“A few weeks ago, a girl escaped from Number Seventy-five and attacked a Butterfly. Did you treat her?”
“I couldn’t know which one you mean. I’m not their keeper. After a few visits the sick ones all look the same.”
Adeline bumped the Needle’s temple with the muzzle. “Think harder.” Now that she’d fired it once, the weapon’s enormity was dawning on her. Fire was slow; a knife was clean; a bullet broke bone and rent flesh at the simple touch of a trigger. Christina liked guns and was particular about them—her estranged father was an early member of the Gun Club and had been keen to induct his then-eldest son into the hobby, and she often traded for parts at Thieves’ Market. Adeline sometimes saw her polishing her collection. But guns were more difficult to get, and more expensive to throw away. Most fights around town featured machetes and metal pipes and the occasional acid lightbulb. So it was interesting a doctor had a revolver in his desk.
“She didn’t have any deformities,” Tian said. But of course neither of them had seen the girl in person, and they couldn’t actually be sure. “But we’ve been told she looked sick. This would have been in July.”
Anggor Neo sucked in a breath. “Oh,” he murmured. “Perhaps…”
“Perhaps what?”
“There was a girl with breakbone fever, almost delirious. I gave her the usual medicines, but she grabbed me and showed me a butterfly she’d drawn on a handkerchief. I didn’t know what she was saying. The disease is carried by mosquitoes, of course, I thought that was the confusion.”
“You didn’t ask her?”
“The whole conversation was gibberish. The fever at that stage makes people mad. Maybe she saw your sister’s tattoo and her mind tripped.”
“What about the beautiful ones?” Adeline interjected. “So much disease around—and they’re fine?”
“More than fine.” The Needle’s voice took on an almost wistful quality. “They’re above disease. If you saw them you would understand.”
“Doubt we’ll get a chance, unless they’re dead.”
“And they take away the dead bodies in the middle of the night,” Adeline said. “Do you know what they do with them?”
“They don’t bring me in when they’re dead.” There was abutthere. Adeline nudged him again. He sighed. “Three Steel has an arrangement with the Green Eyes who run the riverboats. Theydump bodies in the water. That’s all I know.” He glanced between them. “I can give you more information, if you do something for me.”
“Why do you think you can ask us anything?” Adeline said.
Tian ran her tongue over her teeth. “What is it?” she asked, more evenly.
“I took some of the girl’s blood and sent it to one of my brothers, who’s a master in blood work. He’s supposed to come back in a few days’ time. I’ll tell you what he finds, if you find me a girl who owes me money. Her name is Lilian Leong.”
Tian weighed this. They couldn’t get information the Needle didn’t currently have, and there was nothing stopping him from disappearing if they refused to take his offer. “I worked with her once,” she said finally. At her motion, Adeline tossed the gun away onto the floor. “We’ll find her.”
As they left the Needle’s shop, however, Tian was on edge. Adeline felt tense, too, as though she’d upset a delicate balance and now neither of them could look at each other.
“You didn’t have to do that,” Tian said.
“Didn’t I?”
Tian’s jaw clenched. She stopped in the middle of the atrium, glaring at the exhibition, at the kids stepping up to measuring rulers and their parents chatting to the ambassadors. Eventually one of them caught sight of her and quickly pulled her son away.
“Come on,” Tian said. “I know where to start asking about Lilian.”
Hours later, they had spoken to half a dozen more of Tian’s inexplicable friends. Call girls getting ready for the evening who told them Lilian had left Tiger Aw’s employ years ago—because that was where Tian had known Lilian, when she was aserving girl and Lilian was older and unreachably sophisticated; others who knew Lilian had gone to a dance hall in Great World, after that, and had a messy affair with a kongsi man (people disagreed on which gang he was with, but it had been drawn-out and spiteful); she’d gone back to escorting for a bit, while frequenting a particular hairdresser, then found more regular employ at a bar in Rochor.
Now she’d disappeared from there, too, but it seemed only a matter of time before they uncovered her. This city was small, its underbelly smaller, and liable to part with enough scratching. Tian was herself again, a whirlwind of keen charm, the hesitation from People’s Park forgotten. For once Adeline didn’t feel jealous, watching her have the run of town—she had, in fact, a strange sense of satisfaction.
Tian bought them both noodles at another roadside stall she knew. Adeline was the exhausted one now, but she ate and listened to Tian talk about what they would do next. They would put out feelers for Lilian—one of the girls was bound to know someone who knew someone who was currently working with Lilian, assuming she was still alive—and in the meantime, they would investigate Anggor Neo’s other claim, about Three Steel dumping bodies with the Green Eyes. That one would be trickier, but one of the Butterflies, Lesley, used to work at a restaurant by the river. She might be able to find someone who had seen something, or who knew the Eyes’ operations.
There, Adeline thought.Madam Butterfly. A little while ago she might have balked at roping all the others in, but once again, now it only felt right. Of course they should exploit all their possible avenues of information. The girls would do what Tian asked them to do, and Tian was no longer stopping to worry about how it might impact Pek Mun’s standing if she started recruiting Butterflies for her own mission.Theirown mission.
“Tian,” Adeline said, when the plates were clean. “I want the tattoo.”
The next morning they sought out Christina, who’d been out all night with a boyfriend. It had obviously ended badly, since Pek Mun, Mavis, and Vera were with her in the kitchen insulting everything from his mother (ugly) to his endowments (lacking).
Christina didn’t even blink at Adeline’s request. She ushered them up to her room, instructed Adeline onto the bed. She had an actual one, unlike Adeline’s mattress. The rest of the space was crowded with a large wardrobe, a chest of drawers with several incense burners, and a medicine cabinet, all stuffed shoulder to shoulder. “Really,” Adeline said skeptically. “This is where you do it?”
