Jade War

He fantasized about tracking down Mudt, putting his head in a vise, and cranking it slowly until Mudt’s eyeballs popped out of his crushed skull. He was wary, though. Mudt had twice as much jade now, and Bero had none, so any encounter between them was bound to be hopelessly mismatched even without accounting for the fact that Bero could still barely climb a flight of stairs without feeling dizzy. It was the only motivation Bero had left, however, so he followed it dumbly. When he returned to the Rat House, though, he learned that Mudt had not been back there. He went to some of their other usual haunts, places where new green met and talked, and the consensus was that Mudt had not been seen or heard from in some time. The kid had taken Bero’s jade and shine and vanished entirely.

Bero returned to his apartment and did not leave. Months passed. Winter turned to spring and then to summer. He ordered in food, watched television, and slept. The limp he’d had ever since he’d been beaten by the Maiks was more pronounced, and he wore an unrelenting scowl that made his face even more crooked. At the age of twenty-one, he looked and felt like a ghoulish old man with nothing left to live for. Bero had always considered himself to be the sort of person who was not easily discouraged, but now as he lay on the sofa listlessly, barely moving except to eat, piss, or change the channel, he found himself weighing various options: stepping in front of the subway train, jumping off the tallest building he could find, getting ahold of a gun and putting a bullet between his eyes. He debated which of the ways would be quicker, more reliable, less messy. He already knew to rule out overdosing on drugs—very painful, too slow, not foolproof at all.

He counted what remained of his money. A year ago, he’d been flush with cash, but now he was almost broke. He had money left for another month of rent and no income prospects in sight. Bero made up his mind. One morning, he got out of bed, dressed in the cleanest clothes that remained to him, shaved and brushed his teeth for the first time in days, and left his apartment, being sure to close the door tightly behind him. Outside, the world was bright but washed out and blurred, made dull without jade. He went to the bank and withdrew every last dien that remained to him, then took a cab to Poor Man’s Road, where the biggest and best betting houses in Janloon were located. The lights outside of the Double Double beckoned and he stood on the sidewalk gaping at them for a minute before he went inside.

In Bero’s own mind, there was a logic to what he was doing. All his life, he’d ridden the winds of fortune. The elder Mudt had said that Bero had some strange luck of the gods on him and Bero knew it was true. His bad luck would turn to good, his good luck turn to bad, always the capricious gods would swing him one way and then slap him back in the other direction, like a relayball on a rope. This then, would be the final test: He would take what little remained to him in the world and throw it all to the winds of luck. He would bet every last dien he had at the card tables and the spinning wheels, and through that, he’d know whether he was meant to keep going, whether the gods still wanted him alive or not.

Bero sat down at the largest of the card tables with a glass of hoji in hand and began to play beggar’s lot—a game that required almost no skill and relied mostly on luck of the draw. To his surprise, he had an initial string of good hands—a copper run, a brass and silver split, and a jade pair—but then, as was to be expected, his luck turned for the worse, dramatically. His next three hands—a copper pair, an iron single, and a robber’s spread—lost him all his initial winnings, and then he kept losing, with steady efficiency. Bero took a generous swallow of hoji every time he lost, and two hours later, when he was down to a quarter of the money he’d entered with, he was quite drunk. He was having a good time now, though. He grinned with fatalistic cheer as he ordered another glass of hoji, pushed a stack of chips into the center and nodded to the dealer to deal him another hand. The dealer looked at Bero and his dwindling chips with mild concern and said, for the first time, “Are you sure?”

“Don’t stop now,” Bero exclaimed. He hadn’t felt this alive, this full of certainty, since the night he’d taken the jade from Kaul Lan’s grave. “I’m almost done, keke. Once I’m out of money, I’m going to jump off the Way Away Bridge. Or maybe the roof of this casino.” He counted his chips. “The gods have only… ah, maybe five more chances to stop me.” The dealer obliged, and Bero turned over his new cards. An iron single. Bero laughed and took a swallow of hoji.