Chapter 38: We’ve Got to Do Something

Bero returns to Janloon after six years exiled by Espenian handlers to Iwansa, where he lived under a new identity and hated the isolation and culture shock. With oversight fading as the Slow War shifts, he risks coming home, immediately feeling revived by the city’s familiarity and vice.

Seeking old connections, Bero finds Tadino still tending bar at the Little Persimmon, now bearing a facial burn from Mountain clan reprisals. Tadino reveals the CFM was hunted after the Janloon bombing, that Molovni vanished, and that former associates were rounded up. Bero realizes his past crimes make him a target under the harsher crackdowns.

Choosing obscurity over glory, Bero takes a delivery job and quietly moonlights moving bootleg media to tourist stalls. The money is meager but safer than shine or jade trafficking. Tadino, however, repeatedly insists they must “do something” to save the CFM, bitterly condemning foreign promises that evaporated and the clans’ brutal dominance.

Stung by self-contempt and nostalgia for his bolder past, Bero finally asks for specifics. Tadino argues the only force that can destroy a clan is another clan, and that war creates opportunity for the clanless. He proposes orchestrating renewed conflict between No Peak and the Mountain, pulling Bero toward a dangerous new scheme.