Page 81 of The Scarlet Alchemist

I swallowed. “We’re never allowed to quit?” I said quietly.

The Moon Alchemist let out an incredulous laugh. “You think the Empress would let anyone else hire the best alchemists in the country? Once you’re an imperial alchemist, you serve the Empress until you die, and after that as well.”

I felt like the walls were drawing closer on all sides. The man was sucking on rat bones, loudly licking his fingers.

“Do you understand now, Zilan?” the Moon Alchemist said. “You spilled your blood at your last trial, so the Empress almost certainly has it. Even if you fled, her monsters would find you anywhere.”

I shook my head, leaning against the wall, afraid I would fall over. This was the dream I’d so desperately wanted? I’d needed money so badly that I’d signed myself up for something without really knowing what it meant, and now there was no way out.

A warm hand fell on my shoulder. The Moon Alchemist stood in front of me, her eyes the only brightness in the dungeon.

“You’re overthinking this,” she said. “Do you want to be inside the cage, or outside?”

“Outside,” I whispered, even though outside only felt like a bigger cage.

“Then you’ve got your wish,” the Moon Alchemist said. “We’ll start resurrections tomorrow.”

I walked back to the western ward, two steps behind my guard, feet dragging and nails stained red, paper-wrapped pork from the palace kitchens in baskets in each hand. Despite the smell, I was too nauseous to eat. My skin somehow reeked of rot, even though I’d barely touched any of the dead. I felt their soupy eyes on me even when we’d left the dungeons and the sunlight had bleached away the darkness, as if everything below was a hazy nightmare. But night would come again, and I didn’t want to be alone.

The Moon Alchemist’s words still haunted me.

They can siphon off the qi from their loved ones, one drop at a time, until they grow sick and die.

I had no reason to doubt the Moon Alchemist anymore, but even if she knew alchemy better than anyone, she didn’t know my cousins. I’d bring them food, and we’d chat and poke fun at Wenshu, and their smiles would wash away any doubts.Ihad resurrected them, I knew them better than the Moon Alchemist ever could.

But when I opened their door, they were halfway through dismembering a man in Yufei’s bed.

“Shut the damn door!”Wenshu said, mopping up blood with a bedsheet while Yufei startled to a stop, holding a severed hand. A man with a pearly sheen to his skin—or what was left of him—was sprawled face-down over Yufei’s sheets, which were now hopelessly stained red, seeing as she’d chopped off both of his hands. The baskets of pork fell to the floor.

I whirled around to the guard, who’d gone pale. “Wait outside, or I’ll stab you,” I said, slamming the door shut.

“What happened?” I said. “Did it hurt you?”

“He came in through the window,” Yufei said, nodding to the shattered lattice before plunging a knife back into his arm. “Tried to bite me, so I snapped his neck.”

“And, as you can imagine, getting caught dragging a grown man’s body out in the middle of the night isn’t the most flattering look for southern travelers trying to not get burned at the stake,” Wenshu said, wiping sweat from his forehead. “We’re trying to get rid of him discreetly.”

“Then why did you start with the hands?” I said, rushing forward and shoving Wenshu aside. “And stop cleaning while he’s still bleeding!”

“Because our knives aren’t sharp and our resident corpse-handler wasbusy being a concubine!” Wenshu said, casting his rags to the floor.

“I wasn’t being a concubine, I was being an alchemist,” I said, stepping closer and frowning at the pearly coating on his skin. If what the Moon Alchemist said was true, then someone had sent this monster after my cousins.

“How big of a bag do you have to stuff him in?” I asked.

“Here,” Yufei said, holding up a burlap sack the size of a pillowcase.

I fished some firestones out of my satchel and leaned over the man. My hands hovered over the nape of his neck, where a name was etched into his skin and outlined in ink, cracked down the middle where Yufei had snapped his neck. I prayed Wenshu hadn’t—

“And yes, we’ve seen the fucking soul tag,” Wenshu said, “so as soon as we get away with this murder, we’ll be discussing what the hell you’re doing in the palace.”

I raised an eyebrow. “You’re giving a lot of orders for someone who has no hope of hiding this body without me.”

Wenshu clenched his bloodstained fists. His face and clothes were spattered with red. “You won’t have to worry about the monsters anymore if you keep wasting time being a brat. I’ll kill you myself.”

For once, I didn’t think he was exaggerating.

I turned to the corpse and broke it down into pieces with firestone, soaking the bed with blood and passing Yufei feet and kneecaps and squishy organs while Wenshu yelled that she needed to put the biggest pieces in the bag first or else it wouldn’t all fit. Somehow, she managed to cram everything in, save for a few toes poking out the opening. I decided to take mercy on Wenshu and use some stones to strip the blood from the bedding. Then at last, we stood in a clean and silent room, a bag of body parts on the floor between us.

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