Chapter Twenty-Eight. The River’s Green Eyes
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
THE RIVER’S GREEN EYES
The river tide had receded enough to reveal the stinking mud flats under the boats cluttering the banks, some abandoned entirely by their owners and rotting, too.
On land, the warehouses were slowly whittling away, even as shiny new high-rises crowned them on the horizon.
It seemed inevitable they would eventually be abandoned entirely for the bigger ports opening on the coasts.
Until then, smaller boats still sailed in here, and regional deliveries were smuggled through the warehouses.
Clifford Pier downstream was also infamous for illicit cargo, but ever since the police had set up shop right next to it, activity had once more been diverted up the river, where speedboats couldn’t catch you and you could vanish right into the city.
Pulau Saigon rusted at a bend in this polluted stream.
Where it had once been its own islet, river drainage and landfill earlier that year had stitched one side of it to the mainland.
The other end was connected to the riverbank by Butcher Bridge, which the six Butterflies would use to cross.
It was a tiny island where few people lived anymore, mostly just attap sheds that stored charcoal, rice, and gutta-percha, and the small shops that catered to godown workers in the bigger warehouses were closed for the day.
The docks depended mainly on the Green and Red Eyes’ dozens of twakows—wide, flat crafts that carried cargo from big ships in the open water through the shallower river.
Tonight, the Butterflies were looking out for a boat with a green bow, with one eye painted on either side of the hull.
Each was ringed with the lighterman’s blood, and when dipped beneath the surface, those eyes moved.
There was, indeed, one of these moored at the Pulau Saigon end of the bridge.
White irises blinking quietly up and down in the slow current.
On the road above it was a car with its doors open, lights on.
The Butterflies had been prepared to leave the second they were sighted by Three Steel, but there was no movement in the car.
Nor was there any movement in the boat. Both seemed deserted.
Tian paused the girls, all of them taking stock. No one had bothered to build streetlights on Pulau Saigon. Over the crossing, except for the light of the abandoned car and the more distant lights of the opposite riverbank, the islet was black.
Adeline twitched. She had lied to Tian about how much she was looking for a fight. She knew it was foolish. She knew they couldn’t jeopardize the agreement they’d made with Fan Ge. And yet she was looking for a reason.
A man tottered from the shadows. They sprang, fire sparking. It almost lit the pure stench of ganja rolling off him. “Hantu,” he hissed. Ghost. He was fetid, gaunt; his streaked eyes flashed over his shoulder, searching the darkness. With a strangled noise, he all but dashed past them.
“Lot of addicts use this place at night,” Jade said warily. Adeline had never interacted closely with her and Lan before the Three Steel house, but in the aftermath of that, everyone who had been there felt bonded beyond blood.
By burning that house down they’d set a fire of a size unseen in Red Butterfly since Bukit Ho Swee.
They had recrossed a line, invading and destroying a home.
It had been exhilarating to realize there would not be any consequences.
Overnight with Fan Ge’s phone call, the mood amongst the girls had shifted from on edge to positively jaunty.
“The Peony owner owes us money,” Ji Yen had said to Tian that morning.
“We’re going to go smash some things up.
” They returned victorious with a bottle of wine and the debt, which they’d gone to spend on roast pork and ice creams. “We should offer the kid some,” Vera had said, and then was bullied for being a wuss.
Tian, Adeline, and Christina were the only ones in a celebratory mood.
Tian because she’d been too close to the consequences to be arrogant.
Christina because she was taking her cues from Tian.
And Adeline because for her, it wasn’t done yet.
The rest of the girls had gawked at her eyes, but they were used to Adeline being strange and hadn’t felt what it had taken to create them, so it was merely a novelty quickly replaced by other distractions.
Meanwhile Adeline still felt like magic was at war inside her if she didn’t occasionally light a fire, remind herself who she was tethered to.
It was why they were here on Pulau Saigon tonight, instead of drinking and playing games at home.
Mavis formed the sixth of the group that crossed the bridge warily. It was just wide enough for a vehicle, and presumably steady enough, but it seemed to creak anyway.
While Tian headed for the car, Adeline felt a swirl of energy from the boat and went farther along down to it. Cautiously, she lit a flame and brought her head low enough to look under the awning.
Three girls were huddled there. Despite their bedraggled clothes, they were all eerily beautiful in the same way: skin like polished mahogany, features delicate, hair like silk, big soft eyes.
It was possible they’d been given something already.
Or it was also possible that there were beautiful girls, everywhere, and there were men whose magic was seeking them all out to take.
“Ma ?ói,” one girl rasped. Vietnamese. Escaping the war, perhaps, from one Saigon to another, only to end up easy prey. She jabbed a shaking finger over Adeline’s shoulder. “Ma ?ói!”
Adeline had no idea what she was saying, but she could tell it wasn’t good.
She thought about trying to mime something, but had no idea what to even ask.
The girl who was talking, who was in the middle and seemed to have huddled the others around her, kicked the stray oar with her foot and pointed ahead. “C? ?y gi?t anh ta!”
She looked furious at not being understood. Still, Adeline did understand pointing. She turned to the bow of the lighter.
There: dark pools of blood on darker boards. Adeline’s eyes followed their path over the side of the boat, which was when she saw the dead man knocking silently against the boat, one bent, torn arm sticking out of the water.
“Tian,” she called. Heart racing, she brought her fire closer.
It was the Green Eye who’d been rowing the boat.
At least she guessed it was, from what was left of the emerald band inked around the forearm.
The skin had been shredded to ribbons, like an animal had gotten to him already.
Tian squatted and ran her fire close enough to see the jagged edges. “That can’t be Three Steel’s work.”
“Tian,” Jade said firmly, “I don’t fuck with ghosts.”
“Bring them over the bridge and stay with them,” Tian told her and Mavis. “And see if you can get that car over, too.”
As they coaxed the girls out of the boat, Tian scanned the islet beyond. There should have been Steels, with the car. But they weren’t here and they weren’t dead, at least that could be seen. So they had run off somewhere. Why? “I don’t fuck with hantu, either,” Christina said. “Just by the way.”
“Well, you’re stuck with me.” Tian shut her eyes as Lan apparently managed to get the car going.
Keys left behind. That was a bad sign. She waited until the car had been stopped on the other side before sweeping the dark again.
Nothing moved, and yet something seemed to shiver.
“I don’t think it’s a ghost, anyway. There’s someone on the island who’s very angry.
” Tian tilted her head. “Something else, too. A place.”
Tian had sharpened since the Blackhill house.
They both had. Adeline’s yellow eyes had not faded; it seemed like a permanent fixture, and with it came a new clarity to her senses like some outer shell of her skin had been removed.
If she concentrated, the pulses of people around her would start becoming evident in their warm beating circulations.
Tian seemed to do it almost unconsciously.
“You still want to do this?” she asked Adeline.
Now, more than ever. Whatever was wrong here, it felt familiar. The heart of the islet called to her, and she could not, despite any better judgment, turn from it.
“That way, then,” Tian decided, indicating a cluster of sheds.
They lit fires in their palms, keeping close. Adeline laced her other fingers into Tian’s, the heat beneath her palm addictive. “What are we looking for?”
“I don’t know yet,” Tian murmured. “There’s someone moving around, that other way. This way there’s … a center of something.”
“We’re not worried about the someone out there?” Christina hissed. Out there could be anywhere, between overgrown sheds and trees like elongated creatures in themselves. The Butterflies were the brightest things walking.
“It’s looking for something that’s not us. It’s in a lot of pain.” Tian stopped at the sound of scuffling, lifted her palm. Her light expanded. Several meters ahead of them was a dog, licking blood off a fresh corpse.
Adeline sparked her fire brighter and shooed it away from the corpse.
As they went closer, their lights caught the dull white twining the man’s limbs.
“There’s one Steel.” The steel had, in fact, protected him.
Where the tattoos were, he was barely injured.
Apparently frustrated, the attacker had gone for his throat instead. It gaped, everything torn.
Lan retched. “The dog?”
“No. Look at his chest.”
On his shirt—bloody handprints. But some small like a child’s or young woman’s, others large and crooked.
When they examined the ground, they found they had been walking over a trail.
The man had run here the same way they came.
“The boat girls must have seen the killer,” Adeline said. “How come they’re still alive?”