Page 42 of Song of the Crimson Flower

He was standing in the fields outside the Gray City again, but it felt different this time and more real than he had ever seen it. The colors were vibrant, from the bronze of the grass to the blue of the night sky and the crimson tunic worn by the woman next to him. She was almost as tall as he was, with a strong body and alert eyes. She looked like someone who would stand and fight if the sky were to fall, but there was a gentleness to her expression as she looked him.

“Hello, Bao,” she said, in a low, sweet voice. “I’ve been waiting for you.”

Bao was struck again by the reality of the scene. The wind ruffled his hair, bringing with it the sharp, salty smell of seawater, and beneath that lingered a dark scent of damp, rotten earth. The grass whispered around his legs, and when the woman—Mistress Vy—touched his arm, he felt the warmth of her fingers. It felt as though he had been plucked right out of the village by the river and deposited outside the Gray City.

“I’m not really here,” he said, though it came out as more of a question.

Vy gave him a smile of infinite kindness. “You’re not really here. This is a vision. All of those dreams you’ve had over the years have been my failed attempts to summon you, but I succeeded this time thanks to my sister’s help. I’m sure this vision is clearer for you than your dreams have been.” She looked him up and down with benign curiosity. “You have undoubtedly crossed paths with Huong. I can see her mark upon you.”

After the initial surprise of seeing her came the memory of everything Bao knew about her and all that Huy had revealed. “Yes,” he said, anger rising in him, “I have met the river witch. And I’ve had the privilege of being cursed by her, too, for your sake, which is why I’m coming to the Gray City to find her.”

His mother’s eyes fairly glowed. “We will help you when you get here,” she promised. “Huong has been with me for a few days now, and I’m glad that she’s home and I’ve finally found you. I feared I had lost you forever.”

“It took you almost twenty years,” he said bitterly. “Or weren’t you looking at all? I suppose you were busy mixing poisonous drugs for profit?”

Vy gazed at him with disarming warmth in her eyes. “I understand your reluctance to trust me, Bao, with all that you’ve surely heard about me, but I’d like to tell you what happened in your past. I owe you that, at least. Will you walk with me and allow me to explain?”

Bao nodded, but he did not accept the arm she held out. As theywalked toward the gates of the city, he detected a disorienting, familiar scent like dark soil after the rain. “I smell black spice,” he said stiffly. “It has an effect on me that I do not like.”

She laughed. “Of course it affects you. I sense that you are like me: you have no magic, but you still carry our family’s blood in your veins,” she said affectionately. “Do not be so quick to denounce black spice, for I used it along with Huong’s magic to bring you to me tonight.”

The gates before them were crafted of oak and cypress reinforced with steel, set tightly into the city wall that stretched upward fifty feet and comprised slabs of gold-veined granite. Vy signaled to the guard towers and two mammoth wheels began to spin, pulling the gates open to reveal a vast and sprawling city glowing with lanternlight.

Bao observed his mother from the corner of his eye. Her soft, serene features were lit in profile, and her plentiful iron-gray hair had been twisted into a bun, accentuating her cheekbones. The river witch had been right that Bao and Vy looked nothing alike, except perhaps for their strong chins and thin-lipped mouths. As he studied the woman, her narrow dark eyes found his.

“I know what you think of me, Bao,” she said softly, “and that is why I want to show you my city in hopes that you’ll think better of me along the way. I won’t blame you, however, if you would rather end the vision now.” She stood still, waiting for his answer as he looked through the gates at the dark winding city of homes, buildings, and markets.

This is where I was born, he thought with wonder. And as much as he did not trust her, he knew this would be a chance to find the answers for which he hungered. “How did I come to be separated from my family?” he asked. “Did you give me up?”

She smiled, catlike, pleased he hadn’t demanded to end the vision, and led him through the gates. The same shining granite had been laidon the ground all through the city, and it gleamed in the lanternlight. “Huong took you away from the city without my consent,” she said, as they entered a wide street lined with sloping-roofed buildings and gardens that perfumed the air. “My sister and I have never gotten along. We fought all through childhood. I was jealous of her magic, and she was jealous of my ability to make people love me—Sinh being one of them. We all grew up together, and she adored him, but he chose me for his wife.”

So far, what she had said matched with what the witch had told Bao. He looked around at the silent shops and empty vendor carts, having expected the city to be teeming with people.

“This is only a vision of my city, an image I have projected into your mind, which is why we are mostly alone,” Vy said, as though answering his thoughts. “Centuries ago, my ancestors sought to please the Emperors of Feng Lu, so they designed this place in homage to the Imperial City and crafted our home in the image of the palace. The shape of the Gray City, however, is all its own. It is made of concentric rings, with our home situated at its heart.”

“Are any of our family still alive? Sinh, my father?”

Mistress Vy bowed her head. “They all died of bloodpox: Sinh, my parents, grandparents, and uncle, who raised Huong and me for a time,” she said. “Ours is a family of visionaries, Bao, people ahead of their time, but with these gifts come hubris and carelessness. Even we are not immune to the temptation of our creation. One by one, they became addicted, whether through using the drug themselves or secondhand exposure while testing it. They all believed, with every new formula, thatthisone would be safe or thattheycould not possibly contract bloodpox, which they knew was a consequence of using black spice. I watched the people I love go through unimaginable suffering and pain,and I vowed to protect myself and avoid the temptation to which they had fallen.”

“I expected you to lie,” Bao said, surprised by her honesty. There was such deep-rooted pain in her voice that he couldn’t help but pity her. Vy knew what it was like to be alone, too. “I thought you would tell me that everyone is wrong and that black spice is only noble and good.”

“You are my son. You deserve to know the truth. And I also want you to understand what has driven me to keep producing the drug and bringing in money for my research.”

They came to another pair of enormous steel-and-wood gates at the end of the street, and again, Vy signaled for them to be opened. Bao realized how impeccable the Gray City’s security was, with each concentric circle of the city being surrounded by its own wall and guard towers. The next section was a smithing district, and he saw a few people bent over fires, faces intent as they hammered at weapons and wheeled swords and spears away to be stored.

Mistress Vy faced Bao, her eyes glimmering with tears. “I am consumed by the need to make my loved ones’ deaths count. To ensure that they did not die in vain. I owe it to them to be single-minded, even ruthless, in my search for the ultimate medicine. And when I find it, it will eradicate bloodpox and every imaginable disease, and no one will suffer from loneliness or heartache ever again. You can understand that, can’t you? Even if you don’t agree?”

Bao thought of what he had told Lan about healing walking hand in hand with death. He thought of all the patients he had seen die over the years, leaving behind the husbands and wives they loved, adored children, grieving parents, bereft friends. All around her, Vy’s loved ones had left this life. She had been alone, longing for a family just as he had.

She steered him through the gates. “Huong did not understandoragree,” she said. “When you were two years old and Sinh had died after a long, drawn-out battle with bloodpox, she begged me to stop my research. We had done enough harm, she said. Was I waiting until I had lost herandyou, too?” She had to stop speaking for a moment and struggle for composure.

“Is that what happened?” Bao asked, moved by her grief. “You refused to stop your work, and Huong took me and fled?”

“In the dead of night, without even saying goodbye. She had decided that the Gray City wasn’t a good place for you, and that I wasn’t a fit mother.” Vy paused again, her lips trembling. “I sent out legions of guards to find the two of you, but could not. You had all but disappeared. I knew I would never get you back if I tried to pressure her. And so I stopped looking. I focused on my work, hoping she would relent and come back.”

“She didn’t keep me herself,” Bao realized. “She took me out of the city, away from you, and then abandoned me instead of raising me herself.”

“She always had some notion that our blood and our family were toxic. No doubt she had some noble intention of distancing you from anything to do with it, including herself.”

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