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“The maids will bring you a fresh set of clothes while yours are being cleaned,” she told Bao. “Since you’re feeling better, I want to show you something. And I want to return this to you before I forget. Keep it safe for now.” She pulled the bamboo flute from her pocket and gave it to him, and at once he felt a bit calmer with the familiar ridges of the instrument beneath his fingertips.
Quickly, he dressed, taking care to keep the charm around his neck, and met Vy in the corridor. “Is Lan coming with us?” he asked. “And when are we going to see the witch?”
“I told you, Lan is resting,” Mistress Vy said impatiently. “I can see you’re determined not to believe anything I say. I’ve already explained why I lied about Sinh, and as for my guards’ early arrival at Lord Nguyen’s estate, I wanted to catch them unaware and bring you to me as quickly as possible.” She shook her head in frustration at his prolonged silence and opened a door across the hall. She motioned for him to be quiet and to look in, and Bao did so warily.
Lan was inside, sleeping on an enormous bed identical to the one in his room, except that hers had been covered in light yellow silk. Her face looked peaceful and undisturbed, and as he watched, she rolledonto her other side and began to snore gently. He couldn’t help smiling, knowing how she had longed to sleep in a real bed again.
Mistress Vy closed the door gently. “Do you believe me now?” she asked, still looking annoyed. “Shall I show you where Lord Nguyen is sleeping, and then Lady Yen? Or will you allow me to show you what I wished to, and then we can go and see my sister?”
Bao’s fingers closed around the amulet. He thought of how Vy had threatened to bar the gates of the city to him and decided not to antagonize her any more than he had to. “Please lead the way, Mother,” he said, and her good humor returned as she led him out of the house. “Where are we in the Gray City right now?”
“This is our family home,” she said, leading him down a set of stairs. “Many generations have lived here before us. We are at the very center of the Gray City, protected by three concentric rings of heavily guarded walls. I’ve always liked the number three, as you know.” She smiled at him over her shoulder, gesturing to the ornate interior of the home.
Bao looked around politely, but instead of being impressed by the grandeur of the place, he felt ill. His skin crawled at the sight of the bronze-and-cypress furniture, the rare painted scrolls, and the jeweled trays that decorated almost every surface. He could not forget that all of this wealth had been paid for with the blood and suffering of others. Death and black spice had gilded each table and upholstered each chair in silk. And Vy had spent her life here, walking these halls, living in comfort and making excuses for the horrors she caused.
Bao felt the sudden urge to run. He would not let this cursed city or Vy enchant him, however much he felt the eerie sense of having come home at last, and how easily he could imagine living here in peace and listening to the birds sing in the willows.The price of a life heremight be my humanity, he thought.
The guards at the main entrance bowed to Vy as she came out and she greeted them each by name, thanking them for their work. “I want to show you the garden and the infirmary, in which I think you’ll have a particular interest,” she told Bao.
The house was surrounded by a granite wall, a smaller replica of the enormous one that ringed the city. As in the vision, Vy called to the guards atop the towers, and they spun two wheels to open the gates. The moon shimmered gently above them as they entered the garden, which Bao recognized at once. The tangled wilderness looked and smelled exactly as it had when he had last spoken to his mother here.
“These are the flowers my uncle created.” Vy gestured to a cluster of blossoms ranging from crimson to pale pink. Beneath each bloom were several round pods oozing a thick white sap. “Before the poppies that grew outside the city were destroyed, he cross-bred them with other flowers to create these. He laid the groundwork for my research into a safer, less addictive formula for black spice. My workers collect the sap, but no part of the plant is wasted.”
Throughout the garden, people in nondescript gray uniforms crouched among the plants, snipping the blossoms into baskets, scraping the white sap into jars, or weeding the flower beds and clearing away dead plants. As with the guards outside her home, Mistress Vy greeted each person by name, and they bowed to her, smiling, before returning diligently to their work.
Moonlight glittered upon a large bronze statue in the center of the garden. It took Bao a minute to realize that it depicted a monstrous snake coiled at the feet of a robed man. The man’s figure was unnaturally long, and Bao imagined strings dangling from his fingers to the snake as though it were a puppet. The serpent gazed upward reverently, awaiting the man’s command.
“Poppies have always been associated with the Serpent God,” Vy told him. “Long before my ancestors conceived of black spice, he was using these flowers to elicit visions. Combined with blood magic, poppies gave him the potential to be the greatest among the Dragon Lords.” She ran her hand over the statue and Bao shuddered; the snake looked so real that he was almost terrified it would sink its fangs into her fingers.
“Blood magic is what Huong used on me,” he said. “She cut my hand to cast the spell.”
“Enchantments are rendered more powerful when blood is spilt. And not just any blood, but that of someone with magic in their veins.” She paused, looking at him with an appraising air. “That brings me to what I wished to show you.”
The rectangular garden contained a squared-off area surrounded by another black metal gate. Within this protected enclosure stood the infirmary, a pale gray stone building covered with fragrant climbing vines. The interior was clean, quiet, and well-lit, made of strong bamboo and light wood. For such a quiet building, there was an unusual number of people inside: workers in gray uniforms bustling efficiently from the top level to the ground floor, bending over pallets, spooning soup into mouths, and applying a balm to the skin that Bao recognized as a form of black spice. He scanned the patients, who were men and women of every age, but none of them looked as Khoa had before dying in the river market or the sick woman in the village.
Vy smiled at one of the workers, who bowed deeply to her. “How are you tonight, Ly?” she asked. “Is all well? How is old Master Chu?”
“Sleeping like a baby, Mistress,” the worker replied, laughing. “You were right to tell us to lower his dosage. He doesn’t need much more medicine. His daughter came twice today.”
“That’s very like Kim,” Vy said affectionately. “And Thuy? How is she?”
Bao watched as his mother asked about patient after patient, and at one point, she strolled over to one of the pallets and struck up a conversation with the old woman lying there. She pressed hands, patted shoulders, and asked after spouses and children, and every single person responded to her with genuine gratitude. He saw no pretense in the way they lit up when his mother came into the room. “Who are these people?” he asked.
“They either came to the Gray City themselves or were brought here by their families or friends,” Vy said softly. Her eyes rested on a young man about Bao’s age, who was sleeping fitfully nearby. “They are all survivors of the bloodpox and came here at different stages. I’ve been treating them for weeks with my newest formula, and it has stopped everything from fever and aches to severe bleeding, with no addiction.”
Bao stared at her in shock. “You’ve learned how to cure the bloodpox?”
“I’m being cautious, so I won’t saycurejust yet,” his mother answered, but when she turned back to him, her face was like the sun. “That woman there, for example, had been given up for dead by her son when he brought her here, but she is growing stronger every day. Oh, how joyful I’ve been at the prospect of trying to right our family’s wrongs. Do you see now why I won’t surrender to Commander Wei? They don’t want a compromise. They want to come into my city and destroy everything, right when I’m on the cusp of my greatest discovery.”
She bent down to chat with two middle-aged women who lay on pallets, side by side.
Bao looked around the bright, clean, and cheerful room, so at odds with what he knew of the disease and the suffering outside the Gray City. He knew from experience that medicine and the act of healing were never so polished; in all his years of shadowing Master Huynh, caring for people had never looked like this. And yet he did not doubt thatthese people truly had been sick. Here and there he saw hints of the bloodpox: a racking, wet cough from this man here, a slight greenish tinge to the face of that woman there.
Could it be true?Bao thought in dazed wonder and disbelief. Could his mother have, at last, found the medicine for which so many lives had been lost? It didn’t make up for all of the deaths her family had caused; nothing ever would. But such a breakthrough had the potential to change the face of Feng Lu forever.
Bright laughter rang out, and he turned to see one of the patients’ family members embracing Mistress Vy, who spoke to the woman in a low, kind voice. Whatever might be said about the Gray City, its citizens seemed to genuinely like and respect their leader, and she cared about them. As the woman’s arm moved, Bao was startled to see a large black circle tattooed upon her bare arm. “She has the mark of the Iron Palace,” he said to Vy when she came back. He remembered it as the same brand he had seen on the corpse outside of the river witch’s home.
“She is a former prisoner,” his mother explained. “My people come from all over Feng Lu. They are what the other kingdoms might callously, wrongly consider the dregs of society: those who are forced to sell their bodies for money, street urchins with no home, reformed criminals. They come to the Gray City to find work and a second chance at life, and I give it to them.”
