Niru’s moon blade clattered out of his hands as he broke his fall. The man crawled to his knees tiredly and looked up the length of Ayt Ato’s extended blade. “I concede, Ayt-jen,” he declared. He sounded resigned and unsurprised, more defeated in spirit than in body. With head bowed and eyes downcast, he removed his jade rings and lifted a pendant of three stones from around his neck. He laid them on the ground in surrender. “The clan is my blood, and the Pillar is its master.”
Invoking the Green Bone oath was an honorable gesture of submission and clan allegiance, but for nearly thirty years, Ayt Madashi had been the only living person to be called “Ayt-jen.” A prescient hush fell over the spectators.
Ato wiped his moon blade along the inside of his sleeve and sheathed it. “My blade is clean,” he declared. “You fought well, Nirujen. I won only because my family and friends were here to give me confidence.” It was a polite note on which to claim victory, and the tension broke. The crowd murmured appreciatively.
Ru’s brother nudged him in the back. “There, we saw it,” Niko said. “Now let’s get out of here.”
Reluctantly, Ru followed as Niko weaved his way through the slowly dispersing onlookers. Some people lingered to talk. One man said to his friends, with disappointment, “Not nearly as exciting as Kaul Shaelinsan against Ayt Madashi twelve years ago. Now that was a real duel. Haven’t seen a better one since.” Ru smiled with pride for his aunt, and when he and Niko were away from the plaza, he told his brother what he’d overheard.
“That’s a stupid comparison,” Niko said. “Ayt Ato and Niru Von weren’t fighting to kill. This was a show for the Mountain clan, and everyone else, too. That’s why Niru put in a decent effort but didn’t fight to his limit. I bet he took off some of his jade before the duel. If he won, he’d make enemies of the Koben family. Since he lost honorably and made Ayt Ato look good, I wouldn’t be surprised if he has an envelope full of cash coming to him.”
Rigged or not, Ru still thought the duel had been exciting. It had given them an excuse to skip school to sneak into Little Hammer and he still felt giddy with daring. He punched his brother in the arm. “Ayt Ato is pretty good, but you’re better. You could beat him for sure.”
Niko looked at his younger brother in surprise. Then he frowned, his left eye squinting. “I’m never going to fight Ayt Ato,” he pointed out. “Unless both our clans have gone down in ashes and we’re the last people standing, so you better hope it doesn’t happen.”
“The important thing is that you could beat him,” Ru said. “He was, what, fifteenth in his class at Wie Lon? Not bad, but so far, you’re in the top five, right?”
Niko stopped on the sidewalk and faced his brother. “How do you even know my school rank?”
Ru spread his hands. “What do you think, keke? I live at home and hear Ma and Da talk about stuff. And we’re practically cousins with the Juen twins.” Ritto and Din were in the class above Niko at the Academy.
Niko frowned and stuffed his hands into the pockets of his track jacket. He started walking again. Ru jogged past him, skipping backward in front of his brother. “Once you graduate, everyone will know you’re a better Green Bone than that pretty boy, and smarter too. When you have your first big duel, I’ll get everyone in my school to—” Ru glanced over his shoulder to check where he was going and spun to an abrupt stop. “What’s that?”
Three people in black masks, two men and one woman, were plastering the brick wall outside of the subway station with posters. The largest one read, Free Kekon from Jade and Tyrants! It was followed by a long list of names. Ayt. Kaul. Maik. Koben. Juen. Iwe. And onward—thirty of the most prominent Green Bone families in the country. The rest of the wall was being covered with black-and-white newspaper photographs of the accused tyrants. The images were grainy from being enlarged and photocopied, but it took Ru only a second to find the faces of his father, his mother, his aunt Shae, uncle Papi, and the pictures of several other leaders in No Peak, parents of his cousins and friends.
A wave of disbelieving outrage swept over Ru. “What’re you doing?” he shouted.
The three vandals stopped and glared at the intrusion, shoulders and legs tense, ready to run from the police or Green Bones. Seeing only two teenage boys, they relaxed and returned to their task. Ru glanced around furiously for any sign of a clan Finger on patrol, someone to whom he could report the crime—before remembering that he was in Mountain territory. Most, if not all, of the Mountain clan’s Fingers and Fists in the vicinity had gone to the plaza to see the duel.