Jade War

He’d tried to call Cory again, on more than one occasion, hoping to explain things better than he had in their last conversation, but his friend refused to answer any of his calls. He learned from the Hians that Cory had taken an internship at a big law firm in AC and would not be returning to Port Massy over the summer. At times, Anden felt as if he’d made a terrible mistake, that he ought to take the bus to Adamont Capita and find Cory in person and say that he’d been wrong—who cared what Dauk Losun wanted? What did their families matter, what did law school or even the entire Amaric Ocean matter? They could run away together; it would be daring and romantic. Lying awake with his cock in his hand, Anden would groan with the childishness of the thought and with the simultaneous depressing certainty that he’d doomed himself to be alone forever; he was never going to find anyone else like Cory, who wouldn’t even talk to him anymore.

At last, Anden sat down and wrote a letter, which he mused gloomily was a very cliché post-breakup thing to do, but so be it. Cory, he wrote, You have every right to be angry at me, but I know that you’re too good of a person to stay in a bad mood for long, and I hope that after a while, we’ll be able to remain friends. Don’t blame your da. It was my decision in the end. Even though it was one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do, I made the choice I hope is better for both of us. I can’t explain everything right now because they’re “clan things” like you said, but I will soon. Sitting at the cramped desk facing his tiny apartment window, Anden agonized over how much to justify himself, how to sound sincere without being maudlin, starting and discarding several versions of the letter before deciding, fuck it, Cory was probably going to throw it in the trash without reading it anyway. You were my first. You made Port Massy a special place for me, and you’re a better, more generous person than I am. You deserve the best of everything.

Your friend and “islander,” Anden.

Anden mailed the letter to Cory’s address in Adamont Capita. Doing so was painful but took a burden off his mind, and afterward, he awaited Zapunyo’s forthcoming arrival with impatience. If all went according to plan, in a few weeks he’d be on a flight back to Janloon. Of course, there was a reasonable chance he would be dead—shot by Zapunyo’s bodyguards, but he had seen Rohn Toro’s abilities and knew the man’s reputation was well earned, so he trusted in their odds of survival. Having been trained at the Academy and raised in the Kaul family, Anden had been indoctrinated since childhood with the idea that for Green Bones, the possibility of death was like the weather—you could make attempts to predict it, but you would likely be wrong, and no one would change their most important plans due to threat of rain.

CHAPTER 56 No Surprise

The Sin 8 was one of the liveliest nightclubs in the Dog’s Head district. On a Fourthday evening, the line of fashionably dressed twentysomethings waiting to get inside stretched down the block and around the corner. Once past the bouncers, partygoers lined up again at one of the two neon-lit bars, shouting over the throbbing beat of the music to place their drink orders. The main dance floor heaved with the crush of sweaty bodies and pulsed with strobe lights. Upstairs, those hoping to have audible conversations lounged on the clusters of red sofas or, if they were particularly well heeled, rented one of the fifteen soundproof suites with a private bar and server. One of these rooms was regularly reserved for Ven Haku, Fist of the Mountain and scion of the K-Star Freight fortune, to use whenever he wished to entertain his many friends.

Haku was leaning back on one of the sofas now, and despite the glass of hoji in his hand and a couple of pretty girls on either side of him, he wore a brooding, impatient expression. When his most senior Finger said something funny, he didn’t laugh along with everyone else. After the next round of drinks, Haku motioned the server and the disappointed girls out of the room and sat forward, inducing the five other men in the room—all of them Mountain Green Bones with considerable jade and reputations—to quiet their banter and give him their attention.