For a long moment, it seemed that Tyler would not accede. Then, as a loud clang of metal against metal rang through the hospital, he nodded and waved for his men to follow him.
Only Juliette remained, settling her hand on a cooling body.
Only Juliette remained, living with the weight of her sins.
Epilogue
The workers’ strike was a failure,” the maid said, “but that is to be expected.”
Juliette gritted her teeth, placing the food she had gathered from the kitchen into the basket she had set out. The sky had turned dark and she had long scrubbed the blood that stained her hands from the events earlier in the day. When she had returned to her house, her relatives had not even known where she had gone—had not even known she had narrowly been caught in the riots that decimated Nanshi.
The riots had not lasted long after Juliette vacated. As soon as the police forces came barreling through, aided by the gangsters in mass numbers, it was not a fair fight at all. The workers would return to their factory jobs tomorrow morning. Those who had killed their bosses would receive a jail term.
That was that.
Juliette had a feeling the Communists would not be deterred so easily. This was only the beginning of their revolts.
“Anyway,” the maid said gingerly. “Your parents are asking if you will be at dinner. They seek Miss Kathleen and Miss Rosalind too.”
Juliette shook her head. “I have an errand to run. I’ll be back within the hour. Let my parents know, would you?”
The maid nodded. “And your cousins?”
“I sent Kathleen out on a task. She’s to be excused too.”
Perhaps Juliette had said it in a tone that revealed her confusion, or perhaps the words themselves were enough to incite curiosity. The maid tilted her head, noted the sole name, and asked, “What about Miss Rosalind?”
Juliette shook her head with a shrug. “Kathleen said she didn’t want Rosalind going with her, so Rosalind is still up in her room. You may wish to ask her yourself.”
“Very well.” The maid bobbed her head and hurried to her task.
Juliette, sighing, closed her basket tightly and set off too.
* * *
Kathleen wrinkled her nose, surveying the state of the Bund. She had been warned about the corpse, about the insects floating in the water and the bullet hole
s studded in the most bizarre places, but seeing it for herself was another matter. What a mess.
Kathleen spun in a slow circle, grimacing as her shoe came down on the insects lying dead on the pavement.
“She said it should be where the dead man is,” Kathleen called, waving her arm to direct the group of Scarlet men Juliette had assigned to help her. “Get looking.”
Their task? Juliette wanted a fist-size insect, one that she said remained upon a wharf along the Huangpu River. For the sake of science, Juliette had claimed. Really, Kathleen wondered if it was so her cousin had something concrete in front of her, something that confirmed this madness was over and Juliette had done what she had needed to do and it had been worth it.
“Should we, er… move the corpse first?”
Kathleen grimaced. She peered down at the wharf, at Qi Ren in his slumped form, wholly human now and very, very dead.
“Leave him be for now,” Kathleen said quietly. “Start searching.”
The men nodded. Kathleen helped, toeing around the wharf and kicking some of the smaller insects down into the water. The insects floated. All their little dead bodies and exterior shells lumped together on the river, drifting about in groups, resembling oil atop cold soup.
“Miss Kathleen,” one of the men called. “Are you sure it’s this wharf?”
A giant insect was not something that should have been hard to spot. But it was nowhere to be found.
“She said it was the one with the corpse,” Kathleen replied. “I don’t see any other corpse on any other wharf.”