Twenty-Seven
Twenty-Seven
Harriet was becoming increasingly erratic, between dealing with her mother, the magic and mayhem, and the murders. Not that
she was the only one. Still, I made my way to Devil’s Acre without her. If I was going to pull off this trap, I’d need Rui.
“Rui?” Inside the underground fight club, a bookie in a dirty blue newsboy cap took his eyes off the filthy, bloodied pit
for just a moment to answer me. “I haven’t seen him around here in a while. Seems he’s been busy.”
He spat out something yellow onto the ground as the crowd cheered and demanded blood. If Rui wasn’t here fighting against
men twice his size for a group of rowdy spectators, there was only one other place he could be. Though it was a gamble.
A gamble . I chuckled to myself bitterly as I ran back up the winding stairs and hailed a carriage the moment I was back out into the streets. I never gambled when it came my scheming. I’d previously treated my revenge with the deliberate care of a chef preparing a delicacy. Now, as I arrived at West India Dock Road, I simply hoped Rui could gather enough men to help me pull off my stunt by Friday. I couldn’t let the opportunity pass. Dalton Sass was out of my way, but not without a heavy cost. And now my mind was a torrent of thoughts, images, and blood-curdling screams that made my heart rate feel as if it would never ease. I needed my takedown of McCoskry to be over with, and with as few bodies left behind as possible. Maybe then these accusatory howls would finally cease.
Taking in a deep breath, I entered the Strangers’ Home for Asiatics, Africans and South Sea Islanders. The repatriation center
for Black and Asian sailors always had their arms open, ready to embrace my kind. There was nowhere else I knew I could find
Rui.
“Where is Rui?” I asked several people, but to no avail until a Sri Lankan man in the humble little atrium finally nodded
and guided me up a rickety staircase to the second floor. This floor was filled with bedrooms. Each fit at least four beds,
most of them occupied by tired sailors and others without a home, I imagined. The man stopped by a wooden door in the corner
of the hallway. It was opened just enough to fit an arm through. That’s why I could hear a pair of young men talking in hushed
voices inside the room.
“Thank you,” I said to the man, and after he left I leaned in and listened carefully to Rui’s light laughter peppering the
air.
“This isn’t a laughing matter,” said a deep but delicate voice I didn’t recognize. “We can’t keep him in a place like this.
He needs medical care at a hospital.”
“You mean your hospital in Edinburgh?” It was my first time hearing Rui sound so bratty, like a defiant child. “You really
think they’ll treat a fugitive with such care?”
“Keep your voice down!”
Fugitive? Without making a sound, I inched closer to the open crack in the door.
“And whose fault is it that he’s a fugitive?” The other man spoke in a hushed, conspiratorial tone. “You broke him out of
prison when I told you to wait for the law—”
“Wait for the law to what? You saw how quickly they convicted him. It was a Chinese man’s word against a royal attendant. They saw him and saw a criminal.”
“And you’re doing such a good job of dissuading those prejudices with your choice of lifestyle.”
I finally found my way to the opening and peeked inside the room. I couldn’t see much. There was a bed in the room, but I
could only see the rickety wooden nightstand to its left. Next to the leftmost wall, two men faced off against each other.
One, Rui, his white shirt just barely tucked into his brown overalls. The other was a taller man with a long face I couldn’t
fully see. Between his brown britches, perfectly ironed vest, and carefully coiffed black hair, he was done up as if for a
Sunday visit to church. When Rui’s eyes instinctively slid to the door, I whipped around quickly.
“My choice of lifestyle is what’s paying for his medical support here,” Rui said.
“What little you can give him.”
“And it’ll pay his way back to our family in Guangdong—”
“If he even survives the trip.”
“— which is what he wants .” Rui paused, catching his breath because he’d said everything in one rushed sentence. “It’s what our father wants. Don’t
you care about that anymore?”
Our father. He was talking to his brother. What was his name? Luk Ham. The doctor from Edinburgh...
“I heard you’re being called ‘Rui’ here.” Luk Ham laughed bitterly. “Is it fun for you, Wong Yeu Ham? Will playing criminal
get the treatment and respect our father deserves after everything he’s achieved in life?”
Wong Yeu Ham. Rui’s true name. It sucked the air out of the room. Nobody spoke. Not even I could breathe, the tension was
so thick.
“When we came to England,” Rui continued, “Father made us speak English only. He said it would help us fit in if we sounded like them. And what did fitting in get him? Look at him.” Rui flicked his head toward the bed. “He just barely survived apoplexy. If I’d left him in prison, waiting for the justice system to save him, he’d be dead by now. Bringing him to one of your ‘proper’ institutions will land him back in jail the minute they find out who he is. His achievements never mattered to them. Yours won’t either.”
The brothers were silent for a moment.
“That’s enough,” Luk Ham said with an irritated sigh. “This conversation isn’t going anywhere. I’m staying in London for the
time being. I’ll come back once you’ve come to your senses. I expect a different answer when I do.”
“My answer won’t change,” Rui told him.
“Then our father’s death will be on your hands.”
I slipped into the next room the moment I heard Luk Ham approaching. I just missed him—or rather, he just missed me, stalking
down the staircase with angry steps. I kept the door open a crack so I can see his tall figure descending.
“Madam, is there something you need?” said a man behind me. I jumped a little and turned around. He stayed underneath the
covers of his bed, his light brown skin and shaven head just barely seen over the white sheets. He was one of four sailors
in the room I’d just barged into. Each looked at me with curiosity and confusion.
“Oh, no, nothing at all!” I said a little too loudly, entirely embarrassed.
“Except manners.”
Rui pushed open the door and loomed over me. “Eavesdropping isn’t very ladylike.”
With a sheepish grin, I waved at him before dragging him downstairs.
“I’m only here because I have an idea to take down McCoskry,” I said, still embarrassed, hoping my businesslike demeanor would offset it. “I just need your help.”
We entered the dining hall filled with sailors eating their fill of what the missionaries could procure for them: game and
bread and humble vegetables boiled and soft to eat. Even though there were two men on the other side of our long wooden table
drinking their soup, I doubted anyone could overhear us in this noise. Sailors tended to be quite chatty.
“I need a handful of men belonging to my race who will accept a job for a stunningly immodest fee. And I need them by Friday.”
“Well, you’ve come to the right place. There are quite a few here who’d be happy to help with whatever you need from them—as
long as the price is, as you say, stunningly immodest.” Rui’s attention was elsewhere. He crossed his legs, looking around
the dining hall, then up at the rafters in the ceiling. “Though you would know about immodesty, wouldn’t you?”
His sarcasm was a sharp bite. I bristled. “I didn’t mean to eavesdrop.”
“And yet you did.”
“I was looking for you.” I leaned over, my hands on the table. “I didn’t know I’d find your brother too.”
I paused because Rui’s own problems had only briefly distracted me from my own. Too many voices were arguing in my head. Voices
whose arguments only further blurred the lines between right and wrong. That rage that had been burning in me for years was
under attack by confusing emotions I couldn’t deal with. All because of Wilkes’s murder.
Charles Wilkes wasn’t what I would call a good, kind man. He’d turned himself into an inconvenience in my pursuits. But I’d drawn him into this mess for my own benefit. And when I thought of Wilkes’s wife wailing in tears, I wondered if it was really okay to dismiss him as an “inconvenience.”
Wait. Wilkes...
I stared at Rui for a time, my heartbeat quickening as I considered letting the question at the tip of my tongue slip from
my lips. But now that Rui was in front of me, I couldn’t resist.
“Did you kill him?” I’d asked it so matter-of-factly, it took Rui by surprise. Across the table, Rui watched me with a neutral
expression. “The robed man that interrupted the séance. Was that you?”
Rui didn’t answer.
Checking to make sure the rowdy sailors were too busy playing Shove-Halfpenny to notice us, I leaned in and lowered my voice.
“You have no reason to assassinate the Queen, as far as I know. But you were the one who told me to bring John Brown to court.”
“You want me to help you take down McCoskry on Friday?”
Rui’s voice was surprisingly cold. Unnerved, I sat back in my seat. “Yes.”
“How badly do you want it?”
I bit my lip. In the face of Rui’s chillingly ambiguous expression, I couldn’t help but be honest. “I need this done, Rui,”
I whispered. “I want this done fast.”
“Then stop asking unnecessary questions—especially those that have nothing to do with your goal. Remember, little princess,
all I’m doing for you isn’t for free. It’s a contract between you and me. Do as I please and I’ll do as you please.”
Nothing to do with my goal. I already knew Rui was a murderer. I was a murderer. Whatever the truth was, there was no high ground I had to stand on.
Rui reached across the table and grabbed my wrist in a flash, so quickly my cutting gasp almost sounded like a yell. “Don’t relent now. You’re so close, Sally.”
I studied him, his slender face and high, sharp cheekbones. The passion in his eyes that normally ignited so much passion
in me.
I slipped my hand out of his grip. “You said no more unnecessary questions,” I said. “But here’s one more: Why ‘Rui’? Does
it hold some significance to you?”
Rui sat back and considered my question. “Rui...” As he crossed his legs, an almost-whimsical expression appeared on his
handsome face. “I don’t know. It was the name of a man who used to live here. I figured it was as good as any. You and I both
know how quickly names can change for people like us.”
People like us. Yes, he was right. Sometimes my own names frightened me because each felt meant for someone else. Rui...
Wong Yeu Ham... he must have felt the same way.
I couldn’t stop myself from pressing on. “Why are you helping me?” I asked him, risking drawing his ire. “Does it have to
do with your father?”
Rui looked down at the table. For a moment, I didn’t think he’d answer. “When we cross borders into this country, we are sold
many promises,” he began. “The promise of a good, fair life, in exchange for good, fair work. That if we follow the rules,
the rules will work for us. Has this been your experience, Sally?”
I didn’t answer. Years’ worth of trauma must have curdled my expression because Rui nodded as if I’d spoken a single word.
“Neither has it been mine. I wonder if we’re kindred spirits, Sally.”
He looked almost hopeful. How lonely had he been all these years fighting battles on his own while his father was in prison
and his brother was judging him from afar.
“Your brother thinks differently.” I pulled my wrist from his grip and clasped my fingers together. “He believes in this world.”
“And what do you believe in, Sally?” Rui stood from his seat. “Find that answer, and then come to me.”
Confucius had said something about revenge, overly quoted in moralistic circles. I always hated it. Here, in Strangers’ Home,
I was left alone wondering how many graves I had left to dig.