“You’ve only told us some of the cops and officials we already know are in your pocket. You’ll have to do much better than that,” her tormentor said regretfully.
When Shae didn’t answer, the barukan sighed and motioned for the men wearing the lead gloves to lift her back into the tub. Shae twisted and gasped, “Wait, please! I’ll tell you, if you give some of the shine to him.” She looked at Dudo. The Fist was dying. Having already suffered a head injury, he was in no way able to bear the lethal level of jade overexposure. When Shae was in the tub, even through her own throes she could Perceive Dudo’s heart intermittently racing out of control, then crashing to dangerously low levels. She’d been forced to watch him scream and thrash, vomit and convulse, but after that ceased, he was deathly still, barely breathing.
“The bastard snapped my friend’s neck.” The barukan leader poked Dudo experimentally. The Fist did not move at all. “If you really want me to use up my expensive shine on him, you’ll have to give me something that’s actually valuable.”
They were going to die anyway. She had the blood of so many on her hands already, what were a few more? “The second captain of the Matyos—” she began.
“Hannito?” one of the men in the room exclaimed. “I don’t believe it.”
“Not him,” she said. “His younger brother, the deliveryman.”
Someone nearby let out a curse. “That fucker’s dead meat.”
The barukan leader leaned in eagerly now. “Is that true? Who else?”
“You know I’m not lying,” Shae said hoarsely. “Give Dudo the shine.”
The man looked over at one of his subordinates and shrugged, as if to say, Why not? He’s going to die anyway. The thick-lipped second-in-command took out a syringe and emptied the contents into Dudo’s arm. Shae had no idea if Dudo was too far beyond help at this point, but she imagined that at least it would ease his suffering. A few seconds after the shine went into his bloodstream, the man jerked and began to breathe more steadily—a sign of life at least.
“Other names,” the barukan demanded.
Shae gave up another White Rat—the wife of a gang leader—and couldn’t even muster the will to wonder what would happen to the woman. When she didn’t cough up any additional names, however, they put her back into the tub. After a while, they took her out again, gave her another dose of SN2, and asked her more questions. The process took on a certain familiar predictability. How slowly could she offer up information in exchange for enough shine to stay sane and alive?
Whenever she was in the tub, she wanted to give up. She was drowning in jade energy the way a person might drown in their own blood. It was impossible to describe the feeling. Every particle of her being was boiling over and the only way her primitive nervous system could interpret the sensation was itching. Itching in the soles of her feet and the palms of her hands, itching on the inside of her legs and down her arms and all over her scalp, itching inside her mouth, on her eyeballs. She understood now why the disease drove people mad, why they mutilated themselves and threw themselves into the sea. Shae forgot who she was and wanted only to die.
But when they gave her shine, she would come back to herself for long enough to think, I have to give Hilo time. Hilo would find them. He would not be fooled by the barukan’s ploys. If there was anything she had faith in besides the gods, it was her brother’s cunning vindictiveness. So every moment she was lucid enough to think, she prayed silently and fervently, Yatto, Father of All, help me, help my brother.
She had to live. She would not leave Woon to raise Tia alone. She refused to fail her gentle daughter in the way that Green Bone parents too often failed their children, the way her father had failed her before she was born, the way Lan had failed Niko, and Anden’s mother had failed him—by dying. Drowning in blood and jade.
“What is the Euman Deal? Tell us about the Euman Deal.”
This was new. She hadn’t heard this question before, at least she didn’t think she had, although it was getting harder and harder to remember. They’d moved her to the living room at some point and dumped her in an armchair, her limbs still tightly bound. It must be nighttime; no glimmer of light bordered the covered windows. The faces in front of her swam in her warped vision. Moving mouths seemed to stretch in slow motion like those of grinning demons, melting like hot wax, grotesque and abstract. Someone slapped her face. Her head lolled back and her tongue protruded.