“On the house, miss.”
Juliette looked up suddenly, finding a paper bag already hovering in front of her face.
“Only the best for the princess of Shanghai,” the old shopkeeper said, his elbows resting on the perch of the serving window.
Juliette summoned her most dazzling smile. “Thank you,” she said, taking the bag. Those two words would give the shopkeeper plenty of material to brag about when he met up with his friends for mahjong tomorrow.
Juliette turned around and left the line, reaching into the bag and ripping a chunk of the bun to chew on. Her smile fell as soon as she was out of sight. It was getting late and she would be expected at home soon, but still she dawdled among the shops and the bustle of Chenghuangmiao, one slow-moving girl in a crowd of havoc. She didn’t have a lot of opportunities to wander about in places like these, but today she did. Lord Cai had sent her over to check on an opium distribution center, which unfortunately, hadn’t been as exciting as she’d thought. It had merely smelled bad, and upon finally locating the owner with the papers her father wanted, the owner had passed them to her looking half-asleep. He hadn’t even offered a greeting first nor verified Juliette’s right to be asking for such confidential supply information. Juliette didn’t understand how someone like that could be given management over fifty workers.
“Excuse me,” she muttered, pushing through a particularly thick crowd gathered in front of a pencil sketch shop. Despite the darkness seeping into the pink skies, Chenghuangmiao was still bustling with visitors—lovers taking slow strolls through the chaos, grandparents purchasing xiaolóngbao for the children to slurp on, foreigners simply taking in the sights. The name Chenghuangmiao itself referred to the temple, but to the people of Shanghai, it had come to encompass all the busy surrounding markets and the cloisters of activity in the area. The British army had set up its head office here almost a century ago, in the Yuyuan Gardens, which Juliette was passing now. Since then, even after their departure, the foreigners had taken a liking to this place. It was always full of their faces, cast in wonder and amusement.
“This is the end! Get the cure now! There is only one cure!”
And sometimes it was full of native eccentrics too.
Juliette grimaced, tucking her chin in so as not to make eye contact with the ranting old man on the Jiuqu Bridge. However, despite her best efforts to pass unnoticed, the old man straightened at the sight of her and darted along the zigzag bridge—the thuds of his footsteps making sounds that were rather concerning to hear from such an old structure. He skittered to a stop in front of her before she could put enough distance between them.
“Salvation!” he screeched. His wrinkles deepened until his eyes were wholly swallowed by sagging skin. He could barely lift his back past a perpetual hunch, yet he moved as fast as a scurrying rodent on the hunt for food. “You must spread the message of salvation. The la-gespu will give it to us!”
Juliette blinked rapidly, her eyebrows raised. She knew she shouldn’t entertain ranting men on the streets, but there was something about him that pricked the little hairs on her neck straight up. Despite his rural accent, she had understood almost all of the man’s croaky Shanghainese—all except that little pocket of gibberish.
La-gespu? Was the ‘s’ sound merely a lisp of his generational upbringing?
“La ge bo?” Juliette tried to guess in correction. “A toad will give us salvation?”
The old man looked mightily offended. He shook his head from side to side, throwing around his thin, wispy white hairs and rustling up the flimsy braid he wore. He was one of those few people who still dressed like the country hadn’t left the imperial era.
“My mother told me a wise proverb when I was young,” Juliette continued, amusing herself now. “La ge bo xiang qie ti u ¯y.”
The old man merely stared at her. Did he not understand her Shanghainese? Abroad, she had constantly feared that she would lose her accent, feared she would forget how to pronounce those persistently flat tones found in no other dialect across this country.
“Bad joke?” Juliette asked. In the more common dialect, she repeated herself, this time more hesitantly. “Lài háma xiang chi tian é ròu? Yes? I deserve at least a little chuckle, come on.”
The old man stomped his foot down, shaking in his exertion to be taken seriously. Perhaps Juliette had chosen the wrong proverb to joke around with. The ugly toad wants a bite of swan meat. Maybe the old man hadn’t been raised on fairy tales about the Frog Prince and his ugly toad stepbrother. Maybe he didn’t like that her joke implied his la-gespu savior—whatever that meant—was the equivalent of a proverbial, scheming, ugly creature who lusted after the swan, his Frog Prince brothe
r’s beloved.
“The la-gespu is a man,” he snapped right into Juliette’s face, his voice a reedy hiss. “A man of great might. He gave me a cure. An injection! I should have died when my neighbor collapsed on me, tearing at his throat. Oh! So much blood! Blood in my eyes and blood running down my chest! But I did not die. I was saved. The la-gespu saved me.”
Juliette took a great step back, one she should have taken five minutes ago, before this conversation began.
“Uh, this has been fun,” she said, “but I really should be going.”
Before the old man could make a grab at her, she sidestepped him and hurried off.
“Salvation!” he screamed after her. “Only the la-gespu can bring salvation now!”
Juliette took a sharp turn, moving out of view completely. Now that she was in a less crowded area, she let out a long breath and took her time weaving through the shops, casting glances over her shoulder to ensure she wasn’t being followed. Once she was certain there was nobody on her tail, she sighed in sorrow to be leaving Chenghuangmiao behind and wove out from the collection of closely congregated shops, stepping back onto the city streets to begin her walk home. She could have flagged a rickshaw or stopped any one of the Scarlets loitering outside these cabarets, to have them fetch her a car. Any other girl her age would have, especially with a necklace as shiny as the one around her neck, especially if their footsteps reverberated with an echo that stretched two streets over. Kidnapping was a lucrative business. Human trafficking was thriving at an all-time high, and the economy was booming with crime.
But Juliette walked on. She passed men in large groups and men who squatted in front of brothels, leering like it was their second job. She passed gangsters throwing knives outside the casinos they had been hired to guard, passed shady merchants cleaning their guns and chewing on toothpicks. Juliette did not falter. The sky grew redder and her eyes grew brighter. Wherever she went, no matter how far into the darkest underbelly of the city she wandered, as long as she stayed within her territory, she was the reigning supreme.
Juliette paused, rolling out her ankle to ease the tightness of her shoe. In response, five nearby Scarlet gangsters who were waiting around a restaurant also stilled, waiting to see if they would be summoned. They were killers and extortionists and raging forces of violence, but as the rumors went, Juliette Cai was the girl who had strangled and killed her American lover with a string of pearls. Juliette Cai was the heiress who, on her second day back in Shanghai, had stepped into a brawl between four White Flowers and two Scarlets and killed all four White Flowers with only three bullets.
Only one of those rumors was true.
Juliette smiled and waved to the Scarlet men. In response, one waved back, and the other four nervously laughed among themselves. They feared Lord Cai’s wrath if anything were to happen to her, but they feared her wrath more if they were to test the truth of the rumors.
It was her reputation that kept her safe. Without it, she was nothing.