Twenty
At sunrise, it was early enough that the ports were quiet, the waves rocking against the oating boardwalk. It was early enough that the smell of the wind was still sweet, untainted by the smog of morning factories, absent of the aromas that rose from the fried food and sloppy soups cooked in the stalls pushed upon the streets.
Unfortunately, it still wasn’t early enough to avoid a Nationalist rally.
Juliette halted in her step, freezing on the pavement underneath a swaying green tree. “Tā mā de,” she cursed under her breath. “What are—”
“Kuomintang,” Roma answered before Juliette could nish the question.
Juliette shot him a dirty look when he stopped beside her. Did he think her incapable of spotting the little suns on their hats? It wasn’t exactly an obscure logo. The Kuomintang party—and their Nationalists—was growing incredibly popular.
“I know,” Juliette said, rolling her eyes. “I was going to ask what they’re doing. This is my city. I don’t need you educating me.”
Roma cast her a glance askew. “Is it though?”
He hadn’t even put any venom behind his tone, and yet those few words sent a dagger hurtling right through Juliette’s heart. Is it though? How many times had she asked herself that question in Manhattan? How many times had she climbed up to her building’s rooftop and gazed out on New York’s skyline, refusing to let herself love it, because loving one meant losing another, and losing Shanghai meant losing everything?
“Now, what is that supposed to mean?” she asked tightly.
Roma looked almost amused by the question. He made a vague gesturing motion toward her, indicating her dress, her shoes. “Come on, Juliette. I’ve been here a lot longer than you have. You’re an American girl at heart.”
And the implication of the words left unspoken were clear: Do us all a favor and go back.
“Ah yes,” she muttered. The sharpness in her chest only twisted deeper. “Me and my American democracy, how am I managing in such a climate?”
Before Roma could rebut anything further, Juliette started walking again, veering o their intended route. Instead of passing the rally gathered about the wide road, she hurried into a nearby alleyway, barely pausing for Roma to follow after her. He registered the change quickly. Soon the two of them were picking their way through trash bags and overturned food carts, scrunching their noses at stray animals and grimacing at the frequent puddles of blood. While they walked through the city’s back roads, they were content to lapse into silence, content to pretend the other was not present.
Then Roma whirled around, spinning so fast to face the scene behind them that Juliette immediately assumed they were under attack.
“What?” she snapped, pivoting back too. She grabbed her pistol, then pointed wildly, waiting for something to jump out. “What is it?”
Except Roma remained weaponless. He merely searched the street behind them, his brow scrunched.
“I thought I heard something,” he said. They waited. A bird dived into a garbage can. An exterior pipe gushed dirty water on the streets.
“I don’t see anything,” Juliette said quietly, putting her weapon away.
Roma frowned. He waited another second, but the scene was still. “My mistake. I apologize.” He straightened his sleeve cus. “Let us continue.”
Hesitantly, Juliette turned and started to walk again. They were not far now from the address that Kathleen had given her. This was a familiar part of the city.
The goose bumps, however, remained on her arms.
He’s only being paranoid, Juliette tried to reassure herself. The fear of being spotted together was already keeping both of them on their toes. Juliette had her coat collar pulled high to shield her face. Roma wore his hat low over his forehead, which was a good decision when he presently looked so unkempt that
any onlooker on the street might run in the other direction upon sighting him.
In the bright daylight, the cuts on his face were stark against his pale skin.
Judging by the shadows beneath his eyes, Juliette would not be surprised if he had not slept last night, likely tossing and turning in worry over Alisa.
Juliette shook her head. She needed to clear her mind of her assumptions. For all she knew, he could also have been out killing Scarlets.
“It’s one of these buildings,” Juliette said when they came upon the correct street. The houses here were dilapidated and crowded, the spaces between each building barely wide enough for a child to squeeze through. This area wasn’t far from the French Concession, yet a tangible line could be drawn as a border between the two districts, and it was clear which half this street fell on. A long rectangular structure lay half-crumbled under Juliette’s feet. Perhaps a grandiose village gate had stood here once, etched with golden characters to welcome its incomers, but it was gone now, torn apart for cityscapes and depravity.
“Are you sure this is the right place?” Roma asked. “Surely a newspaper job pays more than enough to move elsewhere.”
“Of all people, Roma Montagov,” Juliette said, “you should understand the importance of image.” One and the same, with the people, among the people. The Communists never stopped preaching such ideals. If the common worker had to suer, then Zhang Gutai must too—else what other basis did he have for their respect?
Juliette started toward the building her address indicated. Then—two paces away from the main entrance—she abruptly paused. She pointed. “Look.”
Roma stied his sharp breath. Insects. A collection of their deadened husks, lying out in the open by the entrance of this apartment block. If this didn’t scream guilty, Juliette didn’t know what did.
Pulse thudding, she pushed at the apartment building’s entry door. The rusty lock came free, and the door swung open.
Juliette gestured for Roma to move faster. They worked their way up the stairs, grimacing at the cramped conditions. The stairs staggered up the building along one wall, then trickled straight into a parallel hallway with four doors not so far removed from one another. North, then south, north, then south—they trekked up the stairs, passed the doors on the oor, then moved up the next set
of stairs, continuing the process in a dizzying sort of pattern. Roma was more used to this; Juliette was not. She hadn’t lived within the city limits for years, nor felt the shift of the oorboards sigh under her feet as the entire structure seemed to heave.
“Which apartment is it?” Roma asked. He snied as they passed a windowsill on the third oor’s landing, eyeing the owerpots pushed right to the edge, one little nudge away from shattering on the pavement below.
Juliette only stuck her index nger up at the sky. They kept climbing—up, up, up to the very top, reaching a oor with a sole door waiting right where the
stairs ended.
They paused. They exchanged a look.
“He’s not home,” Juliette assured Roma before he could ask. She bent down on one knee, producing her thin, needlelike dagger from the folds of her dress. “I scanned the calendar in his oce. Meetings with important people all day today.”
Only as soon as Juliette inserted the dagger into the lock, her tongue poking out from her mouth in concentration, she heard the very distinct, undeniable echo of footsteps shuing inside the apartment and toward the front door.
“Juliette!” Roma hissed, rushing forward.
Juliette bolted up, stashing the knife into her sleeve. She held her arm out to stop Roma in his tracks, gathering herself just in time before the door ung open and an old man blinked at them with lmy, squinting eyes. He was surely pushing sixty, frazzled and weary-looking, as if he hadn’t gotten enough sleep
since he came out from the womb.
“Hello,” the man said, confused.
Juliette thought fast. They could salvage this. This wasn’t beyond saving.
“Good morning. We’re from the university,” she exclaimed, dropping into another dialect—Wenzhounese—so promptly that Roma jolted back the smallest inch, unable to conceal his astonishment at her quick switch. “Are you well on this ne morning?”
The man leaned his ear forward, grimacing. In Shanghainese, he replied, “Speak běndì huà, would you, girl? I don’t understand.”
Wenzhou was a city only days of travel to the south of Shanghai, but its local dialect was so incomprehensible to outsiders that Juliette would never have learned it had Nurse not taught her. Nurse used to say that the closest sound resembling Wenzhounese was not a neighboring tongue like Shanghainese, but the chirping of songbirds. In a city not only bustling with foreigners but also native Chinese from every corner of the country, most civilians shared a language, but they did not share the same way of speaking it. Two Chinese merchants could carry on an entire conversation with each one speaking his own dialect. They didn’t need to meet in the middle. They only needed to understand.
Juliette, however, hadn’t expected the old man to understand her at all; she had only one goal. Before he could squint closely at her face and recognize her for the heir of the Scarlet Gang, she had to make him think she was a careless immigrant girl from elsewhere.
“My apologies.” Juliette switched to Shanghainese, task accomplished. “As I was saying, we’re from Shanghai University and terribly excited to see you today.
We’re hoping to found the rst student union club and need some advice. Is Mr.
Zhang home to speak?”
The old man straightened, brushing his hands over his knitted cardigan.
Juliette expected him to turn them away, to tell them to come back some other time, so they could skitter out of sight and mark this o as a temporary failure.
As long as they didn’t raise suspicion, they could come back. As long as this man didn’t pay too much attention to their faces and thought them regular university students who weren’t worth remembering.
She didn’t expect the man to clear his throat imperiously and say, “I am Mr.
Zhang.”
Roma and Juliette exchanged a perplexed glance.
“Er… no, you’re not.”
The man’s posture sagged. He blew out a breath and abandoned his assuming air. “Fine. I am Qi Ren, Mr. Zhang’s personal assistant. You may come in.”
Juliette blinked—rst in confusion over this man’s peculiarity, then in surprise, that he was inviting them in instead of turning them away. As she stood
there, she felt a nudge from Roma, asking why she wasn’t moving when Mr. Qi turned on his heel and shued away on his hard slippers.
This wasn’t her original plan, but Juliette was nothing if not adaptable.
“Come on,” she muttered to Roma. They hurried in after Mr. Qi.
“How shall I address you?” Mr. Qi called over his shoulder.
Juliette didn’t miss a beat. “Zhu Liye. And this is Mr. Montague. Lovely couches you have.” She sat down before he could invite her to.
Mr. Qi, frowning, moved aside a variety of folders on the nearby table, turning them over so his two-character name and Labor Daily’s watermark were facedown. “Will this take some time?”
“If that works for you,” Juliette replied brightly.
Mr. Qi sighed. “I will go make some tea.”
As soon as Mr. Qi had moved far enough into the adjoining kitchen, busy with his task of boiling water, Roma turned to Juliette and hissed, “Montague?
Really?”
“Shut up,” Juliette hissed back. “I couldn’t think of anything else and I didn’t want to pause suspiciously.”
“You’re uent in Russian and that’s the best you could come up with?”
Roma asked, abbergasted. “What is a Montague? It sounds Italian.”
“There are Italian Communists!”
“Not in Shanghai!”
Juliette was prevented from responding when Mr. Qi stuck his head back in and asked what sort of tea they wanted. Once he returned deeper into the kitchen, satised with their polite answers that anything would do, Juliette ducked her head and said, “Okay, we can still do what we came here to do. You must distract him.”
“Say again?” Roma demanded. “You’re going to leave me here to entertain?”
“Is that a problem?”
“Yes, it’s a problem.” Roma leaned back in the couch, his hands placed in his lap. “How do I know you’re going to share whatever information you nd if it doesn’t benet you?”
He was perfectly valid to suspect her, but that didn’t mean Juliette liked the insinuation she would sabotage this operation.
“Stop arguing with me,” she replied. “Our usual job description is intimidation and gunre. If we can even pull this o, we should count ourselves
lucky.”
“Frankly, that’s—”
“Do you wish to save Alisa, or not?”
Roma fell quiet. He clenched his sts, and Juliette couldn’t tell if it was in reaction over her reminder about Alisa, or if it was to resist reaching out and strangling her. Mr. Qi returned right on cue, with a teapot and three round teacups balanced in his frail arms. Wasting no time, Juliette shot to her feet and asked for the washroom. Mr. Qi absently pointed down the hallway while he placed the cups onto the table, and Juliette ounced o, leaving Roma to glare daggers after her as he started making up a story on the spot about the founding of Shanghai University’s Communist union club, which neither of them were actually sure existed. It was his problem now. Juliette had bigger sh to fry.
With her ears perked to ensure Roma was still rambling on about socialist solidarity, Juliette paused at the end of the dilapidated hallway. There were four doors: one wide open into the washroom, two propped ajar and leading into bedrooms, and the fourth shut tight, unyielding when Juliette jiggled the knob lightly. If Zhang Gutai had anything to hide, it would be behind this door.
Juliette braced, then smacked the at of her palm so hard upon the knob that the simple lock clicked out of commission. Freezing for a brief second, Juliette waited to see if Mr. Qi would come running. When there was no interruption in Roma’s spiel, she turned the knob and slipped through the door.
Juliette looked around.
There was a red ag with a yellow hammer-and-sickle stretched across one of the walls. Beneath it, a large desk was overowing with folders and textbooks, but Juliette didn’t waste time scanning it when she approached. She dropped to her knees and pulled at the bottom drawer along the side of the desk.
Immediately, the rst thing she saw was her own face, and though the paper was imsy and thin, the press of ink crooked, the rendering of her features completely awry and miscalculated, it was undoubtedly still her under a heading proclaiming RESIST THE SCARLET GANG.
“Interesting,” Juliette muttered, “but not what I’m looking for.”
She pushed the posters aside and dug deeper. All she found were papers upon papers of propaganda that had no relevance to her, smeared ink written with inciting terror in mind.
In the second drawer, however, she discovered envelopes, all embellished with the scrawls of thick ink nibs that spoke of power and wealth. Juliette thumbed through them quickly, throwing aside invitations from Kuomintang politicians and thinly veiled threats from bankers and businessmen, throwing aside anything that looked vaguely like it could waste her time. Her attention was snagged only when she came upon a little white square, an envelope far smaller than the others. Unlike the rest, it did not have a return address.
Instead, it had one little purple ower in the corner, pressed in by a custom- made rubber stamp.
“A larkspur,” Juliette whispered, recognizing the image of the ower. She scrambled to retrieve the paper inside the envelope. It was merely a small slip of script, typewritten and snipped to t.
It was a pleasure to meet and discuss business.
Let me know if you change your mind. —Larkspur
For a long moment Juliette could only stare at the note, her pulse pounding.
What did it mean? What were all these pieces, part of a bigger puzzle, oating separate to each other but so clearly made to be joined?
Juliette shoved the envelope back in and slammed the drawer shut. She smoothed down her dress and, before any more time could pass to incite suspicion over her absence, she strode out of the oce, closing the door behind her with a soft click.
She took two very deep breaths. Her heartbeat leveled down to its usual rate.
“—and really, our goals extend much further beyond revolution,” Roma was saying when she casually wandered back into the sitting room. “There’s planning to be done, opponents to eliminate.”
“All of which require resources much bigger than ourselves, of course,”
Juliette interjected, settling back onto the couch. She smiled wide enough that her canines slid over her bottom lip. “Now, where were we?”
“Zhu Liye.”
Juliette jerked to attention, eyes narrowing as she looked upon Roma. She had to squint because the sun was glaring brightly behind his head, aring rays that illuminated him into overt clarity while they walked down the pavement.
“Are you still on about the names?”
“No, I—” Roma made a sound that could have been a chuckle, if not for the hostility. “I just understood. You translated Juliette into Chinese. Ju-li-ette. Zhu Liye.”
Roma had clearly been musing over that specic conundrum since the moment they left Zhang Gutai’s apartment. After quickly telling him what she found in the oce, Juliette had been content to walk without conversation as they picked their way back down to the streets. Roma had seemed compliant to the example Juliette set, until now.
“Nice detective work,” Juliette intoned. She hopped down from the sidewalk to avoid a puddle, her heels clicking onto the road. Roma followed closely.
“I actually—” Roma tilted his head to the side. It was almost birdlike in the way he did it—quick and curious and void of ulterior motive. “I don’t know your Chinese name.”
Juliette’s eyes narrowed. “Does it matter?”
“I’m only being civil.”
“Don’t be.”
Another lull. This time Roma didn’t hurry to ll it. This time he only waited.
He knew that Juliette detested silence. She detested it so viciously that when it followed her around with the air of a ghoul, when it skipped between her and whomever she was walking with, whether it be enemy or friend, Juliette would scrape away at herself just to nd a weapon to counter it.
He stayed silent. And Juliette caved.
“Cai Junli,” she said monotonously. “Change up the pronunciation a little and Junli turned into Juliette.”
Her name was no secret; it was merely forgotten. She was just Juliette, the heiress who came from the West—with the American girl’s dress and the American girl’s name. If the people of Shanghai dug deep into the recesses of
their memory, they would nd Juliette’s Chinese name lurking somewhere between the age of their grandfather and the residential address of their third- favorite aunt. But it would never rise to their lips upon instinct. What was instead spoken was what Juliette had slowed down and distorted earlier into a full name: Zhūlìyè.
“You never told me,” Roma said. He was staring ahead. “Back then.”
“There were a lot of things I didn’t tell you,” Juliette replied. Just as dully, she too added, “Back then.”
Four years ago, the city was not the same. Many men still kept their hair long, in what was called a queue, one braid trailing down their back with the front of their scalp shaved. The women wore their garments loose, their pants straight.
So everywhere Juliette went, she went in her bright dresses. She sneered at the ugly clothes other girls wore, and when her mother dared attempt to have her adhere to the usual fashion, she tore the bland shirts from her closet and ripped them into shreds, letting the strips ush in swirls down the newly renovated plumbing. She trashed every qipao and tossed aside every silk scarf Lady Cai tried to compromise with. To avoid being recognized when she colluded with Roma, she threw coats over her gaudy costumes, of course, but she was always treading the line of recklessness. Juliette had almost preferred the thought of being caught a traitor over putting on the same clothes as everyone else. She would have rather been an outcast than admit the blood in her veins was a product of the East.
Juliette liked to think she had come down a bit from her high horse since then. The second time she returned to New York, she had seen the darkness behind the glamour of the West. It was no longer so great to be a child
constructed with Western parts.
“I picked it myself.”
Roma visibly startled at her words. He hadn’t expected her to say anything
more.
“Your name?” he claried.
Juliette nodded. She did not look at him, did not even blink. She said, “The kids in New York made fun of me. They asked what I was called and then they
laughed when I told them, repeating those foreign syllables back at me over and over again as if speaking it in song made it funny.”
She had been ve years old. The wound of the mockery was healed now, covered by tough skin and rough calluses, but it still stung on bad days, as all old injuries did.
“My name was too Chinese for the West,” Juliette continued, a wry smile on her lips. She didn’t know why her face had morphed itself into amusement. She was anything but amused. “You know how it is—or maybe you don’t. A temporary thing for a temporary place, but now the temporary thing is burrowed in so deep it cannot be removed.”
As soon as those words came out, Juliette felt a pang of nausea hit her throat —an immediate visceral realization that she had said too much. Ditzy apper Juliette, who was meant to help her survive the West, had dug her claws in so deep that the real Juliette didn’t know where the facade stopped and where her true self began—if there was even anything left of her true self, or if there was anything in there to begin with. All her cousins—Rosalind, Kathleen, Tyler— they had English names to accommodate to the ood of Westerners controlling Shanghai, but their Chinese names still existed as part of their identity; their relatives still addressed them as such on the occasion. Juliette was only ever Juliette.
The air was sticky. They had been walking for long enough to enter the French Concession, strolling alongside a row of identical houses with glaringly bright walls and generous patches of greenery. Juliette pulled at her collar, grimacing when Roma opened and closed his mouth.
“Juliette—”
Was the line between enemy and friend horizontal or vertical? Was it a great plain to lumber across or was it a high, high wall—either to be scaled or kicked down in one big blow?
“We’re done here, right?” Juliette asked. “Do what you will with this information. I’m sure the link between Zhang Gutai and the Larkspur will give you plenty to work with.”
Juliette veered left, picking a shortcut through a yard that would take her to the next street. The grass here grew up to her ankles. When she dropped her shoe
down, the ground seemed to swallow her, dipping and softening simply by her step. It felt like a welcome—a hurry, a come through.
Until Roma clamped a hand on her shoulder, forcibly stopping her.
“You have got”—Juliette spun around, slapping his hand o her—“to stop
doing that.”
“We’re not nished,” Roma said.
“Yes, we are.”
The shadows of the nearby house were heavy. Roma and Juliette stood right where the shadows ended, right at the strict divide between light and gloom.
Roma looked her up and down.
“You still think it’s a scheme within the Communists, don’t you?” he asked suddenly. His voice dropped an octave, as if realizing that they needed to minimize the volume of their argument while standing on a street like this. In the early-morning light, it was hard to remember what danger tasted like. But one wrong move—one wrong person looking out their window at the right time —and they would both be in deep trouble.
“Roma,” Juliette said coldly, “we’re done collaborating—”
“No, we’re not,” Roma insisted. “Because this isn’t something you can investigate on your own. I can see what you’re planning just by looking at you.
You think you can simply insert yourself into the Communist circles with your Scarlet resources—”
Juliette took a step closer. She didn’t know if it was the bright glare of sunlight reecting o a nearby window, or if she was angry enough to be seeing white aring into her vision.
“You,” she seethed, “don’t know anything.”
“I know enough to see a pattern here with the Larkspur.” Roma clicked his ngers in her face. “Snap out of it, Juliette! You’re only ignoring this clue because you wish to walk away from our collaboration and begin investigating other Communists! It won’t do anything! You’re on the wrong path and you know it.”
His words had a physical force to them—multiple stinging hits that struck her skin. Juliette could hardly breathe, never mind nd the energy to speak, to continue the staged whispers of their screaming match. She hated him so much.
She hated that he was right. She hated that he was inciting this reaction in her.
And most of all, she hated that she had to hate him, because if she didn’t, the hatred would turn right back on herself and there would be nothing to hate except her own weak will.
“You can’t do that,” Juliette said. She sounded more sad now than angry. She hated this. “You don’t get to do that.”
If she leaned in, she could count the individual specks of pollen that had landed on the bridge of Roma’s nose. The atmosphere here was too heady and strange and pastoral. The longer they remained—lined up with the pearly white walls, standing in the swaying grasses—the more Juliette felt ready to slough o a whole layer of skin. Why could she never remake herself—why was she always bound to end up here?
Roma blinked. He eased up on his temper too, his whisper turning into a soft
one. “Do what?”
See me.
Juliette turned away. She wrapped her arms around her waist. “What are you suggesting?” she asked in lieu of a reply. “Why have you latched on to the Larkspur so intently?”
“Think about it,” Roma said. He matched her steady, low tone. “Zhang Gutai is the rumored maker of the madness. The Larkspur is the rumored healer of the madness. How can there not be a link? How can there not have been something that passed between them at their meeting?”
Juliette shook her head. “Link or no link, if we want to x this at the root, we go to the maker, not the healer—”
“I’m not saying the Larkspur has all the answers,” Roma hurried to correct.
“I’m saying the Larkspur can lead us toward getting more out of Zhang Gutai.
I’m saying it’s another way to the truth if Zhang Gutai won’t talk.”
He has some sense to his logic, Juliette thought. He’s not… wrong.
Yet Juliette remained dicult. Her mother once told her that she had almost been born the wrong way around—feetrst—because Juliette always refused the easy way out.
“Why do you insist on convincing me?” she asked. “Why not go about confronting the Larkspur alone, bid me good riddance?”
Roma looked down. His ngers twitched in her direction; he might have been trying to resist reaching out for her, but Juliette booted that out of her thoughts as soon as it came in. Softness and longing were sentiments of the past.
If Roma were ever again to run a tender nger down her spine, it would be to count her vertebrae and gauge where he could stab his knife in.
“Listen, Juliette,” he breathed. “We have two halves of one city. If I act alone, I am locked out of Scarlet territory. I won’t risk losing out on a cure for my sister as soon as possible just because of our blood feud. The feud has taken enough. I won’t let it take Alisa.”
His eyes shifted back to her, and in that gaze lay both sadness and rage, pooling outward until it surrounded the space between them. Juliette was right in the heart of that conict too, horried to have to counter this madness with the boy who had torn her to pieces, yet aching for this city, for what had come
down upon it.
Roma extended his hand. Hesitant.
“Until the madness stops, that’s all I ask. Between the two of us, we put the knives and guns and threats down for as long as it takes to stop our city from falling. Are you willing?”
She shouldn’t have been. But he had worded it just right. To Roma, saving Alisa was everything. Regardless of monsters or charlatan magical cures, all he wanted was for her to wake up again. To Juliette, it was the city that came rst, and the city she put rst. She needed her people to stop dying. It was fortunate that these two such goals came together.
Juliette extended her hand, tucked it into Roma’s to shake. There was a jolt between them, a terrible, hot spark as they both seemed to realize that, for the rst time in four years, this was skin-to-skin contact without malice. Juliette felt like she had swallowed a burning-hot coal.
“Until the madness stops,” she whispered.
They pumped twice, then Roma turned their hands, so his was at the bottom and Juliette’s was at the top. If they couldn’t have anything, then they could at least have this—a second, a whimsy, a fantasy—before Juliette came to her senses and jerked her hand away, returning it to her side with her st clenching.
“Tomorrow, then,” Roma decided. His voice was rough. “We hunt the Larkspur.”
