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.”
When Marshall paused for breath, his chest was rising and falling, appearing exhilarated by the weight of his role. And without hesitation, Benedikt said: “In all my years knowing you, I’ve never imagined you could make such a daft decision.”
Marshall’s expression fell. “I beg your pardon?”
“They’re lying!” Benedikt exclaimed, the sound harsh. “Why would they ever allow the White Flowers to continue onward when the Nationalists have an alliance with the Scarlet Gang? We’re finished, Marshall. The gang is in shambles. There’s no going back.”
“No,” Marshall insisted. He stood firm. “No. Do you know how much violence I witnessed as a phantom in this city, Ben? The view from the rooftops is utterly, utterly different from the view on the street, and I saw everything. No matter the bloodshed, I saw how damn much every White Flower cared for us, for you, for the Montagovs. I can save them.”