Jade War

The man leaned forward. “At least you still have your arms.”

Despite himself, Bero had drained the entire bottle of water and now he slouched, rolling his head back on the Green Bone’s black sofa. He could feel a persistent pressure behind his eyes, an alcohol-induced headache made worse by hours under the too-bright lights of the casino floor. “I’m in this fix because of jade,” he said. “Always because of jade.” He was unable to say why he was admitting this to a Green Bone of the No Peak clan, except that he had stopped caring about anything. His only feeling was limp irritation that this man was trying to convince him to live when he had other plans. “I listened to a barukan asshole who promised me that if I worked as a rockfish for him for a year, I’d earn green. But then I lost a crew to the Mountain—it wasn’t even my fault—and I didn’t take the whisper work he wanted me to, so he cut me off. The fucker cut me off.” Bero wanted to scream thinking about it. More words rushed out of him in a drunken stream. “Then the guy I was working with, he turned on me, the greasy little piss rat. I

made him, and he drugged me and stole my jade and left me to die. If I ever find him, I’m going to kill him in the worst way I can think of.”

Bero opened his eyes and sneered at the Green Bone, daring him. “So yeah, I’m a thief and a smuggler. I worked with barukan gangsters and Uwiwan scavengers to steal jade from the mines. You still plan on keeping me alive now, jen?”

From the edge of the desk, the perched brown monkey stared at Bero. For a minute, the armless Green Bone did the same. Then he tapped the phone on the table with his big toe. The monkey leapt over and brought the receiver to the man’s head. The Green Bone held it between shoulder and ear and dialed a number. His gaze remained on Bero the whole time.

Bero heard the click of the phone being answered on the other end. “Lott-jen, it’s Eiten,” said the armless Green Bone. “Can you come over to the Double Double? I have someone here in my office that the Pillar might be interested in.”

CHAPTER 49 Cleaning out the Rat House

When Hilo arrived at the Double Double, Eiten met him at the entrance. “Who is this kid you found?” Hilo asked, as his former Fist led him across the floor and through the back doors to the adjoining distillery operations. Gamblers paused in their games to salute the Pillar as he passed. Hilo noticed a few Espenian servicemen at the bar, but they were behaving themselves. Poor Man’s Road, which No Peak had fought so hard to conquer from the Mountain, had proven to be a troublesome area over the last two years, but there had been no recent incidents.

“A broke and drunk former rockfish who showed up with a story about being cheated by a barukan named Soradiyo,” Eiten said. “Juen and Lott have been talking to him, but we thought you might want to ask him questions yourself, Hilo-jen.” In the dim, climate-controlled storage room, they walked past rows of large casks, stacked to the ceiling on wooden frames and filled with aging hoji. Cursed Beauty distillery had expanded considerably and begun exporting product to overseas markets. Seeing his friend’s business doing so well gave Hilo a small reason to smile in what had otherwise been a tragic and terrible past few weeks.

“I’m glad I can count on you to keep your eyes and ears open, my friend,” Hilo said.

Eiten dismissed the comment with a shake of his head. “I owe everything to you, Hilo-jen; I only wish I could be more helpful. If this kid is telling the truth, maybe his appearance is a gift from the gods that’ll help us find and punish the half bone dogs who killed Kehn.”

Hilo did not dare get his hopes up so quickly, but he nodded. He already had every Fist and Finger in the clan hunting down any information about Zapunyo’s agents and searching for the barukan that Tau Maro had named, but so far it had been like chasing a ghost.

Hilo regretted not taking Kehn’s warnings about Zapunyo more seriously. He’d been preoccupied with inciting division in the Mountain and hoodwinking the Crews. Zapunyo, he’d treated more as a persistently offensive problem than a truly dangerous enemy. After all, smugglers and drug dealers were like weeds; if you pulled one out, another might take its place, so in a way, there was no rush. Zapunyo, however, was in a criminal class of his own. Hilo realized he’d lost sight of that fact. When the informer had been delivered to No Peak in pieces, he’d made the mistake of not treating an Uwiwan death as seriously as a Kekonese one; he should’ve understood the threat and retaliated against Zapunyo’s transgression forcefully and immediately. That error in judgment would always haunt him.