Rosalind and Phoebe played it safe: the 1rst items they purchased were silk scarves and sunglasses, though Phoebe complained about the circular lenses looking funny on her. Rosalind had told her to tie the silk scarf around her head tighter—which did help Phoebe look less funny, because then she looked like a child playing dress-up instead.
“You know what…” Rosalind sighed. “Just take them oP.”
They had hailed rickshaws into the thick of the city, using the regular bustle of Nanjing Road as their cover. It would be very hard for someone to recognize them given the number of people coming into Wing On every morning, and so Rosalind and Phoebe browsed the shelves in the megastore, quickly waving away any employees who wanted to help.
“Oh, good,” Phoebe said with relief, plucking the sunglasses oP. “They were really hurting my nose.”
“We are not wearing them for style.”
“Speak for yourself. Not everyone is as naturally glamorous as you are. I would rather get hauled in than look ridiculous.”
At the very least, even if Phoebe was recognized, she could extricate herself and make the excuse of being out and about. There was no active search for her in the same way that the Kuomintang were likely scratching their heads over where Rosalind had gotten to.
“We ought to 1nd a few hats,” Rosalind remarked. She looked through the paper bags she was already holding on her arm. “You check the shop across the aisle. I’ll go to the next one.”
“Commencing hat search.”
Phoebe marched oP. Rosalind went over to the next shop, browsing the mannequin heads and hatboxes.
Ten minutes later, Phoebe appeared by her side again. “Find anything?” she asked.
“They are either too colorful or”—Rosalind Aicked the nearest hat
—“covered in feathers. What about you?”
Phoebe shook her head. “I think feathers are in fashion. I found one hat that might look nice on Silas though.”
“Silas isn’t going in disguised. You need to be 1nding something for your brother.”
“My brother has an abnormally large head.”
“What…?” Rosalind thought about it. “That’s simply not true.”
Phoebe grinned. “The more we say it, the more he might believe it. Play along.”
“I am not playing along if you 1nd a hat too big.” “Lang Shalin, why must you ruin my joy like this?”
There was something about Phoebe Hong that persistently gave Rosalind the same funny feeling as that 1rst day she had met her, prancing into Seagreen Press with that basket on her arm: recognition. Some people were very good at leaning into what was expected of them. But do it too well, and it created shimmers in the illusion. A mirror image that overcorrected was just as jarring as one that didn’t reAect every part.
“Oh, now I’m Lang Shalin and not your sǎozi when I’m telling you oP.”
Rosalind picked up a black hat. It might work for a break-in. “Are you concerned?”
The question had come so suddenly that Phoebe didn’t follow Rosalind’s topic switch. There came a pause, then Phoebe gave her a confused look, tugging out a hatbox from the bottom of the pile.
“About being told oP?”
“No,” Rosalind said. “About Silas being 1xated on Priest even after Orion has been rescued.”
Silence. As soon as Rosalind glanced over, she caught Phoebe smoothing down her expression.
“It’s not my business.”
“Sure it is.” Rosalind moved some of the boxes aside to help Phoebe retrieve the one from the bottom. “It’s a little sel1sh for him to be concerned about his work while Oliver is at risk.”
The two sides of Phoebe’s face suddenly suctioned in, as if she were biting down on the insides of her cheeks. After a few seconds, she released the clamp and said, “I have faith that Oliver’s rescue will be successful.”
“Oh, I agree,” Rosalind said. “That doesn’t mean you can’t be upset at Silas’s priorities.”
“I’m not upset.”
Rosalind wasn’t buying it. “You are. I saw you.”
“I was marginally perplexed at best, all right?” Phoebe huPed. “He’s obsessed with her. I’ve said this before. I 1nd it bizarre.”
“You’re jealous.” “I’m—no. That’s absurd.”
“Then why is it only Priest that bothers you? He’s equally obsessed with maintaining his standing in the Nationalists. I don’t see you looking sour over that.”
Phoebe folded her arms aggressively. She almost whacked over the hatbox stack with her elbow, and a shopkeeper nearby shot her an irritated glance.
“At least that makes sense,” Phoebe retorted. “It’s his very career and livelihood. Meanwhile, what’s this one task going to achieve? He 1nally reveals the identity of one assassin. So? You’re an assassin. You’re not any diPerent from the rest of us.”
Rosalind lifted a brow. “Actually…”
Phoebe’s hand snapped up. “Fine, 1ne—that was a bad example.”
There was a small part of this that was just a tad amusing. Phoebe couldn’t see how she looked right now: two blots of red on her face and her eyebrows furrowed down.
“Issue an ultimatum if you want him to let go of the matter,” Rosalind said lightly. “It’s impossible that he will choose Priest over you.”
“I wouldn’t be so sure about that.” Phoebe plucked up a blue hat and put it on herself. It shadowed her eyes, a ribbon trailing over the side. “I didn’t think
Oliver would abandon us. I didn’t think my mother would turn out to be a national traitor more interested in advancing her own work above all else. So I don’t know. People have proven me wrong again and again.”
Rosalind winced. She started a lofty, “Well—” before halting at once, her gaze catching on something over Phoebe’s shoulder. Suddenly their entire topic of conversation seemed arbitrary. She ducked to take herself out of view, and Phoebe, to her credit, followed suit immediately.
“What’s happening?” “Soldiers,” Rosalind hissed.
“In Wing On?” Phoebe craned her neck, trying to look into the aisles without jutting her head out too far. “Shall we leave through the back?”
“Give it a second. He’s still there.”
But the moment the soldier in the aisle turned, putting his back to them, two others appeared at his side, coming into view too. What was happening? Why would the Kuomintang be surveilling a department store?
“Let’s go,” Rosalind said. “Through the aisle now.”
They dove out, hurrying for the back. A sharp left, then a shortcut through the shelves of one store. Rosalind could almost see the doors that led into the alleyway exit before she turned in a rush and rammed right into a soldier.
She froze. A charade prepared itself upon her tongue, but it fell to the wayside the moment she met the soldier’s eyes. She could see the diPerence at once. Though he wore a Nationalist uniform, this was one of Lady Hong’s men.
“Hello,” he said.
“He’s speaking,” Phoebe whispered, grabbing Rosalind’s arm as they both took a step back. “Why is he speaking?”
“They can still speak,” Rosalind answered quietly. Would the soldiers make a
scene? If they had come dressed in uniform, was it to allow Lady Hong to pin the incident on the Kuomintang when a public 1ght broke out?
“Yes, but—”
“Feiyi.”
Phoebe’s grip tightened at once, pulling panicked at Rosalind’s sleeve.
Rosalind put her hand over Phoebe’s, trying to calm her down.
“Feiyi. I hope you will join me of your own free will. Family comes first.”
“Oh my God,” Phoebe murmured. “That’s my mother. Those are her words.”
The soldier was speaking English, but it was Japanese-accented with the wrong intonations. The soldier didn’t understand what he was saying; he was echoing sounds instead of words.
“He’s been fed a script to repeat,” Rosalind said. She pushed her bags into Phoebe’s hands. “Run. Go, hurry.”
“But—”
The soldier lunged. A Aash of a knife. Rosalind barely reacted in time to push his arm, throwing his attack wide.
“Run, Phoebe!”
Phoebe dashed oP. With a gasp, Rosalind didn’t have the time to avoid the next slash, taking a gouge from her neck to her shoulder. God. That was a lot of Aesh to cut through.
She lurched back, digging into her coat for her pistol. There was a shout from another aisle, which meant the rest of the soldiers were coming. This was no place for a 1ght—and she was outnumbered anyway. She drew her pistol to shoot once at close proximity, running oP as soon as the soldier staggered back from the bullet in his stomach.
“Please don’t be poisoned,” Rosalind muttered, her hand going up to clasp her shoulder. Her whole arm throbbed and stung. Though the blood squelched when she ran her 1nger through the tear in her qipao fabric, it seemed that her skin was closing.
Rosalind kept her head ducked, barging past the other shoppers with a one- track goal of getting to an exit. Ignoring cries and concerned shouts, she pushed out through a side door, stumbling into the alley.
“Rosalind!”
Her head snapped up. She spotted Phoebe at the end of the alley, and Rosalind lurched into motion again, lunging for a broomstick by the trash bags and shoving it through the looped handle of the door. It wouldn’t hold for long, but it was enough for Rosalind to hurry over to Phoebe, heaving for breath.
“Here.” Phoebe tried to pass the bags back. “I’ll meet you at the safe house.
Covert needs to know that my mother is in the city.”
“What?” Rosalind demanded. She didn’t take them. “You’re going to Kuomintang headquarters?”
“I’m the only one who can,” Phoebe said, pushing the bags forward more
forcefully and impelling Rosalind to take them, lest they drop straight to the ground. “I know they’re practically useless, but my mother’s in the open now. They can gather forces. Get in her path. We have to keep her away from the rescue tonight, and they’re the best possible resource.”
Rosalind cast a frantic look at the side door into Wing On. At either end of the alley, the day carried on per normal, its busyness utterly unaPected by the soldiers who were about to break through the exit. Phoebe was right. Lady Hong being in the city and playing strange games trying to summon Phoebe to her side meant she was ready for her next move. She was going to go after Oliver.
“Merde,” Rosalind hissed. “Merdemerdemerde—”
The door shuddered. The broomstick slipped. If Rosalind moved now, she could get on a rickshaw and disappear before she was spotted.
“Go!” Phoebe hissed, giving her a push. “I’ll see you shortly.”
Rosalind started to move. “We leave for the facility at nine o’clock,” she exclaimed over her shoulder. “You have to be back before then.”
“I will,” Phoebe promised. “Go!”
Rosalind turned and ran as fast as she could.
Phoebe hurried in the other direction, though she already knew she’d be spotted. Her pastel skirt Aared around her obnoxiously, no help in hiding her when she paused at one of the shop corners to see where the soldiers would go.
A loud clatter echoed through the alley. They had broken past the department store’s door. By then at least Rosalind had disappeared. She had either blended well into the mass of shoppers on Nanjing Road, or she had long boarded a rickshaw. They wouldn’t be able to follow her to the safe house.
Phoebe took a deep breath. Instead of running toward Nationalist headquarters, she stepped out from the corner, coming onto the street plainly. She raised her hands over her head. Tipped her chin high as soon as one of the men spotted her, his uniform lapels catching the morning light.
“Don’t shoot,” Phoebe commanded evenly. “I’m coming with you.”
Shanghai shivers in the cold.
Its central buildings are well insulated, at least—lined with wool and gold. These theaters and hotels won’t feel the wintry temperatures approaching with the darkening afternoon, won’t hear the cries from the north, where the currents and gales blow hardest.
Its peripheries are a diPerent matter. Some stores shutter. Others hide away their belongings and gnaw at their nails, considering the costs of moving and the costs of staying, the impending doom that lies on the horizon.
The pages on the calendar have been turning at breakneck speed. No matter how the mayor wills it to stop, the days run and they run, until time is up and the warships press to the banks of the city with a heavy thunk.
“They’re trying to take us just as they took Manchuria!” One university student has broken from the rules they set for his shadowing period, 1nding it impossible to merely observe and jot notes. The meeting ends, and he pulls away from the crowd. He chases after the mayor, his lanyard Auttering behind him, each of his footsteps echoing through the long halls. “How can we agree to this? How?”
Municipal buildings will be protected if violence breaks out. It is not the
center that will be struck 1rst, anyhow. The doors are heavy; the pillars are stable. The mayor hurries away from the student, and regretfully, he knows any fuss here will be muAed by the smooth walls. It will clash against the echoes already crawling along the ceiling slats: yes, we will pay monetary reparations for the property loss experienced by Japanese owners; yes, there will be an end to all anti- Japanese protests; yes, there will be public condemnation on Chinese civilians who argue otherwise.
“Traitor!” the student screams. Soldiers come to escort him out. “You’re a traitor!”
The calendar settles on January 28. There’s no pretty way for the city to speak about it. No matter what they do, no matter what commands they bend to and how they attempt to prevent the broach, the invasion is here.
