“Mr Aw!” gasped Guet Imm. “Who knew he was so ungrateful? After you gave him all that money!”
“I’ll be more careful next time,” said Tet Sang, ignoring her, but the mata grinned.
“Boss,” he said, “there won’t be a next time. You know what the punishment for banditry is.”
Tet Sang did. He’d seen the posters—triumphant men in uniform, brandishing severed heads. The Protectorate wanted the Reformists to understand what it had in store for them.
“What’s the going rate these days?” said Tet Sang. “Twenty cash per head? I can give you more if you let us go quietly. We don’t want trouble.”
He said it more as a good-faith effort to avoid a bust-upthan because he thought the offer would be accepted. It might have worked if there had only been one mata, but the chief wasn’t likely to take a bribe in front of his subordinates.
“I don’t negotiate with bandits,” he sneered. He raised his gun.
Tet Sang dodged before the mata could bring the gun down on his head, landing heavily on the floor. But Guet Imm was faster. She flipped the table, knocking over all three men. The gun went off, the report deafening in the small room.
The tailor’s wife screamed, but the bullet couldn’t have gone anywhere near her. Guet Imm nodded when Tet Sang glanced at her, to show she was fine.
“Open the door, little brother,” Tet Sang said to the tailor’s son.
The youth hesitated.
“Pukimak!” groaned one of the mata on the floor. He started struggling to his feet. Guet Imm threw the chalice at his head, dropping him.
The other two stayed down, but that didn’t necessarily mean they were unconscious. Tet Sang saw the tailor’s son’s difficulty.
“Let us out or we’ll hurt you,” Tet Sang said loudly.
“You’d better hurt him anyway, or the mata won’t believe,” screamed Madam Ooi in Tang dialect. “No need to draw blood. It’ll be enough to bruise him a little. Boy, don’t fight back!”
“But Ma!” said her son, quailing.
Guet Imm moved so quickly, Tet Sang didn’t see what she did, but the youth’s protest ended in a pained yelp. The tailor’s son staggered forward, holding his head and falling against the door as though by accident. The door swung open.
Tet Sang charged forward, pretending to shove the youth out of the way, and he and Guet Imm were out, running down the alley behind the shophouses. Madam Ooi’s voice drifted through the open door behind them:
“Tuan, tuan, help my son! Those cruel bandits hurt him! Oh, boy, boy!”
“Helpful woman,” muttered Tet Sang. Fung Cheung had remarked that Mr Tan was an old associate, but Tet Sang wondered whether the connection wasn’t really with the wife. Women went soft around Fung Cheung—not only his beauty but his feyness seemed to turn their heads. “What did you do to that boy?”
“Nothing serious,” said Guet Imm. “It’ll look worse than it is.” Without warning, she thumped him on the side of his head.
Tet Sang swore, his hand flying to his head. “What the hell?”
“No wonder you wouldn’t tell me what you were selling!” said Guet Imm. “How could you? Hawking off the deity’s sarira as though they’re—they’re—” They rounded a corner, passing a rattan shop with its wares spilling outonto the five-foot way. “As though they’re nothing more than baskets!”
“Wait,” said Tet Sang.
Two doors down from the rattan shop was one of the many abandoned shoplots that could be found in Sungai Tombak, despite its relative prosperity—people’s livelihoods were one of the many casualties of the ongoing struggle between the Protectorate and the bandits. Tet Sang pushed past a rusting grille into a shadowy doorway, dragging Guet Imm in after him.
Guet Imm hadn’t stopped talking. “You know or not how many tokong they destroyed? How many people died trying to protect the altars?”
“At the Pure Moon tokong at Permatang Timbul, it was thirty-nine,” said Tet Sang. He shoved a batik cloth he’d grabbed on the way out of the tailor’s shop at Guet Imm. “Take off your robes. You know how to wear a sarong?”
“They— What?”
“If you don’t know how to tie, I can show you,” said Tet Sang.
“No, I know how to wear a sarong, I—What did you say about the tokong?”
