Page 52 of The Blood Orchid

Zheng Sili let out a frustrated sound. “I’m hungry,” he said, abruptly turning down a side street and waving us after him like servants.

We showed the flyer to merchants as we approached the city center. Most of them had some vague recollection of the Arcane Alchemist, but couldn’t remember when, or what he looked like, or where he’d gone. Wenshu bought a few lamb skewers and congee and passed them out, which Zheng Sili somehow found a way to complain about even while eating as if starved.

“You guys are just cheapskates,” he said, eating the lamb all the same. “It’s not even your money.”

“I didn’t pack the entire palace treasury,” I said. “The money will run out eventually, and then what? You’d have to eat weeds like apeasant.”

Zheng Sili shuddered, licking the sauce off his skewer. He glanced down at his dirty hands. “Anyone have a rag?”

“Not foryou,” Wenshu said.

“Isn’t everything you wear basically a rag?”

Wenshu made a face that I knew meant he would start yelling, so I reached into my pocket to sacrifice one of my rags rather than listen to them argue.

My fingers closed around a torn scrap of paper. I pulled it out, turning away from Zheng Sili and Wenshu and moving toward the light so I could read it.

“We don’t have to take you with us and pay for your food, you know,” Wenshu was shouting behind me, but his words barely registered as I read over the scrawled handwriting again and again.

“Are you forgetting who carried you to Baiyin?” Zheng Sili said.

“Zilan did that!” Wenshu shouted.

“Gege?” I said, turning around. When he kept shouting at Zheng Sili, I yanked his sleeve. They both turned to look at me.

“The Arcane Alchemist is back where the compass broke,” I said.

“How do you know that?” Zheng Sili said as I passed Wenshu the note.

At the top, there was a hasty sketch of a panda eating a watermelon. Beneath it, a few crudely scrawled words:

Blue robes

Stain on right sleeve

Freckle near eye

“This was in my pocket,” I said. Wenshu’s expression softened as understanding dawned on him. Surely he recognized the handwriting.

“Did a child write this?” Zheng Sili said.

I shoved his shoulder, smashing him against a building.

“What?” he said. “I only—”

“It’smyhandwriting,” I said.

“What?” Zheng Sili said, massaging his shoulder. “When did you write that?”

“I don’t remember,” I said. “I have no memory of writing this, which means—”

“That the Arcane Alchemist is here,” Wenshu said. “We’ve already found him.”

Chapter Eleven

We retraced our steps until we stood once more on the quiet residential street where the compass had mysteriously broken, the panda banner fluttering mockingly in the wind. Zheng Sili glared at it like it was the singular cause of our troubles, his shattered compass crushed tight in his fist.

I wondered if this was how Hong felt all the time—moments of his life wiped away as if they’d never happened, unable to trust his own mind. The once pleasant street now felt sinister, the clear sky foreboding. If I couldn’t trust my own memory, nothing was safe.