Page 64 of The Blood Orchid

“It would have been such an embarrassing way to die!” he said. “They should at least compensate us now! My father would have them shut down if he were here.”

He yanked his sleeve away and stomped inside the armory. I sighed and tucked Durian into my bag before following. Picking a fight with a merchant was an easy way to get skewered, and I would need to do damage control if I didn’t want to drag Zheng Sili’s corpse back to the inn.

Metal covered every wall of the armory, alight with the reflection of the fire burning at the center. There were gleaming bronze plates sewn into lamellar shirts, twinkling chain mail hanging from hooks, gold-plated helmets on shelves. Two men stood in the corner, one of them holding up a red-hot poker that he seemed to have pulled from the welding table. An older man stood in front of them with a sword held threateningly above his head. All of them turned as Zheng Sili and I entered, frowning at us before quickly looking back to each other.

Zheng Sili’s bravado seemed to drain out of him at the sight of weapons. He stepped to the side, just slightly behind me, as if I was the one who’d decided to storm in here.

“They’re trying to rob me!” the older man said, jerking his sword at the younger men.

“With iron pokers?” I said, crossing my arms.

“No one asked you,” one of the younger men said, waving the poker clumsily in my direction. He probably expected me to flinch, but I only frowned and watched errant sparks spiral to the floor.

I crossed the room and grabbed his wrist, dodging a half-hearted swing at my face. He lurched back, but I held tight to his arm and twisted it until the poker clattered to the floor. It was easy to tell the difference between someone who actually knew how to fight and someone just throwing a weapon around. The merchant clearly knew how to wield a sword—he’d forged it, after all.

“I have sympathy for people stealing food,” I said, twisting his arm a fraction farther and pulling a pained cry from his lips, “but I can’t imagine why you need armor badly enough to pick a fight with someone who could cut you in half.”

“It’s our master’s orders,” the other young man said, backing farther into the corner. “If we don’t listen,he’llcut us in half.”

“He ordered you to hold up a blacksmith with a fire poker?” Zheng Sili said, raising an eyebrow.

The man in my grasp shook his head. “He just said to prepare for a journey south by sunrise, but everyone knows what he means. If we don’t have proper protection, we’ll be dead.”

“Southas in Chang’an?” I said, my lips pressed into a tight line.

Both men nodded. “He wants to stake his claim to the throne.”

Zheng Sili rolled his eyes. “The royal army is better trained than you fools,” he said. “They’ll cut you down where you stand.”

“The royal army is all but dissolved,” the merchant said.

I turned around, releasing my grip on the young man. “What?”

The merchant sheathed his sword. He reached into his pocketand pulled out a folded piece of paper, handing it to Zheng Sili. “The crown may be up for grabs,” he said, “but that doesn’t mean my armor is.”

“The crown is not ‘up for grabs,’?” I said, turning to Zheng Sili for explanation.

But he had gone very still, his knuckles white around the paper, angled so I couldn’t see it. “Where did you get this?” he said, turning to the merchant.

“The flyers were posted this morning, came up from the postal carriers, straight from the capital.”

“What does it say?” I said, stepping closer. But Zheng Sili took a step back, pressing the flyer to his chest.

“I don’t think you should—”

I tore the paper away from him and flipped it over.

It was an illustration, the ink faded from a stamp pressed down too many times, but the image still clear.

The gates of Chang’an, a hanged woman dangling from the center, wispy robes shifting like ghosts in a soundless breeze, long black hair, bare feet.

At the top, in bold, black ink:

THE EMPRESS IS DEAD

Zheng Sili came up behind me, clearing his throat. “It says—”

“I can read!” I said, angling away from him, a strange coldness washing over me as I kept reading.