Jade War

CHAPTER 49 Cleaning out the Rat House

When Hilo arrived at the Double Double, Eiten met him at the entrance. “Who is this kid you found?” Hilo asked, as his former Fist led him across the floor and through the back doors to the adjoining distillery operations. Gamblers paused in their games to salute the Pillar as he passed. Hilo noticed a few Espenian servicemen at the bar, but they were behaving themselves. Poor Man’s Road, which No Peak had fought so hard to conquer from the Mountain, had proven to be a troublesome area over the last two years, but there had been no recent incidents.

“A broke and drunk former rockfish who showed up with a story about being cheated by a barukan named Soradiyo,” Eiten said. “Juen and Lott have been talking to him, but we thought you might want to ask him questions yourself, Hilo-jen.” In the dim, climate-controlled storage room, they walked past rows of large casks, stacked to the ceiling on wooden frames and filled with aging hoji. Cursed Beauty distillery had expanded considerably and begun exporting product to overseas markets. Seeing his friend’s business doing so well gave Hilo a small reason to smile in what had otherwise been a tragic and terrible past few weeks.

“I’m glad I can count on you to keep your eyes and ears open, my friend,” Hilo said.

Eiten dismissed the comment with a shake of his head. “I owe everything to you, Hilo-jen; I only wish I could be more helpful. If this kid is telling the truth, maybe his appearance is a gift from the gods that’ll help us find and punish the half bone dogs who killed Kehn.”

Hilo did not dare get his hopes up so quickly, but he nodded. He already had every Fist and Finger in the clan hunting down any information about Zapunyo’s agents and searching for the barukan that Tau Maro had named, but so far it had been like chasing a ghost.

Hilo regretted not taking Kehn’s warnings about Zapunyo more seriously. He’d been preoccupied with inciting division in the Mountain and hoodwinking the Crews. Zapunyo, he’d treated more as a persistently offensive problem than a truly dangerous enemy. After all, smugglers and drug dealers were like weeds; if you pulled one out, another might take its place, so in a way, there was no rush. Zapunyo, however, was in a criminal class of his own. Hilo realized he’d lost sight of that fact. When the informer had been delivered to No Peak in pieces, he’d made the mistake of not treating an Uwiwan death as seriously as a Kekonese one; he should’ve understood the threat and retaliated against Zapunyo’s transgression forcefully and immediately. That error in judgment would always haunt him.

Eiten strode ahead and Deflected open a swinging metal door that led into the large, clean concrete chamber occupied by the distillery’s fermentation tanks. Juen and Lott were standing around a portable wooden table. On the table were city and country maps marked up with colored dots and handwritten notes. Sitting hunched in a metal folding chair behind the table was a skinny, pallid young man with bloodshot eyes and a sour face that looked as if it had been broken and mended at least once in his life. Juen and Lott broke off their conversation to salute the Pillar as he entered. Juen gestured to the notes and maps and said, “Here’s what we know so far, Hilo-jen. Places in the city where Soradiyo goes to recruit or meet with his local rockfish, mostly illegal clubs for jade thieves and shine addicts. Also, drop-off and pick-up sites along the coast and in the mountains for Zapunyo’s scrap-picking operations. Vuay, Iyn, and Vin have sent Fingers to corroborate—quietly, so we don’t spook anyone before we decide to act.”

One thing Hilo was grateful for was how quickly and matter-of-factly Juen had assumed the role of Horn. Juen was not an immediate relative like Kehn had been, and he needed to learn how to have a stronger presence when dealing with the public and clan outsiders, but he was an operational mastermind who could manage a remarkable number of details, and right now that was particularly useful. Hilo studied the information that his men had compiled and asked questions until he was satisfied that they’d done or were in the process of doing their due diligence.

Hilo turned his attention to the young man, the unexpected informer. There was something familiar about him, about his unbalanced face and the sullen, resentful intensity of his eyes. “You say you worked for Soradiyo,” Hilo said. “Why are you betraying him?”

The young man glanced at Hilo with unease before scowling at the ground. “That barukan hung me out,” he muttered. “I was supposed to be a big dog like he promised, I was supposed to get jade, but he hung me out. All the new green are pussies. So fuck them all, and fuck Soradiyo. They don’t deserve what they have. They don’t deserve jade at all.”

Hilo wondered if the young man was still drunk; he certainly sounded it. Some of his angry mumbling was barely audible, and he seemed to be talking half to himself. If there was any Perceivable cunning or deception in him, though, it was blotted out by an impression of overwhelming black bitterness. Whenever he happened to glance at the Pillar, he twitched a little and looked away. Hilo tried to think of where he’d seen the man’s crooked face, because he had a feeling that he’d come across it before. He asked curiously, “You’ve smuggled jade and dealt shine and worked for foreign criminals. Aren’t you afraid we’ll kill you after this?”

The man looked around the stark concrete room and metal tanks as if noticing for the first time that there were no windows and only one exit, and that no one from the busy casino floor would be able to hear anything that was said or done in here. He sniffed and shrugged.

There was still something disquietingly familiar about the man. Hilo had met a lot of people in his time as Horn and then Pillar, and though he could not place this one, he knew better than to let such a thing slide, not when so much was riding on one stranger’s account. “Look at me,” he demanded. The man tensed but did so reluctantly. “How do I know you?”

This time, the informer winced visibly, as if he’d been slapped, and in that instant, Hilo recognized him. “The Twice Lucky,” he said. When the man twitched again and nodded, Hilo laughed. Juen, Lott, and Eiten were looking at him questioningly. “Years ago, the Maiks and I caught a couple of dock brats trying to steal jade off that old drunk Shon Ju,” Hilo explained. “I was all for snapping this one’s neck, but Lan let him go.” Hilo chuckled again at the irony. “Jade fevered, like I said at the time, so it’s no surprise he ended up as a rockfish. But now he’s here, giving us the keys to Zapunyo’s kingdom.” Hilo shook his head, amused and also struck with sadness to think that Lan’s optimism, his softheartedness, had come back to help at such a time and in such a way. You have to give people a chance, that’s what his brother had said.

Hilo leaned over the small table and seized the young man’s chin in a grip of iron. “I said I’d kill you if I saw you again, remember?” he said in a low voice. The man’s sunken eyes widened, but Hilo released him with a quick shake and sighed. “I guess I can’t keep that promise after all. Not after you’ve been helpful to the clan, and with Lan watching.”

Within hours of the car bombing, Ayt Mada had issued a public statement condemning the attack and categorically denying the Mountain’s involvement. Five innocent bystanders, including a child, had suffered non-life-threatening injuries from the blast, and Ayt adamantly declared that this was the work of criminals, as no Green Bone of the Mountain would engage in such a reprehensible breach of aisho. She expressed the Mountain’s sincere condolences to the Kaul and Maik families and vowed to aid them in any way possible to bring those responsible to justice.

It was all very convincing, Hilo admitted, and he intended to hold Ayt Mada to her public sentiments. Some of the leads he and his men had gathered led straight into Mountain territory; No Peak could not effectively go after Zapunyo’s organization without cooperation from their rivals. Hilo sent Juen to meet with Nau Suen and request that the Mountain honor the truce between the clans and help, or at least not hinder, No Peak’s vengeance against the foreign jade smuggler.

With Nau Suen’s permission, Juen took three of his best Green Bones with him into the Factory, the Mountain training hall in Spearpoint. Hilo waited outside in the Victor MX with another half dozen men, two other cars, and no small amount of impatient anxiety. He rested his arm out the window and smoked two cigarettes in a row, staring at the clouds scudding across the sky over resting freight cars. Lan had fought a clean-bladed duel on this very spot four years ago. Hilo found it difficult to even believe that had happened in this same lifetime. Lan shouldn’t have fought, he thought now. We should’ve stormed that fucking building with everything we had.

Juen and his men returned thirty minutes later. Hilo got out of the car to hear what his Horn had to say. “They’ve agreed to let us enter Mountain territory and to go after the targets we name, so long as they’re part of it. We have to share everything we know about Zapunyo’s organization, and Nau’s Green Bones will be right there with us on any action we take within their borders.” Hilo nodded; he hadn’t expected to get assistance for nothing. Naturally, the Mountain would want to lay claim to the jade, money, and shine seized in their own districts.

Juen frowned. “I see why some people think Nau can read minds. He doesn’t look like much, but he makes the skin crawl. He’s not like any Horn I’ve ever met.”

“That’s because he’s not. He’s Ayt Mada’s snake, and he’d slit all our throats in our sleep if he got the chance.” Hilo got back into the car. “We have to move fast. Work with him.”

They took out the Rat House the following evening. Anyone who saw the Pillar that night and on the several more that followed would think they were seeing the Kaul Hiloshudon from six years ago, the fearsome young Horn with his posse of warriors, studded with jade and bristling with weaponry. They would be mistaken, Hilo thought grimly. His thirty-second birthday was coming up, but he didn’t look or feel as young anymore; he arrived in the Coinwash district in Kehn’s Victor MX Sport instead of his signature white Duchesse, and Kehn himself was not at his side. Tar was there, however; the younger Maik had an unhinged look about him, something akin to a shipwrecked sailor or a starved animal, but Hilo could not possibly have left him behind, not in this.

In addition to Tar, he had with him Lott, Vin, and three Fingers. Elsewhere in the city, Juen, Vuay, and Iyn were leading simultaneous raids on other hideouts. Hilo paused on the street before they entered the club. “No killing until we find Soradiyo,” he reminded his men.

They tore off the door and strode into the building. There were about a dozen people inside with unfamiliar jade auras, scratchy and awkward, untrained, flaring into terror and hostility as the Green Bones burst into the room. Half a dozen men leapt up from their places and drew guns, but in the close quarters, only a few managed to get off any shots before the Green Bones were upon them. Moving in a blur of Strength, Hilo slid his head out of the way of one man’s aim, seized the outstretched arm, and slammed the heel of his other hand upward into the man’s limb, just above the elbow, breaking the joint with an audible crack. The gun went off, drowning out the man’s howl of pain. Hilo crushed the side of the man’s knee, grabbed his hair as he began to fall, and slammed the crook’s face into the nearest table as he went down.

Hilo took one, two steps—off a chair and then the bar top—pivoting as he leapt Light from the counter and off the nearest wall, drawing his talon knife in midair and Steeling as he came down with his full weight on the attacker he’d Perceived behind him. They crashed together to the concrete floor. Hilo pulled the man’s head back and nearly cut his throat before he remembered his own admonition to leave the occupants alive. His opponent twisted around on the sticky ground, bellowing and heaving with desperate, unfocused Strength as he tried to seize Hilo in a headlock. He was a burly, powerful man and might’ve succeeded if Hilo didn’t act quickly; he pushed the palm of his hand into the man’s back, Channeling into his spine, rupturing the discs between the vertebrae. The man’s torso and legs went rigid with agony and he lay unresisting on the ground as Hilo got back to his feet and brushed off his clothes.

Several other of the Rat House’s denizens were unconscious or incapacitated, though Hilo suspected that a few of them did not have long to live. Tar, moon blade in hand, had severed one man’s arm at the elbow and opened the belly of another who was now kneeling on the ground, feebly moaning and holding his protruding entrails. The rest of the new green were cowering on the ground with their heads to the floor, begging for mercy. Lott and Vin, their jade auras humming with alertness, were going around confiscating weapons and collecting the illegal jade—rings, pendants, belts. Hilo stood in the center of the dim room and took a good look around. The Rat House was a sorry, stuffy place—one half of it covered with mats, broken concrete blocks, sandbags, and other equipment for people to practice jade abilities, and the other half full of dingy tables in front of a surprisingly well-stocked bar. Two metal needle disposal boxes hung on the wall along with handwritten flyers with tips for safe and hygienic shine injection.

“All of you are jade thieves who don’t deserve to live,” Hilo announced. “Whether you worked for the Mountain, or foreign criminals, or are just too jade fevered and stupid to know any better, you’re all in this situation because you didn’t change your ways when you had the chance.” He allowed his words to sink in as he paced slowly across the floor, examining faces, comparing them to the drawings he’d had made from descriptions and shown to every Green Bone in No Peak.

“I don’t see who I’m looking for,” he said, reaching the end of the room and turning around. “I’m going to give you collectively one minute to tell me where to find the barukan Soradiyo. I know he comes here to recruit scum like you as rockfish for Zapunyo’s smuggling operation, so don’t pretend you don’t know who I’m talking about. And I want the locations of any other hideouts in the city where the new green can be found. If I get what I want in one minute, you’ll lose your jade but keep your lives. If I don’t, you’ll lose both.”

Iyn Ro and her Fingers caught Soradiyo two days later. The smuggler had spent the weeks after the bombing hiding in the storeroom of a gym in a part of the Stump well known as an Uwiwan ethnic ghetto. Upon learning that the Mountain was allowing No Peak into its territories to hunt for him, Soradiyo attempted to flee the country. He would’ve stood a better chance of escaping detection if he’d taken off his jade, but in his haste and desperation, he failed to think of that. Iyn’s search team Perceived a stowaway on a boat bound for the Uwiwa Islands. Soradiyo was jade-stripped and taken to a warehouse in the Docks where Tar took charge of interrogating him.

“The barukan are fucking pussies,” Tar said, when Hilo arrived some hours later. “He gave up everything we wanted. The names of the two rockfish he hired to plant the bomb, plus details about Zapunyo’s operations: the docking locations of the picking crews, the mine sites they scavenge from, how they get the jade scrap out of the country, the names and identities of the other agents in Janloon and the top people in Zapunyo’s organization, the police and government officials that uwie smuggler has in his pocket, and the defenses around his mansion in Tialuhiya.”

“Did you write it all down?” Hilo asked.

“Pano did,” Tar said, indicating the Finger behind him, who was holding a clipboard with notes and who looked a little sick in the face after this unpleasant assignment. Hilo took the clipboard from him and read through all of it, carefully. When he was done, the Pillar nodded in satisfaction and handed it back, then told Tar and Pano to wait outside. He went into the windowless room where Soradiyo hung half-naked with his arms chained over his head, covered in blood and bruises and shaking uncontrollably from jade withdrawal. Hilo waited until the man roused his attention weakly. “Are you here to kill me?” the barukan asked hopefully, his Shotarian accent slurred through a dry throat and cracked lips.

Hilo had two four-ounce juice boxes with him; he always had a couple of them in the car, along with some snacks, for times when his sons got hungry or thirsty while on outings. The oppressive humidity of Janloon’s summer was even worse here in the windowless warehouse than it was outside. The stale air stank strongly of the prisoner’s piss, which stained a splotchy circle of concrete around his feet. Hilo approached the man. He unwrapped the plastic around the tiny straw, punched it into the juice box’s small foil circle, and held it out to Soradiyo, who clamped his bloodied lips around it and sucked back the entire drink in one desperate mouthful. He eyed the second box in pleading, but the Pillar did not give it to him.

“One more question,” Hilo said. “Who gave the order? Ayt or Zapunyo?”

“Zapunyo,” Soradiyo rasped. “With the Mountain’s encouragement.” He struggled to shift, to take some of the body weight off his straining shoulders. “Last year, Nau Suen contacted me. He wanted me to act as the go-between for his clan to talk to Zapunyo. It wasn’t like I had much of a choice; the bastard was killing my scrap pickers and rockfish as fast as I could hire them. The Mountain said it was obligated to uphold its publicly declared agreement with No Peak and do its part to oppose smuggling. But if the Mountain was in sole control, things might be different. Perhaps some sort of accommodation could be reached. That’s what was suggested.”

“And Zapunyo bought it.”

“He saw it for what it was: a trade. The clans were making it too hard for us, costing Zapunyo too much. Ayt was saying that if we got rid of you, she would let us eat.”

Hilo nodded. “It must sting that Ayt gave you up so quickly, that you’re in here now.”

Soradiyo made a motion that might’ve been an attempted shrug. “The price of failure. It’s no big surprise. And it’s not as if I’m telling you anything that you didn’t already suspect.”

“No,” Hilo agreed. “Where do you want your body sent? Do you have relatives?”

Soradiyo closed his eyes. “Yes, in Oortoko, but because of the war, I’m not sure where they are now, and I don’t want them to see me like this. Send me to my cousin Iyilo in the Uwiwa Islands. He’ll bury me, and it’ll serve him right to feel guilty for leaving me here on my own, and for what happened.”

Hilo said nothing more. He drew his talon knife and opened the barukan’s throat in one swift motion. Soradiyo’s wracked body relaxed and his chin fell forward to his chest over an apron of red. When Hilo exited, he said, “Clean him up and send him back to the Uwiwas.”

“That piece of scum killed Kehn,” Tar exclaimed, furious emotion coloring his face. “Why’d you let him off so easy? We ought to sink him into the ocean bit by fucking bit.”

Hilo silenced his Pillarman with a look that was not unsympathetic, but was stern enough to make it clear that he expected no further talking back. “Soradiyo and Tau Maro might’ve planned and carried out the bombing, but they were puppets on strings.” Hilo wiped and sheathed his knife. “Ayt Mada is playing a long game. As for Zapunyo—I warned that Uwiwan dog that if he kept reaching his dirty hands into Kekon, I’d go after him, and that’s exactly what we’re going to do.” The Pillar’s voice flattened to an edge. “We’re going to destroy everything he’s built.”