The smell of boiling alum and raw pine pulp was sharp enough to make Lin Ke’s sinuses ache.
In the center of the damp cellar, two iron cooking pots sat perched on three-legged trivets over low charcoal fire bowls. Gray steam rose in thick, stringy plumes, condensing against the dripping brick ceiling and raining warm, milky drops onto the stone floor.
Shen Yue stood beside the second vat, a wooden paddle gripped in her blistered hands.
Her dark hair was tied back with a strip of rough twine, her sleeves rolled past her elbows. Her forearms were flecked with gray pulp, her eyes feverish in the yellow animal fat light as she stirred the thick, bubbling slurry.
“Fifty sheets,” she said, her voice hoarse from steam breath in. “The arena rules need fifty pre-inspected magic charms in each competitor’s satchel before the opening gong. If we buy fifty sheets of official Academy mulberry paper on the black market, it will cost two hundred spirit stones we don’t have. If we use standard market wrapping paper, the spiritual charge will ignite the wood fibers before the rune can cycle.”
“Which is why we aren’t using market paper,” Lin Ke said.
He sat at the long wooden frame stand table. He was surrounded by shallow clay bowls filled with chemical reagents. Powdered alum, wet lime plaster, crushed charcoal, and a bowl of sour pickling vinegar.
