“I should’ve thought of it sooner,” he said. “I’ll write to him.”

“Write two letters,” Lian said. “Mail takes weeks. Mail gets lost. We need to be sure at least one letter gets through. I’ll take the second letter to your father in Shanghai.”

“Lian, you can’t mean you would go on your own,” he said, taken aback.

“What if your father needs convincing?” she said. “What if I need to plead Meirong’s case with him? This could be the only way to help her. Don’t you see? I have to make sure your father says yes.”

He tried again. “It’s madness for you to travel to Shanghai alone.”

“I have to go anyway,” she said, jumping up. “I need to leave before Wendian carries through with her threats. I’ve been wanting to leave, to find my mother. I’ve saved money, I’ve bought maps. Just write those letters, please, Shao.”

All this time he’d thought of her as the girl he’d guided through the streets of Nanking, silent and helpless. Now she stood, jaw clenched and narrow shoulders pushed back. Defiant and determined. Now he saw the steel in her. She would go on her own if need be to save her friend. To find her mother.

“I want my mother,” she said, and this time a note of longing crept into her voice. Her brown eyes were bleak, but her chin was still defiantly lifted.

He couldn’t let her go alone. “I want to see my mother, too,” he said, getting to his feet. “We’ll go to Shanghai together. The two of us.”

Her face grew radiant and she threw her arms around him, then shrank back quickly, as if startled by her own impulsiveness. He tilted her face to his and she looked up at him, lips parted. The softness of her mouth and the warmth of her quivering body pressed against him stirred something, a yearning that felt familiar. It was nothing like what he’d felt with Jenmei, excited yet uneasy. Jenmei, with her knowing smile as she wound herself around him.

“The two of us,” he repeated. “And Sparrow.”

“WE MUST PLAN for the worst case,” Sparrow said, coming straight to the point. “If Miss Hu is accused of being a spy, then we’ll be accused of helping her escape. We’ll be arrested if caught.”

They were having dinner in the village instead of the mess hall. The noodle shop resounded with customers’ shouts, the serving staff’s responding cries, and in the background, the constant clatter of crockery. Here, they could speak in private.

“I know. Best case, Wendian does nothing,” Shao said. “But we must leave anyway because of Meirong. That makes it a question of when. When is the earliest they would come to arrest Lian? We must get out before then.”