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“It means we’re onto something,” Roma said surely. “We’re closer to saving Alisa.”
Juliette nodded. Somehow, it seemed that the Larkspur knew they were coming. But if he thought a few merchants were enough to scare them off, he would be sorely disappointed.
“We must arrive at his location before the night grows late.”
She produced the flyer heralding the vaccination, folding it so that the address at the bottom was on display. Absently, she used her other hand to wipe at a damp feeling on her neck, wondering if she had, in fact, also acquired blood splatter on herself without noticing.
Roma nodded. “Let’s go.”
Twenty-Three
Once it must have been silent here. Perhaps there had been the occasional horse tearing by on its hooves, passing pasture after pasture until the grooves it forged into the dirt created a trail. In a few quick years, trails forged from centuries of heavy footfalls had been paved over. Pebbles that had thought themselves immortal were crushed into nothing; trees older than whole countries were felled and destroyed.
And in their place, greed grew. It grew into train tracks, linking village to village until there were no boundaries. It grew into wires, and pipes, and apartment complexes stacked atop one another with little planning.
Juliette thought the International Settlement might have gotten the worst of it. The invaders couldn’t erase the people already living within the area they decided to call their own, but they could erase everything else.
Where did the lanterns go? Juliette wondered, stopping at the street-side and craning her head up. What is Shanghai without its lanterns?
“We’re here,” Roma said, cutting into her reverie. “This is the address on the flyers.”
He pointed to the building behind the one Juliette was staring at. For a second, as Juliette looked upon it, she thought her eyes were playing tricks on her. Tonight was a dark night, but there was enough low, oil-fueled light streaming through its windows to illuminate rows upon rows of people outside: a line starting from the front door that was so long it curled thrice around the building.
She charged ahead.
“Juliette!” Roma hissed. “Juliette, wait—”
It doesn’t matter, Roma, she wanted to tell him. She knew what he was thinking, or at least some variation of it: They had to be careful. They had to avoid being spotted together. They had the Larkspur’s assassins on their heels, so they had to watch who they were upsetting. It doesn’t matter, she wanted to scream. If their people didn’t stop dying, if they couldn’t save what they were trying to protect, nothing in this world mattered anymore.
Juliette shoved her way to the front of the line. When an elderly man near the door tried to push her back, she spat the nastiest curse she could summon in Shanghainese, and he shrank like his life had been sucked from his veins.
Juliette sensed Roma’s presence behind her when she came to a stop in front of the towering man who guarded the door. Roma settled a cautious hand on her elbow in warning. This man was twice as wide as her. A head-to-toe glance under the oil lamp’s light told her he was possibly hired help, from a country farther south than China, from places where hunger was fuel and desperation was the engine.
The prodding at her elbow increased. Juliette moved her arm away, shooting a cautionary glance back at Roma, commanding him to stop.
Roma had never been so worried for their safety.
He had been in plenty of shoot-outs with the Scarlet Gang in the years Juliette had been away. Despite his hatred of the White Flower fight club, he had been in more street brawls than he would care to admit and grabbed his fair share of scars because his first reaction to a blade was always to block instead of move. It was inevitable; even if he hated the violence, the violence found him, and he was either to cooperate or be cut down.
But he had always had backup. He had several sets of eyes working his every angle.
This right now was just him and Juliette against a shadowy third threat that was neither Scarlet Gang nor White Flower. This was just the two of them against a force that wanted them both dead, that wanted the present powers in Shanghai crushed until there was only anarchy.
“Let us through,” Juliette demanded.
“Employees of the Larkspur only,” the guard said, his words a deep, deep rumble. “Otherwise you’ve got to wait your turn.”
Roma peered over his shoulder, his breath coming as quick as his rapid motions. They were mostly flocked by the interlocked lines, but a few men and women weren’t standing quite right. They weren’t in the line; they were hovering just outside it—keeping the peace without giving themselves away as personnel.
“Juliette,” Roma warned. He switched to Russian to avoid being understood by eavesdroppers. “There are at least five others in this crowd who have been hired with the Larkspur’s dirty money. They have weapons. They will react if you pose yourself as a threat.”
“They have weapons?” Juliette echoed. Her Russian always had a twang to it; it wasn’t quite an accent—her tutor had been too good for that. It was an idiosyncrasy, a way she spoke her vowels that made them uniquely Juliette. “So do I.”
> Juliette swung her fist. In an arc that started at her stomach and pulled outward, she backhanded the guard so hard that he dropped like a stone, falling out of the way to allow Juliette to kick open the door and pull Roma through before he had even caught up with the chain of events.
She used her gun, he realized belatedly. Juliette hadn’t suddenly obtained the strength of a wrestler—she simply had her pistol clutched backward in her fist and had used the butt of it against the guard’s temple. The guard hadn’t even seen her retrieve it. Her sleight of hand had remained completely off the radar while his focus remained on her face—on the set of her jaw and her cold smile.
Juliette embraced danger with open arms. It seemed that Roma couldn’t do so even when his whole world was at risk, even while Alisa was strapped down by her arms and legs. He almost feared what it would take to push him to the brink, and he hoped it would never happen, because he himself didn’t want to see it if that time came.
