The other Faltas stared in disbelief as their captain’s body hit the floor with a thud. Then they broke into a panic, drawing pistols and pointing them at the broken window as they dove behind furniture and flattened themselves against walls. “They shot Batiyo!” someone screamed. “How the fuck did they shoot him?” The blinds and black plastic now worked against them, obscuring their attackers.
“Look outside the window,” the man with the nose ring ordered.
“You look outside,” someone else hissed, but he edged along the wall toward the glass. Two more gunshots punched through the side of the house. Everyone ducked as the man by the wall dropped to the ground shrieking, clutching his shoulder.
The front and back doors of the house burst open with tremendous noise as they were torn out of their frames. The largest windows shattered inward from the force of Steeled bodies. Gunfire erupted as the Faltas unloaded their pistols at the Green Bones crashing into the house without any pretense of restraint. Everything around Shae erupted in deafening violence.
She blinked at the mayhem as if it were happening in a dream. The young gangster with the neck tattoo grabbed for her, trying to use her as a shield to save himself. Seizing the ropes binding her, he began to drag her across the floor with him, pointing his gun and screaming over the tumult, “Stay away or I’ll kill her, I swear I’ll—”
Shae writhed frantically, catching the man in the shin with a flailing kick that made him yelp with pain. He lost his grip for a moment and reached down to seize her again, but the hand with the gun came off his arm and spun end over end. The moon blade that had severed it flashed back around and sank into the space between the young man’s neck and shoulder, opening his torso with a meaty diagonal cleaving. Shae made a muffled noise as his blood sprayed across her hair.
A final gunshot reverberated elsewhere in the house and then the fighting was abruptly over. Lott Jin’s face appeared over Shae, breathing hard. He was wearing a bulletproof vest and his moon blade was streaked, glistening red. Sweat plastered his wavy hair to his forehead. The Horn dropped down to his knees and broke the padlock on her restraints. “Shae-jen,” he said hoarsely as he unwound the chains. “Thank the gods in Heaven.”
Tears filled Shae’s eyes at the sight of Lott’s face. On weakened arms, she tried to push herself up into a sitting position, but couldn’t manage it; her entire body was shaking with violent relief. “Are they dead?” she asked. “All of them?” She was thinking of the safety of all the White Rats whose names she’d surrendered.
“All of them, Shae-jen,” Lott reassured her. “We’ll get everyone responsible.”
Two Green Bones that Shae didn’t recognize appeared next to Lott and helped him to cut the ropes off her raw, bruised wrists, then her arms and legs. They brought over a stretcher and lifted her carefully onto it. Shae was too weak to protest the gentle treatment as they carried her out of the house that had been her prison for days. She gasped at the shock of cold air and the sight of so many Green Bones moving about under the orange streetlights. Where had all these people come from? She knew some of them, but other faces were unfamiliar.
“Kaul-jen,” said one of the strangers, inclining his chin and touching his forehead as he helped her into the back of a car. “Ayt Madashi sends her regards.”
_______
A month after the ordeal, Shae was still unable to wear jade. Weeks of being treated with high doses of medical-grade SN2 had cured her of the Itches, but the first time Woon had wrapped his arms around her, she’d cringed merely from the nearness of her own husband’s jade. Anden assured her that every examination showed she was physically recovered, but with tears in his eyes he told her that her body might never tolerate wearing green the way it used to. As the one member of the family who knew better than anyone what is was like to be scarred by jade overexposure, he explained that it was not so much a physical issue as a psychological one. Shae knew he was right. She suspected she would have nightmares for years to come.
She reminded herself of how comparatively lucky she was. Tako was buried in Widow’s Park. Dudo had survived, miraculously defying all odds, but he was deeply damaged; he would likely need antipsychotic medication and therapy for years if not the rest of his life, and he would never wear jade again. Wen visited the unfortunate man and his family every week.
No Peak’s foray into Shotar had been a disaster, a loss of years of work in the course of three days. They did eke out a few final satisfactions. With the Mountain’s support, No Peak’s Fists remained in Leyolo City for another two weeks, long enough to find and kill another thirty-two members of the Faltas, wiping out the entire upper echelon of the country’s second-largest barukan group in a spree of unstinting violence that the police ignored as an outbreak of ethnic gang conflict. Shortly afterward, Wen received word that Diamond Light Motion Pictures had agreed to release Danny Sinjo from his contract so he could star in Cinema Shore’s tentpole feature film, Black & Green.