“You like the silk?” He touches his shirt. “It’s Japanese. They still have silk worms.”
She shrugs. “I don’t like anything about you, Narong.”
He smiles at that. “Come now, Kanya. Here you are, promoted to captain and not a single smile in you.”
He motions to the yellow card for coffee. They watch the rich brown liquid splash into a glass. The yellow card sets a bowl of soup down before Kanya, fish balls and lemongrass and chicken stock. She starts fishing out U-Tex noodles.
Narong sits quietly, patiently. “You asked for this meeting,” he says finally.
“Did you kill Chaya?”
Narong straightens. “You always lacked social grace. Even after all these years in the city and all the money we’ve given to you, you might as well be a Mekong fish farmer.”
Kanya looks at him coldly. If she’s honest with herself, he frightens her, but she won’t let that show. Behind her, another cheer from the radio. “You’re the same as Pracha. You’re all disgusting,” she says.
“You didn’t think so when we came to you, a very small and vulnerable girl, and invited you to Bangkok. You didn’t think so when we supported your aunt through the rest of her years. You didn’t think so when we offered you an opportunity to strike at General Pracha and the white shirts.”
“There are limits. Chaya did nothing.”
Narong is as still as spider, regarding her. Finally he says, “Jaidee overstepped himself. You even warned him. Be careful that you don’t dive down the cobra’s throat yourself.”
Kanya starts to speak, then closes her mouth. Starts again, keeping her voice under control. “Will you do the same to me as you did to Jaidee?”
“Kanya, how long have I known you?” Narong smiles. “How long have I cared for your family? You are our valued daughter.” He slides a thick envelope across to her. “I would never hurt you,” he says. “We are not like Pracha.” Narong pauses. “How is the loss of the Tiger affecting the department?”
“Look around you.” Kanya jerks her head toward the sounds of conflict. “The general is enraged. Jaidee was almost a brother to him.”
“I hear he wants to come after Trade directly. Maybe even burn the Ministry to the ground.”
“Of course he wants to go after Trade. Without Trade, our problems would be halved.”
Narong shrugs. The envelope sits between them. It might as well be Jaidee’s heart laying the counter. The return on her long-ago investment in revenge.
I’m sorry, Jaidee. I tried to warn you.
She takes the envelope, empties the money and stuffs it into a belt pouch as Narong looks on. Even the man’s smiles are sharp with cutting edges. His hair is slicked back on his head, sleek. He is both entirely still and entirely terrifying.
And this is the sort you consort with, mutters a voice inside her head.
Kanya jerks at the voice. It sounds like Jaidee. It has the telltales of Jaidee, of his humor and his relentlessness. The hint of laughter along with judgment. Jaidee never lost his sense of sanuk.
I’m not your kind, Kanya thinks.
Again the grin and the chuckle. I knew that.
Why didn’t you simply kill me if you knew?
The voice is silent. The sound of the muay thai match continues to crackle behind them. Charoen and Sakda. A good match. But either Charoen has radically improved, or Sakda has been paid to fail. Kanya’s bet will be a losing one. The match reeks of interference. Perhaps the Dung Lord has taken an interest in the fight. Kanya makes a face of irritation.
“Bad match?” Narong asks.
“I always bet on the wrong man.”
Narong laughs. “That’s why it’s so helpful to have information ahead of time.” He hands her a scrap of paper.
Kanya looks through the names on the list. “These are Pracha’s friends. Generals, some of them. They’re protected by him as the cobra sheltered the Buddha.”
Narong grins. “That’s why they will be so surprised when he suddenly turns on them. Hit them. Make them hurt. Let them know that the Environment Ministry is not to be trifled with. That the Ministry views all infractions equally. No more favoritism. No more friendships and easy deals. Show them that this new Environment Ministry is unbending.”
“You’re trying to drive a wedge between Pracha and his allies? Make them angry at him?”
Narong shrugs. Doesn’t say anything. Kanya finishes her noodles. When no other instructions seem to be forthcoming, she stands. “I must go. I can’t have my men see me with you.”
Narong nods, dismissing her. Kanya stalks out of the coffee shop, followed by new groans of disappointment from the radio listeners as Sakda is cowed by Charoen’s newfound ferocity.
On the street corner, under the green glow of methane, Kanya straightens her uniform. There is a blotchy stain on her jacket, residue of the destruction she has wreaked tonight. She frowns with distaste. Brushes at it. Again opens the list that Narong gave her, memorizing the names.
The men and women are General Pracha’s closest friends. And they will now be enforced against as vigorously as the yellow cards in their towers. As vigorously as General Pracha once enforced against a small village in the northeast, leaving starving families and burning homes behind him.
Difficult. But, for once, fair.
Kanya crumples the list in her hand. This is the shape of our world, she thinks. Tit for tat until we’re all dead and cheshires lap at our blood.
She wonders if it was really better in the past, if there really was a golden age fueled by petroleum and technology. A time when every solution to a problem didn’t engender another. She wants to curse those farang who came before. The calorie men with their active labs and their carefully cultured crop strains that would feed the world. Their modified animals that would work so much more efficiently on fewer calories. The AgriGens and PurCals who claimed that they were happy to feed the world, to export their patented grains, and then always found a way to delay.
Ah, Jaidee, she thinks. I am sorry. So sorry. For everything I have done to you and yours. I did not set out to hurt you. If I had known how much it would cost to balance against Pracha’s greed, I would have never come to Krung Thep.
Instead of going after her men, she makes her way to a temple. It is small, a neighborhood shrine more than anything, with only a few monks in attendance. A young boy kneels before the glittering Buddha image with his grandmother, but otherwise, the place is empty. Kanya buys some incense from the vendor at the gate and goes inside. She lights the incense and kneels, holds the burning sticks to her forehead, raises them three times in the Triple Gem: buddha, damma, sanga. She prays.
How many evils has she committed? How much bad kamma must she atone for? Was it more important to honor Akkarat and his promises of a balancing of the scales? Or was it more important to honor her adoptive father, Jaidee?
A man comes to your village with a promise of food for your belly, a life in the city, and money for your aunt’s cough and your uncle’s whiskey. And he doesn’t even want to buy your body. What else can one wish for? What else could buy loyalty? Everyone needs a patron.
May you have much better friends in your next life, loyal fighter.
Ah, Jaidee, I am sorry.
May I wander as a ghost for a million years to make atonement.
May you be reborn in a better place than this.