Before Benedikt could protest, Marshall was already sliding off the roof, hanging along the gutters by his fingertips, then jumping down and landing cleanly.
“Keep an eye out,” Marshall hissed from below. He disappeared quickly, ducking through the nearest alley and then emerging between two of the buildings, coming onto the main road. Benedikt didn’t like getting left behind, but he had to admit it would have looked strange for him to accompany Marshall. From his vantage point, he watched Marshall approach the group, his posture stick straight, acting the Nationalist soldier. He started to speak with one of the Scarlets, pulling the forged note out of his jacket. All the while, the other Scarlet who had stepped out of the rain and under the awning of the police station was still arguing with the soldier standing guard. The Scarlet—as Benedikt eyed him—lashed out, whacking the soldier’s hat and flipping it right off his head.
Benedikt wondered what could possibly be a point of contention at this precarious time. Was it not the Nationalists’ mission to capture the Montagovs? Why would they keep Roma lurking outside for so long? Did they not worry about a rescue attempt?
“Hey!”
Roma’s voice rang loud. The Scarlets, the two soldiers outside the station, Marshall—they all turned to look at him, taken aback, but Roma’s attention was fixed on the soldier picking his hat back up.
“Why is your hat so big? It doesn’t fit you in the slightest.”
The rain suddenly eased into a light drizzle. Its raucous noise grew faint, and it was like Benedikt’s ears had come unplugged, like he could think clearly again. He realized what Roma was implying. The man outside was not a Nationalist soldier. He had been planted there to stall.
The doors of the station burst open. And out poured a cascade of workers, armed with rifles.
“Ohhh—no, no, no—”
From the street side, Marshall’s gaze snapped to Benedikt, his arm miming a slash across his throat. Don’t! Stay there, Marshall was warning, just as Dimitri appeared behind the workers, coming to a stop at the top step of the station. The workers fanned out.
“I’ll take it from here,” Dimitri said. “Shoot the Scarlets.”
The Scarlets didn’t have a chance to fight back. Some managed to retrieve weapons, some managed one shot. But the workers had them surrounded, rifles already aimed, and with a pop-pop-pop! reverberating along the whole street, the Scarlets all dropped, eyes blank and glazed, fleshy wounds studded into their chests. The blood splashed generously. When Marshall raised his arms high, signaling his surrender, the left side of his neck was entirely splattered.
This is bad. This is so, so bad.
The last of the Scarlet groans faded into silence.
“May as well shoot us too while you’re at it,” Roma said into the deathly quiet. Loudest now were the clinking of bullet casings, dropping from the rifles and littering the ground. “Or do we receive the honor of being torn apart by your monsters?”
Dimitri smiled. “You get the honor of a public execution at nightfall for your crimes against the workers of this city,” he said evenly. “Lead them there.”
Marshall didn’t resist, letting himself be nudged by the sharp end of a rifle. He fell into step beside Roma, arms still held up, and didn’t glance up, though he had to know Benedikt was watching. It was to avoid Benedikt being caught too, he knew, but still he cursed Marshall for it, because if this was Marshall’s death, if this was an inescapable fate, then he needed one last look. . . .
Benedikt scrambled up, his teeth gritted hard. He knew how to save them. He would save them.
Before any of Dimitri’s men could see him, Benedikt hurried off the roof and started to run in the other direction.
Forty-Five
Do you care to explain yourself?”
Juliette touched the quilt over her shoulders, pulling at its loose threads. Her gaze remained unfocused, turned in the direction of her balcony, gazing out at the gray afternoon. The rain had stopped. As the ground grew quiet, so too did the skies.
“Cai Junli.”
Juliette closed her eyes. The use of her birth name had the opposite effect that her mother had likely intended. Lady Cai wanted her to realize the severity of the situation; instead, Juliette felt as if her mother were addressing someone else, some false manifestation of the girl she was supposed to be. All this time, her parents had let her be Juliette—let her be wild, impulsive. Now they wanted the unknown daughter again, but Juliette only knew how to be Juliette.
“Do you even know what happened out there?” she whispered in answer to her mother’s question. This was the first time she had ever seen both her parents in her bedroom at once. The first time that they had closed the door on a party going on in the house, their attention fixated on her instead. “Your precious Nationalists mingling downstairs with champagne—they opened fire on a peaceful protest. Hundreds of people, dead in an instant.”
Never mind the infections. Never mind that the madness would soon break out among the soldiers. The Nationalists would put them in quarantine to prevent the spread of the insects, but Juliette doubted it mattered. The monsters would be working this very moment, quietly infecting as many as they could. Violence on both sides—that was how a city shrouded in blood would always be.
“You are hardly in a place to be lecturing right now,” Lady Cai said evenly.
Juliette tightened her hold on the quilt. The Scarlets had deposited her in her bedroom when they hauled her back to the Cai house, had sat her upon her bed and demanded she wait while her parents came to her. She was to remain idle, some prisoner under confinement in her own home. This was her place. This was the only place she had.
“It was massacre, Māma,” Juliette snapped, rocketing to her feet. “It goes against everything we stand for! What happened to loyalty? What happened to order?”
Her parents remained unbothered. The two of them could have been replaced by marble statues for all that it mattered to Juliette.
“We value order, family, loyalty,” Lady Cai confirmed, “but at the end of the day, we choose to value whatever ensures our survival.”
An image of Rosalind flashed in Juliette’s head. Then Kathleen.
“And what about the survival of those on the streets?” Juliette asked. Each time she blinked, she saw them fall. She saw the bullets pierce their chests and cut through the crowds.
“Communists who threaten the fabric of society,” her mother replied, her tone grave. “White Flowers who have been trying to snuff us out for generations. You wish for their lives to be saved?”
When Juliette turned away, unable to speak past the sour twist in her throat, her mother’s gaze followed. There was little Lady Cai ever missed. Little that went past her appraisal and emerged untouched. Juliette knew this, and yet still she was surprised as her mother snagged her wrist. Juliette’s fingers splayed out against the overhead light. The yarn on her finger glowed white.
“They say you were found with Roma Montagov.” Her mother’s grip tightened. “Again, I ask, do you care to explain yourself?”
Juliette’s eyes went to her father, who had yet to say anything. His composure was placid; Juliette felt turned inside out. While he stood there, occupying a space in her room, Juliette could sense everything: her own inhale-exhale of breath, the electricity droning overhead, the static murmur of conversation outside the door.