Page 10 of Our Violent Ends
The news spreads like wildfire. Whether Scarlet Gang or White Flower, this city holds itself upright by the power of information, and its messengers work frantically, whisper passing whisper until it reaches the ears of its rival darlings.
The Scarlet heir slams a door closed; her White Flower counterpart flings one wide open. The Cai mansion falls to a hush, frantically conferring how this could have happened. The White Flower headquarters trembles with confrontation, demands and accusations thrown over and over until finally, so loudly that the whole building shakes:“Then why didn’t you just pay the damn blackmail money?”
Soon the gangsters will all know. The shopkeepers will know. The workers will know.
The Scarlet Gang and the White Flowers have failed. They promised to rein Shanghai into order, promised thattheirrule, not the Communists, was the one to trust.
But now havoc is loose once more.
“A letter has arrived,” a messenger gasps, coming to a stop outside Lord Cai’s office.
“Found outside, by the gates,” another says elsewhere, entering through the White Flower front door.
The letters are received at once, unfolded in tandem. They reveal the same message, typed in ink, the sign-off still bleeding with black as fresh as spilled blood.
Paul Dexter only had one monster. I have five. Do as I say, or everyone dies.
Roma Montagov kicks a chair. “God—”
“—dammit,” Juliette Cai finishes with a whisper, far across the city.
Paul Dexter had thought himself to be a puppeteering god commanding the city. But he knew nothing. He controlled little save for coincidences and terror. He was the hand gripping a barely controlled mass of chaos.
This time the chaos will take shape, grow jaws and sharp teeth, prowl the corners for any opportunity to attack.
And it will have this city dance on its strings.
Four
Word of the attack spread through the city so quickly that by morning it was on the lips of every servant in the house. They murmured to one another while they dusted the living room, not daring to discuss White Flower casualties with any sense of pity, but moving the volume control on the radio as high as it would go, captivated by the reports coming through.
All morning, everyone waited for the inevitable, waited to hear about rising numbers. But it didn’t come. The White Flowers of the Podsolnukh had all dropped dead like this was merely the work of an assassin, not a monster bearing contagion.
Juliette ran her blade over the flat of the bowl again. She was sharpening her knives because they were as blunt as a well-fed beast, each metallic strike echoing through the house. No one seemed particularly bothered; Rosalind was sitting in the living room, blowing on the nib of a pen while she leafed through the giant tome of a French-to-English dictionary on the table.
“I’m not disturbing you, am I?” Juliette called over.
Her cousin glanced up briefly. “With your loud blade-whacking? Why, Juliette, who could possibly be disturbed?”
Juliette pretended to scowl. One of her great-aunts wandered in from the hallway at that moment, hovering between the kitchen and the living room, catching sight of Juliette just as she struck the bowl again. When Juliette switched quickly to a grin, the aunt only eyed Juliette with absolute apprehension before sidling into the living room and hurrying away.
“Now look what you did,” Rosalind remarked, arching a brow. The aunt’s footsteps faded up the staircase. “Your knives are already too sharp.”
“You take that back.” Juliette set her weapons down. “There is no such thing as too sharp.”
Rosalind rolled her eyes but didn’t say more, opting to resume her task. Curious now, Juliette turned the bowl right side up and walked over, peering at what Rosalind was writing.
Stock Report on Commercial and Economic Conditions in Shanghai Following Anti-British Boycott of 1925
“For your father?” Juliette asked.
Rosalind made an affirmative noise, her finger scanning down the page of the dictionary in front of her. Mr. Lang was a businessman located in the central city, delegated to handle the smaller Scarlet merchant trade that wasn’t important enough for Lord and Lady Cai but still important enough to keep within the family. For the last few years, he had quietly done his job, to the point where Juliette would downright forget Rosalind and Kathleen still had a father until he showed up to a family dinner as a reminder. It wasn’t as though Rosalind and Kathleen interacted with him often either, given their residence at the Cai house, and as far as Juliette knew, her two cousins didn’twantto reside with their grouchy father.
But he was still their father. And about a week ago, when he had proposed taking them out of the city to move into the countryside instead, Rosalind and Kathleen had hated the idea immediately.
“I’m trying to get as much of his affairs in order as possible,” Rosalind explained absently, flipping to the next page of the dictionary. “He’s using the excuse of politics to get out, but I also think he is sick of work. I will not be made to leave simply because my father won’t write up a few reports.”
Juliette squinted at the paper. “What on earth is a hog casing, and why are we exporting them to America?”
