Foul Lady Fortune

“So, are you an enemy of the nation?”

Their hostage—Liza Ivanova, allegedly—looked up with a quirk of her brow.

“What is an enemy, really? I’ve certainly never disrupted the nation’s livelihood, if that’s what you’re asking.”

Phoebe crossed her legs under her skirts, rearranging the thick fabric. She made herself more comfortable on the couch, jostling against Silas, who was sitting primly next to her. They were waiting at his house, a modest manor tucked in a relatively secluded section of the International Settlement. Silas’s parents were out of the house on a business trip, so there had been no trouble bringing Liza in. The staff who were in the vicinity doing kitchen chores or bedroom cleaning knew to avert their eyes and keep their mouths shut about whatever was going on with the hostage situation.

Well, Liza wasn’t a hostage, per se, especially when she was just sitting on the other couch, flipping idly through a magazine, with the freedom to get up at any point she wished, but it made Phoebe feel more official to use such terms.

“I meant—are you working for the other side?” Phoebe clarified, casting Silas a look to show that she was being careful with her wording.

“Sides are interchangeable,” Liza replied, her easy tone unwavering. “Do you have bread? I’m starving.”

Silas stood up immediately. “I’ll get bread,” he said. Beneath his breath, intended more for Phoebe as he passed, he added, “I’ve never met anyone who talks in circles so much. My goodness.”

He padded into the kitchen. Phoebe returned to her interrogation, despite the lack of preliminary information they could get out of Liza. It wasn’t as if Orion had been particularly helpful on his phone call, either. All he had said was that Liza worked for the Communists and warned Silas that she might recognize him, so he would need to maintain the guise of being a double agent in the midst of betraying his friends.

“Have we met before?” Phoebe asked. “I feel as though we must have met before. How old are you?”

“Seventeen,” Liza replied. She flipped to the last page of the magazine, then stretched for a literary journal on the coffee table. “Though I gather that we are of different social circles.”

“Nonsense. I know all the seventeen-year-olds in Shanghai.” It was a huge exaggeration, especially in a city so dense, but when Phoebe exaggerated, she held fast to it. “I knew your face was familiar.”

Liza didn’t look marginally convinced. “My brother was well known around the city. You might be recognizing him.”

“Oh, I know all about famous brothers, too,” Phoebe said with a pout. She drew her legs up onto the couch, hanging lopsided off the edge. “The papers will ramble on and on about Oliver and Orion, but no one ever remembers me.”

Liza said nothing. Phoebe felt like she had lost the thread of their conversation, or perhaps she had clutched it too tightly and somehow managed to pulverize the whole thing in a ham-fisted grab. With a toss of her ringlets over her shoulder, she tried again.

“Who’s your brother?”

Liza’s gaze flickered up, the first glint of sharpness entering her dark eyes. In the kitchen, Silas was closing a cabinet door, and the sound seemed to jolt Liza to look around, to remember where she was.

“You’ll find out soon enough.”

“What is that supposed to mean?” Phoebe pushed herself upright again, returning to a proper sitting position before Silas came back with bread on a plate. He passed it to Liza, and Liza took it with a thank you, her expression carefully controlled. From outside the house, Phoebe thought she heard voices wafting nearer, approaching the driveway.

“Janie must know, then?”

Liza took a bite of the bread. She shrugged. “I don’t know. Does she?”

“Feiyi, come on, you’re both only going to tire yourselves out,” Silas warned. But Phoebe was insistent. She knew how to play the annoying-girl game. She was the reigning champion of annoying girls.

“How did you get into this line of work?”

“How does anyone get into this line of work?”

“Let me speculate,” Phoebe said, tapping her chin in thought. “You mentioned a brother. An important brother. He must be a Nationalist—you work the opposite side to keep him safe. In a game of hide-and-seek, you choose to hide and watch others walk right past you unknowingly, gathering information from the shadows so that you can protect him.”

Liza snorted. After one bite, she was picking at the bread instead of eating it, rolling up little bits of the dough. “Please don’t quit school anytime soon for detective work.”

Phoebe scowled. Silas, having returned to the seat beside her, smoothed her hair back over her shoulder in a placating gesture.

“Fine, so it’s not family,” she said. “A lover?”

Liza mimed a gag. “I have always been mightily uninterested in all matters of romance and whatever else lovers do.”

“Then the only option left is money,” Silas supplied. With Phoebe’s hair tidied, Silas leaned back into the couch, but the motion took him farther away from her. She frowned. Was he afraid of disturbing her skirts? She shuffled closer, pressing herself to his side again.

“Or,” Liza said plainly, “the only option left is wanting a job in politics. I’m Russian—relatively speaking, the Communists are willing to trust me, so I work for them. How did you not begin at the easiest starting point?”

A loud knock came at the front door. Phoebe bolted up, waving for Silas to stay put. It was easy for her to shuffle into the foyer in her frilly socks, gliding along the clean floors like she was skating. The voices outside were midargument, loud enough to be wafting into the house.

“—identities have leaked.”

“You don’t know that.”

“Yes, Orion, because it was a coincidence that we were attacked—”

Phoebe opened the door before Janie’s knuckles could come down to knock a second time. She peered at her brother, then her brother’s fake wife, and pulled the door wider, welcoming them in with a flourish.

“We’ve been expecting you.”

“I gave you these instructions, scamp,” Orion sighed, stepping in. He kicked off his shoes. “Janie, the stage is yours. What did you mastermind this plan for?”

As soon as Janie Mead came in too, Phoebe made a quick glance at the path outside, checking for intruders. There was no movement to be concerned about, but there was a rather large mosquito crawling up one of the entrance pillars. Hurrying to get back in, Phoebe scooped up a pebble from one of the large plants sitting nearby and threw it at the mosquito.

There—squashed. Nasty things. Phoebe skittered back inside, returning to the living room. Janie and Orion were standing before Liza, while Liza remained sitting, still picking casually at the bread. Silas gestured for Phoebe to come closer, but she shook her head, opting for a better view by the hallway.

“Bread?” Liza offered the roll.

“You’re not going to yell at me for framing you?” Janie asked.

Liza nodded her chin at Orion. “Does your husband know yet that it was you who killed Tong Zilin?”

Orion reared back with a look of utter disbelief. “What?”

“Ah,” Janie said. “There’s your revenge.”

Liza smiled. Orion seemed astonished that Janie was not denying it. All the while, Phoebe and Silas exchanged a glance, left out of the loop. They hadn’t even known what they were breaking Liza out of the holding cells for. Had it been accusations of murder?

“Why didn’t you tell me?” Orion demanded. “Is that why you crashed the chandelier at the dance hall? Oh my God, Janie—”

“Can we,” Janie hissed with a lower volume, “resume this conversation another time?”

Orion bristled visibly. Liza looked like she was trying to hold back her laugh.

“Don’t stop on my behalf,” she said. “I have nowhere else to be. Except jail, apparently.”

“You’re welcome,” Phoebe called from the hallway.

With Orion temporarily mollified, Janie smoothed down the fabric of her qipao, turning back to Liza. “Look. It won’t be hard for us to clear your name. In return, however, I want the same thing I asked for earlier. The Communists assigned you to Seagreen—you’re the one most connected to these two avenues and the most likely to get answers. Why that file was yanked away from me. Why my handler was hit. Why they just came after us with guns blazing and a length of rope.”

Silas sat up straighter. Phoebe finally stepped into the living room properly. “What? Are you okay?”

Orion gestured for Phoebe to sit, pressing a finger to his lips. “We’re fine. We got away easily.”

Meanwhile, Liza only slumped in her seat, a frown deepening on her face. She had a very delicate nose, which twitched while she considered the matter. Although it was quick, Phoebe caught Liza’s gaze darting once to Silas. The Communists thought Silas defected. Silas was, in fact, playing a very balanced game as a triple agent, and he needed to maintain the guise in front of Liza in case it leaked. Though Phoebe pretended not to notice, she saw him jerk his head in a minuscule motion, urging Liza to leave him be.

“You think it has to do with your investigation at Seagreen?” Liza asked. “That people on my side are involving themselves in the terror plot?”

Janie threw her hands up, but it wasn’t to signal her rejection of the idea. It was a movement that radiated with bewilderment.

“It has something to do with it, but I can’t figure out what. Get me answers, and my husband will make the right series of calls so that you’re not a fugitive anymore. Though I’m sure you would have plenty of fun being a fugitive.”

Liza got to her feet. Slowly, she dusted her hands of bread crumbs, then stepped away from the couch. Despite the many eyes pinned to her every movement, she was casual as she walked out of the living room.

“If I were more spiteful, I might just run off into the countryside and live as a fugitive forever.” Her voice bounced back, loud with the echo in the foyer. “But not only am I kind—I am the bigger person. You’ll hear from me soon. Goodbye.”

The front door opened, then slammed after her. The house stayed unmoving for a long moment. Then Orion turned to Janie.

“She is so strange. How do you know her?”

“That’s too long of a story.” Janie tightened her hold on something close to her chest: a notepad. “She’s only strange because she was raised that way. The world moves for her. She doesn’t move with the world. She knew there was never any real trouble—or at the very least, she knew that I was going to get her out of it.”

Phoebe peered closer, trying to read what was scratched at the back of Janie’s notepad, but then Janie caught her eye, and Phoebe started to attention.

“Thank you for your assistance, Phoebe. And you, Silas.”

“Oh, anytime,” Phoebe exclaimed. “If you need anyone to tail Liza Ivanova, let me know. I have a feeling she and I could be the best of friends.”

Orion shook his head. He picked up the chunk of bread that Liza had left behind, then tossed it in the trash can on his way to the front door. “I knew she reminded me of someone. I’ll walk you home, Feiyi.”