Jade War

“It’s one thing to wear jade for one’s own protection and to defend one’s friends and neighbors. That is what Green Bones have always done; no law made by man can change that. We hold fast to our traditions, which others don’t understand, and we’re not harming anyone in doing so. And it’s also true that sometimes we must punish people who hurt our community and criminals who are a threat to us. We only want what everyone in this country wants: to have a good life and a better future for our children.” Dauk paused and rubbed a hand over the back of his neck. “This Zapunyo is a stranger to me. He may be a bad man, but he’s done nothing to harm our community directly. We may feel the ripples of the struggle over jade smuggled from Kekon to the Uwiwa Islands, but it’s an ocean away. It’s not our struggle. You’re asking me to murder a man I don’t know here on Espenian soil, to expose my family and my good friend Rohn Toro to unnecessary danger and punishment under Espenian law.”

Anden was not surprised by Dauk’s response and had warned his cousins that might be the case. He said, “Everything will be planned and arranged by No Peak under assumed names. I will be the contact person, and nothing will be traceable to you. My Pillar gives his guarantee of that. The only thing we require is Rohn Toro. Afterward, the clan can get Rohn out of the country—he can hide in Kekon, or anywhere he likes—a paid vacation, until it’s safe to return.”

“Did you come to Espenia to escape being a Green Bone? Listen to yourself, Anden. You sound like a Fist.” The older man smiled but shook his head. “I’m sorry. In this, I can’t help you.” When Anden sat silent and disappointed, Dauk said, “If this is so important to you, then perhaps you have to be the one to carry it out. Of course, I know you were trained to wear jade.”

Anden’s jaw tightened. “You’ve never asked me about this before, Dauk-jen, but I’m sure you know: I was sent here to Espenia because I refused to be a Green Bone. It’s been years since I’ve worn jade. I don’t know whether I’d be able to control it, or what it would do to me. That makes me too unpredictable to be useful in this situation. Even if that weren’t the case, I swore to myself that I wouldn’t put on jade again. That’s the one thing I can’t compromise.”

Dauk was silent for longer than Anden expected. He seemed to be debating with himself. At last he said, “I understand, and I appreciate you being frank about your past. So let me do the same. It’s time we talked about the one thing I can’t compromise.”

* * *

When I arrived in Port Massy with my mother and sisters, I was fourteen years old. One of my sisters, the youngest, died of pneumonia only two years later. My older sister, she ran away with a man that my mother didn’t approve of, and we stopped hearing from her. So after that, it was only my mother and me. We lived in an apartment over a public laundry house. What I remember most about that place was the smell of the soap that everyone used back then—Purely’s Rock Soap—and the damp. The windows were always steamed up and the paint on the walls was bubbled and peeling. In winter, you could feel the damp even more, it was terrible.

Almost all of us who lived in the neighborhood had fled the old country because our homes had been destroyed or our relatives imprisoned or executed by the Shotarians. Our parents had been proud Green Bones or Lantern Men in the One Mountain Society, but in Espenia, we had no status. We were refugees with nothing. Everyone looked down on us, even the Tuni immigrants who lived on the other side of Beecher Street thought we were lower than them. But we were proud of who we were and where we had come from, and we kept to the old ways.

When I was in my twenties, I worked as a deliveryman for an appliance store owner named Ito, who I think used to be a good man but had suffered too much and gone a little crazy. Ito was a Green Bone whose family, like many others, had brought their jade with them to Espenia but did not dare to wear it openly on the street. We were outnumbered by foreigners of all sorts and we saw theft everywhere around us. Children stole from shop carts, hoodlums stole from homes and businesses, the Crews stole from everybody. All with little consequence. We had come to a land of thieves. So anyone who had jade did well to keep it hidden. Although I was born and trained in a Green Bone family, my father and my uncles had been taken by the Shotarians and their jade taken with them. So my family was poor even by the standards of our neighborhood.