Page 47 of The Scarlet Alchemist

“Men with their throats slashed open, livestock cut to pieces.”

“And you don’t think it’s wolves?” I said.

The man scowled. “Not unless wolves can scale our twelve-foot walls. Besides, the teeth marks are human.”

I thought of the man tearing apart the pig the other day. Had they caught him?

“Let’s go,” I said, rushing to grab my shoes. This would show my cousins that I hadn’t been exaggerating, that the capital really was full of monsters.

It wasn’t hard to find the place the old man was talking about—half the ward was already crowded there, packed tightly together and murmuring.

“Why are you so excited?” Wenshu said, grimacing at the mud sticking to his sandals as he stumbled after me, Yufei close behind.

“I’m not excited,” I said.

“Any kind of entertainment in this sad city is exciting,” Yufei said.

We rounded the corner and found a crowd gathered around a pile of smoldering firewood, mostly the broken pieces of wagons that had rolled through town from the carnival.

But the person tied up in the mud wasn’t the man I’d seen the other day. It wasn’t a man at all.

A girl, probably no older than me or Yufei, was bound and gagged on the ground, flinching as men poured oil over her pink robes.

“That’s not the right person,” I said, quiet at first, then louder when no one acknowledged me.“That’s not the right person!”

“Zilan,” Wenshu said, grabbing my arm. “Don’t make a scene.”

“Why do they think it’s her?” I said, yanking my arm away.

“She was seen feeding foxes after dark,” a woman beside me said, casting a dirty glance at the girl in question.

“That’sit?” It wasn’t exactly a normal nighttime activity, but I’d done stranger things after dark. These people were just pinning their fears on an innocent person to make themselves feel better.

Two men yanked the girl up by her tied wrists and dragged her toward the wood. She screamed as her bare feet trailed over the smoldering embers.

I was already reaching for the stones in my bag when Wenshu seized my wrist. I shot him a warning look, but he didn’t let go.

“If we make trouble here, they’ll come for us next,” he whispered. “We can’t afford to stay in any other wards.”

“So we’ll sleep outside,” I said, trying to tug away, but Wenshu held firm, his eyes like cold granite.

“Sleep outside?” he said. “You want to end up gutted like the librarian?”

I turned to Yufei for help, but she only stared wide-eyed at the girl. She wasn’t arguing, which meant she agreed with Wenshu.

The girl screamed as the flames ate across her clothes. Racing comets of fire chased up the length of her hair, her skin dripping like one of the míngqì in Uncle’s kiln when the fire burned too hot. A sharp smell cut through the dizzying heat, sweet and leathery, strong enough that I could almost taste it.

Smoke stung my eyes, blurring the street and casting the silent crowd in a ghostly haze. The gray clouds swirled into stormy shapes beyond the bonfire, like a herd of wild horses tearing from a billowing hurricane.

I didn’t realize I was leaning into Yufei until she steadied me. She and Wenshu were staring at me, their eyes red from smoke, their backs to the fire.

“We won’t end up like the librarian,” I said, just to make them stop. “I wouldn’t let that happen.”

“It doesn’t need to come to that,” Wenshu said slowly. “Remember why we’re here, Zilan.”

I swallowed, thinking of the final exam, of Auntie and Uncle so far away, waiting for our money, probably afraid to buy more food until it arrived. I looked at Wenshu and Yufei, the flames reflected in their black eyes, flickering in tandem, their cold expressions exactly the same. I imagined them standing side by side when the Emperor gave them the purple robes of high-ranking scholars in only a few weeks, solidifying their home in Chang’an, with or without me.

I can’t lose them, I thought, dropping my gaze as Yufei released my wrist.I would rather die.

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