Fonda Lee - Jade War

There were fifty students in the program, hailing from all over the world. There were four Tuni and two Shotarians in the class, but Anden was the only Kekonese. The teacher was a bearish woman with hair the color of wheat. When Anden answered her question about where he was from, she initially thought he said, “Callon,” a city in Stepenland. The students were seated together at round tables and encouraged to get to know each other. Anden decided that he would be polite, but he was not here to make friends—which was just as well since during the lunch break, social groupings quickly formed based on ethnic background. Anden might’ve tried to join in at the table of Tuni youths, but he did not, as he was instinctively distrustful of them; the Kekonese view themselves as superior to neighboring races.

In Anden’s mind, there were two ways to deal with his situation: give in to despair and sleepwalk through the year, or grit his teeth and prove that he could conquer this punishment. Despite the fact that he was clearly starting out as one of the least proficient students, he was determined to work harder than all the others. Book studying had never been a strength of his and so he was not surprised that reading and writing Espenian proved to be a constant struggle, but he soon discovered that he was much better at picking up on spoken language. Whenever he could, he sat in the campus food court, on public benches, or at bus stops, and eavesdropped on nearby conversations, sometimes echoing the words in his head, forming them silently in his mouth. He clung to the idea that the sooner he graduated, the sooner he would go home.

Over the following months, when he was not in class or studying, he tried to make himself useful to his hosts. His time spent working at the furniture store in Marenia had made him handy with tools and chores; he fixed a sagging door, caulked drafty windows, and turned some discarded boards into a shoe rack. He accompanied the Hians on errands and carried things.

“ We should be paying you to stay with us,” Mrs. Hian exclaimed. “We’ve had students room with us before, but most of them want to explore, to go out and enjoy themselves in the city. You work too hard.”

Their neighborhood, Anden discovered, was like a quilt—there were several distinct cultural enclaves side by side within it. Many families of Kekonese descent lived in the dozen square blocks around the Hians’ row house, but Anden could cross a road and find himself in an area that was entirely Tuni, where the residents shouted out to their children in that guttural language, and the eye-watering smoke of clay-pot cooking rose from portable hearths on every front stoop. The rest of the broader Southtrap district, which extended west to Lochwood and east to Quince, was lower- and working-class Espenian.

One afternoon, Anden missed his bus, and as it was a warm spring day by Port Massy standards, he decided to walk back to the Hians’ home. It took him nearly two hours, but he was proud to be making his way alone in this foreign city and gaining a better understanding of its layout. Along the way, he grew thirsty and stopped into a convenience store on the corner to buy a soda and bag of nuts. He counted out the copper Espenian coins on the countertop. The shop owner, a large man with a mustache, said something cheerful that Anden took to be a pleasantry. As he was still not confident in anything that came out of his mouth, Anden merely nodded and smiled. This was a recurring problem—on first appearance, he could pass for Espenian, and it was invariably awkward and embarrassing when strangers tried to speak to him.

As he made his way toward the exit of the store, two men came in. They didn’t stop to browse for merchandise, but went straight up to the counter and began speaking to the owner in an initially cordial tone that quickly turned rough and threatening. Anden paused at the threshold and turned back in time to see the shopkeeper open the register and nervously count out a stack of cash, which he handed to one of the intruders. His eyes darted briefly toward Anden, as if hoping for a stranger’s assistance. Anden stood indecisive, one hand on the door. These were not his people; he did not know what was going on and did not want to get into a bad situation.

The amount of money surrendered was apparently insufficient because more sharp words were delivered. One man grabbed the two nearest store fixtures and pulled them forward, spilling candy bars and sunglasses across the floor. The store owner let out an angry shout of protest. The second man seized him by the hair and banged the owner’s forehead into the top of the cash register with a painful-sounding clang, then shoved him violently backward. The shopkeeper crashed out of sight. His two assailants left; Anden backed out of the way as they pushed past him. One of them paused long enough to snarl directly in Anden’s face, “What’re you looking at?”—it was the first time Anden so clearly understood something said in Espenian—but the other man hurried them both out the door, which jangled shut behind them.

Anden’s pulse was galloping. He felt as if he should’ve done something, but he wasn’t sure what. He knew instinctively that it would’ve been a bad idea to get in the way of the two men, but he didn’t know what a person was supposed to do here in Espenia when he witnessed trouble. In Janloon, he would’ve run out and reported the incident to a Finger in the clan, or a Fist if he could find one.

The shopkeeper groaned and began pulling himself to his feet behind the counter. He did not seem badly hurt, and Anden, with a distinct sense of shame but a desire not to have to interact with the unfortunate man further, pushed through the exit and escaped down the street.

Mr. and Mrs. Hian were distressed by how late he was and berated him for not phoning them to be picked up. They became more upset when he explained how he’d walked home and what had happened along the way. “Those men are in the Crews. They work for Boss Kromner,” Mrs. Hian exclaimed. “Don’t go there from now on!”

Anden wasn’t bothered by the idea of certain parts of the city being off limits; in fact, it was oddly reassuring to realize that there were clans and territories in Port Massy, just as there were in Janloon. With that in mind, he suspected that the shopkeeper had been a Lantern Man of sorts, and the two men had been sent to collect on delinquent tribute payments. He was glad he had not foolishly interfered in an unknown clan’s business, but he was troubled by the situation because it struck him as remarkably coarse. In Kekon, it was rare for Green Bones to treat even the most troublesome Lantern Man so badly. The clans were enmeshed in every aspect of society; failing to pay reasonable tribute meant losing the clan’s patronage, which would make life difficult in a myriad of ways. An unreliable Lantern Man might find it hard to open a bank account, buy a house, or put his children in school. There was no need to threaten or injure him.

Anden thought about this as he tucked into Mrs. Hian’s gingery fish soup. “Why doesn’t the store owner go to this Kromner and ask for some lenience?” he asked. He was certain that a not-insignificant percentage of his cousin Shae’s job as Weather Man was negotiating accommodations with Lantern Men, albeit at a higher level than that of corner store owners.

Mr. Hian chuckled, then turned serious once he realized that Anden was not joking. He stood up and rummaged in the cardboard box on the floor that held an accumulating stack of discarded newspapers, until he pulled out an edition of the Port Massy Post from a week ago and flipped through it to the page he was looking for. Mr. Hian put down the paper and pointed to a black-and-white photograph of a heavyset Espenian man in a dark suit and tie, getting out of a black ZT Toro with a woman in a long white fur coat. Anden was still not good at reading Espenian; the headline had something to do with police corruption.