by Jade Lee
“Did you run this place ten years ago?” Zhi-Gang asked, trying to bring Halfy back to the discussion at hand.
“I been here since I was born,” he said as the door opened and a young girl of about sixteen years brought in a tea tray filled with teacups and a bottle of American whiskey. “Samuel thought I had potential and trained me. Now I’m what he calls his right-hand man.”
A lie if there ever was one, but Zhi-Gang liked it when idiots bragged. They always let something key slip. “What about the new girls? Do they come directly to you?”
“Yeah.” The man grinned. He watched as the girl set out the cups and poured the whiskey. Her hands were steady, her expression blank. For a moment, Zhi-Gang wondered if there were a real person inside or not, then Halfy abruptly demonstrated there was: Just as she turned to leave, he snatched her around the waist and pulled her back, hauling her onto his lap. She squeaked in alarm and tried to struggle, but he cuffed her on the head and she abruptly quieted. He hadn’t even hit her hard, but she settled immediately, her eyes going eerily blank. Even her half-shed, shimmering tears seemed to dry up.
“What are you doing?” Zhi-Gang growled. “I can’t drink with a woman sitting there.”
“Aw, she won’t say nothing. See, that’s what I been telling you. I help in training all the girls. Have since I started outweighing them.”
Zhi-Gang winced. “I’m interested in learning about a particular girl,” he began, but Halfy wasn’t paying attention.
“They’re all the same. Just cunts needing to be opened up.” So saying, he hauled the girl’s legs apart.
“You’ll rip the dress,” she murmured—a small protest from a beaten woman.
“We got lots of dresses,” Halfy returned, but he jostled her enough to tug her skirt up all the way, exposing a shaved and rouged bottom.
“I don’t need to see—”
“They do whatever I say after they’re trained. And if they don’t, we got beds with chains. Opium to make ‘em agreeable, and lots of customers who want to help with the initiation.” Then he visibly preened. “But I get to use ‘em early. It’s part of the training. Gotta get used to a white man’s cock. They’re bigger, you know.” He grinned and shoved a thick finger inside the girl. “They usually scream with me.”
Zhi-Gang showed more reaction than the girl. She simply stared at the far wall, her body completely still as Halfy spread her legs even wider. Acid churned in Zhi-Gang’s gut. Even knowing that Halfy was too young to have initiated his sister, he couldn’t stop imagining it. In his mind’s eye, Halfy became the bastard who had touched his sister, who had raped dozens of young and very frightened girls, who continued to abuse them every chance he got. The need to end the persecution burned through his body making his hands clench.
“Stop it,” Zhi-Gang growled. “I don’t enjoy watching.” And when Halfy ignored him, he abruptly leaned forward and hauled on the man’s arm. “You are disgusting,” he spat.
“You’d rather enjoy her yourself? She’s available. I’ll even discount her for you.”
Zhi-Gang didn’t bother commenting. He hauled the girl to her feet and tugged down her skirt. The girl’s eyes fastened on him. Her expression was still blank, but there was an edge of surprise in her eyes.
“Go find Anna,” he snapped. “The white woman I came here with. Tell her where you were born.”
The girl just stared at him, uncomprehending. Zhi-Gang had to physically turn her around and shove her out. Then, slamming the flimsy wood door, he spun back to Halfy. “How will you contact this Samuel?” he demanded. “When can I meet him?”
Halfy shrugged. “He’s a regular here. He’ll hear that I’m back and come to see me. Probably tomorrow night.”
“Really?” Zhi-Gang drawled. “You don’t send a message? He just appears at your door?”
“Yes.” His eyes got a nasty gleam. “I initiated Anna, too,” he said, obviously relishing the memory. “She was smaller then—young and tight. I was young, too, but still big enough to make her scream. A lot.”
Then Halfy leaned forward and grabbed the teacup filled with whiskey, throwing his head back as he drank. It was the last thing he did. Zhi-Gang slammed his knife straight into Halfy’s heart.
Five minutes later, Anna burst through the door. Zhi-Gang was leafing through what passed for the house’s accounts, looking for a mention of his sister. Mrs. Ting had been quite meticulous, and he found a wealth of information on the running of a brothel. It was only when Halfy took over that things had become sloppy.
Zhi-Gang was on his feet, knives at the ready before Anna was more than halfway through the door. She abruptly stopped, her eyes flickering over Halfy’s corpse. “I can’t leave you alone for five minutes, can I?”
He shrugged. “I couldn’t stand the pig anymore.” He glanced down. “I’ll clean up later—though another towel would be useful.” He’d already found a grease-stained rag and a bucket. Between the two, he’d handled most of the blood.
Anna made a sound of disgust, then stepped back outside. She returned a moment later with many thick towels and two thick-armed waiters. “You know what to do?” she asked the men. They nodded, though they stood frozen to the spot, their minds obviously churning.
Zhi-Gang looked up from the accounts. “Spread the word: I’m in charge now.” Then he flicked his gaze to Halfy. “Do your duty, and you will be amply rewarded.”
As he’d guessed, they were merely wondering how Halfy’s death affected their jobs. With the promise of continued employment, they leaped to it. Halfy was removed in record time.
“And tell the girls that we’re closed today,” Zhi-Gang called before they left. “For everyone except special customers.”
They grunted in acknowledgment and were gone, hauling the body between them.
Anna watched the waiters leave, her expression unreadable. Then she nodded as if satisfied. “They’ve done this before. They didn’t even spill any blood.”
Zhi-Gang exhaled, the tight band around his chest releasing with her casual disinterest. “Shanghai brothels are the best and worst in all of China.” He looked at her face. “Now, you don’t mind that I killed—”
“I thank you for it.” She caught his gaze. “You cannot know how he has tortured these women.”
But he did know. He saw it in his nightmares. He sighed and admitted, “It could make things more complicated.”
“I don’t think so. Who’s the ‘special customer’ you’re waiting for? Samuel?”
He nodded, but his attention was suddenly riveted on something else: his sister’s name, written in neat calligraphy, and the date she’d arrived here. Other notations followed, each like an ice pick to his heart. Names with dollar amounts. No less than seventeen men had apparently bought his sister’s “virginity.” And then came a final notation, years later, with an exorbitant number beside it.
“What does this mean?” he asked no one in particular. “What does it mean?”
Anna peered over his shoulder. When he gave her more room, she ran her finger like water down the page. It flowed over the men’s names, the money exchanges, ending on the last dollar amount and two more words.
“Little Pearl,” she read aloud. Then she lifted her gaze to him. “I think she was sold to Little Pearl.”
His mind reeled with fury even as his heartbeat accelerated. After all this time, he finally had proof that his sister was close. That her time of horror might nearly be done.
“Who is this Little Pearl?”
Anna straightened. “That’s what I came to tell you. I’ve been talking to the girls here. They say there’s a teacher, a woman named Little Pearl who instructs whores in expensive techniques. If anyone would know where your sister is, she would.”
He pushed to his feet. “Then we must find Little Pearl.”
“And after we find her, are you going to kill her, too?”
“Very likely,” he growled. The madames were often worse than Halfy, allowing—even pro
moting—the most vicious and depraved acts.
She sighed. “Then let’s wait until the boys get back from dumping Halfy. They can come with us as drivers. I’m too tired to carry a dead body through Shanghai.”
Little Pearl lived in Chinese Shanghai at a Tigress temple, whatever that was. Anna didn’t really care, except that she was a white woman who wasn’t supposed to leave the foreign territories. But Zhi-Gang wouldn’t leave her in the brothel, and so they used the brothel’s carriage. With the right bribes, no soldier would look inside the dark, closed interior, so she ought to be safe. But just in case, Zhi-Gang joined her inside after giving a great many coins to the driver.
“It will take at least a half hour,” he said as he settled beside her.
She nodded, then gasped as the vehicle lurched into motion. He looked at her in surprise.
“You’ve never been in a closed carriage before?”
“Only a couple of times. With Samuel, a long, long time ago.” She shrugged. “The missions all had open carts.”
Zhi-Gang nodded. “The missions didn’t need to transport screaming girls or bags of opium.”
True enough. Anna relaxed back against the overstuffed squabs only to feel her belly tense again. She wasn’t sure why she was so nervous. It was still daylight. The afternoon sun poured in through the lacy curtains. She could see outside if she wanted; the interior was warmer than the cutting wind outside, and Zhi-Gang was here beside her.
She turned to him, seeing him fidget with his knives, shifting them back and forth between his hands. He replaced a blade in its holster only to abruptly whip it out again. She narrowed her eyes. The anxiety she felt wasn’t hers. It came from him.
“Trying to work up your nerve to kill me?” she asked. She’d meant the question as a light tease, but a part of her still worried. He was, after all, still the Enforcer. He had once calmly said that he intended to kill her as soon as it was convenient.
“What?” He jumped slightly, then abruptly slammed his blades away. “No! No. I’m just thinking about…” His voice trailed off, but she had no problem guessing the direction of his thoughts.
“About your sister?”
He nodded, his expression dark.
She hesitated a moment, then decided to make him face the truth. “You know that she is likely dead, don’t you? Or untraceable. That last notation was a long time ago.” The words were cruel, but it would be better if he were prepared for the worst. “We were lucky to learn this much.”
He nodded. He knew. He’d always known, she realized, and yet something drove him to find this girl. Perhaps it was just their family bond—a brother searching for a betrayed sister—but she sensed there was something else behind his actions. Something more personal to Zhi-Gang himself.
“Did you care deeply for her? Were you two very close when she was taken away?”
He shrugged, shaking his head. “I was a year older. I found her irritating in the way of all little girls.” He sighed and pulled out a blade again. “She cried a lot because of her feet. They were bound and hurt her badly.” His gaze lifted off his knife to stare at the darkened wall opposite. “She used to run so fast—faster than me, I think. Or at least that’s what my brothers used to say. That even little Xiao-Mei was faster than I was.”
“But not on bound feet.”
He sighed. “No. Not on bound feet.”
“Then, what happened?” She wanted to keep him talking. She sensed that this was a rare moment for him: a time when he was vulnerable enough to share some of the darkness that ate his soul. She had to learn now, before they saw this Little Pearl, or he would tuck it away again.
“My parents sold her. The slaver showed up in the middle of the night. They dickered over her price and then sold her. She was more valuable because of her feet, you know. Customers like tiny feet, but only the wealthy aristocrats bind their girls.”
“So your family were aristocrats, if poor ones. You needed the money for food?”
He shook his head, his voice growing darker and thicker. “She was hiding under the table. My brothers were asleep, but I heard the slaver come. I crept to our bedroom door and saw her watching from the upper hallway.”
“She watched her parents sell her?” Anna shuddered.
“She screamed. She kicked. She did everything she could to run, but she was just a little girl with bound feet.”
Anna sighed. She could feel the darkness coiling inside Zhi-Gang, knew here was the source of his anger. “You became the Enforcer to stop this from happening—to stop the trade in girls and opium? That’s a good ending, you know. You may have lost a sister, but there are many girls who will live long and happy lives because of you.”
He rounded on her, and the blade of his knife flashed. He wasn’t even holding it, but she saw it in her mind and recoiled. He gripped her shoulders—not painfully, but with all the ancient hurt in his heart.
“Yes!” he snapped. “I became Enforcer because of her. But not how you think.”
“Then tell me,” she shot back. “Tell what makes you kill anyone who trafficks in girls or opium.”
He pushed away from her, his motion shoving her back into the cushions as he turned away. “I became the Enforcer because I am good at killing. Because my first lover was addicted to opium, and I killed her supplier. That had nothing to do with my sister.”
She said nothing, knowing he would continue in his own time, in his own way. But he said nothing, and in the end she leaned forward, stroking her arm across his back. “You cannot think I would revile you for whatever happened, Zhi-Gang. Whatever it is, I have done worse. I am worse.”
He shook his head. “You took the only life you had available to you. I cannot damn you for being tricked by this Samuel, for doing his business when you had little choice between that or starvation.”
She gasped. She had not told him all of that. She had not talked about the temptations Samuel had offered or the threats he used. It was only after years of thought that she’d realized he had likely engineered the theft that expelled her from the mission. He had created the situation that left her destitute but for his beneficence.
She pressed a grateful kiss into Zhi-Gang’s strong shoulder. “So you can forgive me?” she whispered, her heart filled with awe. “What is so awful that you cannot forgive yourself?”
He shuddered. It was a violent motion, but she held on nonetheless. She would not let go of this man now. “Tell me,” she pressed.
“It was my idea!” he bellowed. Then he rounded on her, his entire body clenched with fury. He unleashed it not at her, but at himself, beating his fists down upon his legs as he spoke. “I had a friend. His sisters had been sold, too. Suddenly, his two annoying sisters were gone and he had food and a bright green plot of land to till.”
She nodded. “It was the way of things in Jiangsu until you stopped it. Just a few days ago, you ended that.”
He shook his head. “Too late. Too late. Xiao-Mei was crying. She wanted to see what I was reading. She wanted to play with her doll but couldn’t walk easily to it. She was always there, always wanting. And we barely had enough to feed ourselves. There was no way we could afford the kind of tutor I wanted.” He lifted his head, and she saw tears wet his cheeks.
“You weren’t in Peking then, were you?” she asked.
He shook his head. “We were in Huai’an, but Father knew I was smart. He said with the right schooling I could take the examination. I could become powerful. I could advise the Emperor and be everything he himself wanted to be but was too stupid to achieve.”
“Your father sold your sister. Not you.”
Zhi-Gang growled, the sound like a pestle grinding ice shards. “It was my idea! She was crying—again. I don’t even remember why, but I told her to shut up. That if she didn’t be quiet we’d sell her like my friend’s sisters. I started talking about the new life we’d have from all the money we’d get. I didn’t know my father was listening. I never thought he’d actually do it.�
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“You were a child. You didn’t understand what you were saying.”
His eyes burned fever-bright, his gaze cutting. “Didn’t you hear me? I was smart! I knew exactly how it could be done; I just didn’t think they would.” Tears shimmered in his eyes. “I tried to help her that night. I ran to her, but was thrown aside. He was too big. There was nothing I could do to stop it. And then she was gone. We sold her and used the money to move to Peking, to make friends with the right people and hire the right tutor. Before long, I was best friends with Jing-Li and had the run of the Forbidden City. I played with the Emperor’s son and then we had everything we ever wanted.”
Anna sighed. “They couldn’t have paid that much for her, even if she did have bound feet. And you can’t buy your accomplishments, no matter how much money you have. You worked hard. You studied hard. You—”
“It all began that day. Because of Xiao-Mei. Because she was sold into… into…” He couldn’t finish his sentence, but then again, he didn’t need to. They both knew the short, brutal life of a whore. “I started training with knives as soon as I could. That’s why I use these small ones. I was too young to wield a heavy sword and I wanted to carry them all the time. I was never going to get caught unaware like that again.”
There was nothing for Anna to say, no way to ease Zhi-Gang’s pain. His life had begun when his sister’s had ended. Did that make what he’d done with his life wrong? No. But it didn’t end the guilt. Nor did it ease little Xiao-Mei’s suffering.
“I’m so sorry,” Anna whispered as she wrapped her arms around him. “I am sorry for your sister, sorry your family faced such a choice, and sorry that you bear the burden of supporting a family based on such a horrible thing. It is terrible, Zhi-Gang, but it doesn’t make you irredeemable.”
He didn’t speak for a long time. If he cried, she couldn’t tell, his body was so still. He remained tight and contained in her embrace until finally his body softened. He wrapped his arms around her and held her as tightly as she gripped him.
