One evening, as Shae sat with Hilo in the courtyard of the Kaul estate after the sun had gone down, she asked him, “Have you ever heard of the Euman Deal?”
He shook his head. “What is it?”
Shae frowned. “Something I heard. Maybe nothing. I don’t know yet.” Without her jade senses, the garden seemed oddly lessened, like a washed-out painting, and being near Hilo without being able to Perceive his aura was strange. She studied his face, wondering if it was even more peculiar for him, to see her once again, after so many years, without any jade at all. For the first time, she noticed flecks of silver in her brother’s hair.
“What did Ayt promise the Matyos, to gain their cooperation?” she asked.
“She killed the proposed immigration ban.” Hilo put his feet up on an empty chair. “She sent word to the Mountain loyalists in the Royal Council that they were to make sure the bill was voted down.”
Shae nodded. The defeat of the legislation ensured the border would remain porous between Kekon and Shotar. The barukan could continue to travel freely between the countries, sending their relatives to Kekon to work legally or illegally. That was something the Matyos would value above any alliance with the Faltas gang.
“The Kobens must’ve been livid.” Councilwoman Koben Tin Bett was one of the most outspoken proponents of the widely popular view that Oortokon refugees had increased crime in Kekon and barukan immigrants eroded traditional Green Bone values. Now, her own Pillar had scuttled the legislation she’d been advancing in the Royal Council. Shae was pleased the isolationist measure had failed, but seeing the shrewd old widow being so plainly put in her place, she couldn’t help but feel a bit sorry for her.
“What can the Kobens do?” Hilo said with a shrug. “As long as their boy is a Pillar-in-waiting, they can’t afford to get on Ayt’s bad side too much. It was the same with Lan and Grandda. You didn’t see it up close the way I did.” Shae waited for an accusatory glance to come her way, but it didn’t. Hilo was staring off into the distance. “Ayt can control the Kobens as long as she has other options. I’m sure the Iwe family hasn’t given up hope that she’ll pass the leadership on to her Weather Man.”
“Ayt Mada won’t be quietly stepping into retirement.”
“No,” Hilo agreed, turning his eyes slowly toward her. “Overall, I don’t think she’s unhappy with how things turned out.” The alliance with the Matyos renewed, the Kobens back under her heel, the Shotarian market under sole Mountain control.
And Ayt’s debt to the Kaul family erased. Shae knew what saving her life had cost Hilo in his soul. She’d never doubted her brother’s ability to take lives or to give his own for the clan. She’d never imagined he would go on his knees to beg his worst enemy for help. In his mind, it would’ve been a betrayal of all the Fists and Fingers who’d fought for him and given their lives under his leadership. She thought about saying something, voicing an acknowledgment of what he’d done—but the idea of putting such feelings into words between them seemed trite, distancing, even insulting. They sat in silence.
After a time, Hilo asked, “What will you do, if you can’t wear jade again?”
Shae touched her bare wrists, unsure how to answer. She thought of Tia, asleep in her bed, and of the simple, profound joy that existed in seeing her daughter’s face and hugging her tight. Having nearly been deprived of that, she couldn’t muster any great regret over the loss of her jade. During her life, she’d earned plenty of green, taken it off, reclaimed it, lost much of it in combat. Jade was her armor and her weapon, but it was not a part of her, the way it was with Hilo. She missed her abilities, but she was not empty, not any less of a person than she would’ve been if she’d lost an arm or a leg or an eye.
It was strange, Shae thought—Green Bones revered jade, but it was not the gems themselves that were worthy of reverence. Jade had meaning because of the type of person one had to become to wear it. Jade was the visible proof that a person had dedicated their life to the discipline of wielding power, to the dangers and costs of being a Green Bone.
She did not require proof anymore. She was past needing to carry her green as a coveted mark of status and credibility, one that declared to everyone that she was equal to her brothers and worthy of being a Kaul. She had two decades on the top floor of Ship Street to do that for her. She had work to do now, to rebuild from their losses, to guide the clan and the country toward growth and progress, to keep it safe from outside threats but also from the perils of its own worst impulses.