Days later, there was still no reply from Sen.

Ruyi told herself not to panic. It’d come she told herself—she’d wrung herself dry worrying over Tingting’s letters, for nothing. She wasn’t playing this game anymore.

Sen had seemed shaken when last they met. Maybe she needed some time.

Still Ruyi worried, but not any more than she normally would.

***

“Coming through!”

The horde of black-cloaked cultists parted way before a rattling steel trolley. Mei used it to restock her dough supply—she’d wheel around these huge clay pots of them. Today it wasn’t clay pots but steel barrels. And in them was top-grade Healing Elixir, worth so much you could trade it for a block of Lower City houses.

The higher the grade, the more effective the elixir per drop. These worked by aiding the body’s natural healing processes, boosting qi flow, clearing up circulation. With just a few drops taken orally, it was like a human got a phoenix’s regeneration for a few hours. It’d be enough to treat almost any illness. A vial could regrow a missing limb.

It was also quite expensive to make. One of the ingredients was Phoenix Tailfeather (where much of the regenerative properties came). But money had always been imaginary to Ruyi; the numbers went up and down but the limits were so far away she never felt them. Mother never seemed to mind. Once she’d ordered a hundred gold-plated cauldrons rather than ten. She didn’t hear a peep.

As Mei shoved from behind and Ruyi pulled from the front, careful not to pull too hard, she thought about how little it’d taken for her to make this batch. A few hours of modest effort, a few scribbled numbers on a requisition form. Then she thought about how much good it’d do; she thought of that swamp of rotting flesh in the field hospital coloring the street black. She’d help these folk walk again, live without pain, maybe even save their lives—in the hundreds! It was enough to put a big smile on her face.

The only thing that did burn her was that she couldn’t very well stencil COURTESY OF RUYI YANG on the barrel’s side. She’d gotten the stencil all carved and made before she realized she was supposed to be anonymous. It did dim her smile a little. She liked helping people, but she really, really liked it when they knew exactly who’d helped them. Especially if they could bow and thank her and maybe name a child or two after her.

“Ah, well,” she muttered. Still a good cause.

“You can drop this here,” said a pair of grunts. “We’ll handle it. The Prophet expects you.”

Cao’s office was exactly as she’d remembered. Spare save for the great zitan desk in the middle. It was as though it hadn’t been used since they last met. There was Cao, in exactly the same suit, clean like it’d just come out of the wash.

“Our Alchemy prodigy!” he said, lacing his fingers. She couldn’t tell whether he was praising or mocking her; his tone could’ve implied both. He wore a well-calibrated smile. “Welcome. What do you have for me?”

She yanked a folder out of her satchel, picked through it, and threw a few drawings at him. He blinked at them.

“And what, pray tell, is this meant to be?”

“It’s my preliminary calculations, written in Zi Runic Language. Alchemists will understand. If they’re worth their silver.”

“If you’ll excuse me,” said Cao. “These appear to be… sketches.” Hastily drawn sketches, some half-crossed out, run through with scribbles.

“Yeah,” said Ruyi airily. “I did them in an afternoon.”

“Miss Nala…” Cao’s smile was so polite it was nearly condescending. “We are paying quite a hefty sum for you. We expect the best work.”

“Are you questioning the quality of my work?”

Cao held up his hands, smiling helplessly. He had a dozen different smiles, it seemed, ready for any occasion, each faker than the last. “Is there a need for such hostility? We make certain to deliver untainted demon flesh to you. We simply expect what we agreed on.”

“You have it. Why don’t you run it over to your Alchemists and let them tell you its worth? These are pretty much a blueprint! The hard work’s done. I’ve narrowed the properties each ingredient ought to have. Give me… six weeks? To optimize ingredient selection, and you’ll have your demon Soul Bind elixir.”

She could get it done in two, probably. But she liked having weekly demon flesh. The instant she’d said six she wished she’d said twelve. Maybe twenty. Ah, well.

Cao pursed his lips.

“Very well,” he said. “Han?”

He nodded to the baldy at the door with his arms crossed. The dragon tattooes on his forearms seemed to be roaring at each other. “Will you retrieve the flesh we’ve promised Miss Nala?”

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While baldy was out, Cao turned to Mei.

“So,” he said. “Have you thought about our offer?”

Mei nodded slowly. “I’ll do it,” she said.

“Good.” Cao winked at Ruyi. “There’s some extra incentive for you. Make certain it works.”

***

“What was that supposed to mean?” said Ruyi as soon as they got out. Coming here they’d had to wheel the barrel through the streets, fending off a dozen thieves as they did. But going back was easier. They were shimmying their way up a pipe onto their usual rooftop highway route.

“What did you just agree to?”

“It’s nothing,” said Mei. She said it so calmly Ruyi almost believed her, but Mei could be calm about almost anything. She was like Jin. They both kept their emotions on a tight leash; Ruyi always felt it was the other way around with herself.

“He said it’d be ‘extra incentive’ for me,” said Ruyi. “It’s not nothing. He meant something by it.”

“If you do poorly, it’ll reflect badly on me.”

It sounded reasonable. Yet…”That’s not what he meant.”

They leapt from roof to roof. Mei considered her silently. “You’re learning,” she said.

“So?”

Mei launched herself off two slanted roofs in a zigzag, cracking the clay tiles. But Ruyi was faster now. Mei couldn’t get away form her.

“So?”

Mei sighed. “Don’t tell Ren.”

“I never tell that dummy anything,” scoffed Ruyi.

“I’m serious.”

Seeing the look in her eye, Ruyi sobered up. “I won’t. Promise.”

“I’ve agreed to be a demon vessel.”

Ruyi stumbled so hard she nearly fell through the crack between the buildings.

“Yes,” said Mei evenly. “I know. I’ve been thinking about this for a long time. You don’t need to remind me of the risks. I know. I just… I think it’s the right thing to do.”

“Why?!”

Mei’s eyes were on the streets. They leapt in silence for a few breaths, then down a chain of flat roofs descending to the main road, were the people were.

“Do you remember when I first took you up there?” said Mei. “And we visited Chrysanthemum Street’s field hospital?”

Ruyi nodded, then realized Mei’s head was turned. “Yeah.”

Mei was looking at two children playing with a black-and-white ball in the streets. One, a bald little girl, was of water-aspect and muddied the ground as she ran. The other, a smaller, stick-thin little boy with droopy eyes, seemed of wind aspect. He chucked it at a hoop. The girl tried blasting it with water, but the winds made it curve around the blast.

“Goooooalllllll!” he squealed, dashing through the streets grinning checkered deep yellow teeth, flapping his arms in wild celebration.

“Cheater!” The girl called after him, both hands cupped around her mouth.

Their skins were riddled with bright red circles.

“Is that dragonpox?” gasped Ruyi. “I thought it was eradicated.”

“Not here. It cropped up in a shelter a few years back and it’s only spread since. It’s seasonal—late spring, early summer, they make up about nearly a quarter of the cases we get. This way.”

They rounded a bend and were coming up on the quaint street that led to the bakery.

“I see patients every day,” said Mei. “I give them salves for their wounds, I feed them elixirs when we’ve got them. I can help maybe… three dozen? Every night when we close up, we leave hundreds behind, waiting in line.. you saw it.”

The horde of men, and women, and children pitted with black, groaning and baking under the mid-day sun, and the nurses shuffling between them, little dots of white in a sea of black. She nodded.

“You said something to me,” continued Mei. “You wanted to jump down and help. And at the time I thought it was, pardon me, naive. Adorable, but naive. A little childish, maybe?”

Ruyi had to swallow an indignant outburst.

“… but I’ve had time to think about it, Nala. You were right. What kind of attitude is this? That all I can do—that anyone can do—is bail water out of a sinking ship?” Mei sighed. “Every day I try. I help as best I can. And every day more come than the day before. You grow numb, after a while. It feels like your life, the lives of tens of thousands, are just the playthings of greater powers. Powers who don’t spare you a second thought. And there’s nothing you can do. You can’t even see them, that’s the worst part… they’re just there, hanging over everything. Does that make sense?”

She wrung her hands. “It’s hard to explain. You have to feel it.”

“I think I get what you mean. Kind of,” said Ruyi slowly. She was thinking of the Emperor, and Tingting, and Chen Qin. But she could tell it wasn’t really the same.

“Let me give you an example.” They came up to the ‘Happy Cookie Bakery’ signpost. Mei leaned on it, arms crossed, and faced her. “Do you know how much it’d cost to eradicate dragonpox from the Lower City?”

Ruyi shook her head.

“About half of what it costs to run the Emperor’s Banquet. And when you noble Alchemists dump your toxic wastes in the western river, guess where it ends up?”

“…in your drinking water?” mumbled Ruyi.

“You are learning.”

“Wait—how’d you know I was a noble?”

Mei gave her such a dry look she was embarrassed. “…Right.”

“I know what you’ve heard about the cult,” said Mei. “The more… radical folks. The ones that want the Emperor given death by a thousand cuts, and the Dukes boiled alive. I don’t want that.” This last bit she added quickly, like she was trying to reassure Ruyi.

“I don’t think cruelty is the answer to cruelty. But there has to be something between that and here, isn’t there? Maybe if we had something that could make them pay attention, things could finally change.”

“But…” Ruyi wasn’t sure what to say. “Why does it have to be you? Why can’t it be those baldies? Or—I don’t know—they have tons of grunts they can send out there!”

“Why not me? Those ‘grunts’ are just people, Nala. Like me. And Han has agreed. As have a dozen others. Cao is asking those he feels truly believe in the cause. I do.”

“But you could die!”

Mei had this set to her jaw like she’d made her mind up. Where was Jin when you needed him?! He could talk her out of this.

“Drawing in souls is an inherently unstable process, even with the purest Soul Bind potions,” Ruyi explained. “And you’re drawing demonic souls from Hell! They could break your mind, Mei. They could—”

“I said I knew the risks,” said Mei. “If you truly believe in something, you should be willing to sacrifice for it.”

Ruyi couldn’t understand how she was so calm. Then again, she’d never seen Mei flustered. Not even by the thought of dying, apparently.

And here she was, feeling all heroic for brewing a vat of elixir. She felt suddenly silly.

At Ruyi’s expression, Mei softened into a smile. “It won’t come to that. Cao only means to wield it as a threat. He won’t make use of it unless he absolutely has to.”

“You trust him?”

“No,” said Mei.

“Then—”

“Cao set up the field hospitals. Cao bought the titles for the land where the Cult’s food halls and lecture halls now sit. He’s shown he cares about us far more than the Emperor ever has. Sometimes we don’t have the luxury of perfect answers, Nala. Sometimes we have no choice but to put our faith in folk, and hope.”

“I… guess…”

“Here. Come with me.” Mei took her by the hands and led her inside, where she baked her egg tarts so gooey and delicious Ruyi almost forgot her unease.