Shae slapped her niece hard in the face, twice, across one cheek and then the other. Jaya ran from the house and was not seen for days. The Horn sent two of his Green Bones to follow her and make sure she didn’t do anything rash, but he needn’t have worried. Jaya’s base of command was in the south and without her own people in the city, she could not do much.
Nevertheless, in a haze of vengeful anguish, Jaya made her way to Iwe Kalundo’s residence in Cherry Grove, only to find it already surrounded by Mountain clan members calling for the former Weather Man’s execution. As Shae predicted, the consequences of the assassination plot were rapidly unspooling. The backlash against Ayt and Iwe was surprisingly swift and strong. Public tolerance for Green Bone leaders murdering their way into power was lower than it had been thirty years ago. Ayt’s violent choices had once been accepted as those of a legitimate ruler defeating less worthy rivals. Now they were viewed as the treachery of an old tyrant desperate to hold on to power. Many in the Mountain clan had continued to regard Ayt Mada favorably even after her resignation, but for the crime of grotesquely violating the sacred peace-keeping role of Deitist penitents, everyone except her most committed followers denounced her.
No one, it seemed, could find out where Ayt Mada was now being held by the Kobens, but outside Iwe Kalundo’s house, Jaya watched along with dozens of spectators as Fists of the Mountain arrived to demand the traitor surrender himself.
Iwe asked for three hours to prepare himself for death. The former Weather Man composed a letter explaining that he’d only ever wanted to prevent the clan he loved from falling to incompetent leadership and eventual destruction by its enemies. He thanked his former Pillar, Ayt Madashi, apologized to his family, and gave instructions as to the distribution of his jade upon his death. Then he dressed in his best suit, walked into the courtyard of his house, and shot himself in the head.
_______
All over Janloon and across Kekon, spirit guiding lamps went up to recognize the passing of Kaul Hiloshudon, a man as dramatic in death as he had been in life, let the gods recognize him. The televised public vigil and funeral were enormous. It seemed every Green Bone in the country, whether they were grieving friends or celebratory enemies, had a story to tell about their personal encounters with Kaul Hilo—his exploits as a young man, his cunning as a Horn and his determination as a Pillar, his famous generosity and fearsomeness.
The Kaul house was draped in white. A steady stream of clan faithful left incense, fruit, and flowers at the gate. On the day of the funeral, Anden walked near the front of the massive, snaking procession to Widow’s Park as if he were drifting through a waking dream, swept up like a single fish in a swift river of collective sorrow. The day was dry but overcast, the sky streaked with purple clouds. The gongs and funeral drums seemed to reverberate through the streets of a city leached of color.
All these people around him, Anden thought, felt as if they knew Hilo in some way, no matter how small. When Anden looked out at the sea of faces, he felt strangely, ungenerously resentful of all of them, savagely jealous of their sadness, as if there was only so much of it for him and they were not entitled to it. They were not Hilo’s brothers. They did not truly know him. They had not Channeled their own energy into his body in his final hours.
Anden left the funeral reception early and found Niko alone in the study—the room that had belonged to Lan and then to Hilo and that now belonged to him.
“Niko-s—” Anden began, then caught himself. His little nephew, who he’d pushed on the swing set and taken to relayball games, who used to curl up quietly next to him on the sofa, holding out storybook after storybook asking to be read to, was now the Pillar of the clan. Anden touched clasped hands to his forehead and bent into a properly respectful salute. “You wanted to talk to me, Kaul-jen?”
Niko looked up from the armchair where he’d been sitting with his elbows on his knees, as if studying the carpet. “Don’t do that,” he pleaded, his face stricken. “When we’re around other people, it’s okay, but when it’s just the two of us, don’t treat me any differently. Please, Uncle Anden. It’s hard enough being in this room.” The young man’s voice was calm yet unspeakably desolate, full of a quiet, private panic.
“I’m sorry, Niko, that was thoughtless of me.” Anden took the seat next to his nephew and looked around the study, taking in the cluttered desk, flat-screen television, family photographs, wall-mounted moon blades, mini-fridge, children’s artwork from decades ago that Hilo had put up and never taken down.