“Phoebe?” he called. He thought his younger sister had gone to sleep hours ago. At his voice, the rustling stopped short. Orion bolted to his feet. The sound wasn’t coming from the right, where Phoebe’s bedroom was. It was coming from his father’s office.
“Èr shàoyé, your tea—”
Orion’s arm shot out. Ah Dou halted fast.
“Don’t move. I’ll be right back.” Gone was the easy grin; in slid the operative. Orion Hong was a national spy. No matter how lightly he wanted to take the world, the world came barreling toward him at breakneck speed every second day.
He hurried up the stairs, keeping his footfalls as quiet as possible. Because the moonlight streamed in through the side windows, only certain parts of the office space were visible. When Orion entered, he made no noise, creeping closer and closer to what he thought was movement at his father’s desk. If luck would have it, he would find nothing more than a wild rodent that had nibbled its way in through the drywall.
But luck wouldn’t have it.
A figure stood up from behind the desk.
Orion sprang forward, fists clenched in attack. With any other intruder, he would have backed away and called the police—the most efficient solution. But this particular intruder had not even concealed his identity, so his grimace was stark on his expression when Orion hauled him by the collar, slamming him against the lower bookshelves.
“What the hell are you doing here, Oliver?” Orion spat in English.
“What?” Oliver retorted, sounding entirely casual despite the wheeze at his throat. “Can I not enter my own home?”
Orion pressed harder. His older brother still didn’t look threatened, though his face did turn red with effort.
“This is not your home anymore.”
Not since Oliver defected to the Communists. Not since the April 12 Purge four years ago, when the Nationalists turned on the Communists and kicked them out of the Kuomintang party through mass slaughter, throwing the country into civil war.
“Ease up,” Oliver managed. “When did you start using your fists instead of your words?”
“When did you start getting so foolish?” Orion returned. “Walking back here knowing what would happen if you were caught.”
“Oh, please.” Even while he was being held down, Oliver sounded so confident and assured. He had always been like this. There was little that the eldest son of a Nationalist general could not demand, and he had grown up with his requests granted at the click of his fingers. “Let’s not bring politics into our family—”
Orion reached into his jacket, then jammed his pistol into his brother’s temple.
“You brought politics into our family. You drew division lines in our family.”
“You could have joined me. I asked you to come too. I never wanted to leave you or Phoebe behind.”
Orion’s finger twitched on the trigger. It would be so easy to pull it. Shanghai had become entirely hostile to Communist activity: no known member could walk the streets without being hauled in, either to be immediately executed or tortured for information and then executed. He would only be hurrying along Oliver’s ultimate fate.
Oliver eyed the pistol. There was no fear in his eyes, only mild exasperation.
“Put the gun down, dìdì. I know you’re not going to shoot.”
“Qù nǐ de,” Orion spat. He was the aggressor, and yet his heart was pounding with terror. As if he had been the one to get caught sneaking somewhere he wasn’t allowed to be. “Did they send you to gather information? Kill me?”
Oliver sighed, trying to crane his neck back from the forceful grip that Orion had on his collar, putting wrinkles into the fabric. He was in a Western suit, which meant he was undercover, dressed in pretense of the elite he used to be instead of the politics he believed in now.
“I’ve quite literally run into you in the field before,” Oliver replied plainly. “Wouldn’t we have come after you sooner if we wanted you dead?”
Unwittingly, Orion’s eyes flickered up to the library walkway, where he had said goodbye to his brother just before Oliver’s defection. Civil war had yet to entirely break out back then. It was coming, and everyone in the city knew it, but they were resolute to pretend until it could not be ignored any further. That night, Oliver had made a mess of the books in his search for a journal, claiming that the reason their mother had left was because their father was a national traitor—that General Hong was hanjian, that he did not have the right loyalties.
“He has been cleared,” Orion had insisted, holding his hands out, frantic to catch the books his brother was tossing. “Oliver, please—”
“Do you believe it? I do not.” Oliver hadn’t been able to find what he was looking for. He had made up his mind already anyway, and when Oliver made up his mind, there was no changing it. “I’m leaving. You have the same choice.”
“I would never,” Orion replied, barely able to get the words out.
Oliver whirled around. “You can’t keep doing this. You can’t keep trying to fix our father’s mistakes.”
“That’s not what I’m doing—”
“It is. Of course it is! Joining the Kuomintang? Training as their operative? You don’t have any interest in any of that. You’re only trying to prove a point to them—”
“Stop it,” Orion tried to interrupt. He had been the one to volunteer his services. When the covert branch came to discuss business with his father, he had been the one to follow after the higher-ups and slap his academic transcript on their desks, showing his years abroad and his early graduation from Shanghai’s secondary education academy, demanding a job that suited his background. “You don’t know what you’re talking about—”
“They’re corrupt. You’re going to fall into his same path—”
“I’m not.” Orion snatched the last book right out of Oliver’s hands. “Treason is not inherited. They’ll see. They’ll have to see.”
It was a long moment before Orion realized what he had said. What he had let slip, and what Oliver would have caught on to immediately.
“So you admit it,” Oliver said quietly. “You do think he committed treason.”
Orion stilled. “I didn’t say that.”
There was no point fighting that fight. Oliver was intent on walking out; Orion was stubbornly adamant on staying. When the front door to the house slammed shut that night, it had echoed so loudly that one of the glass droplets on the chandelier detached and pitched to the floor at rapid speed, shattering right in the center of the living room.
Orion tore his attention away from the books, from the shelves that he had spent hours afterward tidying. His father had been accused of taking Japanese money against national interests. His mother had abandoned them without any explanation. His brother had defected to the enemy. Orion had grown up as a careless middle child with nothing on his shoulders, and suddenly within the span of weeks that fateful summer, he was the only tool left to prove to the Nationalists that the Hong family name was worth something.
“You shouldn’t be here,” Orion said. His words were vehement, but he drew his pistol back and released his hold on Oliver’s collar. “If you weren’t my brother, I wouldn’t take my hand off your throat until I had pulled out your tongue with the other.”