“What was that?” Benedikt demanded. “Was that gunfire?”
The sound came again: a spray of bullets moving even closer. Like phantoms materializing from the mists, three men suddenly ran across the mouth of the alley—quickly enough that they did not sight Roma and Juliette standing there, but not so quick that Juliette couldn’t sight the red rags tied around their arms. It all seemed to happen in seconds. Where it had been quiet, the roads suspiciously empty like its business occupants were taking the day off, the city suddenly roared to life: shouting at every corner, and gunfire. Constant gunfire.
“It’s happening,” Juliette said in disbelief. Today was the twenty-first of March, by the Western calendar. “Revolution.”
“Where are they? Where are Juliette and Tyler?”
Kathleen peered down the second-floor banister, frowning at the sudden commotion. The front door slammed and the volume in the foyer increased, voices shouting atop one another. Lady Cai seemed to be giving instructions, but with so many other people speaking too, she had grown inaudible.
Kathleen hurried down the stairs. “What’s going on?” she asked.
Nobody paid her any attention. Lady Cai continued giving orders, her posture stick straight, her arms gesticulating—grouping men together and sending them out the door as if she were merely conducting some orchestral show.
“Niāngniang.” Kathleen slid herself right in front of Lady Cai. At any other time, she would never have dared. Right now, the house was in so much chaos that her aunt couldn’t tell her off. “Please. Tell me what is happening.”
Lady Cai tried to brush Kathleen aside.
“Communists are acting against Kuomintang instructions for patience,” she said distractedly. “Separate uprisings are happening across the city in an attempt to take Shanghai for the Northern Expedition.” It was then that Lady Cai cocked her head, looking at Kathleen properly. “Aren’t you our inside source on this business?”
“I—yes,” Kathleen replied, tripping over her words. She hoped she wasn’t about to get the blame for this. “I am your source. And I’ve told everyone again and again that the strikes will get larger, that their numbers will rise—”
“Nothing to worry about,” Lady Cai interrupted, her no-nonsense mode returning. “No matter what the Communists take, the Nationalists will take it back, and then it will again be in our hands. Our only problem now”—she waved her hands at the nearest group of men—“is finding where my daughter has gotten herself to before she gets herself killed.”
Kathleen watched their gangsters hurry out the door. Heard them mumble Tyler’s name, Juliette’s name.
Rosalind was missing too. And yet there was hardly a single gangster worried. They pushed and shoved to get out, piling onto the streets while the workers caused chaos, but only because they had been given the instruction to find the younger Cais, somewhere out in the city. If Lady Cai had not commanded it, would they still care?
Kathleen breathed out, stepping away from Lady Cai. Even here, at the mansion, which sat along the city’s outer boundaries, there came the sound of gunfire in the distance. There came the deep, deep rumble of the ground shifting, like something colossal had just blown up.
Juliette would be fine. She would not be so easily taken down.
Shanghai, on the other hand, was a different question.
And Rosalind, too, was another matter entirely.
Kathleen pulled her coat off the rack. She merged with a group of messengers heading out of the house, piling into a car heading for the heart of the city. She needed to find Rosalind. She needed to get her sister back before this city burned down around them.
Lady Cai walked upon the driveway, her arms folded, and locked eyes with Kathleen through the window of the car.
When the car drove off, Lady Cai did not protest.
Juliette watched a brothel owner wander out onto her balcony, her silk billowing in the wind. In seconds, she was shot from below, and with a spray of red, tumbled over the railing onto the hard cement ground.
The worker who had fired the bullet did not pause. He was already moving on, joining a crusade of others in their hunt for another target.
Juliette slammed back inside the alley, her hand flying to her mouth, the metallic tang of the drying blood hitting her tongue. She knew violence. She was used to it, used to bloodshed and hatred . . . but this? This was on a scale wholly unknown. This was not a feud between gangs in a contained face-off. This was the whole city rising up from the gutters, and it seemed riots and protests were no longer enough.