“He’s someone I need to protect,” he offered. “He’s the one in trouble, not me. What Grodescu has will do more than just ruin him. It will get him killed. J—Shan Dao has signed his own death warrant going with him. I have to go after them. I have to. That’s all I can say. Please don’t ask me anything more,” he pleaded, wiping at his eyes.
“A-Seng.” She was crying too, tears spilling over like a flooded riverbank. “Someone should go with you.”
“No.”
“Yes,” she insisted. “If you’re bringing a weapon, then it’s dangerous. You’ll be better off with A-Kwan by your side.”
“Do you see my coat?” he asked, planning to get out the door rather than listen.
“Tinseng, let me get A-Kwan. You need—”
“I need you to stop wasting my time!” he yelled, full volume, then paled as she flinched. His nightmare again, only too real; and really, wasn’t it only a matter of time before she looked at him in fear? “Jie—”
“No,” she cut him off, holding up a hand. “You’re not in your right mind. You love this man—please don’t argue. I think I understand. He did this for you, before you could do it for him. And you’re going to waste his sacrifice by getting both of you killed.” Then, incredibly, she took a step toward him. “If you’re going to save him, you have to do your best. Your best, Wu Tinseng.”
Her voice cut through the black mist of his anger with a power no one else on earth, not even Jinzhao, could wield. Suddenly, he was seven, looking down from the rigging of a mast as the world stretched, the infinity contained between his body and the impact, and the pain promised after the fall.
“Tinseng,” she called up to him, just as she had back then when she’d held up her arms and asked him to jump, “You need to take your brother.”
That, after all, was the secret of jumping: What terror could a fall hold when you knew you had someone to catch you?
He slung the bag over his shoulder and walked past her, pausing to kiss her cheek. He avoided her gaze and walked to the door. Only with his hand on the doorknob did he say, “If he isn’t at the gangway in five minutes, I’m leaving without him.”
The train from Barcelona to Paris took eight hours. The drive took a little over ten hours. But Grodescu had a head start and the trains weren’t known to run on time; no matter how efficient the fascists said they were, this was still Spain. If they were lucky, they’d break even. Tinseng wouldn’t consider the alternative.
Cheuk-Kwan bought the tickets for the 6:00 a.m. train, while Tinseng sent telegrams to contacts in Paris, trying to prepare for a rapid response once they arrived. On the gangway, Yukying had promised to bring everyone along behind them. Tinseng couldn’t think about the others right now. He had other problems. Namely—
“Here.” Cheuk-Kwan smacked the ticket against Tinseng’s chest. “So now will you—”
“No.” Tinseng took the ticket and went back to writing in his notebook.
“You’re such a bastard,” Cheuk-Kwan muttered. He was trying to act angry, but Yukying must have said something when she’d fetched him; he couldn’t stop glancing over, worry twisting his frown. Tinseng ignored his glaring as they boarded the train and, once seated, deliberately balled up his coat and rested his head against the window, pretending to go to sleep. Eventually he heard Cheuk-Kwan sigh and lean back in his chair. He gave his brother time to drift off. After fifteen minutes he opened his eyes a crack to check. Cheuk-Kwan was staring right at him.
His brother snorted softly. “What, you think I’d just fall asleep?”
“Kinda, yeah,” Tinseng admitted.
“Well, you’re shit outta luck. Whiskey keeps me awake.”
“I told you you should’ve had champagne.”
They stared at each other, heads both leaning on their chairs. In the dim night lighting of the car, Cheuk-Kwan looked younger. He looked like Tinseng’s favorite version of Cheuk-Kwan, the one who belonged just to Tinseng. The brother in the bed next to his. In the lowest times, sharing one thin blanket on a dirt floor. The rooms had always changed, but Cheuk-Kwan’s quiet huff of a laugh in the dark never had. Tinseng used to live for hearing that laugh. If they’d always suffered the next day from staying up too late, it had always been worth the pain for a glimpse of who Cheuk-Kwan was without eyes on him. Cheuk-Kwan was a different person in the dark. So, Tinseng supposed, was he.
“Hey, Cheuk-Kwan,” he said quietly, “remember when we were nine, when we stayed up all night comparing girls in our class, and you said Ye Luli was the prettiest?”
“I remember your ranking being the work of a fucking lunatic. Didn’t you put Kong Yun near first?”
“I had to! She would’ve beat me up otherwise!”
“How would she have known?”
“How do I know? She just would have. She was scary. She hit me once, I swear!”
Cheuk-Kwan smirked, almost the laugh Tinseng wanted to hear, but it quickly turned sour.
“So, you were lying back then.”
“I wasn’t, she really was mean . . .”
“No, you—about . . . when you said you liked girls.”
Oh. Well, of all the truths Cheuk-Kwan would have to hear today, this would be far from the worst. Tinseng shook his head and grimaced. “No, I like girls too.”
“So . . .” His brother’s brow furrowed. “So, you’re telling me no one is safe from you?”
“Hey!”
“Be quiet, people are trying to sleep. I can’t believe it. I was going to write the Kowloon Kaifong Women’s Association to let them know there was finally some good news for them.”
“Then I’d have to write and inform them you’re still looking for a wife.”
“Fuck you,” Cheuk-Kwan said, but his expression betrayed him. “You’re really the worst.”
“I know,” Tinseng said, smile crooked with too much love. His brother’s adoration was like slipping into sun-warmed water, and despite it all, Tinseng couldn’t help but think, It has to work out. We have to save Jinzhao. What can’t we do, if we’re together?
