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In Hilo’s defense, he’d been drunk.

At least that was what he decided he’d say about this situation when he woke up bound, gagged, stripped of jade and more hungover than he’d ever been in his life the morning after his graduation from Kaul Du Academy. That’s what Tar had said when Hilo had kissed him behind the temporary bathrooms which had been set up for the party last night, just before they’d parted ways. “Hilo, you’re drunk,” he’d said, pushing Hilo gently away, the subtext being about not being so obvious that they were together when he was too intoxicated to think clearly about the consequences if they were seen.

Hilo had protested that he really hadn’t had all that much and that Tar was underestimating how well he could hold his booze, but it was obvious Tar hadn’t believed him. He really hadn’t thought he’d had that much, thought he must have because things got really hazy after he’d last seen Tar.

Hilo tried to cast his mind back to the night before to work out what the hell had happened and where the fuck he was now. He remembered being at the graduation party Grandda had thrown for him and Shae. He remembered teasing Shae for standing alone in a corner and wondering if she would finally realize that being a cool and distant overachiever wasn’t what would win you loyalty as a leader of Green Bones. Then he’d gone to find Tar or Kehn and been waylaid by Uto who had offered him a drink. Uto had done poorly in the Trials and only graduated with a single piece of jade. Privately, Hilo thought Uto had more potential as a Green Bone warrior than those results suggested, but of course no one was asking for his opinion. Hilo and Uto were only friends of friends, but Hilo felt bad for Uto so he’d agreed to the drink. Afterwards, Uto had said he had something to show Hilo outside the grounds of the Kaul family home. Hilo had been intrigued so he’d agreed provided he could use the bathroom first. That was when he’d had the admittedly drunken run-in with Tar. After that Uto had found him again and he they left the compound. Hilo vaguely remembered that he’d been struggling to walk by that point and slowly realizing Tar had probably been right about him having had too much to drink. Uto had been holding him up by the time they’d piled into a taxi and after that there was nothing until now.

That was all ominous to say the least. It wasn’t like Hilo had never been blackout drunk before—Academy students could throw some wild parties and Hilo was important enough to be able to get into some of the military side of the No Peak’s parties too—but those times he’d gone into the night with the express intention of getting wasted. He’d gone into that party last night knowing that it was happening on the Kaul family’s property and that Grandda would be there so it was probably best to not get so drunk as to do something that might anger his grandfather.

Hilo pried his sticky eyes open and almost immediately had to close them again as the relatively dim light from the exposed bulb overhead burned into his brain, making his head pound even harder and his stomach flip over. That was a bad sign. The piece of cloth they’d stuffed in his mouth wasn’t clean. The bad taste and oily feel of it against his tongue didn’t help his nausea at all. He told himself sternly that he couldn’t throw up while gagged because if he did he’d choke to death on his own vomit. That was one of the least dignified deaths he could think of.  

After a few minutes he thought he might be able to try opening his eyes again. This time he turned his head to the side so the light overhead wouldn’t be quite so blinding and opened his eyes by degrees in the hopes that they’d adjust. The room that swam into focus was old and dusty, with mold growing on the walls. Not a place anyone lived in ordinarily, if Hilo had to take a guess. The room was empty aside from Hilo and Uto, who was curled in on himself in another corner crying softly.

The floorboards outside creaked as someone approached the door. There was a rattle as someone fitted a key in the lock and turned the knob. Hilo closed his eyes at the last moment. He was far from at his best, so perhaps it would be better to pretend to still be unconscious until he had a better idea what he was up against.

Three sets of feet entered the room, two paused in the center of the space while the other crossed and knelt down before Hilo, taking his chin in a rough, fighter’s hand and turning his head back and forth. “Fuck, it is him, isn’t it?” the man who was presumably attached to the hand said. “He doesn’t look as much like Kaul Dushuron as that picture from the paper made him look but it’s still undeniably Kaul Hiloshudon.” The man stood suddenly and crossed the room to slap Uto across the face. “You stupid idiot. You had one job and you bring us a fucking Kaul?”

Uto whined, high and terrified, and tried ineffectively to speak through his gag. The man cursed and Hilo judged his captors to be distracted enough to risk opening his eyes again. He cracked his eyes enough to see the three men, two standing in the center of the room and the third taking off Uto’s gag.

“I don’t understand what I did wrong,” Uto started blabbering the instant he was free of the gag. “You told me that I needed to bring you someone who had four pieces of graduation jade. Hilo-jen and I are friends, so I knew he’d come with me if I asked. You didn’t say it had to be someone in specific!”

“We expected you to have enough sense to realize that you don’t steal jade from the Kauls if you want to get away with it,” the man growled. “Now we have to figure out what to do with your little friend when his rich and powerful Grandda is probably realizing he’s missing and mobilizing No Peak to search for him right now.”

Hilo’s blood ran cold and he squeezed his eyes shut in an attempt at containing his rising horror. These were jade thieves and Uto was in on it. What the hell? What self-respecting Green Bone would ever aid jade thieves?  

Gods. Oh gods oh gods oh gods. This was bad. This was so bad. What was he going to do? How was he going to escape?

“What are we going to do with them?” one of the other men asked. “We can’t just kill a Kaul and toss him down the side of the mountain like we were planning.”

“I mean we can,” the first man said, voice dripping with sarcasm. “We’ll just be hunted to the ends of the earth by No Peak if we do.”

“He’s still unconscious,” the last man said. “There’s some morphine in the med kit. If we dose him up with that and drive back to Janloon maybe we can just dump him somewhere and everyone will think he just wandered off somewhere last night and passed out drunk. As long as he never regains consciousness in our custody that should work.”

“We’d have to leave him with his jade, though,” the first man muttered.

“You really think that matters now?” the last asked. “I don’t know about the rest of you, but I care more about being alive than being rich.”

The first man growled deep in his throat and there was the sound of a fist hitting flesh. Uto yelped in pain. “I don’t understand you,” the man said, presumably to Uto. “I thought we’d impressed on you what the consequences would be if you didn’t do exactly as we said. You know we’re not going to let you live now, don’t you?”

Uto sobbed. “I’m so sorry,” he begged. “I’ve done everything you asked. I just didn’t think. I’m sorry. Please don’t hurt me.” he was still begging when they stuffed the gag back into his mouth.

“Let’s go outside and discuss this a bit more thoroughly,” the first man said, boots scuffing on the ground as he turned. “I agree that using the morphine to keep Kaul under for a few more hours to give us some breathing room is a good idea, but I want to make sure we’ve considered all our options before we made any decisions which will have such a big effect on our payday.”

The other men grudgingly agreed and they left the room, locking the door behind them. The only sound was Uto’s sobbing.

Hilo tested his hands surreptitiously, they were bound behind his back with handcuffs which was less than ideal because there was no chance of being able to cut his binds. Not that there seemed to be anything sharp in this room to begin with. He tugged again, trying to think. The cuff around his left wrist was looser than the one around his right. He wrenched at it for a few minutes, hoping that if he contorted his hand correctly he’d be able to slide it through the cuff, but he had no such luck. 

He needed a plan and quickly. He probably had minutes before someone came back with the morphine. Once he was dosed with that his window for escape would close. He could perhaps use his legs to trip someone up if they were under the impression that he was unconscious until he struck, but without his hands free he would have a hard time subduing that person well enough to keep them from calling for help. If only his hands were smaller.

Oh. The idea struck him like a bolt of lightning. A few months before, he and Tar had gone to see an action movie with some friends. In the movie one of the protagonists had escaped handcuffs by dislocating his thumbs. Afterwards Hilo and Tar had gotten in a friendly debate about whether that would actually work. Hilo had thought it wouldn’t, while Tar had insisted that it would. They’d stopped short of actually getting a pair of handcuffs and testing it— “Not that that wouldn’t be kind of fun and kinky, but how would we explain why our hands were injured to the teachers on Secondday?” Tar had said—so the question was still an open one. It wasn’t like he had any better ideas right now, though.

Hilo rolled his shoulders a little in preparation for what he needed to do. He’d never actually tried to dislocate one his own body parts before so it took a little trying until he found a way to grip his thumb with his other hand that he thought might do the trick. Hopefully he wasn’t going to do permanent damage. Kehn had dislocated his shoulder in a fight during his first week as a Finger and it still gave him problems when the weather was bad. Of course, that sort of thing would still be preferable to being murdered and thrown down a cliff by jade thieves, so Hilo grabbed his thumb as tightly as he could and pulled.

He’d braced himself so he wouldn’t scream, but he couldn’t completely contain the gasp of pain that escaped him as his thumb was yanked out of its socket. It hurt. It hurt more than Hilo had expected it to honestly. He could feel tears gathering in his eyes. Uto made a sound through his gag which might have been Hilo’s name but he didn’t respond. Instead, he used the fingers of his right hand to carefully work the cuff up his left hand. It actually worked. He had to hold his breath against the pain as the metal jarred his dislocated thumb, but it actually came off. He couldn’t believe it. Tar was never going to let him live this down.

There were footsteps in the hallway again. He’d been just in time. The door opened and Hilo pretended to be unconscious for all he was worth as the intruder crossed the room and knelt down next to him. When they were in close enough, Hilo wrapped his hand around the chain of the handcuffs and swung the cuff he’d just freed from his left hand into his captor’s face.

The man cried out in surprise as the handcuff cut into his face and fell over backwards, the syringe of morphine flying from his grasp and rolling across the floor. Hilo launched himself up off the floor, intending to push the advantage of his captor’s surprise, but he’d misjudged what affect his hangover would have on his fighting prowess. His leap from the floor was hampered by a sudden rush of dizziness. He wavered at just the wrong time and the other man managed to recover enough to kick Hilo’s legs out from under him. He went down hard and didn’t have enough time to recover before his captor was on his feet and planted a firm kick into his ribcage. The pain was blinding and Hilo slid across the floor to crash against the wall next to Uto. His chest was a vice of pain and he couldn’t breathe. This was going to be the shortest escape attempt in history and now that they knew Hilo was awake and knew he was a prisoner they’d probably waste no time in killing him before Grandda and Lan could find him.

The man came over and Hilo squinted up at him through teary eyes. He was smirking, looking like was looking forward to kicking Hilo’s teeth in. He drew his foot back and Hilo curled his head out of the way at the last moment, taking another blow to his side instead. He felt his ribs creak warning, one more kick and they’d probably break. Gods, he wished he had jade and could use Steel.

The man drew back foot for another kick, cursing Hilo out all along, and then Uto—who had been huddled forgotten by both of them against the wall—drew his leg back and kicked the jade thief in the knee so hard it buckled and the man went down with a crash.

Hilo didn’t waste time trying to figure out what the classmate who’d betrayed him thought he was doing, he lunged for their captor and punched the man in the face over and over again until he stopped moving. Then he slumped forward and made the mistake of catching himself with his injured hand. He grunted in pain, then grabbed hold of his hand and reset his thumb quickly before he had time to think it through. The pain was sharper than he’d expected it to be and he hunched over his hand, tasting bile in his mouth. He had to huddle like that for longer than he would have liked before he thought he had himself well enough in hand to deal with his classmate and the rest of the escape that still lay before him.

He crawled over, untied the gag and pulled the cloth out of Uto’s mouth. The other boy was talking almost immediately. “I’m so sorry, Kaul-jen. Please forgive me. They were threatening me. I didn’t know what to do. I—”

“Shut up,” Hilo said, trying to ignore how weird it was to be called Kaul-jen. He hadn’t even gotten the chance to get used to being called Hilo-jen in the less than a day since he’d graduated. Kaul-jen sounded like Uto was talking to Grandda. “We need to escape before someone figures out I got free. We can discuss everything else once we’re no longer in danger of having our throats slit.”

Someone who had aided in a jade theft scheme really had no right to look that relieved at the scheme beginning to fall apart. Hilo had to turn away from Uto before he lost hold of the self-control keeping him from kicking the other boy. Instead he crossed the room. The captor they’d just taken care of hadn’t closed or locked the door behind him, so Hilo pushed it a little further open and peaked into the dim, dingy hallway. There was no one in sight so he slipped out and turned left because that was the way he remembered the footsteps of the various captors coming from. Probably the way out was that way.

He didn’t see anyone as he made his way down the hall as stealthily as he could manage. Turned out they were on the second floor so there was a staircase to navigate as well. The good news was that there was a window with the yellowed curtain at the end of the hallway above the staircase. When Hilo twitched it a little aside to peak out he saw half a dozen men standing in the dirt driveway outside. That would make seven with the man he’d left back in the room, eight counting Uto. Hopefully that was all there was to his crew and the downstairs of the house would be empty.

He descended the stairs, placing his feet carefully. Uto was following close behind him and Hilo kept an eye on him as well. He’d made the mistake of trusting that asshole once, he wasn’t going to make it again.

The staircase went down into a living room by the front door. The front windows had a couple tarps tacked up over them and a number of bedrolls were laid out across the floor. Evidently the crew had made their base here for a while. Hilo wondered how far from Janloon they were. He wished he had any idea how long he’d been unconscious.

Going out the front door into the meeting of their captors with no weapons was obviously a bad idea, so Hilo turned right and ventured deeper into the house, hoping for a back door.

He soon found himself in the kitchen. The windows were only partially covered here so there was light enough to see the outdated appliances and the large wooden table in the center of the room. There was a lockbox sitting on the table next to two talon knives—the one Hilo had been carrying last night and another that must be Uto’s—and a handgun. The key to the box was still in the lock. Hilo snorted at the stupidity of putting something in a lockbox and then not taking the key, then flipped the lid open. The lockbox was lead-lined. Inside rested Hilo and Uto’s graduation jade on its simple chains, four Academy training bands with three pieces of jade each, and a study bracelet with five pieces of jade studded into it, obviously a Green Bone warrior’s. Hilo wondered where these thieves had gotten that from.

He glanced out the kitchen window. Soon the thieves in conference in the yard would come to a conclusion and be back. He needed to be ready for them when they did.

A closer inspection of the other keys hanging with the one to the lockbox revealed that the key to the handcuffs was there too. Hilo unlocked his other handcuff and let it fall onto the table. Then he started putting on the jade in the box, first his graduation jade, then Uto’s, then the training bands one after another, and finally the bracelet. Then he braced his hands against the table and waited for the rush.

The jade closed over his head like a rising wave, carrying him along with it. He laughed, giddy. He’d never worn this much jade before. Sure, he’d wheedled Lan into letting him touch his jade necklace once and he and Tar had made out in their dorm room while wearing their graduation jade right after the graduation ceremony, but those had been different. This was like the sun cresting over the horizon at sunrise, like waking up. Hilo had never felt anything so glorious in his life. In this moment he almost understood why people believed jade was from the gods.

He straightened up and turned around. Uto was standing in the doorway, looking like he was debating whether he should run. Hilo wondered if he looked like he was having the closest thing to a religious experience he’d ever had. “I’m not going to let you out of your handcuffs until I’m sure you’re not going to help these assholes,” he told Uto. “I think that’s more than fair all things considered.”

Uto nodded, still looking panicked. “Yes, Kaul-jen,” he panted. “Whatever you say.”

“Good,” Hilo said. He picked up his talon knife and the gun. He checked that the gun was loaded while he headed back towards the front of the house. “Then stay the fuck out of my way.”

The walk back to the front door felt like it was happening in a dream. Hilo had been fantasizing about wearing a lot of jade for his entire life. He’d driven his teachers at the Academy nuts with begging to be allowed to wear more jade. They’d thought him arrogant, hadn’t believed him when he’d said that he knew he couldn’t just tolerate it, that he was meant to carry it. Hilo was meant to wear a lot of jade. This was his natural state, not the lesser one that he had been born into before anyone had let him wear jade.

He probably should have been afraid to open the front door and face the six men outside, but all he felt was a joyful confidence. He could do this. No one could ever stand against him. Not while he was wearing jade.

He stepped out onto the dirt driveway. A few of the men who were facing the house saw him and their eyes began to widen in surprise.

“I’m sorry to inform you that your plan has just gone to shit,” Hilo told them as he raised the gun.

He shot two the jade thieves before they even had a chance to react, then he leveled the rest of them with a Deflection which caused most of them to lose their guns before they could finish drawing them. He leapt Light onto a third and dispatched him with his talon knife. Then he turned on the two who had managed to get to their feet. One had hung onto his gun and started shooting as he backed away from Hilo, perhaps hoping to make it to the ugly brown pickup truck parked at the other side of the driveway. Hilo raised another Deflection to redirect the bullets and charged. The man without the gun tried to run and stumbled. That was all it took for Hilo to be upon him with his talon knife, ready to end things. When the man with the gun saw how quickly his comrade had fallen he gave up on fighting and turned to run. Hilo ran him down and grabbed him from behind, sending a precise bolt of Channeling into his chest, stopping his heart.

Hilo had never killed a human being with Channeling before. He’d been told that there was a level of psychic backlash that no amount of practicing on small rodents could prepare you for. He’d known that, but it turned out he’d vastly underestimated just how bad it was. His brain fizzed with static as the man’s dying sensations washed over him. He couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think. It was only belatedly that he remembered to break contact and by that point all he could do was list to the side until he fell and rolled off the man’s corpse. He landed on his back on the dirt, panting for breath as the mental noise cleared and his vision returned. He had no idea how much time had passed.

Footsteps sounded on the packed dirt. Horror rushed through Hilo as he realized he’d forgotten about the sixth man. He started to push himself up onto his elbows, readying his talon knife but he was still disoriented from killing that last man, he wasn’t going to be fast enough to—

The last man loomed over Hilo, then froze and swayed in place. He coughed and there was blood on his lips. He stumbled and dropped to his knees. Hilo pushed himself up and slit the man’s throat before he could recover. It was only then that he noticed the talon knife sticking out of the man’s back.

Hilo looked up. Uto was standing halfway across the driveway. At some point since Hilo had left him in the kitchen he’d managed to twist himself around enough to get his hands in front of his body not behind his back. Now his hands were raised just in front of him.

“Did you throw that?” Hilo asked. 

Uto nodded. “Yeah,” he said. “It’s sort of a party trick. I never expected it to actually be useful in a real fight.”

Despite himself Hilo was kind of impressed. He couldn’t have made a throw like that. He wasn’t a bad hand at real throwing knives, but talon knives weren’t built for throwing. He wasn’t about to tell Uto that, though. He got up, annoyed at the way the pain that lanced through his ribs made him clutch at his chest. The Channeling backlash had stolen the glorious euphoria of jade and all his aches and pains were back, even more strongly in some cases now that his senses were sharper. The sunlight was awful. He wondered why he’d never heard that wearing jade made hangovers worse. He sure as fuck knew enough Fingers and Fists with wild social lives to think that would have come up at some point.

“What now?” Uto asked, looking like he was considering the possibility Hilo was going to kill him to.

Probably he should kill Uto but Hilo wanted some answers first, and he wanted to get out of here. “We find the keys to that pickup truck,” he said and headed back towards the house.

~~~~

 They were in the truck and on the road in less than ten minutes. They’d found the keys and Hilo had gone back upstairs to kill the man they’d left unconscious in the room where they’d been held. The clan’s justice was served. Probably if Grandda had gotten his hands on them he would have made the deaths less quick, but Hilo was glad that vengeance was a thing he’d meted out with his own hands.

Well, meted out to all save one.

Uto huddled in the passenger seat while Hilo navigated the truck down the narrow roads leading away from the house. They were obviously up in the mountains somewhere, though not anywhere Hilo had ever been before. Uto been conscious when they’d arrived so he’d pointed in the direction they had to turn to head back to Janloon. Hilo had no choice but to trust the other boy and hope that he wasn’t betraying him again. He resolved to stop at the first gas station he found and get a map.

His plan had been to keep driving until he found such a gas station, but it quickly became obvious that wasn’t going to happen. The further they progressed the lousier and lousier Hilo started to feel. Eventually he admitted to himself that this wasn’t just going to get better and he pulled carefully over to the side of the road, ignoring Uto’s panicked look.

Hilo turned the truck off and took the keys with him. He didn’t really think that Uto would drive off and leave him here—if Uto had really meant him harm he could have just let that last jade thief kill him—but he figured with the way things had been going it was best not to risk it.

He got out of the truck and walked back up the road a few paces. He’d hoped to get far enough away for some privacy, but it quickly became obvious that was too much to hope for. Instead he braced his hands on the safety railing running along the side of the mountain road, the sharp edge digging into his palms, and finally let himself vomit.

When he was finished, he made his way back to the truck and knelt on the driver’s seat while he rummaged around in the space behind the seats. He came up with a bottle of water after just a bit of searching. The outside was dirty, but when he unscrewed the cap the water looked and smelled clean.  

Uto was watching him. “What’s wrong?” His eyes were very large. “Is it jade overexposure?”

“No,” Hilo said. He was nowhere near the limits of his tolerance, he could tell. He wasn’t sure why the sense of that was so much clearer now that he was wearing more jade than it had been with less. He took a careful sip of water from the bottle and made a face at his stomach’s unsettled lurch. “But I am hungover as all hell. Was that drink you gave me spiked or something?”

Uto flushed from his ears all the way down his neck, he ducked his head in shame. “Yes, it was,” he said. “I don’t know with what. They just gave me the bottle and told me what to do with it.”

You’re lucky it wasn’t fucking poison. Hilo thought. That explained a lot, though. He had tried to tell Tar that he hadn’t had so much to drink that he deserved to have his boyfriend looking at him like he was a little kid too stupid to know the limits of his own alcohol tolerance.  

 “Are you alright to drive?” Uto ventured, looking like he was perfectly aware of why Hilo might be less than willing to hand over the keys.

“I’ll be fine,” Hilo said. He concluded that his stomach seemed willing to not violently expel that first sip of water so he took another. He’d need to get the whole bottle down, probably. The water would help, but that didn’t make the thought of drinking it more pleasant. “The owner of this truck didn’t happen to have a pair of sunglasses lying around, though, did he?” Painkillers would be even better, but Hilo wasn’t holding out hope for that. Sunglasses would help immensely, though. All the jade he was wearing made the world even more painfully bright than it would have been ordinarily.

There was a pair of sunglasses in the glovebox which was an especially lucky break after how the rest of today was going. Hilo put them on and doggedly finished the bottle of water before starting the truck again and pulling out into the road again.

“Well,” Hilo said without looking over at the traitor in the passenger seat. “If you have anything to say for yourself, now would be the time to say it.”

It seemed that Uto desperately wanted to confess to his treason, because he started talking and didn’t stop for a long, long time, his words stumbling over each other. It had all started a few months ago. Uto had gone out with some Academy friends and started playing cards with some strangers. They’d asked questions about Kaul Du Academy and Uto had had a bit too much to drink and the questions had seemed harmless so he’d answered them. Then there’d been a break-in at the Academy and in the aftermath one of the men he’d been playing cards with had shown up and told Uto that they’d frame him for it if he didn’t do exactly as they said. Uto had capitulated but the demands kept getting worse and worse until he’d been commanded to arrange the kidnapping of a classmate who’d earned four jade pieces in graduation.

“Why me of all our classmates, though?” Hilo couldn’t keep from asking. “Surely you can’t be so stupid as to not realize the Pillar will hunt down anyone who hurts a Kaul.”

“That was my plan, actually,” Uto admitted. “I couldn’t see another way out. I suspected they were planning to kill me when this last part of the job was over and I figured that if I helped them get you I could die knowing No Peak would hunt them down and make them pay.”

Hilo’s impulse was to assume Uto was covering his ass, but he felt sincere to his Perception. “I assume you stole the training bands too,” he said and Uto nodded miserably. “What I can’t figure out is where this bracelet came from.” He jingled his wrist a little to draw attention to it.

Uto’s shoulders sunk. “It was my father’s,” he whispered, face red with shame. “He died fighting the Shotarians. I’m the only male in the family in my entire generation and therefore it was assumed that I’d carry on his legacy as a Green Bone warrior. My mother and aunts told me that bracelet was to be mine when I graduated, but I needed to give those men a certain amount of jade and I didn’t think I could get away with stealing any more unobservant students’ training bands without someone getting suspicious so I broke into my ma’s jewelry box and took the bracelet to fill up the difference.”

Hilo felt sick and it had nothing to do with the hangover. There were no words for how despicable that was. His horror must have been obvious because Uto cringed even deeper into himself in shame.

“You should keep the bracelet, Kaul-jen,” he said. “I’ve proven myself unworthy of it and I couldn’t live with myself if I took it back. You should have it.”

 Hilo thought about pointing out that since Uto had committed an offense punishable by death the question of what would happen to his family’s jade was a moot point, but that seemed to just be cruel. The more he thought about it the more Hilo found he wasn’t as comfortable with the idea of passing along word of Uto’s treason to Grandda as he should be. Just last night he’d been feeling bad for Uto’s wasted potential and trying to figure out how to convince him to swear oaths to the military side of No Peak despite his poor showing in the Trials. Now he was driving the other boy towards his inevitable death.

He was still chewing over this when a gas station appeared on the left. Hilo pulled in and parked the truck in the far corner of the lot. “Stay here,” he told Uto, turning off the truck and pocketing the keys before rummaging the cupholders and compartments for any loose change and bills he could find. “Or don’t and take your chances alone in the mountains in handcuffs. It hardly matters to me.” That wasn’t strictly true, but he figured it was best for Uto to think Hilo had no complicated feelings about what was going to happen to him. “I’ll be back in a minute.”

The inside of the gas station was a dimly lit space with a few small rows of shelves. An old man with gray hair pushed back from his face was sitting behind the counter reading a newspaper and listening to music on a crackly old radio. He started visibly at the sight of Hilo, which was mildly insulting until Hilo admitted that this man probably didn’t have disheveled teenage Green Bones walking into his store ordinarily. He gave the man his friendliest smile and found his way to the refrigerator along the wall. He selected a lemon soda which he hoped would further settle his stomach and then a road map of Northern Kekon on his way to the counter. He would have liked something for his headache, but there hadn’t been money for that in the truck and he’d left his wallet in his bedroom at the Kaul house, thinking he’d have no need for it at the party.

“Can you point out where we are on this?” Hilo indicated the map while the old man counted the bills and change to confirm Hilo had enough for his purchases.

“You lost or something?” the man asked, sweeping the money into his hand and putting it in the cash register.

“Or something,” Hilo said, gracing the man with another smile. “I need to get back to Janloon.”

The old man obviously wanted Hilo gone as soon as possible so he unfolded the map and pointed out the gas station’s location. They were so far from Janloon that Hilo was a little impressed. He must have woken up very soon after being put in that room for the timelines to add up at all. That also meant he had a long-ass drive before him if he wanted to get home today, and that sounded like hell with this level of a hangover and a traitor in the passenger seat. He briefly considered killing Uto and getting it over with so he could at least stop to take a nap partway through the drive if he needed to.

“Is there a public phone here that I can use?” Hilo asked, studying the map and the long drive before him.

“No, there’s not,” the old man eyed him. Hilo could see him weighing the reward of getting the Green Bone out of his store against the risk of angering him. “I’ve got a phone for store use behind the counter, though,” he admitted. “You can use that if you’d like.”

“Thank you,” Hilo grinned at him. “You’ve been very helpful.”

However, standing behind the counter, looking at the phone Hilo found he didn’t know who to call. The correct answer was probably Grandda, but interacting with Kaul Sen was taxing under the best of circumstances which these certainly were not. Lan would be a better choice, but Hilo knew that anything he told Lan would be immediately repeated to Grandda. Hilo didn’t want the Pillar or Pillar-in-Waiting to hear anything about this until he’d decided what to say about Uto. Instead he dialed the familiar number for the Maik family home in Paw-Paw.   

The phone rang a few times then it was picked up. “You’ve reached the Maik residence,” a girl said on the other end. “How can I help you?”

“Hi, Wen,” Hilo said, stretching his face into a smile. He found it was easier to take on the right tone of voice when you were making the right expressions. “This is Kaul Hilo. Are either of your brothers there?”

There was a long pause. That was weird. Wen was a little nervous and overly formal around Hilo but he’d talked to her on the phone before and she’d never been like this. “Hilo-jen?” Wen finally got out. “It’s really you?”

“No, you’ve got me. I’m the ghost of Kaul Hiloshudon and I’ve got nothing better to do with my unlife than haunt you via telephone,” the joke spilled out without much thought. Gods, if he was going to start telling morbid jokes to Kehn and Tar’s sister he was more out of it than he’d thought.

“That’s—That’s not funny,” Wen got out and Hilo supposed it wasn’t. “Kehn and Tar are both out. I’ll have one of them call you. What number should I give them?”

Hilo had to ask the gas station owner for the number. “I don’t want any trouble with the clans,” the man said when he’d finished writing the number down on a slip of receipt paper.

“You won’t have any trouble,” Hilo promised and read the number out to Wen.

 Wen repeated the number back to him and then took a shaky breath. “Okay, I’ll have them call. I’m really glad you’re okay, Hilo-jen,” then she hung up and Hilo was left wondering what she’d meant by that.

He didn’t have to wonder long. He was barely waiting five minutes before the phone rang again. “Hello?” he asked picking it up.

“Where. Are. You?” Kehn demanded from the other end in the tone of voice he used staring down the barrel of a fight. “Tar said that when he lost track of you last night you were so drunk you could barely stand. We were out on our bikes all night searching for you. Where are you?”

Oh, Hilo hadn’t considered that the Maiks might have realized he was missing last night. Probably he should have. “That’s a long story, Kehn, but first you have to tell me; has Grandda noticed that I was missing? Is the clan looking for me?” If Grandda had already mobilized No Peak to find him that would answer his question of what to do about Uto pretty quickly. He wasn’t sure if that was the outcome he was hoping for or not.

Kehn said, “Are you hurt?”

“I’m fine,” Hilo said. Technically the answer to that question was yes—his ribs were feeling increasingly unpleasant as time went by—but he wanted Kehn to be less worried about him not more. “A bit hungover but otherwise fine. Can you answer my question?”

Kehn relented. “The Pillar isn’t looking for you so far as I know, and I suspect that if he started looking for you Tar and I would be the first place he’d look. I’m on duty and it’s just like any other day. Where are you?”

Hilo gripped the counter and rode out the wave of relief. If Grandda hadn’t noticed he was gone yet there was still time to salvage the situation and he found he desperately wanted to salvage it. He looked down at the map which was still lying open on the counter. “Do you know where the overlook up past the reservoir is?” he asked Kehn.

“I think so,” Kehn said. “Is that where you are?”

“Not yet,” Hilo said. “You get off duty at five, don’t you?”

“Yes,” Kehn said, exasperation filtering into his voice. “Hilo, where are you going with this?”

“Meet me at that overlook after you get off duty,” Hilo said. “Maybe around six by the time you get out there? And until then don’t say anything about me to anyone.”

“Hilo, there’s no need to wait until I get off duty,” Kehn said. “I told Wen to find Tar as soon as she got off the phone with me. Tar can meet you way earlier than six. You don’t need to wait for me.”

“I’m not waiting for you,” Hilo said. “I suspect it will take most of that time for me to get to the overlook myself.”

“What?” Kehn actually spluttered, which was an impressive sound coming from him. “Hilo, where are you? Are you not in Janloon or something?”

“I’ll explain everything this evening,” Hilo promised. “Meet me at the overlook. Don’t tell anyone where I am until I get the chance to explain.”

He hung up and tapped his fingers on the countertop while he contemplated his next steps. The more he thought about it the more he realized that he really didn’t want Grandda to know the particulars of what had happened today.

He straightened up and graced the shopkeeper with another smile. “Thank you so much for your help,” he said. “I’ll get out of your hair now.”

Uto had apparently decided to take his chances with Hilo and No Peak, not the mountains in handcuffs and on foot because he was still in the passenger seat when Hilo climbed back in and lay the map out on the seat between them. He opened the bottle of soda and took a couple careful sips before starting the truck and pulling out of the station.

He didn’t say anything for a while, turning things over in mind as he came up with a plan that he thought might work. “Tell you what,” he said to Uto. “I can tell that you didn’t actually mean to do anything treasonous. You were scared and in over your head and didn’t know who to turn to. That doesn’t mean you didn’t do a despicable thing, but I hope it’s not a despicable thing you will ever do again.”

“It’s not, Kaul-jen,” Uto promised. “I’ll never do anything like it again.”

“Alright then,” Hilo said. “I’m going to offer you two options. The first is that we pull over here, I slit your throat and dump your body down the side of the mountain and you’re dead but you don’t have to worry about facing the Pillar’s wrath when he figures out what you did.”

Uto’s eyes bulged and his breathing picked up. “What’s the second option?”

“The second…” this was the risk, the thing that might pay off but also might be a huge mistake. “The second is that we go back to Janloon and pretend this never happened, but you owe me your life and do anything I say from now until the end of time and if you don’t I’ll go to the Pillar and you can face his justice for your treason not mine.”

Uto spluttered in shock. “Of course I want to live, Kaul-jen,” he said. “But what exactly would you be asking from me?”

“Unquestioning loyalty,” Hilo said. “I’m going to be Horn someday and I intend for it to be sooner rather than later. To do that I need lots of loyal people around me to convince the older members of the clan to overlook how young I am. Plus, there will be things I need done but won’t be able to do myself and won’t be able to send the Maiks to do either because of their well-known connection to me. You’ll do those things for me without question.”

Uto scrambled up so he was kneeling on the bench seat of the truck. He bowed his head and raised his clasped hands to his forehead in solute. “Kaul Hiloshudon, I will follow you and remain loyalty to you from now until my dying day. I swear this on my honor, my life and on my jade.”

Hilo hadn’t expected him to swear quite so quickly, and privately thought that the fact Uto had agreed so quickly was proof of what a coward he was, but he supposed that if he was going to offer an out he shouldn’t be annoyed when someone took it. “Good,” he said. “Your first order is that when we get back to Janloon you’ll go to the Horn and tell him you want to swear to the greener side of the clan.”

“W-W-What?” Uto stuttered. “Hilo-jen, I almost failed the Trials, why would the military side of the clan even take me?”

“Because you’re going to insist and not take no for an answer,” Hilo said. “I’ve been in classes with you for years and I don’t think you’re as hopeless at the jade disciplines as your Trial results suggest. I think you’re just bad at taking tests.” Of course, Uto had always proven himself to be a miserable, traitorous coward but Hilo would try to not to treat him the way such people deserved to be treated now that he’d agreed to do as Hilo asked.

Uto looked almost pathetically relieved. “You really think so?” he asked.

“Would I be saying it if I didn’t think so?” Hilo asked. “So you’ll do it?”

“I’ll do it,” Uto said. “Thank you, Hilo-jen.”

“That’s only the start,” Hilo said. “But enough of that now, we need to figure out what we’re going to say about where we’ve been.”

“We could say that I challenged you to a duel,” Uto ventured quietly. “That would explain our injuries. And if we say you won, that would be an explanation for why you have all my jade. We could say that I lifted the bracelet from my ma to entice you into agreeing.”

That wasn’t a bad idea actually, but Hilo was loathe to tell Uto that regardless of his intentions to be nice to the other boy. “How would we explain the lack of blade wounds?” he asked.

“We could say we fought it bare-fist,” Uto suggested.

“We’re Green Bones, Uto,” Hilo said. “When was the last time you heard of two Green Bones fighting a bare-fist clean blade duel?”

“So, we say we were drunk,” Uto shrugged. “We’d probably have to say that anyway, to be honest. The drug in your drink worked faster than I’d thought it would. You couldn’t walk a straight line by the time we left the party and a lot of people saw you.”

Hilo winced. The more he heard the more it seemed that last night had been far from his finest moment. No matter what explanation he and Uto gave for this it was going to reflect badly on Hilo in these critical first few weeks while everyone waited to see how green Kaul Sen’s second grandson really was.  

“The only issue I see is what we’ll do if someone challenges the story,” Uto said. “My ma and aunties might. They were really attached to the idea of me wearing my da’s jade.”

Hilo felt briefly guilty but it was the sort of guilt you felt for something that was sad but couldn’t be helped. He realized he’d decided to take Uto’s jade bracelet, even though he’d never agreed to that when Uto had first brought it up. Uto had proven himself unworthy of carrying his father’s legacy, Hilo reasoned, Uto’s da deserved to have his jade worn by someone who wasn’t a cowardly jade thief.

“Tar and Kehn can say they witnessed the duel,” Hilo said. “They’ll lie for me if I ask them to.”

“So you think it’s a good idea?” Uto asked, sounding hopeful.

“I think it’s as good an idea as any,” Hilo said, then he reached down the front of his shirt and pulled Uto’s single piece of graduation jade over his head. “Here,” he tossed the chain and piece of jade to the other boy. The weakening of his jade senses hit a moment later and he gritted his teeth against the sudden desire to snatch the bit of jade back.

Uto stared down at the jade in shock. “But I thought we’d decided to say you beat me in a duel,” he said.

“We did,” Hilo said. “But the victor doesn’t have to take all the loser’s jade and the Horn will never let you swear if you don’t have any jade at all. Say I took pity on you afterwards and gave it back. That won’t even be a lie.”

Uto colored, obviously not missing the barb in Hilo’s comment. “Yes, Kaul-jen. Thank you, Kaul-jen.”

“You’re welcome,” Hilo said curtly, then tossed Uto the keys to the handcuffs. “Now we’ve got a long drive ahead of us. Let’s see if you know you to unlock your own handcuffs.”

~~~~

There were probably worse things in the world than driving for hours on a blindingly sunny day with the worst hangover of your life, Hilo told himself, but the drive was still hellish. He was fairly certain the only reason he made it at all was because of all the jade he was wearing. Gaining a lot of new jade very quickly could induce restlessness even in experienced Green Bones which was something Hilo was not no matter how badly he didn’t want to admit it. The dizzying euphoria of this much new jade raised Hilo’s heartrate and pumped his system full of adrenaline as his body responded to the newness of it all. He was sure that without that boost he would have passed out behind the wheel and killed them both in a horrible crash down the side of a mountain.

When he arrived at the overlook it was a little before five and Uto had been asleep in the passenger seat for hours, much to Hilo’s annoyance. He thought about kicking the other boy to wake him up, but that seemed cruel so instead he just turned off the truck and let his head fall back, half against the headrest and half against the door.

He only intended to rest his eyes for a moment, but the next thing he knew someone was pounding on the driver’s side window right next to his head. Hilo sat up and rubbed at his eyes, groggy, before he remembered where he was and what was going on.

The instant he unlocked the door, it was hauled open and his arms were full of Maik as Tar practically threw himself onto him, clutching him tightly enough to hurt Hilo’s bruised ribs. “I was so fucking worried about you,” Tar said into Hilo’s hair. “I should have told you that you were full of shit and put you to bed or something. I should never have let you out of my sight. I’m never going to let you out of my sight again.”

Hilo hugged his boyfriend back, shifting just a little as he did to try to ease the pressure Tar’s grip was applying to his ribs. “I’m glad to see you too, Tar.”

“Are you going to explain what happened now?” Kehn asked, serious as ever, though he also reached in through the door and gave Hilo’s shoulder a squeeze. “Where did you get this truck from?”

They ended up sitting out on the grass to talk. The nap had helped immensely, but Hilo still felt exhausted and vaguely ill. He found himself collapsed back against Tar’s chest, his head resting on the other boy’s shoulder with his eyes closed while he talked.

He told the tale mostly as it had happened, save that he left out some details which would make it obvious that Uto had been in on the plot. It wasn’t that he didn’t plan to tell the Maik brothers that part eventually, but he suspected that if he told them while Uto was around one or both of them would go for Uto’s throat and Hilo wasn’t feeling well enough to hold them off. Plus, it would probably be useful if Uto thought that Hilo intended to keep the truth of his shame between the two of them. That way Hilo could use the threat that he’d tell Kehn and Tar what had really happened as leverage against Uto if he needed to as well.

“What I don’t understand,” Kehn ventured when Hilo finished the tale. “Is why you were so insistent that Tar and I not tell anywhere that we had heard from you. Why didn’t you just call home and tell the Pillar or Lan-jen what happened?”

“I don’t want Grandda to know about this,” Hilo said. “It’s all really embarrassing, you know? My first night as a Green Bone and I get drunk and get kidnapped by jade thieves? He’ll kill me himself. I’d rather not have to deal with it.” That wasn’t even really a lie, Hilo realized with some discomfort. If he was going to be Horn he needed to get over these hang-ups around Grandda and soon.

“Then what are we going to tell them instead?” Tar asked, shifting Hilo’s head into a more comfortable position on his shoulder.

“Uto and I talked about this on the way here and we have a plan.” Hilo laid out the lie about the duel as quickly as he could. When he finished he opened his eyes and looked over the other three boys. Tar was fidgeting a little, obviously trapped between worry for Hilo, relief that he was alright and excitement at the prospect of trying his hand at hoodwinking Grandda and Lan. Probably Hilo should have been offended by the excitement but very little Tar did annoyed him. Kehn looked more pensive. He was studying Hilo intently, one fist pressed to his chin.

Uto was watching Hilo and Tar with careful glances like he was trying to keep them from noticing. Tar hadn’t let go of Hilo since they’d arrived and they were sitting practically in each other’s laps, their legs twisted together in a way that didn’t leave much room for misinterpretation of the specifics of their relationship. Hilo knew there were rumors about how close he and Tar were, but in this they were ironically protected by Grandda’s reputation. No one wanted to be the first person to say the Kauls were unlucky by calling the Torch of Kekon’s grandson queer. Hilo wasn’t worried about Uto, though. He’d made their positions clear and he trusted Uto to know that starting rumors was contrary to the oath he’d sworn.  

He could tell Kehn was more worried, though, because his gaze kept flicking to Uto repeatedly throughout the discussion and then when they got up and started getting ready to leave, Kehn grabbed Hilo’s wrist, stopping him. “What?” Hilo asked.

“You know, I’m perfectly capable of telling when you’re spinning a tale,” Kehn hissed into his ear. “Tar is too when he’s not so relieved you’re alive that it’s overriding all his higher brain functions.”

Okay, so perhaps this wasn’t just that Uto was obviously questioning Hilo and Tar’s relationship. “What are you saying, Kehn?” Hilo asked.

“I’m saying that this is your chance to convince me that traitorous jade-thieving bastard deserves to keep his worthless life,” Kehn said. “Otherwise, I’m going to throw him off a motorcycle while I’m driving seventy miles an hour down the freeway and call it a tragic accident.”

“I’ve handled it,” Hilo said. “He knows that if this works out he’ll owe me a debt that he can never hope to repay. He’ll do what I tell him to from now on. I’m going to be Horn someday, and it will be good to have it known that even people who loose shamefully to me in duels still want to follow me,” Kehn still looked unsure. “Trust me, Kehn,” he said. “I know what I’m doing.”

“Gods, I hope so,” Kehn said, but when he pulled away and headed for his bike without any more comment Hilo knew he’d decided to trust him.

It wasn’t really his bike, though. The Maik family was too poor to afford a car, so Kehn and Tar rode bicycles everywhere they went. Hilo—who would have access to a greater portion of the money in his bank accounts once he started working for the clan—had plans to buy a car very soon so the three of them could drive places together. He and Tar had had long discussions on what kind of car he should get while lying together on one of the beds in the dorm room they shared at the Academy. They’d agreed that whatever it was it should powerful and white.

However, today the Maiks hadn’t ridden their bicycles out to the overlook, they’d ridden a pair of shiny motorcycles instead. Hilo surveyed them for a minute before he was able to recall why the flames running down the side of the blue one looked familiar. “Are these Juen Nu’s?” he asked.

“Yeah, they are,” Kehn said. “He agreed to lend them to me for the evening.”

“Wow,” Hilo whistled. “What did you have to promise him to get that favor? Your firstborn? All your jade?”

Kehn smiled. “If only it was something so simple. I had to agree to take all his night shifts for the rest of the New Year’s holiday.”

“In other words, you better be really thankful that we came all the way out here to get you,” Tar said, “because Kehn’s about to have a hellish two weeks.”

“I am thankful,” Hilo said, seriously. “Don’t ever doubt that.”

“I know you are,” Kehn said. “Let’s get moving.”

They’d decided to leave the truck at the overlook with the keys in the ignition. Either someone would take it or it would be discovered by one clan or another, but it was unlikely to be connected to Hilo and Uto. Instead they road back into the city two to a motorcycle. Hilo rode with Tar, his arms wrapped around his boyfriend’s waist and his head on his shoulder again. He was very tired still and just wanted to curl up in his bed and sleep, but he suspected it would be some hours yet before that was possible.

They went to Kaul Du Academy first. There was the matter of the training bands Hilo was still wearing to sort out. He couldn’t still have those when they returned to the Kaul house. Fortunately, it was the New Year’s holiday so campus was mostly empty. They entered the administrative building through a window and Tar forced the lock on the door to the main office. Once inside they rummaged through file cabinets until they found a folder containing copies of the forms which were filled out for lost student belongings discovered around campus. Kehn had better handwriting than Hilo and Tar did so he was volunteered to fill the forms out for each stolen training band. The bands were numbered and the administration kept a record of which band was assigned to which student somewhere, so four Academy students were about to get in a lot of trouble for misplacing their jade very soon. Hilo reassured himself that those students really had been stupid enough to allow their jade to be stolen from them so they therefore deserved punishment.

While Kehn filled out the forms Hilo worked himself up to taking the training bands off. Hilo had always hated coming off jade, even when he’d been younger and only allowed to wear a single piece of jade for extremely short periods of time. It was like someone had snuck up behind him and hit over the head, stealing half his senses every single time. He could barely stand it, that horrible feeling of becoming less than what he was supposed to be. Someday, he promised himself, he would never had to remove any jade ever again.

That day was not today, however, and there was no point in putting the withdrawal off any longer. He removed the training bands one at a time and let them drop onto the coffee table. Then he leaned forward, elbows on his knees and clasped the back of his neck, head bowed while he rode out the crash. He gritted his teeth and tried to convince himself that it wasn’t that bad. He still had his graduation jade and Uto’s family heirloom bracelet. If he’d had to take off all the jade the way he’d had to multiple times a day just last week, it would have been way worse. Those thoughts didn’t really help but they did carry him through the worst of it and into the empty aftermath where he was just horribly aware that he could feel so much more powerful than this and that the thing he needed to feel that way had been taken from him. He lifted his head, keeping his face neutral from long practice and deliberately didn’t look at the training bands lying abandoned on the coffee table.

Tar bounced to his feet. “You’re going to be a couple more minutes, right, Kehn?” he asked. “Hilo and I are going to sneak over to our dorm for a minute, then,” he shot Hilo a commiserating look; he knew how difficult Hilo found coming off jade to be.

“Sure,” Kehn said without looking up. “Uto can stay here with me.”

Well, it seemed that just because Kehn had agreed to trust Hilo’s handling of the Uto situation didn’t mean he was willing to let the other boy out of his sight. Hilo wasn’t about to complain, though. He followed Tar back out into the hallway.

“Why are we going to our room?” he asked.

“You need to change before we go back to the Kaul house and face your grandda,” Tar said, matter-of-factly.

Hilo raised an eyebrow. “Won’t it be suspicious if I turn up in clean clothes after fighting a bare-fist clean blade duel and then presumably passing out drunk somewhere for twelve plus hours?”

“I never said you were going to change into something clean,” Tar said. “I was more thinking something that doesn’t look like you killed seven people while wearing it.”

Hilo looked down and realized for the first time that there was blood on his khaki slacks and slate gray collared shirt. No wonder that old man at the gas station had been so afraid of him. “Yeah, that would probably be a good idea,” he conceded.

Hilo and the Maik brothers were good at getting anywhere they wanted either on or off the Academy’s campus regardless of whether they were actually supposed to go there. Getting into and out of their dorm room without being seen was no exception. The campus was dead enough that they might have been able to get away with going through a door, but there were students staying on campus over the break for one reason or another and therefore a chance there’d be an adult at the desk downstairs. They couldn’t risk running into anyone who might wonder why Hilo was covered in blood. Besides, neither of them could quite resist the idea of sneaking into their room one last time.

At the end of last year, Hilo and Tar had chosen their current dorm room in the room lottery because of the ease of escape. It had been obvious that at least some of the hall monitors had known that, but that they also couldn’t prove it and were less willing to stick their necks out on something they had no proof for where a grandchild of Kaul Sen was involved.

Getting out of the room was very straightforward. All you had to do was pop open the window and climb out onto the roof of the lower building next door which contained the hall monitors’ office and some common spaces, then walk across it and drop down onto some large trash bins hidden behind some trees and from there to the ground. Getting back in was a two-person job without jade, because one person had to boost the other person up from the trash bins until they could reach the lip of the roof. Then that person had to haul themself up and lie flat on their stomach to reach down to catch the other person’s hands and haul them up. With jade they could just leap Light onto the trash bins and then up onto the roof. It was actually a little anti-climactic, but Hilo wasn’t sure his ribs would be pleased if he had to do any pull-ups today, so perhaps it was for the best.

The instant they were both inside the dorm, Tar grabbed Hilo’s face in both hands and brought their mouths together. Hilo allowed himself to enjoy the kiss for a minute before he pulled away. “Tar, you know that I love you, but I’ve thrown up today and haven’t brushed my teeth. Do you really want to be kissing me right now knowing that?”

Tar made a face, though Hilo could tell he was half teasing. “Good point. Go brush your teeth then so I can kiss you without being grossed out.” 

Hilo obeyed. There was a small sink in the corner of their room so he brushed his teeth and scrubbed his hands as clean as he could make them, adding “figure out how to effectively clean blood out from under your nails” to the list of things he needed to be sure he learned from whatever Fist he was assigned to. Then he dug through their first aid kit and found some painkillers. He downed a few of those with another glass of water and hoped that would be the end of his headache. He was pretty sure his queasiness was a simple matter of needing to eat at this point, but unfortunately food was probably as far in his future as sleep was.

“I think this is the best I can do,” Tar said. He’d been digging through Hilo’s dirty laundry and had come up with another pair of khaki slacks and another collared shirt. Both articles of clothing were rumpled and obviously previously worn. “This shirt’s grayer than the one you’re wearing, but hopefully no one was looking closely enough at what you were wearing last night to notice,” Tar said.

Hilo changed pants and stripped off his shirt. The blood had soaked through to his undershirt as well, so he pulled it off, wincing as he raised his arms over his head and started to go to his dresser to get a new undershirt.

Tar gasped and crossed the room in a leap. “You said you weren’t hurt!” he cried.

Hilo looked down and realized his side had turned a spectacular kaleidoscope of blues and purples where the jade thief had kicked him. He probably should have expected that given how much his side hurt, but he was surprised anyway. “It’s fine,” he said.

“No, it’s not. Let me look at it,” Tar held Hilo’s arm up with one hand and prodded at his side with the other. “Gods, Hilo, did someone kick you?”

“Yeah,” Hilo admitted. “Several times.” He hissed when Tar pressed down on a particularly tender spot. “Can you not do that?”

“I need to check if there are any breaks,” Tar said. “Why didn’t you use Steel?”

“I’d been stripped of jade at the time,” Hilo admitted. “I did the best I could to avoid the worst of it.”

Tar hummed and kept pressing on Hilo’s chest for a few minutes until he was evidently satisfied and stepped away. “I don’t think anything’s broken, but maybe something could be cracked and I’m not a doctor anyway. You should see a real one as soon as possible.”

Hilo wasn’t going to do that if he could help it, but Tar was obviously worried and Hilo didn’t want to make him more worried. “If it doesn’t get better in a couple days, I’ll see a doctor,” he promised and stepped away to finish getting a clean undershirt.

“And what the hell happened to your thumb?” Tar demanded. “It’s all black and blue too and I know you know how to punch someone without breaking any fingers.”

“Oh, that,” Hilo laughed, realizing he’d neglected to mention exactly how he’d slipped the handcuffs when telling the story up at the overlook. “You’re going to get a kick out of this part of the story.” 

He was right, Tar did get a kick out of how Hilo had escaped from the handcuffs. “You’ve proven yourself wrong!” he crowed. “Never thought I’d live to see that one.”

“Yes, well that’s what I get for disagreeing with you,” Hilo shrugged as he pulled on the other shirt. “Do it often enough and I’m bound to be wrong sometime.”

Tar opened his mouth to retort, but then a sound disturbed the eerie silence of the residence hall outside their room. The public phone in the hallway was ringing.

Tar unlocked the dorm’s door and went out to answer it. After a minute he called, “Hilo-jen, it’s Kehn. He wants to talk to you.”

The words Hilo-jen were what told Hilo the news was bad. It wasn’t that he had never heard Tar call him Hilo-jen before, but every other time it had ever happened it had been playful and joking. This was the first time Tar had ever called him that in earnest and it clearly signaled that the light-hearted moment was over. Hilo left the room and took the phone receiver from him. “Yes?” he asked.

“I finished the forms and then called home to tell Wen not to worry,” Kehn explained quickly. “She says your brother called the house looking for your almost an hour ago. Thankfully, Wen was out in the street when the phone rang and Ma answered, because I never thought to tell Wen not to say that we’d heard from you. Ma told Lan-jen that we didn’t know where you were. I don’t know if she told him that we’d been out searching for you last night. Either way, if you were hoping to catch your grandda before he started mobilizing the clan to look for you, we might be too late.”

Hilo cursed. He had been hoping that he’d be able to get back to the house before Grandda realized that his absence was suspicious. The fallout of this was going to be bad no matter what, but it would be orders of multitude worse if Kaul Sen had reason to think his least favorite grandchild had wasted his and the clan’s time.

“What should be do?” Kehn asked.

“Not much we can do besides what we were planning to do anyway,” Hilo said. “It’ll probably be fine. Likely, he’ll save most of his anger for me and leave the rest of you alone.” Tar took his hand and squeezed it. Hilo squeezed back.

“Where should we meet you?” Kehn asked.

“Back at the motorcycles should be fine,” Hilo said. “Tar and I will be right there.”

“Okay,” Kehn said, then he paused. “Whatever else happens,” he went on. “I’m glad you’re okay.”

Hilo smiled. “Thanks, Kehn. For everything. We’ll see you in a few minutes.” He hung up the phone and took a moment to center himself and start bracing for the wrath of Kaul Sen.

“Hilo?” Tar ventured. He was still holding Hilo’s hand.

“We need to go back to the motorcycles,” Hilo said. “We’re out of time.”

Tar squeezed Hilo’s hand again. “Okay,” he said. “Let’s go then.”

They were still holding hands when they climbed out the dorm window again.