They locked her in a basement room with a glass door, positioned with a view of the underside of the stairway. Lily Kwan only became aware of this after they’d taken the hood off, leaving her in the small space alone by herself. It was cement on three sides. The glass door locked electronically, and was so thick it hardly even vibrated when she pounded her little fist on it.
She was under no illusions about where she was, or who had put her here. The snatch had been quick, the explosion that peeled open the side of their corrugated steel wall so loud it deafened everyone inside. They’d taken Iris first. Her scream had been muffled in Lily’s ears. Lily had grabbed her sister’s hand, but one of the tall masked Lammergeiers separated them and pulled Iris away.
Father, who had been in bed with one of his usual women, staggered out half-naked from his room, pistol in hand, but he was still drunk and it was too dark. His shots went into the ceiling as he tripped. Lily remembered his eyes, wide with terror, even better than she remembered what happened next. Rough hands, a buffet around the head from an open, gloved hand, and then darkness as the black bag went over her head.
She picked herself up from the floor and used her knuckles to push the tears and grime from her eyes. She felt the absence of her twin sister like a missing limb, and wondered where they had taken her, whether she was in the next room over. Whether she was dead.
She wanted to cry some more, but she was too tired, and it wasn’t doing her any good anyway. She couldn’t get her father’s frightened face out of her mind, which was normally as stern as the misty hills of home, but in that moment had looked to her like the panicked livestock they’d been forced to leave behind. That was one of her chief memories of Before, their herd struggling to swim in the rising currents. The lowing of cattle often woke her.
Mother wouldn’t have let them take her, she knew. Mother had been fierce, the empress of their household, determined that they should live, should thrive. That was all before she got sick.
Lily tried to think like her, to make an “inventory of the problem”, as she would have said. She was the accountant for everyone in their village, and she was always saying things like that. Lily was nine years old, and did not know what an inventory was, except that it meant counting, and knowing.
She counted twenty-two square cement blocks in the walls. She counted six smaller blocks that covered some kind of hole that had been left, but she couldn’t get them to budge, no matter how hard she kicked them. On the glass door, she counted ten etched dots lined up across the centre, which reminded her strangely of other doors she’d seen. Like the doctor’s office from home. She wondered how she had remembered that, and wondered if they were all made by the same factory.
There was something different about this one, now that she looked closely at it. There were no hinges. Instead, it was made to slide into the wall. She recalled now the sound of the slight hiss from when they’d brought her in, and the way it had a similar sound as she’d watched them close it, using a thumb panel to lock it.
Before she could examine it too carefully, she heard the sound of multiple sets of boots make their way down the central cement stairwell. Lily couldn’t see them right away, as her view was the underside of the steps, but soon enough she recognized the three uniformed adults. She pushed herself back against the wall.
One she recognized immediately as her cousin David, son of her father’s sister. He wore the black fatigues and vulture skull arm patch of the Lammergeiers, something that surprised her. No one had talked about David after he’d disappeared, and now she knew why. It was dishonour to wear the uniform of the vulture.
Beside him, a tall woman in a black shooting sweater with leather arm and shoulder patches walked forward to the panel. She had dark skin, and her dark, silver-streaked hair was twisted into a bun and pinned at the back of her head. Lily didn’t know her name, but remembered her face. She’d been giving the orders back at the house, pointing, signalling, forcing the others back with their long rifles. She’d been frightening, but calm. She had not let anyone get hurt.
The third she knew by sight. Sergei. Jīn láng. The Golden Wolf. He had many other names, but that was her people’s name for him. Many respected him for his prowess, more feared him for his blood lust and cruelty. He was, their father had said, the last warlord. A living myth.
I’m proud to be stealing from such a man.
He was dressed in the same kind of sweater as the woman, and the black shape of his massive, muscled frame cut a negative out of the already dim light. His blue eyes were the colour of cornflower, but blank and difficult to read. His face was slack and expressionless. That was until he turned it on her. He smiled, just slightly.
It was this development that precluded Lily from trying to escape when they opened the door. There was no getting past that one. She knew what might happen if she got caught. Better to wait and see. If they had brought David, perhaps they weren’t going to hurt her.
Still, when her cousin entered she couldn’t help herself. She ran to him, trying to throw her arms around his middle, feeling the unbidden tears stream down her face as she babbled. She begged him to tell her what happened, where Iris and her father were.
He stopped her with one hand, pushing her back. Then she saw the expression on his face. Contempt. Hate. She hadn’t seen him in a year, but she couldn’t remember him ever looking at her like this.
“David,” she began, using the western name he preferred. “Why—”
“You little bitch,” he said in Mandarin, giving her a shove. “You let them take you? Now they’ll make uncle give back everything. They’ll torture him and everyone else. You’ve ruined us.”
“But Iris—”
“Your sister was stupid too,” he snapped. “Both of you, stupid little princesses, no thought for your family.”
“Why are you saying this?” she screamed, giving him a shove. He paid her back with a slap across the mouth. An auntie slap, mostly for show, but it still hurt and scared her. She sat down hard on the floor.
Out of the corner of her eye she saw the others shift. The woman moved forward, but Sergei held up his hand. He strode into the cell, causing Lily to scoot backwards into the corner, afraid he would also hit her. A slap from him might take off her whole head.
Instead Sergei turned David to face him, and applied a short, sharp punch directly to his nose. Her cousin cried out in pain as his nose fractured with a crack. Lily covered her eyes as blood began to pulse from it. Then she peeked, unable to stop herself.
David staggered, going down to his knees as he held his face, the only sound coming out of his mouth was a thick moan of pain. He tried to get to his feet, to get out of the enclosed space, but Sergei grabbed him by the collar and tossed him bodily into the other corner as effortlessly as though he weighed nothing.
“Stay,” he said, like her cousin was a dog. David reminded her of a dog, the way he obeyed and shivered. The very small, fearful dogs their nai nai had kept in the village.
Lily looked at her disfigured cousin, but he refused to meet her eyes, too busy trying to keep the blood gushing out of his broken nose. She knew then that he was a coward. Whatever he had expected to get for abusing her, it wasn’t this.
Sergei grinned at her, flexing his fingers like he’d just performed a magic trick. Lily was too afraid to smile back. He made a gesture for her to stand. She held to the wall behind her for support, not sure if she could make her shaking legs hold her.
“You speak English,” the Jīn láng said, though his own English was strange, his Ls mildly rounded.
Slowly, she nodded.
“Tell me your name.”
She had to work to remember, and it took her some effort to give sound to the whisper.
“Lily.”
“Do you know the word okhrana, Lily?”
She had heard the word before, but now that she thought about it, she wasn’t exactly sure what it meant. Soldiers, she thought. The fearsome ones.
“I heard it,” she said uncertainly.
He indicated the stern woman standing at the door. “Lieutenant-Commander al-Sayed is part of the Okhrannik Sergeya. My personal force. They are my most trusted fighters, most loyal, and most respected. The very best.”
“Oh,” Lily said, unsure of what she was supposed to say to any of this, though he seemed to want her understanding.
His smile was indulgent. “I want you to be part of my Okhrana. That’s why I brought you here.”
Now Lily blinked. Sergei wanted her to fight for him? She was a child, with dreams of one day living out on the pretty yachts that anchored beyond the minefield. She’d have all the best food, and books to read. She would live next to her sister’s yacht, far away from the filthy Cradle, and the killing, and most of all the men who did harm to children. And this man, who did the most harm. Why did he need little children in his army?
“Don’t worry. We’ll teach you everything,” he said as he straightened, then turned to David, who was still whimpering in the corner. “Here is your first lesson. What do you think happens to men who strike members of my Okhrana?”
Hearing these words, David’s agonized face turned white under the blood, and his black eyes went round. He looked at Lily, silently begging her for her help. But Lily wasn’t stupid. Men lied all the time. Her mother had taught her that. Her father made an entire business of it, skimming from every shipment that came through their district. She wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for men’s lies. She turned her eyes away and looked up at Sergei, who was now watching her cousin with focused intensity.
“They don’t get any dinner,” she suggested.
“That’s a very good idea, Lily,” Sergei agreed. “I think you should get his dinner from now on. And his room, too. It’s much more comfortable than this one.”
Instinctively, Lily looked to the woman, Nasrin. She was fierce, but there was something in her, an undercurrent of hard warmth that made Lily think of her mother. She liked the idea of a comfortable room, but Sergei frightened her. Not because of his violence, which she knew plenty about. It was his kindness that unsettled her.
The woman beckoned to her. Lily hesitated for one more moment, then ran to her, passing Sergei as she darted out of the glass door. Nasrin took her hand.
“Commander,” David whimpered behind her, then in Mandarin.“Lily, please don’t let him —”
Lily did not look back. Sergei gazed down at him in contempt, then left the little room, the glass door sliding behind him.
“How was that?” he asked the woman as though he wanted her opinion on his performance.
“Good,” Nasrin said, though her tone seemed bored. “You’re learning.”
Sergei glanced around at Lily. “Remember what I said.”
Lily nodded, keeping her eyes down. When she looked up, Sergei was already on his way up the stairs. She and Nasrin remained at the foot of the steps for a moment, both of them looking back at the cell.
David pounded on the door, his hands leaving bloody prints, but he was difficult to hear through the thick plate. Lily decided not to care. It wasn’t that she wanted this, but she had learned quickly how to protect herself. Maybe she could help him later, but it would be good for him to feel bad about his decisions.
Having worked it out in her mind, she felt confident enough to look up to Nasrin and ask the question that was hovering over her.
“Where is my sister?”
“You’ll see her soon,” Nasrin promised in that low, strong voice, squeezing her hand. “Let’s go.”