“What?” Juliette demanded. “What is it?”
“It’s for your father, from the highest command within the Nationalists,” Kathleen answered shakily. “The Central Control Commission of the Kuomintang have made their decision. The Communist Party of China is anti-revolutionary and has undermined our national interest. We have voted unanimously for them to be purged from the Kuomintang—and from Shanghai.”
“We knew it was coming,” Juliette said quietly. “We knew.”
Kathleen thinned her lips. The letter was not finished yet. Having paled tremendously, she didn’t speak the rest aloud, she merely flipped the letter around so Juliette could read it for herself.
Powers of execution should be reserved for the elite, imprisonment for the masses. All members of the Scarlet Gang are to report for duty at the turn of midnight on April 12. The White Flowers may be treated as Communists when the purge begins. When the city wakes again, we shall have no adversaries. We shall be one combined beast to fight the true enemy of imperialism. Put the Montagovs’ heads on pikes and be rid of them once and for all.
In their very living room, the clock tolled for ten o’clock.
Juliette staggered back. “At the turn of midnight April twelfth?” A faint buzzing started up in her ears. “Today . . . today is April eleventh.”
Put the Montagovs’ heads on pikes. Was that what this blood feud had come to? Total and utter annihilation?
Kathleen broke for the front door, the letter fluttering beside the unconscious messenger. She had already burst outside, progressing several steps down the main path before Juliette caught up to her, grabbing her cousin by the wrist and halting her in her tracks.
“What are you doing?” Juliette demanded. The night was cold and dark around them. Half the lamps in the gardens were turned off, perhaps to save on electricity, perhaps to hide the fact that there was not a single guard standing sentry by the front gate.
“I’m going to warn them,” Kathleen replied, her words a tight hiss. “I’m going to help the workers fight back! They’re allowing execution powers! It will be a bloodbath!”
The truth was, the bloodbath had long been building. The truth was, execution powers were already being used; it was only now coming right into the open.
“You don’t have to.” Juliette looked up at the windows across this side of the house, all illuminated. The night seemed so dark in comparison, its shadows almost liquid. When she lowered her voice, she almost thought she would choke on her next breath, like the darkness was pressing against her chest. “We can run. It’s over. Shanghai has been taken over by Nationalists. Our way of life is dead in the ground.”
Everything—either dead or dying. Juliette almost keeled over with the thought. All that she had worked for, all that she thought was her future: none of it mattered. Territories disappeared in minutes, loyalties switched in seconds, and revolution bowled over anything that was in its path.
“Mere moments ago,” Kathleen said tightly, “you were resolute to stop Dimitri.”
“Mere moments ago,” Juliette echoed, her voice breaking, “I didn’t know that there was an execution order for Roma’s head. We have two hours, biǎojiě. Two hours to leave. To run far, far away. Gangsters never belonged in politics anyway.”
Slowly, Kathleen shook her head. “You have to leave. I’m not going anywhere. They’re going to kill them, Juliette. Civilians. Shop owners. Workers. That letter was a pretense—there will be no imprisonment. With the force of gangsters alongside the soldiers, anyone who takes to the streets in support of the Communists will be shot on sight.”
It would be terror. Juliette did not deny that. If she went to her parents right now and demanded answers, they would not deny it either. She knew them too well to think otherwise. Maybe that was why she was afraid of confronting them. Maybe that was why she was choosing to run instead.
“Do you realize?” Her tears refused to fall, but they hovered in a thick sheen over her eyes. “We have passed violence, passed mere revolution. Nationalist against Communist—this is civil war. You’re enlisting yourself as a soldier.”
“Maybe I am.”
“But you don’t have to!” Juliette did not mean to yell. But here she was. “You’re not actually one of them!”
Kathleen pulled away vehemently. “Aren’t I?” she asked. “I am at their meetings. I draw their posters. I know their protest calls.” She tore her jade pendant off. Held it up, in the moonlight. “Short of these riches, short of my last name, what is stopping me from being one of them? I could just as easily be another face in the factories. I could just as easily have been another abandoned child thrown onto the streets, begging for scraps!”
Juliette breathed in. And in. And in. “I am selfish,” she whispered. “I want you to come with me.”
Around them, the lamps flickered, then turned off completely. With only moonlight illuminating the gardens, Juliette wondered briefly if this was some indication that trouble was coming to the Scarlet house. It was not; at times like these, trouble no longer needed to act under the guise of darkness. Trouble was a roaring, raging fire.
Kathleen offered a small, shaky smile, then tied her pendant back on. “We have been allowed selfishness,” she said. “But so many others in this city have not. I cannot find my own peace unless I help them, Juliette. I cannot find my peace with this city unless I stay.”
Juliette knew what a losing argument looked like. A long second passed, and Juliette waited to see if her cousin would falter, but she did not. Kathleen’s expression remained determined, and some part of Juliette knew that this was a goodbye. Her face crumpling, she reached for Kathleen, pulling the two of them close in a tight hug.
“Do not die out there,” she snapped. “Do you understand me?”
Kathleen choked out a laugh. “I’ll try my best.” Her embrace was equally fierce, as was her expression when they released each other. “But you . . . We’re under martial law. How are you to—”
“They can block off our trains and dirt roads, but we’re the city above the sea. They cannot monitor every swath of the Huangpu River.”
Kathleen shook her head. She knew how stubborn Juliette was when she needed something done. “Find Da Nao. He’s a Communist sympathizer.”
“Da Nao the fisherman?”
“The one and the same. I’ll get a note to him telling him to wait for you.”
Juliette felt a hot stone of gratitude roil in her stomach. Even at a time like this, Kathleen was running tasks for her. “Thank you,” she whispered. “I don’t care if this makes me too much of a Westerner. I need you to hear my indebtedness.”
“You only have two hours, Juliette,” Kathleen said, waving her off. “If you’re going to run . . .”
“I won’t make it, I know. I’ll buy everyone more time. I can hold off the purge until morning at least.”
Kathleen’s eyes widened. “You’re not going to approach your parents, are you?”
“No.” Juliette didn’t know how they would react. It was too risky. “But I have a plan. Go. Don’t waste time.”