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Six glasses this time. Juliette took her two smoothly, having prepared herself this round. Roma had to hold back a cough.
“Of course he is real,” Archibald replied. “Who sent you my way—Walter Dexter?”
Just to be petty, she should have made him drink for the answer to his question, but it likely would have done nothing substantial. It seemed like the alcohol was hardly affecting Archibald.
“Sort of.”
Archibald nodded, satisfied enough. “I make direct deliveries to the Larkspur. Does that count as interaction by your terms?” He tipped his glass upside down, shook out the last few drops. “I pick them up from Dexter’s warehouse and take everything to the top floor of the Long Fa Teahouse in Chenghuangmiao. That is where the Larkspur makes his vaccine.”
Juliette let out her breath in a quick exhale. That was it, then. They had their address. They could speak to the Larkspur directly.
And if this didn’t work out, then she didn’t know what the hell they would do to save their city.
“Is that all tonight?” Archibald asked. Something about his voice was teasing. He did not expect this to be enough. He was looking at Juliette like he could read her mind, could see the cogs turning rapidly beneath her skull.
“That’s all,” Roma said, already rolling up his sleeves, preparing to leave.
But Juliette shook her head.
“No.” This time she waved for the bartender. Roma’s eyes bugged. He started to mouth something at her in horror, but she ignored him. “I have more questions.”
“Juliette,” Roma hissed.
The shots appeared. Archibald chuckled—a big and heavy hoot that came right from his stomach and smelled of fumes—slapping his hand down on the table in amusement. “Drink up, Mr. Montagov.”
Roma glared at the glass, and drank.
“His vaccine,” Juliette started, when the heat in her throat eased, “is it real? You must know if you make the delivery. You must have seen more than the average merchant.”
This gave Archibald pause. He gargled his drink in his mouth, thinking for a long moment. Perhaps he was deliberating whether to keep silent on this question. But a promise was a promise; Juliette and Roma had already paid for their knowledge.
“The vaccine is both legitimate and not,” Archibald answered carefully. “The Larkspur makes one strain in his lab, using the opiate I deliver. The other strain is simply colored saline.”
Roma blinked. “What?”
If the madness was not stopped, at some point, it would spread to every corner of Shanghai. With two strains of the vaccine, one that was true and one that was not, the Larkspur controlled who was immune and who was not.
The weight of this revelation smacked Juliette dead center in the chest.
“The Larkspur is essentially picking and choosing who lives and who dies,” she accused, incensed.
Archibald shrugged, neither confirming nor denying what she had said.
“But how?” she demanded. “How does he have a true vaccine to begin with?”
Archibald waved for the bartender. Juliette tossed down her next drink before he could prompt her, slamming the glass down furiously. Roma was the slowest this time, grimac
ing severely as he wiped his mouth.
“You’re overstepping the extent of my knowledge, little girl,” Archibald replied. “But I can tell you this: The first delivery I made, I watched the Larkspur work from a little leather book. He referred back to it continuously, as if he was unfamiliar with the supplies I dumped at his feet.” The cheeky glint in Archibald’s eye seemed to fade. “You wish to know about his true vaccine? The Larkspur was working from a little book made of tough leather found only in Britain. Do you understand?”
Roma and Juliette exchanged a glance.
“That he is British?” Juliette asked.
“He prefers his notebooks made traditionally?” Roma added.
Archibald looked at them like they were both missing brain cells. “Tell me, if a merchant from Britain set sail for Shanghai when news of madness broke out, would he be here by now?”
