Jade War

Hilo took one, two steps—off a chair and then the bar top—pivoting as he leapt Light from the counter and off the nearest wall, drawing his talon knife in midair and Steeling as he came down with his full weight on the attacker he’d Perceived behind him. They crashed together to the concrete floor. Hilo pulled the man’s head back and nearly cut his throat before he remembered his own admonition to leave the occupants alive. His opponent twisted around on the sticky ground, bellowing and heaving with desperate, unfocused Strength as he tried to seize Hilo in a headlock. He was a burly, powerful man and might’ve succeeded if Hilo didn’t act quickly; he pushed the palm of his hand into the man’s back, Channeling into his spine, rupturing the discs between the vertebrae. The man’s torso and legs went rigid with agony and he lay unresisting on the ground as Hilo got back to his feet and brushed off his clothes.

Several other of the Rat House’s denizens were unconscious or incapacitated, though Hilo suspected that a few of them did not have long to live. Tar, moon blade in hand, had severed one man’s arm at the elbow and opened the belly of another who was now kneeling on the ground, feebly moaning and holding his protruding entrails. The rest of the new green were cowering on the ground with their heads to the floor, begging for mercy. Lott and Vin, their jade auras humming with alertness, were going around confiscating weapons and collecting the illegal jade—rings, pendants, belts. Hilo stood in the center of the dim room and took a good look around. The Rat House was a sorry, stuffy place—one half of it covered with mats, broken concrete blocks, sandbags, and other equipment for people to practice jade abilities, and the other half full of dingy tables in front of a surprisingly well-stocked bar. Two metal needle disposal boxes hung on the wall along with handwritten flyers with tips for safe and hygienic shine injection.

“All of you are jade thieves who don’t deserve to live,” Hilo announced. “Whether you worked for the Mountain, or foreign criminals, or are just too jade fevered and stupid to know any better, you’re all in this situation because you didn’t change your ways when you had the chance.” He allowed his words to sink in as he paced slowly across the floor, examining faces, comparing them to the drawings he’d had made from descriptions and shown to every Green Bone in No Peak.

“I don’t see who I’m looking for,” he said, reaching the end of the room and turning around. “I’m going to give you collectively one minute to tell me where to find the barukan Soradiyo. I know he comes here to recruit scum like you as rockfish for Zapunyo’s smuggling operation, so don’t pretend you don’t know who I’m talking about. And I want the locations of any other hideouts in the city where the new green can be found. If I get what I want in one minute, you’ll lose your jade but keep your lives. If I don’t, you’ll lose both.”

* * *

Iyn Ro and her Fingers caught Soradiyo two days later. The smuggler had spent the weeks after the bombing hiding in the storeroom of a gym in a part of the Stump well known as an Uwiwan ethnic ghetto. Upon learning that the Mountain was allowing No Peak into its territories to hunt for him, Soradiyo attempted to flee the country. He would’ve stood a better chance of escaping detection if he’d taken off his jade, but in his haste and desperation, he failed to think of that. Iyn’s search team Perceived a stowaway on a boat bound for the Uwiwa Islands. Soradiyo was jade-stripped and taken to a warehouse in the Docks where Tar took charge of interrogating him.

“The barukan are fucking pussies,” Tar said, when Hilo arrived some hours later. “He gave up everything we wanted. The names of the two rockfish he hired to plant the bomb, plus details about Zapunyo’s operations: the docking locations of the picking crews, the mine sites they scavenge from, how they get the jade scrap out of the country, the names and identities of the other agents in Janloon and the top people in Zapunyo’s organization, the police and government officials that uwie smuggler has in his pocket, and the defenses around his mansion in Tialuhiya.”

“Did you write it all down?” Hilo asked.

“Pano did,” Tar said, indicating the Finger behind him, who was holding a clipboard with notes and who looked a little sick in the face after this unpleasant assignment. Hilo took the clipboard from him and read through all of it, carefully. When he was done, the Pillar nodded in satisfaction and handed it back, then told Tar and Pano to wait outside. He went into the windowless room where Soradiyo hung half-naked with his arms chained over his head, covered in blood and bruises and shaking uncontrollably from jade withdrawal. Hilo waited until the man roused his attention weakly. “Are you here to kill me?” the barukan asked hopefully, his Shotarian accent slurred through a dry throat and cracked lips.