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Winters in Qinghe are frigid, brutal things. Cold and dry, with winds that howl so viciously that Jiang Yanli’s eyes will often fly open in the middle of the night with the mistaken belief that a wolf has made its way into her room.
The winds howl now, stirring her from slumber. Her chambers are large, but not lonely. She wills her body to wake up with every breath she takes. There are tasks to take on today.
Another howl. She looks around, just to make sure. It wouldn’t be the first time.
A wolf slips under the fortress walls.
Jiang Yanli sidesteps the frantic servants as she examines the hole it left at the gate. She tracks its muddy pawprints through the Unclean Realm. Somewhere between the fortress’s entrance and its heart, Nie Huaisang appears at her side.
Nie Mingjue, her husband of three weeks, finds her at the staircase. His saber is drawn and his face is wary.
“Stay back,” he warns. “Starving animals get vicious when they’re desperate.”
Jiang Yanli shakes her head with a smile. She thinks of A-Xian, six-years-old and flat against the ground at the mere mention of wild dogs. “I can’t fault them for that.”
Her husband and her newest younger brother watch in silent awe as she coaxes it outside with nothing more than her gentle voice and a strip of smoked pork belly.
“How were you not scared, saosao?” Nie Huaisang asks, once the wolf’s fluffy tail disappears under the gates. “It was so big!”
Jiang Yanli smiles at him. “I’m bigger.”
She does not wear wolf pelts in honor of her brother. Even the sight of their skin, flat and harmless as it may be, makes him uneasy. She prefers bear pelts. With those, only one animal has to die for her comfort. She draws her cloak, silky silver gracing the outside and soft black fur lining the inside, over her robes as she gets ready for the day.
“You’re a Nie now,” says her husband, two nights after their wedding. “You’re welcome to wear your hair as one.”
Jiang Yanli touches the crown of her head, where her hair still sits in the updo beloved by girls of Yunmeng summers. “I…”
“At the very least, you need to learn how to do it. Huaisang, come here. Let A-Li practice on you.”
Nie Huaisang settles down in front of Jiang Yanli with surprisingly few complaints. The two guide her through a lifetime of their history, wrapped around their scalps and trailing down their backs.
She wraps a few Nie braids around the crown of her head and pins it in place with a silver lotus hairpin. She carries pieces of her home with her always: in her hair, in the purple peek of her innermost robes at the center of her collarbones, at the delicate bell that still hangs at her waist. Should Nie Mingjue ever ask, she would take it off, but he never has.
She dabs a mixture of rose water and honey on her mouth, a balm for her eternally cracked lips. Without her mother’s keen eye and sharp reprimands to put some rouge on your face, A-Li, you look like a corpse, she sees no point in putting on makeup. Meng Yao wears more of it than she does, honestly. She wonders if Nie Mingjue notices, or more so — if he’s ever seen his Vice-General without a touch of eyeliner and lips a bit too pink to be natural.
She runs into Meng Yao on her way to the kitchens, traversing a well-worn path back from her husband’s private chambers. He no longer startles when he sees her, but wariness still draws the lines of his delicate shoulders taut as he bows to her.
“Nie-furen,” he greets pleasantly, head low and deferential.
“Meng-gongzi,” she says, bowing back to him. “You’re already working this early in the morning?”
“Not quite. Sect Leader Nie requested to see me,” he says, intentionally vague. He avoids her eyes even as he straightens out of his bow. She spent her formative years watching A-Xian and A-Cheng drag themselves back from night hunts they were too young to go on and tell her that their scrapes and bruises were from a silly tumble down a rocky hill. She knows which body parts men hide their secrets in.
She lets the lie live. He has been afforded so little kindness; giving him face is the least she can do. “Where are you headed to now?”
“Breakfast with Wen-guniang,” he answers. Wen Qing arrived three days earlier with her brother, who pulled a cart holding what may have very well been every text on qi deviation Qishan has to offer. “There is still so much research to do.” He glances up at her — she is taller than him, if only barely — and breathes out his hesitance. She waits for him to speak. “I believe she’d be very happy if you stopped by her quarters this evening. She has missed you dearly.”
That’s exactly why she doesn’t understand why he insists on lying. She’s well aware of his relationship with her husband, just as he is well aware of her relationship with the finest doctor in all of Qishan Wen. Still, he dances around the truth.
“I’ll be sure to visit her, then. Thank you,” Jiang Yanli says. She and Meng Yao part ways amicably enough, as he goes to spend time with her lover. Inevitably, she will drift towards his.
On the day Jiang Yanli leaves her childhood home for good, she gives her three bows in front of heaven and earth, weighed down by a heavy stone where her heart should live. Maybe she’d be less nervous if they had married two years earlier, per their parents’ original agreement — if she had never gone to the Cloud Recesses’ lectures and met a woman who ignited fire in her veins as her betrothed, mountains away, spent three years in the traditional mourning period.
She knows what it is to want now, want with all of her body and all of her bones. She even let herself indulge her want, just once.
She does not want the man next to her.
The wedding feast passes in a blur of toasts and cheers and faces she forgets the moment they leave. She lets her new husband talk for the both of them. She lets him take her hand and lead her to their wedding chambers.
The bed, clad in white cloth, sits like an accusation.
Nie Mingjue sits on it, heedless of the threat it carries. As if he somehow forgot that in the morning elders from both their Sects will search for signs of blood, proof of their consummated marriage.
“That was a waste of four hours,” he grumbles.
Jiang Yanli tries to speak, but her nerves strangle her voice. She smiles wanly, fading as her husband’s gaze settles somewhere on the floor.
“I know Yunmeng Jiang is different, but the Nie are not vinegar-drinkers. It’s common to have multiple partners,” his voice shrinks, becomes awkward. She didn’t think it was possible for him to sound like this. “Huaisang’s mother and mine were lovers long before our father met them. They were lovers long after.”
She thinks of the way he watches Meng Yao, and it all makes sense. “If you love someone else, then please pursue them. I won’t be offended,” she says.
Their wedding is political — a gesture of unity between their Sects. A way for her parents to finally get some use out of the plain-faced sham of a cultivator they call a daughter.
“Jiang-guniang,” he says, and the formality in such an intimate setting startles her, “The same offer is extended to you. I don’t wish to bed you. Or any other woman, for that matter. It isn’t fair for you to live alone because of my own preferences.”
She rests her hand on his arm, cool relief flooding her body like water on a summer afternoon. “If it helps, I don’t feel desire for men,” she whispers.
They laugh. For the first time, she feels free.
They learn about each other through words, not touch.
And when the morning comes, Nie Mingjue slices his own arm open, letting the blood stain their sheets. “This is a pointless tradition,” he grumbles, watching the red bloom across white. “With enough oil and care it doesn’t even hurt, and that’s without the,” he pauses just long enough to spare a glance at Jiang Yanli, “natural assistance most women have.”
Jiang Yanli heads towards the kitchens. There are two places she feels most comfortable in the world: knee-deep in a muddy pond with a fish wriggling between her bare hands, or in any kitchen she can find. She can’t have the first in Qinghe, but at least the second is always open to her.
She hums a Yunmeng folk song as she cooks. She spares greetings to the cooks between songs, bidding good morning to A-Xie and Jia-er as she works. No matter where she is, the familiar weight of a knife in her hands is always the same. The smells aren’t, but after living in Qinghe for two seasons, she’s learned to appreciate the way their spices hang heavier in the air than the chilis of Yunmeng.
Nie Huaisang comes in right as she guts a fish, her knife embedded deep near the thing’s spine. “How does that not gross you out, saosao?” he says, covering his face with his fan. “I could never. Yuck.”
She picks out a few organs for the healers to make into medicine. The rest can go to the fortress cats, a small thanks for controlling the rat population. Unlike what her brief visits to Koi Tower as a girl taught her, the people of Qinghe value every part of the animal. It’s a relief to know that they don’t let useful things go to waste.
“It’s part of cooking,” Jiang Yanli replies. “Have you eaten, A-Sang? I want to grill this fish.”
“Not make it into soup?”
“I make things other than soup,” Jiang Yanli teases. She made it more in Yunmeng, always comforted in the certainty that it could calm her brothers. A stew would be nice for tonight, but two soups in one day is a little excessive, even for her.
Nie Huaisang’s chatter is as lyrical as any song. Like A-Xian, he’s happy to keep a quiet audience enthralled. She replies when necessary. Hearing the delight in his voice once he realizes she’s read the same poem he excitedly tells her about is always welcome. The only other person who really understands him here is Meng Yao.
She’s grateful she can be something useful to Nie Huaisang. His energy helps her feel at home. When the food is done, they share a lovely meal, full of fun conversation and comfort. Afterwards, Nie Huaisang drifts towards the library.
Jiang Yanli makes her way to the training yard.
Her sword sits abandoned in her quarters. She rarely carried it in Lotus Pier and she carries it even less here. She was a poor cultivator of the sword path and her latest training sessions seem to promise that she’ll be an even poorer cultivator of the saber path.
Her title of Nie-furen is built on the backs of women far stronger than her. The women before her — both her own mother, fearsome on her own merit, and the two ladies of the Unclean Realm — were all incredible cultivators. The least she can do is learn how to swing a saber for longer than five minutes without collapsing.
She works through basic stretches first, forcing her body into obedience. Once she’s as loose and limber as her stiff muscles will allow, she grabs a practice saber and copies the forms she often sees the Captain of the Guard guide the senior disciples through. Practice sabers have so little spiritual energy so even children can wield them with ease, but within a few minutes an exhausted tremble starts in her arms and spreads through her body.
That is where her husband finds her: her cloak abandoned on the ground, sweat staining through every layer of her robes, her entire body shaking like a spring leaf in a storm.
He stomps over to her in a swirl of gray and anger and snatches the saber from her trembling hands. Her eyes fall to the ground and she goes silent. Her body curves away from him, too used to the motions of rage and their inevitable impact to fight back.
Nie Mingjue recognizes this. He takes a step back. Steadies himself. He has told her, repeatedly, that he will not let her fear anything here. Least of all himself. “A-Li,” he says after a considerable silence. “You’re training by yourself?”
She nods. “I’m the lady of the Nie Sect. I should have some practice with your cultivation style,” she says. So much of their marriage is a farce. Her dedication to her new Sect doesn’t have to be another.
“Your status isn’t contingent on how well you can swing a saber,” he counters. “And your duties don’t rely on it, either.”
“I’d still like to learn,” she counters. “It makes me feel useful.” Like she belongs here. Sometimes she wonders if her golden core wouldn’t be so pathetically underdeveloped if her brothers hadn’t rushed it to take her sword from her every time they saw her tire.
She tries not to think about that. She tries not to let herself feel anything about it even less. Their love comes in their protection, in their coddling.
Must Nie Mingjue’s?
“I may not be strong, but I’m not a child, A-Jue,” she says, not unkindly.
“I never said you were. If you want to practice, then practice with me. Don’t push yourself to do it alone.”
She looks at him, stunned. She had expected anger. She had expected an emphatic no. She hadn’t expected an offer to help.
Nie Mingjue shifts. He’s uneasy. “You’ve done enough for today, but we could start tomorrow. After you’ve had time to rest.”
“I think I would like that, A-Jue. Tomorrow, then.”