Page 52 of The Scarlet Alchemist

Once I could no longer hear anything but the prince’s heartbeat, he pulled away and smoothed out his clothes. I brushed off my dress without even looking at it, feeling like I’d resurfaced from deep underwater, unsure what to do or say.

“Sorry,” he said at last, looking down the mouth of the path rather than at me. “The guards were... And I was...”

“Scared like a baby deer?” I said.

“Um, I suppose that’s fair,” he said, waving for me to follow him back to the main path. “At least we’re not dead.”

“As if the guards would hurt you for walking around your own palace,” I said.

The prince frowned. “Of course they wouldn’t hurtme,” he said.

“Then why—”

“Quiet, we’re approaching another guard post.”

We hurried down a smaller passageway to the left, which opened up to a clean-swept compound with small houses aligned in rows, surrounded by ginkgo trees trimmed into perfect spheres. To the right, there was a gray stone building with a towering green door and no windows, just an endless line of bricks with two guards stationed in front of it. I only got a quick glimpse before the prince pulled me back behind the wall.

“They’ve imprisoned my sisters in there,” he whispered. “I saw them dragged off from my windows. Can you get us past the guards?”

I bit my cheek, thinking. The prince had already said it wasn’t wise to simply attack the guards, and judging by how silent the inner palace was, I was inclined to agree. At the sound of fighting, every guard nearby would come running.

Which meant I needed to send the guards somewhere else.

As a child, I’d sometimes been able to keep Uncle and Auntie away from my resurrection practice by leaving snake boxes outside the pigpen to scare them off. But something told me that the palace guards wouldn’t run away from danger but toward it. If I could create some sort of emergency, the guards would have to abandon their posts to attend to it.

“What’s inside that house?” I said, pointing to the building closest to the dungeon, just across the yard. A gingko tree towered over it—if it happened to fall, the roof would cave straight in.

“I think that’s where some guards sleep,” the prince said.

I grimaced. I didn’t want my fake catastrophe to actually kill anyone. “All of these buildings have people in them?” I asked.

The prince shook his head, pointing to the houses with thatched roofs farther to the left. “The inner ones are military storage.”

“Like swords?”

He shrugged. “Swords, gunpowder, crossbows. Things they don’t want the outer court to have access to.”

“Gunpowder?” I said.

“Yes, it’s an explosive that the military uses in—”

“I know what gunpowder is,” I said, scowling.

I knew because royal military parades through Guangzhou were bright, expensive displays of burning lights that cast sparks on our dry roofs, tearing flames through our city before the procession headed back north to proclaim their message of glory delivered. I knew that thatched roofs were flammable, and gunpowder burned up fast once touched by fire. If a thatched roof caught fire, it would collapse quickly, and if a storehouse full of gunpowder went up in flames, the guards would need to put it out immediately, or they would have an empty storehouse to answer for.

I jammed my hands into my satchel and retrieved three firestones, then pulled off one of my socks and balled it up with the firestones inside. “Okay, I’ve got a plan. You might want to close your eyes.”

“Are you sure—”

But he never finished his sentence, because I’d already ignited the sock and hurled it across the courtyard.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

The sock struck the top of the storehouse like a falling comet, and with a white flash, the whole roof burst into flames. I’d seen far worse fires start from far less in Guangzhou. The dim courtyard was suddenly alight with blazing orange, the fire roaring and churning smoke into the night.

The prince shielded his face, but I didn’t look away until I saw the guards rushing through the smoke toward the burning storehouse.

“Come on!” I said, grabbing the prince’s sleeve and yanking him across the courtyard before more guards could come running and spot us.

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