“Hey, don’t be a pervert,” Juni called to Bero. “Close the curtain, will you?”
Juni’s short, sexy hair and her heart-shaped face reminded Bero of Ema. Or maybe they seemed alike because she too was leading a clueless man by his cock. Ema was long dead, blown to smithereens, but Bero still resented her. Now he disliked Juni as well, just from looking at her. Ema had been a bitch to Bero, but she’d been nice sometimes, too. She’d let him fuck her, if only because she was planning to die. When Bero was very drunk, he thought maybe he missed her. Maybe he even missed Sampa and Cheeky and Mudt.
When Bero didn’t move, Kaul Ru got up, holding the top of his pants closed with one hand, and went to draw the curtain shut himself. Bero said, “She’s using you, keke.”
The young man had a flushed, stupid grin on his face. “Fine with me.”
“You dumb kid, you think you’re calling the shots?” Bitter contempt spilled thoughtlessly out of Bero’s mouth. Youthful, naive, reckless confidence was something he’d once believed made him special and would get him everything he ever wanted. “She has a boyfriend, that one. Koben Ashi, a Fist of the Mountain.”
Kaul Ru paused with the curtain in his hand. He glanced back at Juni, then again at Bero as disbelief and then dawning comprehension slackened his face. Bero sneered with savage delight. “You’ve been set up, keke.”
Footsteps pounded up the stairs and into the lounge. Koben Ashi stormed past the few remaining partygoers, his head swiveling back and forth, his eyes wild with insensible fury. Two of his Fingers were right behind him, as was Tadino, who shouted, “Back there, Kobenjen,” and pointed at the curtained room by the bar.
The Fist pushed past Bero, yanked the curtain aside, and saw Ru backing away with his pants undone and Juni sprawled half-naked on the sofa. With a murderous curse, he seized Kaul Ru by the throat and hurled him out of the room against the bar.
_______
Ru crashed into the bar top and fell, hitting his head against a barstool on the way down. Sparks burst in his vision and a ringing sound erupted in his ears. Dazed and crumpled on the sticky floor, his first, ridiculous thought was to fasten his pants before trying to get back up. He fumbled stupidly with the button and managed to do up his fly before Koben Ashi seized him by the back of the collar, pulled him off the ground, and threw him into another wall. Shouts of surprise and alarm broke out. Most of the meager crowd still left in the Little Persimmon grabbed their belongings and ran for the exit stairs. They knew how inadvisable it was to be anywhere near a furious Green Bone.
“Who do you think you are, touching my girl, you little piss rat?” Koben snarled. “After I’m done with your face, you’ll never get laid again, fucker.”
Juni stumbled out from behind the purple curtain, pulling down her skirt and crying, dry-eyed, “Ashi, he’s just a kid, he didn’t know any better. Don’t kill him!”
Ru staggered to his feet and raised his hands to defend himself, but he couldn’t possibly match the jade-fueled speed of a Green Bone. Koben hit him in the stomach, doubling him over, then kicked him to the ground. Ru wheezed with pain, clutching his midsection. From the corner of his eye, he saw Dano shouting and trying to wobble drunkenly to his defense, but the bartender, Tadino, grabbed him by the arm and held him back.
I’m so stupid, Ru thought in agony. Stupid, stupid, stupid. Stupid to trust Dano, stupid to come to this party in Mountain territory and let down his guard, stupid to think for one second that just because he was a stone-eye and the least of his father’s children that he would be spared the attention of enemies.
Koben grabbed a nearby barstool and snapped off one of the wooden legs to use as a club with which to beat Ru unconscious. Koben’s two Fingers watched with slightly anxious but unsurprised expressions. One of them said, “Ashi-jen, this kid isn’t even a Green Bone, he’s not worth it.”
Ru dove frantically out of the way as the chair leg came whistling down. It missed his head and struck his shoulder. His entire arm went numb. They don’t know who I am, he realized. His family had always kept him out of the spotlight and his face was not in the clanmags. He was barely known to anyone outside of No Peak circles, much less in the Mountain clan. The man with the crooked face had been right—Ru had been set up. But so had the Koben family.
Ru threw himself behind a table. The enraged Fist kicked it out of the way and raised the chair leg again, but the obstacle had finally given Ru the two seconds he needed to yank out the compact talon knife he carried sheathed inside his rear waistband. Koben’s eyes flicked down at the sudden appearance of a weapon, and in that moment of distraction, Ru cried out, “A clean blade!” He scrambled into a fighter’s crouch, his talon knife held up in front of him, blood trickling from his nose. “My name is Kaul Rulinshin, son of the Pillar of No Peak, and I offer a clean blade!”