Page 31 of The Blood Orchid

At the end of the hall, footsteps echoed down the staircase. I swore and reached around the bars until I managed to jam the key into the lock. The door swung open easily, and the alchemists flooded into the hall, shoving me against the bars on the opposite side.

Hands grabbed my wet clothes, yanking at my sleeves and hair. The prisoners in the nearest cell had latched on to me as if drowning.

“Please, let us out too!” the woman clutching my sleeve said. “Before the guards come back!”

“I need my arms for that,” I said, slowly extricating myself and fumbling for the key as Wenshu appeared beside me.

“We have to go, Zilan,” he said. I didn’t have a chance toanswer as the lock clicked and the door burst open, knocking me into Wenshu. The alchemists rushed toward the end of the hall, not even trying to be quiet. The guards certainly must have known what had happened by now.

The other prisoners had all pressed close to the bars now, calling out for me, pale arms reaching and grabbing at nothing.

“Just toss someone the keys, and let’s get out of here,” Wenshu said, tugging my arm.

But I stayed rooted in place, the keys cold and impossibly heavy in my hands. I thought of the palace after the fall, corpses bobbing in the scarlet ponds, tile floors so blood-slicked they’d turned to crimson mirrors, gardens fertilized with entrails and teeth. The legacy of the Scarlet Alchemist who let other people fight in her place.

“Gege,” I said, “get my bag and Durian, then come back here.”

“Can’t you just grab them on the way out?” he said, chasing after me as I hurried to the next cell, jamming the key in the lock. The stairwell at the end of the hallway lit up with bright sparks and a rush of fire, screams echoing across the stones.

“I’m a little busy here,” I said, jamming the key in the lock of the next cell.

The door struck me across the face as the prisoners shoved it open, crushing me against the bars and nearly knocking Wenshu to the ground as they ran. Upstairs, I could make out sounds of screaming, the crackle of fire.

“Are you kidding? There’s too many of them!” Wenshu said, hurrying along next to me as I unlocked the next door. “Zilan, did you see how many guards are outside? You want to be caught down here without any stones left when they come down?”

“Then get me my stones!” I said. “You’re wasting time!”

Wenshu let out a frustrated sound and stormed off, disappearing into the dark.

I unlocked two more cells, not even halfway down the passageway. The desperate cries of the alchemists grew louder as they saw that I was coming to set them free. The scent of smoke spiraled down the staircase, the air growing gray and hazy.

With the next door that I unlocked, the crowd forced me to the ground, tripping over me, stomping on my fingers as they rushed out. I couldn’t get up until they passed, the screams of the remaining alchemists somehow even louder now.

“Hey, hùnxie!”

I turned around, facing the mouth of the hall.

Zheng Sili stood in the doorway beside Wenshu, who clutched my bag under his arm and Durian under the other. Zheng Sili held up a fistful of stones in a hand that looked slightly less mangled than a few minutes ago, which meant he’d found some waterstones to heal himself.

“Get away from the bars,” Zheng Sili said.

“Or what?” I said, already moving to the next cell and struggling to find the key with my sore, trampled fingers. He had already ruined my plans once. Did he really have to do it again? “I don’t take orders from you.”

He shrugged, shuffling the stones in his hand, then pressed his palm to the nearest cell. “Suit yourself,” he said.

Then all of the bars exploded.

I ducked, shielding my face as bamboo rained down with the hot scent of firestone and hiss of smoke. Hands closed around me, pulling me to the side as the rest of the alchemists ran for the door. The cell walls gaped open, bamboo turned to pale splinters. Through the smoke, I managed to make out Wenshu’s face as he passed me my satchel, tucking Durian into his robes.Zheng Sili stood beside him, shoving a few prisoners away when they crashed into him in their haste to flee. Maybe the other alchemists had trampled me into unconsciousness and this was a bizarre dream, because the Zheng Sili I knew would never have done anything to help me.

We’d just barely stepped onto the main floor when the ceiling cracked as if struck by lightning. The sizzling corpses of prison guards lay all around the tiles, charred black and dissolving into ashes inside their silver armor. Something in the elaborately painted wallpaper must have been highly flammable, because flames had scorched a path across the painted golden vines, the whole hall now a blazing lattice of flame. A beam had caved in across the front door, a wall of flame sprouting up in front of it, blocking our only exit. For once, I wished that destruction alchemy wasn’t the easiest kind—maybe the other alchemists could have fought their way out without burning the building down on top of us.

I jammed my hand back in my satchel, but I already knew I was out of waterstones—I was supposed to restock when we reached Baiyin.

“What stones do you have?” Zheng Sili said.

I emptied the pitiful remains of my satchel into my palm.

“Three earthstones, six firestones, five woodstones, one button, and one soap bean.”