“Moved back in with her parents.” The conversation continued in more hushed tones. Anden glanced again at Rohn. Occasionally, someone would slide deferentially into the empty chair opposite the man and lean forward to speak to him quietly. Rohn’s expression rarely changed; he would nod a little or ask a question, but he maintained the serenely impassive look of an animal at rest, alert even in its own lair. The people who came to speak to him did not linger or make social talk; they left so that others could come in their turn. Something about the understated gravity in these small interactions made Anden think of home, of the safety he’d always felt and taken for granted in No Peak territory.
Cory came up behind him and grabbed him in a bear hug around the shoulders. “Hey, crumb, it’s toppers in here tonight,” Cory said, letting go innocently. “You doing all right? Have you tried the cake? You want another drink?”
Anden turned around, forcing a smile onto his face. “No, I’m fine. It’s a great party.” His voice fell. “I’m happy for you. I’m just… wishing Adamont Capita wasn’t so far away.”
“I told you, it’s only a three-hour bus ride, crumb,” Cory exclaimed. “It’ll be easy for me to come home to visit.” Anden didn’t feel comforted by this, but Cory said, “Come on, gang along with the rest of us.” He led Anden back to the cluster of their usual relayball friends and cheerfully announced, “Hey, did you all know Anden’s an uncle now?”
Abashed by the attention but proud nonetheless, Anden produced the wallet-sized photographs that Shae had sent him. One was of Niko sitting on the floor of the kitchen in the Kaul house wearing a green T-shirt and blue shorts, holding a plastic toy talon knife in one hand and a half-eaten cracker in the other. He was holding the cracker out, as if offering it to the photographer, probably Wen. The camera appeared to have caught him by surprise—he stared out of the photo with a slightly bewildered expression, crumbs on his chin, one eye squinted in a way that made him look so similar to Lan that it was sometimes painful for Anden to look at the picture.
He’d been astonished to learn of Niko’s existence. Every time he thought about this boy he’d never met, he felt a deep pang of sympathy. Niko was an orphan too, brought into the Kaul home in the wake of tragedy (his mother and stepfather were killed in a terrible house fire, Shae had explained). No doubt he’d felt as lost and confused as Anden had been. If only there was some way he could reassure Niko, tell him not to worry, because unlike Anden, he was a Kaul in both blood and name.
The second photograph was of baby Ru, eight weeks old, though he must be nearly eight months by now. Anden had asked for more recent photographs in his last letter, but it took so long to get them, and he was not about to bother the Weather Man over such a small thing. Ru was cherubic and had a lot of dark hair; he held one pudgy fist cocked by his head and the other extended, as if in a fighting pose. It made Anden smile. His friends in the grudge hall exclaimed appreciatively over the photographs and handed them back. “They’re so cute!” exclaimed Tami, the flirtatious young woman who Anden had learned was studying at Port Massy College to be a dental technician.
Derek said, “Are you going to share your own news, Tod?”
Tod looked around the circle and squared his shoulders. “I enlisted yesterday.”
A brief silence followed this announcement. Cory said, “Good for you, Tod.” Sammy said, “Yeah, that’s toppers.”
Tami’s friend, Ema, asked, with a touch of concern, “What do your parents think?”
“My ma’s worried about me being deployed in Oortoko, but she supports me. My da’s against it, says it’s a betrayal for me to fight on the side of the Shotarians after what they did to Kekon and to our family.” Most Kekonese-Espenians came from families who’d fled the Shotarian occupation of their parents’ and grandparents’ generation. Many had distant relatives who’d been part of the One Mountain Society, who’d been tortured or executed.
“I don’t see it that way at all,” Tod said, a little angrily. “The occupation was thirty years ago, and besides, I wouldn’t be fighting for the Shotarians, I’d be fighting for Espenia, to keep the ’guts from thinking they can take over the world. The recruiter I’ve been talking to said that they’re really interested in getting more kespies like us to enlist.”
“I’ve been thinking about it too,” Sammy admitted.
“It’s the only legal way to wear jade now,” Tod pointed out. “And if the immigration records show that at least one of your parents came from Kekon, you’ll be put on the fast track to special forces. If you make it in, you’ll get a medical exemption: low or no SN1 dosing, no three-year restriction. And you won’t be prosecuted for having worn jade prior to your service.”
“You won’t be able to wear any of your own jade, though,” Cory pointed out. “I’ve heard they start everyone at square one. Even if you already have training in some of the traditional disciplines, they want to build you up their own way.”
Tod stuffed his hands into his pockets and said, “I think it’s worth it. I’d like it if people saw us as patriots, you know? If they realized that jade can be used for good, to serve Espenia.”
Those two things, Anden might’ve pointed out, were not the same at all, but he held his tongue. This was the most bewildering conversation he’d heard during his time in Port Massy. A Green Bone serving the government that banned his jade? Willingly leaving his home to fight in a faraway country for people to whom he owed nothing, in a way that was almost certain to kill jadeless civilians and break aisho? It was astonishingly un-Kekonese.
Anden knew, from discussion at the Hians’ dinner table and from the Kekonese-language newspaper that they subscribed to, that Kekon was hosting more than a hundred thousand ROE soldiers on Euman Island and providing economic and logistical support to the war effort, and still the Espenian government was pressuring the Royal Council for more. The Kekonese were understandably angry. Shae had been vilified for her former military ties to Espenia and been forced to defend her reputation in a near lethal clean-bladed duel against Ayt Mada—something Anden could barely imagine and felt a little sick even thinking about. The foreigners and their war were causing nothing but trouble for his cousins in No Peak.
Anden was sad to admit he’d lost some respect for Tod.
Cory apparently did not feel the same way. “I think it’s toppers what you’re doing, Tod. I hope that—” He didn’t finish because a sudden motion caught his attention. Rohn Toro had leapt to his feet and was standing stock-still, his eyes unfocused in the way that Anden knew to be the expression of a Green Bone concentrating intensely on something in his Perception. A muted burst of rattling noise, like the popping of a dozen firecrackers, came from the street above. Gunfire.
Rohn tore up the stairs like a demon. A wave of confusion, then worry, then fear swept through the enclosed space of the underground grudge hall. Several people began to scramble for the stairs toward escape, but Cory reacted, just as he had when Tim Joro’s wife had run out into the lanes of speeding traffic. “Don’t go up there!” he shouted, in an urgent and commanding voice that Anden had never heard him use before. “Stay here, everyone.” He looked to Tod and Sammy. “Green Bones will go first. Don’t come out until one of us says it’s safe.”
Three men and a woman—Anden had seen them in the grudge hall before but didn’t remember their names—rose from their seats and joined Cory, Tod, and Sammy as they ran for the stairs. Most of the people nearby moved aside to let them pass, but a few still tried to follow or push ahead of them. Protesting voices started to rise. At the foot of the stairs, Tod spun around and threw a wide, shallow Deflection that swept through the hall, knocking off hats and upending drink glasses. “Stay here, we said!” The Green Bones raced up the stairs.