Foul Lady Fortune

The tram was moving slowly, inching along its tracks at a snail’s pace. They were entering Nanjing Road, which meant there was activity in every direction, rickshaw runners and pedestrians surging onto the roads on a whim, scaring even the toughest tram operator. Rosalind peered out the open window, eyeing the road ahead. Men in business suits reading their newspapers by the fading sunlight; elderly women with their shopping baskets; pickpockets moving through the crowds with lightning-fast fingers.

The busyness would start turning residential as soon as Nanjing Road transitioned into Burkill Road. Sincere and Wing On loomed ahead like two dragons guarding their hordes, shoppers moving in and out of the department store doors as their protective underlings.

From her side, Orion suddenly put an arm around Rosalind’s shoulder. “I think we’re being followed.”

Rosalind didn’t visibly react. “We’re on a tram, dear.”

“Okay, let me rephrase. A fellow passenger is keeping an eye on us a bit too closely for my comfort. The man reading Shanghai News. He got on when we did.”

Carefully, Rosalind lifted her eyes to make the search. There were two long rows of seating, one on each side of the tram, so she sighted the man opposite them immediately. He was pressed right up against the operator’s box, holding his newspaper over half his face. When her gaze remained on him too long, his eyes shifted up, locking with hers for a fraction of a second before he turned back to his paper. He was Chinese, dressed in a Western suit. Unless they decided to outright ask, it was impossible to know whether he was Deoka’s man, a Communist agent, or some mysterious third party.

The tram stopped, letting new passengers on.

Rosalind said, “On my mark, let’s get off.”

“We’re still three stops away.”

“You want to be followed to our location?”

Orion grimaced. “Right.”

If Deoka had sent him, their covers were about to be blown mere steps away from the end. They were so close. Rosalind waited, eyeing the last passenger squeezing onto the tram. Up front, the driver pulled on the bell, giving a warning for the pedestrians ahead.

“Now. Go left.”

At once, Orion and Rosalind stood, taking separate exits and pushing past the newly boarded passengers. Rosalind’s feet hit the pavement hard; a second later, Orion exited from the front of the tram.

The tram lurched away. The man reading Shanghai News had not reacted fast enough to follow them off.

“Here I was,” Orion said, “thinking that we were having a lovely evening date.”

Rosalind started to walk. They weren’t far from their destination, or at least not far enough to justify getting onto another tram. “You don’t start all your dates throwing off a tail?”

“I’m divorcing you immediately if that’s your idea of fun.”

Rosalind’s lips twitched. “Watch your step.”

Orion almost tripped on the tram tracks despite her warning. She released a burst of laughter; Orion gave her a half-hearted glare. For the rest of their walk, the two were watchful for more pursuers, but the night was setting in, and the dark made it easy to blend in with the strolling crowds.

Eventually, as they came to Burkill Road, the frantic commercial activity lessened. Rosalind and Orion observed the numbers, counting up. 278… 280… 282…

“Does this location look familiar to you?” Rosalind asked under her breath.

Orion shook his head. “I’ve never been here before.”

There was the address: 286 Burkill Road. It was a single residential building, unlike the commercial shops on either side. Rosalind might have guessed it to be a hotel if not for the front door, heavy and foreboding. Perhaps an apartment complex, then, with the units inside shared. She shifted closer, waving Orion along. In case they looked suspicious lurking around, she made a show out of peering into the saloon windows next door, pretending to be searching for someone.

“What do we do now?” Orion muttered. “Stake it out?”

The front door to 286 Burkill Road opened. A woman exited, her purse swinging on her arm. Rosalind turned quickly to get a better look, but the woman was a stranger.

“Why don’t we just go in?”

“What?” Orion demanded, as if he might have misheard her. “Why would you say that?”

Rosalind reached her hand out wordlessly, prompting Orion to take it. Much to his credit, he didn’t hesitate despite his complaining, their fingers intertwining before Rosalind tugged him forward, climbing the three steps to the door. She didn’t give him any time to doubt the plan. Rosalind pushed through the front door and took them into the building.

It was dark inside, one exposed lightbulb hanging from the ceiling. A set of stairs to their left only led to a second-floor door, so it was hard to say what the rest of the building looked like. Nevertheless, Rosalind’s shoes had sunken into a circular rug upon entering, and there was a small table with a telephone at the back. This didn’t look like a building hallway, one that would split into separate apartment units. This looked like the foyer of a house.

Suddenly, a door opened from the side, bringing a man into the foyer. Though he had been deep in thought, muttering something to himself, he stopped short the moment he spotted Rosalind and Orion. He stared at them. They stared back. When he spoke, it was in Japanese.

Rosalind squeezed Orion’s hand rapidly, spurring him into action. He reacted fast, answering the man with a smile and gesturing toward Rosalind as if he was explaining that she had wanted to see something in here. Rosalind tried her best to look as though she were following the conversation. The light was flickering, turning even dimmer. It was very likely that they could pass for Japanese.

But the man’s tone had started turning sour. Orion let go of her hand. He was trying to placate the man, assuaging him—

Rosalind reached down in a blur, snapping a thin blow dart gun out of her qipao lining and putting it to her mouth. Before Orion had noticed that the man was reaching for something in his back pocket, her blow dart landed on his chest. The man paused, looking down.

He crumpled to the floor with a thud.

“What was he saying?” Rosalind asked. She dropped the blow dart gun beside him.

Orion needed a moment to gather his thoughts. He stared at the man, blinking once, twice, before surging forward to check the man’s pulse and turn him over. There was a pistol clutched in his hand, almost fully drawn. Orion had been seconds away from getting shot.

“That this isn’t a place for visitors. Come on. Let’s see what he was hiding.”

Orion hurried into the side room, making a cautionary sweep before prompting Rosalind to enter too. Inside, as he locked the door after them, Rosalind needed a moment for her eyes to adjust to the darkness before she could see the shapes and outlines in the candlelit office. Thick velvet curtains were drawn over the windows, blocking the night outside. There was an air of clamminess despite the tidy desk and clean painted walls. As if at any second, the ceiling might start seeping with water.

“I see more crates,” Rosalind stated. They were stacked by the corner, identical to the ones that had been in Deoka’s office. When Rosalind crept closer, her eyes adjusted to find a similar shipping label affixed to the top, though these were signed with Ambassador Deoka’s name as the sender.

Rosalind searched around for something to pry off the crate top. “I’m going to open it,” she said. “This might be the only chance we have to see what’s inside.” On a cursory glance, however, the desk had been cleared of anything she could use, and there was nothing else within reach. Orion shrugged too, patting around his pockets and coming up empty.

“I can offer you a gun if you want to shoot it open.”

The walls seemed to shudder at the very thought of a bullet being fired within these quarters. It would probably set fire to the stifling air. With no other option, Rosalind pulled a pin out of her hair, inserting the sharp end into a slit along the crate’s top and pushing down.

“Any luck?” Orion asked two minutes later.

“It would be nice to get some help,” Rosalind muttered, wiping a thin layer of sweat off her forehead. “I’m guessing they don’t usually use a thin pin to open—”

Just as she gave the metal one hard push, there was a thunderous knock on the door. Rosalind jumped, so startled that she lost her grip on the hairpin. Though it finally pried open the crate and popped the top component right off, the pin snapped backward in an abrupt, uncontrolled motion, drawing a short red scratch down her arm.

“Tā mā de,” Rosalind muttered. Her hairpin clattered to the floor.

“You did it,” Orion said.

She had also just poisoned herself, but she supposed that was a problem to deal with when it started setting in. The door jiggled, pushing against the lock. One voice shouted a question. When neither Rosalind nor Orion answered, that one voice turned into multiple, surrounding the foyer. Given that there had been a man left unconscious out there, it was only a matter of time before the other occupants of this building knew that something was wrong.

Rosalind winced, making a rapid search of the crate. They were running out of time. Inside, the topmost layer was an issue of Seagreen’s newspaper. She pushed it out of the way hurriedly, revealing a three-by-three collection of glass vials underneath.

Vials?

“Janie,” Orion said immediately. “Bring one of those to the light.”

Rosalind plucked one out, tipping the vial closer to the flickering candle. It was half-filled with a liquid, obnoxiously green. The top was sealed with a metallic casing, but the kind that would have easily ripped if Rosalind poked a finger through.

Or a syringe needle.

“You sound like you’ve seen this before,” she observed.

“I have. In Haidi’s purse.”

“Haidi’s purse—” Rosalind was forced to clamp down on her surprise when there was another shudder on the door. She shoved the vial into her sleeve, then grabbed the crate lid with the mail label affixed to it. This was going to be their evidence. As soon as she figured out what those vials were.

“Come on,” she said to Orion. “The window.”

“Wait.” Orion had his head tilted, concentrating on the voices. A moment later, he blinked with surprise and remarked, “The people in the foyer—they’re soldiers. Someone is giving orders. It sounds military.”

Rosalind snatched her hairpin off the floor, then hauled the curtains aside and pushed the window open into the night outside.

“Climb.”

The door heaved against its hinges. Rosalind made her exit first, swinging her legs over the windowsill and landing smoothly in the alley. She checked her arm. The red scratch wasn’t healing. It wouldn’t until the poison was counteracted.

“Let’s go!”

Summoned once more, Orion clambered through the window, his shoes hitting the alley ground just as the door to the office burst open. Narrowly, Rosalind hauled him out of view, the two of them breaking into a run before the soldiers inside could see them.

“Main road is that way,” Orion said, casting a glance over his shoulder.

Rosalind shook her head. “They’re too close behind, and the main road is too wide. They’ll see us. Back roads might throw them off.”

Orion didn’t argue. So long as they could navigate the labyrinth of unmapped alleys and lane apartment walkways, they would reach Avenue Road and have a far better chance of losing their pursuers there. Rosalind could already hear yelling in the distance. After they passed an old woman watering her plants and took three sharp turns, the woman’s loud, angered protests some few seconds later warned Orion and Rosalind that their pursuers had entered the back alleys too, probably kicking over her plants.

“Why are imperial soldiers hiding out at a residence in the International Settlement?” Orion hissed. He wasn’t really posing it as a question; they knew. If you started a scheme to prepare for invasion, you needed your soldiers ready to swoop in.

“I would guess they probably have secret bases all over the city.”

The sound of bullets rang into the alleys. Rosalind and Orion both flinched, their breathing heavy, visible in the brisk night air.

“This way.” Orion tugged them to the left, then under a stone gate, then past two residential houses. The ground started to move up on an incline, the pavement turning to smoother stone. The path should have led to an exit, bleeding out onto a main road.

But they ran right into another curved alley and hit a dead end.

“Shit,” Orion hissed. He tilted his head up, up, up, scanning the wall. Only one alley light around the corner illuminated their surroundings. “Is that too high to climb?”

“Way too high,” Rosalind replied, her throat tight. She didn’t know if her increasing dizziness was a result of their desperate sprint or the toxins rapidly entering her system. They would have to abandon the crate lid she was holding. Toss it aside somewhere and act clueless when the soldiers caught up. The soldiers hadn’t seen them, after all. Perhaps Rosalind and Orion could play it off. Make it seem like they were such unlikely suspects for intruders who could break into an undercover military facility that the thought was laughable. They were only a couple out on a night stroll.

Rosalind looked around. Except there was nowhere to hide the evidence, not a single trash bag or an abandoned piece of furniture. Of all alleys to keep clean, it had to be this one.

Orion seemed to come to the same conclusion. “We need to hide that.”

“Where?” Rosalind demanded, her ears roaring with noise as she shook the object of theft in her hands. Her arm, too, had started stinging where she’d been scratched.

“Maybe we can fold it?”

“It’s wood, Orion. How do you fold wood?”

Orion made a noise that sounded like a whistling teakettle. “Can we break it into pieces?”

Rosalind gave him an incredulous look. “IT’S WOOD!”

They were going to get caught in no less than ten seconds. They were going to get caught and then hauled off for execution.

“Can we throw it?” he suggested next.

“Over the wall? Are you out of your mind—”

Suddenly, Rosalind looked at the crate piece again. It wasn’t heavy enough to throw over the wall because it was too thin.

It was thin.

“Orion,” she said.

Orion was so deep in his panic that he didn’t register the eerie calm coming over her. The strike of an idea—one so absurd that she blamed it purely on her poisoned mind—lit a match and caught ablaze.

“What?” he nearly screeched.

She shoved the crate piece to his chest, then pressed up against him, putting her hands around his neck. Just as the soldiers entered the alley, she rose onto the tips of her toes and kissed him, hiding the damning evidence between their bodies.

She didn’t know if it was the poison or adrenaline causing the buzz that ran from the back of her neck to the tips of her fingers. All she knew was that something was different from the last time they had done this, that it was electric when their lips met, like she had plugged herself directly into an outlet. Faintly, she heard the soldiers call out what sounded like an all-clear in Japanese, then their footsteps fading as they went to check the next alley, but something was holding her still, something stopped her from pulling away when Orion set his hands around her waist and pressed closer.

Rosalind drew back slowly, several delayed beats after the danger had passed. Her head was spinning.

The poison, she reassured herself. Not Orion. Definitely not Orion. Definitely not his dark eyes, wide and volatile while she was the subject of his astounded stare. The crate piece started to slip between them. Rosalind seized it before it could fall, her hands clumsy.

“Hey,” she said breathlessly. “Do me a favor.”

Orion blinked once. “Anything.”

“Catch me.”

And with the barest second for him to heed her instructions, Rosalind collapsed into his arms, falling unconscious.