Bero was dropped facedown on the road. He struggled to his knees as Mudt was deposited roughly next to him. A nauseating sense of dreadful familiarity rose in Bero’s throat; this was like that time nearly three years ago when he’d been caught and beaten by the Maik brothers. He had a crooked face and a limp to remind him of that encounter every day, and he had a terrible feeling that he was unlikely to get off as easily this time.
Mudt spat dirt from his mouth. “Now we’re fucked, keke. This is all your fault.”
Bero blinked grit from his eyes. The lower half of the upended truck was blocking the road; the other two trucks had been forced to stop behind it. Green Bones were dragging pickers out of all three vehicles and killing them with chilling efficiency. In minutes, they were dead, thirteen in all. Bero suspected the other seven in the crew were lying on the slag heap some distance behind. He considered leaping up and running for his life. With Lightness and Strength on his side, he might make it, though probably not. He was just about to give it a go anyway, because what did he have to lose at this point, but one of the Green Bones must’ve Perceived his intentions because a pair of rough hands seized them by the backs of their necks. “Do anything stupid and you die, you barukan piss rats.”
“We’re not barukan,” Bero protested angrily.
A man approached. He was older than the others, his closely cropped hair receding to either side of a sharp widow’s peak, but his trim body moved with the lean economy of a grizzled wolf. His piercing eyes did not seem to blink very much. “Zapunyo doesn’t send his hired barukan to supervise the scavenges, not anymore,” the man explained to the other Green Bone. “He needs them to run his operations in the Uwiwas and to guard his compound. The local jade-fevered shine addicts are a lot more expendable.”
“Should we kill them, then, Nau-jen?” asked the other Green Bone, his grip tightening.
The Horn of the Mountain studied the two kneeling teens. In the dark, Bero could not see much of his expression, but the man’s aura was like a low, simmering heat off baked bricks. The Horn’s searching gaze settled upon the jade encircling Bero’s neck and Mudt’s arms. “That’s a lot of quality green for a couple of punks like you.” His voice had the coarse, demanding quality of a military sergeant. “How’d you two scavengers come by it?”
Bero was quite sure he was going to be executed, but he lifted his head proudly and defiantly. “I won this jade. I took it from Kaul Lan’s body myself.”
There was a moment of stunned silence from the nearby Green Bones. Then they burst into raucous laughter that echoed over the idling engines of the stalled trucks. Nau Suen didn’t laugh, but he let his men do so. After the chuckling had died down, one of the Fists said, “These new green, as they call themselves, are worse than the barukan. Every one of them would have you believe they won their spoils in a pitched battle when not a single one of them can use jade worth shit.”
Nau Suen turned a stern look toward the Green Bone who’d spoken. “We hooked half of these sorry miscreants on jade and shine in order to use them against No Peak. Why should we be surprised now that Gont Asch’s discarded tools have been picked up by an opportunist like Zapunyo?” His men fell into chastised silence.
Nau looked back down at the two teens. “We’re not going to kill these two. We’re going to send them back to their employer as an act of goodwill.” He motioned for Bero and Mudt to be released. Bero blinked, not quite believing it enough to be relieved. Nau said to them, “Listen carefully. Tell the barukan Soradiyo that as long as I keep finding and catching his scrap-picking crews, he won’t make money. Zapunyo won’t be pleased. Your manager might even soon be out of a job in the worst possible way. Let him know that Nau Suen, Horn of the Mountain, would like to discuss bettering his career options.”
“You’re going to buy out Soradiyo?” Bero asked, suddenly interested now that he’d recovered from his fear. Mudt shot him an urgent look that screamed, Shut up, you want him to change his mind about letting us live?
The Horn looked at Bero closely and curiously, as if he were a strange species of frog that had been discovered in the rain forest. Bero found the man’s gaze unnerving and began to think that maybe Mudt was right; maybe he should’ve kept his mouth shut the whole time. He’d heard rumors on the street that Nau Suen was so skilled in Perception that he could read minds. Which was stupid, everyone knew that was impossible, but nevertheless, Nau’s stare was so penetrating that Bero’s skin crawled.
The Horn said, “Ask another question and I’ll rip your tongue out. You’re a dog, a messenger, that’s all you are.” Nau leaned in close and spoke into Bero’s ear. “But you’re not lying. You actually do believe you’re wearing Kaul Lan’s jade. Which means that sooner or later, you’ll wish I’d done you the favor of killing you tonight.”
Nau straightened and turned away. “Let’s go,” he said. “Get these trucks out of here.” Several Green Bones combined their Strength to haul the lead vehicle upright, then Nau and his Green Bones got into the three trucks, taking the bin of jade scavenge with them. A few paused to roll the bodies of the pickers into the gully, one by one. With a rumbling spray of dirt, they drove off, leaving Bero and Mudt still kneeling by the road to wait for morning and make their way back down the mountain alone.
CHAPTER 24
The Inheritance
Shae walked from the Weather Man’s residence to the main house. Even though it was an hour before dawn, the lights were on in the kitchen. Kyanla was stirring a pot of hot cereal at the stove. Hilo sat at the table, cutting a nectarine into bite-sized pieces with a paring knife and putting them on a plastic food tray in front of Niko. The toddler pushed them around, depositing more of them on the floor than in his mouth. Hilo grumbled with weary patience.
Shae stood in the entry of the kitchen. Whenever she looked at Niko, she still felt a jolt—an echo of the shock on that evening three months ago when her brother had arrived back in Janloon with an exhausted two-year-old child in his arms. “Does he always wake up this early?” she asked.
“Pretty much,” her brother said, eating the rejected fruit pieces himself. “Since I had to be up early anyway, I thought I’d let Wen sleep in. She was up half the night with Ru.”
“We have to go,” Shae said.
Hilo wiped his hands on a napkin and got up, leaving Kyanla to take his vacated spot. The boy ignored the housekeeper’s attempts to reinterest him in breakfast and held his arms out to Shae to be picked up. “Auntie, auntie.”
“Not now, Niko,” Shae said, with a stab of guilt, as she placed a consoling kiss on the top of his head. Despite the shock of both his existence and his arrival, she’d loved the little boy almost at once. It was impossible not to see his resemblance to Lan, not to feel a mingled pang of sadness and joy every time he made an expression that reminded her of her dead brother. When Niko was fussy, clingy, and confused, when he began to follow her and tearfully hug her legs, she loved him all the more, wanted to comfort and protect him. She suspected he had taken such a strong liking to her because she was the one in the family most similar in appearance to Eyni.