To Gaze Upon Wicked Gods

Chapter Four

Had the Phantom's promises gotten to my sister? What was Meiya doing with those posters? Was this why she entangled herself with opian in the first place? Had some scoundrel sold her on the narrative that opian could strengthen her Gift, or turn her magic into something it was never intended to be? A killer? Like me . . .

The claims weren't always false. Opian enhanced magic the way oil coaxed flames. But the brighter we burned, the sooner we perished. The effects Rome's drugs had on my people was temporary, and always short lived. Was this the truth she hid from me, the reason she had become an addict of the very drug that had killed our father? So that she could fight for a futile cause?

Heroes die. Cowards live.

Baihu's proposition rang in my ears, hauntingly quiet. I can make it worth your while.

Was I a coward, or a hero?

I shook the thought away and kept walking. At the street corner, an elderly lady with graying hair perched on a cart of fruits: hawthorn berries, plums, persimmons, and lychees piled in neat order. Ripe and swollen, brilliant with colors that promised sweet bites.

My mouth watered for the lychees, but Meiya's jutting bones and hollowed cheeks flashed before my eyes, her body so frail and tiny. No matter how tightly she wrapped her robes, the soft cotton failed to find flesh to cling to. One of the more deadly symptoms of withdrawal. It pilfered her appetite for anything other than opian, causing her body to wither away like dust vanishing in the wind.

I reached for the coins in my pocket. Food prices kept climbing, day by day. If the scale of peace finally tipped for war, the prices would go up even higher. What would three women do then, when we could barely survive now?

You should save these coins for a rainy day, my better judgment urged. But my sister deserved a treat. A splash of sweet in these never-ending bitter days.

Tomorrow she would have gone ten days without opian—the longest since I had found out about her addiction. She deserved something to celebrate this small milestone. The hawthorn berries were expensive but worth Meiya's smile. Maybe in that moment she wouldn't hate me so much and we'd be the people we were once more.

Sisters.

Best friends.

Money and fruit exchanged hands just as a loud gong tore through the air.

"Gather around, gather around! Ladies and gentlemen, I am about to change your life." A young man in black linen robes hollered from the wide streets of a crossroads up ahead. Around him, a wide-eyed audience gathered in a circle. "Does anyone here know an opian addict?" he called.

I sighed, knowing where this was going—another false antidote. One thing this city had never lacked were lies that preyed on the vulnerable.

First, they sold us opian with deceptions of longevity and miracles of granting normal people Xianling magic, or making Xianlings stronger, enhancing our magic to godly heights. Now, grifters sold lies to the addicts who could no longer afford this deadly drug and its sickly highs.

The smart ones walked away. The desperate ones stumbled forward to ask the price. Hope was precious, and some would pay anything just to hold its beating wings for a few seconds.

I hurried away without paying the man heed and was at the edge of the market when a haunting melody made me pause for the second time tonight.

There, under the arches that marked the end of the market, knelt a girl in gray, muddied clothes, an er-hu in her lap. Beside her, a slender, limp hand peeked out from a long bamboo sheet, skin pale and translucent as rice paper, blotted by dark veins.