Fonda Lee - Jade War

Mr. Hian said, “This Blaise Kromner—he’s a bad man. A criminal. He’s known to sell drugs and to deal in women. His people do all the work so he is never caught, but he has a nice car, nice clothes, and is always going to parties and being photographed. Do you think he cares about the store owner, or even knows who he is?” Mr. Hian folded the newspaper up and put it back in the bin. “Anden-se, the Crews aren’t like clans. All they care about is money. They never give, they only take. That store owner pays and pays, but gets nothing.”

Anden received another shocking cultural education two weeks later, this time much closer to home. He was returning to the house in the evening, carrying a bag of groceries he’d gotten for the Hians, when he heard shouting from one of the open windows across the street.

This was not uncommon; there was a Kekonese couple living there that fought like animals all the time, sometimes screaming at each other late into the night. The man’s voice could be heard clearly. “I ought to kill you, you fucking cunt!” There was a crash, more shouting from both parties, then abruptly, the woman burst from the front door in her nightclothes and ran, it seemed to Anden, straight into traffic.

Anden envisioned her being smashed like a loose goat on the freeway and flying off the hood of an oncoming car. A bicycle swerved out of the way and the young man riding it leapt off with a startled curse. Anden dropped his bag of groceries and started forward even though he knew in that instant that there was no way for him to do anything in time.

The young man who’d been riding the bicycle lunged and grabbed the distraught woman. In a burst of Strength and Lightness, he dragged her back to the sidewalk. Cars shot past a hand’s breadth away, honking loudly. The woman’s astounded husband—shirtless, drunk, and enraged—ran up yelling unintelligibly. He staggered as the bicyclist turned and threw a Deflection that hit him at the knees. As he stumbled forward again, another Deflection caught him in the midriff and he sat down hard, as if he’d been clotheslined at the waist.

The wife ran sobbing into a neighbor’s house down the street, not even bothering to thank her defender. After a minute, the husband got to his feet and retreated back to the house, muttering curses but keeping his murderous glare averted.

Anden found his voice. “You’re a Green Bone,” he shouted in Kekonese.

The young man across the street looked over, pushing the disheveled hair off his forehead as if to see Anden better. He laughed, showing a broad flash of white teeth. “And you’re a fool islander,” he shouted back. He dusted off his pants and gathered his bicycle.

Anden stared, his mouth open in astonishment. He couldn’t see any jade worn on the man’s body, but it must be there. The Green Bone swung his leg over his scuffed bicycle and glanced back at Anden, still standing on the sidewalk, groceries spilled behind him.

“You didn’t think there was anywhere else in the world where people have jade?” The man waved mockingly and pedaled off, calves bunching, ropey shoulders leaning over the handlebars. Anden stared after him until he was out of sight.

Possibly, he thought, not everything in Espenia was strange and unbearable.

The meeting between the Pillars of the Mountain and No Peak clans was held in the town of Gohei, roughly seventy-five kilometers from the heart of Janloon. The last time Kaul Hilo and Ayt Mada faced each other in person had been a year ago in Wisdom Hall, in a negotiation that had spanned the course of several days under the jurisdiction of a mediation committee arranged by the Royal Council. Unlike that event, which had been a public performance that both clans knew would not result in any real agreement, the event in Gohei was known only to a handful of Green Bones in the top leadership of both clans. Gohei was controlled by the minor Black Tail clan, which had no tributary status or formal allegiance with either the Mountain or No Peak, so the proceedings would take place on neutral ground. The meeting would happen over the course of a single afternoon. Each clan paid for the presence of two senior penitents from the Temple of Divine Return. All these details were arranged between the Weather Men and signaled that the discussions would be taken seriously.

Hilo, Shae, Kehn, and a small group of their closest aides—Tar, Woon, and Juen—arrived in Gohei shortly after noon and were met at the house of the Black Tail clan’s Pillar. Durn Soshunuro, his wife, and three of his four children greeted the visitors with great respect. The only one not present was Durn’s oldest son, who was waiting somewhere away from the premises—an understandable precaution that no one would begrudge the family for, given the slim but dangerous possibility of the negotiations breaking down in dramatic fashion and the hosts being blamed or caught in the center. Durn’s uncle had been a wartime comrade of Ayt Yugontin and Kaul Seningtun but had afterward eschewed living in the big city, preferring to reside in the countryside. With Ayt’s and Kaul’s blessings, he formed his own small clan and took jurisdiction over Gohei, which at the time was a farming community that also acted as a trading post with the Abukei tribes and a stopping point for travelers on the way to Janloon.

Following Janloon’s decades of expansion, Gohei had since become more of a far-flung suburb—Hilo had seen barely any break in the urban landscape on the drive here—and Durn Soshu was highly motivated to remain on good terms with both the Mountain and No Peak, knowing that his own clan’s continued independence relied on it. Even it if was only a matter of time before Black Tail became a tributary entity, Durn was a wise enough Pillar to want that transition to occur peacefully. He had seen what bloodshed the big clans were capable of and wanted to avoid his family—only half of whom even wore jade—ever being on the receiving end. So he put his entire home at the disposal of the visitors and arranged the large sunroom to be the meeting place, with the proper number of chairs in their positions and a jug of cold citrus tea and glasses already set in the center of the table. Two of the penitents stood in the corners of the room and the other two were situated in the front and back halls so there was nowhere on the main floor not within spiritual purview. Hilo thanked Durn graciously and Woon discreetly handed Durn’s wife a green envelope in consideration for the trouble they had gone to.

It was a good thing that Hilo had already spoken at length with Shae and Kehn and had mentally prepared for the meeting during the car ride, because Ayt Mada and her people arrived only a few minutes later. When they entered the room, the number of jade auras crowding Hilo’s mind seemed to dim the sunlight pouring in from the large windows. It was the first time he’d gotten a close look at Nau Suen, the new Horn of the Mountain, and his eyes and Perception lingered a little longer on the man who’d stepped in to replace Gont Asch. Nau was tall and lean, and though he was in his early fifties, he looked like the sort of person who would get up at sunrise to run five kilometers before breakfast. Perhaps because of his prior career as an instructor at Wie Lon Temple School, Nau carried his jade stacked on his wrists, on leather bands similar to the sort used by students. An unblinking gaze and cool, probing jade aura suggested that very little escaped his notice.

Ayt Mada appeared unchanged and straightforward in appearance, wearing a pair of blue slacks and a white blouse, but commanding in the intensity of her assured stare and dense aura. “Kaul-jen,” she said, and seated herself comfortably in one of the two chairs pulled up close to the table. Wordlessly, Hilo sat down in the seat across from her. The Horns and the Weather Men took their seats slightly behind their Pillars, and the remaining Green Bones stood watchfully against the walls. Durn and his wife came in with plates of light snacking foods—sliced fruit, small nut paste buns, salty dried meat cakes—and poured cool tea into glasses. Durn’s youngest child, a girl of about eight, followed close behind her parents. With the nodded permission of the Pillars, Durn made a point of also pouring his daughter a glass of tea and letting her help herself to the snacks, so there was no suspicion of anything wrong with the food. Durn saluted deeply to both Ayt and Kaul, then drew the long window shades for privacy and silently withdrew.