Jade War

Ayt Mada appeared unchanged and straightforward in appearance, wearing a pair of blue slacks and a white blouse, but commanding in the intensity of her assured stare and dense aura. “Kaul-jen,” she said, and seated herself comfortably in one of the two chairs pulled up close to the table. Wordlessly, Hilo sat down in the seat across from her. The Horns and the Weather Men took their seats slightly behind their Pillars, and the remaining Green Bones stood watchfully against the walls. Durn and his wife came in with plates of light snacking foods—sliced fruit, small nut paste buns, salty dried meat cakes—and poured cool tea into glasses. Durn’s youngest child, a girl of about eight, followed close behind her parents. With the nodded permission of the Pillars, Durn made a point of also pouring his daughter a glass of tea and letting her help herself to the snacks, so there was no suspicion of anything wrong with the food. Durn saluted deeply to both Ayt and Kaul, then drew the long window shades for privacy and silently withdrew.

Ayt spoke first. “I trust your Weather Man has explained to you why we’re meeting.”

Hilo narrowed his eyes at the condescending insinuation that he needed even the simplest things explained to him. So be it if Ayt viewed him a simple thug; he saw no reason to dissuade her of the opinion. He leaned back in his chair and popped an entire nut paste bun into his mouth, taking his time to chew and swallow. “We’re here because you expected to be in control of the city by now, and for everyone with the name of Kaul to be feeding worms, but that hasn’t happened.” He spread his hands and gave her a cold smile. “Talk is for when violence fails.”

The Pillar of the Mountain said, with a flash of impatience, “If one of us could’ve won this war with moon blades, Kaul-jen, we’d have already done so. Now we’ve placed ourselves, and the country, in an untenable position. There’s no money entering the national coffers from jade exports. The Oortokon conflict will become a contest between the major powers, who’re greedily eyeing Kekon’s inactive jade mines for their military forces. If we continue in this way, we’ll undermine the national government, drain the jade stores of both our clans, lose the support of the people, and make our nation a vulnerable target for foreigners. The public knows this, the Royal Council knows it, the smugglers like Zapunyo know it. So now it is up to us to avert this disaster.”

Hilo regarded the other Pillar shrewdly. “If the KJA starts up again, it has to be with all the new rules in place. All the jade that’s mined goes through the official body so there’s no theft on anyone’s part.” His lips curled slightly. “I should say, no further theft. You haven’t repaid the Kekon Treasury for the ‘financial discrepancies’ that the audit turned up last year.”

Ayt was not ruffled. “Let’s not open those books again, Kaul-jen. No one cares about balance sheets from three years ago. You drop the subject of the alleged misappropriations, and we’ll take a lower share of KJA allocations for the next three years. Our Weather Men can figure out the exact percentages in order to satisfy the board of directors.”

Hilo shrugged; he had never expected that the Mountain would account for the jade it had already stolen, so this was as far as he figured Ayt would go. “Fine. So that’s the KJA. As for the smuggling: Ti Pasuiga has crooks working in the city and all over the country. Zapunyo doesn’t care about clan territorial borders and neither will the foreigners. A truce means both of us have to agree to take an equal part in going after the black market—stamping out the rockfish and the shine dealers and the foreign gangsters that’ve sprung up like weeds while we were busy fighting each other. If one side puts in more effort, it would be too easy for the other to take advantage and move in on undefended territories.”

Ayt inclined her head. “My Horn will cooperate with yours to make sure we’re jointly committed in our efforts against smuggling. We agree it has to be eliminated. We won’t move on any of your territories, so long as the currently disputed districts are fairly divided.”

“Fairly divided,” Hilo repeated scornfully. There was no division that would satisfy both sides; three days in Wisdom Hall last year had made that abundantly clear. No matter which parts of the city were conceded to which clan, one could argue endlessly that the split was incorrect and should be done another way. The thought of giving up anything to the Mountain made Hilo furious, but he knew there was no way to deal with it except quickly and bluntly. “That depends on whether we’re talking about area or value.”

“Value,” said Ayt.