Page 28 of Our Violent Ends
His friend casts him a glance askew, shivering. It is freezing cold in Shanghai. Ice crystals remain on the streets, and when a bird caws from somewhere afar, the sound hardly echoes because a gust blows fiercely enough to drown it out.
“What does it matter?” his friend replies. “The city can only get worse. We may as well try.”
They approach the station. From above, one might admire the way the crowd fans out, flaming torches raised to the sky, blots of orange running a perfect semicircle in formation, blocking off all paths of escape. It almost looks like warfare, and the wind leans forward.
“This is your first and only warning,” an officer bellows through a megaphone. “Those causing civil unrest will be beheaded on sight!”
It is not an empty threat. Here, at the outskirts of the city, where gangster royalty and foreigners would rarely go, there have already been sightings upon sightings of decapitated heads impaled upon lampposts. They decorate street corners like mere shop signs, used as a warning to other dissidents who dare attempt to overthrow the territory they live in. It has come to this; it is not enough to expect loyalty, not enough to scare by force.
The Scarlets have long known that the people are no longer afraid of them. And that is something for the Scarlets to be afraid of.
“No gangster rule!” the crowd demands at once. “No foreign rule!”
The officers ready in formation. Broadswords glimmer under the silver moonlight—an option far messier than bullets, but rifles are short on supply. The Nationalist armies have their pick of the weaponry, and they have taken the guns to fight a real war elsewhere.
The city sniffs, and the clouds grow dense, blocking the shine of the moon. Shanghai fights a war too. The soldiers in uniform have not arrived yet, but it is a war, nonetheless.
“Your numbers mean nothing,” the megaphone tries once more. “Disperse, or—”
The officer steps back abruptly, seeing something in the crowd. It is a chain effect, and all the workers turn to look too, one after the other, raising the gas lamps in their hands and lighting the dark night.
And they see a monster standing in the crowd.
At once the masses falls loose in fear. Police officers and gangsters on the other side of the line rush for shelter. By now this city knows how to react. Its people have gone through this play enough times that they have memorized their lines and they remember which exit to take. They pick up children and haul them to their shoulders, they offer the elderly their arms, and theyrun.
But... the monster does not do anything. Even when the workers have dispersed, it stands there, one lone entity in the middle of the road. When it blinks, its eyelids come together from the left and right, and at once a collective shudder shakes the city from all who look upon it. They wish not to see how the monster’s blue skin grows murky under the light, but the moon shines on anyway, and the officers in the station must turn away from the window, breathing shallowly with fear.
In this part of Shanghai, the uprising pauses. Other places—other fringe districts and dirt roads—burn and become awash in blood, but here there is no movement from within the station, no slash of a broadsword nor heads atop pikes, so long as the monster remains.
It tilts its head up, looking at the moon.
Almost like the monster is smiling.
Eleven
February 1927
The sun was out today, burning above the city as if it were a large diamond studded into the sky. It seemed most suitable, Juliette thought as she stepped out of the car, breathing in the crisp air. There were parts of Shanghai that she could not look at directly because it glimmered too harshly, so overwrought with the strength of its own extravagance that it could not be appreciated for any of it.
Particularly here, at the heart of the city. This was technically International Settlement territory, but the French Concession was only some streets over, and the overlap in jurisdiction was messy enough that Juliette never cared much about the border that existed along Avenue Edward VII. Neither did its inhabitants, so this was where they were starting their work in the French Concession: outside of it.
Juliette ducked into the shadow of a building, slinking around its exterior. Here lay all the fanciest hotels, so close in succession, and Juliette didn’t want to get trapped into conversation with any overeager foreign ladies out to experience the local culture. Quick as she could, she stepped into the alley and stopped, steeling herself.
He was wearing white again. She had never seen so much goddamn white on him.
“Alors, quelle surprise te voir ici.”
Roma turned at the sound of her voice, unamused by her false astonishment. Both his hands were in his trouser pockets, and it may have been Juliette’s imagination, but she swore one hand twitched like it was clutching a weapon.
“Where else would I have been waiting, Juliette?”
Juliette merely shrugged, having no energy to continue being a nuisance. It didn’t make her feel any better; nor did it improve Roma’s default scowl. When his hand came out of his pocket, she was almost surprised to find that it was a golden pocket watch he retrieved, flipping its cover to check the time.
Juliette was late. They had agreed to meet at noon behind the Grand Theatre because their destination was across the road at the Recreation Ground, where the foreign race club was. The race club was always at high capacity, but especially at these hours, when socialites and ministers threw bets like it was their full-time job.
“I was running errands,” Juliette said as Roma put the watch away.
Roma started off in the direction of the racecourse. “I didn’t ask.”
