Twenty-Seven

Twenty-Seven

Rumor had it that there would be more protests today. The early morning had passed with a flurry in the Scarlet house, its hallways combating collision after collision of whispers. If it wasn’t Tyler’s relatives trying to clarify with one another what exactly Miss Rosalind had done to be hauled home covered in blood, it was their speculation about whether it was safe to enter the central city today when reports said that workers were attempting to strike yet again.

Tyler couldn’t get out fast enough. A bunch of good-for-nothings, they all were, talking instead of doing. With the new hubbub, hardly anyone was paying heed to what had happened to their vaccine supply. The monsters had invaded a secure facility that only Scarlet inner circle knew about. Was no one suspicious? Was Lord Cai not the slightest bit concerned?

“—right?”

With delay, Tyler stubbed out his cigarette in the ashtray, then looked up at Andong and Cansun. They were across from him, pacing the length of the room, while Tyler remained seated upon a chaise lounge, granted a full view out the floor-to-ceiling window before him. Below, the intersection just outside the Bailemen dance hall was at high capacity of activity: the citizens and occupants of Shanghai bustling to and fro like there was hardly a minute to spare. Every so often, someone walking on the street would glance up, tracing their eyes across the block letters reading PARAMOUNT fixed outside the dance hall. They could likely see into the windows of the second floor, into the opulence and the vacant rooms open for Tyler to come and go as he pleased. The rest of Shanghai didn’t have such leisure.

“Were you saying something?” he asked, frowning.

Andong paused for a beat, like he couldn’t tell if Tyler genuinely had not heard him or if he was giving him another chance to reconsider what he had just said. When seconds passed and Tyler did not look angry, Andong cleared his throat and repeated, “I was only remarking on the uselessness of trying to disrupt the Communist forces. Our numbers are dwindling as it is, and theirs keep growing. We have a blood feud on the other side to take care of; they are single-minded in their objective.”

Tyler nodded. He remained only half listening, and when he replied, it was also halfhearted.

“No one cares to follow what is good.”

Tyler retrieved a new cigarette, but he didn’t light it. The blood feud. The goddamn blood feud and the goddamn White Flowers, siphoning their resources and their members and their members’ loyalty like some parasitic invasion of the mind. What was it about their maneuvers that had people turning against their family? Juliette, and her dalliance with Roma Montagov. Rosalind, and whatever nonsense she had gotten involved with.

Perhaps it was simply the women. Perhaps they were just weak.

Tyler struck a new match. Once his own cigarette was lit, he threw the pack into the air, and Andong’s hand whipped out, hurrying to catch it before it could fall to the floor. Cautiously, Andong took one cigarette out. He worried it between his lips, and as if reading Tyler’s thoughts, asked: “So what are you to do about Juliette?”

“What am I supposed to do?” Tyler replied immediately. He took a drag, then almost coughed. He had never liked these things. He smoked them for a lack of anything better to do. “If she won’t admit to her wrongdoing, I can’t force it out of her. She will merely keep rotting us from the inside out.”

She didn’t even know it. Tyler had no doubt that Juliette—his cousin who had grown up with everyone wrapped around her finger—would never for a second consider that she might be wrong. That her behavior was traitorous, even if she was not openly acting the traitor. Sympathy for the White Flowers was weakness. Love for the White Flowers was a direct strike against the Scarlets in the blood feud. Juliette may as well take a gun to her own head for all that she was doing to the future of the gang she was supposed to lead.

He still didn’t know what to believe—whether she had something to do with the vaccine disappearing. Juliette was the one who had killed the last monster; was it so hard to believe that perhaps she had gotten her hands on five others? Juliette was the one who wanted the vaccine distributed to the whole city; was it so hard to believe that she would steal it for that purpose?

But why seek a vaccine at all if the monsters were under her control? It made no sense. Something didn’t quite click.

Unless they weren’t hers. Unless she was going along with it because they were under Roma Montagov’s control, and she couldn’t find it in herself to rebel against him.

Tyler jumped to his feet, drawing Cansun’s curious attention. The window was flaring with light, a vendor’s stall passing the street underneath with its reflective surfaces. They had initially come to a high vantage point to watch for the possibility of monsters in the city, but there had been no chaos of the supernatural persuasion, only human strikes and human protests.

If Roma Montagov was the perpetrator, then Juliette could still be saved. Tyler believed that. The Scarlets came first, and bitter as it was, that did include his cousin. Blood to blood—it was the same sort that ran in their veins. That had to count for something. If she were forced to choose sides, if she saw how this city was split, she would realize what was at stake. She would stop operating foolishly under a White Flower’s thumb.

“What does Roma Montagov treasure most?”

Andong blinked, taken aback by the question. Meanwhile, Cansun folded his arms and brought his shoulders near his ears, considering the question. He was already slight and looked even more so when he stood like that, wasting into a stick figure.

“What do we care about Roma Montagov for?” Andong asked, but both Cansun and Tyler were looking out the window, tracing the crowds that gathered thicker and thicker.

Tyler dropped his cigarette in the tray. His fingers were dusted with ash, prickling at his skin. The human body was so fickle. He should have been born a beast instead. He could have used it well.

“Come on, gentlemen,” he said, making for the door. “The protest starts soon.”

The streets were full of people, blocking the entrance of the meeting hall that Kathleen needed to enter.

With a wince and an awkward sidestep, Kathleen tried to squeeze herself through, her elbows held out on either side of her. It did little to avoid the jostling, but it did streamline her path ever so slightly. The crowds could have been worse. They could have summoned a strike that incapacitated the whole city, but it seemed they remained localized in the central areas.

“Oh, Christ—”

Kathleen ducked, narrowly avoiding being smacked across the face by a worker’s sign. The worker glanced at her momentarily before moving on, but Kathleen’s gaze was drawn to the red rag tied around their arm.

Which color do you bleed? Juliette had asked so long ago, in that den not far from here. Scarlet or the worker’s red?

When Kathleen brought her hand up to shield the sun off her face, the red thread at her wrist glimmered like jewelry. It was pristine and stark, dangling softly against her skin. This was Scarlet red. This was the clean edges of a color used merely for allegiance—for decoration. The worker’s red was dirty, and spirited, and desperate. It had long exploded outward in all directions, spilling like a crowd growing frenzied.

Kathleen finally pushed her way in, sidling into the meeting hall. This was not the very worst it could get—far from it if the enthusiasm among the Communists here was any indication. The Communists and their unions would keep trying and trying, each time inciting revolt in one part of the city and hoping it would set off a chain reaction in the others. The better they prepared, the more likely they would succeed.

And when they did, that was no longer the protests of unruly workers on the streets.

That was revolution.

“Attention! Attention!”

The meeting had already started, switching from one speaker to another, so Kathleen slid into a seat, hoping she hadn’t missed anything critical. It hardly seemed important now to keep an eye on their further plans—the Scarlets already knew: the Communists had almost reached the end of their planning, the final revolt waiting in the wings, ready to take to the stage.

“What are we rising for?” the speaker onstage asked. “What do we incite change for? Our own gain? Our own peace?”

Kathleen pulled at her braid. Her mind wandered to Rosalind, to her sister’s silence last night when she had stirred back into consciousness.

“The state will continue to suppress us. The law will continue to cheat us. Anyone who deems themselves a savior of this city is a fraud. All kings are tyrants; all rulers are thieves. It is not peace nor gain that revolution shall aim for. It is only freedom.”

All through the meeting hall, Party members rose to their feet. Their chairs scraped back, the noise grating to the ear. Kathleen didn’t move, only taking it all in. She wasn’t worried about sticking out. No one was paying attention to the last row, too focused on the speaker at the front.

“The gangsters of this city sacrifice us for their pride, for their meaningless blood feud. The foreigners of this city sacrifice us for riches, for unending gold stockpiled on their ships. We will free ourselves from these chains! Who are they to tell us what to do? Who are they to punish us when they see fit?”

His words washed over her like a tidal wave. Kathleen suddenly wanted to clutch her stomach, unable to bear the truth knotting up inside her. Indeed, who was the Scarlet Gang to whip Rosalind bloody merely because they had decided she was not loyal enough? Why did they deserve the power to hurt another person? Why was this the way they lived, falling to their knees under Lord Cai just because it was the way it had always been? If he wanted them dead next, then Kathleen and Rosalind had no choice save to place their heads down for the sword’s blow. Protection was nothing when it hinged on one family’s whims and desires. This wasn’t what Kathleen had sworn loyalty to. She wanted order—she wanted order under Juliette’s control.

But if order needed to tremble under fear first, maybe it wasn’t worth it.

“Rise!” the speaker onstage said. “Too long have we suffered and languished. We shall rise!”

At last Kathleen stood too, putting her hands together to clap.

Alisa chewed on her fork, her foot dangling off the roof edge.

At present, she was sitting at the very top of headquarters, face turned to the cold wind as her fingers flipped through a file swiped from her father’s office. Her bedroom was directly below, warm and cozy, but her brother or other White Flowers could walk in at any moment, and she couldn’t have that while she was snooping. In search of privacy, she had climbed up to the roof tiles instead, a plate of cake in one hand and the folder of papers tucked under her arm.

She stabbed her fork in for another bite, chewing thoughtfully. Just as she started flipping to the next page, there was a burst of noise from afar—the usual rowdy shouting of a fight starting. Alisa stiffened, knowing she would need to go inside if there was blood feud conflict coming nearer, but she couldn’t see anything other than the usual empty alleyways, even as the voices got louder. For several long moments, Alisa continued searching, but nothing moved in her periphery short of her blond hair waving with the wind.

“Strange,” she muttered, content to stay put for the meanwhile.

Alisa flipped to the next page. The folder had been selected at random after she poked her head into her father’s office for the briefest second and saw it lying on his desk. She had heard rumors of Communist spies infiltrating the White Flowers and was curious; Roma had been busy lately, though Alisa wasn’t sure if he was looking into the same Communist spies or something else. No one ever told Alisa anything. No one ever paid her attention at all unless it was to barge in on her and tell her that her tutors were here.

Unfortunately, Alisa didn’t think she had stolen anything very relevant. The folder contained profiles on the Kuomintang, but nothing past basic information. Some news clippings on Chiang Kai-shek. Some maps from spies who were tracking the Northern Expedition. The only thing that seemed briefly interesting was an investigation into General Shu, who had little information made public about his life. By the time Alisa scanned to the end, however, all she had gathered was that General Shu had a bastard son. Which was entertaining but hardly helpful.

“Hey!”

Alisa set the file aside and peered down from the roof. With that shout catching her attention, now she could see the fighting, though it seemed not to be a fight at all. She squinted, trying to pick out exactly what was coming in her direction, and only when she saw the signs did she realize that perhaps it was not a blood feud conflict moving down the main road but a workers’ protest.

“Ooooh,” Alisa said under her breath. “That makes more sense.”

She tucked the folder under her arm, then gathered up the plate and the fork. In a hurry, she skittered across the roof, carefully lowering herself over the edge with the one hand she had free and sliding the whole way down upon one of the exterior poles. She landed in the thin alley around the back of the apartment complex, her shoes squelching hard in the mud, her elbow thwacking against a pot of flowers growing upon one of the first-floor windowsills. It wouldn’t do to be spotted waving this folder around at the front of the house, and so she would merely use a back entrance, or else—

Alisa stopped when a figure stepped in her path. Before she even had time to run, the bag came down over her head.

In White Flower territory, the protests reached all-time heights, spilling over the footpaths and wreaking havoc in the buildings. When Roma exited the safe house he had been visiting—another stop on his search for the identity of the White Flower Frenchman—he was almost impaled by a shovel.

“By God,” Roma spat, hurrying to the side.

The worker only eyed him, not seeming very sorry. Why would he be? There were no other gangsters in sight to put a stop to this.

With another muttered curse, Roma hurried back home, staying close to the buildings. His father should have sent men out for crowd control. Their numbers should have gathered by now, fighting back against the rioters with weaponry. So where were they?

Roma ducked into the alleyway that took him to headquarters, a hand above his head to protect himself from dirty laundry water. A heavy drop landed on his palm right as another colossal shout echoed down the road, driving unease into his bones. It seemed nonsensical that he was spending time searching for the Frenchman when there had not been an attack since the train cart. When instead all that had been wreaking havoc across Shanghai was the blood feud or the rioters, and as far as he knew, not a soul in the White Flowers had a plan of action to combat that sort of discord instead.

“You’re full of nonsense.”

Roma frowned, closing the front door after himself. The loud bang did not interrupt the voices shouting from the living room. A wave of heat from the radiators immediately warmed his stiff skin, but he did not shrug his coat off. He wandered into the living room, following the shouting, and found Benedikt and Dimitri in the heat of an argument, a plate smashed to pieces by Dimitri’s feet, as if someone had thrown it.

“What is going on?” Roma asked, for what felt like the umpteenth time that day.

“That’s what I want to know too,” Benedikt replied. He stepped back, crossing his arms. “Alisa is missing.”

An ice-cold sensation swept down Roma’s spine. “I beg your pardon?”

“I heard her yell,” Benedikt seethed. “From somewhere outside the house. And when I went to investigate, guess who the only person present was?”

“Oh, don’t be tiring,” Dimitri sneered. “I heard no children screaming. Nor any ruckus past the chaos on the streets. Perhaps you are imagining things, Benedikt Ivanovich. Men who do not assert themselves tend to—”

Roma did not hear the rest of whatever foolish thing Dimitri was surely to say. He was already charging up the stairs with a roar in his ears, taking two at a time until he was on the fourth floor, charging into Alisa’s bedroom. Indeed, as Benedikt had said, it was empty. But that didn’t mean anything. Alisa was always disappearing for large blocks of time. For all he knew, she was hidden in some air duct across the city, biting into an egg roll and having the time of her life.

“She’s not in her room. I already checked.” Benedikt’s voice traveled up the staircase before he did, emerging with his hands buried in his hair.

“It’s hardly unusual,” Roma said.

“Yes.” Benedikt bit down on his cheeks, turning his face gaunt. “Yet I heard her yell.”

“Dimitri is right on one thing at least—there is plentiful yelling outside. The streets are rioting. I can hear yelling right now.”

But Benedikt only gave Roma an even look. “I know what Alisa’s voice sounds like.”

The certainty was what had Roma on edge. Acting on a sudden instinct, he made a sharp pivot for his room. He didn’t know why that was the first place he thought to check, but he did, easing his door open gently. Benedikt was close on his heels, peering in curiously too.

Three things became immediately apparent, one after the other. First: Roma’s room was freezing. Second: it was because his window had been pulled open. Third: there was a letter fluttering on the window ledge, pinned down by a thin blade.

A wave of goose bumps broke out all down Roma’s arms. Benedikt hissed in a breath, and when Roma didn’t make a move to go fetch it, he did the honors instead, tearing the blade out and unfolding the letter.

When he looked up, his face was void of blood.

“Moy dyadya samykh chestnykh pravil,” Benedikt read. “Kogda ne v shutku zanemog—”

He didn’t have to finish it. Roma knew the next two lines that were coming.

“On uvazhat’ sebya zastavil,” he intoned. “I luchshe vydumat’ ne mog.”

The opening verse to Eugene Onegin. Roma marched forward and took the letter, immediately crinkling the edges with his grip. Past the famous lines of poetry, the letter proceeded.

I hear dueling is the most noble way to kill someone. It’s about time this blood feud earned some nobility, don’t you think?

Meet me in a week’s time. And I’ll give her back.

And beneath the text, there was a flourish of a signature, leaving no doubt who had devised this masterful scheme.

“They have taken Alisa,” Roma rasped aloud to Benedikt, though Benedikt already knew. “Tyler Cai has taken Alisa.”