The Walled City

by Ryan Graudin

  Dai’s hand grips tighter, steadies me. “Tell him Mei Yee is in trouble. He needs to come get her.”

  “That’s all?”

  “It’s enough. It will get him to come.” He crams the money into my jacket pocket. “It will give us the distraction we need to make things right.”

  I feel undone. My head is spinning the way it was that first day in the Suns’ guest suite. The world lurches even when I’m standing still. “And what are you going to do?”

  Dai’s walking again. His arm guides me like an ox pulling a plow. Trash churns under our boots while we make our way to the main street. When we reach the end, Dai lets go of my arm.

  “The best place for me right now is inside that brothel.”

  I don’t think I hear him right, but his hands return to mine. Metal—cold and hard—brushes my skin. Weight falls, sudden, into my fingers. I look down and realize what Dai has given me: his revolver.

  “Keep this for me.” He presses the gun into my palm. Heavy, heavy power in my grasp. “If Fung finds it on me, I’m done.”

  “No! I’m not leaving you here. I promised—”

  Dai shoves the gun harder into my hand, cuts me off. “I know what you promised. And I know what I promised. But there are two of us, Jin Ling. That’s two chances to get your sister out. If we go in there together, that’s screwed; and I’ll be damned if I’m going to let you go in first.”

  “But, Dai—” His name falls out of my throat. “Longwai. He’ll kill you.”

  The older boy keeps talking. Doesn’t miss a beat, “If he does… don’t worry about the ledger. You get your sister out. Get as far away from this city as possible. Don’t look back.”

  That was always the plan. But suddenly it feels like an impossible thing to do by myself. There are no words. I just look at the older boy. My throat is thick and my side hurts. My hands are heavy with his gun. His last protection given to me.

  I’m shaking again. “I—I don’t know how to use it.”

  “Pull the hammer, pull the trigger,” he says sharply. “There are six shots, so save them until you can’t anymore.”

  I don’t want to leave him here. Alone. Without a weapon. I want to stay with him and fight. But my splitting side tells me that’s no longer an option. I have to go. I have to let Dai do the things I can’t.

  “Get your ass back here fast. Osamu’s, too.” He swallows. Looks over my shoulder. Where the entrance to the brothel lies.

  I don’t know if I can do this. But I have to. My fingers close tight around the gun.

  “Remember. Tai Ping Hill. Number sixty-two. Ambassador Osamu.” Dai drills the information deeper into my skull. Not that he needs to. Every word is already there, blazed in challenge and fire. “And take these just in case.”

  He presses the keys to his apartment into my hand and lets go. Pushes me away. “See you soon.”

  I hope he’s right.

  I’m running, even though my side splits and I don’t remember telling my feet to move. The gun is tucked deep in my jacket, slowing me with its impossible weight. Every step is awful. But my boots keep pounding. Through streets and shortcuts. All the way to the Old South Gate.

  MEI YEE

  Half of me expected to be taken to the lounge, made an example of right there and then. I was ready for it—ready for the belt to choke up my arm. Ready for the syringe to slip into my vein and introduce me to an entirely different universe. I was ready for other things, too—the hard nose of a pistol against my head or the dead-thin edge of a knife across my throat. I was ready for it to end.

  The only thing I wasn’t prepared for was Sing’s room.

  Keys shake in Mama-san’s bird-boned hand as she twists the lock, shoves the door open with her hip. Even with all the powder and paint, her face is clear; every horrible emotion she’s ever felt is strung across it like prayer beads. I’ve never seen her like this, not even when Sing was bloodied and broken on the floor.

  I think of that night. Of the snap and the scream when we left her alone with Longwai. Of the bruises she tried so hard to bury with powder and sharp-tongued words. It doesn’t matter that she’s holding those keys. None of them lets her outside. She’s just as trapped as any of us.

  With the open door comes a smell not even incense can mask. Urine and waste and sick. The air is thick with it, clawing into my nose, down my throat. I smell all the days Sing has been here, rotting beneath a single flickering lightbulb.

  The room is bare, stripped of all furniture and decor. The only thing that isn’t walls or floor is a pile of filthy pillows in the corner. Sing’s body—wasted from a fortnight of heroin and little food—melds almost invisible into the poor light and stained fabric. She’s stretched across the floor with a stillness like death.

  Mama-san seems not to notice, her nose long used to the stench. She looks at me and her face hardens. “You stupid girl!”

  I expect questions. Or maybe a slap. But not this. Mama-san is glaring at me, lips pursed and coated with her fiercest shade of paint.

  “You could have gotten out of here. If you’d played it right. You had the ambassador wrapped around your pinkie finger.” She holds up her smallest nail. It’s the same color red as her lips. “You had the chance and you wasted it. Threw it away like it was nothing!”

  “I didn’t do anything.” I flip the switch inside me. The one I use when the ambassador crawls into my bed. The one that makes me feel dead inside and out. “Yin Yu is jealous of me. She’s spreading rumors.”

  There’s no guilt shifting through my veins when I say Yin Yu’s name. Not this time.

  “It doesn’t matter. Don’t you understand? Where there are rumors, there’s hope. And when there’s hope…” Her finely filed scarlet nail points to the heap on the floor. Where skin and bone and pillow stew in what’s left of Sing. “It’s not allowed in a place like this.

  “Stupid,” Mama-san mutters, and shakes her head. She doesn’t even look at me again before she pulls the door shut.

  There’s even less light now. I feel as if I’ve been sealed up inside a tomb.

  Stupid. Mama-san’s word echoes in the new dark. Claws at me with its hints of truth. I never should have told the girls. Never should have expected them to have the same trust in a boy they’d never met…

  A rattling breath rises from the corner, like a wind chime threaded with bones. Now that it’s darker, the pile of pillows has transformed into a crowd of hulking spirits, calling me over. Wanting to devour me the way they’ve swallowed my friend.

  The breathing grows louder, like hundreds of dried leaves tumbling and crunching against one another. One of the pillows lurches, falls on its side as something moves behind it. Then there’s a loud, awful noise.

  Heeeeeeesh…

  “Sing?” I whisper on purpose, because I don’t know if I really want her to hear me. I think of the last time I stood by this door, on the other side. How she threw herself at it like a wild creature.

  But I don’t think she’ll be doing that now. The pillow-demons stay still. There’s only the rasping struggle of Sing’s lungs to let me know she’s there at all. I take a few steps forward, wait for my eyes to adjust.

  She’s whiter than a set of bleached sheets. So much lesser and faded from the girl I knew: a husk. There’s almost nothing left to her. I don’t know if she could stand if she tried.

  But she does move. Her arm reaches out and, even though the movement is slow, I jump back. It’s a weak motion, taking everything she has to grasp out for my foot.

  And the labored breaths turn into words. I have to strain to hear them. “M-m-more…”

  “Sing.” I crouch down, keep my distance. “It’s me. Mei Yee.”

  Her eyes are open, but dull, as if they’re not really seeing anything at all. She stares and stares. Her arm stays still, wrenched and twisted like a spare piece of string. She looks dead. Only her horrible, rattling breath tells me otherwise.

  A shiver takes me, starting first in my neck a
nd dripping down my back like rainwater. I go back to the door and sit, clutching my knees to my chest. My eyes shut. I wish my nose and ears could do the same.

  The shell is gone. The boy is gone. And I’m like a star falling, falling, falling into darkness worse than death.

  DAI

  It was a split-second decision, staying behind. One of those ideas you can barely process while your brain is stringing out cusswords a mile long. I’m standing in the lip of the alley, where the trash thins out into the trample of the wider street. There’s no time for second thoughts, but they’re there anyway, sticking me all over like hot acupuncture needles.

  I have no idea what I’m going to do once I get through those doors. How I’m going to distract Longwai long enough for Osamu to get here. All I know is that Mei Yee’s timetable has suddenly grown a hell of a lot shorter than mine. And I’ve got promises to keep.

  My body feels so much lighter without my gun tucked into my jeans. Like a piece of me is missing. The nautilus shell is still jammed up a sleeve of my sweatshirt. More damning evidence. I kneel down and find an empty bag of dried seaweed bites. The kind Hiro and I used to toss at each other during study sessions. The logo—a cutesy cartoon cat licking its lip—is long faded. No one would bother to pick this up.

  I slip the shell in—shove it to the far edge of the wall. The cellophane wrapper crushes hopelessly under my boot. Crunching against a wreath of shiny, jagged glass. The pieces are as sharp as a surgeon’s scalpel. Perfect for peeling back skin, slicing veins.

  My hand hovers over them, twitching as I weigh the risk.

  I can go in there without a plan, but there’s no way in hell I’m walking in without a weapon.

  I grab the largest fragment of glass, shove it into my front pocket.

  Better not get caught in the alley. My brain’s adrenaline highlights this point. With double underlines and stars in the margins, the way Hiro used to mark up his biology textbooks. I take note (the way I never really did when I was actually studying), slip out into the wider streets, and start walking.

  I’m not as far from the alley mouth as I’d like to be when Fung rounds the corner. For such a hulk of a man, he’s fast. When he sees me, he shifts gears, lurches into double speed. I barely have a chance to flinch before he’s next to me, seizing my hoodie like a dog’s scruff.

  “You,” he grunts. “What are you doing back here?”

  “I was on my way to see Longwai.” I keep my voice level and long, like a ruler. Not the easiest feat when I can see Fung’s gun not-so-subtly strapped against his hip.

  “Yeah?” The gangster’s eyebrow quirks, and the beast on his face moves like the New Year’s dragon dances. The ones that will soon take place in Seng Ngoi’s streets. “Funny thing. He wants to see you, too. You stood up his runs.”

  Shit. The runs. How could I forget? Not that there was much I could do in any case.

  Fung doesn’t let go of my sweatshirt. He tugs me back to the brothel’s yawning door, pausing only to discard our shoes. I feel like a squirming rodent being dragged back to an eagle’s aerie. Waiting to be torn apart by razor talons and beaks.

  The lounge has a few smokers, but Longwai’s couch is empty—just a stretch of threadbare fabric and sagging cushions. Fung pulls me through the smoke. We pass couches and the upturned corners of rugs and even serving girls. I look into their faces, hoping against hope that one of them will be Mei Yee. That the words we heard behind the window were a terrible, unreal illusion.

  But she isn’t there. Not holding a serving tray or behind the zither. She’s not even lurking in the shadows.

  My chest feels like someone’s pumped it full of liquid lead. I see the same pain in the other girls’ faces.

  Fung keeps walking, dragging me through to the hall.

  The east hall.

  We stride past doors full of nameplates, to the end, where stairs curl up. At the bottom step, the gangster releases my sweatshirt, prods me forward with a growl.

  “Up you go.”

  I conquer every step, trying not to think about whether Fung’s got a gun pointed at my back. I think, instead, of how close I am to the book. How freedom has never felt farther away.

  When we reach the top, my pulse is scattered and uneven. Just like Fung’s thick-knuckled knock on the door.

  Longwai isn’t wearing his lounging jacket when he opens the door. He’s dressed like Fung—only smarter. Buttoned-up shirt. A blazer. Slacks. All black. Like a Western businessman preparing to go to a funeral. Except Western businessmen usually don’t wear gold chains around their necks or guns on their belts.

  And I’m really, really hoping there won’t be any funerals today.…

  The leader of the Brotherhood sees me. The knife scar on his face bulges along with his jaw, purple and shiny. This, with his smart dress, makes him look more like a predator than ever before.

  “I thought I asked you to check the alley.” He shoots a sharp look past my shoulder, at Fung.

  “I did, sir,” the guard says quickly. “Found this one skulking nearby.”

  “I didn’t know Hak Nam’s side streets were off-limits.” I try my best to look bewildered.

  “They are if I say so.” There’s no smoke weighing down Longwai’s eyes. No subtle sloth to his movement. If he was a cobra before, now he’s a mongoose. His gaze snakes back to Fung. “Keep searching. Leave the boy here for now. We’re long overdue for a discussion.”

  My hands clench tight against my thighs as Fung walks away, moves back down the stairs. I feel the glass, sharp and pressing through denim.

  Longwai walks away from the door, and the room comes into full view. The first thing I see are the guns and cruel-edged knives. A whole wall of metal and trigger, power and pain staring me in the face. The shard in my pocket is starting to feel like a bad joke.

  I try not to stare at it too long. There are plenty of other things to look at. A large television screen crowned with rabbit ears and tinfoil. A tank full of aquamarine water and tropical fish that stretches across an entire wall. A hefty, lacquered writing desk. The top drawer with its delicate golden lock.

  I’m so, so close. If Mei Yee is right.

  Mei Yee. On my way up the stairs, I’d thought maybe she would be here. But the shadows of this room are empty things. She’s somewhere downstairs, behind one of the many doors.

  Longwai walks to the middle of the room, where a glass-topped table stretches out. Perfect lines of white powder streak across it: albino tiger stripes.

  Every inch of me is alert—fighting fear and the very real sense that I’m prey. Prey in the deepest corners of the beast’s lair. I put on the face I always wore when I was younger and my father decided to chastise me. Aloof, cocked brow. Like nothing in the world could stop me.

  “Trouble?”

  “Nothing that concerns you. Yet.” Longwai stands over the table, and I realize that the glass is really a mirror, shining his own towering height back at him. “I’m more curious about why you missed our last appointment. And the one before that.”

  “My runner got stabbed. I haven’t been able to find a replacement. It’s not easy to find vagrants willing to work with you.”

  “There’s a reason for that.” Longwai’s hands rise up to his belt line, lifting the jacket up with it. His pistol gleams against the aquarium’s tropical light. “You failed to honor our agreement. I’m not the forgiving type.”

  “So I’ve heard.” I feel every ounce of blood in my head as my heart drills it through, beat by beat. But I keep my mask up. Stay cool. Don’t look at the wall of sharp, sharp knives. “But you kill me, and it’s a guarantee that no vagrant will ever run for you again. No matter how good the money is. Survival is the highest law.”

  “You’re a dangerous boy. Clever.” Longwai’s hand pulls away from the weapon, goes up to cradle his hairless chin. “And here I was thinking you were the disposable one.”

  It’s all I can do not to look over at the desk. So close. I’m so, so c
lose. Just feet away from the book. All it would take was a distraction and a swift movement. Bullet or blade to the head.

  But those guns on the wall probably aren’t even loaded. Not like the gun in Longwai’s holster. And even if I did get the book and get downstairs, I don’t know where Mei Yee is. I wouldn’t have time to look for her.

  It’s not the right moment. But what terrifies me is the very real possibility that the right moment will never come. That this is it.

  “I like you, Dai,” the drug lord says, “which is why you have all your appendages intact and a brain without a bullet lodged in it. You’re smart. You work the system. Get things done. I need men like you.”

  Air grows stale in my lungs. I look down at the tabletop mirror. Where the lines of cocaine double, become more than they actually are.

  “I need men like you,” he repeats, “but I also need to know I can trust you. I need to know you have my best interests at heart.”

  “Is this an invitation?” I’m not faking the breathlessness in my voice. Out of all the things I was expecting when I was dragged through this door, an invitation to join the Brotherhood was not among them. Tsang would be peeing his pants right now.

  “It depends on how you want to look at it. Try to see things from my perspective. Do you honestly think I can let you walk away from this operation? After how much you’ve seen? Anyone else would be in a body bag now. But you have guts and brains. I’d hate to let such assets go to waste.”

  “So… I join the Brotherhood or get carved up and shot?”

  “Let’s call it an opportunity.”

  “Well, I am an opportunist.” I try to grin. I try not to think of Hiro and Pat Ying and Jin Ling and Mei Yee and all the other countless lives this man has destroyed. I try not to feel the endless pieces of shrapnel always shredding, always burning in my chest.

  “Of course, there are the formalities before you become an official member. Background checks and oaths and such. And there’s the little matter of your loyalty. All my men must pass a certain test.”