Page 4 of The Blood Orchid

But luckily, he’d mentioned where he got the map in the first place.

I’ve spoken to a great alchemist who lives in the empty valleys beneath the Borderless Sea. He calls himself the Sandstone Alchemist, for he has built a palace of sandstone underground. He claims he has been to Penglai Island.

Unfortunately, my father hadn’t been thoughtful enough to include a map to the Sandstone Alchemist’s front door. But his journals mentioned entering the desert from Lanzhou, and from there, he couldn’t have gone far. The desert was hardly kind to the people who had lived on its borders for centuries, much less to pale-skinned foreigners who didn’t know its secrets.

Part of me liked the idea of following the ghost of my father’s footsteps. Once, I’d sworn to master alchemy just to spite him for leaving my mother on her deathbed. But when the Moon Alchemist had shown me the truth—that he’d given the last of his life to resurrect me and had returned to her for a cure—that hate had quickly dissipated.

I imagined him, long and wiry, copper hair and eyes full of sky, striding into this golden sea so many years ago with nothing but a dream. I didn’t much believe in ghosts, but in the haze of heat waves, at times I thought I could see him there, looking over his shoulder.

Wenshu stomped his foot, the ground echoing below him, sand shivering away. “Does that sound like an underground palace to you?” he said.

“It doesn’t sound like a sand dune, that’s for sure,” I said, kneeling down. I grabbed three earthstones from my satchel and pressed them to the ground.

Slowly, sand whispered away from the space beneath my hands, forming pale clouds behind me. As the winds picked up, the ground began to sink beneath our feet, and we dropped deep into the mouth of the desert. We sank down, the sand growing cooler and darker beneath us, until at last my hands touched cool metal, my feet on solid ground.

A trapdoor.

“That’s one way to stay cool in the desert,” Wenshu said. “Burrow underground like a fox.”

I knocked twice on the door, feeling a bit silly waiting to be invited into a hermit alchemist’s secret lair as if we’d stopped by for tea. As expected, no response came.

“Well, we tried,” I said, placing three firestones to the lock, snapping it off easily.Amateur.

Wenshu made an indignant sound, gaze following the discarded lock as the sand swallowed it. “Zilan, you can’t just—”

“Out of all the awful things I’ve done,” I said, gripping the handle, “I think I can live with myself for opening a door.”

We dropped down into a cool, silent tunnel. I ignited three firestones in my palm, casting the packed sand walls in pale orange light. A network of thin silver wire braced the curved ceilings of the tunnels, the ground beneath us polished sandstone in ribbons of red and brown. I held the firestones ahead of me, but the light couldn’t pierce very far into the sea of darkness. There was only a tunnel growing narrower as it faded into the dark.

“This has to be the Sandstone Alchemist’s home,” I said. “Noone could carry this much sandstone this far into the desert without alchemy.”

“Finding him isn’t what I was worried about,” Wenshu said, staring off into the never-ending tunnel. “He doesn’t seem the type to appreciate visitors, if the buried door was any indication.”

“Did you think we’d find merchants selling the secrets to Penglai Island in the town square for twenty gold pieces?” I said, glaring over my shoulder. “This was never going to be easy.” I turned and headed deeper into the tunnel system, forcing Wenshu to follow me, as I carried our only source of light.

The sounds of the desert grew distant the farther we walked, which was how I knew we were heading deeper underground. The sand walls seemed denser, darker from trapped moisture. We drew to a stop where the main tunnel split off into three smaller tunnels.

“Which way?” Wenshu said.

I hissed in pain as my firestones burnt out against my palm, singeing my skin and casting us in sudden darkness. “Do I look like a map to you?” I said, reaching into my bag for more stones.

“You’rethe royal alchemist.”

I tensed, grateful that Wenshu couldn’t see my face in the darkness, couldn’t tell how much I hated that title. All throughout Chang’an, and then China, the news of the palace massacre had spread through woodblock print flyers.

THE SCARLET ALCHEMIST, the print said at the top, with an illustration of a girl drenched in red, standing before a crumbled palace oozing with blood, severed hands and heads on the lawn, the sky a vicious red.

Scarlethad once referred to my own blood that I’d spilled for the dream of becoming a royal alchemist, but it had taken on a new meaning since that day. I was the last of the royal alchemists,the only one who had emerged from the palace, trailing bloody footprints behind me. No one knew what had truly happened, but most people didn’t need the truth. They created their own stories.

The Scarlet Alchemist, who killed all her friends. The Scarlet Alchemist, who was so jealous of all the other women in the palace that she tore them to shreds. The Scarlet Alchemist, who refused to die like a little cockroach, not because she was strong, but because everyone else had died for her. I had given everything for that title, and within a month, it was no longer an honor, but a curse.

“And what sort of alchemy do you propose I do here?” I said, still fishing for more firestones in my bag. “Exactly what kind of stone do you think tells you the location of a reclusive alchemist buried underground?”

My fingers were already growing cold, the temperature of the shadowed tunnels a stark contrast to the burning, golden sun aboveground. My trembling fingers skittered across the smooth stones, unable to discern their type in the dark. Normally, I could tell them apart by touch alone, but with my fingertips numb from cold, I wasn’t certain.

Wenshu must have sensed my hesitation, because he sighed and started rummaging through his own bag.

“Royal alchemist can’t even make a torch,” he said, striking a match, bathing the hallway in light.