The window was pulled open, the afternoon sunlight pouring into the dusty corners, reflecting off the brass lamps. When he set the cloth down, he heard a splash and then a quiet curse. It sounded like a girl whimpering in pain, footsteps coming nearer and nearer.
Roma’s immediate thought was that it was Alisa—that she had managed to escape and had found her way back home. Without even thinking, Roma pushed the window as wide as it would go and climbed through, his shoes clunking down on the wet clay ground outside. Nothing on the northern side. He spun around.
And saw Rosalind Lang, dressed in what looked like a nightgown, a heavy coat thrown over her shoulders.
Roma resisted the urge to rub his eyes, wondering if he was hallucinating. His lack of sleep in the last few days might finally be getting to him, because if Rosalind’s presence here wasn’t strange enough, her bedraggled state certainly was.
Then a beat passed, and Rosalind pulled a pistol from her coat. She raised it fast, seeming to expect a fight.
Roma didn’t return the gesture. He only raised his hands slowly and said, “Hello. What are you doing here?”
There was humor in this—it wasn’t lost on him, despite the utterly unhumorous situation. Once upon a time, before Roma met Juliette, before Roma rolled a marble at her feet and fell in love with her, he had been sent into Scarlet territory with another mission.
He had been sent in for Rosalind.
That was why his father had started to suspect him in the end. Rosalind Lang had become the talk of the town as the best dancer the Scarlet burlesque club had ever seen, and there had been plans for Roma to mingle into the Scarlet crowds, to get closer to Rosalind and obtain Scarlet information under the guise of a great, star-crossed love affair. Instead, Roma had heard rumors of Juliette Cai’s return to Shanghai and had switched gears while crossing onto Scarlet territory, wanting to see this terrible Scarlet heir for himself.
He hadn’t stood a chance. The moment he saw Juliette Cai for the first time, saw that smile playing on her lips, standing there at the Bund, it was a done matter. That false star-crossed love affair pivoted and turned real. Roma would claim, in reporting back, he hadn’t had any luck with their plan, yet he kept slinking into Scarlet territory regardless. Of course his father caught on.
How strange it was to find Rosalind Lang here, mere paces away from his father’s domain, five years later.
“One shout,” he said when Rosalind kept the pistol pointed in his direction. “That’s all it takes before White Flowers rush out of the house and you are riddled with bullets. Think carefully, Miss Lang.”
“About what?” Rosalind managed. Her hand was trembling. “I may think carefully and shoot you, or I may forget to think entirely and shoot you.”
Roma frowned. When he took a step closer, he saw the redness in her eyes, like she had been freshly crying. “Teach me how one should forget to think,” he remarked. “That sounds like a feat most valuable.”
He did not know what he was quite stalling for. It didn’t seem right, somehow, to draw forth a crowd of White Flowers and kill Rosalind Lang. Perhaps it was because he did not dislike her sister, and Roma had no inclination to bring hurt onto Kathleen Lang.
Perhaps it was because she reminded him of Juliette.
“Don’t think I won’t shoot,” Rosalind spat. “Shout for help. Do it!”
Roma did nothing. He only stood there, frowning. What could she possibly be doing here?
Finally, Rosalind gave up, a fresh tear tracking down her face as she lowered the gun.
“How much easier it would have been,” she whispered, “if it had been you instead. How good you are. How noble.”
Rosalind quickly pressed the back of her hand to her lips, like she was stopping herself from saying more. With a hard blink to clear her eyes of tears, she charged forward and hurried by, her shoulder brushing Roma’s as she passed. Roma stared on even after she disappeared, fixated on the mouth of the alleyway as if mere concentration could dissolve his bewilderment.
Maybe he should have shot her. It would have been what Juliette deserved. An eye for an eye. A life for a life.
Roma shook his head. But that wasn’t who he was. It wasn’t who he wanted to be. The Scarlet Gang had taken Alisa, and he would get her back honorably. The Scarlet Gang wanted to stoop low, and he would steer in an entirely new direction. He had washed his hands with enough blood. He was tired of it. Tired of the smell that permeated into his sleep, tired of hating so deeply that it burned him from the inside out.
Quietly, Roma climbed back in through the window.
Thirty
The sky was overcast, dark enough that the morning almost seemed to be nearing night. That would have been too much to ask for. If the whole day could simply skip past itself, then no duel could be fought.
But here they were, standing by the Suzhou Creek under clouds as plump and heavy as waterlogged laundry. Juliette couldn’t make sense of how quiet it was, how there hardly seemed to be anyone present today on the roads. In the distance, the large gasworks factories sat utterly idle, not a single worker to be seen. Was there something happening that she did not know about? Some rally gathering all the numbers elsewhere in the city that she was not aware of?
“Look alert, Juliette.”
Juliette cast a wary eye to Tyler as he hovered at the end of the alley, ready for the very moment that the Montagovs appeared. Directly ahead, the creek flowed on, filled with fishing boats and houseboats that seemed to sit unoccupied.
“I don’t suppose we’re following the actual dueling code, are we?” she asked. “Because there are quite literally five hundred rules, and my Russian vocabulary only goes so far.”
In answer, Tyler pulled something from his pocket and tossed it Juliette’s way. She caught it swiftly, the pages crumpling underneath her fingers. The cover was faded, but its text was still legible, surrounded by a border decoration: Yevgeniy Onegin.
“Thirty-two paces,” Tyler replied evenly. “We can make that trash bag a barrier.”
Juliette glanced over her shoulder, checking on Alisa again. The girl stood under the grip of two of Tyler’s men. Another two Scarlets were posted at the other end of the alley. They were standing guard in case the White Flowers decided to rush in from the back roads and summon a turf war, but Roma would never be so thoughtless. There was no possible victory picking a fight within such a small space, surrounded by high walls and tiled rooftops that jutted into either side. All that could possibly suit a place like this was a duel.
Thirty-two paces. A barrier in the middle, which the dueler on each side could approach but could not retreat from once they had stepped forward. Tyler had one shot. If he missed, Roma could compel him right to the barrier, and when Roma took his returning shot, there was only one outcome possible. At such proximity, Roma could only strike true.
But that required Tyler missing first. And even at thirty-two paces, Juliette wasn’t sure if it was possible. She could only hope that they wouldn’t advance to the barrier. That they would both stay far, far from each other, and both would miss, and this duel would end with honor restored and without death, with Alisa returned to the White Flowers and Tyler mollified.
An utter joke, Juliette thought. Her heart was thudding a storm in her chest. Never could that happen. So how was this going to end?