But here, in the square, there was a group of men loitering with military weapons slung over their shoulders. Militia soldiers.
Juliette exchanged a glance with Roma. “Keep walking,” she warned.
In quiet places like this, it was true warlord rule that continued to thrive. Militias patrolled the streets, utterly loyal to the one general who oversaw the wider district. The generals who had grown into warlords were no mighty figures—they were only men who had managed to seize power when the last imperial dynasty fell. The current government, really, was no more than a warlord installed in Beijing: all they had different from the rest of the warlords was the seal of approval from the international stage, but that did not mean control; it did not mean their power actually stretched any wider than the soldiers they had loyal.
“Juliette,” Roma said suddenly. “How far along is the Northern Expedition right now?”
“The Northern Expedition?” Juliette echoed, taken aback by the question. “You mean the Nationalists?” She tried to remember the last update she had heard from her father, searching her memory about their campaign to defeat the warlords and unify the country with a true government. “A telegram some days ago said that they’ve completely captured Zhejiang.”
It would have been a worry. Zhejiang was the province directly below Shanghai, but after all, what had the Scarlet Gang been doing sidling up to the Nationalists this whole time if not to ensure their own survival? The Nationalist fighting armies were edging closer and closer to the city, but it wasn’t as if they were truly defeating the warlords. Merely placating them. Reaching agreements, so that there was an understanding about the Kuomintang’s place as eventual rulers of this country.
“They may have come even closer since then,” Roma muttered. He inclined his chin toward the militiamen. “Look.”
It was not the men he was gesturing to. It was what the men were looking at, which Juliette saw as soon as one shifted on his feet and moved away: a rising sun, painted crudely on the outside wall of a restaurant. The symbol of the Nationalists.
“Hey, you!”
The militiamen had spotted them.
Juliette immediately stepped forward. “Who, me?”
“Juliette, stop it,” Roma hissed, making a grab for her wrist. She jerked her arm out of his reach, and he didn’t try again.
“Not you,” one of them said with a sneer, approaching. “The Russian. Did you do this?”
“Do I look like I have the time?” Roma retorted.
The man lunged forward. “You sure have a lot of time to talk back—”
Juliette held out her hand. “Not a step closer. Unless you want your ashes scattered into the Huangpu.”
Like magic, the soldier immediately halted, a clarity entering his eyes. Juliette’s coat was undone now. It was time for her identity to be used, placed in the open like a playing card in a game of offensive maneuvers.
“Let’s go,” Roma muttered to Juliette.
When she didn’t move, he nudged her shoulder. This time, Juliette allowed herself to be led off, sparing one more glance at the men eyeing her warily. Though she was finished, the one at the front of their group clearly wasn’t.
“Soon it won’t matter who you are, Lady of Shanghai,” he called after her. “The Nationalists are coming for all of us who rule by anarchy. They will take us all down.”
With one last tug, Roma had Juliette over the bridge and out of sight before she could retort.
“It’s supposed to be in and out, Juliette,” he muttered.
Juliette’s neck gave a little crick! with the speed she turned to look at him. “You heard me in the car?”
“I’m a liar—what can I say?” Almost flippantly, Roma stopped and pointed up ahead. It was an old-style residence, built in a way that was utterly untouched by foreign influences and so spacious, because all who had once lived there and lived there still could afford it. “How are we going to do this?”
They had arrived. The residence of Huai Hao, owner of the second vial. When Juliette approached the circular entranceway, she stepped through without any care—these residences were built precisely to welcome in visitors. They were void of doors around the facility, allowing wanderers to enter and appreciate the scenery, perhaps write a poem or two as they waited for the host to arrive, if this were eight hundred years ago.
But it was the modern world now.
“I’m flattered you would let me make the decision,” Juliette said, running her finger along a bird feeder.
Though she teased, she knew exactly why he was buying time to ask such mundane questions. They had thrown enough money around. The White Flowers had the means to pay such outrageous sums, but to keep doing it over and over without approval first was toeing the line. Juliette knew him too well—he couldn’t fool her—and she knew him well enough to know that admitting this outright would be a sign of weakness.
In another world, where she was smarter, she would let him suffer, sow discord within the White Flowers. But this was her world, and she only had her present self.
“I wasn’t letting you make the decision,” Roma replied. “I was asking your opinion.”
“Since when did you value my opinion?”
“Don’t make me regret asking.”
“I’ve a feeling you already do.”
Roma rolled his eyes and marched ahead, but then there was the sound of a door sliding, and Juliette grabbed the back of Roma’s coat, yanking him back. They ducked behind the bird feeder, hearing two sets of footsteps approach their direction.
“Mr. Huai,” a voice called. “Please, slow down. Shall I call for the car, then?”
“Yes, yes, do one thing right, could you?” a gruff voice snapped.
The second pair of footsteps hurried back in the other direction, but another kept walking. Soon, he was in view, and Juliette poked her head out to find a middle-aged man strolling for the exit. He already had so much here. Opulence and luxury on par with the city. It was a far cry from the man in the wonton shop. There was no desperation to survive. There was only greed. And Juliette, too, could play greedy.
“You asked how we are to do this,” she whispered to Roma. “How about like this?”
She reached into her coat, and as Mr. Huai walked by, not noticing his intruders despite how exposed they were, Juliette stepped out in front of him and leveled her gun to his forehead.
“Hello,” she said. “You have something we would like.”
Nineteen
News of a monster attack arrived in Shanghai far before their rival darlings did. Already—regardless that the casualties had occurred out in the countryside—the people of Shanghai were boarding up their windows and locking their doors, finding quarantine to be a better solution than risking madness on the streets. Perhaps they feared the monster, who was said to have crashed out the moving train windows and rolled upon the hillsides. Perhaps they feared that it would soon stumble into city limits, spreading infection.
Benedikt threw half of his sandwich into the trash, strolling under the flapping shop banners. Again and again, no matter how many times the White Flowers said it, no one cared to listen. These monsters were not random hits. So long as the White Flowers behaved, so long as they continued fulfilling demands . . .