The Needle had a name. Adeline’s own head hurt now. Everything was catching up to her, but she refused to collapse—or worse, break down—so she merely turned her back on the others and started crushing the white pills into the wood one by one, staring into the mirror at her own eyes. Theywereyellow, like the rings of something molten. Around them the left side of her face was a tapestry of bruises, and her mouth was swollen where the tooth had dislodged. She barely recognized herself. She wanted to rip her eyes out.
“He said he was going to Saigon,” she murmured, remembering suddenly the Needle’s voice floating through her consciousness. Who was goingtoSaigon right now? And he had promised to be back soon. Surely not from all that way. “Does Three Steel do business in Vietnam?”
“I don’t know that kind of thing. Wait!” the mistress exclaimed, as Adeline took a step toward her. Adeline hadn’t even tried anything, but maybe there was something in her damaged face, or flashing eyes, that scared her anyway. “I just know they have a place on the river. Boats come in there.”
“PulauSaigon,” Tian said suddenly.
There were over sixty smaller islands scattered around Singapore’s coasts. Pulau Saigon, however, sat within Singapore itself, a tiny islet in the river between the banks of Robertson Quay. It was mostly industry and warehouses and, at night, opium smokers. More importantly, it was controlled by the Green Eyes—Three Steel’s long-time partners of river lightermen. Until now, Adeline had chased after Three Steel and these pills because of her mother and because of displaced revenge, because she hadn’t had anything else to take it out on, and because Tian had been so willing to sweep her up if she went along. But now it was so personal she could still taste it. Now she wanted to know.
“Tian, we need to go,” Christina said, looking at the grandfather clock nervously.
Tian set her jaw. “We take them,” she said, pulling Christina out of their hostages’ earshot.
Christina’s brows shot up. “We don’t mess with children.”
“We do if his father is trying to kill us, and if he did that to Adeline,” Tian said. “We need leverage, Christina. And I’m willing to bet Fan Ge will stop to listen for a son.”
Christina was a fool if she didn’t see Tian was right. “It’s just bringing them away,” Adeline added. “We won’t hurt them.”
Unless they were given a reason to. It was a reasonable thing to do, Adeline thought, given the circumstances. Their hand had been forced.
As the others escorted Fan Ge’s family out, Tian turned to Adeline and cupped her face, tilting it up again to look her in the irises. Adeline had come to see the world—and herself—more clearly when it was reflected off Tian, and she saw now the silent understanding that they had been dropped into something bigger than they could understand. Hadn’t this been about territory, and protecting themselves and avenging loved ones? Instead they had waded into a current of the gods. Tian was a conduit. She was supposed to be the gate through which that current flowed. Instead she might as well be drowning right alongside the rest of them.
“I feel Lady Butterfly,” Adeline told her. “Like wings in my veins.”
“What did they give you? The drugs?”
“They unlock our power somehow. Looked into my bones.” She wasn’t making the most sense, but now that she was alone with Tian, her body seemed to be giving in to the delirium. “And I saw Hsien.” This seemed imperative to say. The second time they’d dosed her, she had seen Hsien dance past. Tian’s grip on her grew tighter and tighter, and then she let go and turned in a half circle, pressing her knuckles to her mouth. When she faced Adeline again, her eyes were wet.
“We should go. While we have the time.”
“What about the house?”
“Which house?”
“This one.”
“What about it?” Tian found the answer in her face. Tian a few days ago would never have condoned it. Tian here, now, walked back across the room and ripped both curtains off the rail. One spilled with fire as she bunched the fabric in her fist; the other she handed to Adeline.
Adeline took it, lit it, and tossed it.
Tian scooped hot water over Adeline as she scrubbed every inch of her skin red, avoiding only the bruised places that felt raw to the touch. When she’d scoured her body she let Tian wash and gently untangle where dried blood had stuck her hair together. She refused to flinch at water, of all things, but it hurt like a bitch coming anywhere near open wounds. She let Tian also help her dress, and let Tian move her to her bed, and sat there squeezing Tian’s hand tightly enough to cut off her circulation. They’d set that house on fire. She’d never seen anything like it—flames chasing up the walls like splatters of orange paint, eating anything they could catch with unnatural speed. They’d had to leave.
Instead Adeline still rattled with explosive energy as Ah Lang came and did his ministrations. She wouldn’t let him check her blood, even though she was probably still racing with whatever Three Steel had given her. She didn’t want to see blood come out of her right now. So he soothed the bruises and attended to her head, and checked her mouth for the knocked-out molar and declared nothing to be done about it, he couldn’t grow new bone. She ran her tongue over the gap like she had as a kid and wondered what she could get to fill it. Adeline focused on Tian, because she had to focus on something to pull herself forward; if she stopped, she might burn right through herself.
There were too many girls in the house that weren’t usually here. Some who’d been at the raid—Jade, Yue, Lan—and others who’d heard what had happened and were shoring up, or simply getting off the streets. Adeline didn’t want to be gawked at all over again, so she sat in Christina’s room sitting under the tattoo needle again. She moved flames on her fingers and watched how they responded to the new lines going over her forearm. They were waiting for Fan Ge to call Tian back, or for Three Steel to show up here en masse.
Even Fan Ge couldn’t show up with an army on a street in town like this and not attract unwanted police attention. And if Fan Ge did show up, his son would be dead before he could get through enough of the Butterflies to get to him. It was in everyone’s best interest to strike a deal.
That bluff, of course, did actually require them to be able to back it up. It had gone unspoken as they locked the hostages in a room and set girls to take turns guarding them. If anyone had anything to say about Tian’s decision to take captives, they hadn’t said it aloud. The girls did as Tian instructed without protest. Word had been sent to Three Steel joints that they had Fan Ge’s mistress and son and wanted a direct line.
In the meantime, Adeline waited for the jolt of power that should have come with the strengthened ink. Instead, she only had the sensation that she’d been once more contained. Christina watched her warily. “That’s all I want to do for now. You’ve taken something no one else has. I don’t know the guides anymore.”
“This is fine.” Adeline hadn’t stopped the fire. The motions were still comforting, but the fire itself was less than soothing—it wanted to spread. “Thank you.”
“You can sit here for a bit.”
Christina wasn’t gone five minutes before the telephone rang downstairs, though. Adeline’s head snapped up as she sorted through the noises that erupted: calling for Tian, rapid footsteps away, and then returning doubled.
