Jade War

“Skinny.” Rohn spoke from the floor, his voice strained with pain, but calmly, urgently reasonable. Perhaps he thought he could talk his way out of the situation, reach his jade somehow, or at the very least, delay what was coming. “We’ve known each other since way back. We grew up practically around the corner from each other in Southtrap. We’ve been on different sides before, but the two of us, we’ve always worked things out between our bosses.”

“That is true,” said Reams. “We were good foremen, weren’t we?”

“We can still work things out,” Rohn said. His face had gone chalky, and his pants were soaked with blood. “Kromner was greedy, he got rich and fat, but you’re practical, Skinny, you always have been. You’re Boss of your own Crew now. Why make enemies instead of friends?”

Skinny Reams took off his felt hat and turned it around and around in his hands. “You make a good point, Rohn, but I’ll tell you why,” he said, as solemnly as a schoolteacher at a lectern. “Because I don’t like you kecks at all. Everything was going fine before Boss Kromner got it into his head to get involved with you people over jade. I don’t care how much they’re worth, those rocks aren’t natural. They don’t belong here, and neither do you. Since I’m the new Boss in these parts, I have to make it clear that I differ from Kromner on this point. So it’s got to be this way.”

Reams’s biggest, strongest-looking man produced a white plastic bag and double loop of cord. Rohn knew what came next; he surged upward, away from his executioner, toward the duffel bag with his jade gloves. Blood loss, the bullets in his legs, and the two other men who grabbed his arms ensured that he did not get far; the bag went over Rohn’s head and the cord around his neck.

Anden lunged forward with a shout of sheer desperation but could do nothing with his arms tied behind his back; Sunter eagerly kicked him to the ground and put a boot in the small of his back. His glasses were knocked off his face and went skittering across the floor. The other guard took a cloth rag from the hook on the wall near the garage cleaning supplies and jammed it into Anden’s mouth, muffling his cries. He gagged on the taste of grease and cleaning fluid, felt the corners of his mouth burning as the fabric was pulled tight.

Rohn Toro fought like an ox. His body heaved and crashed against the concrete. He twisted and tried to slacken the pressure on his windpipe, but injured and without jade, in seconds his movements began to weaken. Reams’s coat continued tightening the garrote with the impassive deliberation of a piano tuner. From where he was pinned with his face against the cold concrete, Anden watched the most formidable Green Bone in Port Massy, the man who’d defended the grudge hall from machine gun fire and single-handedly taken out a room full of barukan, grow feeble, his legs beating against the floor, the plastic clinging to his face cutting off what little air remained to him. A stench rose from his body as his bowels gave out in the last few seconds of his life. The executioner stepped away; the plastic did not flutter against Rohn’s open mouth.

Reams touched the tip of his forefinger to the center of his brow and raised it in the sign of the One Truth. “God uplift his soul,” he muttered. His men followed suit obediently.

The garroter stepped away from Rohn’s body and toward Wen and Anden. “Do we have to kill the peach, Boss?” Sunter asked, looking at Wen. “She’s pretty; couldn’t we just—”

Reams gave his coat a sternly disappointed look and Sunter stopped talking. Anden’s vision was blurred and he thought his heart might pound itself to death before the crewboys killed him. When Wen turned her head to catch his eyes, he tried to speak but the gag was still in his mouth and he could only look at her in mute panic. He thought she made an attempt to smile at him, as if in solidarity, telling him to be brave, that at least they were facing this together.

Wen turned to Reams and tilted her chin to stare up into his face. “Do you know who I am?” she asked in accented Espenian. Her hands were clasped together tightly and it was clear she was frightened, but her voice was shockingly calm. “Do you know the name Kaul? Or the name Maik?”

Reams looked down at her with dispassion. “Sorry, peach. Who you are doesn’t matter to me. If you’re important among your own people, then so much the better for my purposes.”