Jade City

by Fonda Lee

  The seat at the other end of the table was empty. Ayt had not arrived yet. Hilo checked his watch. He leaned back in his chair and smiled at those assembled, apparently at ease as he waited. “Ayt-jen must’ve stopped to key my car.”

  A nervous chuckling from some around the table. Mr. Loyi half smiled and Mr. Kowi laughed out loud, but Vang and Nurh looked unimpressed. Most of the people in the room, regardless of clan, regarded Hilo with a mixture of nervous respect and cloaked disdain; they didn’t know what to make of the wolfish young Pillar. Hilo didn’t particularly care for them either. Puppets behind puppets.

  In the seat slightly behind and to the left of him, Shae’s aura grew a little louder in his mind, and she rapped a pen on the arm of her chair, as if in a warning reminder that they were here to improve their standing with the council, not worsen it.

  Silence descended abruptly over the room. The politicians that had been chatting quietly noticed and straightened back to the table expectantly. It took Hilo a second to realize that the change was in reaction to him. He had gone entirely still, his gaze resting unfocused on some middle distance as his Perception stretched beyond the walls. Ayt Mada and her Weather Man had entered the building and were making their way toward the room. His enemy’s jade aura was dark, dense, and molten, like lava flowing inexorably closer, building in heat. It exuded a calm, unrelenting malice directed unmistakably at him, and as she could no doubt Perceive him where he sat, the intensity of their long psychic stare was such that Hilo felt there was almost nothing left to say by the time Ayt entered the room a minute later. Everything that was going to happen today had already happened. The rest would be meaningless talk.

  As he had expected, Ayt’s physical appearance was of little note in comparison to the impression left by her aura. She was dressed in black, with a cream-colored blazer, and wore no handbag, jewelry, or makeup. She strode in, appeared faintly amused by the waiting crowd, and settled into the chair opposite Hilo at the other end of the table. Short, slick-haired Ree Tura took the seat behind her left shoulder.

  “Good afternoon, councilmen,” Ayt said.

  “Ayt-jen.” The politicians beholden to the Mountain nodded in her direction. They paid her respect, that much was clear, more than the No Peak councilmen paid to Hilo, whose lips twitched slightly, his eyes still fixed on the other Pillar. With Ayt’s entry, the room changed. Where there had been businesslike anticipation, now there was a tension preceding something inevitable. The air held the quality of a taut bowstring, of the blade before it falls, of the space between hammer and pin. Even the suits in the room with no ability in Perception sensed it easily enough.

  The chair of the committee, a woman named Onde Pattanya who was one of the few independent council members, was brave enough to stand up and start the meeting. She cleared her throat. “Respected Green Bones and fellow members of the Royal Council, we meet in Wisdom Hall today, in good faith and in the spirit of the Divine Virtues, under the watchful eye of the gods”—she glanced meaningfully at the penitents in the corners—“and under the auspices of His Heavenship, Prince Ioan III.” She inclined herself toward the portrait of the sovereign on the wall.

  “May he live three hundred years,” the room murmured in dutiful chorus.

  Hilo quelled a smirk as he glanced at the oil painting on the wall. It depicted a stately, heavy-browed young man in the traditional long-robed garb of Kekonese nobility, sitting on a wide, cushioned chair with one hand resting on the sheathed moon blade across his lap and the other holding a fan of palm fronds, representing the monarch’s role as warrior and peacemaker.

  It was an archaic symbolism. The moon blade was traditionally a Green Bone weapon; Hilo was quite certain the prince had never drawn a real one. Members of the Kekonese royal family were forbidden from wearing jade, an edict codified in the national constitution after the throne was reestablished following the Many Nations War and independence from the Empire of Shotar. Hilo had seen the prince, who was considerably less majestic in real life, during public festivities at New Year’s and other major holidays, and there was a large, framed photograph in the Kaul house of the monarch bestowing Hilo’s grandfather with some royal honor for national service. Prince Ioan III was popular as a symbol of Kekon’s unity and history, but he was a figurehead, a man who lived a comfortable, state-funded life of ceremonial duties. His splendid portrait was in the room, but he was not. He merely gave his blessing to the Royal Council, which represented the people and passed the laws. Ninety-five percent of the council members held clan affiliation and were funded by powerful Lantern Men, who were themselves tributaries of the clans. Real power in Janloon, and by extension the entire country, rested in the clans, in the two Pillars whose hatred for each other pervaded the length of the room like a pungent odor.

  “Let me begin,” said Councilwoman Onde, “by applauding Ayt-jen and Kaul-jen and their Weather Men for taking the important step of being here, and signaling their willingness to resolve differences through negotiation instead of violence. I speak on behalf of the entire Royal Council in expressing my sincere hope that we will soon reach an agreement that will return our city to a state of peace. We are scheduled to meet here for five days, but all of us on the committee are committed to staying as long as necessary to assist in reaching an agreeable outcome. Of course,” Onde put in with an optimistic smile, “if we conclude early, all’s the better.”

  Hilo thought glumly about all the time that would be wasted—time in which he was kept away from the critical battles that were being fought throughout the city. While he was in here, Kehn was in sole command of the war, and while Hilo had faith in his Horn, he would be deluding himself not to admit that Gont outclassed the Maiks as a strategist and fighter. Ayt could afford to sit here; Hilo could not.

  “We’ll begin with an opening statement from each side,” said Onde. “By coin toss, the Mountain will proceed first. Ayt-jen.” She sat down and picked up her pen.

  Ayt let a pause settle, just short of uncomfortable, before she said, in a clear, even voice that reminded Hilo of an Academy lecturer, “I’m deeply saddened that the rift between the two great clans of this country has led to bloodshed. However, my father—let the gods recognize him—impressed upon me the responsibility that Green Bones hold, to protect and defend the common people. When those who depend on us for protection are threatened, we have no choice but to respond.”

  She held a hand out to her Weather Man, who immediately placed a sheet of paper in it. “For some time now, No Peak’s overly aggressive tactics have harmed respectable citizens and businesses. For the enlightenment of the committee, Ree-jen has listed merely a few examples.” Ayt glanced at the paper in her hand. “Construction on the Reign of Luck Casino was delayed for three months due to sabotage, which was explicitly ordered by the Horn of No Peak at the time …”

  Hilo listened silently to Ayt’s extended list of grievances. He kept his expression mild and unchanged, but impatience and anger built inside him. He could reply to every single one of the accusations. Yes, he’d ordered his Fists to disrupt the construction of the Reign of Luck Casino, but only because the building contract had been outright stolen from No Peak. Yes, he’d allowed his men to cripple those three Mountain Fingers—because they’d vandalized and terrorized a string of No Peak properties. Ayt went on with an accounting of old sore spots, some stretching back two years or more, none of them material to the war now.

  When Ayt finished, Councilwoman Onde thanked her and reminded everyone there ought to be no discussion until No Peak had had a chance to respond. Onde turned to Hilo and asked if he was ready to make his opening statement. For a moment, Hilo considered declining the invitation and leaving the circus before it could continue, but Shae loudly rustled the paper she reached forward to place on the table beside him. Hilo glanced down at it. The Weather Man and her Shadow had prepared different speeches depending on what strategy Ayt employed—whether she began with grand statements, specific demands, or vagu
e accusations. Hilo picked up the paper.

  “I’d like to applaud and thank the Royal Council for recognizing the need for this meeting. As active citizens and members of the community, we Green Bones want peace and prosperity for Janloon as much as anyone else.” The words sounded stilted and unnatural in his mouth, and he skipped over some of the speech. Does Shae really expect me to say all this? He continued reading, reciting a list of No Peak’s opening demands of the Mountain: withdrawal from the Docks, surrender of the Armpit, cessation of SN1 production, and consent to being subject to an outside inspection of financial records and jade inventories. The last one was so outrageous that Hilo had to fight a smile at Ree Tura’s look of outrage, though Ayt herself seemed unsurprised and didn’t react.

  “Thank you, Kaul-jen,” said Councilwoman Onde. “I am encouraged by the clarity and forthrightness expressed by both Pillars in their opening statements. A solid basis upon which to build our discussion.” Onde was likely one of the only individuals in the room to think this could be true. The clan-affiliated politicians on both sides of the table appeared more nervous after hearing the superficiality of the speeches, sensing it to be a sign that their Pillars had already come to an understanding without words. “As the issue of territorial jurisdiction is the most pressing in terms of contributing to the ongoing street violence, I suggest we begin there,” Onde said brightly.

  After several hours, Ayt made a show of conceding that the Mountain would hold its position south of the General’s Ride and not press further into the Docks or the Junko district. In exchange, Hilo stated to the council that there would be no further attacks on Fishtown or Spearpoint. Meaningless agreements. The Mountain couldn’t push further into the Docks; Hilo knew they didn’t have the manpower. Just like he knew No Peak couldn’t hold Fishtown or Spearpoint, even if he went after them. Neither district was particularly valuable anyway. The Armpit and Sogen were the worst battlegrounds, and there’d been no movement toward agreement in either. Kehn was installed with eighty warriors in Sogen right now.

  Tellingly, no mention had been made by either side of the assassination attempt on Hilo, the murder of Lan, or the massacre of twenty-one Mountain Green Bones on Poor Man’s Road. A room in Wisdom Hall was not where those grievances would be accounted for. Hilo stared across at Ayt as they both stood up to leave. This is a joke. A joke we’re sharing.

  The second day of negotiations did not progress much further than the first. During one of the fifteen-minute breaks, Hilo took his Weather Man aside. “This is an orgy of pigs in shit,” he said. “A complete fucking waste of time.”

  “If we walk out now, it’ll look like we broke off negotiations and No Peak will be held at fault for continuing the war,” Shae insisted. “The way those suits in there see it, the Mountain took Lan and we took from the Mountain in return. In their minds, that settles the blood score between the clans and we ought to talk the rest of it out and get back to life as normal.” She cut him off before he could reply with any derisive exclamations. “Remember why we’re here. We need to show the Lantern Men and the Royal Council that we made an effort at peace. The way Ayt is stonewalling, we’ll have their sympathies when we lay everything out on the last day.”

  Shae had obtained early results of the formal audit on the KJA, and she planned, on the fifth and final day, to use them as leverage against the Mountain, and failing that, to disclose them and make it clear to the council that the war was about far more than clan vendettas, that the Mountain’s actions went against Kekonese law and values. Hilo admitted that it was not a bad plan. Either they would come away with enough concessions to put them in a tenable military position until spring, or they would hold the moral high ground and thus, hopefully, the support of the clan’s Lantern Men and the public. Nevertheless, Hilo felt all these things were ancillary factors; they would not substantially change the outcome of the war, and he chafed at the task of playing through this farce for the benefit of the spectators.

  He returned to his place in the room. It was growing increasingly infuriating to Perceive the smugness of his opponent’s thick jade aura, to catch the occasional twitch of amusement on her lips. They were in on this together, the placating and assuaging of the politicians and the businessmen, the self-importantly modern Kekonese who liked to tell themselves that there was no need to solve disputes in the old way, the way of the clean blade under the judgment of Old Uncle. A belief both Pillars knew to be falsehood.

  Ayt was playing her part more willingly than Hilo, however, because she was good at it. Far better than him, a fact she lorded over him with every word and gesture. She’d been Weather Man before she’d become Pillar and knew how to come across as a seasoned and articulate businesswoman. She was using that advantage now, to taunt and provoke him, to make him seem like nothing but a young hoodlum. The contrast between them made these jadeless stooges forget that Ayt Mada was the most powerful Pillar on Kekon on account of having killed her father’s Horn, his First and Second Fists, his Pillarman, and his youngest son. At times, the thought made Hilo chuckle.

  The second day ended with so little change from the previous that even the relentless Onde seemed discouraged. Hilo was impatient to get to a phone, to find out if one of his Fists, Goun Jeru, who’d been ambushed and badly injured just before dawn, had survived the surgery room. He and Shae said little to each other, parting ways outside of Wisdom Hall. Shae stepped into a car waiting to take her back to the Weather Man’s office on Ship Street. Hilo found it amusing that for someone who had put on such a show of eschewing clan trappings back when she’d first returned to Janloon, his Weather Man seemed to harbor no qualms about wielding them now. Which merely proved to Hilo that his sister had been fooling herself the whole time and ought to have known better, ought to have come around before she’d been forced.

  Hilo looked for his driver and the Duchesse in front of the reflecting pool but instead saw Maik Tar waiting in one of the clan’s nondescript cars. When he got into the passenger seat, Tar turned down the radio and offered him a cigarette. Hilo noticed that the Pillarman’s sleeve was speckled with dried blood; his eyes were ringed from lack of sleep but gleamed with a triumph that made the texture of his aura scratchy with repressed excitement. “How’d it go?” Tar asked. “Same as before?”

  “Worse. A shame the penitents are still there.”

  “You could bring me in,” offered Tar. “I’m not going to Heaven anyway.”

  “How’s Goun?” The unhappy shift in Tar’s aura answered him immediately. “Fuck,” Hilo said quietly. Goun had been a classmate of his, a skilled fighter but also a funny man who put people in a good mood and could always tell a story. Hilo ought to have seen him before he died, ought to have gone in person to break the news to his parents and sister. Instead, he’d been mincing words and pandering pointlessly in Wisdom Hall.

  A wave of rage boiled up Hilo’s neck and into his face. “Fuck! Fuck the gods! Fuck Ayt and fuck Gont with a sharp stick, fuck them.” He slammed his head against the headrest and punched the ceiling of the car, denting it.

  Tar dangled his cigarette out the open window and waited until his Pillar had calmed down. “Let the gods recognize him, poor bastard,” he said at last.

  “Let the gods recognize him,” Hilo agreed in a deadened voice.

  “It’s not all bad news, though,” Tar said, and waited with some obvious smugness for Hilo to ask him what redeeming thing it was he’d made a point to come in person to share. Tar was like a kid sometimes, eager to please, prone to both tantrums and overexcitement, possessing a curious combination of boldness and insecurity. Ever since he’d gotten out of the hospital, he’d seemed desperate for a chance to prove himself and displace the embarrassment of his injury. Redesigning the Pillarman’s role for Tar was a stroke of personnel genius that Hilo was quite proud of.

  Still, as he was in an awful mood over losing Goun, Hilo did not at once indulge the man’s eagerness. Instead he asked, “Has Kehn been to Goun’s family?�
��

  “I don’t know,” Tar said. “I haven’t talked to him.”

  “Who’s managing Goun’s Fingers?”

  “Vuay or Lott, as far as I know.” Tar sounded a little surly now. Goun had been his classmate too, but Tar seemed only mildly bothered by his death. He cared for only a few people in the world, though these people could ask anything of him.

  Hilo gave in. “What’s giving you such a hard on, that you have to tell me?”

  After Tar had explained everything, Hilo stared out the window, his burning gaze resting unfocused on some middle distance as the fingers of his right hand drummed lightly and rapidly on one knee. “Drive,” he told Tar. “Let me think about this.” After a while longer, he declared, “Tomorrow’s going to be different. A lot different. You did good, Tar,” and his Pillarman smiled in satisfaction at the praise, touching the new talon knife on his belt.

  CHAPTER

  46

  Honest Talk

  On the morning of the third day of mediation, Hilo arrived early at Wisdom Hall with Shae to meet with Chancellor Son Tomarho, who had been requesting a meeting with the Pillar for some time, with increasing pique. “Kaul-jen, come in. How’re the gods favoring you?” Son asked, ushering them into the office.

  “With their usual sadistic sense of humor,” Hilo said. “You?”

  The politician appeared to stifle an involuntary reaction to Hilo’s casual blasphemy by lowering his ruddy face beneath a stiff and shallow salute. “Ah. Well. Well enough, thank you.” Hilo was under the distinct impression that Chancellor Son Tomarho did not like him. A year ago, he’d refused Son’s request that he break up the workers’ strike on the Docks by force, and at Lan’s funeral, the man had shown only the minimum of respect to the new Pillar. The fact that Hilo had now ignored him for several weeks while he concentrated on the war could only have exacerbated the man’s dislike. Indeed, the way Son was looking at him now, with an obviously forced smile that did not hide the coldness of his scrutinizing gaze, confirmed what Hilo suspected: The chancellor saw himself as a man of political refinement and distinction, someone existing above the unfortunate but occasionally necessary savagery of certain parts of the clan. Son looked at Hilo and saw youth and muscle—someone who ought to be taking orders, not giving them, and certainly not attending Wisdom Hall as Pillar.