“Tell your Pillar,” Shae said, clenching her fists in the folds of her skirt to distract from the pain and the growing numbness in her leg, “that she hasn’t won. I know what’s she doing and I’m going to stop her.”
Nau Suen stood and looked down at Shae lying propped against the wall, drawing ragged breaths. He spoke leisurely as he wiped the blood from his hands on a clean edge of the tablecloth. “When Ayt Yugontin—let the gods recognize him—was on his deathbed, his son, his Horn, and a number of his close advisors discussed dividing the Mountain clan. After the Spear of Kekon was gone, they said, the clan would lose its legendary warrior leader, its heart and soul. It would be best for everyone to go their separate ways, for each of the men who had the support of one faction of the clan to form their own, smaller clans, rather than vie for the difficult task of following in the great Pillar’s shadow. I was there; I remember the conversation.
“Ayt Mada was Weather Man at the time. She rarely spoke of her birth family, but she said that she remembered her parents fighting. One evening her father stormed from the house, her sister and brother fled to their own friends, and she, an eight-year-old child, wandered down to the river. When the Shotarian bombs fell and the landslide engulfed their village, the rest of her family died apart and alone.”
Nau ate two pieces of the untouched quartered plums and a handful of the roasted nuts remaining on the blood-spattered table. “Madajen told Ayt Yu’s advisors that the strongest Green Bone among them should become Pillar after her father’s passing. She offered to duel any of them for the leadership. They smiled and laughed at the idea. Women did not duel men. I had a better sense of Perception than anyone else, so I was the only one who knew better than to laugh. Ayt Mada killed all those men rather than let the Mountain be broken.”
On his way out, the Horn of the Mountain took a moment to pick out one of the unbroken bottles of aged hoji left on the shelf. He turned over his shoulder, his penetrating gaze falling back onto Shae with a touch of cold sympathy. “I’ve known her for twenty-five years. You have no choice but to fight, of course. But you can’t win.”
Nau’s boots crunched on glass as he left the room.
CHAPTER
11
The Slow War
Shae dragged herself through the Unto & Sons Restaurant & Hoji Bar until she found a telephone behind the bar. She called the first number that came into her mind and reached Woon’s office voicemail; the workday was over by now. She phoned his home number. After two rings, Woon’s wife picked up the call.
“Is Papi there?” Shae asked. “I mean, Woon-jen—is he there?”
“Who is this?” Kiya asked, instantly suspicious.
“Kaul Shae, the Weather Man,” Shae said, teeth clenched in pain, lying on the floor behind the bar. “I need to talk to your husband, is he—”
Before she could finish the sentence, there was a sound on the other end of the line as if the phone was being taken away, and then Woon’s voice demanded, anxiously, “Shae-jen? What’s happened?”
Ten minutes after she got off the phone with Woon, an ambulance arrived, followed within seconds by a car of No Peak Green Bones. Shae recognized one of the Fists, a young man from Janloon with wavy hair named Lott, presumably in Lukang on assignment. “We’ll follow you the entire way to the hospital, Kaul-jen,” Lott said, jogging alongside the paramedics as they carried Shae out.
“The Pillar and Weather Man of Six Hands Unity are dead,” she said, grabbing the Fist’s arm before she was loaded into the ambulance. “Their Horn betrayed them to the Mountain. We need to secure our own territories before word gets out, and then take as much of Lukang as we can before the Mountain does.”
At the hospital, Lott posted guards outside Shae’s room. Woon chartered a small plane and was by her bedside two hours later. He arrived with Juen Nu and a dozen of the clan’s Green Bone warriors. Sitting up in bed with her swollen leg wrapped and elevated, Shae explained the Mountain’s scheme of moving black market jade through Lukang and gave the Horn the envelope in her bag containing the information about the people and assets of Six Hands Unity—all of them now under questionable ownership.
By nightfall, Six Hands Unity was in a state of civil war and Lukang was a battlefield. Shae slept restlessly for short periods at a time, Woon always in her room or on the phone in the hallway outside. Every few hours, Iyn Ro or Lott Jin would come back to the hospital to report on what was happening.