Page 51 of The Blood Orchid

“Half for you, and half for me and my brother to share?”

He shrugged. “I forgot about him.”

As if summoned, Wenshu appeared at the mouth of the alley.

“Have the two greatest alchemists in Lingnan found a solution yet?” he said, crossing his arms and leaning against the wall.

“One of them has,” Zheng Sili said, popping another grape in his mouth and rising to his feet, compass in one hand.

We followed the compass deeper into the city, but had to loop around the market to go where it pointed, not wanting to scale the walls of the ward with so many people watching. After half an hour, I started to suspect it was leading us in circles.

“Are you sure this is actually real?” I said, reaching out my hand expectantly. “Let me see it.”

“Don’t break it,” Zheng Sili said, reluctantly handing it over.

At once, I could feel the hum of alchemy ignite in my bones, like I was holding a piece of the sun. I turned in the opposite direction and the arrow snapped back toward the direction of the sunset. It seemed real enough to me.

“How did you even make this?” I whispered.

“Intelligence,” Zheng Sili said, snatching the stone back. “You want me to be your alchemy tutor, pay me.”

“We’re literally buying all your food,” Wenshu said, but Zheng Sili ignored him.

We followed the stone even farther across town, down winding pathways, ducking around fruit carts and through stores. Zheng Sili seemed so singularly focused on the direction of the arrow that he saw nothing and no one else, and we had no choice but to follow after him, even when he brushed past families and ran through storefronts.

The sun set quickly after that, practically crashing into thehorizon, a swift cold washing over the town. At last, Zheng Sili drew to a stop in the middle of a street. A sudden gust of wind blew my hair into my face, and I realized that one of my hairpins had fallen out somewhere along the way.

“Well?” I said, raking my hair out of my eyes.

He was glaring at his palm. “I don’t understand,” he whispered.

I sighed and grabbed the compass. This time, he didn’t even fight me, but merely stared at his empty hand.

The compass arrow spun in dizzy circles in my palm, no longer settling on one direction. Wenshu watched over my shoulder, frowning. I held the compass up to my eye and squinted in the setting sunlight until I saw a crack straight down the center.

“It’s broken,” I said, handing it back to Zheng Sili.

He shook his head, not moving to take it. “That doesn’t make sense. How could it break? It’s made of strong stones, and it’s not as if I dropped it.”

“Well, can you make another one?” Wenshu said.

He shook his head. “I don’t have any waterstones left.Someonewouldn’t give me any more money.”

“We can’t use up all of our waterstones on your flimsy compass that brought us nowhere,” I said. “Remember what happened the last time we were out of waterstones?”

Zheng Sili grimaced. He looked around at the street we’d arrived on, as if snapping out of his trance. We stood on a quiet residential road. Lanterns had burned down low, casting the street in soft darkness, edges blurred away by shadows. An old woman emerged from her house, shooting us a curious glance before dumping a bucket of soiled water into the street. There was a pub a few houses down with a fluttering banner of a pandaeating a watermelon. It hardly seemed like a great hideout for a thief.

“Maybe you made it wrong,” I said.

“How wouldyouknow?” Zheng Sili said, glaring. “You can’t even make a normal magnet, much less one this advanced. Maybe we’re in the wrong city.”

“Well, can you make a rock that can take us to the right city?” Wenshu said from behind us.

Both of us turned to scowl at him.

“Arock?” Zheng Sili said threateningly, at the same time I said: “What kind ofrockdo you think can track elusive alchemists across the country?”

Wenshu put his hands up in surrender.

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