On a woman so sworn your daughter.
“Yes,” Brother White Skull whispered.
Flesh is only flesh, after all.
Brother White Skull shut his eyes, and it looked like shame.
The White Bone god took the tooth of the fruit and sharpened it to a claw. Brother White Skull removed his shirt. He was thickly inked beneath it, with twisting skeletal dragons. The god found the head of one dragon on his arm, dug the claw in, and slashed her conduit from its tail to his shoulder.
Adeline jumped, expecting waterfalls of blood, but the wetness brimmed and did not fall as the god plucked a red string from withinBrother White Skull’s opened arm. Adeline’s head swam. Were sores appearing in the walls? Their time was running short. They could not stay for much longer.
The god hooked the claw onto the string, pulling it taut with tension. Brother White Skull’s face contorted. Blood welled in his nostrils. Around them, the heartbeat was falling out of sync. The thread was so fragile, and the god so ultimate, and Brother White Skull was shaking with the effort of staying on his feet—Tian moved to hold him up, but Adeline caught her arm, sensing they could not interrupt. The pulses tripped over each other as the god’s edge strained against the thread, and blisters bloomed at the god’s back.
The thread snapped. The god shrieked and fled, casting the claw down. Brother White Skull momentarily teetered. Then he fell to his knees.
The vision vanished as he hit the ground. Flesh and bone replaced by wood and incense and water. Adeline gasped at the sudden pain that had exploded in her head and grabbed at Tian, who was similarly panting. They had returned to the temple, its wonderfully solid walls and old sparseness, the salted pool within it.
But Brother White Skull was still on the ground, and he was bleeding badly. It streamed from his nose, and his arm had been opened wrist to shoulder, revealing the gleam of bone. Tian made a horrified noise. Khaw and Christina were already with him; Christina had taken Khaw’s overshirt and was fashioning it rapidly into a sling. “Did it work?” she asked urgently, seeing Tian and Adeline on their feet.
“It will have to do,” Khaw said roughly, and hauled his older brother to his feet, slinging the undamaged arm around his shoulder.
As Christina and Khaw helped Brother White Skull out of the temple, for a moment Tian and Adeline were left alone with the water. “We could,” Adeline began.
“It’s not for us.” Tian’s voice was hoarse. “I don’t think it should be.”
“You’re afraid of her,” Adeline realized, and for the first time, she felt a little doubtful.
Tian looked at her sharply. “You should be.”
They left. When the others weren’t looking, Adeline scorched spots onto the trees, marking the way back.
While Brother White Skull slept off the Needle’s draught, the Butterflies met Khaw and two other White Bones in the living room, poring over maps. They had eaten and drunk—Khaw had sent people out—and now they were identifying all the Three Steel sites they knew of, including the list Elaine’s father had supplied.
“We have to assume Su Han is out of the way,” Khaw said. “But wherever they’re making these pills, we need to find it.”
“One of the industrial districts,” another White Bone guessed. “They’ve invested in Bartley and Kallang, here.”
It was actually a shockingly long list. Fan Ge was evidently serious about legitimizing his business and creating an empire, and he was doing so with land, all the opportunity opening up every day. Whether he had purchased it or an ally had, Three Steel now had some kind of presence in all the fast-booming towns in the island.
They were discussing a futile-sounding plan to stake out all of them when a shout came from the front door, where a White Bone was watching out the window. “Khaw! Car!”
“Are you expecting someone?” Tian said.
Khaw shook his head.
They moved almost in lockstep. By the time Adeline made it outside after them, Khaw was pointing a gun straight down at the white Toyota that had stopped in the driveway. “Get out of the car!”
Slowly, Seetoh Su Han opened the door and stepped out. She was moving awkwardly, and they soon saw why: she was soaked in blood from the waist down. A scarf had been tied over her stomach,but that was soaked through as well. One of her sleeves had been ripped off, revealing an arm of familiar skeletal dragons.
“Kian Yit!” she shouted, unfazed by the gun. “I don’t know how you did it, but you got my attention. Here I am. You might as well have the balls to kill me properly.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIXBONES TRADE BUTTERFLIES
Su Han looked decades older, her skin dull beneath poorly set powder. A large bruise was setting on the right side of her face and Adeline thought she recognized the imprint of those fists. But even haggard and beaten, there was a certain wiliness about her. She had long, pin-straight black hair that fell like a sheet even with the rest of her in disarray, a fringe that parted evenly over a perfectly symmetrical nose and mouth. Half her guts coming out her side apparently couldn’t stop her shouting past the armed group that surrounded her.
“Kian Yit! Don’t hide behind your little brothers!”
“He’s coming,” Khaw said grimly. “Don’t worry.”
