All three of them became instantly wary. “When it’s clearer,” Christina said carefully. “The members must choose.”
Adeline held her tongue, understanding she’d stumbled onto treacherous ground. So Pek Munwasn’ther mother’s undisputed successor. She had brushed off Wang, from the coffee shop, when he’d asked about it. So who else, then? Christina, who seemed about equal in age? But no, Christina had been mediating the whole time.Tian, Adeline realized. She’d seen the way the other girls responded to Tian at her mother’s funeral, how they subtly sought her approval and didn’t question when she went off by herself. In a group like this, Adeline understood thatalonewas not an acceptable mode of operation unless you were more than just a member.
It’ll divide us, Tian had said about her going to Jenny’s, like she wasn’t just afraid of undermining her older sister. She said it like she knew she might tip the scales in her own favor—and didn’t want to. But that excited Adeline, although she made an effort not to show that, either. If Tian was an option, then that was where Adeline would cast her cards. If she could find cards to cast.
“They need time,” Tian said diplomatically. “And we coulduse that time—”
“I said no,” Pek Mun said shortly, but Tian wouldn’t stop.
“No one else is going around killing tang ki ko. It’s only becauseof Adeline they didn’t succeed in ending us, and now they’ve killed Bee? They’re up to something. We should press him.”
“We haveno proof. If Three Steel really killed Madam, they would have acted on it the instant we were supposed to lose our fire. They were just as slow as we were.”
“They were biding their time, making sure she really was dead. Fire doesn’t kill as directly as a knife.”
“You don’t think that’s careless?”
“I think that’s arrogant. You didn’t see Bee until after the Sons had her. I won’t go after Fan Ge, fine. But that fucking Steel who attacked her is forfeit.”
“We know who it is?”
“I do. One of the Sons told me. And I know where he hangs out.”
As Pek Mun absorbed this, an egregiously cheerful “Jiak png!” burst from the doorway. Two girls who must have been sent for supper stopped dead with stacks of tingkats on their arms, realizing they’d interrupted something serious.
“Let’s eat,” Tian repeated, forcing her voice louder and more even. She slung her arm around Christina and grabbed the nearest bottle. “For Bee!”
The two errand girls laid out a spread of food. Tian pulled Adeline onto the chair beside her. Adeline wasn’t actually hungry, but allowed herself to be levered, and allowed Christina, on her other side, to force on her some fried wontons and noodles. Tian reached for the sweet and sour pork, and after a pause, deposited the meat into Pek Mun’s bowl. It was received with evident surprise. Tian met Pek Mun’s gaze with a tilted chin and half a shrug. A concession? Adeline thought. No, a peace offering.
But the next piece Tian picked up, she gave to Adeline.
There was a collective pause around the table, brief yet deafening. Maneuvered, Adeline did not attempt to push the fragile suspense and reach for more food herself until Pek Mun flicked herfringe and began eating without comment, freeing the other girls to do the same and move on.
Eventually it was the other girls who returned to the subject of the Three Steel who’d killed Bee. They couldn’t let him get away with it, they should rally everyone they could. All this, Adeline noticed, Pek Mun did not directly refute. Unlike with Adeline’s mother, it seemed even she couldn’t deny Three Steel’s direct involvement here. In this, she had to let the girls’ will lead.
“What if the rest of us lose control of our fire, too?”
“That’s why Adeline’s here,” Tian reminded them. They had stumbled over Adeline’s presence during the conversation, but Tian’s little demonstration earlier had made her otherwise unquestionable.
“Tian, when are we going to go after him?”
From Tian, Christina, and Pek Mun, there was an infinitesimal pause, so subtle Adeline wouldn’t have spotted it if she hadn’t already been watching. “Mun?” Tian said lightly. “What do you think?”
“As soon as we can,” Pek Mun replied, with equal lightness.We, Adeline thought, and was determined to earn it.
CHAPTER EIGHTOIL AND STEEL
It was a street that would be unrecognizable in six years’ time, victim to repossessions, redevelopments, at least one inheritance dispute, and one bad case of termites, but for now all the tenants on either side of the shophouse where the Butterflies lived had been there long enough to understand the nature of the girls that came in and out. They paid requisite fees accordingly to be left alone and even got along quite well with the Butterflies—the seedy hotel two units down brought in cases of a good Thai beer that the housekeeper was willing to pass along under the table, and the assistant cook at the eating house opposite would sometimes give Tian packets of leftover dim sum. There were shops that were open only in the day and establishments that were open only at night, and so the storefronts and windows were checkerboarded no matter what time it was. Adeline was trying to guess which was the Butterflies’ until Tian pointed out a dark window that appeared from the dress forms, wearing outdated cheongsams, to be a run-down tailor’s shop.
At least, a shop was a generous name. The inside barely had space for a counter, squeezed between rickety cabinets stuffed with rolled fabric and papered with faded posters of elegant women.
“Surely no one actually comes here,” Adeline said.
“Sometimes. You’d be surprised. Anyway—it keeps the girls busy.”
“Not you?”
Tian’s teeth were white in the dark. “Wouldyoubelieve I was a seamstress?”
