Foul Lady Fortune

Fiction | Novel | YA | Published in 2022

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Summary

Background

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Prologue-Chapter 12

Chapters 13-23

Chapters 24-36

Chapter 37-Epilogue

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Tools

Beta

Discussion Questions

Chapters 13-23Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapters 13-17 Summary

Phoebe is outside the Seagreen Press gates, spying on suspicious activity: Three of the company’s employees are loading boxes into a car. Silas arrives, demanding to know what Phoebe is doing. She draws his attention to the covert activity but agrees to call it quits for the day as an amateur spy, at which point Silas consents to drive her home. On their way, they come across the investigation scene of another poisoning. Phoebe sees a figure in a black coat, who leaves hurriedly and ducks into a car. She notices that the car has the same plates as the one she was surveilling at the press office. She and Silas tail the car to see where it’s going.

Meanwhile, Rosalind and Orion arrive home from work. Lao Lao has prepared dinner for them, but Rosalind immediately goes to her bedroom, closes the door, and starts to brew poison for her arsenal. After Orion eats, he joins her and tries to fall asleep at eight o’ clock. Rosalind sends him to sleep on the couch so that she can finish her work in private.

Late that night, Celia is still at the photo shop. She’s checking Communist map coordinates for the district and finds some strange anomalies. Boundaries appear to be missing. She goes out to investigate the discrepancy, and Oliver joins her. As they follow the map’s perimeter, they come to a warehouse. Oliver seems to know something about the place but refuses to confide in Celia. Inside, they find a laboratory and boxes of what might be chemicals. Celia wants to check their contents, but Oliver protests that whoever owns the lab would know that someone was snooping. He advises Celia to redraw her map with the proper boundaries and leave the lab alone.

The next morning at work, Orion tells Rosalind that he has met several more employees. He suggests that they begin socializing with this group after-hours to hear what’s really happening at Seagreen. At the same time, Orion is secretly still trying to figure Rosalind out. He assumes that there’s far more to her story than she told him.

Rosalind leaves to attend a meeting with the company’s boss, Ambassador Deoka. While in his office receiving filing instructions, she notices a box with a shipping label addressed to the area where Celia is currently stationed. After her meeting, Orion informs Rosalind that they’re going to meet some coworkers that night at the Peach Lily Palace. This dance hall is right across the street from the Scarlet Club, where Rosalind once worked as a burlesque dancer. She hopes that none of her former associates in the neighborhood recognize her.

The narrative switches to Communist agent Liza, who lives in an apartment right across the street from the Peach Lily Palace. She has been given a long-term surveillance assignment at Seagreen with no official objective in mind. She knows that a Communist secret has recently been traded to the Japanese and suspects the document may be at Seagreen, but nothing has turned up yet. Looking out the window of her flat, Liza sees Rosalind and Orion walking into the dance hall, so she decides to follow them.

Inside the club, Orion and Rosalind meet up with three coworkers. Shortly afterward, Orion excuses himself to look for someone in the crowd, while Rosalind continues to socialize with the trio. She makes an awkward political comment that arouses suspicion in one of her coworkers. He later corners her alone, threatening to expose her identity. She then lures him into the women’s bathroom, where she poisons him. Now Rosalind is faced with the dilemma of how to dispose of the body when someone walks in.

While these events are transpiring, Orion has spotted his father at one of the gambling tables and goes to confront him. He says that Oliver was searching through the general’s papers. The general seems surprised and has no idea what his son was after. After a brief and fruitless conversation, Orion leaves, regretting the distant relationship he now has with his father.

Meanwhile, Rosalind is standing in the bathroom over a dead body when Liza arrives. The Communist spy offers to help her. She suggests that Rosalind stab the dead man with a hair pin, making it look like he was poisoned by the serial killer. Rosalind agrees. She punctures his elbow to mimic a syringe mark, rinses the blood off her hairpin, and leaves the bathroom while Liza stages the scene.

Chapters 18-23 Summary

Rosalind leaves the washroom and tries to figure out a diversion and an escape route from the club. She ends up in a backstage dressing room where the showgirls change costumes. Recognizing the number that the dancers will perform from her days at the Scarlet Club, she dons a costume and takes the stage. Orion is lounging near the wings and doesn’t recognize her. At an opportune point, when the dancers go out into the audience to solicit tips, Rosalind approaches Orion and demands the gun he’s carrying. She uses it to shoot out the lights above the stage.

In the ensuing confusion, Rosalind drags Orion back with her to the dressing room, where she shoots out the lights and retrieves her own clothing. The couple then heads for the exit with the rest of the panicked patrons. Back at the flat, Orion demands an explanation, but Rosalind refuses to trust him with the whole story.

In another part of town, Nationalist troops are moving through the neighborhood where the photo shop is located. Celia and Oliver follow them to the warehouse, where the soldiers are unloading crates. As they watch this activity, Celia accuses Oliver of keeping secrets. He knows what’s going on in the lab but won’t tell her. Oliver protests that he’s only trying to keep her safe. Celia retorts that he’s taking risks with his own life without considering what his loss might mean to her. Their conversation is interrupted when a bullet comes flying at them through the trees, and they flee the scene.

A few days later, as Rosalind is delivering files at the office, she comes across a room that contains intelligence on Communists. She enlists Liza’s help to search the room for the file about Priest. Rosalind agrees to create a diversion while Liza slips inside. Liza is supposed to give Rosalind a copy of whatever she finds. When the two girls are ready, Rosalind stages a public spat with Orion in the hallway. He plays along, not quite knowing the reason for the drama. After everyone’s attention is diverted, Liza sneaks in and finds the file in question. Afterward, Rosalind and Orion make a big show of reconciling in front of the entire staff.

Hours later, Liza arrives at Rosalind’s desk with a copy of the file. It makes no mention of Priest but says that three Communist agents have infiltrated Nationalist ranks. Their code names are Lion, Gray, and Archer, but their real names aren’t given. Rosalind and Liza take a moment to share a brief conversation about the past. Rosalind was once involved with White Flower member Dimitri Voronin, who was a rival of Liza’s older brother, Roma, for control of the gang. Roma was romantically linked with Rosalind’s cousin Juliette, who was part of the Scarlet Gang. Their Romeo and Juliette romance ended when both died in an explosion. Rosalind blames herself because she thinks she might have averted that tragedy if she’d spoken up in time. Liza bears no malice toward her, but Rosalind can’t forgive herself.

That evening, after work, Rosalind is on her way to report to Dao Feng when she’s attacked. Her assailant steals the secret file and runs away. Rosalind continues to her destination and makes her report to Dao Feng. He’s disappointed that the file didn’t mention Priest, but he registers alarm at the other code names that Rosalind tells him about. Shortly after Rosalind and Dao Feng part ways on the street, she hears her handler shouting for help and races back to find him lying on the ground. He has been poisoned. Rosalind catches a glimpse of his attacker, who appears to be the same person who attacked her.

At the hospital, Orion, Silas, and Phoebe meet Rosalind. The doctors say that Dao Feng is in critical condition and that it will take time for the poison to leave his system. Unable to do anything, the others go home. At the apartment, Orion and Rosalind speculate about a new handler being assigned to their mission until Dao Feng recovers.

Orion notices the torn sleeve of Rosalind’s blouse, a result of the attack. When he goes to find a bandage, she quickly cuts her arm so that he won’t realize her wound has already closed over. Although he doesn’t suspect her miraculous healing powers, he gets a glimpse of scars on her back. She discloses that her family beat her severely many years earlier for betraying them. Rosalind doesn’t mention that the beating was because she wouldn’t reveal Dimitri’s identity to her Scarlet Gang family. Orion seems genuinely concerned about her. Rosalind feels sympathetic toward Orion in his futile attempt to keep his crumbling family together. Elsewhere that night, covert operatives are discussing the attack on Dao Feng. The speakers deny that an attack was ordered or carried out by the chemical killer that evening.

Chapters 13-23 Analysis

This segment deepens the novel’s exploration of the theme Shifting Personas and Authentic Identity. While the major characters all wear masks to cover their true intentions, those masks slip as personal alliances form. For example, Celia is biologically male but identifies as female and wears a ribbon around her neck to hide her Adam’s apple: “It […] prevented hateful strangers from trying to tell her whether […] she could be a woman […] it was only unfortunate that others […] had certain ideas about what she needed to look like” (146). To his credit, Oliver is fully aware of her disguise and accepts her as she is.

Unfortunately, Oliver wears a disguise of his own that doesn’t become apparent until the two investigate a nearby warehouse. As revealed much later in the novel, this is the lab where Lady Hong is conducting experiments on her super-soldier serum. Her son knows about her activities but refuses to confide this secret to Celia. Celia is sensitive to his deception all the same. As spies, they respect the necessity of keeping secrets, even from one another, but she knows his “tells”—quirks of behavior—when he keeps secrets from her. She wonders what he’s hiding about this place. The two agents are falling in love, which means that they’re revealing their genuine identities to one another bit by bit. However, they continue to wear personas to prevent fully disclosing the truth. Celia makes a telling comment about the degree to which Oliver has let his persona slip while in her presence:

He could hide it from the others. He could boss them around and let them believe in a certain level of cruelty. But Celia knew better. And she supposed she only knew better because he let her in, because he let those real flashes slip through, aware that there was the possibility she might use it against him and risking it anyway (203).

To some extent, the same process of discovery is unfolding in Rosalind and Orion’s relationship. He initially views her as a pretty agent but nothing more. She sees him as a vacuous playboy. In this segment, they gradually develop respect for one another. He’s shocked by her resourcefulness in planning an escape from the Peach Lily Palace. However, she still isn’t willing to reveal her assassin identity to her partner. The two eventually form an unexpected bond over their unhappy families. Rosalind reveals the scars on her back that resulted from a beating by the Scarlet Gang. Orion confides the emotional scars that he bears because his family is broken and he can’t fix the situation:

“‘I tried to hold on,’ he continued softly. ‘But that only made it fall apart further. Now preservation is all I have left. It’s not a home, not really. It’s an image I’ve trapped under museum glass, put on display for my visitation every so often’” (254).

To some extent, Orion has created a false mask for his family in his mind. It represents his past, and he’d rather contemplate it than the reality that confronts him every day. In the case of both couples, personas give way to disclosure of real identities as love enters the picture.

The third example of this pattern isn’t a romantic link but a pragmatic one. Liza is a Communist spy on a long-term assignment at Seagreen, yet she agrees to collaborate with Rosalind in finding the secret file that was leaked to the Japanese. The two women share a degree of emotional connection. As members of rival gangs, both suffered losses. They understand one another in a way that no one else in the story can. Their differing political allegiance doesn’t represent an ideological polarity: “They were both rather similar [in] their stances toward their respective political factions […] Neither cared about the faction itself, but they took on the burden for the sake of what that faction could provide” (216). As a result, Rosalind and Liza work together as a team throughout much of the story. In this segment, the author suggests that genuine concern is the key to unlocking genuine identity.