Page 81 of The Blood Orchid

There was no record of Taizong himself being an alchemist, that was certain. Back when he was alive, alchemy was seen as undignified work, a new and unproven science.

I shook my head. “Even if it’s referring to Taizong, that wouldn’t help us. I can’t go ask a dead man for his ring.” I hoped that Hong was wrong, because the last thing I wanted was to go back to Chang’an to dig up his grave and pry the ring from his skeletal fingers.

“You could check the treasury?” Hong said. “If he had a ring he knew was valuable, he might have left it for my father.”

I let out a stiff laugh, imagining myself going back to Chang’an and waltzing into the palace treasury. I’d probably end up stabbed again. “They don’t let concubines poke around in there,” I said. “Especially now that Yufei isn’t there, I don’t think I can just walk in.”

“But you’re not just a concubine,” Hong said. “Remember?”

Right, I thought grimly.I’m the Empress.It felt impossible to imagine myself in such a position. I had spent my whole life standing in opposition to the rich, the family chosen by the gods. And now I was part of their history.

Far below us, the wind hummed once more, whispering his name in a language I didn’t know yet somehow could understand perfectly. I didn’t want to leave him again, but we were so painfully close to finding Penglai, to bringing him back for good, and if something was hunting him in the river plane, it wasn’t wise to waste more time. “I have to go,” I said, pulling away. “But I’ll see you soon.”

He smiled, but it didn’t reach his eyes. “Soon,” he echoed, the words soft, a gentle promise that the dead wind carried away.

“We are absolutely not going back to Chang’an,” Wenshu said, clutching his pear like he wanted to bludgeon me with it. “Do you want to get skewered again?”

We all sat on the floor of our room, pears and grapes spread out on a cloth before us. We’d ridden half a day south back to Zhongwei, not wanting to stick around Wuzhong on the off chance that someone found the Silver Alchemist’s body and started looking for her murderer.

Zheng Sili was peeling grapes for Durian while Wenshu sliced the pears. I turned to Zheng Sili, but his expression looked just as uneasy. I couldn’t blame him—Chang’an was at least a week’s ride south, not exactly somewhere to return to on a whim.

But I worried more about what we’d find when we eventually returned. I imagined the private armies tearing through the palace, overturning chests of jewels, storming through the duck ponds. It was dangerous to leave the throne empty for too long.

“The whole country is looking for us,” Wenshu said. “At least out here, they can only go by a description and some illustrations. People in Chang’an have actually seen us. Not to mention that the Empress probably has more puppets there than anywhere else.”

“It’s not like we’re safe up north either,” Zheng Sili said, carefully peeling the skin off a grape.

“We’ll have to return at some point,” I said. “People need to know that the House of Li hasn’t been wiped out.”

“Yes, we’ll return,” Wenshu said, “once you’ve harnessed all the power of Penglai Island to make sure we win whatever fight we’re walking into. Otherwise, all we’ll do isprovethat the House of Li is gone once they hang our corpses at the gates.”

I groaned, flopping back against the futon and staring at the ceiling. The other reason, which I didn’t want to bring up, was that if Yufei was alive, she would return to the palace once she heard that we were there. If she never came back, we’d know what that meant. Perhaps Wenshu didn’t want to think about it.

“But where else can we look?” I said. “What else couldchild of Heavenmean?”

“Oh, it’s definitely Taizong,” Zheng Sili said, popping a grape into his mouth. He moved it to his cheek for a moment, then spit the skin loudly on the floor, followed by two seeds. “Your boyfriend is right.”

“Taizong was not the first emperor to hold that title,” Wenshu said, glaring at the discarded grape skin. “The Mandate of Heaven began in the Zhou Dynasty.”

“Yes, which is way too old to make any sense,” Zheng Sili said, picking something from his teeth. “The Arcane Alchemist said that when he and his buddies found Penglai Island, they came back with the idea for life gold. That was one century ago, not nine centuries ago.”

“So it’s definitely Taizong, who is buried in Chang’an, the one place we absolutely cannot go?” I said.

Wenshu grimaced but said nothing. Zheng Sili finally succeeded in plucking the piece of seed from between his teeth andcast it to the floor. “Maybe I could go?” he said.

Wenshu and I both turned to him.

“My face isn’t as well-known as yours,” he said, shrugging.

I pictured Zheng Sili knocking on the doors of the palace, picking grape seeds from his teeth. The private armies would behead him on sight.

“Is this some misguided ploy to seize the crown?” Wenshu said flatly.

Zheng Sili scowled. “My family hasn’t laid the political groundwork for something like that. The Zhu family, on the other hand...”

I shook my head. “This is my mess to clean up,” I said. “Besides, they wouldn’t let you in, and you’d be executed if they caught you.”

“And they’d letyouin?” Zheng Sili said.

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