Page 30 of The Blood Orchid
I turned around. At the front of the cell, a guard held one of the prisoners against the bars with his sword pulled tight to her throat. It was the young girl I’d spoken to before, standing on tiptoes so the blade wouldn’t tear into her neck. The guard reached his left hand through the bars, palm open. “Hand it over,” he said.
I clenched my jaw, careful not to tighten my grip around the egg in anger. Against the cell bars, with the pale light gleaming wetly in her eyes, the girl looked so much like the prince’s little sisters, who the Empress had thrown in the dungeon. They’d both looked at me with so much hope when I’d set them free, and then a few weeks later, one of them was nothing but an empty husk in my arms. That was the price they’d paid for trusting me to keep them safe.
Zheng Sili scoffed. “They don’t even know each other,” hesaid. He turned back to me and gestured expectantly. “Go on, crack it open.”
“Now,” the guard said, tugging the blade tighter, a thin line of red spreading across the girl’s throat and pulling a helpless sound from her lips. I thought of the corpses of children I’d resurrected back in Guangzhou, whose souls I found hiding in tall grass or curled up against trees, crying for their mothers in the dark. Children cried loudly because they thought someone would answer. I was supposed to be that person.
“Here,” I said, rising to my feet, turning so the guard could see the egg in my bound hands. “It’s just an egg.”
“Are you serious?” Zheng Sili said. “Our only way out, and you’re giving it up for a stranger?”
“She’s just a kid,” I said, my heart sinking as the guard reached through the bars and snatched the egg from my hands. He pulled his sword away, and the girl fell forward against me, scrambling away from the bars.
“I’monly eighteen!” Zheng Sili said. “You had no problem walking away and letting the Empress killmeafter she made you an alchemist!”
“Yes,” I said, “because you’re an asshole.”
Zheng Sili let out an indignant sound and finally—mercifully—shut up, sitting down heavily in the corner facing away from me like my very presence disgusted him. The girl had already left my side, retreating into the dark corners of the cell where the guards couldn’t reach her.You’re not her savior, I reminded myself bitterly.You’re the reason she was in danger in the first place.
“How the hell did you sneak this in?” the guard said, turning the egg over in his hands. He pinched it between his index finger and thumb, holding it up to his candle. The surface crinkledwith hairline cracks, then shattered in his hand. I stepped closer to the bars for a better look, praying that Durian had laid some kind of alchemical weapon.
But nothing but orange yolk and slimy egg white oozed down the guard’s wrist. It was a normal egg after all.
The guard made a disgusted sound, shaking the goo off his hand. “You were hiding a rotten egg?” he said. “You alchemists are worse than...” He trailed off, staring at his hand, the glossy egg white like fish webbing between his fingers. He held up his hand, watching the translucent goo expand and capture the candlelight. Then he took one faltering step forward and collapsed face-first onto the ground.
Metal clanged as his helmet hit the dirt, his candle tipping over and extinguishing itself in a pool of hot wax, the hall cast in darkness again. The other prisoners murmured in confusion, some pressing close to the bars.
“I told you that duck was evil,” Wenshu said, stepping around me to get a better look. “Is the guard dead?”
I knelt down, my face against the bars as I squinted through the darkness. The guard’s chest rose and fell shallowly, the plates of his armor shifting from the movement.
“He’s alive,” I said. “Out cold, though.”
I leaned closer, trying to make out the shape of keys in the darkness, but a sharp scent nearly cleaved my face in half, so strong that it felt like someone had jabbed a spear straight up my nose. I lurched back, falling against Wenshu, my eyes watering at the memory of the scent.
The egg smelled like durian.
Wenshu had always called durian “corpse fruit” because it smelled oddly similar to the scent of rotting corpses, which weknew all too well. But no durian—or corpse—had ever smelled quite this foul. No wonder the guard had been knocked out by the smell.
I tensed as the guard wheezed out a loud breath, but thankfully, he remained still.
“If you want to take advantage of this situation, now is the time,” Wenshu said, squinting down the hallway. “I don’t think any other guards have noticed his absence yet.”
“Right,” I said, blinking away involuntary tears and doing my best to wipe my nose against my shoulder. Before anything, I needed to untie my hands.
I sat down on the ground, this time holding my breath, and slid my leg between the bars. I prodded the metal plates of the guard’s armor with my toe, dragging him closer. Steel was a metalstone, a catalyst that I could use to start reactions, so if I could only touch his armor with my hands, I would be free.
When he was finally close enough to the bars for me to reach, I turned around and angled my bound hands through the bars, twisting my wrists until my fingers brushed his steel plates.
The cool steel hummed beneath my fingers, all the tension in my muscles soothed away. Alchemy sang through my body, and for the first time since I’d left Guangzhou, I felt like I was home again.
I ran my fingers across the plates until I was sure I was touching exactly three metal scales, then let alchemy burn through me.
A chunk of the armor snapped off, the metal sparking and warping in my palms, contorting into the shape of a blade. I gripped it tight until I’d slid it back through the bars, then turned and offered it to Wenshu, who managed to cut my ropes from behind. My wrists screamed as blood rushed back into them,but I shook away the numbness and cut Wenshu’s ropes, passing him the knife again.
“Cut everyone else’s ropes,” I said, holding my breath and reaching back through the bars, quickly transforming some of the metal plates into new alchemy rings. One by one, the untied alchemists joined me, ripping off gold plates and steel and iron from the guard’s armor, forging his helmet into blades and batons, stripping the metals from him like vultures to a carcass. They nearly crushed me in their fervor, but I could hardly blame them after they’d been trapped down here for so long. I barely managed to snatch the keys before an overly eager alchemist could transform them into something else.
I turned as Wenshu cut Zheng Sili’s ropes, perhaps deliberately saving him for last. Zheng Sili winced as his purpled hands hung limp at his sides, not even bothering to reach for metal with his broken fingers. He was such a far cry from the proud and polished alchemist I’d first met.