Eighteen

Eighteen

For the right amount of money, Miss Tang was more than happy to provide Roma and Juliette with a car, putting one of her men in the driver’s seat and instructing him to drive smoothly. Zhouzhuang was, by all technicalities, a town within Kunshan, but it lay much farther south, practically on the same latitudinal line as Shanghai. Still, it was a simple car ride in and out, and then they could catch the next train out of Kunshan’s city central.

“In and out,” Juliette muttered to herself, watching their misty gray surroundings blur together through the window. No more getting jumped by mysterious figures in the dark. No more getting distracted by White Flowers pretending to be her husband. “In and out.”

“Are you talking to me?”

Juliette jumped, her head—still throbbing from the night before—almost colliding with the low ceiling of the car. Said White Flower was staring at her in concern, leaning against the window on his side.

“No,” Juliette replied.

“You were muttering something.”

Juliette cleared her throat, but she was saved from answering further when the car started to slow, pulling into a cleared patch of hard dirt. Ahead, a canal was running quietly into the morning, its waters glistening despite the light spattering of clouds.

They had already ventured so far from Shanghai that Juliette figured they may as well return with something to show for it. Still, as she weighed the risks in her head and tried to plot a way forward for stopping the blackmailer, she wondered if she was lying to herself—if acquiring a second vaccine was nothing more than a matter she pretended was pressing just so she could sit near Roma for a second longer, her hand resting on the seat inches from his. She could not reach over, but the mere proximity soothed a part of her she didn’t want to acknowledge.

The car came to a stop.

“We’re here,” the driver declared. “You need a guide? I know Zhouzhuang well.”

“No need,” Roma said, all business. “We’ll be out soon.” He reached for his door, then glanced at Juliette again, who remained seated. “Come on, get a move on, lǎopó.”

Juliette thinned her lips, practically blowing her own door off its hinges as she got out.

“You can let that whole jig go now,” she muttered.

Roma had already walked far ahead. With a sigh, Juliette reluctantly followed, dragging her feet as she too ducked under the loose willow tree and entered the canal town.

She had never visited Zhouzhuang before, but it felt familiar in the way that desert roads and snow-capped mountains did: sights that she had never glimpsed with her own eyes but plucked from storybooks and word-spun tales. As she and Roma picked carefully through the narrow footpath, edging along the side of the river canals, they kept track of the street names using small markers along the cornerstone buildings. Every so often, elderly voices would call out from within their shops, selling candy or handheld fans or dried fish, but Roma and Juliette avoided looking into the stores they passed, for they were walking so closely to the entrances that a mere second of eye contact would trap them in conversation.

Juliette suddenly paused. Where Roma swerved around the woman by the canal scrubbing at her laundry, Juliette’s gaze latched on to the soap suds running along the concrete and into the water. The woman paid no attention, crouched over her task. The soap suds approached the edge . . .

Juliette dove toward the canal, her knees scraping the ground and her hand closing around the small string of pearls just as they fell over the edge, saving the jewelry before it could be washed into the water. The woman gave a cry of surprise, startled by Juliette’s quick rescue.

“I gather that this isn’t something you intended to toss into the canal,” Juliette said, holding out the soapy pearls.

The woman blinked, realizing what had happened. She gasped, dropping her laundry and waving her hands around with fervor. “Goodness, you are heaven sent! I must have left it in one of the pockets.”

Juliette offered a small, amused smile, dropping the string back into the woman’s hand. “Not heaven sent; I can just spot pearls from two miles away.”

There came the sound of someone clearing their throat, and Juliette looked up to find Roma waiting, brow quirked to ask why she was lingering and chatting. The woman, however, was still turned to Juliette, the crow’s feet of her eyes crinkling deeper in kindness.

“Who are your parents? I’ll bring some luóbosī cake over later as a thank-you.”

Juliette scrambled for an answer. Roma, overhearing the offer, cleared his throat again to urge Juliette to hurry up and extricate herself.

“Oh,” Juliette said carefully. “I’m . . . I’m not from around here.”

She didn’t know why she was being so delicate around the subject. She could have easily said that they had come in from Shanghai. But there was something entirely too genuine about the woman’s offer, something untainted by the usual give-and-take exchange of the city. Juliette didn’t want to ruin it. She didn’t want to pop the illusion.

“Oh?” the woman said. “But you look familiar.”

Juliette pulled her coat tighter around herself, then nudged a loose lock of hair behind her ear. She stood up, trying to signal to an impatient Roma that she was trying to wrap this up.

“I drop in sometimes,” Juliette lied. “To see . . . my grandmother.”

“Ah,” the woman said, nodding. She turned her head out toward the water, closing her eyes for the wind to blow against her face. “It is a peaceful place to retire, isn’t it?”

Yes, Juliette thought without hesitation. Peace—that was the all-consuming sensation making the township sound different to her ear and the air smell different to her nose. It was unlike anything she had ever known.

“Dorogaya,” Roma prompted suddenly. The only reason was to avoid using her name, Juliette knew. He was playing along with the little act Juliette had put on for the woman, but her gaze jerked up anyway, her heart rabbiting in her chest. She wished he wouldn’t throw the word around like that. It used to mean something. It used to be sacred—moya dorogaya, I love you, I love you whispered against her lips.

“I must go,” Juliette told the woman, taking her leave. She surged a few steps ahead of Roma, not wanting him to see her expression until she had a handle on herself. She would have continued forward aimlessly if Roma hadn’t called out again.

“Slow down. It’s this way.”

Juliette turned around, seeing Roma point across a narrow bridge. As he started to climb, Juliette only stood by the canal, watching the water run languidly beneath the short structure.

“I kept them, you know.”

Roma stopped at the top of the bridge. “What?”

All the pearls and diamonds. All the bracelets he had picked for her later in their relationship and that one necklace when they were fifteen—the first gift he had given before he kissed her on the rooftop of that jazz club. She kept them all, took them in a box with her to New York, even though she said she wouldn’t.

“Did you say something?” Roma prompted again.

Juliette shook her head. It was for the best that Roma hadn’t heard her. What was the point of telling him any of that? This place was making her sentimental.

“Juliette,” Roma chided when she remained yet unmoving. “A word of warning that if you fall into the water from there, I will not be coming to your rescue. Come on.”

“I’m a better swimmer than you are anyway,” Juliette shot back darkly, clutching her fists and finally starting her climb. The stone under her feet seemed to sink in and shift around. Once they were on flat ground again, Roma ducked his head to avoid a shop sign and stepped into an alley, his eyes tracing the markings along the wall; Juliette simply trusted that he was navigating correctly, more concerned with where she was stepping in case her shoes caught an uneven brick and she tripped.

They ventured deeper into the alleyway. Juliette tilted her head, listening while she walked. She was trying to decipher what was so strange about what she was hearing, until she realized it was because she could hear very little at all, and that was incredibly unusual. The walls on each side of the alley blocked out the hum and buzz of the townspeople around the canals. They boxed Roma and Juliette in, like every thin alley in this township was in its own bubble, like every twist and turn led into its own world.

“It got so quiet,” Juliette remarked.

Roma made a noise of agreement. “I hope we’re not going in the wrong direction,” he muttered. “This place is a labyrinth.”

But it was a beautiful labyrinth, one that felt not like a cage but rather an endless arena. Juliette reached out to brush the bumpy wall of the shop they passed, angling her shoulder to avoid thwacking a protruding alley pipe.

“Zhouzhuang has been standing since the Northern Song Dynasty,” she said absently. “Eight hundred long years.”

From the corner of her eye, she saw Roma nod. She thought that he would leave it at that, entertain her musings without much interest and think nothing more of it.

Only he replied, “It must feel safe.”

Juliette glanced at him properly. “Safe?”

“Don’t you think?” Roma shrugged. “There must be a certain comfort here. Cities can fall and countries can go to war, but this”—he raised his arms, gesturing at the rivers and the stone paths and the delicate ceiling tiles that decorated what were once temples—“this is forever.”

It was a nice thought. It was a thought Juliette wanted to believe in. But:

“This is a town within a city within a country that is always near war,” Juliette said quietly. “Nothing is forever.”

Roma shook his head. He looked visibly shaken, though Juliette was not certain if it was because of what she had said or because of what her words had incited within him. Before she had a chance to ask, Roma was already brushing it off. He cleared his throat. “They call this place the Venice of the East.”

Juliette scowled. “Just as they call Shanghai the Paris of the East,” she said. “When are we going to stop letting the colonizers pick the comparisons? Why don’t we ever call Paris the Shanghai of the West?”

A twitch pulled on Roma’s lips. It almost looked like a smile, but it was so fast that Juliette might have imagined it. They were emerging from the alley now, nearing an open square with a large bridge on its opposite end. Beyond the bridge, they would find their destination.

But here, in the square, there was a group of men loitering with military weapons slung over their shoulders. Militia soldiers.

Juliette exchanged a glance with Roma. “Keep walking,” she warned.

In quiet places like this, it was true warlord rule that continued to thrive. Militias patrolled the streets, utterly loyal to the one general who oversaw the wider district. The generals who had grown into warlords were no mighty figures—they were only men who had managed to seize power when the last imperial dynasty fell. The current government, really, was no more than a warlord installed in Beijing: all they had different from the rest of the warlords was the seal of approval from the international stage, but that did not mean control; it did not mean their power actually stretched any wider than the soldiers they had loyal.

“Juliette,” Roma said suddenly. “How far along is the Northern Expedition right now?”

“The Northern Expedition?” Juliette echoed, taken aback by the question. “You mean the Nationalists?” She tried to remember the last update she had heard from her father, searching her memory about their campaign to defeat the warlords and unify the country with a true government. “A telegram some days ago said that they’ve completely captured Zhejiang.”

It would have been a worry. Zhejiang was the province directly below Shanghai, but after all, what had the Scarlet Gang been doing sidling up to the Nationalists this whole time if not to ensure their own survival? The Nationalist fighting armies were edging closer and closer to the city, but it wasn’t as if they were truly defeating the warlords. Merely placating them. Reaching agreements, so that there was an understanding about the Kuomintang’s place as eventual rulers of this country.

“They may have come even closer since then,” Roma muttered. He inclined his chin toward the militiamen. “Look.”

It was not the men he was gesturing to. It was what the men were looking at, which Juliette saw as soon as one shifted on his feet and moved away: a rising sun, painted crudely on the outside wall of a restaurant. The symbol of the Nationalists.

“Hey, you!”

The militiamen had spotted them.

Juliette immediately stepped forward. “Who, me?”

“Juliette, stop it,” Roma hissed, making a grab for her wrist. She jerked her arm out of his reach, and he didn’t try again.

“Not you,” one of them said with a sneer, approaching. “The Russian. Did you do this?”

“Do I look like I have the time?” Roma retorted.

The man lunged forward. “You sure have a lot of time to talk back—”

Juliette held out her hand. “Not a step closer. Unless you want your ashes scattered into the Huangpu.”

Like magic, the soldier immediately halted, a clarity entering his eyes. Juliette’s coat was undone now. It was time for her identity to be used, placed in the open like a playing card in a game of offensive maneuvers.

“Let’s go,” Roma muttered to Juliette.

When she didn’t move, he nudged her shoulder. This time, Juliette allowed herself to be led off, sparing one more glance at the men eyeing her warily. Though she was finished, the one at the front of their group clearly wasn’t.

“Soon it won’t matter who you are, Lady of Shanghai,” he called after her. “The Nationalists are coming for all of us who rule by anarchy. They will take us all down.”

With one last tug, Roma had Juliette over the bridge and out of sight before she could retort.

“It’s supposed to be in and out, Juliette,” he muttered.

Juliette’s neck gave a little crick! with the speed she turned to look at him. “You heard me in the car?”

“I’m a liar—what can I say?” Almost flippantly, Roma stopped and pointed up ahead. It was an old-style residence, built in a way that was utterly untouched by foreign influences and so spacious, because all who had once lived there and lived there still could afford it. “How are we going to do this?”

They had arrived. The residence of Huai Hao, owner of the second vial. When Juliette approached the circular entranceway, she stepped through without any care—these residences were built precisely to welcome in visitors. They were void of doors around the facility, allowing wanderers to enter and appreciate the scenery, perhaps write a poem or two as they waited for the host to arrive, if this were eight hundred years ago.

But it was the modern world now.

“I’m flattered you would let me make the decision,” Juliette said, running her finger along a bird feeder.

Though she teased, she knew exactly why he was buying time to ask such mundane questions. They had thrown enough money around. The White Flowers had the means to pay such outrageous sums, but to keep doing it over and over without approval first was toeing the line. Juliette knew him too well—he couldn’t fool her—and she knew him well enough to know that admitting this outright would be a sign of weakness.

In another world, where she was smarter, she would let him suffer, sow discord within the White Flowers. But this was her world, and she only had her present self.

“I wasn’t letting you make the decision,” Roma replied. “I was asking your opinion.”

“Since when did you value my opinion?”

“Don’t make me regret asking.”

“I’ve a feeling you already do.”

Roma rolled his eyes and marched ahead, but then there was the sound of a door sliding, and Juliette grabbed the back of Roma’s coat, yanking him back. They ducked behind the bird feeder, hearing two sets of footsteps approach their direction.

“Mr. Huai,” a voice called. “Please, slow down. Shall I call for the car, then?”

“Yes, yes, do one thing right, could you?” a gruff voice snapped.

The second pair of footsteps hurried back in the other direction, but another kept walking. Soon, he was in view, and Juliette poked her head out to find a middle-aged man strolling for the exit. He already had so much here. Opulence and luxury on par with the city. It was a far cry from the man in the wonton shop. There was no desperation to survive. There was only greed. And Juliette, too, could play greedy.

“You asked how we are to do this,” she whispered to Roma. “How about like this?”

She reached into her coat, and as Mr. Huai walked by, not noticing his intruders despite how exposed they were, Juliette stepped out in front of him and leveled her gun to his forehead.

“Hello,” she said. “You have something we would like.”