Page 53 of The Blood Orchid

The more I thought about it, the more obvious it became that we’d somehow lost time—how quickly the sun had set, how the compass had broken for no apparent reason, how I felt more exhausted than I should have. How much time had we spent with the Arcane Alchemist? What had happened when we found him? Judging by the broken compass, it hadn’t gone well.

Zheng Sili looked ready to charge into the pub and raise hell for the crime of destroying his precious compass, but Wenshu grabbed his arm before he could.

“Don’t go in there so angrily,” Wenshu said. “If he’s there and sees us looking like we know what happened, he’ll walk straight out.”

“So what’s our story, then?” Zheng Sili said, wrenching his arm away.

“That we need to, oh, I don’t know,eat dinner?” I said.

Zheng Sili shrugged. “I’m just saying, I’m not pretending to be your servant again.”

“Then pay for your own damn food,” Wenshu said, shoving the door open and waving me inside, slamming the door in Zheng Sili’s face.

I made a conscious effort not to survey the entire room the moment we entered. Instead, I cast a quick glance around as if looking for empty tables, making a mental note of everyone wearing blue robes, which had apparently been one of the more salient details. It wasn’t hard, because the pub only contained a dozen or so people, all men, several in blue robes, three of them with their backs turned. Of course this couldn’t be simple.

I shuffled closer to Wenshu, who pretended to think carefully about which table to sit at. Zheng Sili slammed the door open and stomped inside behind us.

“This place is for drinking, not standing,” one of the barmaids said, causing a few heads to turn our way. Wenshu distractedly slapped some coins on the counter, gesturing for me to sit beside him.

Zheng Sili cleared his throat, waving at the barmaid. “Do you have ox?”

Wenshu elbowed him in the ribs. “Do you have to order meat every time we go out?”

“Do I have to eat dirt just because you do?” Zheng Sili said asthe barmaid set down some cups full of dark wine in front of us. Durian slid his beak out of my bag, but I quickly poked it back inside and tightened the drawstring. Setting an alchemical duck loose in the restaurant wouldn’t exactly improve our stealth.

I took another slow sip and tried to look casually around the room.

One man in blue sat by the window, laughing and slamming down his cup as he talked loudly to two other men. That probably wasn’t our alchemist—anyone with a forgettable face probably didn’t have many friends.

Another man in blue at a corner table had a young boy in his lap and a woman by his side eating off his plate. I doubted the Arcane Alchemist had built a reputation as a thief and then started a family in the same city where he brazenly robbed people.

Another man in blue was reading a scroll at a dimly lit table by the opposite wall. He glanced up in irritation whenever his candle flickered too violently, his reading light shifting back and forth. With his back to the door, he didn’t seem to have noticed us. I leaned slightly out of my seat, trying to get a better look at what he was reading.

As I leaned forward, I locked eyes with another man, who was slipping out the back door.

In the darkness of the far wall, it was hard to make out the hue of his robes. But as the candlelight flickered, I caught a bright flash of blue on his sleeve as he reached for the door.

We made eye contact for one fleeting moment, his hand an inch away from the doorknob.

He looked young, his face smooth and bright, dark eyes wide as he drew back at the eye contact. His hair fell over half his face, softening the harsh edges of his jaw. I was certain I hadn’t seen him before.

Then the moment dissolved, and he turned back to the door.

On the side of his face, there was a single freckle just under his eye.

I leaped from my seat, ignoring Wenshu’s and Zheng Sili’s questions as I hurried after the man, nearly overturning a server. I couldn’t let him out of my sight, or this would start all over again and we’d have no chance of finding him.

He was already heading out the doorway, but I grabbed on to his sleeve and stumbled into the alley with him just before the door could close.

“Hey!” he said, trying to pull his sleeve away from me. I held on tight, taking out my knife.

He raised his hands and backed against the wall of the building, jolting at the impact. His eyes watered as I drew closer, his hands shaking. The certainty I’d felt in the pub rapidly dissolved, weakening my grip around my knife. Could this startled deer of a man really be a great alchemist? His face certainly wasn’t plain and unmemorable. In fact, I wasn’t sure I’d ever seen a more handsome man, and I prayed Hong would forgive me for the thought. He had perfectly smooth skin and comet-bright eyes, his face somehow as delicate as an orchid yet thornlike in its sharpness.

Wenshu burst out of the back door, knife already in hand. The man in blue flinched, wringing tears from his eyes. He flinched again when Zheng Sili stumbled out the door a second later.

“I have a few coins in my pocket,” the man said, hands still held up in surrender. “You can take whatever’s there.”

I looked to Wenshu, sure my expression gave away my doubt. “I don’t remember him,” I said, “but I wouldn’t, would I?”