Flags of Sin Read Online Free PDF Page B

that they were moving again.
    Jun and
Yu disappeared around a corner, and she found herself wanting to rush forward
to regain sight of them, but she resisted, maintaining her pace, despite the
hammering of her heart in her ears. She rounded the corner and nearly peed, as
four of the Empress Dowager’s personal guard ran toward her. Her eyes darted to
the left, then the right, desperate to find a hiding place, but none was to be
had. And besides, it was too late. They were only paces from her when she first
saw them, and now were almost upon her.
    She
dropped to her knees and bowed, dropping one hand to the filthy stone and
rubbing it in the mud. She raised the hand and rubbed the dirt on the little
one’s face, then she smeared the rest across her own as they came to a halt and
surrounded her.
    “Get
up!” ordered one of them.
    She
stood slowly, keeping her head bowed.
    “What is
your business here?” demanded the man directly in front of her.
    Her
mouth was dry, her tongue like withered reeds. She mumbled.
    “Speak
up, woman!”
    “Do you
have any food for a poor woman and her child?” she asked, her voice barely a
whisper.
    The man
reached forward and grabbed her by the chin, pushing her head up. She caught a
glimpse of Yu further down the street, stopped, but not facing her. The man’s
eyes looked at her in disgust, then down at the baby.
    “You’re
both filthy! As a mother you should be ashamed!”
    She
dropped her head as soon as he let go, and bowed profusely. “Your words are too
true, too true,” she repeated, again in the hoarse whisper.
    “You
disgust me,” he said, spitting at her feet, then stepping around her. “Let’s
go, these aren’t the ones we’re looking for.”
    She
began to breathe a sigh of relief when a hand tapped her on the shoulder and
she nearly screamed. She spun her head around and saw an outstretched hand. It
contained several scarred coins.
    “Take them,
you need them more than I do.”
    She
stretched out her hand, and her heart nearly stopped as she saw how much it
shook. The coins were deposited in her palm, then the soldier closed her hand
around them lest they should fall onto the road.
    “Now
go.”
    She
stood frozen, unable to move. She felt his hand on her shoulder. It squeezed
gently. She looked up. Her jaw dropped as she recognized the young man in front
of her as a soldier she had seen many times in the Empress Dowager’s court.
    He
smiled at her.
    “Go,
Mei, and save our future emperor.”
     

 
     
     
    National Stadium, Beijing, China
    One Week Ago
     
    Chris looked up at the massive structure, his mouth agape. “It’s
incredible!” he exclaimed. He looked down at his much shorter wife, who too was
staring at the combination of glass and metal towering above them. “You can see
why they called it the Bird Cage.”
    Anne-Marie
nodded. “Reminds me of that nest above our door that bird kept trying to build
last year.”
    Chris
chuckled at the memory. “I think I had to clean that out every day for almost a
month. Persistent little bugger.” His experienced eye took in every square inch
of the structure it could manage. An architect himself, he had just finished
his involvement with the Freedom Tower in New York City, and as a reward, he
and his wife decided to fulfill a lifelong dream—visit China.
    It was a
blowout, four week vacation, where he wasn’t skimping on anything. The downturn
hadn’t hit them at all, his work secure due to the project he was on, and
though he felt some sympathy for those actually losing their jobs, he felt little
sympathy for those losing their homes due to having taken on ridiculous
mortgages.
    Think
people! How can you earn forty-k a year and expect to afford a four-hundred-k
home?
    As an
architect, he was always floored at how much square-footage the average American
thought they needed to live comfortably. Every year the average seemed to go
up, the footprint getting larger and larger as each new-home season began.