Adeline’s mind turned. “There’s a girl who learned to control the body’s heat,” she said slowly. “Create fevers. But she hates Three Steel. She would never help them.”
“Sometimes there are a dozen Needles in the same lineage who don’t share their work with each other. It’s only when circumstances force them that they realize two of them have developed the same practice independently. If one girl can figure it out—what would have stopped anyone else?”
Adeline stared at the Needle, but refused to open Red Butterfly up to any further examination. She turned to Mr. Chew. “The information you promised.”
She still felt a traitorous raw edge of fear, facing Mr. Chew. There was more power in this world than gods. He could very well have thrown her out now that she had upheld his end of the deal, but it seemed he had honor enough. “Not here,” he said.
He took her down the hall to his office instead. This was a room Adeline had never been allowed in. There were certificates on the walls, a large calligraphy piece, and framed pictures of his extended family. Adeline held back another comment as he extracted a sheet of letter paper from the folio on the desk.
“These are all the properties I’ve helped Three Steel manage. I don’t know what he does with them.” He picked up a pen and underlined one of the addresses. Adeline noticed he was wearing two rings—a plain wedding band, and a gold one marked with a star. “But this place is a personal property. Fan Ge keeps something secret there.”
“What kind of secret?”
“That’s all I know. But it’s private and well-guarded. The gang’s big brothers all gather there.”
Refraining from any revealing response, Adeline folded the paper away. “Why are you willing to sell Three Steel out?”
“They’re not what they used to be. They’re grasping for power, but their space is running out. There was a time where if I wanted to do business, I had to have the favor of one gang or another. Now you’re quickly being boxed out of any respectable society. It’s a very simple calculation to me. Idolove my daughter,” he said. “Of course, if you reveal to Three Steel I gave you this information, you’ll find out they’re not the only people I have.”
No, of course not. Because men like him didn’t have to worry about being gutted in the street, or having to sell a daughter to pay debts. The soil within these gates would never taste blood. Adeline took him in—the slight balding at his temple, the mole on his chin, the frayed thread around his collar button—until he shifted in his seat, unnerved. Only then did she say, “Bring the others here.”
Mr. Chew frowned. “What others?”
“Your daughter’sfriends,” Adeline replied, disbelieving once again that she was trying this hard to help the Marias. “The ones who were with her. The ones you also said were dying?”
Siew Min’s parents, who lived closest, brought her over immediately. Mrs. Chew had called them. She had also seen Adeline and recognized her instantly as Elaine’s former friend, but said nothing. Adeline wondered how much she knew of her husband’s business, or of his infidelity. Considered telling her, for a while, but decided against it. For all she knew, Mrs. Chew might start calling her the whore. She was already eyeing Adeline with enough open distrust. Adeline wondered if she was who her husband saw when he visited Desker Road—a better version of her, perhaps—or if his dreams contained no reminder of her at all.
Siew Min wasn’t in as bad of shape as Elaine, but Adeline could sense her own fatigue by the time she had broken Siew Min’s fever. Fire had never demanded energy from her. If anything it had always soothed her, but this was taking and taking, like it knew she wasn’t meant to be able to do it. Still, she didn’t want to let her guard down while she was within the Chews’ gates, with the old Needle watching her closely. When the fever finally subsided, Siew Min’s hand clamped around hers. Adeline looked down to find Siew Min peering up half-consciously, with something there like reverence.
Elaine’s boyfriend Frederick arrived next. Adeline hadn’t meant him when she was thinking of Elaine’s friends, and wasn’t pleased by this development. She contemplated saving her energy for En Yi instead as Frederick’s father helped him onto the Chews’ large velvet sofa. Frederick’s father, Adeline registered, the second minister of something or other. She lurked in the corner quietly, keeping her wrists hidden. She didn’t know how recognizable the butterfly was and didn’t intend to find out.
“You sure about this?” the Second Minister asked Mr. Chew in English. “You know I’m skeptical about TCM… My wife believes in all the traditional healing things, but I don’t know. We were going to check him into Gleneagles if he wasn’t better tomorrow.”
“I’m sure,” Mr. Chew said smoothly. “I’ve worked with Mr. Gan for a long time. I trust his methods. Come, give them space. Let me pour you some whiskey. Just brought from Germany.”
If the Second Minister wondered what Adeline was doing there—if he had even seen her—he did not ask, letting himself be diverted for a stiff drink. Once they were gone, the Needle motioned for Adeline to come back forward. There had already been reluctance at the idea of letting him treat Siew Min and Frederick. There was no telling what the reaction might have been if a teenage girl had been presented instead.
Adeline recognized Frederick from the times he’d picked Elaine up. He really was a prawn, she thought, humoring herself back toenergy, muscled from swimming but vastly unappealing from the neck up.Oh, well, I guess they kiss with their eyes closed.
“What’s so funny?” Master Gan said.
“Nothing.” She again thought about letting Frederick just die, then caught the Needle’s gaze. She sighed, gritted her teeth, and reached out. She did let him have it tougher, just a little bit.
It was strange seeing the Marias again, and Elaine’s boyfriend, too; there had always been some truth to their gossip that she wasn’t like them and now she knew even more how that was and wasn’t hurt by it, but she experienced a small and odd kind of grief for the younger girl she had been, who’d never quite understood why she always seemed to be being a girl wrong compared to everyone else at school.
When the Second Minister came to retrieve his son, he shook Master Gan’s hand profusely. “Maybe I have to reconsider.” Then, to Mr. Chew: “I’m talking with Health and Home Affairs, you know. I suspect there was something unnatural about this illness. All of them got it, at the same time? I want to try to track down the others who were at this revival. And this fellow who was leading it, this Elijah. They managed to find a prison convert in the system who matched the name and description—apparently has old secret society connections. Think it could be some kind of drug. Apparently the secret society branch recently got wind of something new going around.”
“Parliament is working on that new Drugs Act, aren’t you? Maybe you use this as a push,” Mr. Chew said, ushering the Second Minister and Frederick smoothly out to their car.
En Yi had already been admitted into inpatient care. Mr. Chew, seemingly eager to have Adeline out of his house, put her in the Rolls-Royce with Master Gan and a stoic driver roused from the staff quarters. Now the car slid soundlessly along the shifting roadstoward Alexandra Hospital. Adeline had almost forgotten what it was like to move through the city so silently; how quiet the night here could be when it was cushioned beyond the glass.
It was long past visiting hours at the former military hospital, but Mr. Chew had strings to pull here, too. Adeline and Master Gan were let up to see En Yi without even providing identification.
She’d never been to a hospital that she remembered. The air was cloyingly sterile. It was almost enough to cover the terror that stirred in her chest as they walked past the wards. She had learned to recognize when the sensation wasn’t her own, and was instead the latent afterimage of some anguish that the fire liked to draw out as kindling. This particular one had an obvious provenance: massacre. The flame in the back of her mind flickered with wisps of screams and bullets and bayonets. All over, now, though. The people lying in these beds were to be saved.
En Yi’s parents had left her to be monitored overnight. The girl was a motionless lump on the bed, but there was also an armchair and a painting on the wall; the single ward was laid out to be comfortable. Adeline had more recently seen the death beds of Sago Lane laid out shoulder to shoulder, so this suddenly seemed extravagant. The night felt blurry. She’d nearly fallen asleep in the car and even now had to spark her fingers to ground herself. Otherwise she was barely sure how she had gotten here.
En Yi shivered and clawed at the blanket with surprising strength when Adeline tried to draw it back. “I’m trying to help you,” Adeline snapped.
