CHAPTER
15
A Bargain with Demons
Outside the warehouse stood a dozen souped-up Torroyo motorcycles in the garish neon shades preferred by Janloon’s northside bikers: violent red, lime green, electric blue. Hilo paused to admire a couple of them, patting the contoured leather seat of a particularly striking vehicle, bending to examine the gleaming engine and peering briefly over the dash before continuing on to the aluminum door of the repurposed building, which vibrated with the pounding bass of loud music.
With him were Maik Tar and two senior Fingers that Hilo hoped to soon promote to Fists: The clever but slightly pudgy and unassuming Obu had better Deflection than anyone Hilo had ever met, but needed to learn how to command if he was to advance; the other Finger, Iyn, had no especially superlative jade talent, but like many female Green Bones, particularly on the Horn’s side of the clan, she was accustomed to working harder than her male counterparts, which Hilo appreciated. Iyn Ro and Maik Tar had an on-again, off-again relationship, which was currently off; they were too similar, and as lovers, they fought like cats.
The four Green Bones strode into the motorcycle gang’s headquarters.
Roughly twenty bikers, almost all between the ages of sixteen and twenty- five, were sprawled on battered old sofas, drinking and smoking, some shooting pool, a few watching television. Three men were openly counting a pile of money in one corner. Hilo looked around with interest. As far as
gangs in the Coinwash district went, the Chrome Demons maintained one of the better equipped and appointed abodes, with relatively less filth, vermin, and drugged indolence.
All eyes turned to the intruders. A second later, every member of the Chrome Demons was on his feet, hands going for guns and knives and whatever other weapons were on hand: bottles, pool cues. The trio of men in the corner jumped up and tried, amusingly, to hide the large stack of money behind them.
Tar shouted, “Listen up, curs!” Someone shut off the music.
“Who owns the beautiful fire-red Torroyo RP550 out front?” Hilo asked.
“I do,” came a reply from the back of the room. A surly man stepped forward. He was heavily built and, typical for his gang, wore a leather jacket with the sleeves sliced into tatters. His thick hair was styled into two stiff and vaguely phallic humps on his head. He appeared a few years older than most of the youths around him, and Hilo deduced from his superior vehicle and his authoritative swagger that he was the leader of this cell of Demons.
“What do you value more, your face or your bike?” Hilo asked him.
“What?” growled the man uncomprehendingly.
“Your face or your bike,” Hilo repeated. “Which would you choose?”
The man’s eyes flicked down to the jade studs visible across Hilo’s collarbone, and then over at Maik, Obu, and Iyn. “My face,” he said hesitantly.
Instantly, Hilo struck him, breaking his nose. The man fell back, eyes streaming, stunned with pain; he hadn’t even had time to raise his hands in defense. A few of the younger Demons, who were less wise to the world, made sudden moves to unload their pistols, but before a single shot could be fired, Obu flung a Deflection that hurled every member of the gang back against the walls and caused the sofas and heavy pool table to skid out of place.
As the Chrome Demons staggered back to their feet, Hilo said reasonably, “We’ve heard many complaints about the noise and disorderliness of street racing in this neighborhood. Also the number of robberies is getting out of hand. It’s obvious from such fine rides parked outside that the Chrome Demons are not short on money. So it’s only fair you criminals should pay tribute to the clan that takes care of the law-abiding people you so carelessly inconvenience.”
As Hilo spoke, Iyn walked the warehouse floor with a large canvas bag, collecting the ample pile of cash from the back table and confiscating guns with businesslike efficiency. With Maik and Obu watching every move, no one dared to put up an additional fight. The Chrome Demons were a rough lot, with street-hardened, tattooed, glowering killers among them, but many of them rapidly handed over their weapons and money in resignation; they’d obviously been fined by Green Bones before and understood that they were guaranteed to get out alive if they cooperated and guaranteed not to if they didn’t. Clan oversight over every aspect of society, including crime, was largely accepted as part of life in Janloon. One foolish man leered at Iyn, but she turned such an eagerly murderous look on him that he stopped contritely and emptied his pockets before she could break any of his bones. Hilo was pleased with both of his Fingers; so far they had taken their cues from him and applied the proper amount of force. Neither had overreacted, yet no one in the room questioned they would shed blood without hesitation. It was a tricky balance that a Green Bone had to strike.
Iyn came back and set the bag of weapons and money on the ground at Hilo’s feet. “Normally,” he said, “I would take your ill-acquired gains and leave you with the warning that if I heard more complaints I would send you and your bikes to the bottom of the harbor. But that’s something I could’ve sent any of my Fists to do. It’s not why I’m here.”
“Why the fuck are you here?” slurred the leader, holding his face.
“Good of you to ask,” said Hilo. “You know of Three-Fingered Gee?”
“Gee’s dead,” someone in the room called out.
“Feeding the worms,” Hilo agreed. “The man who killed him works for the Mountain. I’m sure of it, but I want to know how. I want to know what he’s doing and who he’s working with. A lot of this”—Hilo nudged the sack of money and guns with his foot—“comes from the brewing and selling of street shine to jade thieves and smugglers. The sort of folks that buy and trade with black market carvers like Tem Ben. So here’s my offer: Follow your contacts. Your thieves and pickpockets, your shine dealers and pimps. Do it quietly. Find me Tem Ben and as many of those who work with him as you can, and I’ll walk out, leaving this bag on the floor.” Hilo turned his hands up and gestured magnanimously around the disordered warehouse. “Obu, Iyn, and Maik Tar will come back expecting news, but you won’t see me again so long as you don’t cause any more trouble in No Peak territory. What you do
or take from across the border, however—in Fishtown or the Stump—that, I’m willing to overlook.”
There was a pregnant silence punctuated by murmuring shuffles. The Horn of No Peak had, with certain caveats, essentially given the Chrome Demons a free pass. A reprieve from clan repression and taxation in exchange for information, and he’d all but encouraged them to wreak havoc in Mountain territory and steal back across to Coinwash without repercussion if they could get away with it. The men in the warehouse shifted with dubious excitement; the Horn must be angry indeed. Clan war might spell opportunity.
“We should agree, Okan,” one of the younger bikers said in an eager whisper to the leader, who was staunching his bleeding nose with his shirt.
“I’ll decide what we do,” Okan snarled at the youth, evidently trying to reassert his severely diminished authority. He turned back around and frowned fearsomely at the intrusive Green Bones but did not quite meet their eyes, staring instead at the bag between the Horn’s feet. The man had no jade aura, of course, but Hilo could still Perceive the tension in him clearly: humiliation and pain, warring with the growing sullen awareness that he was being offered something he would be deeply foolish to refuse. At last he said, “So do we get a cut when you take out Tem Ben and the Mountain’s people?”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Hilo said sharply, and the easy manner that he’d displayed thus far vanished so quickly that everyone in the warehouse, even Hilo’s own people, flinched at the change. “That’s clan business. You find me Tem and tell me about his activities and connections, but what happens after that is between Green Bones. I’m putting you in a better spot than the Reds or the Seven Ones or any of the other gangs. You abuse my generous nature on No Peak ground and I’ll find out, and gods help you. Now tell me your answer.”
Okan mumbled, “All right; we understand each other. We agree.”
“That’s ‘Yes, Kaul-jen,’ and kneel when you pledge your word to the Horn, you dog,” said Maik Tar angrily. Hilo thought that last bit was unnecessary; the gang leader was already resentful and cowed enough, and as much as Hilo appreciated the younger Maik’s fervent nature, Tar’s excitable cruelty detracted rather than added to the impact of the Horn’s words.
Hilo said nothing, making a mental note to himself to correct Tar later.
Instead, he picked up the canvas bag at his feet and held it back out to Okan
with an air of mild ceremony, symbolically restoring enough of the man’s lost respect that he was reasonably confident the rest of the gang would abide by the agreement reached tonight.
The leader of the Chrome Demons, still seething, knelt in front of Hilo on the concrete floor of the warehouse and raised his hands in a salute.