Anden pressed his knuckles into his desk. He wasn’t surprised that most Espenian doctors misunderstood jade and saw it as an unacceptable threat to their established practices, but if the countermeasure passed, Green Bone healers like Dauk Sana, who’d been quietly helping people in the Keko-Espenian community for decades, could be arrested and face years of imprisonment. “Is there anything we can do?”
“There is some good news,” Dr. Martgen said. “Yesterday we convinced Assemblyman Sonnen, the chairman of the National Panel on Health, to delay voting for three weeks and allow lawmakers to witness a public demonstration of bioenergetic medicine before making their decision.” A brief pause on the line. “I realize this is extremely short notice, but is there any way . . .”
Anden sank into his chair. The legalization of jade in Espenia, even if it were limited to the medical field, was something No Peak had been wanting for years. “I’ll get on a flight as soon as I can,” he said. “I need to sort out some things at work and with my family, and I’ll try to bring others with me. I’ll call you back.”
After hanging up, Anden let out a long breath and scrubbed his hands over his face. Then he got on the phone again. He called in favors from his coworkers, pleading with them to cover his shifts for the next three weeks, then left a message for the clinic’s secretary to reschedule his less urgent appointments. That done, he called the Kaul house. Hilo was not home, but Anden explained the situation to Wen, who told him to arrange the trip to Espenia and act with the clan’s full authority. It still startled Anden sometimes, to hear his sister-in-law say things such as, “I’ll pass everything you said on to the Pillar,” speaking of Hilo the way a Pillarman would, as if she didn’t share a bed with him every night.
Having secured the clan’s approval, Anden phoned Dr. Timo and Dr. Yon, two senior physicians who’d traveled with Anden to Espenia on professional visits to the Demphey Medical Research Center. Ordinarily, he would never think to be so presumptuous as to contact them personally at such an inconvenient time and ask them to upend their schedules. When he reached each of them, he apologized for bothering them at home and said, “My cousin, the Pillar of No Peak, has asked me to act for the clan,” which made it clear he was making this request not as a junior colleague but as a representative of the Kaul family. He assured the men they could expect to be rewarded for their trouble and have their travel expenses taken care of.
After both physicians had agreed to make the trip, Anden made one final call to Kaul Dushuron Academy and dialed the extension for the boys’ dormitory, followed by a two-digit room number. A couple of years ago, personal phones had been installed in each of the students’ rooms, a luxury that Anden had never had when he was there. He told Niko he was sorry he wouldn’t be able to take him to see the Janloon Spirits relayball game next weekend, but if the fourteen-year-old would go to Anden’s apartment twice a week to collect his mail and water his houseplants, there would be a hundred dien in it for him.
“No problem, Uncle Anden,” Niko said. “I hear there’re a lot of thieves in Espenia. When you’re over there, do you wear one of those money belts under your clothes to stop pickpockets?” Niko was an unusually cautious teenager, prone to imagining worst-case scenarios. After Anden explained that the area he was visiting in Adamont Capita was perfectly safe, his nephew asked, “Can you bring me back a bag of those sour sweets, like you did last time?” Anden promised to do so.
After a frustratingly long wait on hold with Kekon Air, Anden managed to book himself onto a direct flight to AC the following afternoon. The only seats left available in the main cabin were middle seats near the back of the aircraft. At the airport check-in counter, Anden spent a doubtful minute debating the issue with himself before upgrading to business class. Even when given full authority by his cousins, he was always hesitant to spend the clan’s money, as he held no official rank in No Peak, and felt that he was in some sort of perpetual debt on account of how the Kaul family had raised him and paid for a Green Bone’s education at Kaul Dushuron Academy, followed by an Espenian associate’s degree, and then medical school at the College of Bioenergetic Medicine—all for what?
He was doing well enough for himself as a physician, his relationships with the Kekonese-Espenians in Port Massy had benefited the clan on both sides of the Amaric Ocean, and for years he’d been acting as the liaison between Martgen’s research team and the Green Bone doctors in Janloon. But his adoptive grandfather, the late Kaul Seningtun, let the gods recognize him, had brought an orphan boy into his home expecting to add a prodigious jade warrior to the family, one that could help his own grandchildren lead the clan. Anden knew his cousins would not evaluate his worth in such a mercenary way, but he imagined other people did. Lott Jin had outright said as much when he’d suggested Anden could’ve been First Fist in his place. Anden often told himself that at the age of thirty-one, he was done caring about what others thought of him, but nevertheless, he couldn’t help but feel he still had something to prove.