Page 6 of The Scarlet Alchemist

“All the more reason to stay on our good side,” I said, digging through my drawer for the right stone and hiding a small smile. Something in me always warmed when Wenshu or Yufei called me their sister. Sure, we’d grown up together, but I was really only their cousin. It was painfully obvious just by looking at the three of us together—I was taller than both of them because that was what happened when you had a towering Scotian father. My hair had a strange coppery tint in the sunlight, my arms and legs were so long that Auntie So called me grasshopper, and the shoemaker told me only men had feet so big.

When we played by the river as kids and I saw our mismatched reflections rippling in the muddy water, the wordsisterfelt like a lie. I had not always been their sister, which meant one day they could decide I wasn’t their sister anymore. It was fine now, when we were all living under Auntie and Uncle’s roof. But maybe one day, Yufei would finally meet a man that didn’t disgust her, and Wenshu would marry because it was the logical choice, and I would be alone. Unlike Yufei, I wasn’t pretty enough to persuade a man to pay a dowry for me. The fact that I was ahùnxie—half Hàn Chinese and half foreigner—certainly didn’t help my case. Part of me wished all of us could be like Yufei and just pretend to never age, so we could stay together forever.

I pulled three small moonstones from the drawer, warming them between my palms. Moonstone was a waterstone, useful for healing and repairs. All the stones in the world had different properties based on their elements—most metalstones could reshape other objects, earthstones were good for transforming the mind, woodstones worked well for manipulating plant and animal life, and firestones were agents of destruction or great change. There were still thousands of stones with untapped uses, and even more hybrid stones that alchemists tried to forge for more powerful reactions, like the chicken-blood stone my father had studied.

I’d bought an old alchemy-stone manual a few years ago for half price because it was so outdated, then taken notes in the margins as I tried out each stone to verify what the book said. I knew by heart how to use any stone I could find in Guangzhou, and carried a satchel of the most common ones with me at all times: moonstone for healing, iron for reshaping, amethyst for breaking.

For small repairs like this, a few moonstones would do the trick. I held three of them in my hand, sunk my fingers into the mashed potatoes, and closed my eyes.

The real reason I could do alchemy and my cousins couldn’t was that they couldn’t hear the river flowing inside them. I’d asked them about it once and Wenshu had checked my forehead for a fever.

Qi—breath, energy, life—circulated through all our bodies, an endless river inside us keeping our hearts beating, making our lungs expand, warming the food in our stomachs. Alchemy was about drawing the power of the natural world into your qi. When I closed my eyes and let my breath grow shallow, I could hear it rushing over smooth stones and golden sands, pouring into the vast ocean of my heart.

My palm grew cool as it soaked up the healing properties of the moonstone, the river inside me running cold, thin layers of glassy ice forming across it and shattering in the current. I breathed out a cloud of water vapor, my skin prickling with goosebumps. Then, like an unstopped dam, the moonstone’s energy bled out my palms and into the potatoes.

The starchy sludge grew firm beneath my hands, the skin sealing back up, soft spots of overripeness growing firm. Five whole sweet potatoes sat on the floor beneath my hands.

My fingers stung as if frostbitten, one of my nails cracking as I rubbed my hands together to melt away the coldness.

Whenever I called on alchemy, it bit back. That was one of alchemy’s central principles—you cannot create good without also creating evil. For small things like reconstructing potatoes, the cost was negligible. For bigger transformations...it was always a question of whether it was worth it.

“Thanks,” Yufei said, gathering up the potatoes. She paused, raising an eyebrow as if contemplating something of great importance. “We should do this with the food the merchants throw out at the end of the day. Save some money.”

“That’s not a bad idea,” I said.

“It is absolutely a bad idea,” Wenshu said. “You want to eat rotten fruit and spoiled meat?”

“Zilan can unspoil it,” Yufei said.

“You would lick soup off the floor. Your standards for food safety don’t reassure me.”

“Iwouldn’t lick soup off the floor,” I said.

“No, you would just resurrect potatoes with hands covered in corpse juice,” Wenshu said.

“The moonstone purifies—”

“Eat what you want,” Wenshu said. “There’s a very short list of things I would die for, and potatoes are not on it.”

I turned to Yufei. “You and I are on that list, but second to his soap beans.”

Another handful of soap beans flew across the room, raining over me and Yufei.

“Did you want me to go with you or not?” Wenshu said.

I nodded, biting back another jab. Taxes for our ward were due at the end of every week, and it wasn’t a good idea for a girl to walk alone to the other end of the city on a day that everyone knew she’d be carrying money. I had cinnabar crystals in my pocket that I could use to explode a thief’s brains if I wanted to, but it was better for our business for me to simply walk with Wenshu and avoid conflicts altogether. He always offered to go by himself, but I knew he didn’t have enough of a spine to stand up to the market commandant.

“I’ll come too,” Yufei said.

“You already went out today,” Wenshu said. “Mama will be mad if you get too tan.”

“I want rice cakes,” Yufei said, as if that would ward off Auntie So’s anger.

Wenshu rolled his eyes and handed me a straw hat from the hook by the door, taking one for himself as well. I didn’t particularly care if I got tan, but I knew it would give Auntie So one less thing to worry about. Both she and Uncle Fan had been too sick to work lately, so if me having the complexion of raw whitefish made them smile, I wouldn’t question it.

I grabbed the bag of gold from behind the counter while Wenshu took out our sales ledger. We left through the side door, locking it tight behind us and stepping out into the sharp sunlight.

CHAPTER THREE

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