I breathe out as they walk away, waiting until the footsteps are gone before tipping the flap up an inch to make sure they’re really gone. There’s a set of boots facing away from me at the end of the alley.
Carefully letting the flap close, I look at the gate for a moment. But then I get up, lurching down the alley until I find a path to a main street. I brush at my coat and pants. Soybean hulls, burned rice, eggshells are all ground into the wool of my borrowed coat.
I wonder if the Watchmen would find the situation funny. Guarding the orphanage doors to keep the Fourth in, but keeping me out instead.
I’ll just have to watch and wait until I can sneak back up. I scrub at the bits of trash and spoiled food decorating my coat, the smell of rot wafting up from the new stains.
No one pays attention to me on the street, my winter-shrouded form only one in the stream of hunchbacked workers shuffling to and fro from the factories. Not wanting to be found by someone actually looking for me, I walk a few streets down toward the market, watching a throng of students lining up to purchase bright red scarves to show support for the army from the safety of an alley. Before I can edge my way into the crowd, a man crashes into me, sending me back into the alleyway.
Pain sears through me, the impact too much even for Da’ard to cloak. I curl up, back to the wall, my arms clutched around my ribs, the world a red haze around me. The man who crashed into me grabs my wrist, hauling me deeper into the dark of the Third Quarter’s maze of back roads.
I scratch at his hand, screams bottled up in my throat as he clamps the other hand down over my mouth. A few people do glance at us through the gaps between buildings, but they just look back down at their feet, too tired from long hours and food rations that don’t quite fill their stomachs to wonder about anything at all. The pain blossoming all through my ribs steals any strength I might have had from my arms and legs, leaving me to sag limply to the ground. The man scoops me up, then strides down the alley, looking both directions before he opens a small wooden doorway and carries me into the darkness waiting inside. Kicking the door shut, he deposits me on something soft and velvety. A light clicks on, and I’m sitting in what looks like an old-world throne, the chair’s upholstery shiny in the sudden light, the wooden arms chipped with age.
Pain hums insistently through my sides, but I refuse to feel it. I ram my elbow into the man’s stomach and run for the door. Locked. I stumble along the walls, frantically pulling aside curtains and looking for a way out, but there is nowhere to go. My stare goes back to the man, bent over and clutching his stomach where he stands between me and the door.
“Stop.” He croaks in a painful whisper, “I want to help you.”
Not one of the curtains has a window behind it. One room with one door that opens out into the street. It makes no sense. The City doesn’t build anything down in the Third Quarter unless it has a practical purpose. To sleep in, to eat in, to work in. But here, there are books—real books, not propaganda pamphlets—lining the walls. An intricately threaded rug covers the center of the floor, the reds and golds woven in and out of each other reminding me of something beautiful, something past.
He coughs, putting a hand over his heart. Catching my eye, he moves his other hand to cover the first, two fingers over his right hand, the rest curled underneath. A sign. Mother’s sign.
CHAPTER 5
WE USED TO SPY TOGETHER. Me; my sister, Aya; and Mother. Sometimes Father, too, all of us hiding secret notes to each other under the fancy silk upholstered chair in the family room, listening at doors to hear the maid’s gossip, me and Aya attempting to sneak into their self-criticism sessions. Father would try to hide the twinkle in his eye as Aya and I fell all over each other laughing when we came back to report to Mother. Just fun and games, though now it seems I should have taken spy games as some sort of warning long before Mother disappeared in a bloody terror. Who else but a traitor would teach her daughters to pass secret messages, to hide in doorways and listen to the Thirds talk for fun? Maybe she was training us, hoping we’d take after her, be part of her network.
Or maybe they were just games. Was this man there, lurking in the background of my childhood, watching us play?
We had lots of hand signals, but Mother made this one up. Two fingers over a closed fist meant danger. To freeze.
“Where did you learn that?” I snap, then immediately wish I had held my tongue. My hat was lost in the scuffle outside, and I find myself with one hand to my cheek, covering my birthmark as if that might somehow negate any connection I have to Jiang Gui-hua.
“Jiang Sev.” The man’s eyes hold mine fast. “I’m sorry I frightened you. There are rumors in the Third Quarter you are responsible for the bomb that destroyed the Aihu Bridge.”
“That I did what? The bomb fell from a plane, for Yuan’s sake. Tai-ge was there. . . .” And Tai-ge told me to stay inside. Not to draw attention to myself and it all would pass. But here I am, sitting with a man who must have anti-City leanings if he’s trying to help a Fourth, and especially a Fourth with my parentage.
The man continues, “On top of that, three different families in this neighborhood have had kids stop responding to Mantis, and you know whom people will blame. If you are recognized outside the orphanage, you might not make it back there alive. It was dumb luck that my informant managed to tell me you’d gotten away before anyone saw you.”
“Your informant? Who are you?” My panicked heartbeat races faster and faster.
“We need to get you out of here.” He folds back the rug to reveal a wooden plank in the stone floor. When he pulls it up, there is just enough room to climb down an iron ladder into darkness.
I have no intention of going down the black hole to Yuan knows where with a man who just dragged me into his own personal counter-Liberation study. There is only one place it could lead for me, and execution does not sound good. “Look. I don’t know who you think you are . . .”
He doesn’t look up. “My name is Yang He-ping. Dr. Yang.”
The name nudges some long-sleeping memory at the back of my mind, but I’m too frightened to pull it out. “I don’t care. I don’t know how you learned that sign or what you have to do with my family or where this stupid tunnel leads. I am not a traitor, whatever my stars say.”
Dr. Yang smooths his salt-and-pepper hair away from his face. Lines crinkle around his brown eyes. I’d guess he’s somewhere around fifty. Despite the three metal stars perched high on his shoulder, his hand is marred by a series of crisscrossing white scars where his hand marks should be, as if the wielder of the knife couldn’t decide where he belonged and gave him five, six, seven marks and hoped he’d fit in somewhere. I finally notice that the crinkles are not only the beginning of his age showing, but part of the smile stretching across his face. “I didn’t ask you to lead a revolution, girl. I just want to help. Though if I hear of any job openings, I’ll let you know.”
“You’ll help me get back into the orphanage? Somehow, without anyone noticing, even though they already know I’m out of my room? How?” I can feel a smile crack through the fear pounding at my head. But it is a giddy, uncontrollable smile. Hysteria. I nod toward the ladder. “Where does this even go?”
“The old City. This City was already hundreds of years old by the time Yuan Zhiwei led our people up here to hide, each generation building over the dead bones of the last. There’s a whole world left over from Before. It’s not a safe place to take a stroll, and the sewers leak through in places, but the Watch doesn’t bother much with patrolling down there, and it’ll get us to the library. No one will look for you there.”