Page 8 of The Blood Orchid

“I’d rather an earthquake than another visitor,” he said, standing up with a scroll under his arm.

I chanced a glance at Wenshu, who I knew had seen what I’d seen.

When disaster struck, people always looked to what they valued most. It was an old trick that market commandants tried on merchants they suspected were hiding money to evade taxes. Back in Guangzhou, the commandant would break our windows in the dead of night, or punch holes in the thatched roof during a rainstorm, or set fire in the middle of the shop, then stand back and watch. They knew that when disaster struck, you looked for what was most important to you.

And the Sandstone Alchemist had looked to the room on the left.

“Here you are,” he said, holding out a nondescript scroll in one hand.Probably blank, I thought,or something equally useless.

But the Sandstone Alchemist was already heading for the doorway, getting ready to kick us back out into the desert. There was no way he’d simply let us look around. Not without a good reason.

I reached into my bag and cupped a hand under Durian’s belly, whispered an apology into his feathers, and set him down on the ground.

At once, he took off for the doorway, flying low, nearly knocking the Sandstone Alchemist off his feet.

“Durian got out!” I shouted, rushing forward and shoving Wenshu into the hallway. “Catch him before a snake eats him!”

Wenshu knew as well as I did that Durian was more likely to eat a snake whole than be eaten by one—I’d caught Durian disemboweling a carp twice his size from one of the palace ponds—but luckily Wenshu only rolled his eyes and took off running.

“You can’t just run around in here!” the Sandstone Alchemist said, chasing after Wenshu. I jogged behind them for a moment before turning back to the room we’d just been in, rushing straight through it to the room on the left.

This room had no shelves or cabinets. It was nothing but four walls of smooth, polished sandstone, no cracks or seams. At least, nothing you could see if you weren’t an alchemist.

I pressed my palm flat against the wall, my iron rings flush against it. Alchemy rippled through the stone, searching for something to bend, mold, break.

Alchemy curled around a thin, nearly invisible seam in the wall, pausing to gauge my intentions, await my command.Is this what you’re looking for?it whispered from somewhere deep inside of me.

I’m not sure, I thought,but let’s find out.

The alchemy flooded the seam in a burst of purple light. The stone crackled as dusty white particles swirled into the air, the seam carved wider. At last, a small door swung open, no larger than my satchel.

I slipped my hand inside, fist closing around a few sheets of paper. But there was no time to read them now—hurried footsteps were drawing closer to the room.

I stuffed the papers in my bag and hurried back into the hallway, where Durian narrowly evaded the Sandstone Alchemist’s grasping hands.

I reached into my bag, pulled out a handful of dead crickets, and tossed them on the ground. Durian landed on top of them before I could even put the bag away, gobbling them up. I scooped him up as he quacked in protest, setting him back in my bag.

Wenshu and the Sandstone Alchemist had finally caught up, panting and glaring at me, though likely for different reasons.

“We’re done here,” the Sandstone Alchemist said at last. “Take your scroll and get out.”

“Let me see it first,” I said, because accepting it too eagerly would look suspicious.

“Get out of my home, then you can see it. That was the deal.”

Wenshu crossed his arms. “But—”

“You’re already pushing your luck,” the man said, jamming a finger at Wenshu. The viper slithered down his arm, baring yellowed fangs. Wenshu swallowed and backed up, nodding.

The man brushed past us, charging down the hall. Slowly, the ground began to slope upward, the sound growing softer and brighter under our feet. We reached a trapdoor in the ceiling, which the Sandstone Alchemist shouldered open with a grunt, bright light and a gust of hot sand blowing through. He clambered out, then held out a hand.

“Is all of this really necessary?” Wenshu said as the Sandstone Alchemist pulled him up. “You really hate people so much that you need to be this reclusive?”

The Sandstone Alchemist shook his head, yanking me up. I slipped in the sand, keeping a firm grip on Durian. “I’m not here because I hate people,” he said. “I’m here because people would use me for awful things. That is the cost of being a great alchemist.”

At last, he passed me the scroll. I was ready to leave, but I needed to at least make a show of looking at it until he disappeared back into his dune.

I unfurled the scroll and scrutinized the detailed map of China, the sweeping deserts of the northwest, the mountains in the northeast, the rippling ocean border in the east. But there was no indication of anything resembling Penglai Island, just as I’d expected.