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.