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Figuring out where the Horn of No Peak was wasn’t the easiest thing Anden had ever done, but it still turned out to be entirely possible.
The first thing he tried was calling the Horn’s house. Maik Wen answered and told him that Hilo was staying in the main house until their wedding, but that she’d watched for the Duchesse last night and hadn’t seen it pull in. That meant the Horn had spent the night out in the city as he’d become increasingly likely to do as the situation with the Mountain devolved and that his command post was probably the best place to reach him. She wouldn’t give him the address, Wen apologized, it wouldn’t be the sort of place Hilo would want his student cousin to show up at.
Anden thanked her and then called No Peak’s public relations number, explained who he was and then asked Pillarman who answered for the address. That might have worked, if Woon Papi hadn’t answered instead of one of his underlings. Woon knew the family well and knew that this was information Lan and Hilo wouldn’t want Anden to have.
“Can I at least have a phone number for him?” Anden asked, half desperately, thinking that perhaps if he got the number he could reverse engineer the address through the use of a phonebook, though the thought of how much work that would be made his head hurt.
“Is there something you need to talk to him about?” Woon asked. “He’s going to be calling in to report to Lan-jen in a couple hours. I can ask the Pillar to tell Hilo-jen that you want him to call you.”
“No, that’s okay,” Anden said quickly. The last thing he wanted was Lan to know Anden was trying to talk to Hilo. Maybe the Pillar wouldn’t assume the worst, but Anden didn’t want to risk it. “It’s stupid, really,” he said, glad the phone protected him from Woon’s sense of Perception. “I’m just getting nervous about the Trials and Hilo-jen mentioned something he wished he’d studied for them once, and I forgot what he’d said it was. I wanted to ask him to remind me. It’s nothing that can’t wait until the next time I see him.”
“Okay,” Woon sounded like he might be smelling the rat even without being able to Perceive that Anden was lying. “Are you sure you don’t want me to have Lan-jen mention it to Hilo-jen?”
Suddenly and horribly Anden remembered that Woon knew that Lan was taking shine. Did Woon know that Anden knew? Would he realize that Anden might be trying to figure out where Hilo was so he could break his promise to Lan? Panic tightened his chest. Lan couldn’t figure out what Anden was going to do. He’d be so angry.
He’d almost convinced himself not to say anything after Shae’s words after the relayball game, but Shae hadn’t known what the issue was. Maybe she would have said different things if she had known. Also he knew that this was the sort of thing Hilo would want to know. Even if Hilo ended up agreeing with Lan that the shine was a necessary evil to deal with an injury, it was still information a Horn should have about their Pillar. Even if Hilo screamed at Anden for breaking the Pillar’s trust at least Anden would have assuaged the horrible anxious knot in his chest that said it was wrong to do nothing.
“No, it’s fine,” Anden assured Woon. “As I said, it was a bit of student anxiety. Hilo-jen has more important things to worry about. I’ll ask him next time I see him. I’ll stop wasting your time. Goodbye.” He hung up and then winced. He could have ended the call a bit more smoothly.
“Everything alright, Emery?” Ton asked, passing by Anden and their dorm’s public phone on his way out for the run he took every morning regardless of the weather.
“Everything’s fine,” Anden said.
“Okay, just wondering,” Ton said. “It’s just kind of early for you to be up.”
What was Anden going to say to that? “Actually, I haven’t slept at all, because I spent the whole night angsting over what to do about my cousin, the Pillar of No Peak, who’s currently doping himself on shine to combat jade overexposure because we’re on the brink of war with the Mountain and he doesn’t want to seem like he’s thin-blooded?” Of course not. He might have decided to break Lan’s confidence and go to Hilo, but he sure as hell wasn’t going to tell any of his classmates.
“You don’t have the monopoly on getting up ridiculiously early, Ton,” he said instead with a weak smile.
“I never said I did,” Ton said. “But for some reason the rest of you are always determined to sleep in as long as possible. You want to go for a run with me?”
“No, sorry,” Anden apologized. “I’m actually up because I have an errand to run and I want to be back on campus before our first class.”
“Fair enough,” Ton shrugged. “See you in class.”
“See you,” Anden said, but a new plan was forming and he already knew that was a lie.
~~~~
Five minutes later Anden let himself and his bike out of a side gate of the Academy campus onto a service road. He hopped on the bike and started peddling as fast as he could go. There was an hour and half before his first class started. There was no way he’d be able to track down Hilo, have the conversation he needed to have and then get back to campus in that amount of time. He was going to be counted absent. He wondered how long he’d have before the office called the Kaul house and told Lan that Anden was missing. Half an hour? An hour? More? Less? It wasn’t like Anden to miss class. Would that make the teachers more forgiving, or would they assume he was in mortal peril? If Lan heard that Anden had suddenly gone missing from class would he assume the Mountain was responsible? Or would he correctly guess that Anden was betraying his trust?
In other words he needed to move fast. He peddled through the sleepy streets at full speed, looking for No Peak Green Bones.
It took an excruciating amount of time to find a likely group of Fingers. The trio were young, not very heavily jaded and had obviously been on the night shift. To make it even better one of them had graduated last year, so he would know Anden.
“Hi,” Anden said, skidding to a stop and trying not to gasp too audibly. “I need to know where the Horn’s command post is. Or where he spent last night. Anything. I have an important message I need to deliver to him as soon as possible.”
The oldest and most heavily jaded of the three Fingers blinked sleepily at Anden. “Who are you?”
“His name’s Emery,” the Finger Anden remembered from the Academy jumped in. “He’s the Mad Witch’s son. The Kauls took him in after she lost it.”
Anden gritted his teeth at the Finger’s introduction but forced himself not to comment. “That’s me. I just need the address to Hilo-jen’s command post. The Pillar called me at the Academy and told me to deliver this message, but neglected to tell me the address.” That wasn’t the best lie in the world, but hopefully it would be enough.
The senior Finger was obviously wondering why the Pillar would go through this much trouble to deliver a message when he and Horn surely had secure phone lines they could use, but the younger Fingers were already nodding. “Sure,” the one who had called Anden the Mad Witch’s son said. “It’s—” he rattled off the address and Anden repeated it back to make sure he remembered it. The Finger nodded, obviously glad to be helping with some kind of secretive clan business. Anden felt bad for how much trouble he was going to get into when Hilo or Lan figured out how Anden had gotten this address.
“That’s great. Thank you,” Anden said. “I’ll be on my way.”
He left the Fingers in his dust and peddled like mad to the nearest transit station. He locked up his bike and then spent endless twenty minutes waiting for the bus. He told himself it would take longer to bike there, but it didn’t stop him from pacing in circles until the bus pulled up.
By the time he got off the bus at the nearest stop to his destination, his hour and half was long gone. It was approaching two hours since Anden had left the Academy and he was still a few blocks from the command post. It was too late to worry about the potential consequences, Anden just shouldered his bag and ran flat out. The streets were more alive now and people gave him weird looks and he flew past. He didn’t let it bother him. He had one goal and that was getting to Hilo as quickly as possible.
He’d forgotten to factor the obvious fact that there would be Green Bone guards around the Horn’s command post into his plans or to consider that a boy bolting down the street might be seen to be somewhat threatening.
They didn’t attack him—they could tell he wasn’t wearing jade and wouldn’t break aisho—but they did step into his path deliberately enough to bring him skidding to a stop. “Where are you going in such a hurry?” one asked. He had jade pierced all along his ears and through his eyebrows, probably a Fist by the way the others deferred to him.
“My name is Emery Anden. I’m the Kauls’ cousin,” Anden panted. “I need to speak to the Horn. Is he here? It’s urgent.”
Immediately he knew that this wasn’t going to be as easy as it had been with the Fingers. These Green Bones were older and more experienced and they didn’t know him at all. Of course, they undoubtably knew that the Kauls had adopted Aun Ure’s son after she’d died of the Itches, but that didn’t mean they knew that Anden went by the name Emery or that they had any idea what he looked like. Any good guard would deny him passage.
Anden wracked his brain, trying to figure out how to prove that he really was who he said he was. He knew any manner of personal things about Hilo that wouldn’t be known by just anyone but how did he know this Fist would know those things? Hilo was famously close to the members of the greener side of the clan and openly referred to them as friends, but that didn’t mean they knew personal things about him that a family member would know.
“What’s going on here?” a voice called. The Green Bones turned and Anden looked over their shoulders to see his salvation approaching in the form of Maik Tar.
“Maik-jen!” he called. “Is Hilo-jen here? I need to talk to him.”
Tar did a visible double-take at the sight of Anden standing in the middle of the street surrounded by Green Bones. “What are you doing here, Emery?”
“I need to talk to Hilo-jen,” Anden repeated, trying not to sound as desperate as he actually was. It occurred to him that he’d be joining the ranks of these Green Bones in just a few short months and that he should be putting in an effort not to seem so much like a panicked kid. “Is he here?”
“He’s upstairs,” Tar said. “He just got off the phone with the Pillar.” Anden’s stomach sank. “You’re not supposed to be here,” Tar said, apparently oblivious to Anden’s feelings or perhaps just ignoring them, “but since you’re here, I guess I better take you to him. If only so we can figure out who told you to come here.”
“Thank you, Maik-jen,” Anden saluted and hurried forwards. The Green Bones guards returned to their posts without comment.
Tar walked fast. Anden didn’t have trouble keeping up but he did wish they could have gone slower so he could catch his breath. As it was he was still panting when he and Tar finished climbing the command post’s stairs and entered a large room.
Shades were pulled down over the windows, but there were lamps in the corners as illumination instead. Along the walls were several different telephones; various extra moon blades, talon knives and guns; an electric kettle; and an assortment of nonperishable and quick to prepare foods. In the middle of the room was the large table with a number of maps of Janloon spread out across the top. Hilo was standing over the table surrounded by half a dozen heavily jaded Fists, deep in conversation.
“Good news, Hilo-jen,” Tar announced and Hilo stopped midsentence. “The Mountain doesn’t have your cousin again,” he gestured over his shoulder at Anden who suddenly wished he could melt down into the floor as the weight of the gazes of seven of the most powerful men in the clan settled on him.
Anden hadn’t really considered what kind of reaction Hilo would have to him showing up at a command post he wasn’t supposed to know the location of first thing in the morning, but he was pretty sure the pure confusion that he got would not have been in his top five.
“Andy?” Hilo asked. “What are you doing here? What question about the Trials could possibly be so important to make coming all the way out here at the crack of dawn worth your time?”
Evidently Woon had told Lan about his call after all. “That was a lie,” Anden choked out.
That made Hilo even more confused. “What do you mean?”
Anden winced. That was not how he should have started this. “I lied to Woon-jen about why I wanted to talk to you. I didn’t want him to tell Lan what I actually wanted.”
“Alright…” Hilo was overcoming his surprise and getting suspicious, though of what was hard to tell. Anden wished he knew what Woon had told Lan and what Lan had told Hilo. “You do realize that you’re absent from class, don’t you? Kaul Du Academy called the house to inform Lan. We thought the Mountain might have had another go at kidnapping you.”
“I’m sorry, Kaul-jen,” Anden said, ducking his head. “But I really need to talk to you.”
“About what?” Hilo asked.
“I need to talk to you privately,” Anden said. “Please, Hilo-jen. I came all the way here because I couldn’t talk about this over the phone.”
Hilo just looked at him for a minute. Anden knew that the Horn could Perceive his sincerity and seriousness but feared that wouldn’t be enough until Hilo sighed and stepped away from the table. “Fine, Andy, we’ll do this your way. Kehn, I’m going to drive my cousin back to the Academy. Do me a favor and call the Pillar to let him know we found him?”
Anden almost protested and asked that they not tell Lan he was here, but he didn’t know how Hilo would react to that and while he might be betraying Lan he didn’t want to cause him unnecessary anxiety. “Thank you, Hilo-jen,” he said instead.
~~~~
Hilo’s Duchesse Priza was parked under an awning behind the building. It wasn’t necessarily hidden, but it wasn’t in plain view either. Anden and Hilo climbed and Hilo started the car and backed out into the alley.
Anden had spent the entire morning trying to get in this position with Hilo and now that he was here he found that he couldn’t speak. He fiddled with the strap of his bag until Hilo lost patience.
“Alright, Andy, let’s get going,” he said. “You’ve been trying to get me alone since the ass-crack of dawn, so I assume whatever you have to say is actually important.”
Anden took a tight breath. “I made Lan a promise that I think I shouldn’t have made,” he burst out.
Hilo raised an eyebrow at him. “Lan isn’t the sort to extract bad promises from people,” he said. “I would trust any promise he asked of me and you should too.”
Anden’s chest tightened. “That’s basically what Shae said too,” he muttered.
“Wait, you talked to Shae about this already?” Hilo asked. He sounded mildly offended and Anden remembered to late the intense rivalry Hilo and Shae had had when they’d been younger.
“Not really,” he said. “I more just tried to convince her to go to the house to visit Lan. I’d hoped that if she did she’d realize what was wrong on her own without me having to actually break my promise not to tell, but that was foolish of me. She didn’t agree to go anyway and even if she had, you must have seen him in person recently and if you haven’t noticed anything, why would she?”
“What do you mean ‘I’d hoped that if she did she’d realize what was wrong on her own?’” Hilo asked. “Is something wrong with Lan that I don’t know about?”
Anden almost breathed a sigh of relief. Hilo had gotten halfway there on his own and that made the rest of the betrayal easier to complete. “A couple weeks ago Lan called me and asked me to pick something up for him. I had to go to an apartment in the Crossyards district and pick a padded envelope up from a man who lives there. Then I was supposed to give the envelope to Lan and no one else. I wasn’t supposed to tell anyone I’d done it and I wasn’t supposed to look in the envelope. Only one time I looked in the envelope.”
“And?” Hilo prompted when Anden didn’t immediately go on.
The last of Anden’s leeriness collapsed and suddenly he just wanted to say it, to get it over with. “Hilo-jen, the envelope was full of shine.”
Hilo almost crashed the Duchesse.
Anden gripped the car’s door as the Duchesse swerved towards the sidewalk. He saw several pedestrians leaping out of the way. Hilo cursed and cranked on the wheel, straightening the car out. He turned down a quieter side street and pulled over. Then he turned, sliding across the bench seat to trap Anden against the side of the car, one hand placed on the door and the other on the seat near Anden’s head. Anden shrunk back, both from Hilo’s expression and from his aura. Hilo’s jade aura was always intense—he was an intense person and he wore more jade than almost everyone Anden knew—but he’d never felt this volcanic explosion from his cousin before. He had not realized how good-tempered Hilo normally was around him before.
“Anden, are you saying what I think you’re saying?” Hilo demanded.
Anden nodded feeling small and horrible and afraid. “Lan-jen caught me looking in the envelope,” he said, his voice tiny. “He said that he was injured from the fight with Gam and that the shine was a necessary medical precaution until he got better and could carry all the new jade without it. That’s when he made me promise not to tell anyone. Not even you.”
Hilo stared down into Anden’s face for a second or two more, but he could obviously Perceive that Anden was telling the truth. He pushed himself back and collapsed back onto the driver’s side. “Fuck,” he breathed.
Anden started talking, “I know that I’m disobeying a promise I made directly to the Pillar. I know that I’ve proven myself to be unworthy of all the kindness your family has shown me and unworthy to be a Green Bone and—”
“Andy, shut up,” Hilo ordered.
Anden shut his mouth so quickly that his teeth clacked together. He watched the Horn process the implications of this news in silence, fighting the urge to continue apologizing. He knew he’d done the right thing—Hilo’s reaction proved as much—but that didn’t make him feel any better.
Hilo ran a hand down his face. “Fuck,” he repeated. “I should have fucking known. I knew he was injured after the fight with Gam. I knew that he was struggling to carry all that jade the night of the fight. I made him take the new jade off for a while, but he seemed better the next day so I thought it was fine. I never checked up on it. Stupid.”
Anden had never seen Hilo like this before. It wasn’t that he’d never seen Hilo admit to a mistake before—for all his arrogance Hilo was actually fairly good at that—but he’d never seen this level of self-recrimination before. He felt like he should say something to comfort his cousin, but had no idea what would be appropriate.
Hilo let his head thump back against the window with a sigh. He sat like that for a few stretching minutes, then he straightened up, turned forwards and put the Duchesse back into gear.
“Where are we going?” Anden asked.
“I’m taking you back to the Academy like I told Kehn I doing,” Hilo said. “You’re missing class.”
Class was the last thing on Anden’s mind so he couldn’t believe Hilo—who had been infamous for skipping class for any reason he could think of as a student—remembered it. “What about—” he began.
“Once you’re back where you’re supposed to be I’ll go have a talk with Lan,” Hilo said. “But first we need to make sure you don’t get a misdemeanor for this whole thing.”
~~~~
The office ladies at Kaul Du Academy were rumored to have worked there since the school opened. Anden wasn’t sure that was true, but they had all definitely worked there when Hilo had attended the Academy. Anden could tell because they were visibly not pleased to see him saunter into the office with a talon knife at his hip and his moon blade across his back and Anden trailing at his heals.
“Hello,” Hilo said with a smile completely at odds with the stony expression he’d worn on the entire drive. “I’m just bringing my cousin back. I’m sorry he missed class. There was some family business to take care of and we forgot to call the absence in. What do I need to sign?”
The two women working the desk exchanged a look. They obviously thought Hilo was full of shit, though whether that was because he was Kaul Hilo and had a reputation here or because Lan had been shocked that Anden wasn’t in class when they’d called in his absence was hard to tell. However, they also couldn’t very well call a Kaul out on something like that.
“Right here, Kaul-jen,” one woman said handing him the binder with the excused absence forms in it.
Hilo filled out and signed the form quickly, then graced the office ladies with another smile. “One last thing, would you mind if I have some privacy and the use of one of your phones? I need to call one of my Fists.”
The identical looks on the office lady’s faces said that they really did mind, but it was also obvious that they knew that Hilo was the Horn of No Peak now and that they couldn’t actually refuse him. One put her phone on the counter so Hilo could reach it and then they both roused their colleagues from the rooms deeper in the office and they all filed out to wait in the hallway. Anden started to follow, but Hilo stopped him. “What class are you missing?”
Anden glanced at the clock. “Algebra.”
Hilo grinned, though tension still hung around his eyes. “Then you’re not missing anything important. Wait a minute. I’m just going to call Kehn and tell him I won’t be heading straight back.”
Anden couldn’t disobey the Horn any more than the office ladies could so he stayed. Hilo dialed and lifted the phone to his ear. The phone on the other end was picked up quickly. “Eiten-jen, it’s the Horn. Can you give me to Maik Kehn? Thanks.” He waited a moment then spoke again. “Kehn, I’m at the Academy. Something’s come up. I’m going to—” He trailed off as Kehn evidently interrupted him. “Sure, go ahead. Is something wrong?”
Hilo listened to his First Fist then cocked his head to side in confusion. “What do you mean, Lan said to tell me something strange?” He listened again and his face calcified into an expression Anden had never seen him wear, a sort of mute, sickened horror. He reached out very deliberately and braced himself on the corner of the countertop. “Did he say anything about why it was so vital I hear that Andy doesn’t know what he’s talking about?”
Anden’s blood ran cold, he dropped into one of the chairs for people waiting in the office, his knees too weak to hold him. He pressed his palms to his eyes to hold back tears. He’d really done it. Lan would never trust him again.
“No, it’s fine. That was mostly a rhetorical question anyway,” Hilo said. His voice sounded wrong, strangled almost. “I think I’ve got a clear picture of the situation. Thank you for passing the message on to me anyway.” He took a deep breath. “I’m going to have to deal with some family stuff today, Kehn. I don’t know how long it’s going to take me. Keep all our balls in the air for me, okay? Have Juen help Tar with the Doru shit. I’ll call you and check in when I can. And…” he paused for another deep breath and Anden realized with something between shock and horror than Hilo was trying not to hyperventilate, “You didn’t tell anyone what Lan said to you did you? No? Good. Continue not telling anyone. And see what you can do to shut down rumors about why Andy showed up this morning. I’ll call you later.”
Anden heard him put the phone back in the receiver and a minute later the Horn dropped heavily into the chair next to him. He listened while Hilo pulled out a cigarette and lit up, then the back of his hand bumped against the back of Anden’s. “Here, Andy, this will help.”
Anden lifted his head just a little and saw that Hilo was offering him a cigarette. He took it, raised it to his mouth, inhaled and immediately choked.
On any normal day Hilo would have keeled over laughing if he’d done that, but today the Horn barely seemed to notice. He lit another cigarette and raised it to his own mouth. His hand was visibly shaking. Hilo hadn’t entirely believed him in the Duchesse, Anden realized. Maybe the not believing had been subconscious, but he’d held out hope that Anden had been wrong somehow. Ironically, in trying to get Hilo not to take Anden seriously, Lan had done exactly what needed to be done to convince Hilo of Anden’s truthfulness.
Hilo didn’t say anything until he’d finished his first cigarette and lit a second one. When he did speak it was with in a toneless voice that Anden had never heard from him before. “I’m not going to lie to you, Andy. This is bad,” he said. “Really bad. Though I’m glad you told me.”
“I should have told you sooner,” Anden said miserably.
“I’m glad you told me at all,” Hilo said, he turned to look at Anden. “I understand that in doing so you’ve broken Lan’s trust, but it wasn’t fair of him to ask you to keep such a secret even from members of your own family. Obviously the rest of the clan can’t know about this, but you did a good thing by telling me, no matter how furious Lan gets at you for it.”
“Thank you, Hilo-jen,” Anden said. He didn’t have the heart to say that wasn’t going to make him feel any better.
Hilo squeezed his shoulder and got up. “I need to go. This situation won’t get any better by procrastinating on handling it,” he said that casually, but he was close enough that Anden could feel his aura writhing and churning with uncertainty, with a desperate sense of “what the fuck do I do?!” “You should go to class,” his cousin said. “Even if it is fucking Algebra.”
Anden made an effort at smiling.
“I’ll call you tonight,” Hilo said. “Let you know how it goes. I think I still remember the extension for the year-eight dorm you’re living in from when I was a student. If not…” he grabbed a piece of what Anden hoped was scrap paper off the counter and scribbled a phone number on it. “This is for a phone in the command post. Call there and ask for me. If I’m out, I’ll let whoever we leave manning the phones know to expect your call.”
“Okay,” Anden whispered.
“Being a Green Bone isn’t just a matter of blindly following your superiors, Andy,” Hilo said quietly. “Neither is being part of a family. My Green Bones know they can question me if I make nonsensical decisions and I’m sorry that you got the impression that you couldn’t do the same for Lan’s decisions. Lan’s health is what matters in this situation. I’d rather he be furious at both of us for the rest of our lives than dead from shine addiction or the Itches. Does that make sense?”
That, Anden thought, was likely the closest thing to wisdom anyone had ever heard from Kaul Hilo. “That makes sense,” he said.
“Good,” Hilo said. “Now I really do have to go,” and he swept from the office.
Anden was still sitting in the chair, staring the butts of his and Hilo’s cigarettes in the ashtray when the office ladies bustled back in talking quietly amongst themselves. He listed forwards and pressed his face into his pants legs.
“Mr. Emery, is everything alright?” one of the office ladies asked.
“Yes,” Anden said, voice muffled. “Everything’s fine.”
“Then I think you should go to class,” the woman said pointedly. “Before you miss another class period.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Anden stood up, gathered his bag and headed into the hall.
After all, what else could he do now?