Page 36 of The Blood Orchid
“Everything is seventy-five apiece,” the merchant said.
I clenched my jaw. He probably saw my clothes and thought I was some aristocrat from Chang’an who would toss her coins over unquestioningly.
“Look,” I said, “I understand marking up the price for tourists, but this is robbery.”
His frown carved deeper into his face. “I am not trying to swindle you,” he said, “I’m making sure I’m not out of business by the end of the week. Same price for everyone. In a few days, my wife and I are melting down our gold and trading it for its weight in silver. That value has always held stable.”
I blinked, taken aback. “That’s... quite a risk,” I said.
“Theriskis trusting that gold will have more value than dirt by summer’s end, with what’s happening in the capital.”
I went still. “What’s happening in the capital?” I said quietly, careful not to reveal the apprehension in my voice.
“Riots,” the merchant said, shrugging. “All of Chang’an’s rich have pooled their money and are paying men from all over the country to knock down the palace walls and oust the royal family. We’re standing at the edge of a new dynasty, and I’m not going to be sitting here helpless when gold loses its value again. My grandfather told me how it was when Taizong came into power.”
So that’s where all the men in Baiyin went, I thought. I’d assumed they’d been hired to draw out alchemists in hiding, but apparently the rich had given up on making life gold and were ready to take matters into their own hands. Yufei still had her army and a few alchemical traps I’d left behind at some of the palace doors, but would that be enough? She had always seemed so strong and unyielding, but then again, so had the Moon Alchemist. I could still see her lying on her back, skin sickly gray, teethpainted with blood while she begged me to let her die.
“Do you want the stones or not?” the merchant said. “I have other customers.”
My hands felt numb as I dug into my satchel and pulled out more gold. It wasn’t as if I had a choice. I passed him the gold and hurriedly filled my satchel, not waiting for Zheng Sili to follow. Hopefully I’d at least bought the right kind of opal—only the thought of reaching Penglai made that much money seem insignificant.
I found Wenshu at the end of the block, squatting by a corner, trying to wrangle Durian back into my bag.
“Jiejie might be in trouble,” I said.
“Yufeiistrouble,” Wenshu said. “Can you get your duck back in here?”
I snatched one of the apples from the bag in his other hand, bit off a piece and spit it into my hand, then held it out to Durian, who snatched it at once and finally sat still in the bag.
“There’s a private army heading for the palace,” I said. Wenshu hummed, his expression unchanged. “You’re not worried?” I said after a moment.
“Am I worried about Yufei, who has never so much as let a man breathe in her direction if she didn’t expressly allow it, who has an entire army and fortified palace? No, Zilan, I’m a bit more worried about us, seeing as all we have is a demonic duck and a failed eighteen-year-old alchemist to defend us. Yufei can hold her own.”
I wasn’t quite as certain, but there was little point in arguing with Wenshu when we couldn’t do anything to help Yufei anyway. Maybe Wenshu truly couldn’t comprehend the worst-case scenario in the way I could, simply because he had never been around for it. He had always waited by the river for me toresurrect him and clean up the mess I’d made. He wasn’t the one whose failures were printed on flyers spread across China, whose name conjured shame and fear.
“If we go now, maybe Zheng Sili will get lost and never find us again,” Wenshu said.
“I can only hope,” I said, tightening the straps on my bag and heading down the street.
Zheng Sili did, unfortunately, catch up with us a block away, clutching a bag of stones in a green silk satchel. Together, we hurried to the first inn we could find.
The innkeeper looked at us for just a moment too long, giving away her suspicion. All three of us were still wet, with Wenshu and me wearing silk from the capital while Zheng Sili was so thoroughly caked in mud that it looked like he’d just climbed his way out of the tar pits of hell.
Wenshu shoved Zheng Sili out of the way and approached the innkeeper first. “Our servant overturned our boat,” he said, glaring at Zheng Sili. “Please tell me you have somewhere we can stay for the night.”
“Yourservant?” Zheng Sili said in Guangzhou dialect.
I grabbed him by the ear and yanked him down to my level, forcing a sharp whine out of him. “Yes, because you’re the one who bathed in mud,” I said in Guangzhou dialect, already getting a fairly good idea what Wenshu was thinking—it didn’t make sense for two men to share a room with a woman unless one of them was a servant, and we didn’t want innkeepers to wonder what our story was. We didn’t want them to remember us at all.
The innkeeper shot us one last look before telling Wenshu the price. He paid and waved for us to follow him upstairs. As soon as the door shut behind us, Zheng Sili crossed his arms and glared at me. “My father is a first-ranked magistrate in Lingnan,and I just had to pretend to be a slave,” he said.
“A servant is not the same as a slave,” I said, locking the door and wishing with all my might that we’d lost him in the town square. “And does your father’s status really matter that much if he disowned you?”
Zheng Sili rolled his eyes. “At leastmyfather didn’t give me a servant’s name.”
I glared, but couldn’t bring myself to disagree.Zilánmeantpurple orchidand was the kind of name more common among servants than scholars. The children of aristocrats had names that were virtues or dreams, carefully chosen characters that destined them for greatness.Silimeantto think of manners—a name for a man who diligently studied texts and applied their wisdom to his life. Zheng Sili was born to be a scholar, and I was born to be no one, and somehow we had both failed at our destinies.
Wenshu sat down heavily on the floor and pulled back his sleeve, grimacing at what remained of the arrow embedded in his arm. I knelt down in front of him and slapped his hand away. There was still a piece of wood lodged inside, so I pinched it between my fingers and yanked it out, then pressed three moonstones to the wound to heal it.