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“I am not one of your pets!”I said. “I would rather starve than eat your scraps!”

“Zilanxiaojie—”

“I should have just let that archer skewer you,” I said. “What a waste of my stones.”

Then I turned and stormed away. I had passed two rounds of the royal alchemy exam—I could find my own damn way out of the palace.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

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,xiaojie,” 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 thehúlijingsoon, 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 abouthúlijing—evil fox spirit shapeshifters—on occasion, but I’d never thought of them as more than folktales.

“There’s ahúlijinghere?” 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.