Page 37 of The Blood Orchid
Wenshu gritted his teeth but otherwise didn’t comment until I was done. He mumbled thanks, then rushed off to find somewhere to scrub the mud from his skin and clothes.
Zheng Sili was still hovering awkwardly by the door, so I dug out soggy handfuls of scrolls from my bag and dropped them on the ground in front of him.
“Make yourself useful,” I said, gesturing to the wet paper. He wasted no time digging waterstones out of his bag and repairing the scrolls with a flourish of wholly unnecessary and ostentatious blue light. I repaired another handful, and at the cost ofonly a couple bruised fingers, my father’s notes and the paper from the Sandstone Alchemist were once again dry and whole.
“This is one old transformation,” Zheng Sili said, frowning at the Sandstone Alchemist’s riddle. “What is this supposed to be?”
I tugged it away from him and rolled it up quickly, despite his protests. “Nothing that concerns you.”
“Well, pardon me for reading what’s right in front of me,” he said, standing up and crossing his arms. “Have fun staring at your poems. I’ve been eating peasant food for months and need something of substance.”
He stormed off and slammed the door behind him, finally leaving me alone.
I looked back to the scrolls, turning over my new opals in my hands. I held one up to the window, and as it caught the lamplight, I imagined the white eyes of dragons surveying the seas, looking down on this tiny bridge between the desert and mountains and all the lost souls inside of it.
It seemed that most of the city closed down just after nightfall. Though there were no wards in Baiyin that would lock us inside like in Chang’an, most of the shops were dark by the time Wenshu and I had both changed and headed into town. We left Durian sleeping on the bed and ventured farther and farther from the inn in search of light. Zheng Sili hadn’t returned yet, and maybe, if we were lucky, he never would.
Baiyin clearly had not been spared by the raids. Half the buildings at the outskirts were little more than splintered wood and shattered clay spilled over cracked dirt. Instead of thatched roofs, only scorched black reeds covered the skeletons of houses, each gust of wind stirring up clouds of ash.
The center of the city had been more thoroughly repaired, a heart of golden light and loud voices that wiped away the unease of the ghostly outskirts. That was where we found a pub with candles still burning, the sounds of laughter rattling the lattice windows. It sat alone at the edge of one of the destroyed streets, boards hastily repaired with clay wires, cloth tarps thrown over the roof.
“Too noisy?” I said to Wenshu.
He shook his head. “I’m too hungry to be picky,” he said, already heading for the door.
Wenshu attempted to buy us some congee while I claimed the corner of a long table, trying to make myself small in the large crowd. People this far from Chang’an probably had never seen the face of the prince or the royal alchemists, but I didn’t like to stake my safety on a probability. I only wanted to inhale a bowl of soup, cram some food in my bag for Durian, and head back to the room to sleep until I felt less like a resurrected corpse.
The man at the bar must not have spoken Chang’an dialect, because I saw Wenshu pantomiming eating with a spoon as I sat down. He passed the man a few gold coins and crossed the room, sliding onto the bench beside me.
“I did my best, but I have no idea what he’s going to give us,” he said.
“As long as it’s not life gold, we should be fine,” I said. We’d eaten weeds and duck eyes and entrails that no one else wanted, after all. Anything served in a restaurant couldn’t be that bad.
We waited in silence, the dim lighting and warm murmurs around us not at all helping me stay awake. I leaned into Wenshu and closed my eyes for what I swore would only be a few moments, but jolted at the sound of bowls hitting the table.
A server had placed two bowls of congee in front of us.
“Your pantomiming must have worked,” I said, sitting up straight and grabbing my spoon. No matter how far from home we traveled or what delicacies we could have afforded, I always wanted congee when I was cold and tired. It made me feel like I was standing in the kitchen with Auntie So once more, back when I was too small to peer over the lip of the pot and could only smell the rice and marvel at the steam as I clung to her skirts.
“I think it’s more likely that the word forcongeeis similar here,” Wenshu said. “But maybe I’ll have a career as an actor when this is all through.”
I smiled and scooped up a heaping spoonful, blowing on it once before raising it to my mouth.
I hesitated, the spoon just barely grazing my lips, the white steam spiraling before me, shrouding my vision.
This didn’t smell right.
There was a metallic undertone beneath the rice, brought forth in the steam. I had melted many metals down before with alchemy, so I knew the scent.
I knocked Wenshu’s spoon out of his hand, spraying congee across his shirt.
“Fan Zilan!” he said, jolting back. “What are you—”
“Don’t eat that,” I said.
He tensed. “Why not?”
I leaned over the bowl and took a deep breath. The steam made my eyes water, and there it was, more pronounced—the metallic scent knifing up my nose. When I clasped the bowl in both hands, alchemy hummed through the ceramic, numbing my palms.