Jade War

Hilo threw open the back door of the Duchesse Signa and piled both children onto the seat. Ru stared at his father with wide, frightened eyes. “Am I going to die?”

“No,” Hilo said. He got in and started the car.

* * *

At Janloon General Hospital, the emergency room staff hurried Ru into an examination room. An X-ray revealed two button-sized jade stones, which thankfully had not lodged in the boy’s esophagus on the way down but were now trapped inside his stomach. Ru was hooked up to machines to monitor his heart rate, blood pressure, and temperature. A white-haired doctor came in and explained that he believed the stones could be removed without surgery. Ru would be sedated and a flexible grasping tool inserted down his throat to try and extract the pieces of jade. Hilo sat next to the bed holding his son’s small, sweaty hand in his own while the boy was put under anesthesia.

“Are you mad at me?” Ru asked, his voice turning groggy.

“No.” He was too afraid to be angry. “I love you.” He smoothed Ru’s hair. The boy’s forehead felt warm and damp; Hilo wasn’t sure if it was a jade-induced fever or merely exertion from crying.

“I want Ma,” Ru whimpered.

“You’ll see her when you wake up,” Hilo promised. Uncontrollably, his mind flashed to the worst possible outcome he could imagine: having to call his wife while she was thousands of kilometers away on a business trip to tell her that their son had died of jade poisoning while under his watch. He felt ill at the thought and told himself that would not happen.

A nurse had brought in a small stack of board books and a toy truck for Niko to play with, but after a cursory look, the boy ignored them. He sat on a chair next to Hilo with his knees drawn up to his chest, hugging his legs. After the initial bout of tears in the car, his eyes were dry. He stared around at everything with interest and faint hostility, but he had not spoken since they got to the hospital.

Hilo looked at his wristwatch. It was past dinnertime; they’d been in the emergency room for two hours already. It would be midmorning on the east coast of Espenia. By now, Anden was supposed to have phoned to confirm that Zapunyo had arrived in Port Massy and that all the arrangements were in place. Unable to reach Hilo at the house, he would’ve phoned the Weather Man’s office. Shae would be wondering where he was; perhaps she was trying to reach him now.

The doctors came in and wheeled Ru away. Hilo followed as far as they allowed, then watched his son disappear behind closed doors. The white-haired doctor assured Hilo that the procedure would not take long. “You’re not the first Green Bone family to have had this happen, Kaul-jen,” the doctor said. “As long we get the jade out quickly, there’s no permanent harm. SN1 isn’t recommended for children, but we can use small doses if it looks like that’ll be necessary.”

Hilo thanked the doctor, then took Niko by the hand and went into the lobby of the hospital. He sat his nephew down on a chair near the bank of pay phones. “Are you hungry? Do you need to go to the bathroom?” The boy shook his head. Hilo bought him a bag of crackers and a bottle of fruit juice from the vending machine anyway, and keeping the boy in sight, he called the house. After assuring a worried Kyanla that Ru would be fine, he asked her to retrieve his address book from the study and to search up the phone number of the hotel Wen was staying at in Adamont Capita. He wrote the number on his hand, then depressed the phone hook and deposited enough coins to place a long-distance phone call. When the call was transferred to Wen’s hotel room, it rang and rang but there was no answer. Hilo hung up. He called the Weather Man’s office on Ship Street.

“Where have you been?” Shae sounded more flustered than he was used to hearing from her; he could practically sense the crackle of her jade aura even over the phone. When he explained what had happened, her irritation turned to concern. Say whatever else he might about his sister, but she was always caring toward the children. “Is Ru going to be all right?”

“The doctor thinks so. I’ll find out soon.” He said, “What have you heard from Andy?”

“There’s a problem,” Shae said. “Zapunyo won’t meet in the room we’ve arranged at the Uwiwan Cultural Center. Maybe something’s spooked him. Or maybe he intended to change the location all along, to throw off any potential threat. He’s insisting that the interview take place in his hotel room, with his bodyguards. Otherwise he refuses to meet at all.”

Hilo cursed. This changed everything. “We can’t get jade into Zapunyo’s hotel room,” he said at last. “It’s too late for that.”

“Anden and I have been talking about it,” Shae said. “If we go ahead with the interview, we could have a weapon brought up to the room by someone posing as a room service waiter. If it were hidden in a napkin or under a tray, and Rohn Toro could get to it before anyone questioned who’d made the order—”