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We’d ventured east toward Huizhou as children to trade along the river, but we’d never gone north into Qingyuan. Beyond the city walls, there was little more than farmland and open sky. We passed through deep valleys of young sugarcane, its leaves waxy and green and lush, the air tinged with sweetness. Cicadas chirped in the grass, flies swarming around our horses. I’d never before seen so much open land, like the whole world was a scroll unfurling into forever.

“I’m going to throw up if you keep squeezing my stomach like that,” Yufei said.

I loosened my grip probably less than she would have liked, but I didn’t want to slide face-first into the prickly sugarcane. Kumquat started trotting faster downhill and I grabbed Yufei’s shoulders for support.

“How much farther for today?” I called to Wenshu, who looked only marginally more dignified than me and Yufei because he had more space in the saddle, though he still clutched the reins with stiff hands.

“We should at least ride until sunset,” he said. “Do you hate Kumquat that much?”

“Shut up,” I said. I knew he’d seen me flinch away from the horse’s gigantic black eyes before the merchant helped me into the saddle. I remembered my mother riding horses along the shore when I was a child, her hair loose, smiling while my father and I swam in the sea. I wanted to be as graceful as her, but something about horses unnerved me. Their big eyes were such a cavernous, glossy black. Their hoofbeats made the whole earth tremble, rattling my bones.

“I can’t believe you’re fine with dead bodies but don’t like horses,” Wenshu said.

“They’re just so large,” I said. “Like trees, but they can run toward you.”

“Now you know how people feel when they stand next to you.”

I would have thrown something at Wenshu if I hadn’t been hanging on for dear life.

Once we’d traveled for several hours without falling off, we picked up the pace a bit, because according to Wenshu,If we were going to go this slowly, we might as well have paid for donkeys.

We reached a town in northern Qingyuan just as the sun was setting. It wasn’t nearly as far as we needed to go, but our legs were sore from riding and we all practically fell off our horses.

People called Qingyuan the gate to the wilds of Yuebei. The south of Qingyuan, where we’d come from, was mostly trading villages. But to the north of Qingyuan, we’d pass through towering bamboo forests, sloping mountains, rice plantations, and wild bananas trees.

We walked our horses to the closest inn and tied them up. When we ventured farther into the farmlands, we would likely have to sleep outside, but it wasn’t safe to do that so close to a city. Our throats would be cut in our sleep, our gold stolen. If we could just make it north to the Cháng River, we could follow the postal route straight to Chang’an.

I couldn’t help but wince as Wenshu handed over our gold coins to the innkeeper. After hoarding gold for years, spending so much of it at once felt wrong.

A night at the inn apparently came with a bowl of porridge. We weren’t quick to turn down hot food, so we stumbled into a pub so loud that it made my head throb, men’s voices far too boisterous and cheerful for so late in the day. Wenshu pointed me and Yufei to a bench in the corner and handed us each a bowl.

At the bar, a pair of scholar alchemists were practicing party tricks, turning beer into blocks of ice. The innkeeper laughed uneasily and gave them new drinks on the house. Wealthy men like them could use their alchemy to charm free food and gifts from merchants, partially out of reverence and partially out of fear. It was a dangerous game to show off alchemy with so many desperate for life gold, but few would bother the sons of aristocrats and risk imprisonment.

As a merchant alchemist, I had no such protections. I’d heard of other lower-class alchemists who woke up shackled in dark rooms, tortured or starved until they made life gold, even if they didn’t know how. The punishment for kidnapping a commoner was only forty lashes with a light stick, a low price for an aristocrat to pay in exchange for eternal life.

A group of men in cyan robes drank rice wine across from us—probably the local magistrate and his right-hand men, based on the color of their clothes and the way their skin sparkled with gold flecks. I shoveled soup that tasted like dust into my mouth and willed myself not to fall asleep sitting up.

I was stirring the slurry in my soup together when feet stopped in front of our bench. Wooden shoes that curled up at the tip, gold designs carved into the sides.

“What lovely wives,” a man said.

Wenshu choked on his soup. For a moment, his expression was so pained that I thought he actually might vomit it back into his bowl, but he swallowed it down and shook his head. “Sisters, sir,” he said. Then elbowed us and we ducked our heads in a bow.

“Oh, unmarried, then?” the magistrate said, sliding onto the bench next to me. I wanted to recoil, but Wenshu left me no room to move. The man smelled like wine and sweat. He must have been close to Uncle Fan’s age. Yufei clutched her spoon like she fully intended to scoop the man’s eyes out, but I was too tired to conjure any anger right now and dropped my gaze back to my soup.

“How much for the pretty one?” the man said.

I didn’t need to look up to know that he meant Yufei. She moved to stand and most likely pour her soup over his head, but Wenshu grabbed her wrist.

“They’re not for sale,” Wenshu said, somehow managing to sound polite. He could have been a court actor in another life.

The man sighed. “Thehùnxie, at least?”

I stifled a sigh. I would have preferred “the ugly one” or “the tall one.” Yufei moved again, but Wenshu tightened his grip around her wrist.

“We have business up north,” Wenshu said evenly. “They need to work for me for a few more years before they can marry.”

It was a vague enough response that it might stand a chance at appeasing the man, if he was decent and honorable.