Chapter Twenty. Madam Butterfly #2
More than that, she felt safe. Clutching onto Rong and Vera’s shoulders and swaying around to the volume turned all the way up, she had the strange idea that she could rest in it.
Occasionally she would catch Tian’s glance across the room and get the hint of a smile in return.
At least once she got a wink before Tian returned to her huddle with Christina and some of the others, loudly trying to make Lesley take the last piece of siew mai.
There were dead girls out there, and ones at the threat of death, who refused to hear it even when Tian had tried to plead with them, only to be thrown out by Madam Aw.
Girls were hurt every day, and had nowhere to go.
But, Adeline thought, weeping-laughing into Rong’s neck at a joke that kept going, all the ones she cared about were here.
They wanted her and she wanted them. She wanted them fiercely and it didn’t scare her.
“Let’s hit the town,” Rong was saying. “Go to every bar that owes us and get properly slammed.”
“Or find some assholes who want to fight,” someone else said. “I could fight someone right now. Let’s go beat some sailor up.”
“Or the stupid Boar boys at the park. They really are pigs. The other day one of them yelled about my tits.”
“They’re not allowed to say that. Only we’re allowed to yell about your massive tits.”
“Let’s go beat them up.”
“Let’s go beat them up. Hey, Tian, we have an idea!”
“We’re not going to fight the Boars.” Tian had no memory of anything that had happened after the last candle went out, but she’d changed nonetheless. Her anchoring tattoo was now permanently red, like Adeline’s mother’s had been. Finally, the proper flow of the goddess had been restored.
“But we want to go scare someone! You can’t be mothering us now that you’re Madam. Where’s your fun?”
“Fight, fight, fight, fight.”
“Kao peh kao bu, drink your damn wine and come back to me in an hour.”
“Fight them in an hour!” They were saying anything now, hopped up on their own egging on. “Punch their teeth, burn off their hair, kick them in the balls—”
“The wine isn’t enough I need to fuck a man up—”
“You just want to fuck a man; we know how you are—”
“You can do both, you know—”
Tian’s chair screeched across the floor, cutting out all breath from humor. Mavis almost tripped over Rong. Silence swallowed the glee abruptly as Tian stood, eyes fixed on the door.
There was no more amusement on her face as she walked rapidly across the room, so abruptly she might have been possessed again. She’d been a little tipsy earlier, but that was gone, too, as she hesitated at the handle, then wrenched it open.
Adeline was the first to chase her out onto the street.
Outside, the headlights of a convoy filled the narrow road. Tian was stiff and predatory as the cars slowed. The tinted windows didn’t long hide who was in them. The first car stopped before them, and the White Man of Chinatown stepped out of it.
Fan Ge had been more covered up at the funeral.
Now, in a short-sleeved shirt open to the chest, it became evident that every inch of his skin was covered in pale metallic ink.
Steel dragons curled around his fingers, across his broad shoulders, rose up his throat, danced around his mouth, followed the curves of his eyes.
The god of war was emblazoned beneath his left shoulder, and the goddess of mercy beneath his right, shrouded in steel clouds.
His chest bore a white eagle. A strike would simply ricochet off him.
From the rest of the convoy emerged Steel after Steel, at least twenty of them, filling the road to box them in.
Behind Fan Ge, in the seat, Adeline caught sight of a stunning woman—not Fan Tai Tai, too old to be a daughter, likely a mistress or escort—before he shifted and blocked her from view.
“Ang Tian. I thought you might do it today. Auspicious, and all that.”
“How did you know where we were?” Tian said tersely.
“Ah, the barber over there owes me a lot of money.”
“He’ll regret that.”
“You should be flattered.” He looked over her, then swept the Butterflies, all of whom had come rapidly to surround each other. “I did think it would be the other one. Where is she?”
“Say your piece.”
Fan Ge shrugged. “You die now or you die in ten days.”
Tian tensed. “Not even an offer for me to swear to you instead?” Her voice was flat. She was concealing her shock well, if she had it, but Adeline caught her alarm nonetheless. Somehow they had thought themselves still beneath Three Steel’s notice, at least while the bigger gangs fought.
“I’m not interested in oaths from little girls.
You are unnatural and your god is an abomination.
Insects should be crushed.” Fan Ge’s gaze fell on Christina, turned mocking, then dropped onto Adeline.
She curled a fist, but Christina clamped her wrist before she could do anything untoward.
His appraisal was less common leering and something more studied.
“You don’t respect the other gods either, if you’re killing them off,” Tian said. Fan Ge’s attention swung back onto her, dismissive. She stood her ground, shoulders a hard-set line.
“The kongsi are weak because we’re divided.
The police carve us up because brothers spend their time fighting petty brawls with each other.
They have no vision. Some of us must have the gall to survive.
If we’re to survive, we must adapt. Sacrifices are always involved.
Those other gods have done nothing for me. Better one than none.”
“Then go unite all the others and leave us.”
“Don’t think I underestimate you. I know exactly what your kind is capable of and I don’t intend to have that running around.
I do things properly. I killed the man who tried to kill you before.
Now this is conduit to conduit. Now I’m being generous.
You have the ten days to get your things in order, and then you die quickly, and your sisters get out of my way.
Or you insist on making it difficult, and you won’t be the only one that ends up dead.
” He paused, then leaned in and murmured something only to her.
Tian went rigid.
Then she flashed a knife.
Fan Ge backhanded her as the blade glanced off the side of his face—she’d been going for the soft of his eyes—and threw up a hand at the volley of guns that had suddenly appeared in his men’s hands.
Tian, bleeding from the corner of her mouth, staggered away with vile loathing on her face.
“You can have your ten days,” she snarled. “It won’t be me that’s dead.”
“I’m a man of honor,” he said. He touched his eyebrow, which bore the tiniest nick where the blade had managed to slip between tattoos. “We can do this the easy way. You know how to contact me, when you decide.”
He got back in the car, wasting no time. Only when his door shut and his car began moving off did the other men do the same, the cars rolling on past as though they had never stopped at all. Tian watched them go.
Adeline reached for her. When they touched, Tian whirled and caught Adeline’s wrist.
Adeline finally saw what Pek Mun must have seen—gold veins breaking up the blacks of Tian’s eyes, and the fractured black shards flickering. Beneath her grip, Adeline’s tattoo began to heat. Then Tian blinked and snatched her hand away.
“Say something,” Adeline said, but Tian couldn’t look at her all of a sudden.
The silence dragged, underscored only by the tinny sounds of the radio still playing inside. It was Christina who finally asked, “Tian. What are you going to do?”
“I…” Tian glanced at her side, as though expecting to see someone there. “I don’t know.”