The aftermath of the carnival looked like a storm had blown through the city, red paper littering the ground, the dirt streets uneven from heavy foot traffic, the scent of firecrackers scorching the air. People in the western ward were busy fishing scraps of silk out of the mud to clean and resell.
I spotted a red piece of silk in decent shape jammed into a gutter above my head as my cousins and I walked back to our ward that evening. I plucked it free and quickly tucked it into my pocket, but an old man pawing through the mud had seen me.
“Please, xiǎojiě,” he said, “could I have half?”
The three of us walked past him without a word. It was what Uncle Fan had always taught us—Charity is for the rich. Show kindness once and by nightfall you’ll have a hundred people at your door—but after berating the prince for his lack of charity, I was too aware of the old man’s gaze following me down the street.
I shook my head. This was different. The prince had enough wealth to feed a thousand mouths, while my cousins and I would run out of gold by the end of the week if we ate more than one meal a day. It was different because he kept his money for extravagant pets while we spent all ours to stop from starving.
We’d received a letter from Uncle and Auntie earlier that day, saying they were feeling healthier than ever, that they were doing well enough to manage the shop, so we didn’t need to worry about sending money—lots of lies that only made us worry more.
Soon, I hoped we could give them enough for at least another month’s rent. Wenshu and Yufei had both passed their second-round exams in the top twenty percent of their class, their success in the third round practically guaranteed.
Their final exam required recitation and debate in the Northern dialect. That seemed far easier to me than their written exams, but Wenshu would barely break from studying to eat. Northern words had started bleeding into his speech in Guangzhou dialect and he yelled at me when I pointed it out.
I was more worried for my own test, which I couldn’t practice for the way my cousins could. Some of the Northern alchemists whispered that runners-up were sent to other provinces as teachers to make sure the pool of alchemists continued to grow. I couldn’t imagine coming this far only to be ordered back to the south.
In the afternoon, Wenshu managed to talk down the price on some burnt rice, which we ate in our room so no one could covet our food. It tasted sharp going down my throat and kept catching in the space where my molar used to be. I told my cousins about the prince’s irritating persistence while Yufei licked her bowl clean and Wenshu watched with his arms crossed.
“You shouldn’t upset the prince,” Wenshu said. “The last thing we need is a powerful enemy.”
“He’s not exactly the vengeful type,” I said, frowning. “He probably just sat in bed and moped after I left.”
“Who cares if he’s upset?” Yufei said, scooping stray pieces of rice from Wenshu’s bowl when she was finished with hers. “He thinks Zilan’s a duck.”
Wenshu sighed. “I know that death is inconsequential to us, but if someone’s trying to kill the Crown Prince, we need to stay as far away as possible.”
“It’s not like I go looking for him!” I said.
I flinched at the sound of a knock on the door.
“You’re too loud!” Wenshu said under his breath as he stomped off to answer it.
The bald man who rented us the room stood in the doorway.
“I’m sorry for my sisters,” Wenshu said, bowing. “We’ll be quieter.”
The man shook his head. “They’re burning the húlijīng soon, after the ward is locked,” he said. “I’m letting you know as a courtesy—you’re travelers, after all. If you don’t attend, it looks bad for you.”
Auntie So had talked about húlijīng—evil fox spirit shapeshifters—on occasion, but I’d never thought of them as more than folktales.
“There’s a húlijīng here?” Wenshu asked.
“Likely more than one, which makes it all the more important that you go,” the man said. “There’s been trouble here for weeks.”
“What sort of trouble?” Yufei said.
The man frowned at a woman speaking to him so casually, but Yufei was probably pretty enough to get away with it.
“Men with their throats slashed open, livestock cut to pieces.”
“And you don’t think it’s wolves?” I said.
The man scowled. “Not unless wolves can scale our twelve-foot walls. Besides, the teeth marks are human.”
I thought of the man tearing apart the pig the other day. Had they caught him?
“Let’s go,” I said, rushing to grab my shoes. This would show my cousins that I hadn’t been exaggerating, that the capital really was full of monsters.
It wasn’t hard to find the place the old man was talking about—half the ward was already crowded there, packed tightly together and murmuring.
“Why are you so excited?” Wenshu said, grimacing at the mud sticking to his sandals as he stumbled after me, Yufei close behind.
“I’m not excited,” I said.
“Any kind of entertainment in this sad city is exciting,” Yufei said.
We rounded the corner and found a crowd gathered around a pile of smoldering firewood, mostly the broken pieces of wagons that had rolled through town from the carnival.
But the person tied up in the mud wasn’t the man I’d seen the other day. It wasn’t a man at all.
A girl, probably no older than me or Yufei, was bound and gagged on the ground, flinching as men poured oil over her pink robes.
“That’s not the right person,” I said, quiet at first, then louder when no one acknowledged me. “That’s not the right person!”
“Zilan,” Wenshu said, grabbing my arm. “Don’t make a scene.”
“Why do they think it’s her?” I said, yanking my arm away.
“She was seen feeding foxes after dark,” a woman beside me said, casting a dirty glance at the girl in question.
“That’s it?” It wasn’t exactly a normal nighttime activity, but I’d done stranger things after dark. These people were just pinning their fears on an innocent person to make themselves feel better.
Two men yanked the girl up by her tied wrists and dragged her toward the wood. She screamed as her bare feet trailed over the smoldering embers.
I was already reaching for the stones in my bag when Wenshu seized my wrist. I shot him a warning look, but he didn’t let go.
“If we make trouble here, they’ll come for us next,” he whispered. “We can’t afford to stay in any other wards.”
“So we’ll sleep outside,” I said, trying to tug away, but Wenshu held firm, his eyes like cold granite.
“Sleep outside?” he said. “You want to end up gutted like the librarian?”
I turned to Yufei for help, but she only stared wide-eyed at the girl. She wasn’t arguing, which meant she agreed with Wenshu.
The girl screamed as the flames ate across her clothes. Racing comets of fire chased up the length of her hair, her skin dripping like one of the míngqì in Uncle’s kiln when the fire burned too hot. A sharp smell cut through the dizzying heat, sweet and leathery, strong enough that I could almost taste it.
Smoke stung my eyes, blurring the street and casting the silent crowd in a ghostly haze. The gray clouds swirled into stormy shapes beyond the bonfire, like a herd of wild horses tearing from a billowing hurricane.
I didn’t realize I was leaning into Yufei until she steadied me. She and Wenshu were staring at me, their eyes red from smoke, their backs to the fire.
“We won’t end up like the librarian,” I said, just to make them stop. “I wouldn’t let that happen.”
“It doesn’t need to come to that,” Wenshu said slowly. “Remember why we’re here, Zilan.”
I swallowed, thinking of the final exam, of Auntie and Uncle so far away, waiting for our money, probably afraid to buy more food until it arrived. I looked at Wenshu and Yufei, the flames reflected in their black eyes, flickering in tandem, their cold expressions exactly the same. I imagined them standing side by side when the Emperor gave them the purple robes of high-ranking scholars in only a few weeks, solidifying their home in Chang’an, with or without me.
I can’t lose them, I thought, dropping my gaze as Yufei released my wrist. I would rather die.
We stood still as the screams fell quiet, the body a blackened pile of embers and bones. Some women and children finally began to leave, so we slipped away with them and headed back to our room.
Yufei and Wenshu both went to sleep not long after, but I stayed up staring at the ceiling, the taste of burnt flesh tacky in my mouth. And when they stopped breathing and the room fell silent, I could hear nothing but my own traitorous heartbeat, could see nothing but the moon casting its dim light across my open palms, like I was holding up handfuls of shimmering pearls.