I roll my eyes, though he isn’t looking at me anymore. “So you do it with hundreds of Seconds watching from upriver?”
“If they’ve gotten as far as our camp, they already know we’re here. When they find my pack, they’ll know who we are. We didn’t really have time to think of a better way to get June out of there alive.”
“How about the gun? Did we leave it out in the clearing?” The Red must have kicked it away from me after he knocked me down.
Howl pulls the weapon from his jacket and slides it across the dirt floor to rest near my open hand. I have no desire to touch the cool metal.
Howl’s voice is wry, laughing at himself. “I can’t shoot the stupid thing anyway,”
June’s eyes rest lightly on the gun, but when she notices me watching her, she returns to staring a hole in the wall.
“Look, I’m sorry I didn’t tell you I had it,” Howl says. “I didn’t know what to expect from you. Whether you had a knife up your sleeve like everyone else. Which you did, actually.” He reaches into his coat pocket, touching what I can only assume is Tai-ge’s knife. “Telling you was on the to-do list for today, after our chat last night.” Howl’s hand goes back into his jacket, fishing around in the inside pockets before coming up with another grenade. He sets it between us, the silvery pattern glinting in the lantern’s dim cast. “This is all that’s left. No more surprises.”
“Right.” June doesn’t look up when I answer, her eyes suspiciously far from the gun. “No more surprises.”
? ? ?
We huddle against the stone walls, waiting like cornered rats. Howl and I take turns keeping watch, but visions of soldiers stumbling into our cave keep the circles under our eyes even when we’re off duty.
June draws a square on the floor, dividing it into smaller and smaller pieces until she has a grid in front of her. Digging into her bag of belongings, she pulls out two handfuls of pebbles and deposits them on the ground, one pile dark, one light. She inches the lantern a little closer and looks up at me.
“Weiqi?” I ask.
A nod.
“Sure, I’ll play.” I scoot closer to the board, relieved to have something to distract me from jumping at every noise that filters back into our hideaway. Weiqi is one of my favorite games, the one thing Mother left me that I’m not ashamed of. I love the weight of the stones in my hands, the way their smooth surfaces feel against my skin. My mother, Aya, and I would study at the board, and she’d show us where the holes were, how to attack, when to give up. Aya and I played often. But even though she was much better than I was, able to see patterns where I could not, I still relished the thoughtfulness of the game.
Mother could trounce both of us, even with only one eye on the board. I only ever beat her once. I crowed about it, refusing to play her again for weeks because I knew I wouldn’t win a second time. We never did play again, because she disappeared.
June pushes the lighter pebbles toward me, carefully arranging her darker ones in a pile and setting one on the makeshift board. Smoothing her hair behind her ears, she doesn’t look up from the piece, waiting for me to make my move.
I place a pebble on the board, watching her more than the game.
June keeps her attention on the stones, rolling a pebble in her fingers across her lips as she thinks, each piece placed in quick, confident movements. Like Aya as she surveyed her kingdom of stones. About five minutes in, June’s mouth curls into a tiny, tight-lipped smile. She looks up and whispers, “Trapped.”
“What?” I look down to the long lines I’ve been making with my pieces to capture territory and realize she’s right. I’m trapped. She pulls all the trapped pieces off the dirt squares, arranging them in a tidy row.
Now I am focused. This little girl can’t beat me.
But within three moves, I’m trapped again. Two more and the game is over. Howl looks over from his post near the door, whistling in appreciation. “Wow. I didn’t know you could lose weiqi that quickly. Remind me not to have you plan any military operations for me.”
“No one believes weiqi has anything to do with battle theory anymore. Besides, I was distracted by your loud mouth-breathing.”
It isn’t true, though. The reason I spent many an hour staring Tai-ge down across a weiqi board was because he was studying ancient war theory. General Hong was convinced the game teaches you how to think correctly. Different battles going on all over the board, drawing in your enemy and trapping them. Blatant attacks. Feints and tricks. Defending territory. It’s all there.
I stand up to stretch, my head brushing the ceiling. “You try, Howl. She’s brutal.”
His pieces pile up in front of June even faster than mine did. “I concede, General June.” Howl gives her an elaborate bow from his seat on the floor.
“My turn again.” I shove him aside and watch carefully as she sets the first piece on the lines. Eyes narrowed, I watch the light pebbles grow from lines to circles, but I can see where she is going this time. Howl cheers when I capture three of her pieces, but June just grows more and more relaxed, shooting me an impish little smile as she corners five of mine.
We are so absorbed in the game that the footsteps from outside don’t register at first. Howl gives a melodramatic groan as more of my pieces slide toward June. “Were you a Hong in a past life? How did you . . .”
“It’s coming from over here.” A female voice. Close.
We all drop to the floor, pebbles scattering.
Howl creeps closer to the bend in the rock that shields us from the door, gun in his hand. June stays frozen on the ground next to me, the overwhelming feeling that our pieces are about to be taken flooding the cave.
The footsteps crunch closer, careful and slow. The snaps of branches under boots sound like bones cracking. “I don’t see anything. Just a bunch of scrub and rocks.”
The voice slinks around me, teasing goose bumps out of the skin on my arms. I’m lying so still that my muscles clench until I feel as though my body is trying to morph into something else. Breathing feels too noisy, but I’m running out of air. It seems as if the edges of my brain are crinkling and expanding.
I startle as a rock hits the inside wall, kicked by those worn boots from outside. Howl creeps closer to the door, crouched and ready.
Silence.
The soldier doesn’t come in. Doesn’t call for reinforcements. Doesn’t leave us a bloody mess in the dust. Her heavy tread fades back into the cold whispers of the forest. Howl inches back toward us. “Gone,” he murmurs.
June’s eyes are wide as she pulls herself up from the ground, leaning against the cold stone in a heap. “You’re loud,” she informs Howl.
“Sorry. I get a little excited about weiqi. I used to play with my father. The whole family would get involved, rooting for one of us.” Howl slides in next to us, our energy spent. “Didn’t realize the sound would carry so far.”
“Somehow I can’t imagine the Chairman playing.” Shock still splinters my voice into a barbed mess. “Wouldn’t everyone lose to him on purpose?” Maybe weiqi is the one bright spot in their family.
Howl blinks, staring at the dirt on his hands instead of answering.
“I played with my father too.” June’s husky voice surprises me. She looks up skittishly, like a spooked deer waiting for the shot to sound. I catch her eye and hold it, waiting.
“He didn’t turn hard, like the others.” Her voice is so quiet I have to strain to hear it, even with the small space between us. “Compulsions . . . He was always sorry.”
She seems so much like my sister.
The thought floats out, unbidden. June is so small and wary, too young to worry so much about dying, but with her history etched in lines across her forehead. I always tried to take care of Aya, even when they separated us at the orphanage. I still wonder, if I’d been there when SS took her over, would I have been able to save her?