Foul Lady Fortune

Orion pushed through the crowd, coming to a natural stop by one of the poker tables. At first he didn’t say anything. He merely pretended to observe the game, arms crossed over his chest.

Then he dropped into one of the emptied seats, drawing the attention of the man on his right.

“Why have you been so hard to get ahold of recently?”

His father’s gaze flickered to him.

“You know where to find me,” General Hong replied, giving a smile that did not reach his eyes. “You’re a young adult now. I have no business checking in on you and your daily affairs.”

“I didn’t ask to be checked in on,” Orion retorted. “It would simply be nice if you were home once in a while. Oliver made an appearance the other day. Did you know that?”

Gauging from the way General Hong turned to look at his son, he did not know that.

“I beg your pardon? You didn’t think to tell me this earlier?”

“As I said”—Orion leaned back, letting a woman reach over the table to shake the dealer’s hand—“you have not been easy to reach.”

“Liwen. You can easily send a note to the office.”

“Yes, well…” Orion trailed off, unable to find the right words. This whole time, he had been speaking English while his father used Shanghainese in reply. It felt easier somehow. To adopt a foreign tongue for difficult matters, to blame that foreignness for the conversation’s friction. The version of him who spoke Shanghainese with his father wouldn’t give him attitude like this. That version of him, who had trust and love and belief for a father he admired, seemed to exist only in the past.

“I didn’t want to put it in a mere note. I wanted to explain it to you directly. Oliver broke into the house and was searching for something in your office.”

General Hong frowned.

“I kicked him out, obviously,” Orion continued. “But pray tell, why would my brother show up like that?”

Someone at the table won the round. The chairs rocked with celebration, bodies shaking with uproar and feather boas flying around in disarray. Orion ducked to avoid an arm that was waving around his head, glaring up at the two people who stood behind him. His father, meanwhile, sat still; there was no one who dared motion too forcefully around his head.

“I don’t know,” General Hong answered evenly.

Orion’s mouth opened and closed. “How could you not—”

“You should have reported it immediately. Then we could have checked the perimeter. We could have found him. He is a traitor. There is no sense in protecting him.”

“I wasn’t trying to protect him,” Orion hurried to say. The insistence tasted sour on his tongue. He could say that he wanted Oliver arrested, could claim before a podium that he wanted his defector brother to be executed as enemies opposing their government ought to be, but he would only be mimicking the words of his father, echoing back the speeches that he had heard so often they had erased all thought of his own. Of course a part of him was keeping his brother out of trouble; otherwise he would have pulled the trigger when he saw Oliver that night.

“Father.” Orion spoke quietly, so that only General Hong could hear him using the address. “Why would Oliver risk himself like that—”

“If he shows his face again, you tell me promptly—understand?”

Orion’s fists curled at the interruption. By now he should have been used to running into wall after wall when it came to his father. General Hong never cared to communicate properly anymore, only in bits and pieces, making small handouts when he deemed Orion worthy enough to know something. On the matter of Oliver, though, Orion was not certain if his father was choosing to obscure information, or if General Hong didn’t want to look the fool and reveal that he too was in the dark.

“Why don’t you ever do something?” Orion hissed.

His father’s expression remained level. “What would you like me to do?”

I don’t know, Orion thought. Go back to how it was. Travel back in time and not mess up. Pluck his head out of the sand and look at how they were now, because he had been caring once before; he had been loving once before. It was only that he chose not to be anymore, and that dissonance was worse than if the warmth had never existed to begin with.

“Never mind.” Orion pinched the bridge of his nose. “Forget I said anything.”

General Hong peered at him. “What’s wrong with you? Are your headaches starting again?”

Orion moved his hand away, almost taken aback. In his first few weeks as a spy, he had gotten into trouble while chasing someone and hit his head on a bad fall. It almost disqualified him permanently for agent work when the Nationalists asked after his progress and he could barely leave the house to make any. He had been plagued by headaches for months after, bouts of dizziness that came and went on a whim. On particularly bad days, it was as if the whole world was closing in around him: his lungs seizing, his thoughts swirling at a thousand miles per minute.

Silas had been his saving grace. If Orion went off the grid, Silas got involved in his missions to keep him on track, working double assignments and reporting extensively when Orion could drag himself out of bed again. As time passed, the painful attacks lessened in frequency, until Orion wasn’t seeing stars every time he lifted himself up too quickly. The headaches hadn’t come in a while now—these days, as a remnant of the old injury, they usually arose only if he pushed himself too hard with physical exertion. He didn’t know his father still remembered.

“No. No, I’m fine.” Orion got out of his seat. There was nothing more to be said about his brother, he supposed.

“Will you be home tonight, then?” General Hong asked absently, just before Orion could make his farewell.

“I’m on an assignment right now,” Orion answered. “I haven’t been home in days.”

“Ah, is that so?” General Hong lifted his hand, signaling to the dealer that he would take cards this round. “Very well.”

It was impossible to tell what he meant by that. Orion would exhaust himself trying to figure it out. All he could do was incline his head and excuse himself, pushing away from the poker table and wandering off in search of his wife.

Rosalind lunged for the dropped cloth in a panic. Just as she was rising, fist clutched tight to prepare for another fight, she recognized who had come in and exhaled sharply with relief, dropping her murder weapon again.

Alisa Montagova folded her arms. “Right here?”

“I wasn’t exactly given plenty of options to work with,” Rosalind shot back. “Lock the door.”

Alisa did as she was told. Rosalind didn’t bother asking the girl how long she had been watching, or how she knew to follow, or what she was even doing here at Peach Lily Palace. In this day and age, one had to expect spies everywhere.

“The back exit has been barred for months,” Alisa said. “You can’t move him out that way.”

Rosalind crouched down delicately, digging through Zilin’s pockets. She didn’t find anything particular: his wallet, keys, two playing cards that were folded at the corners. So he was cheating at his poker games. How expected.

“Suggestions, Miss Montagova?”

“Ivanova,” Alisa corrected, whip-quick. While Rosalind rolled her eyes and continued frisking the line of Zilin’s clothes to make sure she wasn’t leaving evidence behind, Alisa Montagova was deep in thought, rubbing the palm of her hand against her chin.

She walked forward after a long moment, looming over Zilin’s body.

“Why don’t you pass it off as one of the chemical killings?” Alisa suggested.

Rosalind frowned up at her. “Because I don’t know what chemicals the killer is using. This also isn’t Chinese territory.”

“So serious.” Alisa bounced into a crouch too. She wasn’t wearing heels like Rosalind, so her feet were completely flat, bringing her closer to the ground. “It’s not as if the policemen are very good at their jobs. Just use that”—she pointed to the pin in Rosalind’s hair—“to make the injection wound, and they will mark it off as one.”

Rosalind reached into her hair, sliding out a pin. It was thin and sharp, a perfect piercing mechanism. Then her eyes narrowed. “You came up with that plan rather quickly.”

“I am an agent for a party that has gone entirely underground,” Alisa shot back. “If I don’t think quickly, I die. Now, do you want my help or not? If you evacuate the dance hall, there’s a window at the back of the main stage that I can haul him through. It will look like he was killed in the alley.”

As soon as Alisa finished outlining the plan, a wisp of an idea started to unfurl in Rosalind’s mind. The dance troupe was still running their routine downstairs. If they had started ten minutes ago, then their first costume change was likely fast approaching.

“How can I trust you?” Rosalind asked. She rolled Zilin’s sleeve up.

“Same way you trust me with your identity. Same way I trust you with mine.”

On the other side of the women’s washroom door, a burst of voices neared with sudden gusto. The knob jiggled—once lightly and another time more vigorously—but when it wouldn’t open, the voices gave a bad-tempered grumble and moved away.

“We have no other choice,” Alisa continued.

Rosalind muttered a curse under her breath, then pointed a finger at Alisa. She wanted to chide the girl like a child, but it was jarring to see a face as old as her own, to tell her off when Alisa had caught up in age. Alisa lifted her chin, looking eager for a lecture. It would probably serve as her daily entertainment.

No time.

Rosalind yielded, taking a deep breath and twirling the pin in her hands. Before she could feel the push of nausea in her throat, she stabbed down, sinking the metal half an inch into the soft of Zilin’s inner elbow. When she pulled the hairpin out, there was a thin coating of red over the silver. She cupped her hand beneath the tip, catching a droplet of blood before it could hit the floor. Alisa grimaced in disgust, and Rosalind shot her a silent look of scorn, asking Alisa if she wanted to do it instead.

Alisa, at least, had the self-awareness to look adequately reproached. She shot to her feet and shuffled to the sink inside the washroom, turning on the tap and gesturing for Rosalind to go ahead. Careful not to jostle the body, Rosalind rose too and stepped over him, putting her hand under the water. In three quick swipes, Rosalind had the blood cleaned from her pin and off her glove, shaking away the excess water before it could soak the fabric. Then she slipped the pin back into her hair, its jewels catching the light of the mirror.

“Be careful lifting him,” she warned. “He’s heavy.”

Alisa nodded. She gave a salute. “Ne volnuysya, I have it handled.”

“How can I not worry?” Rosalind muttered. Alisa Montagova was a thin girl and Zilin was almost six feet tall. Still, Alisa was right: there was no other choice.

Rosalind took the two playing cards off the floor, scrunching them into her fist. Everything else needed to stay on Zilin’s body to make the sight look normal when he was found. His cheating hand, however—Rosalind ripped the thick cards, shredding the spade and the diamond into pieces. When she tossed the paper bits into the nearest toilet stall, Alisa was watching, a small smile playing at her lips.

“It’s on you now.” Rosalind tugged her sleeves straight. She opened the door. “Be safe.”

With her jaw gritted tight, she cast a silent prayer for luck and slipped out.