Page 38 of The Scarlet Alchemist

A procession of acrobats and musicians paraded down the street, tossing strips of bright red paper and gold foil into the white sky. Wagons rolled by, piled high with enough silk that it looked like a mountain was drawing nearer, a flutist seated at the top playing sweet melodies that disappeared into the clouds. Other women balanced tall poles vertically on their heads, somehow walking forward as other girls balanced nimbly at the top.

“Is that alchemy?” I wondered out loud as they strode past.

A woman beside us scoffed. “Not everything beautiful is created by alchemy,” she said, then showered us in a handful of red paper. “Long live the Emperor.”

“Is this...carnivalhis doing?” Wenshu said, brushing paper from his hair.

The woman shook her head. “It is the will of the Empress. We used to only have carnivals for the gods, but now she holds them in honor of the Emperor and his continued strength in the face of his illness.”

The Emperor’s inability to conquer an illness in over a century hardly seemed worth celebrating to me, but I held my tongue. Still, it was interesting that in the capital, such festivities were now for humans and not solely gods.

Auntie So still prayed and lit incense when she could come by it, but as the years went on, people seemed to put their faith less and less in the gods they couldn’t see and more in the alchemy that they could. The Buddhists in particular had grown quieter over the years as their popularity waned. I suspected it was because people no longer needed the comfort of reincarnation after death when they could buy enough alchemical gold to live forever.

As we crossed the street in search of food, something hard wedged itself up between the reeds of my sandals. I hobbled after Yufei for a few moments before pausing to shake out what I’d thought was a rock, but instead, a pearl fell into my palm.

My heartbeat hammered louder in my ears, remembering the dead librarian and my missing pearls.This city practically bleeds jewels, I told myself.A pearl in and of itself doesn’t mean anything.I stuffed it into my pocket, though it felt oddly heavy.

When I looked up, Wenshu and Yufei had already disappeared in the crowd. I spun around, searching for white hemp robes, but they’d vanished in the sea of colors.

A man shouldered past me, and when his arm brushed mine, his skin felt like a sharp breath of winter. A breeze blew back his long yellow sleeve, and beneath his robes, his skin looked like polished metal, glimmering white.

My feet ground to a stop, breath trapped in my throat as he continued away from me in the crowd. I finally turned when the cold sensation vanished, just as the man disappeared around a corner.

My fingers traced over the pearl in my pocket. The man’s skin had been unnaturally polished, clean and rippling and white...like a pearl.

Once again, the image of the dead librarian burned across my vision. My knees shook and I started to feel untethered, like my soul was a kite rising over Chang’an, past the mountains of silk and flute melodies, up toward the faraway clouds. I held onto a cart for balance, then found myself moving forward as if the earth had sloped downward. Had the man with pearl skin even been real, or was my mind just hazy from the heat again? I stumbled after him, just to get a closer look, to be certain of what I’d seen.

There was a flash of yellow robes as he turned another corner. I hurried after him, slipping through the crowd, bumping into people who yelled and swore at me, but I only moved faster, as if magnetized. I tracked him deeper into a residential ward, twisting around clotheslines, farther and farther from the carnival on the broad main roads, the sounds of music growing softer.

In the stillness of the street, a high-pitched squeal tore through the air before cutting off abruptly. My footsteps slowed and I pressed a hand to the side of a building for balance.

Then came the smell of blood, so sudden and thick, a wave of bitter salt that stung the roof of my mouth.

A pig’s severed head splashed into the road in front of me, its dull brown eyes wide, severed tendons splayed out like jagged ribbons.

I pressed a hand over my mouth to stop from gagging and leaned slowly around the corner, where the man in yellow hunched over the remains of a pig. He knelt in a pool of blood, making an odd watery noise, like the sound of Yufei raising her bowl to her lips and slurping down the last of her soup.

The man froze, the wet noises silencing. He started to turn, but I was already running the other way.

I fled back toward the main street, not quite sure where I was going, just following the music until I burst back onto the main road, panting. I glanced behind me, but the street was empty.

A hand gripped my sleeve.

“There you—Ow!”

Wenshu winced as I twisted his arm.

“Sorry,” I said, releasing him.

“This is the thanks I get for finding you?” he said as Yufei approached with three pieces ofhúbing, handing one to me.

“You startled me,” I said, gripping the bread so hard that it snapped in half.

“You’re breathing fast and sweating,” Yufei said, raising an eyebrow.

“I was running,” I said, my hands trembling. “I saw a pig’s head.”

Yufei and Wenshu exchanged a glance. “And it...chased you?” Wenshu said.

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