Page 20 of The Scarlet Alchemist

My hands tightened around the steel. Only nine more people could pass.

I slipped my arm through the bars, reaching out for the alchemist’s discarded stones. Auntie So always said I was long-limbed like a wind sock, so I prayed that would finally be good for something. But the stones were too far away, no matter how much I stretched.

On the other side of the yard, metal clinked and clanged, and the audience cheered as the official drew another tally mark on the board. Soon after, a third.

As the tally marks kept coming, panic ignited in my stomach and I started hammering my fist on the cage again, even though it wouldn’t help. I knew the answer. All I needed was a few stones, and I could be out in moments. How could I come so close and go home with nothing?

The man with the cockroach mustache strolled over to my cage, shoving a quartz key into his pocket. Apparently not all the men were fools, but I loathed thatthiswas the one who had found the same answer as me.

“Poor thing,” he said, kneeling in front of my enclosure, eyes glinting with gold. “Nothing but a little caged bird now, aren’t you?”

“You’re actually proud of yourself?” I said. “You can’t even win a fair fight.”

“I don’t need to prove myself toyouto be worth something,” he said.

In a burst of rage, I reached out and grabbed his beard through the bars, yanking him face-first into the dirt. He bit down on his tongue, red spilling past his teeth.

The satisfaction lasted only a moment before he spit a mouthful of blood at my face, then grabbed the dirtied hem of my skirt spilling through the cage.

I didn’t see what stone he’d grabbed for his transformation, but my dress burst into scraps of fabric, fluttering to the ground around me. I had nothing but a long, thin undershirt made of pongee to cover me. The man reached for me again, but I raked my nails against his outstretched hand, shifting against the other end of the cage so he couldn’t take what little clothing I had left.

I shivered and hugged myself to hide what I could, the steel cage burning against my skin from the afternoon sun.

The man sat back and laughed as the scraps of my dress settled around him, the horrible sound echoed by at least a dozen other men. Hands pawed at me through the bars, no matter which side I leaned to. Someone grabbed my head, and my hairpins clattered to the floor of the cage, hair falling over my face. Someone else sloshed hot tea over my bare back, another hand tugging at the edge of my undershirt. There was nowhere safe but to curl deeper into myself, wishing for the thousandth time that I was smaller, that I could fold myself up and tuck myself away like a used rag. Tears burned at my eyes. Was it not enough to take away my dream? They had to humiliate me for daring to try?

The man with the terrible mustache reached through the bars again and swiped a thumb across my face, catching the traitorous tears. I wanted to push him away, but no matter where I went, more hands would seize me.

“If you ask me nicely, maybe I’ll let you out,” he said. “Just admit that you can’t do it yourself.’”

Icando it myself, I thought, unable to stop more tears as another hand ripped at the seams of my shirt.

Far away, I saw the official drawing the eighth tally mark on the board.

The bars around me started to blur into a lake of silver. I placed my bare palms against the burning metal just to keep myself grounded.Please, not now, I thought. Starbursts flashed behind my eyes, the white sky dripping into the horizon like sheep’s milk. This really wasn’t a good time for one of my fainting spells. Who knew what these men would do if I stopped fighting. I fell onto my forearms and pressed my head to the cool metal, sucking in deep breaths as the world spun around me.

The man’s words fell over me in sharp waves, and in the distance, the official called out another number, another mark painted on the board, another chance gone.

This isn’t fair, I thought. But what part of my life had ever been fair? I was foolish to expect them to let me compete. I wanted to cry in Yufei’s arms and let her break all these men’s faces. I wanted Wenshu to take me home and feed me and scrub the tears from my face until my skin was raw. Everyone who would help me was far away.

And then, strangely, I thought of the handsome stranger by the well, and the purple orchid crushed in his palm.

I will go to Chang’an to be a royal alchemist, I’d said to him. I’d been so certain at the time. So naive. I’d thought that skill and dreaming were enough.

That man had come all the way from Chang’an forme, not for any of these men. I was a great alchemist that they whispered about in the North. I was worth traveling across half of China to meet. I could do things that no other alchemist could dare to dream of. I was Fan Zilan.

I closed my hand around the man’s wrist, the cold touch anchoring me, the dizziness ebbing away. Maybe he thought it was desperation, because he didn’t pull away, even as my nails dug into his pale skin.

“Ready to give in?” he said.

I smiled, the sharp expression startling him back, but it was too late. I already had him in my grasp. Maybe they hadn’t wanted to give me any stones or metal to work with. But alchemy was everywhere—in the earth, the sky, the seas, our breath, and our blood.

I grabbed one of my hairpins from the floor and stabbed it into his wrist.

A tortured wail ripped from his mouth and he reared back, but I held his wrist tight as blood gushed across his white skin, splashing over the floor of my cage. If I couldn’t get a key, then I needed something harder than steel to saw my way out, and blood was full of iron.

The copper in my hairpin acted as the catalyst metal, drawing the blood up from his wrist, splitting the wound wider as an iron blade ripped from his veins, clattering to the floor of the cage. The reaction was unstable because I’d neglected the rule of threes, singeing my palms and bare knees and casting dizzy shapes across my vision, but it didn’t matter. Let the alchemy take what it wanted from me, crack me open and tear me to pieces, as long as it gave me its power.

The man fell back, scrambling away and screaming as I hacked at the bars with my iron blade. Everyone had backed away from my cage in terror, watching the bleeding man stumble drunkenly as red painted the dirt. The bars of my cage fell away, and at last I rose to my feet, standing in only my blood-soaked underclothes.

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