Jade War

CHAPTER 43 Family Jade

Three weeks before New Year’s, Hilo drove an hour inland from Janloon and stopped at an abandoned farmhouse indicated only by a highway marker on a flat stretch of road at the foothills of the mountains. He navigated the Duchesse’s bulk up the rutted dirt path until it became too narrow and overgrown, then he got out of the car and walked the rest of the way to the single crumbling brick building. The sun had already slid behind the forested rolling peaks that dominated the sky to the west, and bats were flitting all over the empty field, flickers of heat in the periphery of Hilo’s Perception. Two of Tar’s men stood in a clearing behind the farmhouse, digging a hole, their shovels scraping and clanging against dry dirt, breaths steaming in the air. They paused in their work, wiping their brows with their forearms and touching their heads in abbreviated salute as the Pillar passed and ducked under the sagging eave to enter the dilapidated structure.

Inside, stark light came from an electric camping lantern hanging from a metal hook fashioned from a coat hanger. A layer of dirt, straw, and bird droppings caked the stone floor. Tar and his lieutenant Doun stood together, chatting and sharing a smoke as they waited for Hilo’s arrival. Near their feet was a long lump, wrapped in canvas and tied with rope, like a badly rolled carpet. Next to the lump was a large rectangular steel container with a lid, lying open—an underbody truck toolbox that Tar had purchased from a freight equipment company.

At Hilo’s entrance, Doun saluted, then bent down and cut the ropes binding the lump. He pulled away the canvas to reveal a dirty and bruised young man. The teenager had been gagged and bound, but at the sudden light, he blinked and twisted on the ground, struggling to sit up. His shrill jade aura flared, as painful in Hilo’s mind as a blast of microphone feedback. Doun stood back and Hilo looked down into a thin, sweaty face and eyes wide with hate and fear. The Pillar’s gaze slid off the captive’s face and settled on the jade beads around his neck and then the jade-studded forearm cuffs cinched to his skinny arms. Kaul Lan’s jade. It had not even been reset.

Hilo was overcome by a sense of cold rage and deep unease. Years ago, when he was the Horn under his brother, he’d been at the Twice Lucky restaurant in the Docks on a night when two teenage hoodlums tried to steal the jade off a drunken old Green Bone. Hilo and the Maiks had been there to stop them, but Hilo remembered thinking that those boys were a sign of a growing societal rot, an omen of worse to come. He felt that way even more strongly now, looking at this stranger, this nobody who had caused so much grief to the Kaul family and yet managed to go unpunished for so long. Some people believed that with SN1, jade could be worn by anyone—but that could never be true. Because if any lowlife could wear Lan’s jade, then jade meant nothing. The world of Green Bones meant nothing. The sheer nihilistic possibility horrified Hilo to his core. The No Peak clan was like a tiger, and this thief like a rat, but even the largest, most powerful creature would fear a plague of rats, moving in the dark with sharp teeth and carrying disease. It was an imbalance in nature, a sign of an accelerating fundamental wrongness in the world that even this moment couldn’t set right.

Tar had opened a duffel bag and was laying out some tools: a cordless drill, a length of plastic tubing, duct tape. Hilo crouched down. The teenager jerked away from him, straining with Strength to break his bonds. He threw a Deflection that rippled out in an unfocused wave, sending the dirt on the ground puffing against the stone walls and swaying the hanging camp lantern as Hilo dispelled the panicked effort with a casual counter Deflection. Doun came over and pinned the prisoner’s shoulders to the ground to stop his flailing. Hilo undid the buckles on the cuffs and removed them one by one. He reached around the boy’s straining neck and unfastened the clasp, gathering the long string of jade beads into his hand. Hilo tucked Lan’s jade into his inside jacket pocket. He patted a hand over the bulge, reassuring himself that it was secure.

The thief moaned; his eyes rolled and his body shook and shuddered with the initial jolt of jade withdrawal. Hilo removed the gag from his mouth. The teen spat blood-tinged grit through broken teeth, and to Hilo’s surprise, he swiveled his head to stare at Tar, his face contorted and gaze burning with a loathing that seemed larger than his skinny frame could hold.

“You,” the thief snarled, his voice shaking. “You killed my da. You slit his throat and threw him in the harbor. I hope you and your whole family die screaming, you soulless piece of shit.”

Tar glanced over with interest, then went back to fitting a drill bit. “Who was he?”

“His name was Mudt Jindonon.” The boy began to weep; ugly tracks ran down his muddy face. “He owned a store and a bit of jade, that’s all. He was my da, and you killed him.”

“I remember Mudt Jin.” Tar nodded that it all made sense now. “Mountain spy, shine dealer, jade thief, crime ring leader. Helped to plan the cowardly murder of a Green Bone Pillar. Normally I don’t like to think that bad blood runs in the family, but I guess in this case it’s true.”

Hilo looked at the noisily crying teenager who’d killed his brother and escaped, then desecrated the family’s grave for its jade. He felt no sense of triumph, just an overwhelming disgust and pity, a heavy and impatient desire to finish something that should’ve been done long ago. Hilo unbuttoned his shirt down to the navel and pulled it open. He removed three jade studs from his chest, wincing a little as he worked them free. He rolled them in the palm of his hand, his own jade, won in his youth against some enemy he could not now remember. He would barely feel the loss of them now, but back then, every bit of green he’d added to his body had tasted like destiny. “Look at me,” the Pillar said softly. He held out the three jade studs in his hand. “This is Kaul family jade. It’s what you were willing to kill and steal for. I’m giving it to you. You’ll take it with you to the grave, just like a Green Bone.”

“It wasn’t me!” Mudt screamed, animal fear finally blotting out his deep rage. “There was another guy! He did it—the whole thing, it was all his idea. I just went along—”

Hilo gripped the thief’s jaw and squeezed, forcing his mouth open and cutting off his frantic protests. One by one, he dropped the three jade studs into Mudt’s mouth, then clamped the jaw shut. Tar tore a piece of duct tape from a long silver roll and sealed the teen’s lips. They wound more tape around the wrists and ankles to make the bonds extra secure, then Tar took the thief’s feet, and Doun gripped him under the armpits, and they hefted him easily, placing him inside the metal box. With knees bent, he fit with barely any room to spare and could not turn over inside. Hilo caught one last haunting glimpse of the white face, stark with terror, before they dropped the lid in place. Thuds, faint screaming, and spiking jade aura shrieks emanated from inside the container, interrupting the whine of the cordless drill as Tar made holes all around the edge of the lid and fastened it in place with metal screws. Using the largest drill bit, he made a hole near the top of the box big enough to stick a finger through. Into this he inserted a length of plastic tubing through which air could flow. They didn’t want the trapped man to suffocate.

Tar and Doun carried the box outside. The two men in the field had finished digging and were leaning on their shovels, resting. When they saw the Pillar coming out of the building, they set down their tools and hurried to help Tar and Doun balance the box and lower it into the hole in the earth. Filling in the two-meter-deep grave took an hour, with all five men taking turns with the shovels while the others rested. At last, there was only a patch of fresh soil to mark where the box was buried, and poking up from the ground, a barely visible stiff plastic air tube.

Without his regular dose of shine, an addict would normally begin to feel the effects of jade overexposure within twenty-four hours. With jade trapped inside an adrenaline-overloaded body, it was sure to happen much faster than that. The Itches would set in shortly thereafter.

They collected the camping lantern and tools from the empty farmhouse. It was entirely silent out here in the country. The night sky was clear and filled with stars. None of the pollution or noise from Janloon reached them, and there were no other dwellings in sight. The nearest town, Opia, was thirty kilometers away on winding, mountainous roads. As they walked back to the cars, Hilo made a point of personally thanking the three Nails (that was what Tar called his people now, to differentiate them from Kehn’s Fingers) for spending what would’ve been a nice evening diligently carrying out such an unpleasant task. All of them—Doun, Tyin, and Yonu—assured the Pillar that it was simply their duty to the memory of Kaul Lan, and they were only sorry that it had taken them so long to find the thief and dispense the clan’s justice.

Hilo said to Tar, “You made sure the bartender who phoned in the tip was rewarded?”

“Of course,” Tar said.

Between handling this and whispering the name of Koben Ento, Tar had been working hard lately. With the clan’s expansion into Espenia, Hilo had some ideas for how to use Tar’s small team in the future, but now was not the time to broach them. He put a hand on his Pillarman’s back. “I know that sometimes I’m impatient or short-tempered with you, but only because you’re my closest brother now, and I trust you with things I wouldn’t trust to anyone else,” Hilo said. “I’m glad I can count on you, Tar. I don’t say it often enough.”

It was the early hours of the morning by the time Hilo arrived back home. He closed the front door quietly behind him as he entered without turning on any of the lights, so as not to disturb Wen and the baby, only two weeks old, a girl of course. In the kitchen, he draped his jacket over the back of a chair and washed his hands in the sink. He was tired, but also hungry and thirsty, so he poured himself a glass of water and took two oranges from the fruit bowl and a bag of peanuts to the table. The Pillar sat in the dark, peeling and eating the oranges and cracking the peanut shells. He was rarely alone, so he relished the moment of peace and did not hurry to go to bed.

Hilo took Lan’s jade from his pocket, set it on the table, and looked at it.

A stir in his Perception told him that someone else was awake in the house. He sensed Niko’s approach before he heard the boy’s feet padding hesitantly down the stairs and stopping at the entrance to the kitchen. The blinds were open over the patio door and the moon’s glow mingled with the courtyard lights so it was just bright enough for Hilo to see his nephew’s face, creased with sleepiness and mild concern. “Uncle?” he said. “Why are you sitting in the dark?”

“I got home late and didn’t want to wake you.” Hilo held out his arms and the boy came to him, climbing into his lap and laying his head against his uncle’s chest. Even though Niko and Ru knew each other as brothers and called Wen their mother, Hilo always insisted that Niko call him uncle so that he’d never forget who his real father was. Hilo smoothed the boy’s hair and whispered, “Stand up, I want to show you something.” He set the three-year-old (almost four now, Hilo reminded himself) down on his feet and said, “Do you want to know where I was tonight, why I got home so late I couldn’t tuck you into bed? I was searching for something, something that’s been lost for a while, and I finally found it.” He picked up the cuffs and the necklace of jade and let the boy admire and touch them. Some limited jade exposure at this young age was not harmful; indeed, it was beneficial for a child to have a basic foundation of jade tolerance before Academy age. “This was your father’s jade, Niko,” Hilo said. “It belonged to him when he was Pillar of the clan. One day, when you’re a Green Bone, it’ll belong to you. I’ll keep it safe for you until then.”

Niko yawned. “I’ll have to grow a lot bigger first.”

“A lot bigger,” Hilo agreed. He picked the child up and carried him back up the stairs.