Afar, a bird had started cawing. The sound was high-pitched, a warning from the city itself. With a firm nod, Kathleen stepped back, then gave Juliette’s hand one last squeeze.
“Keep fighting for love,” she whispered. “It is worth it.”
Her cousin disappeared off into the night. Juliette allowed herself one ragged breath. She let the quavery sound rush outward and tear a rip into her composure before she inhaled deeply and clutched her hands over the silk of her dress.
When Juliette stepped back inside her house, the living room remained silent, the messenger still lying on his side. She picked up the fallen letter and lifted her head, staring up the staircase. The light in her father’s office was off. Now she knew: in the third-floor sitting room, her parents and whoever else they had deemed worthy to invite in were discussing senseless massacre for the sake of the Scarlet survival.
Juliette squeezed her eyes shut. The tears fell then, finding an easy path down her cheeks.
Keep fighting for love. But she didn’t want to. She wanted to hold love to her chest and run, run like hell so the rest of the world couldn’t touch it. It was exhausting to care about everyone in the city. She thought she had the power to save them, protect them, but she was still one girl, shut out of everything important. If she was going to be treated like a mere girl, then she would act like one.
The wind blew into the living room, the front door still cast ajar. Juliette shivered once, then suddenly couldn’t stop shivering, the tremors rocking from head to toe.
I will fight this war to love you, Roma had said, and now I will take you away from it.
Enough was enough. In this moment, Juliette decided she did not care. This was a war they had never asked to be a part of; this was a war that had dragged them in before they had the chance to leave. Roma and Juliette had been born into feuding families, into a feuding city, into a country already fractured beyond belief. She was washing her hands of it.
She was not fighting for love. She was protecting her own, everyone else’s be damned.
Thirty-Eight
The uniform was less itchy than Marshall had expected.
He had grumbled like high hell when his father had tossed it at him upon his arrival, opting to fold his arms and demand that they throw him in a cell instead. General Shu had stared at him blandly, as had all his men, as if Marshall were a child throwing a tantrum in a candy store. It had seemed rather silly then. To stand around and waste time, achieving nothing meaningful save for being a big headache. It was only that if he remained petulant, he could fool himself into believing that someone was coming for him. That the city might stop fighting, that the gangs would go back to normal, that the White Flowers would storm the place, waving for him to hurry and come home.
But Marshall had been hiding out for months. The White Flowers thought he was dead. The city had given up on him. There was no use digging his heels in and being difficult.
Marshall inspected the cuff of his sleeve, his attention drifting from the Nationalist currently speaking. This was General Shu’s residence, and his father and twenty-odd men were presently convening around the heavy wooden table in the council room, letting Marshall listen too, as if he were here to learn. There were no more seats available at the table, so Marshall stood by the door instead, leaning on the fraying wallpaper and eyeing the ceiling, wondering if the creaking he heard late at night from his bedroom one floor above was the footsteps of his father, pacing the council room at odd hours.
“Érzi.”
Marshall jumped. He had zoned out. When his eyes focused on the table again, the men were clearing out, and his father was staring at him, his hands behind his back.
“Come sit a minute.”
At the very least, Marshall hadn’t missed anything. He had heard all he needed in the other meetings. The Communists needed to go. Shanghai was theirs. The Northern Expedition would succeed. Blah, blah, blah—
“No campaigns to rush off to?” Marshall remarked, dropping into a seat.
General Shu didn’t seem amused. The door closed after the final Nationalist, and Marshall’s father returned to the table, selecting the seat two away from Marshall.
“You are not being forced to remain here.”
Marshall snorted. “Given the soldiers stationed around this house, you and I have very different definitions of what being forced means.”
“Mere precautions.” General Shu rapped his knuckles on the table surface. Marshall’s eyes shot to the sound immediately, stiffening at the move. It was how his father used to get his attention at the dinner table on the rare occasions he came to visit. Visit, as if it weren’t his own family. “You are young. You don’t know what is best yet. What I must do is keep you within the most ideal conditions, even if I must compel it, and only then can you—”
“Stop,” Marshall pleaded. They had had enough low-toned, mean-spirited back-and-forth yesterday. He was hardly in the mood to start hashing out again how exactly a childhood kept out in the countryside qualified as an “ideal condition.” “Get to the point. What am I doing here? Why do you care?”
For several long moments, General Shu said nothing. Then: “This country is going to war. I was content to let you run yourself wild as a gangster when there seemed no harm, but it is different now. The city is dangerous. Your place is here.”
Marshall resisted the urge to laugh out loud. Not in humor—in belly-deep, stinking resentment.
“I survived as a gangster in Shanghai for years. I can manage, thanks.”
“No.” General Shu turned to his side, looking across the top of the chair between them. “You didn’t, did you? At the merest provocation, the Scarlet heir asked you to play dead, and you did.”
Marshall was so tired of this being some crime. What was wrong with hiding? What was wrong with retreating and lying low, if only to survive and recoup, if only to fight another day?
“I bear no ill will to the Scarlet heir.”
“Maybe you should. She is reckless and volatile. She is everything wrong with this city.”
“I ask again,” Marshall repeated through gritted teeth. “Is there a point to this?”
His father could say that it was for his own good. He could pull up the city’s every obituary, could show Marshall the sheer numbers that had been lost in these recent few years to the blood feud, a bullet through the chest for no reason other than wandering too close to the wrong territory. It didn’t matter. It was all an excuse.
The Nationalists shunned the imperial monarchy, but when they marched into this city and took it, they acted just as conquering kings and empires did. Different titles, the same idea. Power was only long-lasting if it were a reign, and reigns needed heirs. Marshall’s father never cared to find him when he was a child surviving off scraps. It was only now, when appearances became key, that he remembered Marshall existed.
General Shu sighed, dropping the brewing argument. Instead, he reached into his jacket, his hands brushing past the flashing medals pinned to his lapel, and retrieved a small, square card.
“I divulge this information because I care.” The card landed upon the table, faceup. “There is an execution order from the Kuomintang on the Montagovs.”
In a flash, Marshall shot to his feet, lunging for the small card and scanning the telegram. The stroke of midnight. No prisoners left alive.