” she said, her back to him. “I’ve allied with them when it’s been advantageous, but they’re not a clan. They’re not truly Kekonese. They’re barukan. They may decide they don’t care whether I approve of their actions or not and choose to side with the Faltas.”
Hilo came up behind her, stopping at the point where their jade auras scraped against each other like shelves of granite along a fault line. “The Ayt Madashi that I know doesn’t take no for an answer, not from anyone. Those who do stand in her way”—Hilo opened his hands in self-indication as he stood in her foyer—“have to be ready to die. It’s why you’re the only one in the world who can help me right now. The gods have always had a sick sense of humor.”
Ayt let out a soft derisive laugh and touched the scarf around her neck. She turned to face him. “In that regard, Kaul-jen, you and I are in complete agreement.”
“After all these years,” Hilo said, repeating Ayt’s own words, “is there anything you believe I won’t do if I have to?” With the grim dignity of a man stepping up to the executioner’s blade, Hilo lowered himself to his knees in front of the adversary he’d spent decades of his life trying to destroy. “Help me find my sister and bring her back to Janloon alive. Your debt will be repaid—a life for a life. Whatever happens between you and me in the future, we’ll call that fair. Shotar will be yours completely. I’ll pull No Peak out of the country and leave it to the Mountain for as long as I am Pillar.” Hilo touched his clasped hands to his head in salute. “I swear this to you, Ayt Madashi, Pillar of the Mountain. On my honor, my life, and my jade.”
CHAPTER
48
Debts and Losses
Shae’s captors dragged her out of the tub full of jade and deposited her onto the linoleum floor of the bathroom. The smooth, cold surface under her cheek was a tiny, tantalizing relief—an ice cube in an inferno. A needle slid into the vein of her arm, and seconds later, blessed cool liquid salvation spread through her body as the SN2 hit her brain. It was never enough, of course—small doses that temporarily abated the worst of the physical agony, keeping her lucid and preventing her from falling headlong into the madness of the Itches. The short barukan leader with the green skull pendant bent over her and removed the gag that kept her screams muffled. She had never hated anyone in the world more than she hated him. Not Ayt Mada, not Zapunyo, not anyone.
“Give me names,” he said again. “The names of your White Rats.”
“I’ve already told you what I know,” Shae rasped. Even her tongue felt hot and swollen. She wanted to writhe on the floor, to claw at her face—anything to alleviate the feeling of heat bubbling under the surface of her skin. When she was inside the tub, at least there was the almost transcendent delirium of jade energy. Lying on the ground in chains, she didn’t even have the strength to lift her head off the floor.