Page 12 of The Blood Orchid

I kept my expression still, fighting the urge to cross my arms and hide my rings, which would only look more suspicious. “Yes?”

“You think we don’t know what alchemy rings look like?” he said. “You’re an alchemist.”

“I’m not,” I said, too quickly.

“So the two of you survived in the desert and managed to crawl here from Chang’an on foot, without alchemy?” the man said.

More people peered from the broken windows of their houses now. It seemed the village wasn’t as dead as we thought, only dormant, tricking travelers—or private armies—into walking away.

I doubted I could argue my way out of this one—the man was already convinced of what I was. I could have subdued him easily enough, but if I did, we certainly wouldn’t be able to sleep here. That was, unless I also killed every survivor we came across. But I’d hurt enough people with my mistakes. I would rather stay out in the desert and pray I didn’t become viper food in my sleep.

“We don’t want any trouble,” Wenshu said.

“And we don’t need any more alchemists here,” the man said, stepping forward.

“She’s not an alchemist,” said a voice somewhere behind me.

The three of us turned around.

A young man leaned against a withered tree, arms crossed. His coppery, sun-scorched hair fell in his eyes, tossed and twisted from the desert wind. Sun had turned his bare shoulders and forearms golden, but also stolen the color from his clothes, now only an echo of what I guessed had once been blue and green and yellow.

“I met her the last time I was in the city,” he said, smiling at me. “She’s just an aristocrat’s daughter running away from an arranged marriage.”

I carefully controlled my expression before responding. I was certain I didn’t know this man, which meant he was lying for me. People only lied for others if they cared for them, or they wanted something in return.

I glanced at Wenshu, whose skin was still tinged gray from the remnants of venom, his hands trembling beneath his long sleeves. As far out as I could see on the horizon, there were no other villages, and the temperature was dropping swiftly. This place was our only hope of resting tonight.

“I’m running away from my father,” I said at last, dropping my gaze as if ashamed. “He’s already sent people after me twice.”

The first man sighed, mumbling something to the old man on the ground.

“Fine,” he said to the man by the tree. “They’re your problem, Junyi.” Then he turned to Wenshu. “You want to stay? Help us skin a goat for tonight.”

“I don’t know how to do that,” Wenshu said, his voice wavering as he backed up into me. But that, like everything else about us, was a lie. Wenshu had once chopped up a man and shoved his severed limbs into a pillowcase. But he wasn’t supposed to be Fan Wenshu the merchant’s son coated up to his elbows in blood, he was a rich boy running away from Chang’an.

“We’ll teach you, pretty boy,” the man said, waving for Wenshu to follow him back out into the fields of onion flowers.

I didn’t want to be separated, but normal rich girls didn’t typically volunteer to help skin goats. They got their meals already skinned and cooked, arranged on golden dishes with fresh scallions and daylilies.

“I’ll show you where you can stay,” the man—Junyi—said to me.

I cast Wenshu a quick glance before turning and following Junyi. For now, this was as much good fortune as we could hope for—the armies were unlikely to come through a village they’d already raided, and we would have shelter and food for the night.

Junyi led me farther back into the desecrated village, intoa clay house with no door, scattered sticks and boards leaning against the front wall as if they’d been torn away. There was only one window on the western wall of the house, no doubt to keep out the rays of the setting sun. The tiled floor glowed warmly around my ankles, still clinging to the heat of the afternoon.

“What do you want?” I said, the moment I stepped inside. “Money?”

Junyi laughed, reaching for a pot on a high shelf, twisting in a way that would definitely injure his back if he wasn’t careful. What kind of farm boy could be so reckless? “There are more important things than money,” he said, setting the pot unevenly across the stove.

“Hardly,” I said, frowning as he lifted a bucket of water from the floor and struggled to pour it into the pot. He set the bucket down heavily, water splashing over the sides, then tried to strike a match by rubbing it too slowly against his sleeve.

“You’re going to set yourself on fire,” I said, stepping forward and grabbing the bag of matches from him. I struck one against the clay front of the stove, tossing it into the woodpile, where it caught fire at once. I shoved the pot back to the center of the stove for good measure. “Have you never made tea before?”

He laughed stiffly, tossing two tea cakes into the pot, which was more than necessary for two people. “Forgive me for being a bit nervous in front of a royal alchemist,” he said.

I drew back against the wall, one hand in my satchel.There it is, I thought. He probably wanted me to make life gold for him and keep it a secret from the rest of his village. “I’m not—”

“Do you really think no one knows who you are?” he said, breaking up the tea cakes with a wooden spoon. “The only surviving alchemist of the massacre, the hùnxie girl from the south, tall like silver grass. You’re kind of hard to miss.”

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