Jade War

The assassination plan was formed over several conversations at the Kaul family dinner table. Secrecy was of the utmost concern, since after Tau Maro’s betrayal, it was safe to assume that Zapunyo might have other spies within No Peak circles and they could not risk any word of the plot reaching him in the Uwiwa Islands. In order to throw off any suspicion, false rumors and death threats against the smuggler were deliberately set into motion, hinting at a more obvious plot that involved striking when he was in the hospital room recovering from surgery, when they knew the smuggler was bound to take extreme precautions. A new phone with a speaker, connected to a secure line that was known only to immediate family, was installed in the dining room of the main house on the Kaul estate so that Anden, waiting at designated times in his apartment in Port Massy, could be remotely brought into the discussion.

Anden found this arrangement difficult; the meetings were always midmorning in his time zone, which disrupted his day, and being able to hear but not see what was going on gave him a strange and lonely feeling. He could picture all of them in the dining room—Hilo at the head of the table, a cigarette in hand, Tar next to him, Kehn’s empty chair, Wen filling teacups, Shae holding Jaya on her lap—all while Anden sat alone on his bed in his small apartment, his ear pressed to the receiver, trying to hear the muted long-distance conversation over the sound of his building’s noisy central heating system. Sometimes Anden could hear the shouts of Niko and Ru playing in the other room or coming over to the adults to ask for this or that and being told to say hello to their uncle Anden on the phone before being shooed away again.

At times Anden thought it almost comical that he would have to make some excuse to leave on an early, extra long lunch break from working at the Janloon Trade Partnership Liaison Office in order to take part in conversations with his family back in Janloon, all to plot the murder of a man he had never met. He felt no moral qualms about assassinating Zapunyo, nor resentment over the efforts he was being asked to make. He understood how important this was to his cousins as well as to Wen, who always visited him on her business trips and whom he felt closer to now than he ever had while living in Janloon. It was only ironic to him that this was how he would finally be returning to Kekon. After the deed was done, both Anden and Rohn Toro would have to leave the country. Anden was instructed not to say anything beforehand to the Hians, or to his friends or coworkers. He had to be ready to depart quickly, and Shae would take care of the rest. If all went according to plan, after three and half years in Espenia, he would be going home.

Anden did not quite allow himself to believe it. In a way it seemed fitting, almost poetic: Killing Gont Asch had ruined him as a Green Bone and led to his exile; this deed would end his time abroad and return him to Kekon with the proof that even without jade, he was not useless, he was still a force in the clan, still a Kaul. Not long ago, it would’ve been all Anden wanted, but now he faced it with bittersweet melancholy. He was impatient to return home, but not happy to leave Port Massy after all. When he’d arrived, he’d seen nothing but the impersonal concrete grayness of the vast foreign city. Now he could say that he’d seen the fierce, enterprising life that pulsed like jade aura through the veins of its streets and in the marrow of its steel structures. Port Massy had been and still was the trading post of the world, a market where anything could be found, bought, and sold, a place that held a little of everything in its grasp—even jade and Green Bones, along with uncountable other wonders known and unknown—and still, somehow, was its own self, standing without compare. Anden would never think of his biological father with anything but indifference and disdain, but now he thought that perhaps the man was simply typical of his race and couldn’t be too badly blamed; Port Massy owed its unique glory to the mercenary wayfaring nature of the Espenian people, and as the meeting with Zapunyo neared, Anden found himself appreciating, even admiring, the city more than he ever had before. Wen was correct; he had friends here now, an independent life that he was proud of in many ways, and he thought constantly and sorrowfully about what he was giving up.