It was the longest speech that Bero had ever heard the teenager give. Bero stared at Mudt with astonishment. Then he exploded. “Who the fuck do you think you are, talking to me like that? You think I need you? If it weren’t for me, you wouldn’t even have jade. I came up with the plan to get Kaul’s jade; I got us into the Rat House; I got us the scavenging work—everything’s been my idea all along, you’re the one who’s nothing and you’re saying that I’m nothing? I ought to—”
Bero lurched up to grab Mudt by the throat, but the boy leapt up and scrambled out of Bero’s grasp. Bero lunged after him, but suddenly the ground seemed to tilt under his feet; he staggered and fell against the sofa. A wave of dizziness swept over him and his head swam. He hadn’t had that much to drink yet, definitely not more than Mudt, and Mudt was standing with no problem, watching him impassively, expectantly.
In one sharp instant of clarity, Bero realized what was happening. He stared at the empty bottle of beer he’d knocked over on the floor. He remembered that he’d once told Mudt why his face was crooked—had explained with regret and yet some pride that he’d almost managed to steal jade straight off a drunken Green Bone by drugging his drink, years ago.
“You fucker.” Bero tried to shake the descending curtain out of his head; he blinked and cursed and crawled forward toward Mudt with murder on his mind. “You shit-eating little rat fuck.” Bero’s stomach churned and convulsive spikes of pain shot through his guts. He tried to summon his focus; with a snarl of effort, he unleashed a feeble Deflection in Mudt’s direction. It went wide, knocking a lamp off a table and sending it into the wall with a crash. Mudt didn’t even move.
Bero curled on the carpet, sweating, clutching his stomach, tongue lolling. Through a fog, he saw Mudt approach and stand over him with something in his hand. Bero couldn’t see what it was until his betrayer bent down and jabbed him in the thigh with it. Mudt depressed the syringe, shooting a triple dose of concentrated SN1 into Bero’s veins. Enough to send his heart into convulsions. Enough to kill him.
Bero tried once more to wrap his hands around Mudt’s skinny neck, but the teenager used his Strength to break Bero’s grip easily. He sat on Bero’s chest, pinning his arms, and as Bero’s eyes rolled and his mouth worked frantically, Mudt removed the string of jade from around Bero’s neck and placed it around his own. Bero’s world dimmed. The poison in his drink, the overdose of shine in his blood, the jade being torn away from him—he couldn’t tell which of the three was most rapidly robbing him of the ability to move, to speak, to think.
Mudt stood back up. “I’m not sorry for you,” he said, but he sounded hesitant, as if he were saying it to convince himself. He stared at Bero for a long moment, then said, with greater conviction, “You’d have done the same to me if you were in my place. You’re only getting what you deserve.”
Bero’s fingers clutched at Mudt’s ankle. Mudt stepped out of reach, and Bero flopped and rolled after him on the ground like a fish flung onto the deck of a boat. He heard Mudt walking away, and then he heard the sound of the apartment door opening and shutting. Mudt was gone, and he had taken Bero’s jade and left Bero to die. Mudt! That greasy little kid, that nobody, that boy who’d worked in the Goody Too and had always seemed so dim. He’d been killed by Mudt, who was supposed to be weaker, supposed to be the sidekick, and who had become the only person Bero might’ve called a friend—and the irony of it was such that Bero was overwhelmed by the desire to laugh and to scream and to bash in the boy’s skull.
With this last surge of hate, Bero crawled to the apartment door and heaved himself against it; the loose lock popped and he fell across the threshold, and then it seemed he was being dragged backward down a very long, dark tunnel.
CHAPTER 37
Threats and Schemes
A large insulated shipping container marked to the attention of the No Peak clan was discovered in a boathouse in the Docks on the basis of an anonymous tip. The box, normally used to transport frozen seafood, contained the dismembered body of an Uwiwan man—arms, legs, hands, feet, cock, torso, head. One of the Fingers, Heike, leaned over the water and lost his latest meal; Lott kept his gorge down as he peered at the grisly sight before taking a hasty step back. “Who was it, Maik-jen?”
Kehn closed the lid on the body; it seemed indecent to look at the parts for long, particularly as he thought it likely the man had been alive for at least part of the time that they were being separated. “One of our rats in Tialuhiya,” Kehn said. “My guess is the one who tipped us off on the Amaric Pride.” Kehn was not the sort of person to openly show the full extent of his disappointment or anger; it had been his habit since he was a boy to be the calm one, to keep Tar out of trouble, or if they were already in trouble, to get them out. Now, however, he stormed out of the boathouse under a dark cloud. Establishing and maintaining informers in the Uwiwa Islands was painstaking work and a significant investment of time and money on the part of the Horn’s side of the clan. In Kekon, No Peak had ample resources and influence, but it was not easy to recruit, control, and protect White Rats in other countries. When, despite all efforts, some of them were discovered by Ti Pasuiga and grotesquely punished, it scared all the others, and No Peak could not effectively retaliate.
Kehn stewed on these troubles and thought about how to bring them to the attention of the Pillar. “We’ve lost rats before,” he explained the following day over lunch in the Twice Lucky, “but they just disappear. This is the first time Zapunyo’s rubbed our face in it, sending us a body in pieces like that. Smugglers used to be mostly a nuisance, but Ti Pasuiga is well organized and feared in those islands, and now it’s not afraid to offend us directly. That Uwiwan cur has gotten too bold.”
“He’s frustrated,” Hilo said, passing the plate of duck skewers to Tar. “Zapunyo has plenty of dirty money and cheap lives, but if he can’t get jade out of Kekon and move it to buyers, he doesn’t have a business. The Ygutanians, the Oortokon rebels, and the barukan who’re supporting the rebellion because they hate the Shotarian government—those are his biggest customers, and with the heat you’ve put on his routes through the Origas Gulf and East Amaric, he’s stuck.”
The Pillar seemed less upset about the slain rat than Kehn had expected, or perhaps he was simply preoccupied, thinking about his upcoming trip to Espenia. While he was gone, the Weather Man would be in charge of No Peak, and although Kehn liked Kaul Shae well enough, she worked behind a desk and had no real understanding of the military side of the clan. He was accustomed to being able to consult with Hilo-jen about every aspect of the Horn’s responsibilities. “Zapunyo’s starting to look to other markets,” he said. “He already brews SN1 to keep his scrap pickers and rockfish and polishers from getting the Itches; it’s natural that he’s also making it to sell for profit, especially now that the Mountain’s factories in Ygutan are gone. We’ve heard he’s trying to partner with other groups—drug cartels, arms dealers, prostitution rings—to distribute jade and shine in other parts of the world.”
“Why can’t the Espenians get the Uwiwan government to deal with Zapunyo?” Tar asked. “They know where his mansion is; why not just kill him?”
“The Uwiwan government is a corrupt black hole,” Hilo said. “Parts of that country are lawless, and half of the foreign aid that goes into that place disappears.”