“Were you saying something?” he asked, frowning.
Andong paused for a beat, like he couldn’t tell if Tyler genuinely had not heard him or if he was giving him another chance to reconsider what he had just said. When seconds passed and Tyler did not look angry, Andong cleared his throat and repeated, “I was only remarking on the uselessness of trying to disrupt the Communist forces. Our numbers are dwindling as it is, and theirs keep growing. We have a blood feud on the other side to take care of; they are single-minded in their objective.”
Tyler nodded. He remained only half listening, and when he replied, it was also halfhearted.
“No one cares to follow what is good.”
Tyler retrieved a new cigarette, but he didn’t light it. The blood feud. The goddamn blood feud and the goddamn White Flowers, siphoning their resources and their members and their members’ loyalty like some parasitic invasion of the mind. What was it about their maneuvers that had people turning against their family? Juliette, and her dalliance with Roma Montagov. Rosalind, and whatever nonsense she had gotten involved with.
Perhaps it was simply the women. Perhaps they were just weak.
Tyler struck a new match. Once his own cigarette was lit, he threw the pack into the air, and Andong’s hand whipped out, hurrying to catch it before it could fall to the floor. Cautiously, Andong took one cigarette out. He worried it between his lips, and as if reading Tyler’s thoughts, asked: “So what are you to do about Juliette?”
“What am I supposed to do?” Tyler replied immediately. He took a drag, then almost coughed. He had never liked these things. He smoked them for a lack of anything better to do. “If she won’t admit to her wrongdoing, I can’t force it out of her. She will merely keep rotting us from the inside out.”
She didn’t even know it. Tyler had no doubt that Juliette—his cousin who had grown up with everyone wrapped around her finger—would never for a second consider that she might be wrong. That her behavior was traitorous, even if she was not openly acting the traitor. Sympathy for the White Flowers was weakness. Love for the White Flowers was a direct strike against the Scarlets in the blood feud. Juliette may as well take a gun to her own head for all that she was doing to the future of the gang she was supposed to lead.
He still didn’t know what to believe—whether she had something to do with the vaccine disappearing. Juliette was the one who had killed the last monster; was it so hard to believe that perhaps she had gotten her hands on five others? Juliette was the one who wanted the vaccine distributed to the whole city; was it so hard to believe that she would steal it for that purpose?
But why seek a vaccine at all if the monsters were under her control? It made no sense. Something didn’t quite click.
Unless they weren’t hers. Unless she was going along with it because they were under Roma Montagov’s control, and she couldn’t find it in herself to rebel against him.
Tyler jumped to his feet, drawing Cansun’s curious attention. The window was flaring with light, a vendor’s stall passing the street underneath with its reflective surfaces. They had initially come to a high vantage point to watch for the possibility of monsters in the city, but there had been no chaos of the supernatural persuasion, only human strikes and human protests.
If Roma Montagov was the perpetrator, then Juliette could still be saved. Tyler believed that. The Scarlets came first, and bitter as it was, that did include his cousin. Blood to blood—it was the same sort that ran in their veins. That had to count for something. If she were forced to choose sides, if she saw how this city was split, she would realize what was at stake. She would stop operating foolishly under a White Flower’s thumb.
“What does Roma Montagov treasure most?”
Andong blinked, taken aback by the question. Meanwhile, Cansun folded his arms and brought his shoulders near his ears, considering the question. He was already slight and looked even more so when he stood like that, wasting into a stick figure.
“What do we care about Roma Montagov for?” Andong asked, but both Cansun and Tyler were looking out the window, tracing the crowds that gathered thicker and thicker.
Tyler dropped his cigarette in the tray. His fingers were dusted with ash, prickling at his skin. The human body was so fickle. He should have been born a beast instead. He could have used it well.
“Come on, gentlemen,” he said, making for the door. “The protest starts soon.”
The streets were full of people, blocking the entrance of the meeting hall that Kathleen needed to enter.
With a wince and an awkward sidestep, Kathleen tried to squeeze herself through, her elbows held out on either side of her. It did little to avoid the jostling, but it did streamline her path ever so slightly. The crowds could have been worse. They could have summoned a strike that incapacitated the whole city, but it seemed they remained localized in the central areas.
“Oh, Christ—”
Kathleen ducked, narrowly avoiding being smacked across the face by a worker’s sign. The worker glanced at her momentarily before moving on, but Kathleen’s gaze was drawn to the red rag tied around their arm.
Which color do you bleed? Juliette had asked so long ago, in that den not far from here. Scarlet or the worker’s red?
When Kathleen brought her hand up to shield the sun off her face, the red thread at her wrist glimmered like jewelry. It was pristine and stark, dangling softly against her skin. This was Scarlet red. This was the clean edges of a color used merely for allegiance—for decoration. The worker’s red was dirty, and spirited, and desperate. It had long exploded outward in all directions, spilling like a crowd growing frenzied.
Kathleen finally pushed her way in, sidling into the meeting hall. This was not the very worst it could get—far from it if the enthusiasm among the Communists here was any indication. The Communists and their unions would keep trying and trying, each time inciting revolt in one part of the city and hoping it would set off a chain reaction in the others. The better they prepared, the more likely they would succeed.
And when they did, that was no longer the protests of unruly workers on the streets.
That was revolution.
“Attention! Attention!”
The meeting had already started, switching from one speaker to another, so Kathleen slid into a seat, hoping she hadn’t missed anything critical. It hardly seemed important now to keep an eye on their further plans—the Scarlets already knew: the Communists had almost reached the end of their planning, the final revolt waiting in the wings, ready to take to the stage.
“What are we rising for?” the speaker onstage asked. “What do we incite change for? Our own gain? Our own peace?”
Kathleen pulled at her braid. Her mind wandered to Rosalind, to her sister’s silence last night when she had stirred back into consciousness.
“The state will continue to suppress us. The law will continue to cheat us. Anyone who deems themselves a savior of this city is a fraud. All kings are tyrants; all rulers are thieves. It is not peace nor gain that revolution shall aim for. It is only freedom.”
All through the meeting hall, Party members rose to their feet. Their chairs scraped back, the noise grating to the ear. Kathleen didn’t move, only taking it all in. She wasn’t worried about sticking out. No one was paying attention to the last row, too focused on the speaker at the front.