Jade War

CHAPTER 16 Not a Thief

Anden became accustomed to the routine of his life in Port Massy. The summer days lengthened and grew hot and muggy, although the city more often than not remained overcast and colorless. Despite himself, Anden grew to be on cordial terms with his classmates, and he got to know a few of the Hians’ neighbors. On two other occasions, he saw the Green Bone on the bicycle—once speeding by in the opposite direction on the other side of the street, once standing on the street corner talking to a trio of other young men while Anden passed on the city bus.

Anden was inordinately curious and wanted to ask the man a thousand questions. When he mentioned his encounter to the Hians, they said, “Ah, that’s Dauk Corujon. He’s going to law school; we’re all very proud of him. Yes, of course he’s green; he’s a true Kekonese son. How many Green Bones are there here? In our neighborhood?” Mr. Hian shrugged. “Thirty? Forty? Who knows.”

Anden was amazed. Shae had studied in Espenia but had never mentioned anyone wearing jade. He suspected she had never come across any during the time she resided in graduate school housing in the college town of Windton where there was no significant Kekonese community. Port Massy contained twenty times the population of Windton, and showed its roots as a trading hub in the people, food, and goods that could be found from every part of the world. Riding the bus every day, Anden had heard many different languages spoken, and he imagined it would be possible to survive in Port Massy without actually learning Espenian, by sticking closely with one’s own people. Now that Anden knew there were Green Bones living near him in secret, he kept trying to spot them. He studied ordinary-looking men and women in the grocery store, standing in line at the bank, strolling down the sidewalk. He queried Mr. and Mrs. Hian frequently.

“Mr. Tow? Of course not. Can you imagine him as a Green Bone?” Mrs. Hian snorted. Later on, “Oh, yes, the Ruen family—all Green Bones. Ruen-jen has been teaching the jade disciplines for years.” They were amused by his extreme interest, not fully appreciating that Anden had been surrounded by Green Bones all his life and from his first day in Port Massy had found the absence of them one of the most disquieting things about Espenia. Conversely, discovering their covert existence in the Southtrap neighborhood was oddly reassuring.

No matter how hard he looked, however, he didn’t see any jade on display—no piercings, no rings or bracelets or gem-studded belts. It was entirely bewildering. In Janloon, jade was an unmistakable mark of status—it commanded respect in the darkest alleys of the Coinwash district and the boardrooms of the highest skyscrapers in the Financial District. Green Bones wore their jade openly and proudly and would not think to hide it unless they had some desire to appear especially modest or unassuming.

It made social interactions in Espenia difficult, Anden felt, not even knowing who to address as jen. “This isn’t Kekon,” Mr. Hian reminded him. “The Espenians don’t appreciate that jade is part of our culture. They would think we’re trying to threaten them or stand out as different. Showing off jade would only be asking for trouble.”

As fascinated as Anden was by the unusual jade subculture, he didn’t make any special effort to meet the neighborhood Green Bones or to find out where they trained and socialized. He was, after all, not a Green Bone himself—a fact that still stirred a sense of shame in him every time he thought about it, although the feeling had diminished over the months. Far away from Janloon, his disgrace within the No Peak clan was unknown and he wasn’t reminded of it constantly the way he had been back home. Here in Southtrap, where a person couldn’t tell who was and wasn’t green, it didn’t seem to matter as much. He had no expectation that he would become personally involved with Green Bone matters ever again—until he made an understandable but serious mistake.

With the student allowance Shae had provided for him and Mr. Hian’s help in perusing the classifieds section of the local newspaper, Anden had purchased a secondhand bicycle, which he kept chained in the alley behind Mr. and Mrs. Hian’s row house and hoped to use more often now that the weather was agreeable and sometimes even sunny. One afternoon late in the summer, he rode his bike to a nearby park, where he settled under a tree to complete the week’s assigned readings. He ended up dozing off afterward. When he awoke, he gathered his belongings, fetched his bike from the rack, and headed back to the Hians’ home.

He’d gone no more than half a block when he heard yelling and glanced back to see a man chasing after him and waving his arms. Anden stopped and put a foot down. His pursuer caught up; he was a man in his early twenties, not much older than Anden himself. His face was a splotchy pink and his large teeth were bared in anger. “What’re you doing? That’s my bike!”

Anden looked down and saw that, indeed, he had taken the wrong bicycle. It was nearly identical to his own, but the red paint was new and unscratched, the tread on the tires still pristine. The owner seized the handlebars. “You thought you could steal my new bike?” He launched into an accusatory tirade in Espenian too rapid for Anden to follow.

“Sorry.” Anden’s face burned with embarrassment as he got off the bike. “Sorry. Mistake.”

The man shoved Anden aside roughly. “You’ve got to be the dumbest thief around. You have any idea who I am? Don’t you even speak Espenian?”

Anden’s grasp of the language was far from perfect, but he understood enough to know he was being accused of thievery. At first he was astonished; then a surge of angry defensiveness flooded up his neck and into his head. Thieves were the lowest sort of people; being called a thief was worse than being called a coward or a degenerate. Men in Kekon were killed for less. Who would say such an abusive thing to a complete stranger, without giving the other person any chance to explain? “No steal,” he protested vehemently. “I said mistake.”

“Yeah, sure, nice try. Get out of here, go back to wherever you came from, you dumb fuck.” The man began to push his bike away. Anden stood dumbfounded for a second. Then he took several quick strides and grabbed the back of the bicycle seat. The man spun back around, his mouth open in outraged surprise.

“I didn’t steal your bike.” Anden enunciated each word. “Apologize.”

“Are you kidding me?” shouted the man. “You sound like a keck—is that what you are? You want your fucking face smashed?” He dropped his bike to the ground and faced Anden with fists upraised.

Anden experienced a moment of severe doubt. All he’d wanted was for the man to take back what he’d said; no one deserved to be roughly treated and slandered over such a simple error. He wasn’t keen to fight this man, but he couldn’t think of any way out that didn’t involve retreating—which was not acceptable, as he was the one who’d been so badly insulted. In Janloon, if he’d had friends with him as witnesses, he might’ve tried to reschedule the contest to a later time and place—sometimes, cooler heads prevailed in the interim—but he had no idea what the dueling customs were in Espenia, and it didn’t look as if the other man was about to back down.

Anden took off his glasses and put them in the side pocket of his school bag before setting it down on the grass next to the sidewalk. He raised his fists and fell into a poised, evenly weighted stance, still wondering why it had come to this at all. Why couldn’t the other man have simply accepted his apology for the mistake and moved on?

The man’s eyes widened in surprise, then narrowed in angry menace. “Oh, you’re asking for it now, you cocky little—” He rushed forward and swung at Anden’s head.

It had been some time—his final Trials at the Academy, to be exact—since Anden had fought, and he was initially slow to react. He barely fended off the man’s opening barrage of punches, and though he saw the obvious opportunity to counterattack, he’d overcompensated for his sluggish reflexes by retreating too far out of striking range and couldn’t move fast enough to close the distance before his opponent squared up to face him again. Anden shook his head, frustrated at himself; Hilo would’ve cuffed him hard about the head for being so sloppy. As he was thinking this, his adversary popped a perfect jab through his guard and hit Anden in the cheek.

Pain bloomed in Anden’s face. Being struck seemed to snap an entire childhood of martial training back into place; he lowered his chin and shoulders and ducked under the next blow, burying a fist in the man’s side. His opponent grunted in pain and made to fling an arm around Anden’s neck in a headlock. Anden dropped the point of his elbow into the man’s thigh and shoved himself backward, dodging under the grip and sending the Espenian stumbling ahead. The man recovered his footing immediately and came back at Anden with an onslaught of heavy blows. Most of them battered Anden’s raised arms but a few connected with his stomach and sides with eye-watering force, and one popped him in the mouth hard enough to cut his lip on his teeth. There was little finesse to the man’s fighting, but there was plenty of speed and power, and the brash instinct of someone who’d been in more than his fair share of scraps before. He was larger than Anden, and angrier, and in this blunt physical contest, those two things gave him the advantage.

It occurred to Anden, in a sudden surge of panic and shame, that he—the youngest member of the Kaul family, schooled at one of the best martial academies on Kekon—was about to be beaten by an Espenian street brawler.

Anden gasped with pain but held his ground; arms still tucked close against his head, he popped his elbow up and clipped his opponent in the chin. Planting his shoe in the man’s abdomen, he kicked him back with as forceful a thrust as he could muster. When the Espenian regained his balance and came forward again, Anden backed up hastily, as if reluctant to engage with him again—not an altogether false sentiment. He felt his heel touch the edge of the sidewalk. As the other man committed his weight to the next blow, Anden jumped back off the curb. He caught the man’s outstretched arm and pulled. It was not a forceful move, just a sharp tug at the wrist, but with their combined momentum, the Espenian went forward; his leading foot landed off the curb and he went staggering headlong. Even so, he was nimble and wouldn’t have fallen; Anden had to solve that by punching downward as his opponent’s upper body tipped, connecting hard with the side of the face, scraping ear to jaw.

The Espenian put his hands out, breaking his fall as he landed on the asphalt. Anden wasted no time; he struck the man again, then kneed him in the chest. His opponent tried to throw his arms around Anden’s legs; Anden dodged aside and kicked him in the ribs. The man finally rolled into a ball, groaning in pain, and Anden leapt upon him, straddling him across the chest and holding a fist poised over his swollen face.

“Do you want to stop?” The man didn’t answer, so Anden hit him in the mouth hard enough to cut his knuckles on the man’s teeth. “Do you want to stop?” he asked again, and was relieved when this time the Espenian nodded. “Say I’m not a thief,” Anden insisted.

“Wh-what?” the man slurred through puffy lips.

Anden drew his fist back again. “Say I’m not a thief.”

“Fine, fine, you crazy fuck! You’re—you’re not—”

Several arms grabbed Anden around the arms and chest and hauled him off the man and back onto the sidewalk. Anden looked around in surprise and confusion to see a small semicircle of gathered bystanders; two large men had pulled him away, and another person squatted down to check on his downed opponent. Anden shook off the restraining hands. Why had they interfered? Clearly, he’d won fairly; the other man had been on the verge of conceding.

One of the bystanders appeared to be Kekonese. Anden called out to him in his native language, “What’s going on? What’s the problem?” but the man looked at him with stony displeasure.

Anden’s opponent crawled to his feet. “You’re dead, you hear me?” His voice was a deadly snarl. “I don’t know who you think you are, but you step on Carson Sunter, you step on the wrong crewboy. I’m going to find you, and I’m going to kill you.” He spat a glob of blood onto the sidewalk at Anden’s feet, then turned and stumbled away, retrieving his bicycle and leaning on it for support as he disappeared down the street, snarling profanities.

The small group of spectators dispersed, none of them willing to look at Anden. Again, Anden spoke to the Kekonese man, who he was sure he’d seen around their neighborhood. “What happened? Did I do something wrong?”

To his astonishment, the man responded in Espenian. “What did you do that for? You want to give all of us a bad name? Beating a man up over a bicycle?” In an added rush of Kekonese, “Are you trying to be one of those clan goons from the old country?” Shooting Anden a parting look of disdain, he turned away and left, leaving Anden on the sidewalk.

When Anden walked in the front door, Mrs. Hian let out an appalled gasp. “What have you been doing?” she exclaimed, sitting him down in a chair at the kitchen table and rushing to fetch ice and salve for his swollen cheek and lip. “How did this happen?”

After Anden had relayed his story, Mr. and Mrs. Hian exchanged a grim look. “This isn’t good,” said Mr. Hian with a worried sigh. “It may cause problems for us.”

“I don’t understand,” Anden protested. “He insulted and challenged me, and I won the fight fairly. He conceded; people saw it. If he comes back for vengeance, he would be in the wrong.”

“Anden-se,” Mr. Hian said somberly. “Dueling is not allowed in this country. The Espenian courts will not uphold the result of any dispute solved by a duel, even if the parties were willing.”

“That man could come back to harm you, or more likely, his family could demand money from us,” Mrs. Hian explained as she dabbed Anden’s bloodied face.

“Under the law in Espenia,” Mr. Hian explained, “there is no such thing as a clean blade.”

Anden sat in silent dismay for so long that the Hians looked even more anxious and tried their best to comfort him. Mrs. Hian got up and rubbed his back and said, “Don’t feel bad; it’s our fault, not yours. You were only defending your reputation and your family’s name; how could you know that the rules here make no sense? We should’ve explained it to you, but we didn’t think this would happen.” Mr. Hian offered Anden a glass of hoji and a cigarette and said, “Don’t worry too much.”

“What do we do now?” Anden asked miserably.

Mrs. Hian’s mouth was set in a worried line. She turned to her husband, who folded his arms on the small kitchen table and nodded reluctantly. “We must go to the Pillar.”