“You mean the nasty envelopes I personally licked to close?” Marshall asked. “I put them in there. Do we need them now?”
There had been a pause in his speech. With delay, Benedikt realized the missed beat had been because Marshall was pointing. And the only place to point at . . . was this filing closet.
“Fetch them, would you? We need to be off in a few minutes.”
“Yessir.”
Footsteps, dragging his way now. Benedikt looked around frantically. At the end of the closet space, there was a small cardboard box, which he had to assume was what Marshall was coming in for. He walked toward the box, then faltered, freezing three steps away from it when Marshall opened the door, stepped in, and closed the door after himself.
Marshall hit the light switch. He looked up. Widened his eyes.
“Ben—”
Benedikt clamped a hand over Marshall’s mouth, the effort so aggressive that they slammed into one of the filing cabinets, bodies locked. Benedikt could smell the smoke clinging to Marshall’s skin, count the lines crinkling his brow while he tried not to struggle.
What the hell are you doing here? Marshall’s eyes seemed to scream.
What do you think? Benedikt silently responded.
“What happened?” General Shu called from outside. He had heard the loud thud.
Carefully, Benedikt eased his hand away from Marshall’s mouth. The rest of him didn’t move.
“Nothing. I stubbed my toe,” Marshall called back evenly. In the same breath, he lowered his voice to the quietest whisper and hissed, “How did you get in here? The Kuomintang have an execution order for Montagovs, and you deliver yourself right to the door?”
“No thanks to your father,” Benedikt shot back, his volume just as low. “When were you going to tell me—”
“Bad time, bad time,” Marshall interrupted. He heaved an inhale; their chests rose and fell in tandem. Marshall was dressed in uniform, each polished gold button on his jacket digging between them. It seemed the walls were closing in with how close they were, the space shrinking smaller and smaller.
Then Marshall swerved away suddenly, squeezing through the narrow passage and retrieving the box. Benedikt leaned back against the cabinets, his breath coming short.
“Stay here,” Marshall whispered when he walked by again, holding the box. “I’ll come back.”
He turned off the lights and closed the door firmly.
Benedikt resisted the urge to kick one of the cabinets. He wanted to hear the thud of its metal echo, have it ring so loud and forcefully that the whole house was brought here to him. Of course, that would be incredibly, incredibly ill advised. So he stayed unmoving. All that he allowed was his rapidly tapping fingers. How much time did Roma and Juliette have at the Bund? How close was it now to noon?
After what seemed like eons, the door opened again. Benedikt tensed, prepared to pull his weapon, but it was Marshall, his expression stricken.
“You can come out,” he said. “They’ve all departed for the Scarlet house.”
“And left you behind?”
“I feigned a headache.”
Benedikt walked out, almost suspicious. His ankle stung, slowing his movements, but the hesitation was intentional too. He didn’t know what had gotten into him; he had come here resolute to rescue Marshall and leave as quickly as they could, yet now he looked at Marshall and felt utter bewilderment. There was a hot stone in his stomach. He had imagined Marshall getting tortured, abused, or otherwise at the mercy of people he could not stand up against. Instead, Benedikt had found him moving around this house as if he belonged here, as if this were his home.
And maybe it was.
“I thought I was coming to break you out,” Benedikt said. “But it looks like you could have broken yourself out at any point.”
Marshall shook his head. He stuck his hands back into his pockets, though the posture was incongruous with the ironed smoothness of his trousers. “You clown,” he said. “I was trying to help you from the inside. My father was going to delay the execution order.”
A coldness blew into the room. At some point, while Benedikt was hiding, a steady rain had started up outside, turning the sky a terrible, dark gray. The droplets came down on the windows, sliding along the edges and collecting in a miniature puddle on the carpet. Benedikt blinked. Had he latched the windows after climbing in? He could have sworn he did.
Did he?
“You would have been too late,” Benedikt reported. “Executions started at dawn. It was Juliette who came to warn us.” Or rather, warn Roma, and Benedikt was roped in by virtue of proximity.
Marshall jerked back. “What? No. No, my father said—”
“Your father lied.” As Marshall had. As Marshall seemed to be doing with increasing frequency.
“I—” Marshall broke off. His attention turned to the window too, looking irritated by the water dripping in. He walked toward it. “Then why would you come here, Ben? Why venture right into enemy territory?”
“To save you.” Benedikt couldn’t believe what he was hearing. With Marshall’s whole past crumbling as a lie, perhaps his entire persona, too, was an untruth. Is Marshall Seo even his real name?
“Of course it is.”
Benedikt had muttered that last part aloud.
“Seo was my mother’s family name,” Marshall went on, pushing the window closed. “I figured everyone would ask fewer questions if they thought I ran from Korea after Japanese annexation, an orphan with no ties. Less complicated than running from the Chinese countryside because I couldn’t bear to live with my Nationalist father.”
“You should have told me,” Benedikt said quietly. “You should have trusted me.”
Marshall turned around, arms crossed, leaning up against the glass. “I do trust you,” he muttered, uncharacteristically quiet. “I merely would have preferred to maintain a different past, one of my choosing. Is that so wrong?”
“Yes!” Benedikt snapped. “It is if we had no idea that you were going to be in danger when Nationalists marched into this city.”
“Look around. Do I appear in danger?”
Benedikt could not respond immediately; he feared that his words would come out too sharp, too far from what he really meant. This never used to be a worry, not with Marshall, not with his best friend. Of all the people in the world that he trusted would understand him no matter how unfiltered his thoughts ran, it was Marshall.
But something was different now. It was fear that had settled into his bones.
“We have to go. Roma and Juliette await at the Bund with a route out, but the Nationalists have already sent people after them. If we wait any longer, either martial law will shut the city down with no means of escape or Juliette is going to get hauled away.”
“I can’t.” Marshall tugged at his sleeves, trying to straighten out the imaginary crinkles. “I have their trust, Ben. I am more help to you as a docile Nationalist prodigy than anything else.”
Somewhere in the house, a grandfather clock started to chime.
“Whether or not my father lied about the timing of the purge is irrelevant,” he went on. “What is relevant is that droves of White Flowers will be hauled into imprisonment to await execution alongside the Communists, regardless of whether we were truly working with them. I can stop it. We won’t have to run. Roma won’t have to run, so long as I stay. If I can steer my father into protecting us, the White Flowers survive.”