by Chloe Gong
And he really should have bowed.
“I assume you’re here for the same request still?” Juliette asked, smoothing her sleeves down.
“Indeed.” Paul Dexter took back his hand without any malice. His smile was a cross between that of a Hollywood star and a desperate clown. “My father promises you that we have more lernicrom than any other merchant sailing into this city. You will not find better prices elsewhere.”
Juliette sighed as a few cousins and uncles filtered through the living room, waiting for them to pass. As the group walked by, Mr. Li clapped a hand over her shoulder good-naturedly.
“Good luck, kid.”
Juliette stuck out her tongue. Mr. Li grinned, wrinkling his entire face, then produced a small wrapped candy from his palm for Juliette to take. She was no longer an overeager four-year-old who would eat until she gave herself a toothache, but she took it anyway, popping the candy into her mouth while her uncle strolled away.
“Please sit, Mr. Dexter—”
“Call me Paul,” he interrupted, perching again on the long couch. “We’re a new generation of modern people and Mr. Dexter is my father.”
Juliette barely refrained from gagging. She bit down on the hard candy instead, then collapsed onto an armchair perpendicular to Paul.
“We have been admiring the Scarlets for some time now,” Paul continued. “My father has high hopes of a partnership.”
A visible shudder swept through Juliette’s body at the familiarity Paul had with the term “Scarlets.” As a name, the Scarlet Gang sounded a lot nicer in Chinese. They called themselves hóng bāng, the two syllables twirled together in a quick snap of vowels. Such a name curled in and out through Scarlet tongues like a whip, and those who didn’t know how to handle it properly ended up lashed.
This was Paul Dexter’s lashing.
“I’ll give you the same answer we gave your father,” Juliette said. She drew her legs up onto the armrest, the layers of her dress falling back. Paul’s eyes followed the motion. She watched his eyebrow twitch with the scandal of her long, pale thigh on show. “We’re not taking on any new endeavors. We’re busy enough with our current clients.”
Paul feigned disappointment. He leaned forward, like he could persuade her with mere eye contact. All it did was show Juliette that he hadn’t quite brushed out a clump of pomade in his sweep of dark-blond hair. “Don’t be like that,” he said. “I hear there’s a rival business who might be more enthusiastic about the offer.…”
“So perhaps you should try them,” Juliette suggested. She straightened up suddenly. He was trying to entice her into listening by suggesting he would take his business to the White Flowers, but it mattered little. Walter Dexter was a client they wanted to lose. “I’m glad we could resolve this matter so promptly.”
“Wait, no—”
“Goodbye now…” Juliette pretended to think. “Peter? Paris?”
“Paul,” he supplied, frowning.
Juliette summoned a smile, not unlike the scatterbrained one Rosalind had been mimicking earlier. “Right. Bye!”
She hopped to her feet and pranced across the living room, toward the front entrance. In a blink, her fingers were on the heavy handle and she was pulling the door open, eager to get rid of the British visitor.
Paul, to his credit, was fast to recover. He came up to the door and bowed. Finally, some manners.
“Very well.”
He stepped out, onto the front stoop, then pivoted again to face Juliette. “May I make a request, Miss Cai?”
“I already told you—”
Paul smiled. “Can I see you again?”
Juliette slammed the door shut. “Absolutely not.”
Six
Roma wasn’t having a pleasant day.
Within his first hour awake, he had tripped going up the stairs, smashed his favorite mug with his favorite herbal tea, and checked his hip against the kitchen table so roughly that there was a giant purple splotch forming on his torso. Then he had been forced to inspect a crime scene. Then he had had to face the possibility that this was a crime scene of supernatural proportions.
As Roma trudged back into the city’s central hub under the early-afternoon sun, he could feel his patience wearing incredibly thin. Every blow of whistling steam sounded like the noise his father made from his mouth when he got angry, and every crack of a butcher bringing his cleaver down reminded Roma of gunfire.
Usually, Roma adored the busyness that surrounded his home. He would deliberately take the long routes to skirt in and out of the stalls, peering at the bundles of farm-grown vegetables piled higher than their seller. He would make faces at the fish, inspecting the conditions of their small, dirty tanks. If he had time to kill, he would pick up sweets from every vendor selling them, popping them into his mouth as he went along and emerging from the markets with aching teeth and empty pockets.
The open market was one of his greatest loves. But today it was nothing but an irritant atop an already viral rash.
Roma ducked under the laundry lines pulled along the narrow alleyway leading into the Montagovs’ central housing block. Both clean and dirty water dripped furious puddles onto the pavement: transparent if it was under a sopping-wet dress, black and sludgy if it was under a half-installed pipe.
That was a feature that became more prominent as one ventured deeper in Shanghai. It was as if a lazy artist had been in charge of building everything—rooftops and window ledges would curve and stretch with the most glorious angles and archways, only to abruptly end or cut into the neighboring block. There was never enough space in the poorest parts of this city. Resources were always running out just before the builders were ready. Pipes were always a smidgen too short, drains only had half a covering, sidewalks seemed to slope into themselves. If Roma wanted to, he could stretch his arms out from his bedroom window on the fourth floor and easily reach the outward-folding window shades of a bedroom in the building next to his. If he stretched with his legs instead, he could hop over without struggle to scare the old man who lived there.
It wasn’t like they were short on space. There was an abundance of land outside the city for expansion—land untouched by the influence of the International Settlement and the French Concession. But the White Flowers’ lodgings were nestled right beside the French Concession, and there they were resolute to stay. The Montagovs had been located here since Roma’s grandfather emigrated. The foreigners had only claimed the nearby land in these recent years as they became more brash with their legal power. Every once in a while it gave the White Flowers great trouble whenever the French tried to control the gang’s ongoings, but the state of affairs always blew in favor of the Russians. The French needed them; they did not need the French. The White Flowers would let the foreigners continue practicing their laws over a space that didn’t seem to belong to either of them, and the pompous merchants with their floral coats and polished shoes stepped aside when the gangsters ran amok on the streets.
It was a compromise, but it was one that would become more tense as more time drew out. Places like these were already suffocating. It did naught to add more weight upon the pillow pressed to their faces.
Roma shrugged Benedikt’s bag higher up his shoulder. Benedikt hadn’t been very pleased that Roma was taking his art supplies away from him, but then Roma had pretended to offer it back, and his cousin had only needed one look—at all the dead bugs Lourens didn’t want to keep and the dead man’s shoe that Roma had shoved in there—before promptly pushing it back, asking Roma to return it after he gave it a good wash.
Roma unlocked his front door and slipped in. Just as he dragged himself into the living room, a door slammed to his right, and Dimitri Voronin was strolling in too.
Roma’s already unpleasant day turned even worse.
“Roma!” Dimitri shouted. “Where have you been all morning?”
Despite being only a few years older, Dimitri acted as if he were legions superior to Roma. As Roma passed him, Dimitr
i grinned and reached out to ruffle Roma’s hair.
Roma jerked away, narrowing his eyes. He was nineteen, heir to one of the two most powerful underground empires in the city, but whenever Dimitri was in the same room as him, he was reduced to a child again.
“Out,” Roma replied vaguely. If he said it was anything related to White Flower business, Dimitri would pry and pry until he was in the know too. While Dimitri wasn’t unintelligent enough to ever openly insult Roma, Roma could hear it in every reference to his youth, every quasi-sympathetic tut whenever he spoke up. It was because of Dimitri that Roma wasn’t allowed to be soft. It was because of Dimitri that Roma had crafted a cold and brutal face that he hated seeing every time he looked into a mirror.
“What do you want?” Roma asked now, pouring himself a glass of water.
“Don’t worry.” Dimitri wandered into the kitchen after him, grabbing a nearby chopping knife. He stabbed at a plate on the table, picked up a piece of cooked meat, and chomped down around the thick blade without regard for who had left the plate there or how long the food had been sitting out. “I was on my way out too.”
Roma frowned, but Dimitri was already walking off, taking with him the heavy scent of musk and smoke. Left alone, Roma heaved a long exhale and turned to put his glass in the sink.
Only, as he turned, he found himself being watched by wide brown eyes on a small, pixie-like face.
He almost yelped.
“Alisa,” Roma hissed at his sister, throwing open the doors of the kitchen cupboard. He couldn’t figure out how she had been watching him from up there without his notice, or how she had even managed to fit in among the spices and sugars, but by now he had learned not to ask.
“Careful,” she whined when Roma lifted her out of the cupboard. When he set her down on the floor, she gestured at the sleeve Roma had clenched in his fist. “This is new.”
It was very much not new. In fact, the cloth-and-wrap shirt that went around her petite shoulders resembled the sort of clothing the peasantry wore before the royal dynasties in China ended, ripped in a sort of manner that could be caused only by slipping in and out of the tightest corners. Alisa simply spoke outrageous things on occasion for no reason other than to incite confusion, leading people to believe she skated a thin line between insane and overly immature.
“Hush,” Roma told her. He smoothed down her collar, then froze, his hand stilling when it touched a chain Alisa had looped around her neck. It was their mother’s, an heirloom from Moscow. The last time he’d seen it, it had been on her corpse after she was murdered by the Scarlet Gang, a bright silver chain that stood stark against the blood seeping from her slit throat.
Lady Montagova had gotten sick shortly after Alisa was born. Roma would see her once a month, when Lord Montagov took him to a secret location, a safe house tucked in the unknown nooks of Shanghai. In his mind, she had been gray and gaunt, but always alert, always ready to smile when Roma walked up to her bed.
The point of a safe house was so Lady Montagova didn’t need guards. She was supposed to have been safe. But four years ago, the Scarlet Gang had found her anyway, had slashed her throat in response to an attack earlier that week, and left one wilted red rose clutched in her hands. When they buried her corpse, her palms were still embedded with the thorns.
Roma should have hated the Scarlet Gang long before they killed his mother, and he should have hated them even more—with a burning passion—after they killed Lady Montagova. But he didn’t. After all, it was lex talionis: an eye for an eye—that was how the blood feud worked. If he hadn’t launched that first attack, they wouldn’t have retaliated against his mother. There was no way to spread blame in a feud of such scale. If there was anyone to blame, it was himself. If there was anybody to hate for his mother’s death, it was himself.
Alisa waved a hand in front of Roma’s face. “I see eyes, but I see no brain.”
Roma snapped back into the present. He placed a gentle finger under the chain, shaking it about. “Where did you get this?” he asked softly.
“It was in the attic,” Alisa replied. Her eyes lit up. “It’s pretty, isn’t it?”
Alisa had been only eight years old. She had not been told about the murder, only that Lady Montagova had at last succumbed to illness.
“Very pretty,” Roma said, his voice hoarse. His eyes flicked up then, hearing footsteps on the second floor. Their father was in his office. “Run along now. I’ll call you down when it’s time for dinner.”
Giving a mock salute, Alisa skittered out of the kitchen and up the stairs, her wispy blond hair trailing after her. When he heard her bedroom door close on the fourth floor, Roma started up the stairs too, going up to his father’s office. He shook his head roughly, clearing his thoughts, and knocked.
“Enter.”
Roma filled his lungs with air. He pulled the door open.
“Well?” Lord Montagov said in lieu of a greeting. He did not raise his eyes. His attention was on the letter in his hand, which he scanned quickly before tossing it away and picking up the next one in his stack. “I hope you found something.”
Cautiously, Roma walked in and set the bag down on the floor. He reached into it, hesitating for a moment before pulling out the shoe and setting it down on his father’s desk. Roma held his breath, clasping his hands behind his back.
Lord Montagov looked upon the shoe like Roma had presented him with a rabid dog. He made that expression at Roma rather frequently. “What is this?”
“I found it where the first seven men died,” Roma explained carefully, “but it belongs to the man who died in the Scarlet club. I think he was present at the scene of the first crime, and if so, then this is a matter of contagion—”
Lord Montagov slammed his hands down on his desk. Roma flinched hard but forced himself not to close his eyes, forced himself to stare forward evenly.
“Contagion! Madness! Monsters! What is wrong with this city?” Lord Montagov bellowed. “I ask you to find answers and you bring me this?”
“I found exactly what you asked for,” Roma replied, but quietly, barely audible. For the last four years, he was always doing what was asked of him, be it a little task or a terrible one. If he didn’t, he would have the consequences to fear, and though he hated being a White Flower, he hated the thought of not being one even more. His title gave him power. Power kept him safe. It gave him authority, it held his threateners back, and it let him keep Alisa safe, let him keep all his friends within his circle of protection.
“Get this out of my face,” Lord Montagov ordered, waving at the shoe.
Roma thinned his lips, but he pulled the shoe away and shoved it back into the bag. “The point remains, Papa.” He shook the bag, letting the fabric swallow up the shoe. “Eight men clash on the ports of Shanghai—seven rip out their own throats, one escapes. If that one then proceeds to rip out his throat too the next day, does that not sound like a disease of contagion to you?”
Lord Montagov did not respond for a long while. Instead, he spun on his chair until he was facing the small window that overlooked a busy alleyway outside. Roma watched his father, watched his hands tighten on the arms of the large chair, his closely shaven head prickle with the faintest hint of sweat. The stack of letters had been momentarily abandoned. The names signed in Chinese at the base of many were familiar: Chen Duxiu, Li Dazhao, Zhang Gutai. Communists.
After the Bolshevik Revolution swept through Moscow, the tide of that political wave had blown down here, to Shanghai. The new factions that rumbled to life some few years ago had been persistently trying to recruit the White Flowers as allies, ignoring the fact that the last thing the White Flowers would want was social redistribution. Not after the Montagovs had spent generations climbing to the top. Not when most of their common gang members had fled the Bolsheviks.
Even if the Communists saw the White Flowers as potential allies, the White Flowers saw them as enemies.
Lord Montagov finally made a disgusted noise, tu
rning away from the window.
“I wish not to be involved in this business of a madness,” he decided. “Such shall be your task now. Figure out what is occurring.”
Slowly Roma nodded. He wondered if the tightness of his father’s voice was a sign that he thought this madness business beneath him, or if it was because his father was afraid of catching the madness himself. Roma was not afraid. He only feared the power of others. Monsters and things that walked the night were strong, but they were not powerful. There was a difference.
“I’ll find what I can on this man,” Roma decided, referring to the most recent victim.
Lord Montagov wheeled his chair back an inch, then lifted his feet onto his desk. “Don’t act in haste, Roma. You must confirm that this shoe truly belongs to the man who died last night first.”
Roma furrowed his brow. “The last victim is being kept in a Scarlet hospital. I’ll be shot on sight.”
“Find a way in,” Lord Montagov responded simply. “When I gave you the order to obtain Scarlet information, you seemed to approach them with ease.”
Roma stiffened. That was unfair. The only reason why his father had sent him into Scarlet territory in the first place was because lord against lord was too severe of an interaction. If Lord Cai and his father had met and had their encounter end peacefully, both would have lost face. Roma, on the other hand, could defer to the Scarlet Gang without consequence to the White Flowers. He was merely the heir, sent out on an important mission.
“What are you saying?” Roma asked. “Just because I had reason to enter their burlesque club does not mean I can gallivant through their hospital—”
“Find someone to take you in. I have heard rumors that the Scarlet heir has returned.”
A clamp fixed itself onto Roma’s chest. He did not dare react. “Papa, don’t make me laugh.”