Jade War

CHAPTER 60 End of an Agreement

Shae had not slept the entire night. She’d unplugged the phone in her kitchen, brought it into her bedroom, and plugged it in next to her bed, then climbed under the covers and closed her eyes for a few hours, knowing that everything had been set in motion and there was nothing she could do now except wait for news. Anden was supposed to call as soon as the task was done and he and Wen were safely back with the Dauks and had access to a phone. If everything went according to plan, that would be early in the evening in Port Massy, which was just before sunrise in Janloon. Shae sat two bedside clocks next to each other on her windowsill, displaying the local times in both cities, and throughout the night the steady tick of their minute hands seemed as ominous as the countdown timer on a doomsday device.

The tepid glow of dawn began lightening the sky; across the courtyard, the lights in the main house came on. She saw Kyanla’s figure moving in the kitchen, drawing open the blinds over the patio door. Shae’s mother came out of the guesthouse and did her slow stretching exercises in the garden. The phone next to Shae’s bed did not ring. Anden should’ve called by now. Something was wrong. Shae sat with her back against the headboard of her bed, knees drawn up, a feeling of dread gathering in her chest and spreading into her throat, her limbs and extremities.

“Get him off the phone,” ordered Skinny Reams, twitching his gun toward where Anden stood in the office. Rohn Toro had collapsed to the ground in agony, but he lunged for the duffel bag and his jade-lined gloves. Reams strode forward and kicked the bag out of his reach. Wen pulled the fountain pen from her pocket, but before she could pass it to Rohn, one of the crewboys seized her from behind and lifted her, shouting and struggling, off her feet.

Anden dialed the last digit of Dauk’s number and grabbed the base of the phone, pivoting behind the half-open office door, out of sight and out of the line of fire. He flattened his back to the wall; the rotary spun and clicked. The phone rang on the other end: once, twice. The receiver was shaking in his hands. Hurry, hurry! The call picked up, and then the phone was smashed out of Anden’s hands and went flying. The cord was yanked from the wall. Anden recognized the reddened, freckled face right before Carson Sunter punched him in the stomach and then in the face. Anden had forgotten how hard Sunter could punch, but he remembered now. He tasted blood on his tongue as he fell to all fours behind the office desk. He searched wildly for something, anything, to use as a weapon and grabbed for a silver letter opener lying on the desk. The butt of a pistol came down on his fingers; Anden howled as he felt two of them break. The circle of the weapon’s muzzle pressed against his cheekbone. “Didn’t I tell you?” Sunter demanded. “Didn’t I tell you I’d find you and kill you, you half-keck bastard? Did you think I’d forget?”

“That’s all over, there was an agreement,” Anden said, mumbling through the pain.

“You made an agreement with Boss Kromner, but Kromner is locked up, and we don’t work for him anymore. It’s Skinny’s word now and Skinny figures you kecks have been behind all this trouble from the start.” Sunter seized Anden around the back of the collar and, with the gun still pressed to his head, steered him back out into the garage of the hardware store.

Anden’s heart was already slamming against his ribs, but now he felt his legs go weak. Rohn Toro lay on the concrete, blood from his gunshot wounds pooled around him. He’d been kicked and beaten; his eyes and lips were swollen. Skinny Reams and three of his men stood in a circle over him. “The demon who can kill five men with his bare hands in less time than it takes to have a piss,” Willum Reams said, in a dry tone, almost disappointed. “Turns out you’re made of flesh and blood after all.”

Rohn coughed and winced. “How did you find me, Skinny? Who sold?”

“The cops at the hotel, of course,” Reams answered. “Told us exactly which car to follow.” Another of his men snorted and added, “You’re amateurs, you kecks. The Crews have been as tight on the PMPD as a pimp on a virgin since before any of your race touched these shores.”

“What do you want me to do with this one, Skinny?” Sunter asked.

“Put him over there next to the girl,” Reams said. “Tie them both up.”

Rohn’s blackened eyes caught Anden’s briefly with something near to apology but much closer to regret. Wen was kneeling on the ground by the wall, her face drained of color and expression; another one of Reams’s men held a gun over her. As Anden was forced to his knees a couple of meters away, her eyes flicked to him, then to the open duffel bag that had been kicked aside on the floor. The fountain pen that had fallen from her grasp lay nearby.

“Put your hands behind your back or I’ll shoot you in the kneecaps like your friend,” Sunter said. Anden’s mind ran seemingly in time to the throbbing of his broken fingers. Even as his wrists were tightly bound together, he tried to think of how he might create a distraction, get either the gloves or the pen with the hidden jade over to Rohn, possibly give them a chance of survival.

“Did his phone call get through?” Reams asked his coat. “Is anyone coming?”

“I didn’t hear him talking to anyone, but I can’t say for sure,” said Sunter.

“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.”

Wen spat at Reams’s feet. She straightened and spoke in Kekonese. “The clan is my blood, and the Pillar is its master.” The man with the garrote stepped behind Wen and slipped the plastic bag over her head. He looped the cord around her neck and began to tighten it. Wen did not struggle. She had seen Rohn Toro—a man, much larger and stronger than her—beaten into submission and murdered before her eyes and saw no point in repeating the indignity. Wen’s face remained turned slightly upward, and she kept reciting the single line, over and over again, until she had no access to air and only her mouth was moving. The clan is my blood, and the Pillar…

Wen’s legs kicked, stiffened, went limp.

Anden was screaming endlessly around the gag in his mouth; his mind was filled with nothing but the sound of his own screaming and when the bag went over his head and the cord around his neck, he couldn’t muster any of the composure Wen had displayed. He was sobbing with impotent, burning, grief-stricken rage, cursing their killers with every ounce of vitriol in his being. He couldn’t believe he was going to die in such a low way at the hands of such scum, helpless, here of all places—on the floor of a garage in fucking Espenia. His vision went red, then white.

Shae took out her address book, picked up the phone, and told the operator that she needed to place a long-distance call to Port Massy. The number that Anden had given her for his apartment rang without response. She had been advised not to use the number for the Dauks’ residence, as it was possible that the Espenian authorities might still be monitoring it, but she called it anyway; there was no answer there either. Her final attempt was the Weather Man’s branch office, just in case for some reason Anden had gone there, but as expected, it was closed for the evening. Shae depressed the receiver cradle, then released it and called her own office to tell her secretary that she would not be coming into work this morning and to cancel her appointments.

She thought about the small prayer room in the main house, but she didn’t dare to leave earshot of her phone. She placed three sticks of incense in a cup, set it by her window, and knelt. Thin tendrils of fragrant sandalwood smoke rose and mingled against the glass. Shae touched her forehead to the ground three times and whispered, “Yatto, Father of All. Jenshu, Old Uncle. Gods in Heaven, please hear me. My cousin, Emery Anden, was adopted into our family and raised as my youngest brother. He could’ve been a powerful Green Bone but he refuses to wear jade because he didn’t want a life of killing and madness. My sister-in-law, Kaul Maik Wen, is a stone-eye but she’s never let that stop her; she’s risked her life and her marriage for the clan, and she’s the mother of three small children who need her. Anden and Wen are green in the soul, and now they’re in danger in Espenia because I put them both there. Please protect them and bring them home safely.”

The silence that followed her words was so absolute that her growing panic spiked into anger. “Why are you always so cruel?” she demanded in a harsh whisper. “Every week, I come to you on my knees. If you even exist, then help us. We’re not a family that can claim to adhere to the Divine Virtues all the time, but who can? Who in our position could stand a chance? Please, I’m begging you, don’t punish Wen and Anden for anything my brother or I have done in the past.” Shae felt her hands trembling against her thighs. “On my honor, my life, and my jade—I’m begging you.”

Anden didn’t hear the noises at first. When he did, he didn’t identify them as the crunch of tires and the slamming of car doors. The one thing he heard was Carson Sunter exclaim, “Shit, they’re here.” He heard that part clearly—and then Reams’s sharp order: “Out the front.”

The circle of pressure around Anden’s neck abruptly slackened and he was dropped to the ground on his stomach, the pain in his throat and chest so bad it felt like fire inside his lungs.

A great deal more noise erupted—gunshots and shouting, running feet, more gunshots reverberating in the enclosed space—he had no idea where they were coming from or how many there were, and then crashing sounds farther away in the front of the store. He couldn’t see anything except shadow and movement through the film of white plastic over his face, which was still suffocating him. He was fading out, his consciousness sliding away like hot oil.

Hands seized him and rolled him over roughly; the plastic was torn off his face. Air flooded into Anden’s nose and mouth and he gasped violently, blinking and heaving for breath. Shun Todorho knelt over him, his face ashen and horrified. He had a gun in his hand, but he set it down and worked at removing Anden’s gag. Anden coughed and spat, the corners of his mouth raw and stinging. Someone else—Sammy—cut the bindings around Anden’s wrists, and they sat him up, steadying him. Three other Green Bones that Anden recognized from the grudge hall were crowded into the garage. “The phone call was cut off—we thought we were too late,” Tod said.

“We were,” Sammy said, turning to where Dauk Losun knelt beside Rohn Toro’s body. The Pillar of Southtrap rocked back on his heels, tears running freely down his rough face.

Anden shot to his feet, swayed, and stumbled to where Wen lay motionless on the concrete. He tore the bag off her face and pressed his ear to her chest, praying he would hear a heartbeat. He had learned basic first aid at some point in his life, and he struggled to remember what to do if a person was not breathing. He tilted Wen’s head back and opened her mouth, sealing it with his own, and breathed out in two hard puffs. He began doing chest compressions. How much time had passed? It couldn’t have been more than a few minutes… perhaps… He breathed into her mouth again. “Please,” he begged all the gods, “please.”

Wen remained limp.

Sammy crouched down beside Anden and put a hand on his shoulder. “She’s gone, crumb,” he said. Anden stopped in midmotion. In desperate epiphany, he whirled, his eyes wild, and scrambled to the duffel bag still lying open on the floor, out of reach the whole time that Rohn Toro had needed it most. Anden grabbed Rohn’s black gloves and hurried back to Wen; before anyone could even ask him what he was doing, he shoved his hands into the jade-studded lining.

Sharp, physical pain radiated from his broken fingers all the way up his arm and he whimpered, clutching his wrist, curling his body around his injury and bracing impatiently for the more profound pain to come. It had been so long since he had worn jade that he expected the rush to arrive like a sledgehammer, and he readied himself. In his mind, he coiled, the way a man might crouch, arms extended, balanced on the balls of his feet, optimistically hoping to catch a boulder hurled in his direction. Anden breathed in, then out, and for the second time in his life, sensation and awareness engulfed him in a maelstrom of energy. It was not as much jade as he’d once handled in the final battle against Gont Asch, but it was still enough to make his skull feel as if it were being blasted apart. He threw his head back, mouth open and gasping, but he did not cringe from the onslaught; through it all he was aware of the passage of time. Every second he took to adjust to the jade rush, every instant of delay, was one he could not afford.

He had only one chance, and it was now.

With a wrenching force of will, he grasped the jade energy with skills that were ill-used but not forgotten. He bent the flow of energy to his will; he pulled it into a single focus. His eyes were closed, but he could sense the presence of the people around him, breathing, pulsing, living creatures, and he ignored them all. He concentrated only on the form beneath him, the body that had been alive only a few minutes ago—and he saw it for what it was—an organism that had once throbbed with energy but in which the current was now stilled and rapidly draining.

Anden pressed his clenched fists down over Wen’s chest and Channeled. The energy surged into Wen’s heart and lungs. Anden hung on to it the way one might with shaking arms control the shaft of a thrust spear. With his jade abilities straining to their utmost, he squeezed.

Wen’s heart convulsed in his grasp. It gave a juddering spasm and beat once, twice, and then continued to beat, forcing blood through vessels and organs, back into her brain. Anden’s entire body trembled with unbearable effort; sweat bathed his face as he continued to press. Wen’s lungs contracted. She gave a great, heaving gasp, her back arching on the floor. Her eyes flew open.

Anden released his hold on her, turned away, and vomited. His hands were shaking too badly for him to remove the gloves; he tugged them off with his teeth and let them fall to the ground. Wen stared up at him in abject confusion and pain, and then tears sprang into her eyes.

Jade energy crashed out of Anden like a weight dragging him through his own body toward the center of the earth. He was utterly drained, exhausted and empty, as if he’d run for days or crawled through a desert. He pulled Wen into his lap and began to sob, and she clutched him and they rocked together on the floor of the garage, only dimly aware of Dauk Losun and the other Green Bones of Southtrap standing around them, staring and silent with astonishment.