Fonda Lee - Jade War

“He’ll always be a stone-eye, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t plenty of things he can do. Look at your ma, on a business trip right now, doing useful work for the family and the clan, even without jade.” Hilo turned stern. “You’ll have to protect him, though. Keep him safe. No more scares like we had today. Understand?”

Niko nodded. “Yes. I won’t tease him anymore. I’ll be a good big brother from now on.”

When Wen returned to the Capita View Hotel, hoping for a nap after a morning of meetings and looking at flooring and paint samples, the bellman at the front desk told her that her husband had been trying to reach her for some time and had left a message and phone number for her to phone him back at Janloon General Hospital. Wen hurried up to her room. She told herself not to panic, but her hands were shaking as she used the calling card Shae had given her to place the long-distance phone call. A receptionist answered and told her to wait.

Several agonizing minutes later, Hilo came onto the line. “Everyone’s fine,” he said right away. “We had a little scare, that’s all.” He told her about what had happened to Ru. Then he put Niko on the line to say, “Hi, Ma, we miss you, when are you coming home?”

Wen assured him she would be home in three days, asked him if he’d been practicing his reading and handwriting every day, then asked for the phone to be returned to his uncle.

“Do the doctors think this will have any long-term effect?” she asked Hilo.

“It won’t,” Hilo said. “The doctors say that Ru’s a stone-eye.”

Wen sat down hard on the edge of her hotel room bed. Her first reaction was surprise that Hilo sounded so unemotional about it, but then again, he’d had several hours to come to terms with the news, and she was hearing the diagnosis just now. Her voice came out small. “They’re sure?”

“They’re sure.” Hilo still didn’t sound upset, but there was an impatient edge to his voice, the one that he sometimes used to say, “Nothing,” or “Fine,” but that Wen always knew to be a sign that he was preoccupied or worried.

Wen felt unexpected tears prick her eyes. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” he said, then as if realizing he’d snapped at her, he said in a gentler voice, “I said everyone’s fine, didn’t I? That’s what’s important. Don’t worry, and don’t let it ruin your trip.”

“What else aren’t you telling me?” Wen asked. “I can tell there’s something else.”

“It’s nothing to do with you at all. Clan things.”

Wen glanced at the clock. “Does it have to do with the plan to kill Zapunyo?”

Hilo sighed as if giving up. “That Uwiwan coward won’t leave his hotel room to meet at the place we’ve arranged. It’s too risky for Andy to try anything now. The plan’s been called off. We can’t get to him this time, Wen.”

“Not this time,” Wen repeated. “When, then? You promised me, on the day that Kehn was murdered, that we would get the people who did this. All of them. It’s been more than a year.”

“You think I don’t know that?” Hilo made a frustrated noise. “You’re upset right now because while you were away, I wasn’t paying enough attention to the boys and so this accident happened. But when have I ever failed to do what I promised? Have I ever left an offense against our family unpunished? Sometimes it takes longer, is all.”

There was some distraction in the background of the hospital and Hilo turned away from the phone to speak to someone briefly before coming back onto the line. “I have to go; they’re discharging Ru and I have to fill out some paperwork.” A pause. “I didn’t want to trouble you with bad news. It’s not even that bad. Could’ve been a lot worse; we should be grateful it wasn’t. And don’t worry about the clan things. We’ll talk when you get home. I love you.”

“I love you too,” Wen said. “Tell the boys their ma loves them.” After Hilo hung up, Wen stared at the silent receiver for a long moment before putting it back in its cradle. She felt leaden. Mechanically, she got up and changed into more comfortable clothes, drank a soda from the minibar, then wandered her hotel room in a daze, before sitting back down on the bed.

She felt as if she wanted to cry, but the sensation was too indistinct, everything was happening too far away. If she were with her family, it would feel more real. She thought, My son is a stone-eye. She imagined Ru lying in a hospital bed, calling out for her, and with a surge of instinctive maternal desperation, she wished she was there to hug him tightly and comfort him. But she was also strangely relieved she was not there, that she did not have to look into his trusting face and lie to him by telling him everything was fine, because of course it was not fine. She felt herself detaching in a way, pulling away defensively from all the unkind thoughts that came to her: Ru could not attend the Academy, he could not be a Green Bone like his father and his uncles, he could not hold any significant rank in No Peak. He would be like his mother, ignored and dismissed, fighting the stigma of bad luck his entire life, only he was a boy so it would be even worse for him, because men needed to command to be respected, and who would follow a stone-eye?

With painful, revelatory honesty, she admitted to herself why, from the moment she’d seen Niko’s baby picture in the letter among Lan’s papers, she’d been so invested in bringing him back to Janloon, why she’d insisted that Hilo go in person to Stepenland to retrieve the boy so he could be raised with their own children. Perhaps she had suspected it all along; certainly the possibility had troubled her during her first pregnancy: Her son, Ru, could not be his father’s heir.

Niko was the child she couldn’t bear herself; he was the true first son of No Peak. It was an irony that he’d been born to a woman as ungrateful and faithless as Eyni, but the gods had a cruel sense of humor, that was something even Hilo and Shae agreed on. All that mortals could do was accept the lot they were given, and yet still fight to better their own fate and that of their loved ones. Alone in the hotel room far from home, Wen was overcome with such a baffling mixture of pride and shame that her vision finally did blur with tears.

She dried her eyes and began to think clearly again. She understood that her value in the clan, her value to her family, to Hilo, and most of all, in her own mind, lay not in what she could accomplish herself—because a stone-eye was always something of a blank space amid the strong auras around them, a void where gazes and expectations slid off like oil—but in what she made possible for others. She was unable to wield jade herself, but as a White Rat for the Weather Man, she had taken jade to those who could and would use it for the clan’s gain. She had not borne the Pillar a son who could follow in the family’s footsteps, but she had ensured that Niko was brought back to be raised in his rightful place. She could never be a Green Bone herself, as much as she felt she was one at heart, but she could think like a Green Bone. She was an enabler, an aide, a hidden weapon, and that was worth something. Perhaps a great deal.

Wen picked the phone back up and called the Weather Man’s office.

Shae was silent for a long minute after Wen finished speaking. “I can’t agree to that.”

“You want Zapunyo dead as much as I do,” Wen said. “You’ve spent months preparing for this opportunity and you know it’s the best one we’re going to get. If we don’t take it, Zapunyo will disappear back into his fortress.”