You’re such a fucking pussy now.
The instant he was back in Janloon, however, Bero felt better, as if he’d been slowly turning on a cooking spit for years and finally been plunged into a cool tub of salve. On his first day back, he sat on a park bench in Paw-Paw soaking the city back into his pores—the grease of street food, the sounds of hawkers and cab drivers shouting in Kekonese, the spring damp on his parched skin. Even garbage in Janloon smelled better than it did elsewhere, the rats were sleeker.
Most of the people Bero had known were gone. Out of curiosity, he went back to the Little Persimmon lounge and to his great surprise he found Tadino working behind the bar. The man looked different—his hair was longer and he’d lost his sneering, sharptongued bravado. Instead, a hunted look darted in his eyes, and a raised red circular scar on his left cheek distorted the skin of his face.
“Shit, keke, is that you?” Tadino exclaimed. “Where have you been?”
“Nowhere,” Bero said. “Staying the fuck away from everyone.”
“Left town? Smart move. I thought maybe they picked you up in the raids along with everyone else.” Tadino dried his hands on a towel and glanced around nervously before leaning in to speak in a lowered voice. “They had our names on a fucking list, keke. Did you know Molovni disappeared? He must’ve ratted all of us out. Good thing you got away.”
“What happened to your face?” Bero asked.
Tadino winced, involuntarily touching his scarred cheek. “You really have been gone, haven’t you? The Mountain clan came in here, saying this was a meeting place for the clanless. I got off easy because they thought I was just the bartender.”
Bero said, “It doesn’t look that bad.”
“It hurt so fucking much I pissed myself.” Tadino shuddered at the memory and ran an agitated hand through his disheveled hair. He gave Bero a strangely desperate look. “I’ve got to say, I’m glad to see you, keke. There aren’t many of us left, you know? Why’d you come back here, anyway?”
“I need work.”
It was true. He’d used up all his Espenian cash and needed to make money again. The obvious thing to do would be to go back to stealing or drug dealing, but after talking with Tadino, he was forced to conclude that was too risky. The clans had always tolerated some low level of street crime, but these days, anyone caught engaging in anti-clan activities—stealing from or damaging clan businesses, shine dealing, jade trafficking, associating with the Clanless Future Movement or politically radical causes, or simply having too many suspicious foreign connections—would get anything from a face branding up to a gravesite, depending on the severity of the offense. Bero had at different times in his life been guilty of every single one of those things, and now that he was finally back in Janloon, the last thing he wanted was for Green Bones to notice him.
Bero had few legally employable skills, but he could drive and knew the streets well, so he got a job as a package delivery man. The money was shit, though, so after six months, he cooked up a plan with two of Tadino’s friends and began using the delivery company’s van to move bootlegged video and music tapes to booth vendors who sold them to tourists in the Docks and in the Temple and Monument Districts. As long as they were ripping off foreigners, he figured he was safe, although the money was only so-so. Nothing close to what he’d once made as a jade-wearing rockfish or a shine dealer or an informer. Bero decided he could accept that. Less money, but less danger. So be it. He was thirty-six now, fucking old.
“We’ve got to do something,” Tadino began saying every time Bero showed up at the Little Persimmon to drink. The man’s scarred face didn’t seem to repel customers. If anything, the sort of people who visited the Little Persimmon seemed to treat it as a badge of honor, or a mark of credibility, like a prison tattoo. “We’ve got to save the Clanless Future Movement before it’s too late. Otherwise the clans win.”
“The clans always win,” Bero mumbled scornfully. “Guriho and Otonyo blew up a building with all the Green Bone leaders in it and where are they now? Feeding worms.”
“ ’Cause they got it all wrong,” Tadino insisted. “I’m telling you, I’ve thought about this a lot. Trying to take out the clans like that was stupid. All it did was unite them in crushing us under their heels. Now they’re hunting us down like dogs.” Tadino wiped down the bar counter with violent swipes of the cloth, putting all his hatred into the polished wood. “And what happened to all those foreign ‘friends’ that bastard Molovni promised us would support the cause? Where are the fuckers now? Left us to be slaughtered, that’s what. We’ve got to save ourselves, ’cause no one else will.”