Rosalind was growing increasingly suspicious.
The outskirts of Suzhou were 1sh farms and 1elds, villages situated around lakes and townships running with canals. Jiemin had practically driven in circles before they arrived at their next town, slathering the wheels of his car with mud. Perhaps that could be explained as him being careful, but Rosalind stood now in front of a podium taking questions, and though the hour hadn’t drawn to a close yet, her superior was wandering oP, something catching his attention at the side of the town square. It was bizarre. He had made it his mission to supervise her answers. Wasn’t he afraid that she would start talking about forbidden topics again? There were still at least ten minutes left of questions.
“—mobilization?”
Rosalind started. “I’m sorry.” Her microphone screeched with feedback. She searched the crowd for the person who had been talking, then realized she hadn’t even noted it to begin with. Though it wasn’t getting dark yet, the hour hovering somewhere past four in the afternoon, the skies were gray and heavy, signaling a downpour to come. The whole town square was vaguely foggy. “Could you repeat that?”
The tour was moving in a new direction, and it was avoiding major locations. If Jiemin thought Rosalind wouldn’t notice, he was sorely mistaken. They could have cut a line straight through Suzhou. Instead, they had pressed as close to Lake Tai as they could get, curving north to south like a half-moon.
“No, of course there’s no threat to our safety at the moment,” Rosalind answered after the audience member repeated their question. She was still searching for Jiemin. He had disappeared. “Besides, you can trust that the
Kuomintang are snuAing out threats before they ever reach your ears. Next question?”
Hands shot up. Small as their locations were, the crowds were getting bigger each time.
“Can you show us your powers?”
Rosalind barely stopped herself from rolling her eyes. “Unfortunately, unless you want me to bleed all over this podium, I will have to refrain from doing that.”
The man at the back wasn’t satis1ed with that answer. “Come on! There are hardly any photographs of the immortal Lady Fortune in action.”
“I don’t see the relevance of that request.”
“You can understand the people’s curiosity. How do we know this isn’t some invented scheme by the Nationalists?”
“If you believe that, then—” Rosalind stopped dead. While she scanned for Jiemin, she had caught movement on the other side of the town square. A glimpse, and then nothing, disappearing behind the teahouse on the right.
Orion. That was Orion peering around the corner.
At once, without a second of hesitation, Rosalind pushed away from the podium, jumping oP the raised stage. The reporters exclaimed aloud in curiosity; the ordinary townspeople raised their eyebrows, perplexed over this turn of events. She didn’t pay them any mind. She performed a hard swerve in the crowd so that it was clear she wasn’t heading over to strike the man with the outrageous question, breaking from the audience and running for the teahouse at the edge of the town square.
“Orion!” she called. Rosalind skidded around the bend. The pathway was empty. No. “Orion! I know you’re there!”
“What is going on?”
Someone grabbed her shoulder and spun her around. She came face-to-face with Jiemin.
“I saw him,” she said. “Orion. He’s here.”
It was a Aash of bewilderment that crossed Jiemin’s expression 1rst. Then—
pity.
“You probably just saw me,” he said. “I was looking around the perimeter.”
He thought she was imagining it. That she was mistaken.
Rosalind yanked her shoulder out of his grip. Behind him, the other Kuomintang soldiers were shutting down the press event, waving for the attendees to scatter.
“He was wearing something entirely diPerent. He was dressed in black. I saw
him.”
Before Jiemin could give her another excuse, she spun on her heel and ran down the pathway. She didn’t know where she was going; nor did she know exactly what she was looking for. She took a left, and then she scanned her surroundings; she gasped in a breath of air and moved through a thinner alley, peering into each window she passed. She’d seen him. She knew she’d seen something.
Rosalind kept running. Kept searching. She almost collided with dozens of
townspeople minding their business, but she couldn’t stop herself from continuing, even as she wandered so far from the town square that she knew she was on a wild-goose chase. She 1nally brought herself to a halt at the corner of the next wide road she came upon. Her pulse was pounding so intensely that she could feel it in her teeth, each vibration thudding from her neck right into her mouth.
“Damn it,” she whispered to herself. “Goddamn it—”
A car pulled up in front of her. The door opened from the inside: Jiemin, pushing it wide and sliding along the back seat.
“Get in. Now.”
Rosalind exhaled in defeat. Though she wanted to dig her heels into the ground and refuse to move, she got into the car, her hands clutched tightly before her. She always did. Wasn’t that the problem?
Jiemin didn’t say anything at her side. It was a very short drive. When the car stopped in front of the inn, Rosalind clambered out, itching at every bend of her limbs.
She slammed her door. “This is the end of today’s event, yes?”
“It is,” Jiemin replied. He was close on her heels as she walked into the lobby, going up two Aights of stairs to her room. “I do request a word, though.”
“What?” Rosalind snapped. She pushed in through the entryway, tore her gloves oP, and shed her coat. Even though her room wasn’t well insulated and her qipao was short-sleeved, she could barely feel the cold. Her bones might as well be made of poker irons, burning red from contact.
Jiemin caught the door before it could close in his face. He grimaced, stepping through and shutting it properly. “If you need time away from this tour…”
“I don’t need time away,” Rosalind hissed, spinning around. “I need to know what the hell you’ve been concerned about these past few days and whether it has anything to do with Orion showing up.”
A howl of wind blew outside, shuddering the windowpanes. They had come
into the inn right on time: rain poured down in an instant, hammering a staccato tune upon the roof. Something was shifting into place here. A thousand diPerent explanations ran through her head over how she could have seen Orion, half of them being that he needed help, and she couldn’t do a single thing to save him.
“I think you might have misunderstood.” Jiemin, still holding that grimace, walked to the table in the adjoining kitchen and leaned against it. “Fine. Yes. There have been warnings coming through covert about your tour. It has nothing to do with Hong Liwen. We received an alert about Communists trying to put a stop to it.”
What?
“For what reason?” Rosalind demanded.
Jiemin shrugged. The motion looked entirely too casual for the topic at hand. “We don’t know yet. Our spies are hard at work trying to 1gure it out. Right now, all we can conclude is that they have sent people in, so we’re on high alert and changing our routes to minimize the chances of sabotage. That’s it. I promise.”
“You promise,” Rosalind echoed. She scoPed. “You just as much as admitted that our information pipelines aren’t functioning very well. Lady Hong is nearby. We need to take advantage of the opportunity.”
“It is highly unlikely,” Jiemin insisted. “She’s moving with a military force.
Any conAict with us would be an international incident.”
“Domestic.”
Jiemin paused, taken aback at her quick correction. “I beg your pardon?”
Rosalind examined her hands, pacing a small circle around the room. Winter always used to roughen her palms and crack her knuckles, but these days her skin stayed perfectly unmarred. It didn’t look right. “She’s in collaboration with the Japanese and passing her research to them for resources and money, but technically it would be a domestic incident. She’s a Kuomintang asset gone rogue. It would be in1ghting.”
“In1ghting for another country’s agenda. Therefore an international incident.”
“No, that’s impossible to prove,” Rosalind returned. “The empire could deny it every step along the way. She has never been a Japanese agent. She has always been serving her own interests, following where her research goes. It is no diPerent from a militia group starting a coup against its warlord because someone else oPered to buy their loyalty. Domestic.”
And when the coup succeeded, Lady Hong would be rewarded, and she would have the resources she needed to continue experimenting in the name of research. In a way, this was easy to understand. Everything she did against her country, she did for herself. It just so happened that the Japanese Empire was also bene1ting while she worked, and Lady Hong didn’t care that she was helping cause harm.
Jiemin seemed to give up on arguing with her. He stuck his hands into his trouser pockets, still leaning against the table. The rain poured on. They listened to it fall for a long moment. Then:
“We’re not in the age of gangsters and warlords anymore, Lang Shalin,” Jiemin said. “This is the national government. Please leave the battle plans to the generals and lieutenants. You are one agent. You have one task, and it’s not Lady Hong.”
Sure. The generals and lieutenants. As if they weren’t the ones who let this build into what it was now. They had dismissed General Hong the 1rst time around. They had failed to 1nd Lady Hong even knowing she was armed with resentment over her project’s shutdown.
“How can I do that?” she asked tightly. “Right now, their battle plan is ignoring her and hoping she goes away.”
“Right now, their battle plan is keeping an eye on the empire funding her. We have bigger problems than one woman.”
When Jiemin tipped his head back, stretching his neck and letting his gelled hair shift from its combed line, he looked his age for once. Eighteen years old and handling national decisions. Eighteen years old with sway on the fate of hundreds upon thousands.
He pushed oP from the table. His hair fell back into place.
Rosalind tucked her 1ngers into 1sts. She stopped pacing, hovering at the edge of the kitchen.
“You should get some rest,” Jiemin said now, walking for the door. “We’re starting early tomorrow—”
“You are underestimating her.” Her words stopped Jiemin just as he was reaching for the handle. “You have to know that. This isn’t your regular rich elite turning hanjian for more wealth. She’s working with science that you cannot begin to imagine.” Rosalind reached for the knife block on the kitchen counter.
Jiemin swiveled around rapidly, just in time to see her draw out the sharpest one and press the blade into her arm. “Lang Shalin, what are you—”
“Have you seen my powers before?”
Rosalind cut a line from the inside of her elbow to the inside of her wrist. The blood ran immediately, rushing into her palm, running down her open 1ngers, dripping to the Aoor. Pain followed seconds later—sharp, searing pain— but by then Rosalind had prepared herself enough not to react.
Though Jiemin’s eyes turned wide, he held his tongue. His lips thinned; his posture was as stiP as a board.
“You haven’t,” Rosalind answered for him. “So look. I will show you. A few seconds more and—oh, how nice. Bleeding has stopped.” She set the knife back onto the countertop. Wiped the crook of her elbow to clear some of the blood there. “All my wounds knit together from the inside 1rst. If anything gets caught deeper, in muscle or near bone, the injury won’t heal until it has pushed all debris out, so the skin is the last thing to smooth over. And just as I say that…” She stretched her arm out. The wound was gone. As if it were never there.
“Were you making note of the time?” she asked.
“Less than a minute,” Jiemin answered. He had schooled his expression to impassivity again.
“Shoot a soldier with these abilities, and he heals that quickly.” Rosalind went to the sink. She put her arm under the tap. “Make a strike that should have been critical, and before you can take a step away, he’s already recovered. That one woman has the power to start a large-scale hostile takeover. If you don’t get Orion away from her and stop her from experimenting further, she could blow a hole in the government just to prove that she can. What then? What’s the point in preparing to 1ght the Japanese on the battle1eld if she’s killed everyone before you can even lift your weapons?”
Rosalind slapped the tap oP. The water stopped running, swirling down the drain in a muddied brown fashion. Her arm was clean once more.
Jiemin heaved a sigh, scrubbing his hands up and down his face. The rain poured on.
“Okay,” he said eventually. “Okay. I will talk to upper command. We can formulate a better plan.” He pulled the door open. “In the meantime, please just try to prevent getting snatched by the Communists before we 1nish this tour. Meet me in the hallway in the morning for our next stop.”
Jiemin exited the room. Once Rosalind was alone again, she walked to the window, peering out at the dull gray. Everything looked the same. The low buildings, the shop fronts. The heaving, crying skies and the slick, paved street. She missed Shanghai. Everything outside the city had a sleepy quality during these hours because their lights went dim so early. Though Shanghai was blinding at times, its heart pulsed electric no matter what time of the night it was.
Rosalind pressed a hand to her mouth. She had missed a bit of blood at the tip of her 1nger. She ignored it.
Had she been mistaken? Even if it was a trick of the eye, she had seen
someone peering around that corner. She couldn’t possibly be so lost in her own head that she was conjuring Orion out of nothing.
A cold tremor crept down her spine. She turned around suddenly, moving away from the window. What had that driver in their traveling party said? I was
only helping out a lost couple from the city.
“Mon Dieu.”
Who looked nearly identical to Orion? Christ. Rosalind couldn’t believe the thought hadn’t occurred to her until now. Especially after Jiemin just said that the Communists were meddling with the tour.
Rosalind caught sight of a telephone plugged into the corner. She hurried over, picked up the receiver, and dialed headquarters.
“Can you transfer me?” she asked when the line connected. “To Shepherd.” “May I ask who’s calling?”
Rosalind hesitated. Little point in using code names now. Not when her face was splattered on posters across the city. Still, she said: “Fortune.”
The click was immediate. A few rings later, Silas answered, his voice hoarse. “Wéi?”
Rosalind frowned, looking at the clock. “Were you sleeping? It’s 1ve o’clock.” “Why am I being judged for my sleeping schedule?” A rustle echoed over the line—probably Silas adjusting the telephone cord. They had both switched to speaking fast English, which didn’t entirely protect their conversation, but it did make it harder if there were spies tuned in. “There are underground meetings I
attend late at night. Nothing wrong with catching up on rest ahead of time.” Rosalind wouldn’t know. Rest had become a foreign concept to her.
“Do you know anything about Oliver out on the 1eld?”
A beat passed on Silas’s end. Rosalind hadn’t bothered with a prelude to her question, so Silas needed a moment to process what she was asking.
“I haven’t heard about any speci1c mission,” he replied, “and trust me, I’ve been looking extensively into Oliver. Why?”
“I think he’s following me.” Rosalind paused. A lost couple. Although she was
certain that Celia was likely to be close by too, she left her sister out of this. There was no need to implicate her or risk any information leaking to the Nationalists about her presence. “I think he’s after Orion too.”
Silas took another moment to consider the matter. The thing about Silas, Rosalind had noticed, was that he never mused excessively—he digested, he drew his conclusion, and then he verbalized precisely that.
“He must know,” Silas said aloud, arriving exactly where Rosalind was. “When you encounter Orion, he’s going to swoop in.”
Rosalind swallowed down her curse. “I can’t let him do that. Can’t you put some words in undercover? Get the Communists to withdraw?”
“I’m not high up enough for that. Oliver makes most of his own decisions.”
Damn it. Rosalind was at a loss. He and her sister were most de1nitely going to make an appearance, but as to whether they would harm or help…
“Okay. I’ll 1gure it out,” she decided.
Silas made a curious noise. “What’s that mean?”
It meant she ought to get ready. Though she was never going to hurt her sister, she would do whatever else necessary when the situation arose.
“If they’re going to combat me for him,” she said, “I’ll return 1re.”
Celia returned to their inn an hour after Rosalind’s press meeting ended. She entered when another group did, appearing natural by 1ddling with her sleeve and looking distracted so that no one within the group would wonder why she was walking so closely. The receptionist at the front desk didn’t notice her come in. Good. Silently, she parted with the group at the stairwell and climbed to the top Aoor.
Inside their room, Oliver was playing with a piece of string. He didn’t immediately turn when she walked through the door, but the legs of his chair made a scraping noise against the Aoor, pivoting the rest of him to face her.
“I was about to start worrying.”
“I didn’t want to go in when there was no one there,” Celia replied. She took her coat oP. There were Aurries of ice collected on her collar. “Small town, smaller telegraph office.”
When Rosalind’s press event ended and the Nationalists ushered her away, Celia and Oliver had signaled to each other from their hiding places before Oliver slipped away from the scene and Celia went oP to send a telegram to central command, updating them on their mission progress. Oliver had been waiting for some time now.
“So the missive has been sent?” Oliver asked.
“Of course. I updated them on where we’re going next.” Celia 1nally took a deep breath, relieved to have returned. Maybe the concept of safety was a mere illusion in their lives. All the same, this—the doors locked and the curtains drawn tight, a candle Aickering for light and Oliver sitting vigilantly in the corner—was close enough. “What have you been doing?”
Oliver gestured behind him. A dress of hers was hanging oP another chair. “I 1nished restitching the hem half an hour ago.”
“I’m talking about that.” She pointed to the string he was still Aicking back and forth.
“Oh, that.” In a Aash, Oliver had tied the string around his armrest, securing it in a looped knot. “Practicing a one-handed restraint technique. Impressive, no?”
Celia reached for a cup in the kitchen. She 1lled it with water. “You tied a pretty bow, Oliver. Whoever you are trying to restrain like that is going to free themselves in about ten seconds.”
“It is only a temporary method. Don’t have such high standards, sweetheart.” He stood up. Wandered over to the counter too, propping his elbows on the granite. For a good minute, she and Oliver listened to the rustling of the inn and the night outside singing with crickets. The rain had stopped. Oliver, eventually,
broke the lull to say:
“She was calling for Orion.”
Celia took another sip of her water. “An easy mistake to make,” she replied, her voice quiet.
“I didn’t think she would see me. I was rather far away.”
Meanwhile, Celia had been situated on the third Aoor of a building overlooking the town square. At 1rst she had risen quickly when Rosalind plunged into the crowd, pulling away from her surveillance out of personal concern. When she’d realized it wasn’t danger that her sister spotted but rather a case of mistaken identity, Celia had forced herself to duck low behind the window in case the Nationalists started looking around and saw her.
“Be glad that she did mistake your identity and didn’t yell your name out
loud,” Celia said. “The Kuomintang can shrug oP her imagination running
wild. They’re going to be much less inclined to shrug oP con1rmation of our presence.”
Oliver folded his arms. He leaned lower on the granite, his head lolling before rising suddenly.
“How often did you speak to your sister after she went on assignment at Seagreen?”
Celia almost dropped her cup of water. “Why do you ask?”
“Only curious.” Oliver straightened up, then returned to his chair. “Don’t sound so concerned.”
Alisa’s voice echoed through her head. What if Oliver is instructed to grab his
brother without any regard for Rosalind in the middle? It was a valid question. And Celia hated that. They had already formed a plan, and the encounter today with Rosalind con1rmed that it would certainly work when the time came. If Orion were to appear, he would be wearing a Nationalist uniform as part of Lady Hong’s disguised forces. That meant it was easy for Oliver to dress exactly like him and incite confusion, which also meant it would get most of the attention oP Orion for Celia to grab him.
“I can oPer no help about her time at Seagreen.” Slowly, Celia walked across the room too. She opted to remain standing, her arm brushing the curtains. “Everything she told me was about her personal business. Not her work.”
“Good,” Oliver said. “That’s exactly what I was wondering about.” “Her personal business?”
A pause. Oliver reached for the dress he had left hanging on the other chair, prepared for her. He smoothed the fabric against his 1ngers.
“Is she in love with Orion?”
This line of questioning was entirely unexpected. Celia was most de1nitely not up to date on that. She hadn’t even known that Rosalind and Orion had in1ltrated Seagreen pretending to be married. As close as she and Rosalind were, it was only natural that information slipped through the cracks if they were separated for months on end.
“I…” Celia scrambled for an answer. “I don’t know. I hardly thought to inquire in our letters.”
“But it’s not something you need to inquire about outright. It must have shown in the way she spoke about him. In the matters she mentioned.”
“I don’t know. Really. Believe me or don’t believe me.”
“Okay, okay.” Oliver raised his eyebrows. “Don’t bite my head oP. I’m not trying to be an irritant on purpose.”
“Hmm.” Celia took another drink of water. She let their conversation peter oP, then peeked through the window. When there appeared to be nothing interesting on the street outside, she turned around again. “All right, why are you asking about Rosalind like that?”
“I am only curious,” Oliver said again. “When we encounter her… it is information that is good to know.”
When they met in conAict. When battle broke out around them.
“Well, for her sake, I hope she’s not in love with him,” Celia muttered. “It can only make everything a dozen times more complicated.”
“For Orion’s sake, I hope she is,” Oliver countered. “Maybe it’ll save him when nothing else will.”
Celia paused. Digested his words. He had sounded completely matter-of-fact, but she knew him well enough to spot that waver at the end, a signal that the truth had squirmed its way out despite Oliver’s best ePorts.
“And do we want that?” she asked carefully. “Orion saved?”
Central command wanted him as an asset. Central command had sent them after Orion Hong to secure a resource, either to be used or to be wiped out on their terms. If Oliver went against this, he was going against them.
“The 1rst step is saving him from my mother,” Oliver replied evenly. “Everything else comes next.”
“But then what happens next?” Celia kept pushing. “Let’s say we successfully
yank him away from her when he shows up. What if the only way to save him is by giving him back to the Nationalists?”
Oliver was quiet for a moment. Suddenly, he stood up, stretching his arms wide.
“How about we consider that when we get there?” He walked past, brushing her shoulder. “It’s dinnertime. I’m starving. What are you feeling?”
Celia held back her sigh. Just as she thought she was getting through to him. “Dumplings. You’re on duty to go get them.”
