Tian’s jaw set, but Christina was right. That was the tragedy of it. The girls had been brought here for one thing and now, though freed, technically, there weren’t many jobs that would take a girlwith no papers or education or who couldn’t speak their language, except jobs that didn’t need their workers to speak at all. Groups formed around shared tongues, offered blood bonds on the basis of familiar language. Before people had been Chinese, they were Hokkien, Hakka,Teochew nang. “The Raja’s a cranky bitch.”
“But he’s always looking for desperate hands.”
“He won’t take Rosario,” Adeline pointed out. Tian had set the girl down in the back seat of the car. She’d woken briefly again on the way, and Tian had nearly lost her grip before managing to knock her out again.
Tian squeezed Adeline’s hand and glanced at her with a whole conversation they didn’t have time to have. “Mavis, you and Jade take Rosario to Ah Lang. See if he can do anything. Lan, I need you to send a message to Nine Horse. They know how to reach White Bone.”
Lan checked her watch nervously. “Now?”
“Tell my brother—hell, tell Brother White Skull if they can get him—that we have a girl infected with their god’s blood, and that he should hurry up if he wants to see her alive. Oh, and Lan,” Tian added, as Lan started to duck in the back seat with Rosario. “Stop visiting Fan Ge’s mistress. I don’t care if you feel bad for them. They’re not our friends.”
“I haven’t been making friends,” Lan protested.
“I saw you coming out the room. Just don’t do it.”
“Where are we going?” The Filipina who’d spoken earlier, Pilar, had become the de facto liaison, and this she asked quietly to Adeline, who was nearest.
“Thieves’ Market,” Adeline told her. She wondered if she’d looked that guileless, when Tian first brought her to Red Butterfly. It felt like a lifetime ago.
Wartime scarcity had budded Thieves’ Market in the center of town between Jalan Besar and Rochor Canal Road. Thirty years later, the flea tents and blue-and-red tarpaulins sprawled between several streets. Like any other night market, Thieves’ Market still sold bright trinket toys and cotton singlets and rattan stools for the whole household. There were still hawkers tossing woks and pratas and serving bowls of chendol to shoppers indulging in sweet treats. Its popular wares were dirt-cheap appliances and spare parts, and rare objects you had to snatch up before they were gone the next day. If you knew which stalls to visit, however, there were also unmarked potions and powders. Smuggled jade and gold and jewels with no certificate amidst the costume jewelry. Amulets tethered to demons, if you were willing to risk it, and cursed objects, if you would believe it. From the man smoking beside the chendol stall to the cheerful-looking woman folding tablecloths, there were the kinds of services that didn’t run in the classifieds, and the kinds of buyers you couldn’t find at a usual pawn shop. Items whose source you did not ask, and whose bargain you were grateful for.
Christina walked them up to a tarpaulin covered in spare parts, from automobile pieces to smaller metal objects Adeline couldn’t name, and boxes of gears and springs. If you knew to ask, the boxes under the awning behind the tarpaulin concealed different sorts of parts: those for firearms of every kind, and bullets, and a selection of whole pieces, too, with histories attached. Christina’s preferred pearl-inlay pistol claimed a story of drawing blood from some Catholic holy figure in Manila before it had made its way here, to the crooked-nosed seller who gave Christina a gold-toothed beam.
“There’s my saint,” she cooed at Christina’s purse. “You brought the whole flock, har? Can’t be here to buy, then. Pity—I just got another crate in that was left from the ang moh base.”
The British had cleared out the last of their forces earlier that year, but it appeared some of their items had fallen through thecracks and trickled down here. “You came just in time,” the seller continued, musing and testing the air. “I can smell the rain coming; we’ll be packing up before midnight.”
“Almost monsoon season,” Tian remarked.
“At least it’ll wash away the haze.”
The seller whistled for the attention of a young boy, who promptly ran off at the signal. While they waited, Adeline studied the girls from Pulau Saigon standing awkwardly around them. All of different heights and builds and different features, but the magic had left an uncanny familiarity between them, made their beauty brittle. Yesterday had been the last time they took a pill—who knew how many they’d taken before that, or how many it took to make the magic erupt. The effects seemed unpredictable to the individual, much like it was even for the kongsi. It could be that the girls would be completely fine as long as they didn’t take another one. It could be that they didn’t need to worry about the Gunny Sack King anyway, because they’d be dead in fifty hours. However many they’d already taken, they weren’t without effects; people on the street had turned to look at them, and they’d had to keep their heads down.
“Tian,” Christina said abruptly, “I think you should take your own advice. Don’t get friendly with Fan Ge’s mistress.”
Tian gave her an odd look.
“She hasn’t been,” Adeline said. They had visited the woman and her son last night to tell her the deal had been made with Fan Ge, and not in the day since. Adeline would know; she and Tian had barely been a minute apart. Even that single interaction with the woman had been the furthest thing from friendly. She’d exuded such loathing at the news of her impending freedom that even Adeline had felt unsettled.
“Anyway, we’re releasing her tomorrow,” Tian said slowly. “It doesn’t matter who’s friendly or not.”
“No, hang on,” Adeline said. “Why are you saying that, Christina?”
“Alysha and Ning saw her leave the room. They didn’t know how long she’d been there.”
Tian frowned, but before Adeline could catch whatever was starting to form in her expression, the boy returned, nodding at the seller. Christina removed a clip of bills and folded several into the woman’s hand. “That’s extra for you to box me another set of bullets for the saint,” she murmured. “I’ve been using it too much lately.”
The errand runner led the Butterflies through the street and past a pair of bouncers into a snookers den. Jazz was playing off a turntable in the corner while balls clicked and scattered across worn felt tables.
A great deal of the resold goods in Thieves’ Market were acquired by the efforts of the Gunny Sack King and his plentiful band. They moved through homes and offices and stored scores quietly away until the police stopped looking, then put things out on the tarps six to eight months later, suitably laundered. They were not a kongsi, had no god but money and no oaths but what they could spend, but Raja Guni kept several orphans fed. He liked children and young women—people suspected them least.
The King himself was playing a game in a British admiral’s cap and jacket. Weaponry wasn’t the only pilfered item from the decommissioned bases that had become popular. He set down his cue as the Butterflies approached, waving off his female opponent. “Shouldn’t you be busy?” he asked them, without preamble.
“What does that mean?” Tian said flatly.
“Oh.” He shrugged. Admiral’s dressage aside, he looked like the real karung guni men who collected secondhand goods from homes—weathered, on the older side, spindly but not frail, someone who could get around. “Let’s talk, then. Do any of you play?”
He was shifty. Adeline distrusted him instantly.
