Jade War

The dealer cleared the cards and his throat at the same time. “The gods don’t control the card tables, if you don’t mind me saying. Maybe you ought to take a break from playing. Whatever’s bothering you so badly, it can’t be worth throwing away all your money and then your life.”

“Just what I needed,” Bero griped. “A dealer with a heart. That’s not your job.”

The dealer didn’t reply, but surreptitiously, he caught the eye of someone across the room and made a hand gesture that Bero did not notice. Bero lost two more rounds of play. With a satisfied sigh, he pushed all his remaining chips into the center of the table. “That didn’t take too long.”

“Hold on,” said a voice behind Bero. The dealer paused, and Bero turned toward the strangest thing he’d ever seen: a man in a white shirt and dark blue pinstripe vest, wearing leather slip-on sandals. The man had no arms; his short sleeves dangled empty. A small brown monkey sat on his right shoulder.

“Is this some kind of joke?” Bero said.

The armless man made a curt gesture with his chin. “Come with me,” he said to Bero.

“You can’t make me,” Bero said, like a child. A stern, irritated expression came into the man’s face. He took a step toward Bero, angling his torso in a slightly forward lean as if he were extending the arms he did not have, and pushed Bero out of his chair with a firm Deflection. Bero stumbled and nearly fell. He caught himself on the edge of the card table and blurted, “You can’t do that! Leave me alone, monkey man. I haven’t broken any rules. What’re you hassling me for?”

“Walk,” said the man, and nudged Bero with another precise Deflection that kept him upright but shoved him forward. Bero swayed drunkenly and cursed as the Green Bone escorted him across the main floor of the Double Double. Gamblers looked up from their games to watch them pass, but oddly enough, none of them seemed surprised by the strange sight. The brown monkey leapt to the ground and scampered ahead to pull the handle of a metal door that read EMPLOYEES ONLY. The armless man propped the door open with his foot to let Bero through and said, “Turn right. Second door.”

Bero obeyed, perhaps only because he was curious about the unusual turn of events. He was in a red carpeted hallway. To the left he could hear the sounds of the casino’s kitchen. To the right were several offices. The armless Green Bone directed Bero into one of them. Inside was a large desk, but it was very low, the height of a child’s desk, as well as a black sofa, and several framed certificates on the wall that looked like awards. Behind the desk was a display shelf with a long row of bottles of hoji.

“Sit down,” said the Green Bone, jerking his head toward the sofa. He pulled a foot out of its slipper, opened the bottom drawer of his desk cabinet, and took out a bottle of water, which he rolled across the floor to Bero. “Once you’re sober, you’ll get your remaining money back and so long as you promise not to kill yourself, I’ll call you a cab. You have somewhere to go? Someone to go to?”

“What do you care?” Bero said, but he took the bottle of water and fell onto the sofa.

The man said, “Every once in a while, we get someone like you, someone who wants to put on a bit of a show for themselves before bringing down the curtains. Or maybe they’re having a bad time so they come here hoping to turn things around, but make it worse instead. Some of them end up trying to jump off the roof of the casino or to blow their brains out in one of the premium suites. It’s bad for business.”

“So who are you, the owner? Or just the casino watchdog?”

Bero said it mockingly, but the man merely shrugged. As he had no arms, the movement appeared odd, as if his head bobbed briefly into his torso. “When you have a good sense of Perception, it’s easy to notice the desperate ones. But no, I’m not the owner of the Double Double. I make hoji.” He nodded toward the bottles on the shelf. Bero saw that the frames on the wall held certificates for various industry awards. “The Double Double has an in-house distillery. I run the distillery, and I’m an… unofficial floor manager at the casinos. I keep an eye on all of Poor Man’s Road.”

“Why don’t you have any arms?” Bero asked.

For a moment, the Green Bone gave him a cold and disgusted look, as if he were regretting having interfered with Bero’s original plan. Then he said, “I don’t have arms because the Horn of the Mountain cut them off.” He pushed his chair over so it faced the sofa, then sat down facing Bero. “I’ve been where you are now. I wanted to die. I begged for death. I was in too much pain and couldn’t see a future for myself. But a friend spoke to me at the right time and convinced me to live. Now the man who cut off my arms is dead, but I’m still alive, and my family and business are thriving. So whatever it is that brought you here, whatever wrong you’ve suffered—there’s something on the other side of it.”

Bero muttered, “At least you still have your jade.”