“Go back to your home and your wife, Woon,” Hilo ordered.
Woon flinched as if the Pillar had struck him. His face flushed more deeply than Shae had ever seen. For an extended moment, he seemed to struggle with the desire to explain himself; then, with a visible effort, he regained his usual composure. He nodded once, curtly, and walked past Hilo, out of the house to his car.
Shae’s face burned as she turned away and did up the buttons of her shirt. She pushed herself angrily into a sitting position. “Why did you have to barge in like that and treat him so harshly?”
“Do you think what you’re doing is kind to him?” Hilo replied without any remorse. “Are you planning to break his heart, or ruin his life?”
Shae mumbled, “Of course not.”
Hilo’s eyes narrowed as he came to stand over her. “What’s wrong with you, Shae? Do you love him or not? If you do, you have to tell him to leave his wife. Otherwise, you have to fire him from the Weather Man’s office, or transfer him out of Janloon. Didn’t I tell you about this a long time ago, and you wait until now to do something about it?”
Shae opened her mouth; a dozen retorts rose to mind, the automatic responses she’d developed to Hilo over so many years. Stay out of my life. You don’t know anything. This is none of your business. But of course, that was not true. Hilo was the Pillar and anything that affected the clan was his business, including a potentially ruinous affair between the Weather Man and its Sealgiver.
Shae closed her mouth, swallowing all the easy, childish things she wanted to say. Instead, she dropped her face and pressed her fingertips against her eyes. “Not yet, Hilo, please. I’m tired of losing people.”
Her brother’s jade aura shifted unexpectedly. A subtle withdrawal. He said nothing as she lifted her face out of her hands and pointed to the plastic container of pills on the nearby table. “Hand me those painkillers and a glass of water.”
Hilo did as she asked. He sat down on the edge of the coffee table and took the empty glass from her when she was done. Shae could see their reflection in the windows. Outside it was a moonless night and the Kaul estate was quiet. It was difficult to believe that right now, the clan’s warriors were waging fierce battle in another part of the country. “I was sorry to hear about your man, Luto,” Hilo said, in a different voice. “Let the gods recognize him.”
“Let the gods recognize him,” Shae repeated. “He was young and smart, with the whole rest of his life ahead of him. He wasn’t even a Green Bone; he shouldn’t have died. It was a meaningless death.”
Hilo regarded her with a stern sort of sympathy. “If a bullet had caught you in the neck, would you want me to say your death was meaningless? Luto wasn’t green, but he gave his life for the clan, just like any Fist or Finger.”
“Fists and Fingers wear jade and take oaths. They know they might have to do battle.”
“Everything is a battle now,” Hilo said grimly. “Every business, every town, every newspaper article or press conference or godsdamned vote in the Royal Council.” The familiar ferocity in Hilo’s voice was laced with deep resignation. “There used to be a way things were done, under the eyes of Old Uncle. We used to be able to count on certain things. Now there aren’t any lines. Everyone in the clan is part of the fight.”
Shae wondered if he was thinking of Wen. She was unsure of her ability to read him anymore. Over the past two years, he’d rarely spoken to her about anything outside of clan business. She remembered how much Hilo used to irritate her with his cheerfully aggressive openness, his physicality, the way he would throw his arms around her, goad and tease her. Looking at Hilo now, sitting on the table with his elbows on his knees, she found herself wishing for the grinning, arrogant brother she’d once had, the one who always seemed so sure of himself.
“We’ve been trying for years to break the Mountain and send Ayt Mada to the grave,” Hilo said. “And here we still are—that bitch still on top of her clan, still coming after us. We won’t win Lukang in the end. We’ll take some of it, maybe a lot, but if that city is the key to her alliance with the barukan and control over the black market, she’ll never let Six Hands Unity go to another clan.”
Shae thought about what Nau had said to her, his complete certainty. “No, she won’t,” Shae agreed. “But I finally know what we have to do, to take Ayt’s tools away. I figured it out with Woon in the hospital yesterday.”