Jade War

Anden did as he was told, but over the next several days, he kept recalling Cory’s look of alarm that night, the way he’d pulled Anden down to the ground away from machine gun fire, and how he’d gotten angry at Rohn and told him not to involve Anden at all: He shouldn’t even be here.

Thus far, Anden had thought of Cory as the leader in their relationship, himself as the follower. Espenia was Cory’s country, this was his city and his neighborhood; he was three years older than Anden; he was more socially gregarious and more sexually confident and experienced. None of this had bothered Anden, had indeed made Cory only more attractive and alluring. But for the first time now, Anden also saw himself as the weaker of the two of them. Mrs. Hian was right; Cory was a Green Bone and Anden was not. When he’d rushed into danger, the Pillar’s son had been forced to protect him. If their relationship lasted, would this always be the case?

Anden was deeply troubled by the idea. He’d been born to a Green Bone family, adopted and raised by Green Bones, and trained at a Green Bone school. All his life he’d been taught to stand up not only for his own honor and reputation, but that of his family and clan, and to defend those who were weaker, those without jade who fell under the clan’s protection. Even as an exile from No Peak, even without jade, he hadn’t yet faced the reality that he

was now one of those people who needed defending. Everyone Anden had ever been close to, everyone important in his life, was a Green Bone. He had no template for how to be a member of the Kaul family, indeed, how to be a Kekonese man at all, without jade. He had a sudden vision of Cory one day following in his father’s footsteps and becoming the Pillar of Southtrap, with Anden relegated to being his secret lover, a vulnerable boyfriend who never fit into Espenia on his own terms, and the thought made Anden feel, for the first time in nearly a year, a fresh pang of shame over his situation.

It didn’t help his mood that he’d lost the parts of his routine that he’d come to enjoy the most. Relayball was put on hiatus for two weeks following the incident, and afterward, he couldn’t muster the enthusiasm to attend knowing that Cory wasn’t there. The grudge hall was indefinitely shut down; Anden snuck by the building once during the day and saw police tape crisscrossing the broken front entrance.

The Port Massy police questioned the residents of Southtrap but learned very little. No one claimed to have been there at the time that the shooting happened. No one said anything about why the community center had been targeted. That same night elsewhere in Southtrap, Kekonese businesses had been vandalized and walls were spray-painted with slurs, but no one pointed out the obvious to the police: that the crimes were racially motivated, that Kromner’s crewboys were targeting the Kekonese for their gambling operations and jade.

Anden heard rumors from Derek and Tami and a few others he managed to run into occasionally on his way to and from school and work. Dauk had sent Rohn Toro with a few of his men to retaliate against Kromner’s Crew. Two bookmaking operations were attacked and robbed, and two crewboys suspected of being among the drive-by shooters were found dead with broken necks. In response, the attacks on Kekonese businesses and civilians increased: The barbershop that Mr. Hian had been going to for eight years was set ablaze; an elderly Green Bone was ambushed and beaten outside of his home and his few pieces of jade stolen; a local shopkeeper falsely suspected of being a Green Bone was attacked at a bus stop. No arrests were made.

The Hians’ eldest son, a perpetually harried but well-meaning man in his early forties whom Anden had met over several polite but shallow interactions in the past, came over to the house to try to convince his parents to move out of the neighborhood and into the suburbs. Anden sat upstairs in his bedroom trying not to eavesdrop, but there was no avoiding it.

“Southtrap’s turning into an ethnic ghetto,” their son argued. “Wouldn’t you rather live somewhere with more space and less crime?” But the Hians insisted that they did not want to move. They liked the location, they had friends here; where else could they walk to a Kekonese grocery store? Maybe, Mrs. Hian complained, if their sons were considerate enough to give them grandchildren while they were still alive, they would have a reason to move; otherwise, what was the point?

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