“Do you ever feel bad for having to kill people, Uncle?” Niko asked quietly. “I don’t think I could kill one of my own friends, like Ritto or Din, no matter what they did, even if they burned down the house.”
“I don’t feel bad about killing our enemies, anyone who would want to hurt our family. But sometimes, it’s much harder, when it’s someone you knew and maybe trusted. I feel a lot worse in those cases, but I still have to do it.”
They sat together in silence for several minutes, Hilo stroking his nephew’s hair and letting Niko lean against him as the boy absorbed everything his uncle had said. Hilo was relieved that it was done. He could only hope he’d done an adequate job of explaining such a painful topic to a child. Being a Kaul, a Green Bone, and the Pillar of the clan defined Hilo at all times, but even more important, he felt now, was being an honest and loving father to his children. Niko was the first son of the family. If he was to be Pillar someday, he needed to be raised well, supported but never coddled. “I love you, Niko, never forget that.”
“I love you too, Uncle,” Niko said, drying his eyes.
Hilo kissed Niko on the forehead and set him down. As they walked back to the car, he added, with a wink, “Don’t tell Ru and Jaya that we went to Hot Hut, it’ll make them whine with jealousy.”
CHAPTER
14
Green Turning Black
the seventh year, eighth month
Hilo was awoken by an unexpected phone call in the middle of the night. At first, he didn’t recognize Tar’s voice. His brother-in-law was incoherent, babbling and crying in panic. Hilo managed to figure out that he was at a pay phone outside his apartment building in Sogen. “Stay where you are,” he ordered. “Are you listening to me? Stay exactly where you are until I get there.” He hung up and got dressed. Wen was awake, sitting up in bed and staring at him with a mute and frightened question on her face. “Something’s happened,” Hilo said. “I’ll find him and bring him back here as soon as I can.”
He roused Juen and three Fists—Lott, Vin, and Ton—and they made it to Tar’s location in fifteen minutes. Tar was no longer at the phone booth. They followed a trail of blood on the sidewalk. The Pillarman had run for three blocks and collapsed behind a building. He was semi-lucid and his clothes were soaked red. He had knife wounds on his torso and arms. When he saw Hilo, his face collapsed into a baffling expression of relief, pleading, and fear. “Hilo-jen, help me,” he begged, nearly choking. “I’ve done something awful.”
Hilo could not believe his eyes. The sight of his most loyal and fearsome lieutenant lying crying and shivering, covered in blood in an alleyway, was not something that seemed as if it could be real. Juen and Lott knelt over Tar and Channeled into him enough to control the bleeding before lifting him into the back seat of one of the two cars. “Take him back to the house,” Hilo instructed Lott and Ton. “Call Anden to come over and help patch him up. Don’t let him leave, don’t let him make any phone calls, don’t let anyone else see him—not my wife, not my kids.”
Hilo went with Juen and Vin back to the apartment building. Tar’s unit was on the top floor, a spacious penthouse facing south over the city. The door was unlocked. Hilo walked inside to a terrible sight. The place was wrecked. Blood soaked into the beige carpet had gone tacky and the splatters on the wall were darkening to brown. Furniture and doors were splintered and broken, items scattered. Iyn Ro’s body was sprawled partly across the sofa in the living room, the fatal wound in her throat a gaping red meaty opening that was difficult for even a seasoned knife fighter like Hilo to look at.
“Fuck the gods in Heaven,” Juen whispered in horror.
The warmth was draining from Hilo’s limbs. It was one thing to see a Green Bone slain by an enemy or killed in a fair duel. It was another entirely to look upon a scene of carnage inside a relative’s home. His mind struggled against denial, not wanting to accept what his own eyes told him. Maik Tar, his Pillarman and brother-in-law, whom he’d loved and trusted since they were teens at the Academy, had murdered a fellow Green Bone of the clan, a woman he’d planned to marry next month. Iyn’s jade earrings and bracelets were still on her body. The sight was obscene, as if she were an animal slaughtered for no reason at all, meat left to rot in the sun.
Hilo stayed long enough to ensure that arrangements were made for the body, then he left Juen and Vin with the tasks of seeing that they were carried out and informing Iyn’s family. He drove back to the Kaul house alone in a numbed state, the streetlights passing over the white hood of the Duchesse with the monotonous pulse of a heartbeat in his ears.