The smoke was starting to fade. Celia had been fumbling around for some time now, pitching her voice like Rosalind’s to keep Jiemin going in circles. Though she was all the way at the southern end of the gardens, she had just heard the screech of tires, then the loud echoes of Nationalists calling instructions to one another. Someone had left the scene. Either Rosalind had made a getaway, or Lady Hong had.
Celia pressed up against a tree, considering her next move. Even with the coat on, she and Rosalind didn’t look that alike up close, not in the way that Oliver was nearly identical to Orion. If she moved fast, there was a chance that the Nationalists would follow and continue thinking she was Rosalind from a distance, buying her sister time to get away. There were safe houses in this town. One that was nearby, according to the map she had scoped before the event. But then her own mission…
Large swaths of the smoke cleared with a new gust of wind. For a brief moment, Celia glimpsed Oliver up ahead, engaged in combat with soldiers who looked to be Nationalists. It was hard to tell. This whole aPair was a 1ght between true Nationalist soldiers and fake Nationalist soldiers wearing costumes. It could have been either side.
Celia hesitated. She couldn’t wait until the smoke cleared to 1nd out. That was a fast-track method of getting killed.
As soon as Oliver 1nished disarming a small group of soldiers, Celia surged forward and grabbed his wrist. “We’re going.”
Oliver blinked, twice. The 1rst time was in surprise; the second time was at something over her shoulder. He said, “Duck,” and Celia acted on command, dropping to the ground just as Oliver threw his jacket over the head of the
soldier running at them. The moment his opponent was blinded, he took Celia’s elbow and hauled them out from the thick of the battle.
“Where’s Orion?” “Yeah, about that.”
The fence was completely Aattened. Someone had driven a vehicle into the gardens, then reversed with little care about what they were running over. Those tire tracks didn’t look like the military vehicles Lady Hong must have charged onto the scene with. It looked like a civilian getaway car.
“Over there!” a soldier bellowed from behind.
Celia stiAed a gasp. The Nationalists had almost cleared the scene amid the last wisps of smoke. What remained were either bodies from both sides collapsed upon the grass or Lady Hong’s soldiers being held captive. Perhaps the Kuomintang had plans to bring them back for information, but she doubted any of these men had much of their minds left intact to give up anything of value.
“Run.”
Oliver didn’t hesitate. He did, however, look rather confounded, casting another glance at the tire tracks before they circled around and skidded onto the street past the teahouse.
“Do continue,” he said, as if they were maintaining polite conversation over a light platter of snacks.
“Rosalind has him,” Celia huPed. She had no con1rmation, but she was willing to bet on the guess. “Assuming she follows my instructions, I know where they’re going next.”
Celia cast a glance back. The Nationalists were mobilizing on their chase much quicker than she would have expected. They needed to deal with this 1rst before worrying about 1nding Rosalind again.
“This way,” Oliver said, noting the same and signaling left.
They swerved into a side street. Celia spotted a door into a pavilion and hurried them toward it, closing the entrance after themselves just as a few soldiers ran by.
“Confirming report. Spread out and search…”
“… operatives Hong Lifu and Lang Selin on the scene…”
At once Oliver and Celia froze, their gazes colliding with shock. There was no reason they should have been identi1ed already. For all that the Kuomintang could see from a distance—from the only context they were working oP—they were Orion and Rosalind.
“That doesn’t make any sense,” Oliver muttered. “I look just like my brother.
At no point did they see us both. How would they know?”
Not only that, but they were calling her Kathleen again. For her entire time as an agent she had been identi1ed among Nationalist enemies only as Xiliya— Celia, but its transliteration into Chinese, spreading among operative circles like a code name. Her sort of intelligence work meant she swapped into new code names too often to let one be her general identi1er, so by nature she and Oliver slipped their proper names into the 1eld. And since she never chose herself a new Chinese name, Westernized it was.
She supposed that since Rosalind’s identity had gone public, information was starting to cross streams. Rosalind was being slapped front and center on the papers, so it was only a matter of time before Celia joined her, before people farther along the Nationalist chain of command recognized her photos and put two and two together that the Xiliya they knew used to be the city’s Lang Selin. They would believe Kathleen Lang to be the real person and Celia Lang to be an adopted identity—when, in reality, it was the other way around.
But how could they have seen through the mix-up between Rosalind and
Celia that quickly, unless they had already suspected that Oliver and Celia would show up? It sure as hell wasn’t Rosalind giving them the warning when she hadn’t even known Celia would be there, so…
Celia bit too hard on her lip. She tasted metal in her mouth.
“We better 1nd an escape route as soon as possible,” she whispered. “I suppose we’re not really fooling them anymore.”
Oliver squinted beyond the pavilion wall. “Might be better to take shelter 1rst. Isn’t that the safe house?”
Celia followed his line of sight. The apartment was three houses away, rising slightly taller than the other buildings on this block. Its east-facing window was visible from here, reAecting the gleam of the low moon.
“It is,” Celia said. The soldiers were still shouting closely enough that their voices echoed back, albeit faintly. It was a tricky maneuver, but Celia could trace the exact route to the house, even from her lower vantage point. “We could climb our way there. It’ll be less conspicuous than using the streets.”
“My thoughts exactly. Let’s go.”
Oliver hoisted himself onto the top of the wall, then reached his hand down. While Celia scrambled to hurry, her shoes weren’t doing her any favors when it came to balancing. She squeaked, almost pitching right oP the top of the wall before Oliver slid an arm around her waist to hold her in place.
Celia stilled. Her balance was recovered, but she was oP-kilter in a diPerent way.
“You okay?”
A nod. She didn’t trust herself to speak. The building on the left had a small ledge on its side that they would need to leap onto, and she focused her concentration on that instead.
“Go 1rst,” Oliver whispered.
“All right.” Celia stood shakily, listening for the soldiers’ voices below. “Don’t scream if I fall and splatter in the alley below.”
“Don’t say that,” Oliver chided.
“Too late.”
With a barely held wince, Celia jumped, clutching a pipe while she secured her foothold on the ledge. Oliver followed suit, entirely without struggle. They circled the exterior walls, one foot in front of the other on the precarious ledge, then repeated the process to get onto the next building. This one had to be an inn. When Celia pressed up against a window and eased across it, she heard snoring inside.
“There!”
Celia froze, her hand still gripping the top of the window frame. The call had come from below, at the other side of the building. Seconds later, a gunshot rang into the night. She didn’t dare look over. If they had been seen…
“False alarm! Keep moving!”
She breathed out. Beside her, Oliver released his exhale too.
“We’re almost there,” he whispered. “How are we going to get through the window?”
“It looks like it’s only a latch on the inside,” Celia replied, inching along the exterior wall again. Her shoe kept threatening to slip, but she was cautious, making sure each foothold was secure and at no risk of sliding around before putting any weight down. “Do you have anything thin we can get between the panes?”
“I would pat my pockets, but I shouldn’t let go of this wall.” Oliver paused. “What about the pins in your hair?”
“I don’t wear—” Celia stopped. She was about to say that there were none, but there were three perfectly good pins sticking out of her hair that she had put in to mimic Rosalind. She was surprised Oliver had even noticed them. “That might work. Get me up?”
As smoothly as they could manage, they jumped onto the restaurant building, hovering just below the window that would be their entrance. Footsteps thudded closer and closer, and when Celia glanced down, she saw a soldier surveying the alley right beneath them. He had his back to them, going in the other direction.
But that way was a dead end. He was going to turn around as soon as he reached the wall.
“Putain.”
“Mon Dieu, surveille ton langage.”
“Watch your surroundings,” Celia retorted. “Hurry!”
Oliver lifted her smoothly, putting her at direct eye level with the window. It took a few seconds of fumbling before Celia could push the pin in, then it was just too short to smoothly hit the latch. She shoved against the pane. Yanked the pin up. Again.
“Another soldier has entered the alley….”
“I’ve got it!” Celia declared, the latch swinging oP. “Come on!”
She pushed the window, its hinges squeaking obnoxiously. Though she intended to hop over the sill smoothly, she practically threw herself in, lying Aat on the Aoorboards. Oliver scrambled in too, ducking down just as the soldiers turned around to continue their search.
A few minutes passed. It sounded like they had left the alley.
The safe house groaned in greeting. Night was a blanket of safety, but it was also an extra veil of risk. Anything could jump out when they weren’t watching.
Celia rose to her elbow carefully. They had landed in some sort of small room. A few boxes were stacked tightly to their left, but otherwise the space was dusty and unoccupied, leading toward an open door.
“The whole place should be empty,” she said, still slightly short of breath. Oliver clambered to his feet. “It can’t hurt to make sure.”
They entered the dark hallway, waiting for a reaction with each step they took. The safe house wasn’t large: it was an unoccupied residence above the restaurant, so the only proper access was through the stairs in its back kitchen, leading up to the hallway, which then split into two rooms, one on each side. Celia peered down the stairs, listening. No doors or barriers blocked them oP from the restaurant. She could hear the soldiers shuAing around outside.
“These rooms extend a bit farther than the restaurant itself,” Oliver observed. His volume was quiet, as though he was talking to himself more than actually intending to speak aloud.
“Maybe a passageway?” Celia suggested. “For another exit.”
It didn’t look like there was any other way out except for the stairs, unless they wanted to climb through a window again. Oliver entered the second room wordlessly. Celia trailed in after him, letting her eyes adjust to the darker space. With less moonlight coming in through the smaller window, she could hardly tell what the shapes in the corner were until Oliver went rummaging around, kicking at the tarps draped over the furniture until something metallic clinked.
“Hmmm,” he said simply. Celia sneezed.
“Shush, sweetheart.”
“Sorry,” Celia said nasally. “Let me just plug up my nostrils. What was that noise?”
Oliver pulled the tarps oP. One dresser. A mirror. Nothing useful in the slightest—no radios or telephones hooked up to the walls. “I’m not sure. Do you still hear it?”
He rustled the tarps around, trying to re-create whatever he had done to prompt the metallic clinking. All he did was produce more dust, and Celia pinched her nose to prevent sneezing again. A groan reverberated along the Aoorboards. The curtains to the window were folded at the top, a pale fabric color that was gathering spiderwebs from its sides.
“I don’t hear it.” Celia stepped closer to the furniture pieces. The cheap wood and chipping sage-green paint looked like they hadn’t been touched in eons, put up here and left forgotten. As if they were decoration pieces to another era rather than real, usable pieces, and Celia nudged her foot against the corner of a mirror stand, trying to push it against the wall.
It scraped against the edge of the rug. The clinking noise came again.
Ah.
“It’s the Aoor,” Celia said. “Something is beneath the rug.”
Oliver got to work immediately, shifting the furniture pieces oP the rug. Now that Celia’s eyes had adjusted to the dark, she could see the patterns on the yellow rug as each segment was cleared, the ends stretching to take up half the room. The border was faded, as were the symmetrical whorls and Aoral details, but it still looked like something that had been rolled right out of the Qing Dynasty.
Celia grabbed one corner. Oliver grabbed the other. Underneath, there was a circular handle attached to a panel in the Aoor, barely larger than the window they had climbed through.
“Well, it’s not an exit.” Oliver lifted the hatch. Inside, the space was miniature, likely built to store food. Whether the original intent or not, it could also store fugitives in the event the safe house was intruded upon. “But it is a hiding spot.”
He let the panel fall closed. The metallic handle clanked once more.
“That’s the whole safe house,” Celia said. “I don’t think we have any way to communicate with central command from here.”
Oliver made a contemplative noise. He walked to the window, peering out. “Let’s check the restaurant,” he decided. “And if there’s no telephone… then I
suppose we wait until the coast clears outside.”
