Page 27 of The Blood Orchid
The guard shoved me inside, but I tripped over the lip on the doorway and fell forward, chin slamming into the ground with no free hands to catch myself. Wenshu fell on top of me, crushing me into the dirt. The door locked behind us, the footsteps receded, and all light vanished as they slammed the hall door shut.
“Get off me,” I said, squirming as Wenshu tried to roll away without the use of his hands. I struggled to my knees, shakingmy hair out of my face as my eyes adjusted to the ghostly faces of the other prisoners cast in darkness.
The other people in the cell watched us with dead eyes, slumped against the walls. Dirt and soot caked their faces, their eyes red, lips split, hair knotted. None of them tried to talk to us, as if new prisoners weren’t a noteworthy event.
“Are you all right?” I said to Wenshu, squinting to inspect his arm in the dark.
“Well, I’m covered in filth, but I haven’t lost a dangerous amount of blood, and it’s not like this arm would be particularly useful right now, even if unpunctured,” he said. “Though I’d feel better if you told me your brilliant plan to get us out of here.”
“Give me a minute,” I said, looking away. “I’ll think of something. I just hope Durian is okay in my bag.”
“Durian?” Wenshu said. “I’m more concerned aboutusthan your demon duck!”
“I’ll get us out of here,” I said. “I just need...” I trailed off, taking stock of the cell. The floor was a dusty gray type of dirt that I’d never seen before. I bent down and tried to pinch it between my fingers as best as I could with my hands bound behind my back.
“It’s made of recycled paper scraps,” said a small voice behind me.
I turned to a girl who couldn’t have been older than ten, her black hair so matted with gray dirt that she almost looked elderly, her lips chapped and colorless. How long had these people been down here, sleeping on the ground?
“There’s no alchemy stones in it,” she said when neither of us responded.
“How do you know?” I said. “Have you tried?”
The girl turned around, showing us her bound hands, wigglingher left hand, ring finger and pinky finger missing. “Each try costs you a finger if you get caught,” she said.
Wenshu let out a wounded sound, thumping his head back against the wall. “We’re doomed.”
“We’re not,” I said. “I’ll get us out of here.” It was what he wanted me to say—what the Scarlet Alchemist was supposed to say—but the words felt paper-thin.
This soundless cage wrapped in cool darkness felt like a stark antithesis to the alchemist I’d been. I’d once stood proudly beside the Moon Alchemist in my crimson robes, having defeated the wealthy sons of scholars and been hand-chosen by the Empress. Now I was trapped in a paper box in the dark, everyone that had once helped me dead, stripped of my alchemy while the kingdom crumbled far away.
“I’ll think of something,” I said, more to myself than Wenshu.
“Keep quiet, would you?” called a man from the other side of the cell. “If the guards hear you saying that, they’ll piss in our water. Again.”
I clenched my jaw, running through my options.
It was impossible to completely strip a room of alchemical potential, because alchemy was in our bodies—the iron in our blood, the salt in our skin, the zinc in our bones. The problem was, most of it couldn’t be used without a catalyst stone to activate it.
I ran my palm across the smooth walls, coated in a papery substance that wouldn’t break when I dug my nails into it, no discernible stones inside. Whoever built this place must have consulted an alchemist.
“Back up!” a guard shouted near the door, nearly impaling Wenshu with his sword. Wenshu scrambled away and sat beside me as the doors swung open once more.
The guards threw a man into the cell. He landed on his face, groaning and spitting out a tooth. Even with his hands bound, I could make out the crooked angles of his broken fingers, the purple flesh where fingernails should have been.
“Better luck next time,” one of the guards said, laughing with the other as he locked the door once more. A few of the prisoners helped the man sit up.
“Don’t touch me,” he said, twisting away from them. “I’m fine.”
Even though his voice sounded parched, his words heavy with exhaustion, I would have recognized that voice anywhere. I stepped forward to get a better look at his face.
Our gazes locked, and he squinted at me through one swollen, purple eye. I knelt in front of him, because I had to be sure.
“Zheng Sili?”
Chapter Six
The man went very still, like a rabbit passing under the shadow of a hawk. “Hùnxie?” he said tentatively.