Page 70 of The Blood Orchid
We passed through a long hallway of arched doorways on the way to meet the mysterious alchemist, and every single one was blocked with a painted yingbì—some showed terraced fields of rice, others misty mountains, and others twisting rivers that led to the sea, almost as if each door was a passageway into a new world.
“This alchemist is very superstitious,” I said as we reached the staircase.
“You could say that,” Wenshu said under his breath.
The temperature dropped steeply as we went down the stairs, the tiles sharply cold beneath my socks, the banister like ice against my palm.
“Aren’t we still in the desert?” I said, looking over my shoulder at Wenshu, whose teeth were already chattering. “How is it this cold?”
“The alchemist said something about slate tiles retaining cold,” Wenshu said, though I could tell from his expression that he wasn’t convinced. He pointed toward the end of the first-floor hallway, where another yingbì blocked my view of the room. This one was not a landscape painting, but a scene in a dark pit carved from black rock, alight with red fire. Fanged monsters dragged naked figures across the ground, bound them with chains, and fed them into the depths of the pit. Religious conceptions of the afterlife had all but vanished in the golden age of alchemy, but I remembered Auntie So’s stories about the ten courts of Buddhist hell, and this sure seemed like one of them.
I stepped around the yingbì, into the room.
The first thing I saw was Zheng Sili, seated on the floor, clutching Durian in his lap. His gaze snapped toward me when I entered, something close to a smile crossing his face before he carefully smoothed out his expression again.
Across from him, a young woman with hair the color of starlight sat on a wooden chair before a low table, where one steaming teapot sat surrounded by five small white cups. The wall behind her—in fact, all the walls in the room—were shelved, packed tight with glass jars that twinkled in the weak sunlight. The jars looked empty as far as I could tell, but each one had one or two colored ribbons tied around the neck. My breath fogged the air in front of me as I stepped into the room, the cold tiles numbing my toes.
The woman’s eyes tracked me with an odd sort of intensity as I approached, the way my uncle appraised his clay creations. Thesharpness of her gaze and the long mane of white hair over her shoulder made her look like a winter fox, ready to devour me.
As she raised a teacup to her lips, I caught a glimpse of the Arcane Alchemist’s opal ring on her finger. On her other hand, she wore a gold ring with a bright red gemstone.
I drew to a stop.
Red zircon, I thought, my pulse hammering in my ears, the image from my dream echoed across my vision.
Before I could get a closer look, Wenshu nudged my shoulder, pushing me farther into the room. The white-haired woman set down her teacup and folded her hands in her lap.
“Zilan, this is the Silver Alchemist,” Wenshu said, gesturing to the woman.
I stepped around the table and knelt down on the floor, pressing my face to the freezing cold tiles in a deep bow. “Thank you for saving me,” I said.
“Alchemists are a dying breed,” she said, her words light as silk. “I could hardly let you go to waste.”
I lingered on the floor, my forehead chilled against the tile, for she hadn’t exactly given me permission to stand up yet. “Well,” I said, after an awkward stretch of time, “I’m grateful for what you’ve done.”
“Indeed,” the woman said airily. Then, at last: “Come, sit with me. I’ve been waiting to speak with you.”
I peeled my forehead from the floor, blood rushing from my head, and sat down in a chair that creaked as if in agony beneath me, the sharp edge biting into the back of my thighs even through my skirts. Wenshu sat in the chair next to me, while Zheng Sili remained on the floor.
“I would ask how you’re feeling, but I know that you’re fine becauseIhealed you,” the Silver Alchemist said. “So please don’ttake my lack of concern for rudeness.”
“Oh, I didn’t,” I said, leaning to the side so the sunbeam glaring off one of the jars wouldn’t hit me in the eye. “What are all the jars for?”
“They’re containers,” she said, as if it should have been obvious.
“Yes, but what will you put in them?” I said. I must not have done a good job at sounding polite, because both Wenshu and Zheng Sili shot me warning looks.
The Silver Alchemist only raised an eyebrow, a slight smile curling one side of her face. “They’re already full,” she said.
The sunlight shifted through the window, lighting up the far wall of glass jars, each one undoubtedly empty. Wenshu’s gaze could have burned a hole in the side of my face, but he shouldn’t have worried—I knew when to drop a topic. It didn’t matter to me how this alchemist wanted to decorate her house, only that she gave me my ring back.
“I’m very grateful for your help,” I said, leaning around a servant who hurried to pour me a cup of tea, “but about your payment—”
“What does your duck eat?” the Silver Alchemist said, eyes fixed on Durian, who had hopped from Zheng Sili’s lap and was trying to sit down on an empty tea saucer.
“Whatever we can find for him,” I said, trying not to let the irritation at being interrupted show on my face. The rich had always talked down to me when I was a merchant, but it had been a long time since anyone had dared. “He eats fruits. Sometimes he finds bugs—”
“Servant boy!” the Silver Alchemist called.