Fonda Lee - Jade War

Anden’s jaw tightened. “You’ve never asked me about this before, Dauk-jen, but I’m sure you know: I was sent here to Espenia because I refused to be a Green Bone. It’s been years since I’ve worn jade. I don’t know whether I’d be able to control it, or what it would do to me. That makes me too unpredictable to be useful in this situation. Even if that weren’t the case, I swore to myself that I wouldn’t put on jade again. That’s the one thing I can’t compromise.”

Dauk was silent for longer than Anden expected. He seemed to be debating with himself. At last he said, “I understand, and I appreciate you being frank about your past. So let me do the same. It’s time we talked about the one thing I can’t compromise.”

When I arrived in Port Massy with my mother and sisters, I was fourteen years old. One of my sisters, the youngest, died of pneumonia only two years later. My older sister, she ran away with a man that my mother didn’t approve of, and we stopped hearing from her. So after that, it was only my mother and me. We lived in an apartment over a public laundry house. What I remember most about that place was the smell of the soap that everyone used back then—Purely’s Rock Soap—and the damp. The windows were always steamed up and the paint on the walls was bubbled and peeling. In winter, you could feel the damp even more, it was terrible.

Almost all of us who lived in the neighborhood had fled the old country because our homes had been destroyed or our relatives imprisoned or executed by the Shotarians. Our parents had been proud Green Bones or Lantern Men in the One Mountain Society, but in Espenia, we had no status. We were refugees with nothing. Everyone looked down on us, even the Tuni immigrants who lived on the other side of Beecher Street thought we were lower than them. But we were proud of who we were and where we had come from, and we kept to the old ways.

When I was in my twenties, I worked as a deliveryman for an appliance store owner named Ito, who I think used to be a good man but had suffered too much and gone a little crazy. Ito was a Green Bone whose family, like many others, had brought their jade with them to Espenia but did not dare to wear it openly on the street. We were outnumbered by foreigners of all sorts and we saw theft everywhere around us. Children stole from shop carts, hoodlums stole from homes and businesses, the Crews stole from everybody. All with little consequence. We had come to a land of thieves. So anyone who had jade did well to keep it hidden. Although I was born and trained in a Green Bone family, my father and my uncles had been taken by the Shotarians and their jade taken with them. So my family was poor even by the standards of our neighborhood.

Like I said, Ito was a good man but had gone a little crazy. One day he got into an argument with a Shotarian customer. As a child in Kekon, Ito had watched his own sister raped by Shotarian soldiers and his older brother beaten until he could no longer walk or talk, so Ito hated Shotarians even more than the rest of us did, almost with a kind of madness. That evening, offensive words were exchanged, and then things got out of hand and the Shotarian man ended up dead on the floor of Ito’s shop. I was the only one who saw it happen. Ito turned to me with a wild look, and in that instant, I saw that he was thinking that I was the only witness and he would have to kill me too, to make sure no one found out what he’d done. Quickly, I reassured Ito that it had not been his fault, that it had been an accident brought about by the other man’s provocation. Thinking to save my own life, I offered to help Ito get rid of the body.

It was a horrible thing that we did. We cut that Shotarian’s body into pieces and we paddled a rowboat up the Camres, sinking them into different sections of the river, weighed down with cement. I had nightmares about it for many years. Sometimes I still do.

Even after I’d helped Ito with this grisly task, I feared for my life. What had happened unhinged the man even more. Whenever he looked at me, I knew he was trying to Perceive my sense of guilt and wondering if I would talk. He was still thinking about killing me. Looking back, I think the stress had gotten to him and he was beginning to suffer from the early stages of the Itches. In Kekon, someone in the clan might’ve noticed; a caring friend or relative might’ve made him seek medical help, but he was alone in Port Massy and I was the only one who knew.

The police came poking around, asking questions about the Shotarian man’s disappearance. Of course, no one told them anything because the police are not trustworthy and half of them take money from the Crews, but rumors began spreading within the neighborhood that Ito had something to do with it. Ito became convinced that I had started those rumors, but now he hesitated to kill me and confirm the existing suspicions about his guilt. People grew worried. A Green Bone who loses control and goes mad is a danger to everyone, especially in Espenia, where people do not understand jade and where it would only bring more negative attention from outsiders.

There was another Green Bone in the neighborhood, a young man named Rohn Toro, who was known for being a good fighter that even the Crews respected and would hire for some of their jobs. Rohn had gotten into trouble with the law before, so the police suspected he was responsible for the murder of the Shotarian man. They came to arrest him, but Rohn fled and went into hiding. For weeks, he remained in a basement and didn’t emerge. Rohn and I were acquainted and lived in the same building, so I brought him food while he kept out of sight.

People began to grumble about Ito. They could forgive him for killing a Shotarian man and covering up the deed, but it was wrong for him to remain silent and let another Green Bone be accused and likely executed in his place. Ito, though, thought only of his own skin. He had a weak character and would never have lasted as a Green Bone in Kekon. Ito found out where Rohn was concealed and was about to go to the police with the information. Once Rohn was arrested and punished in his place, Ito figured he would be in the clear. All that would be left to do was to get rid of me as well.

When I realized what Ito was planning, I went to Rohn Toro and we decided to act. Together, we ambushed Ito on his way to the police station. There were two of us, and Rohn was younger and stronger in jade ability than Ito. We killed Ito and took his jade.

I had no special skills or standing in the community, except that even then, I was known as someone who was honest, and I was good at listening and speaking reasonably and convincing people to my way of thinking. With Ito dead, I went around to all the neighbors and told them what had to be done to prevent any further trouble. When the police came around searching for Rohn, over a dozen people came forward to say that Ito had been the murderer and had fled the city. Sure enough, the police found the Shotarian man’s wallet and traces of his clothes and blood in Ito’s shop—that was how stupid the man was—but they never found the man himself. The important thing was that they didn’t come after Rohn or anyone else.

The true murderer was punished, the neighborhood was spared further police scrutiny, and a Green Bone who could not be trusted was removed from being a danger to us all. The community saw this as my doing, and they began coming to me to deal with other problems, some small and some big, and over time they began to call me the Pillar. But in my heart, I knew that even though the outcome was all for the best, the gods knew what I had done.

I’d been Ito’s accomplice in covering up the murder of an innocent man. Even if he was a Shotarian, he didn’t deserve to die and he didn’t deserve to have his body desecrated. His family had no remains to bury and he would’ve gone to the afterlife in pieces. And even though Ito was surely planning to kill me, he was a man who was in pain who had shown me kindness and given me my first job and livelihood to support my mother and my young wife. I murdered him in cold blood and disposed of his body as well. The gods knew. I think they understood why I did it, and so they weren’t too harsh. So I’ve been fortunate in my life in most ways. Except one.