Jade City

by Fonda Lee

They were entirely taken aback. They’d never seen him this angry before, not in eight whole years. But Lan was dead, and things were different now. Different from how they’d been in the Gathering Hall on the night of the typhoon, back when Anden had still believed that his cousins had everything under control and there was no need for him to speak up.

  Even in grief Anden had dwelled on the fact that Lott Jin had said barely a word to him in weeks, had seemed to outright avoid him. Seeing Lott’s mouth hang open in amazement now gave Anden a burning rush of cruel satisfaction. Why was Lott always so selfish? Did he think that he was the only one who ever feared for his life, or who wished things were not the way they were? How dare he speak so arrogantly, as if he could simply give up on the clan and walk away?

  Lott’s mouth snapped shut. “Have I offended you, Emery?” He drew out the syllables of Anden’s name in an exaggerated Espenian accent, emphasizing their foreign sound. “I didn’t realize it bothered you so much to hear anyone question the clan or say a single word against the great Kaul family.” Lott’s eyes glittered. “You might be First of Class, but none of us have taken oaths or been given rank yet. You can’t tell us what to do or how we can talk.”

  “We’re year-eights,” Anden shot back. “No Peak is depending on us. The lower years will be watching to see what we do. That kind of talk is bad for the clan, and you were having it out here in the middle of the field, where anyone could hear you.” He flung his rebuke at the other student in a mounting fury; doubts were like viruses, easily spread from mouth to mouth. “Your father’s a Fist; you should know better.”

  “Don’t tell me what I ought to know, and don’t talk to me about my da,” Lott snarled, and suddenly there was a dangerous charge in the air. They were both wearing jade today, and Anden felt the other young man’s aura flare like a grease fire. The huddle of year-eights shifted nervously. Dueling was forbidden on Academy grounds and there were instructors nearby. Already, some of the other milling students and their relatives on the field were pausing to glance over at their group.

  “Come on, now,” said Ton, stepping partway between Anden and Lott. “We’re all a little jade-addled from today. Maybe we were talking a little too freely. I don’t think there was insult meant from anyone here, was there?” He looked pointedly at both Lott and Anden.

  “I suspect there was,” Lott said angrily, but then his gaze slid abruptly behind Anden’s shoulder and he stopped. In the same instant, Anden felt the unmistakable liquid heat of Kaul Hilo’s jade aura wash over him.

  “Andy.” Hilo put a hand on Anden’s shoulder and joined their circle as if he did it every day. “Kehn told me everything—said you were incredible today. All I caught was the awards. Had to come see you up there as First of Class, at least. Sorry I couldn’t make it earlier.” Hilo’s lips rose in the lopsided insouciant smile he’d always possessed, but Anden could see that he’d changed. His youthful appearance was shot through with darker shadows that played around his eyes and mouth. There were angles to his face and fresh scars on his hands. The Pillar’s presence quieted the group at once, disrupted its direction like a boulder landing in the center of a small stream.

  “I … I’m glad you could come at all, Hilo-jen,” Anden managed.

  Hilo said, “Introduce me to your friends, Andy.”

  Anden went around the circle. When they reached Lott, Hilo said, with great interest, “The son of Lott Penshugon? I’m sorry your father couldn’t be here to watch you in Pre-Trials. I’m sure he wanted to come, but I’m counting on him to hold the Sogen district for No Peak.” The Pillar appeared not to notice Lott’s tense shoulders and rigid face, and said even more amiably, “I’ll tell him how well you did. He says you can throw a knife even better than he does, and you’re the sort that can carry his jade, I can see that already. You should talk to Maik-jen. Anytime; no need to wait until the graduation ceremony to do it.”

  Lott’s face and neck flushed. “Thank you, Kaul-jen.” His jaw twitched as he saluted Hilo, his eyes jumping sideways to Anden for a suspicious instant.

  “That goes for all of you,” the Pillar went on, his eyes sweeping around the small circle of year-eights. “I’ve been telling Andy you’re the biggest, strongest class to come out of the Academy in years. I’m already old compared to you. You’re the future of the clan and a credit to your families.”

  “Thank you, Kaul-jen,” Ton said, and the others echoed him.

  “Our blood for the clan,” Dudo added fervently, dipping deeply in salute.

  “Soon, my friend, but not yet,” said Hilo lightly, tugging Dudo up by the back of his collar. “You’ve got two more months to be an Academy student. Not just a student, but a year-eight. It’s practically your duty to make the lives of the lower years miserable and to get the masters to declare you the worst class ever by the time you leave. Every class does it. I’d tell you some stories from my year, but it’s the night after Pre-Trials—why aren’t you all racing off campus to get drunk by now?”

  Several of them laughed, then thanked the Pillar again and hurried away with backward glances. Lott cast one final unconvinced look at both Anden and Hilo, then followed the others.

  Hilo walked with Anden across the mostly empty field. His voice changed, lost its lightness. “You and Lott’s son were ready to have it out back there. What were you having words with him about when I arrived?”

  “It wasn’t important,” Anden mumbled. As angry as he was at Lott Jin, he was hesitant to speak badly of him in front of the Pillar. But Hilo continued to wait expectantly for an answer, until Anden felt he had to respond. “He was saying the clan won’t get as many Fingers as you think it will. That those who have a choice won’t want to take such a risk during wartime.”

  “We won’t get oaths from all of them, that’s true. Maybe not even as many as we’re hoping for. Is that why you were so angry?”

  “It was the way Lott was talking, Hilo-jen. He was being disrespectful.”

  Hilo nodded in understanding. “You were putting him in his place, then?”

  “I …” Anden wasn’t sure. There was the faintest teasing suggestion in Hilo’s voice and in the curve of his eyebrow. Anden was appalled to think that his cousin might suspect some other reason for his emotional outburst at Lott. “I had to say something.”

  “Andy,” said Hilo sternly, “a lot of those boys who’re your classmates now will be your Fingers later. You’ve got to learn: There’s a way to discipline a man so he hates you forever, and another way to do it so he loves you all the more for it. To know what it is, you have to know the man. What do you know about your friend back there?”

  Anden hesitated. What did he know about Lott Jin?

  Hilo said, “I’ll tell you what I know: His old man’s a boor. As loyal and green as they come, lucky for us, but Lott Pen walks through life like he’s begging for someone to start something with him. Always glaring, never a kind word to anyone. The sort of person who kicks dogs. No wonder his son mouths off and has such a gloomy face. Not sure how to be his own man, with a father like that. Not sure what to think of the clan.”

  They were walking in the opposite direction of the dormitories, but Anden followed without a word. He had the feeling that Hilo was telling him something he thought was very important: valuable advice for a future Fist. Hilo said, “What you were saying to him just as I came up—it made your friend feel less than his da, and he couldn’t handle that. He’d have taken any scolding or beating from you so long as it made him seem better than his old man.”

  No one could deny that Kaul Hilo had a way with his people. It came from a genuine concern, and was a talent more mysterious to Anden than any jade ability. They passed through the entry gates and walked down to the parking lot where the Duchesse was parked. “People are like horses, Andy. Fingers and Fists too—everyone. Any old horse will run when it’s whipped, but only fast enough to avoid the whipping,” Hilo said. “Racehorses, though, they run because they look at the horse on their left,
they look at the one on their right, and they think, No way am I second to these fuckers.”

  It began to rain, lightly, a cold winter drizzle. Anden glanced anxiously at the sky and rubbed the outside of his arms, but Hilo stood with his hands in his pockets, elbows jutting loosely forward as he leaned against the Duchesse. “Sometimes, Andy, the people you think you can count on, they let you down in a bad way, and that’s hard to take. But for the most part, you give a man something to live up to, you tell him he can be more than he is now, more than other people think he’ll ever be, and he’ll try his godsdamned best to make it true.”

  Anden had the sudden and distinct impression that he was being gently chastised for failing today, in his reaction to Lott and the other year-eights. If it hadn’t been for his cousin’s appearance, he’d have antagonized the very students Hilo was depending on to join the ranks of No Peak in the spring. Anden dropped his eyes; he understood that he, too, had been given something to live up to. “You’re right, Hilo-jen.” It wasn’t enough to be a Green Bone, even to be First of Class—he had to be a Kaul.

  “Don’t look like that,” Hilo said. “Like you think I’m disappointed in you when I’m not. We all have to learn. You stood up to another man and demanded respect for the clan. That shows your heart was in the right place, and that’s what matters. Now, let me see the new green you got for being First of Class.”

  Anden handed his cousin the small green box. Hilo opened it and removed the single round stone, the size of a shirt button and twice as thick, mounted with a simple metal clasp. He held the piece up and studied it. The jade was a flawless, vivid, translucent green, edging nearly into blue. Even in the low light at the end of a cloudy day, it seemed almost to glow in Hilo’s fingers. The Pillar made an appreciative noise in his throat, and for an instant, Anden felt an insensible anxiety, a wild, irrational possessiveness, the sudden desire to seize back his prize.

  His cousin smiled as if he could read this instinct in Anden’s face or in his aura. He reached out and took Anden’s left wrist. With a deliberateness that was almost tender, he loosened the leather training band and set the fourth jade stone into a vacant grommet next to the three others. He closed the clasp over the leather so it sat snugly against Anden’s skin, then adjusted the band’s buckle to fit. “There,” he said, giving his cousin a playful tap across the cheek. “That’s better, isn’t it?”

  Anden closed his eyes for a minute, reveling in the new energy that streamed like light through his tired muscles and frayed nerves. Even with his eyes closed, he felt as if everything was deliciously clear and heartbreakingly beautiful—the rain striking his skin felt as if it sizzled with sensation, there were a hundred thousand different notes of sound and smell and taste in the breeze, and his cousin’s aura—the shape and place and quality of it—was clearer to him than sight. Anden laughed, a little self-conscious at grinning so stupidly. He could do Pre-Trials all over again, right now, and do better than he had before, he was sure of it. Every piece of jade gained was like an improvement on the realness of the world, the power he had over his own body and everything around it. He opened his eyes to see Hilo watching him with pride, but also envy. “Do you feel this way every time you get new jade?” Anden asked.

  “No.” Hilo glanced away. He put an unconscious hand to his chest. “You never forget your first stones—the first six or so. You remember the day you got each one, how you got it, what it felt like, everything. The ones after that add less and less. Every Green Bone levels off at some point. When you’re carrying all the jade you’re meant to carry, adding more doesn’t make a difference. With some people, it goes the other way—it starts ruining them.”

  Anden’s euphoria slid away at Hilo’s words. Ruined. His mother, his uncle, now Lan—it seemed wrong, disrespectful, to think of them in that way, but what other way was there? Even the wondrous rush of new jade could not suppress the apprehension that rose in Anden—for himself, for others. He could see just a few of Hilo’s jade studs in the space under the collar of his shirt and between the first two buttons, always left undone. But he knew that there was more adorning his cousin’s torso, many dangerous trophies added in the last month alone. “That won’t happen to you, Hilo-jen, will it?” he asked, unable to hide his worry.

  Hilo shook his head a little sadly. “I don’t feel anything anymore.”

  CHAPTER

  42

  Old White Rat

  The back of the Paw-Paw Pawnshop was one of a few places that Tem Ben could be found conducting business with those daring and foolhardy enough to be on the bottom rung of the black market jade trade. It was, Tem thought with satisfaction, a robust industry these days. The Green Bones were busy killing each other with enthusiasm, so criminals of all kinds were enjoying a reprieve. There was still the Janloon police to keep an eye out for, but really, all they did was fine petty crime, manage traffic, and clean up after the clans. They were civil servants, not fighters. Most possessed no jade at all. Nothing like the beautiful specimen Tem was currently examining under a 10X loupe. Under magnification, it displayed the characteristic uniform interlocking grain pattern that distinguished true Kekonese jade, the rarest, most valuable gem in the world, from all other inert green decorative rocks.

  Tem frowned to keep his delight hidden from the twitchy Abukei man standing in front of his desk, chewing his bottom lip with crooked teeth stained red with betel nut juice. Tem waved a hand to gesture him back from blocking the light of the single overhead lamp. The Abukei man had good reason to be nervous; the jade he’d brought in was embedded in the hilt of a well-worn talon knife. Lifting a Green Bone’s weapon was a far greater offense than river diving—almost certainly fatal if one was caught. This shifty, ropy man didn’t look like an experienced or cunning thief. Tem suspected that, like the other cut jade specimens he’d seen lately, this particular piece had been taken from a corpse. Green Bones were diligent about collecting the jade from their fallen enemies, but in a chaotic street war, sometimes things were overlooked in haste, weapons were lost, fast scavengers could get lucky.

  Tem was curious, but his stated policy was no questions asked, and he stuck to it. He moved the loupe away and blew out sharply into his thick mustache. “There are some imperfections,” he lied. “Forty thousand dien.” The stone was worth twice that much, but the man was eager to get rid of the knife, Tem could tell.

  “Is that all?” the man wheedled, clearly suspecting that he was being cheated. “I’ve made nearly as much as that for river rocks before. This is a real talon knife.”

  “Jade is more plentiful these days,” Tem said. “Forty thousand.”

  It was still more money than the man had ever seen. He took the stack of bills Tem counted out for him and left, looking unhappy. It wasn’t as if he had much of a choice. With Three-Fingered Gee feeding the worms, and Little Mr. Oh having seen the excellent wisdom of retiring from the business, a jade thief in these parts would have to trek clear across the city to find another reliable buyer.

  Alone in the pawnshop’s back room, behind the glass cases of watches and jewelry and the wall of secondhand televisions and speakers, Tem Ben caressed the hilt of the wickedly sharp talon knife and grinned at his purchase. He unwrapped an Ygutanian toffee in celebration. He could not find them anywhere in Janloon and had to have a friend mail them to him. There were times when he missed his adopted country, but he had to admit winters here were far more pleasant, and there were lucrative opportunities on Kekon. It was fortunate that Ayt Mada understood the value of stone-eyes and rewarded him accordingly. Another year or two of this and he could live like a king in Ygutan. The Pillar had even promised there would be clan work and good money for him there once he returned. Of course, his family still considered him an unspeakable embarrassment, but being filthy rich was the best sort of revenge.

  The bell over the front door rang as someone entered. The shop was closed to regular business; another jade seller perhaps? Tem leaned over to the peephole in the w
all, which gave him clear line of sight to the front of the shop. A man in a short tan coat and billed hat stood at the front, barely moving, as if he were listening for something. Casually, he turned around and locked the door with gloved hands.

  In an instant Tem knew the man was here to kill him. The jade carver slid open his desk drawer and extracted a loaded pistol—a Ankev semiautomatic with enough stopping power to take out an Ygutanian steppe bear—and pointed it at the entrance of the back room as he dropped the talon knife into a satchel of rolled money. Quietly, with the bag in one hand and the gun in the other, Tem backed away toward the pawnshop’s back door. He turned the knob and pushed. The door held firm. Tem shoved it hard with his shoulder. It budged slightly but stopped again; there was a metallic clanging sound from some obstacle barring the door from opening.

  Fear swept over Tem. He dropped the bag and put his back to the door, the Ankev hefted and ready, waiting for the man to round the corner. If he’s a Green Bone, wait to shoot. Wait until he’s too close to Deflect. Empty the whole magazine. If he avoids the first shot, the others will get him. Steel won’t stop an Ankev. Nothing stops an Ankev, not one man, no matter who he is. And Tem was an excellent shot.

  He couldn’t hear the man’s footsteps. Indeed, the pawnshop was disturbingly quiet. Sweat trickled down the side of Tem’s face, but he didn’t move. He waited. Still, nothing happened. Then suddenly, loud crashing erupted from the front of the shop as several heavy things hit the floor. Glass shattered. Tem stood rooted; was the man searching for something? Searching for jade? Was it his talon knife Tem had in his satchel? The carver took a sideways step toward the peephole and leaned down—

  The wall next to him exploded in a spray of splinters and plaster. A man’s fist punched straight through the thin interior drywall and seized Tem’s wrist in a crushing grip of immovable Strength. Too late, Tem realized all the noise had been the sound of the Green Bone clearing the stacks of televisions and electronics from in front of the wall separating them. The seemingly disembodied arm protruding from the wall gave a violent twist and broke Tem’s wrist the way one might dislocate a chicken wing joint. The stone-eye howled as the Ankev pistol clattered to the floor.