Page 28 of The Blood Orchid
I looked him up and down, the dirt smeared on his face, skin colored with bruises, hair tousled and damp with blood. His offensively ungroomed mustache was thankfully gone, but in every other sense, he looked worse for wear. Like me, he had come all the way from Lingnan and been tossed into the jaws of the Empress and her political games. But while I’d tried to stop her, he’d helped her.
“You piece of shit!” I said, lunging for him.
It didn’t matter that my hands were tied. I would rip his ears off with my teeth if I had to. I landed a kick against his jaw, and his head slammed back against the bars. He made a wounded sound, falling to the dirt.
“Zilan!” Wenshu said, but I ignored him and pressed my foot into Zheng Sili’s sternum, stopping him from sitting up.
“Hey,” one of the prisoners said weakly in protest, but I shot him a murderous look and he backed away. People in here were probably too busy surviving to insert themselves in otherpeople’s problems, and I doubted someone like Zheng Sili had made many friends.
“You tried to save the Empress!” I said. “After everyone died to stop her, you tried to save her because a couple guards pointed their knives at you? I could have you hanged if we were back in Chang’an!”
“I know!” he said, coughing as I switched my foot from his chest to his throat, pressing down threateningly. He looked like an overturned beetle, legs in the air. “I know, okay? Just let me up, and I’ll explain!”
“Explain?” I said, grinding my heel down. “Let meexplainmy foot to your mouth!”
“Zilan,” Wenshu said warningly, standing up.
I sighed. I really didn’t want to pause to explain this all to my brother. “I was dying on the ground when this guy tried to save the Empress,” I said, which seemed a good enough summary for the time being.
“Huh,” Wenshu said, frowning. “Well, in that case.” He turned and gave Zheng Sili a swift kick to the ribs, making him roll over and groan. “You can’t kill him, though,” Wenshu said. “What if they don’t take his body out? It will smell even worse down here.”
“Aren’t you the prince?” Zheng Sili said, bloody drool pooling under his face.
“No,” Wenshu said, sitting down.
I reeled back for another kick, but Zheng Sili jolted away, scrambling back against the bars.
“I’m sorry!” he said. “I’m sorry, okay? I didn’t want to help the Empress, I swear! The guards threatened my family.”
“Yeah, mine too,” I said, glaring back at him. “They died so the Empress could die.”
Zheng Sili winced. “I’m sorry,” he said again. And for a fleeting, regrettable moment, I felt bad for him. He no longer sounded like the proud aristocrat who had torn my dress back in Lingnan. His gold molars were missing, his nose knocked off center, hair caked with blood.
“After you won the last alchemy exam, the Empress threw the rest of us in the dungeons,” he said. “Half of us died down there from some kind of sickness. They left their bodies in the cell with me, rotting. I didn’t know how long I was down there talking to corpses, but all I could think about was how I’d given my whole life to become the kind of person the Empress would respect, and she’d thrown me out like a piece of garbage for some peasant girl.” He winced. “Sorry, I mean, no offense. But you didn’t respect her the way I did.”
“Because that’s not what the imperial exam is about,” I said.And I’m a merchant, not a peasant, I thought, but I doubted the distinction would mean much to an aristocrat.
“I know,” he said, shoulders slumping. “I only got out when the alchemists took over the palace and set all the prisoners free. But before I could even go home, some guards found me and threatened to kill my little brother if I didn’t help them. And that’s... that’s when you saw me.”
The memory of that moment reignited the rage I’d felt upon seeing him. I could still taste my own blood as I’d lain half dead on the stairs of the throne room, thinking that when I died, at least it would have been for something that mattered. And then Zheng Sili had arrived, set his greedy hands on the Empress’s dying body, and undone what I’d given everything for. Would her soul still be clinging to the river plane if it wasn’t for him?
“You have no idea what you’ve done,” I said, not sure if it was truly fair to blame everything on him, but the rage pulsingthrough my sore muscles felt so much better than the harrowing pity from only moments before.
“I didn’t want to help her,” he said, slumping against the bars of the cage, no longer meeting my gaze. “I didn’t know what else to do, and I don’t know if what I did was right. But do you want to know the worst part?”
“That all my friends and family died in vain?” I said, reining in the urge to kick him under the jaw again.
“Mine too,” he said, letting out a dry, empty laugh that seemed to drain what little color was left from his face. Blood dripped slowly from the curve of his lips to his torn robes in a slow, dark rain. “A private army trampled my brother in a raid a week later. It was almost a relief when they captured me because I didn’t have to figure out what to do next.”
He looked so small in the darkness of the cell, withered into himself, pale from weeks without sun. I had long ago learned that sometimes people’s souls died before their bodies did. You could see it in their eyes, an undertow drowning them slowly behind their irises.
But the world was full of sad stories, and Zheng Sili’s was not the worst I’d heard.
I sighed, sitting down cross-legged and leaning against the wall. “This is exactly why you never became a royal alchemist,” I said.
He looked up sharply, eyes narrowed. “Excuse me?” he said.
Maybe the rage in his expression, or even the blood dripping down his chin like a feral wolf would have scared some people, but I had seen far worse than angry rich boys.