Donovans 02 - Jade Island

artifact.
    Unsettled and uneasy, Lianne watched while Kyle circled the case several times. The look in his eyes told her that he was completely under the jade’s spell.
    “You aren’t thinking of bidding on it, are you?” she asked finally.
    “Is that a problem?”
    “I hope not.”
    “Are you going to bid on it?”
    “I…yes,” Lianne said, sighing. “I really don’t have any choice.”
    “Why?”
    She didn’t answer. She simply turned away from the blade and went to stand at another SunCo display. This case featured Neolithic work as well, but it was thousands of years “younger” than the blade that haunted her.
    Kyle watched Lianne, wondering what it was about the fine blade that brought unhappiness, perhaps even fear, to her dark cognac eyes.
    “I thought Warring States jade was your passion,” he said.
    “As a rule.”
    “And this Neolithic blade is the exception that proves the rule?”
    She made a sound that could have meant anything, then looked up at Kyle. “Have you seen this case? It has extraordinary examples of Shang work,” she said carefully, “fully as exceptional as the blade.”
    Reluctantly Kyle shifted his attention away from the blade to the case where Lianne stood. Inside the elegant glass cage, two jade bracelets rested on burgundy velvet.
    “Notice particularly the bracelet on the right,” she said. “At some time in the past, the jade was burned, perhaps in a tomb fire, perhaps later in a collector’s home that was destroyed by war.”
    “How do you know?”
    “Nephrite—Chinese jade—only takes on that chalky, pale beige, ‘chicken bone’ color after it has been burned in fires as hot as one thousand degrees. The heat changes the chemistry of the jade. It becomes opaque, the original color fades to near white, but the carving itself remains as clear and distinct as when it first came from the artisan’s hands. Time and fire have altered the main color, yet left the darker, veinlike patterning of the stone intact. The result is striking.”
    “Enhanced by time.”
    Her smile flashed briefly. “You’re a quick student. Or am I going over things you already know?”
    “Like I said, I’ll tell you if I get bored. What else do you see when you look at the chicken-bone jade bracelet?”
    “In profile, it would be slightly concave rather than straight.”
    Kyle looked more closely, then nodded.
    “Not only is a curved profile more difficult to make than a straight one,” she said, “but the carver was skillful and patient enough to keep the thickness of the bracelet the same no matter the degree of the curve.”
    He bent down, then sat on his heels to view the bracelet from another angle.
    “In the machine age,” Lianne said, “we take that kind of precision for granted. Yet this bracelet is from the Liangzhu culture, perhaps five thousand years old.”
    Kyle heard what she said, and he heard what she wasn’t saying, too. She appreciated the jade bracelet, respected the tradition it sprang from, admired the result, and had no desire to bid on it herself.
    “What makes the Neolithic blade superior to this bracelet?” Kyle asked.
    “Nothing.”
    “Yet you’re not going to bid on this bracelet.”
    “No.”
    “Why?”
    “It’s personal, not professional,” Lianne said.
    “In other words, none of my business.”
    “As I said, you’re a quick student.”
    Kyle stood with a swift, fluid power that startled her into stepping backward.
    “You’re quick, period,” Lianne said.
    “Youngest brothers have to be, or they’re chopped meat.”
    She stared for a moment, trying to imagine the tall, rangy man in front of her as a boy. “How many brothers do you have?”
    “Three, all older than me. Two younger sisters.”
    Lianne smiled wistfully. “Five siblings. What fun that must be.”
    “Yeah, a regular six-ring circus.”
    Yet Kyle was smiling despite his dry words. He butted heads with his brothers on a regular basis, his independent and stubborn sisters made him crazy, yet he wouldn’t have traded any of it for peace and quiet. At least not on a permanent basis.
    Once in a while, though, he wanted distance. After the fiasco in Kaliningrad with the stolen amber, he had needed a lot of space to lick his wounds and think about all the stupid things he shouldn’t have done and would never do again if he could help it. When thinking got too painful, he stepped aboard the Tomorrow, cast off, and went fishing, letting the hours and days slide