Jade War

CHAPTER 38 Not the Real Thing

Mudt walked into the Pig & Pig pub in Coinwash and sat down at the counter. “A plate of the battered shrimp and a glass of the Brevnya ale.” The bartender eyed Mudt skeptically on account of his age, but seeing as he appeared to be a heavily jaded Green Bone, he asked, “You want a regular glass or the extra tall, jen? It’s only five dien more on Seconddays.”

“The extra tall then,” said Mudt. The battered shrimp and the beer arrived, and Mudt took his time enjoying his meal. He was in a celebratory mood; today, for the first time, he’d combined Lightness and Steel—he’d run to the edge of the roof of his apartment and leapt a full twenty meters to the top of the building next door. He’d hit the concrete, rolled, and collapsed on his back, his heart pounding with adrenaline and all the breath knocked out of him, but uninjured, with not even a bruise. All his long hours of obsessive practice were starting to pay off. He knew he was still a long way off from being able to take on someone like Maik Tar, a Green Bone with years of training. He would need to bide his time and also think of some way to gain an unexpected advantage, the way he had when he’d drugged Bero’s drink.

Mudt could not help but feel remorse for murdering Bero, and even after all these weeks, he missed the other teen’s company and wished he had someone to talk to, to share his success today. He was still haunted by the way Bero had lain on the floor twitching in those last minutes, eyes rolling with impotent rage. But with each fortifying swallow of ale Mudt took, the feeling diminished. There wasn’t any room in this world to be soft. Look at the Green Bone clans. A real Green Bone wouldn’t give a second thought to killing an enemy and taking his jade. That was the sort of person Mudt needed to be if he was going to achieve his eventual revenge against Maik Tar and the No Peak clan.

Mudt ordered another extra tall glass of beer and reassured himself with the knowledge that the world had suffered no great loss from Bero no longer being a part of it. Mudt had even heard his father once say, “I think he’s a sociopath.” In their world, that was not necessarily a bad thing. Mudt had looked up to the older teen for a long time. Unlike Mudt, Bero had seemed so confident and tough, not afraid of anybody. Mudt admired that about him.

The jade around Mudt’s neck felt warm and heavy. It moved and rolled on his skin like something alive, that gave life. He’d had to increase his daily dose of shine to carry it all. Fortunately, he knew where Bero kept his stash hidden, and unlike Bero, he also knew how to get more. He might, at one time, have told Bero, if Bero had ever bothered to ask him.

The pub was slow at first, but more people arrived as the night went on. A group of five college-age girls arrived, dressed in short skirts and high heels. They were on a mission to get their friend, who had just been dumped by her asshole boyfriend, properly drunk. “A Green Bone,” one of them exclaimed, flashing a coy smile at Mudt after she’d ordered her drink from the bar. “I haven’t seen you before, but you must be a Fist. Are you new around here?”

“He’s not a Fist.” An older girl rolled her eyes at her friend’s naïveté. “He’s too young. That can’t be real jade.”

“It is real,” Mudt said, his face warming. He’d never been noticed by women before, had barely ever had any conversations with them. His head buzzed from the booze and his stomach felt bloated with fried food. With this much jade, his sense of Perception was distracting, overwhelming. The girls seemed like furnaces of energy standing close to him—he had a hard time focusing on their faces. “Do I look like some barukan poser? Every bit of green you see is the real thing.”

The older of the two girls said, “How did you get it then, since you can’t even be twenty?” She feigned intense interest. “Did you win it in duels? Is your family name Kaul?”

Her friend laughed. The girls wore perfume and makeup and they were as pretty as models on television, even as they laughed at him. Twin surges of embarrassment and anger flooded Mudt’s brain. People treated Green Bones with respect. That was the way it was supposed to be, the way it had always been. They wouldn’t dare to question Green Bones about how they’d earned their jade or speak to them in a condescending way, the way these girls were speaking to him.

But not everyone who wore jade these days was worthy of deference. They could be found in Janloon, or on television, or in gossip talk: new green and barukan and foreign gangsters and Espenian soldiers who killed even women and children.

Mudt had jade, but he was not a Green Bone; he had not been raised or trained as one and so he was not convincing as one. He had a wary, twitchy, cowed manner that became apparent to anyone who spoke to him for a few minutes. On some deep and shameful level, he knew this about himself, and he knew the girls at the bar could sense it too. In that instant, he remembered how Bero had stood up to the disbelief and laughter of the Mountain Green Bones on that night in the forest when Mudt had been sure they were both going to be killed. Bero had been selfish and reckless, but he hadn’t been afraid.

Mudt turned to the girls and blurted, “What makes you think the Kauls are so special? You want to know where I got my jade? I won it. I took it off the body of Kaul Lan himself.”

The two girls stared at him. Mudt saw that he’d gone too far. He might as well have stood on the counter and proclaimed himself the reincarnation of Jenshu. Unlike Nau Suen and the Mountain Green Bones, no one here was amused by new green bravado; they did not want to be seen associating with him. The girls began to edge away as if he’d admitted to a contagious disease, their eyes darting around to see if there were any real Green Bones in the pub who had overheard and would come over to break Mudt’s legs for his blasphemy.

Quickly, Mudt laughed loudly and smiled. He was not practiced at smiling, so it came out as an overly toothy grimace. “You should’ve seen the look on your faces,” he exclaimed.

“You’re drunk,” the older girl said, not smiling at all, and pulled her friend away to rejoin their party.

Mudt admitted that he might be, at that. He paid his bar tab and left before he could say anything else foolish. The bartender had only been at this particular establishment for a month, but he had sharp ears and was not new to the neighborhood, not by a long shot. After Mudt was gone, he went into the back of the kitchen and used the employee phone near the restroom to place a call.