Fonda Lee - Jade War

“We were,” Sammy said, turning to where Dauk Losun knelt beside Rohn Toro’s body. The Pillar of Southtrap rocked back on his heels, tears running freely down his rough face.

Anden shot to his feet, swayed, and stumbled to where Wen lay motionless on the concrete. He tore the bag off her face and pressed his ear to her chest, praying he would hear a heartbeat. He had learned basic first aid at some point in his life, and he struggled to remember what to do if a person was not breathing. He tilted Wen’s head back and opened her mouth, sealing it with his own, and breathed out in two hard puffs. He began doing chest compressions. How much time had passed? It couldn’t have been more than a few minutes… perhaps… He breathed into her mouth again. “Please,” he begged all the gods, “please.”

Wen remained limp.

Sammy crouched down beside Anden and put a hand on his shoulder. “She’s gone, crumb,” he said. Anden stopped in midmotion. In desperate epiphany, he whirled, his eyes wild, and scrambled to the duffel bag still lying open on the floor, out of reach the whole time that Rohn Toro had needed it most. Anden grabbed Rohn’s black gloves and hurried back to Wen; before anyone could even ask him what he was doing, he shoved his hands into the jade-studded lining.

Sharp, physical pain radiated from his broken fingers all the way up his arm and he whimpered, clutching his wrist, curling his body around his injury and bracing impatiently for the more profound pain to come. It had been so long since he had worn jade that he expected the rush to arrive like a sledgehammer, and he readied himself. In his mind, he coiled, the way a man might crouch, arms extended, balanced on the balls of his feet, optimistically hoping to catch a boulder hurled in his direction. Anden breathed in, then out, and for the second time in his life, sensation and awareness engulfed him in a maelstrom of energy. It was not as much jade as he’d once handled in the final battle against Gont Asch, but it was still enough to make his skull feel as if it were being blasted apart. He threw his head back, mouth open and gasping, but he did not cringe from the onslaught; through it all he was aware of the passage of time. Every second he took to adjust to the jade rush, every instant of delay, was one he could not afford.

He had only one chance, and it was now .

With a wrenching force of will, he grasped the jade energy with skills that were ill-used but not forgotten. He bent the flow of energy to his will; he pulled it into a single focus. His eyes were closed, but he could sense the presence of the people around him, breathing, pulsing, living creatures, and he ignored them all. He concentrated only on the form beneath him, the body that had been alive only a few minutes ago—and he saw it for what it was—an organism that had once throbbed with energy but in which the current was now stilled and rapidly draining.

Anden pressed his clenched fists down over Wen’s chest and Channeled. The energy surged into Wen’s heart and lungs. Anden hung on to it the way one might with shaking arms control the shaft of a thrust spear. With his jade abilities straining to their utmost, he squeezed .

Wen’s heart convulsed in his grasp. It gave a juddering spasm and beat once, twice, and then continued to beat, forcing blood through vessels and organs, back into her brain. Anden’s entire body trembled with unbearable effort; sweat bathed his face as he continued to press. Wen’s lungs contracted. She gave a great, heaving gasp, her back arching on the floor. Her eyes flew open.

Anden released his hold on her, turned away, and vomited. His hands were shaking too badly for him to remove the gloves; he tugged them off with his teeth and let them fall to the ground. Wen stared up at him in abject confusion and pain, and then tears sprang into her eyes.

Jade energy crashed out of Anden like a weight dragging him through his own body toward the center of the earth. He was utterly drained, exhausted and empty, as if he’d run for days or crawled through a desert. He pulled Wen into his lap and began to sob, and she clutched him and they rocked together on the floor of the garage, only dimly aware of Dauk Losun and the other Green Bones of Southtrap standing around them, staring and silent with astonishment.

Shae scrambled across the floor of her bedroom and grabbed up the receiver as soon as the phone rang. Anden’s voice, dampened by the long-distance connection, sent her sagging against the bed in relief at first, but he sounded so strange that her alarm surged again. “Shae-jen,” he said, “sorry I didn’t call you on time. It’s done, it worked as we planned, but we were ambushed afterward, and… the Crews…” Anden’s voice caught audibly in his throat. “Rohn Toro is dead.”

“Are you and Wen all right?” Shae demanded.

A pause. Her cousin was breathing hard. “I’m not sure yet,” he said, almost too quietly for her to hear, even with the phone pressed hard against her ear. “If I give you a number, can you call me back? I’m on the pay phone at the hospital and running out of coins; I think this call is going to cut out soon.”

After Shae returned Anden’s call, he told her what had happened, with enough faltering throughout that she could tell he was still in shock and having difficulty grappling with his emotions. “How will we tell Hilo?” he cried. Shae told him not to worry about that, she would handle it, and to call her again in two hours so she would know he’d made it safely home.

Shae was reeling when she hung up. She took several minutes to compose herself, then placed yet another long-distance call to the personal residence of Hami Tumashon, catching him before he went to bed and instructing him to go to the hospital at once and spare no effort on the part of the Weather Man’s branch office to make all the urgent and necessary arrangements.

Shae dressed and walked across the courtyard to the main house. In the kitchen, Kyanla was sitting at the kitchen table, coaxing Jaya to eat from a bowl of porridge. The toddler banged her fists on the high chair and flung a spoon onto the ground. “Where’s Hilo?” Shae asked.

The housekeeper’s brows rose in worry at the tone of Shae’s voice. “The Pillar is in the training hall, I think. Is everything all right, Shae-se? Are you not going into the office today?”

Outside the training hall, Shae paused and leaned her forehead against the door. Her dread was worse than it had been in the cabin with Doru, worse than standing across from Ayt Madashi, knowing she might die. She could Perceive her brother’s aura and her nephew’s small presence and she hesitated, reluctant to take the next step, to ruin the moment, to destroy everything.

She slid open the door. Hilo and Niko were sitting on the floor playing Blind Miner, a game that Shae recognized immediately, one that every Green Bone family played with their children. A piece of cloth was spread on the floor; it covered a dozen small rocks, only one of which was a piece of jade. Niko was feeling the cloth and the hard objects underneath. He tapped one of them and Hilo whisked the cloth away and grinned. “Another point for you.” It was a silly, simple game to pass the time, but it was also a way to expose children to jade and begin to attune them to its physical effects. Which one makes you feel good when you touch it—a little warm, a little tingly?

Niko looked up and said, “Do you want to play, Auntie Shae?”

“No, Niko-se, not right now,” Shae said. “I need to talk to your uncle.”