CHAPTER
42
Old White Rat
The back of the Paw-Paw Pawnshop was one of a few places that Tem Ben could be found conducting business with those daring and foolhardy enough to be on the bottom rung of the black market jade trade. It was, Tem thought with satisfaction, a robust industry these days. The Green Bones were busy killing each other with enthusiasm, so criminals of all kinds were enjoying a reprieve. There was still the Janloon police to keep an eye out for, but really, all they did was fine petty crime, manage traffic, and clean up after the clans.
They were civil servants, not fighters. Most possessed no jade at all. Nothing like the beautiful specimen Tem was currently examining under a 10X loupe.
Under magnification, it displayed the characteristic uniform interlocking grain pattern that distinguished true Kekonese jade, the rarest, most valuable gem in the world, from all other inert green decorative rocks.
Tem frowned to keep his delight hidden from the twitchy Abukei man standing in front of his desk, chewing his bottom lip with crooked teeth stained red with betel nut juice. Tem waved a hand to gesture him back from blocking the light of the single overhead lamp. The Abukei man had good reason to be nervous; the jade he’d brought in was embedded in the hilt of a well-worn talon knife. Lifting a Green Bone’s weapon was a far greater offense than river diving—almost certainly fatal if one was caught. This shifty, ropy man didn’t look like an experienced or cunning thief. Tem suspected that, like the other cut jade specimens he’d seen lately, this
particular piece had been taken from a corpse. Green Bones were diligent about collecting the jade from their fallen enemies, but in a chaotic street war, sometimes things were overlooked in haste, weapons were lost, fast scavengers could get lucky.
Tem was curious, but his stated policy was no questions asked, and he stuck to it. He moved the loupe away and blew out sharply into his thick mustache. “There are some imperfections,” he lied. “Forty thousand dien.”
The stone was worth twice that much, but the man was eager to get rid of the knife, Tem could tell.
“Is that all?” the man wheedled, clearly suspecting that he was being cheated. “I’ve made nearly as much as that for river rocks before. This is a real talon knife.”
“Jade is more plentiful these days,” Tem said. “Forty thousand.”
It was still more money than the man had ever seen. He took the stack of bills Tem counted out for him and left, looking unhappy. It wasn’t as if he had much of a choice. With Three-Fingered Gee feeding the worms, and Little Mr. Oh having seen the excellent wisdom of retiring from the business, a jade thief in these parts would have to trek clear across the city to find another reliable buyer.
Alone in the pawnshop’s back room, behind the glass cases of watches and jewelry and the wall of secondhand televisions and speakers, Tem Ben caressed the hilt of the wickedly sharp talon knife and grinned at his purchase. He unwrapped an Ygutanian toffee in celebration. He could not find them anywhere in Janloon and had to have a friend mail them to him.
There were times when he missed his adopted country, but he had to admit winters here were far more pleasant, and there were lucrative opportunities on Kekon. It was fortunate that Ayt Mada understood the value of stone-eyes and rewarded him accordingly. Another year or two of this and he could live like a king in Ygutan. The Pillar had even promised there would be clan work and good money for him there once he returned. Of course, his family still considered him an unspeakable embarrassment, but being filthy rich was the best sort of revenge.
The bell over the front door rang as someone entered. The shop was closed to regular business; another jade seller perhaps? Tem leaned over to the peephole in the wall, which gave him clear line of sight to the front of the shop. A man in a short tan coat and billed hat stood at the front, barely
moving, as if he were listening for something. Casually, he turned around and locked the door with gloved hands.
In an instant Tem knew the man was here to kill him. The jade carver slid open his desk drawer and extracted a loaded pistol—a Ankev semiautomatic with enough stopping power to take out an Ygutanian steppe bear—and pointed it at the entrance of the back room as he dropped the talon knife into a satchel of rolled money. Quietly, with the bag in one hand and the gun in the other, Tem backed away toward the pawnshop’s back door. He turned the knob and pushed. The door held firm. Tem shoved it hard with his shoulder.
It budged slightly but stopped again; there was a metallic clanging sound from some obstacle barring the door from opening.
Fear swept over Tem. He dropped the bag and put his back to the door, the Ankev hefted and ready, waiting for the man to round the corner. If he’s a Green Bone, wait to shoot. Wait until he’s too close to Deflect. Empty the whole magazine. If he avoids the first shot, the others will get him. Steel won’t stop an Ankev. Nothing stops an Ankev, not one man, no matter who he is. And Tem was an excellent shot.
He couldn’t hear the man’s footsteps. Indeed, the pawnshop was disturbingly quiet. Sweat trickled down the side of Tem’s face, but he didn’t move. He waited. Still, nothing happened. Then suddenly, loud crashing erupted from the front of the shop as several heavy things hit the floor. Glass shattered. Tem stood rooted; was the man searching for something?
Searching for jade? Was it his talon knife Tem had in his satchel? The carver took a sideways step toward the peephole and leaned down— The wall next to him exploded in a spray of splinters and plaster. A man’s fist punched straight through the thin interior drywall and seized Tem’s wrist in a crushing grip of immovable Strength. Too late, Tem realized all the noise had been the sound of the Green Bone clearing the stacks of televisions and electronics from in front of the wall separating them. The seemingly disembodied arm protruding from the wall gave a violent twist and broke Tem’s wrist the way one might dislocate a chicken wing joint. The stone-eye howled as the Ankev pistol clattered to the floor.
The hand released him. Tem fell back against the desk, holding his limp wrist against his chest and scrambling to pick up the fallen pistol with his left hand. The wall came apart in a cloud of white dust as the Green Bone smashed a hole large enough to step through. Tem raised the pistol; it shook
as he tried to steady it with his broken hand. Whimpering with pain, he pulled the trigger. The enormous handgun kicked violently in his weaker grip and punched a hole above the back door.
The Ankev was yanked from Tem’s hands. The man now holding it squatted down in the small space and brought the butt of the heavy metal weapon down twice like a hammer, shattering Tem’s kneecaps. The carver screamed and rolled on the ground in agony. “You shit-licking pig fucker! I’ll kill you! I’ll fucking kill you!” he shrieked in Ygut.
His tormentor pulled over the desk chair Tem had been in minutes before and sat down. He put the Ankev down on the table and took off his cap, beating the plaster flakes from the felt. He brushed at the shoulders of his jacket, and finding that ineffective, he took the jacket off. After shaking off most of the debris, he laid the jacket over the desk on top of the gun. Then he rolled up his sleeves and waited until the stone-eye stopped screaming and
lay gasping, eyes rolling with hate.
“You know who I am?”
“You’re one of those whoreson Maiks,” Tem said.
“That’s right,” said Maik Tar. “And you’re Tem Ben, better known these days as the Carver.” He pulled a rectangular black object from his jacket pocket. Tem saw that it was a portable cassette tape recorder, like the sort that a journalist might carry. Maik wound the tape to the beginning. “You’ve had a good run,” he said. “Taking out the two other buyers on this side of town— that took some thick blood and style.”
“I’m a stone-eye,” Tem protested. “The clan let Gee and Mr. Oh run their businesses for years, and now you’re going to kill a stone-eye over a little river runoff? Where’s your precious Green Bone code of aisho, you cur, you fucking louse.”
“Hey, if you’d stuck to buying river stones, it would’ve been different.
Kaul Lan wouldn’t have sent anyone after you, not a stone-eye, not when it might piss off the Tem family for no real gain. You take a carver off the streets, someone else fills his spot anyway, right?” Maik set the tape recorder on the corner of the desk. “But now that Lan-jen is dead and we’re at war, it’s time for an overdue chat. You’re not just a stone-eye carver with bad Ygutanian fashion sense. You’re a White Rat.”
A White Rat: a clan spy and operative. Green Bone code against murdering enemy clan members with no jade didn’t apply to White Rats.
“My family’s cut me off; I’m not part of the Mountain. You can’t break aisho on a hunch!” Tem poured sweat.
“Oh, it’s no hunch, so don’t waste your breath on denials. We’ve had eyes on you for months. Did you really think you could piss inside No Peak territory and that we wouldn’t smell the stink?” Maik peered inside Tem’s satchel, rummaging through the cash and pulling out the wrapped talon knife as if unerringly questing out the nearby jade. He unfolded the cloth and whistled. “Wartime is good for carrion eaters, obviously.” He took the knife and tested the edge with his finger, then laid it next to the tape recorder. “This can go the fast way, or the slow way, but in any case, you’re going to tell us everything about the Mountain’s activities in No Peak territory, starting with where you send all the jade you get your hands on. I’ve already got a pretty good inkling, but I want you to tell it for posterity. So be sure to speak clearly.” He picked up the tape machine and pressed the record button.
Tem Ben spat. “Tell your master Kaul Hilo to go fuck himself.”
Maik’s eyes narrowed into slits. He hit pause on the recorder, set it back down on the table, and picked up the talon knife instead. “The slow way it is.”