Fonda Lee - Jade War

Anden was not certain if that was still true. Standing in the Kaul courtyard, he wished he had just enough jade to be able to Perceive his cousin’s aura, because Hilo’s face was unreadable. “I’m sorry, Hilo-jen,” Anden said. “I shouldn’t have agreed to do anything if Wen was involved.”

Hilo didn’t answer for so long that Anden wondered if he’d even heard. “Wen made her own choices,” the Pillar said at last. “I know how persuasive she is, how she gets her way when her mind is set on something. You’re the only reason my children aren’t motherless right now.” A wounded and confused expression flitted across the Pillar’s face. His voice turned hoarse and fell almost to a whisper. “She disobeyed me, went behind my back for years . How can I ever forgive that?”

Anden dropped his gaze to the paving stones. “It was never about going against you, Hilo-jen—for me or Wen. I know what it’s like, to not be the person your family expects you to be. And how hard it is to act for yourself after that.” He cleared his throat; his voice had gone scratchy. “It’s not your forgiveness we need. Just your understanding.”

Silence fell in the courtyard, disturbed only by the warm wind that stirred the leaves in the cherry tree and the surface of the pond in the garden. “You have to move back home, Andy,” Hilo said quietly. “I’ve missed you.”

Anden had been waiting to hear those words come out of his cousin’s mouth for years. Now, however, he felt no great relief or happiness—only the sort of heaviness that comes from wanting something for so long that the final achievement of it is a loss—because the waiting is over and the waiting has become too much a part of oneself to let go of easily.

“I’m enrolling in the College of Bioenergetic Medicine,” Anden said. “I’ve already spoken to their admissions department, and if I get my application and fees in this week, I can start in the coming year. Channeling was always my strongest discipline at the Academy. Killing Gont Asch made me feel like a bloodthirsty monster, but—” He tried, for the first time, to put his decision into words. “This time, when I used jade, I didn’t want it for myself. I wasn’t trying to overcome anyone else. I was only thinking of Wen, and the jade was just a tool in my hands that I could use to pull her away from death.”

Anden let out a shaky breath. The memory of those few desperate seconds was etched indelibly into his mind, more recent and vivid than even Gont’s death or his mother’s madness. “Maybe I can wear jade in a different way. If I’ve learned anything in Espenia, it’s that there’s more than one way to be a Green Bone. I’m coming back to Janloon to stay, and I’ll wear jade again, like you always wanted me to, but only to heal, never to kill.” Anden paused; Hilo hadn’t said a word to interrupt him the entire time. “I wouldn’t ask the clan to pay my tuition,” Anden finished.

Hilo’s mouth went crooked halfway between a grimace and a grin. “You think I care about the school fees? You haven’t changed as much as you think you have, Andy.” The Pillar rose from his chair at last and walked past Anden to the patio door. When Anden turned around, he saw the Kaul children standing at the glass, staring out at them. Hilo slid the door open and said, “Come out, you three.” They ventured out shyly. Ru ducked his face and went behind his father’s leg. Jaya toddled forward with an excited screeching noise and fell to examining bugs on the pavers.

Anden crouched down. “Hello, Niko. Do you know who I am?”

The boy gazed at him with large, calm eyes full of interest and mild skepticism. “You’re my uncle Andy,” he said.

“The one I’ve told you so much about, who was studying far away in Espenia,” Hilo added. “He’s come home to stay now, so you’ll get to know him. Would you like that?”

Bero got off from his shift in the kitchen of the Double Double. He’d been working there for almost a year now, the longest he’d ever held any kind of job in his life, and he finally had enough money saved to move out of the charity home for recovering addicts. Eiten-jen had agreed to provide a reference letter so Bero could get an apartment of his own again. He hung up his apron and walked out of the casino where not long ago he’d contemplated ending his life by jumping from the penthouse level. Strolling down Poor Man’s Road, he passed the glittering lights of the Palace of Fortune and the fountain in front of the Cong Lady. Across the street, a new casino was being built. Posters on the chain-link fence surrounding the construction site advertised the opening of the Green Lotus casino by Enke Property Group in ten months. The influx of Espenian servicemen on leave had kept Janloon’s gambling tables busy over the last few years, and although most of them would soon be gone, the business owners in the Armpit district were optimistic that with the end of the Oortokon War, high-rolling foreign tourists would return to the city in greater numbers than before.

Bero walked south until he reached the end of Poor Man’s Road and crossed into Dog’s Head. The difference was stark; on one side of Janto Avenue, the Armpit swarmed with commercial activity and well-dressed people spending money; on the other, small brick shops looked down on narrow streets, laundry hanging from the open windows of their second-floor apartments. Bero stepped over a sleeping dog to enter an unmarked door on the right-hand side. He climbed the narrow stairway to a lounge on the upper floor. In the evening, people would fill the small dance floor and sweat to jiggy music or sit on the red benches and converse over brandy, but that would not happen for several hours yet. Right now, the lounge was empty except for three men who sat around a table, playing a game of cards and smoking while the bartender polished glasses behind the counter.

The card players glanced up when Bero approached. One of them, a man with a square hat and a thick beard down to his chest, said, “Ey?” He looked disreputable, almost certainly of mixed blood. Bero pulled out the crumpled single-page leaflet from his pocket, the one that demanded, in bold black font, Join the Revolution!

“You handed this to me on the street the other day,” Bero said.

“Aha,” said the man, brightening at once, and shifting his chair over to make room for another seat at the table. “If you’re here for the meeting, you’ve come to the right place.” He spoke with a foreign accent, introducing himself as Guriho, and his companions as Otonyo and Tadino.

“I wasn’t expecting shotties,” Bero said, looking at the choker of bluffer’s jade around Otonyo’s throat. He’d had enough of the barukan.

The men bristled, and Bero felt he’d made a mistake. Tadino said, “Call us shotties again, and I’ll cut your fucking balls off and salt them.” He looked like the sort that might do it, too, his face all angles and hard lines. “We’re Oortokon, which is an independent country of the Ygut Coalition.”

Bero shrugged; geopolitical distinctions didn’t matter to him. “You’re barukan, though.”

“Ex-barukan. Did my time already and starting life anew.” Otonyo placed a finger under the chain of nephrite links encircling his neck. “I wear this because it’s symbolic. It’s to show that jade is a tool of oppression, allowing those in power to stay in power and keep the rest of us imprisoned. Here in Kekon, it’s the Green Bone clans. In Espenia, it’s the military and the merchant class. In Ygutan, the aristocracy. As jade spreads, it’ll be the same story all over the world.”