The Walled City

by Ryan Graudin

  JIN LING

  Years of empty doors and hollow corners. Months of dark and black. Nights of shivering wet and dead rats roasting on a spit. Days of running and stabbing and running and snatching and running.

  It was not for nothing. There’s a moment where I can only stand and stare. Wonder how I ever doubted I would find her.

  The first thing I see is her dress. As red as dragon scales under the streetlamps. Brighter than blood. Her hair is longer now. Braided to her waist. Her face is smoother, sadder. There’s a heaviness in her eyes. A weight on her shoulders that wasn’t there before.

  But she’s still my Mei Yee. Still my beautiful, beautiful sister.

  My sister is a beauty, but the ambassador’s a beast. Full of hot air and smoke. Puffed big and bad for show. For all his bellowing, Osamu reeks of fear. Vagrants know the scent well. The knives honed in on my throat now point at him. Eight strong.

  “I’m a government official and my men are just behind me. If you don’t move, I’ll have them shoot you all on the spot,” the ambassador snarls.

  “He’s lying.” I speak clearly. Loudly. My hand is still tight on Dai’s gun. “It’s just him.”

  The ambassador notices me for the first time. His eyes pop almost out of their sockets. Like a rat skull crushed by a boot. “You! You set this up, didn’t you, you little—”

  My hand comes out of the jacket. It’s not shaking or spinning like the rest of me. The revolver’s barrel points straight at the ambassador’s chest.

  The gun does something eight knives can’t. The ambassador falls silent. His face turns as pink as raw meat. Full of very real fear.

  The revolver stays steady, but all my insides are shaking.

  Do it. Do it. Do it.

  But my finger won’t move. Won’t pull the trigger. I stare at the ambassador’s meaty face, and all I can see is Kuen’s leer. So horrible, blank, and red after what I did to him.

  And just like that, my chance is gone. The ambassador clutches my sister. Hides behind her like the coward he is.

  MEI YEE

  The ambassador is unraveling, like a ball of yarn no one can catch. All the perfectly selected masks he put on for me, for Longwai, have been shucked away like played cards. Now he’s just standing in the cold—the age spots on his face are tinged purple, the way my bruises were—staring at the boy and his gun.

  There’s something brutal, something familiar about the boy with the gun. He’s staring at the ambassador the way Jin Ling used to stare at my father: eyes full of poison, fists full of fight.

  I think of my sister and find myself staring harder at the boy.

  It can’t be.… Not here…

  The ambassador tugs me tight to himself, crushing me into his girth so that it’s my body blocking the bullet’s path. As soon as this happens, the boy’s features change, soften into the face I saw so many nights just by moonlight. When we shared the window together, hunting stars.

  It can’t be.… But it is.

  The sight of my sister is the strength I need. She fills my insides with steel and bravery and the impossible. My freedom, my escape, is right in front of me. And I’m the only one who can seize it.

  The ambassador’s arm is locked around my throat. His hand is just by my shoulder, the tendons cording and taut. I sink my teeth deep, deep beneath his skin.

  He howls and the taste of his blood fills my mouth: all salt and bitterness. His arm yanks away and I rush past the boys and their knives. They don’t pay any attention to me. They close in around the cursing ambassador. I can see the ridged bones around their eye sockets. The knobs of their knuckles, too big around their knives. I think of the stray dogs in my old province. How hunger hollowed out their bones and created fierce, desperate creatures. Beasts that knew no fear.

  My sister grabs me by the hand and starts pulling. We’re running down the street, sliding into a dark alleyway, when the ambassador’s screams start in earnest.

  I’m not sorry.

  Sometimes, when Father’s rage became too unhinged and his hits were murderous instead of battering, we would hide. Jin Ling always led the way: out the door, past the ginkgo tree, into the vast maze of rice field rows. We would dip waist-deep into the water, slink like the snakes that actually lived in those long waves of green.

  I feel like that now. But instead of rice fields, Jin Ling leads the way past walls of slime and over hills of trash. Through gaps I didn’t even notice until she slipped into them, pulling me after her with urgent strength.

  The ambassador’s screams are long gone by the time we finally stop. Jin Ling is breathing hard, much harder than she should be, and sweat drips from the hacked ends of her hair despite the cold. She’s still holding my hand, fingers wrapped tight around my thumb, the way she used to cling to me when she was first learning to walk.

  We stop in a dark, empty corner and look at each other. Wordless. We stand, stuck in the moment. Staring and trying our best to believe.

  “Mei Yee.” She says my name and holds my hand so hard I don’t think she’ll ever let go. “It’s me.”

  After all I’ve been through, all that’s been done to me, I thought I had no more tears left. But the sight of my sister—the sound of her saying my name—is enough to break me. The water wells up, salty and free across my cheeks. “You came for me.”

  Jin Ling doesn’t fit so well in my arms anymore. She’s almost as tall as I am. Her face buries into my shoulder as it did when we were little, but she has to bend over to do it. And I feel her bones more easily, despite the jacket she’s wearing.

  When we finally pull apart and face each other, I study her. Not so many freckles anymore. And she’s grown into her nose. And—

  “Your hair,” I gasp, and laugh through the rest of my tears.

  “I cut it.” She swallows and smiles, but her voice is shaky. “When I first came to find you.”

  “First?”

  “I chased the Reapers’ van when they took you,” Jin Ling explains. “I cut my hair so I could pass as a boy. I’ve been looking for you ever since.”

  I don’t have the words. I look at her—my fierce, fighting little sister—and tuck a strand of her hacked hair behind her ears. The thought of her cutting it all off and coming here to look for me is too much. Impossible, even though she’s here now, saying it.

  But I remember the way Jin Ling made her wishes. How she said I wish we could be together forever with the bite of a tigress. Nothing would be impossible enough to keep her wishes from being fulfilled. Not even the Walled City.

  “How did you find me?” I say this and then stop. Know. I see the answer on my sister’s face, feel it on the insides of my chest where I’m crumbling to pieces.

  My freedom cost so much more than a dying star.

  “Mei Yee…” Jin Ling is looking at me again. “The boy, the one who came up to your window…”

  I shut my eyes. It’s so, so cold, but I can’t even shiver. People only shiver when they remember what it means to be warm.

  “Dai.” I say his name, but it doesn’t help. It doesn’t bring him back to me.

  “Yes,” my sister says. “What happened to him?”

  “Dai.” I say his name again, but the empty space is still there. Jagged-edged and howling, like the hole in my window, letting winter’s chill slip in. I don’t want to say what I’ll say next, because if I do, what I saw will be real and true. But even words unsaid can’t take back two bullets from Longwai’s gun. “Dai’s dead.”

  JIN LING

  My sister’s words are like a knife to the gut. Hot and fast. Nothing but pain. It takes a minute for their truth to sink in. For the burn to start.

  “The ambassador came and accused him of having secrets,” Mei Yee says. Her eyes are closed. Lids fluttering and white like moth wings. “Longwai shot him.”

  Dead. Dai.

  Those two words sound so alike, but I refuse to believe they go together. They don’t fit. I was just with him. In the alley. He looked so
strong. So sure. So red and alive under the light of the window.

  But he knew it was coming. You get your sister out. Get as far away from this city as possible. Don’t look back. He knew I’d have to do this without him.

  Mei Yee breathes out beside me. Her breath sounds like the shudder of dead leaves, the rip of paper. I hear it and remember that she’s wearing nothing against the cold and her silk slippers are in bloody shreds. Dai might be dead, but my sister is alive. And I mean to keep her that way.

  “Here.” I shrug off the jacket. Hand it to her. It’s drenched in my sweat, my blood, but the fabric still smells like lemon and green tea. Like Dai’s house. “We have to go.”

  “Where?” Mei Yee whispers.

  I don’t want to go back to Dai’s apartment. Face the vast, empty grunge of those tiles. The two black marks that will never be erased. But my orange envelope is there and Mei Yee needs good shoes. Proper clothes. And I have a feeling that Chma will be there, waiting. I can’t lose him, too.

  But after that?

  I think of our father’s house. Our mother’s herb garden littered with bottle caps and liquor glass. Hollow windows and doors. I imagine Father leaned against the doorjamb. Waiting. Cheeks redder than the setting sun. Fists curled. And Mother behind him. Always behind him.

  I’m not ready for that fight. Not with a burn in my shoulder. A gun in my hand.

  I don’t know where we’ll go. Somewhere far, far away from here. Somewhere we’ll never, ever have to look back.

  “We’ll figure it out,” I tell her.

  MEI YEE

  Jin Ling leads the way again and I follow, my mind numb. Trying not, not, not to think of Dai and those final, awful moments. What he gave up so I could be running and twisting through these streets behind my sister.

  I’m so busy trying not to think of this when Jin Ling stops, motions for me to be quiet. We’re in a sliver of space. It couldn’t even really be called a proper alleyway with how tightly we’re wedged in here. The cinder block scrapes against my back, my chest. If I breathe too hard, it will crush.

  I want to get out because the stones feel as if they’re suffocating me, but Jin Ling doesn’t move. She stays wedged by the final opening and watches. The tower of free air in front of us is suddenly blocked, crammed full with a man’s face. A dragon inked in savage scarlet.

  Fung.

  My heart stops, but Longwai’s man doesn’t. He passes our gap, dragging something behind him. There’s the awful scrape, scrape of plastic and deadweight against the ground. My throat is lined with vomit, but I stand on my tiptoes, catch a final glimpse of the body bag as it’s jerked past our hiding place.

  I try to swallow back the sick, try to breathe, but the walls won’t let me. Jin Ling slips her hand in mine, squeezes tight. As if she knows that her presence is the only thing holding me together.

  The dragging sound stops too soon. Fung’s grunt creeps into the alley as he lets the bag down, brushes his hands off.

  “This is what comes of crossing the dragon,” he growls at the body before his boots start their scuff back in the direction he came. “Better luck in the next life.”

  Jin Ling and I wait long minutes between the cinder blocks, listening and watching. Finally my sister edges out into the wider street nose-first, like a mouse emerging from its hole. Pulling me out only when she’s sure it’s safe.

  The bag isn’t even two arm’s lengths away, a pile of sad black plastic. I don’t want to look at it, the way it’s shoved into a corner where a door stoop meets a wall. As if it actually contained garbage and not the boy who woke me up. Set me free.

  My sister creeps up to the plastic and kneels down. Her fingers out and touching.

  “Jin Ling—” I don’t know what to say except that I can’t be here. I’d rather remember Dai as the life outside the window. Not as the body in the trash bag, kicked to the curb. “Please.”

  Jin Ling frowns, her fingers digging deeper into the crumpled plastic. She starts tearing. The black splits apart easily under her nails. Like some sick cocoon: no wings, only death.

  I catch a glimpse of skin—as white and hard as a china plate—and look away.

  Jin Ling keeps tearing and the plastic keeps ripping. I keep looking at my bloody slippers, trying to ignore the sick emptiness of my stomach.

  “Mei Yee…” There’s a rustle and the pulling stops. “Look.”

  My eyes stay down, take stock of shredded silk and numb toes. I can’t look up. Don’t make me look up. This hurt—red skin and glass stab—is so much easier to take.

  “I can’t—I can’t see Dai like this,” I whisper.

  My sister swallows. “It’s not him.”

  JIN LING

  Not Dai. I stare at the bagged body. What the gangster just dragged through the streets—it’s more skeleton than girl. Greasy hair. Wasted face. A single scarlet dot between her eyes.

  “Sing,” Mei Yee gasps beside me. “The second shot. It must have been Sing.…”

  I drop the plastic back over the dead girl’s face. Look up at my sister. “What happened? The last time you saw Dai. Where was he?”

  “We—we were in Sing’s room. The ambassador accused Dai of keeping secrets, and Longwai shot him. He fell on the floor and there was blood everywhere. Longwai stepped over him and aimed the gun at his head. The ambassador dragged me away, and I heard another shot and I thought…” Mei Yee folds a hand over her mouth. Stares at the trash bag.

  “The first shot. Where was Dai hit?”

  “I-I don’t know,” she manages. “Somewhere near his chest. It all happened so fast.…”

  I stare at the crinkled black, too. But I’m not thinking about what’s inside it. I’m thinking about my next move. Weeks ago I would’ve run—taken my sister out of the Walled City and never looked back. Part of me—the survivor who’s kept me alive all these years—still wants that. Follow rule number one. Run, run, run. I’ve fought so hard, risked so much to get Mei Yee back. And now she’s here. My work, the reason I came to this place, is finished.

  But I remember the promise I made to Dai, even though he never asked me to make it. I promised to help him get his book. His freedom. As long as he’s alive, that promise still stands.

  Dai saved my life. My sister’s. Now it’s time for us to save him.

  “Dai’s probably still alive. He’s got to be or else that gangster would’ve dragged two bags out.” I look back at Mei Yee. She’s standing still, swallowed whole in Hiro’s jacket. Her cheeks are wet. “And if he is, we have to get him out.”

  I expect her to argue; instead she looks up from the bag to me. Her voice is so strong, so sure. There’s a fire in her words—in her—that was never there before. “I know. How?”

  How. That’s the question. My mind is working. Spinning faster than a weaving loom. Taking all the individual threads and piecing them together. Braiding them into a terrible, delicate tapestry.

  The ledger.

  One more day until New Year’s.

  Mei Yee’s scarlet dress.

  Midnight.

  Eight boys and their knives.

  Dai’s revolver.

  So many pieces. Parts that could snag. Go wrong. The whole thing could unravel at any point. I try not to think of this.

  Instead, I look straight at Mei Yee and tell her, “I have a plan.”

  1 DAY

  DAI

  The room is all dark. The kind of absolute black where you hold your hand to your face and still can’t see jack shit. I’ve got no sense of time. If it’s day or night. How many more hours of this I have to endure before Tsang’s men come busting through to haul my ass off to jail.

  The girls should be long gone by now. I wonder if Jin Ling used the gun I gave her. I really, really hope she shot Osamu—that son of a bitch.

  It’s thoughts like these that hold the pain at bay, keep my mind from snapping. I always used to wonder—in the long nights after the night that changed everything—what it felt like taking
a bullet to the chest. I tried to imagine Hiro’s pain: the hole inside him, letting nothing in, everything out. The fire and ice and numb all pressing down, calling out his final, splitting breath.

  Soul and body cut apart. Forever.

  I don’t have to imagine it anymore. Turns out it’s a hell of a lot worse than I thought. I didn’t feel it at first. Just a heavy push into my right shoulder, my knees crumpling in shock. Then pins and needles and sear. So many pain synapses firing in my brain that I didn’t really care that Longwai was looming over me. Waving death in my face.

  But he didn’t shoot. He didn’t let me bleed out, either. (Who knew Fung was such a talented nurse? A gauze-wielding wonder.) Not so much a mercy as the fact that he wants answers before he stuffs me in a trash bag.

  I’m lucky Longwai decided to start off light—just a few punches to the agonized mess that was my shoulder. He left me in here tied to a chair to “think about my options.”

  Options. With an s. Like I’ve got more than one.

  As long as I stay silent, I stay alive. There’s no way in hell I’m talking, not with just a day left. I want to see this bastard burn as much as Osamu. Hopefully, Tsang and his team will get here before Longwai gets more serious. Wants to carve out an eye or an ear with that infamous, eager knifework of his.

  This thought makes me test my bonds again, but the ropes are still too tight, fat pythons coiled around my wrists.

  But when you’re flustered, like Longwai was, you miss things. Like the piece of glass tucked deep inside my palm. The one I clung to like life, through the gunshot. Through hit after hit after knuckle-ridged hit. I never let it show, kept my fists clenched even when Longwai landed the first punch, listened to me scream.