Kathleen made a final marking. Just as she set her pen down, one of the map corners started to curl upward, but before the paper could roll into itself and smear the ink, Juliette snatched one of her lipsticks from a box on her vanity and set it on the corner to keep the map down.
“Really?” Kathleen asked immediately.
“What?” Juliette shot back. “I needed something heavy.”
Kathleen simply shook her head. “The fate of the city rests upon your lipstick. The irony is not lost on me, Juliette. Now—” She shifted back into business mode. “I don’t know if it’s worth shutting down operations in these parts just to prevent a strike, but the next one will hit somewhere here. The labor unions are only going to keep blowing things bigger and bigger.”
“We’ll warn the factory foremen,” Juliette confirmed. She lifted a thumb to the map, trying to gauge how far away the locations were from one another. As her hand hovered over the southern part of the city, over Nanshi, she faltered, sighting the road where a certain hospital was.
If the protesters that day hadn’t stormed the hospital, Juliette wondered if there could have been another way out.
Wishful thinking. Even if they had all backed away without a fight, Tyler would have shot her in the head the moment she reached for Roma’s hand.
“Juliette.”
The bedroom door flew open. Juliette jerked in surprise, ramming her knee hard against the vanity table. Kathleen, too, sucked in a fast inhale, her hand flying up to the jade pendant around her throat as if to check if it was in place.
“Māma,” Juliette breathed when she turned to face the doorway. “Are you trying to scare the living daylights out of me?”
Lady Cai gave a small smile, opting not to respond. Instead, she said, “I’m off to stroll Nanjing Road. Would you like anything? New fabric?”
“I’ll pass.”
Her mother pressed on. “You could get a new qipao. Last I checked, you only fit two in your wardrobe.”
Juliette barely refrained from rolling her eyes. Some things never changed. Lady Cai might voice it rarely now that Juliette was at the ripe age of nineteen, but she still detested those flashy, loose Western dresses her daughter so loved.
“I’ll truly pass,” Juliette replied. “I love the two in my wardrobe far too dearly to acquire a third.”
It was her mother’s turn to resist an eye roll. “Very well. Selin? Are you eyeing any fabric you’d like me to snatch up for you?”
Kathleen smiled, and though Juliette had been flippant through this whole conversation, her cousin seemed genuinely touched to be asked.
“That’s kind of you, Niāngniang, but I have enough garments in my wardrobe as it is.”
Lady Cai sighed. “All right, then. If that is how you ladies choose to live.” She turned on her heel and was on her merry way, brisk and quick. Except she had left Juliette’s door wide open.
“I swear my mother does this on purpose,” Juliette said, rising to close the door. “She’s far too smart to actually forget that—”
A disturbance wafted into the hallway. Juliette stopped, inclining her ear out.
“What is it?” Kathleen asked.
“Sounds like yelling,” Juliette replied. “Perhaps from my father’s office.”
Right on cue, Lord Cai’s office door flew open. The volume grew infinitely louder, and Juliette frowned, digesting what the argument was actually about.
“Oh, wonderful.” She reached into the back of her dress, feeling around amid the fabric at her shoulder blades. There, where the loose stitching dipped into a little hollow to accommodate a sash of black that trailed to her legs, she dug out her pistol. “I’ve just been dying to thwack a Nationalist lately.”
“Juliette . . . ,” Kathleen warned.
“I’m kidding.” But she didn’t put the pistol away. She merely waited by the doorway, watching the Nationalist march out with her father closely behind him. This was a different Nationalist from the many she had already seen coming and going from the office. A lesser-known officer with fewer medals pinned to his chest.
“You have free rein because you’re supposed to keep this city in check,” he shouted. “Until the National Revolutionary Army comes and swallows the Beiyang government for the Kuomintang, there is only you. Until we may install a central force so that power in Shanghai is not a game of bribing police officers and militia forces, then there”—he started punctuating each word with a stab of his finger into the wall—“is—only—you.”