Chapter Text
“It’s an insult!” Nie Mingjue roared. You know, just in case anyone in his vicinity thought that Wen Ruohan sending a directive of marriage on his cousin’s behalf was a friendly gesture.
It wasn’t framed as a suggestion or a coy invitation to negotiations. The letter Nie Mingjue received all but demanded he acquiesce to a match, with the marriage to be arranged posthaste.
“Da-ge.” Huaisang said warningly. It was hard for any of them to forget their home had become a haven for spies but it was important to maintain appearances.
“He means to leash me,” Mingjue continued in a lower but still furious voice. “This is a bridle, not a bride, being offered.”
Huaisang closed his eyes, looking pained. “Da-ge, your meridians.”
“It’s an outrage!”
“And you don’t know what to do about it.” added Nie Zonglai, the current head of the Nie military forces (promoted since the last commander took a sword to the stomach). He was sharing the role with his younger brother, Nie Zonghui.
“And I don’t know what to do about it.” Da-ge agreed, collapsing into a chair.
The conversation was sensitive enough for Huaisang to get up and check the door one more time. Since the Wen established their little nest of spies in Qinghe town, nowhere had been safe. It was only though the sheer loyalty of the Nie family retainers and the thickness of the old stone walls that they’d maintained some privacy in Da-ge’s inner chambers. Even that would slip away, given time.
He gave Nie Zonglai a thoughtful look before deeming him safe. Adopted or not, he’d been with the Qinghe Nie for decades.
Nie Zonglai was a patient, cautious man. “You recognize that rejecting the offer would be tantamount to full scale revolt.”
“Something is brewing. Lan Qiren sent another letter,” Da-ge said. “He’s holding a meeting in Cloud Recesses in three weeks. The rest of the clans must agree to go to war.”
“I think you should accept.” Huaisang told his older brother. Before Mingjue could go on another rant he held up his closed fan. “It will make Wen Ruohan think you’re cooperating. He’s trying to forestall a rebellion by marrying someone in but if what you say is true the revolt is a matter of weeks, not months. He can’t get control of the Nie that fast.”
Da-ge still looked doubtful. “I am loathe to make oaths I cannot follow through on.”
Huaisang shrugged. “Then don’t. If Wen Ruohan wants to break the rules then let him. It will only destroy the validity of the agreement. Send back a response that seems to consent but don’t send any betrothal gifts. Don’t send a formal proposal, don’t ask for her birthday, don’t do any of it. Without the right forms the engagement has no bite, no one will blame you for not honoring it when we win.”
“If we win,” Da-ge reminded him. “Where do you get these ideas, Huaisang?”
This particular plot had come from a trashy serialized novel about drama between rival noble families vying for the emperor’s favor. Without a betrothal letter or wedding gifts, a wife foisted on a young heir by the scheming empress was demoted to a concubine when the empress fell.
“Studying.”
Nie Mingjue looked very tired. He’d been looking tired a lot since Huaisang came home. It was hard to tell whether the Wen or the hole where Meng Yao used to stand sapped his brother’s vitality more.
“I can draft a response to Wen Ruohan’s letter for you, da-ge.” Huaisang offered, hoping to make the lines between his brother’s eyes less deep stricken.
“Fine.”
Nie Mingjue wasn’t brooding. He didn’t have time to brood. The waters of war were moving too fast.
The Wen Supervisory Office in Qinghe, which they took advantage of their brief window of opportunity during the indoctrination camp to establish, was a perpetual thorn in his side. Four dozen of Wen Xu’s favorites parked right outside his door, watching for any sign of rebellion.
They weren’t sharp enough to notice all his preparations, the extra stockpiled provisions, the goods diverted and cultivators hidden in the woods. Scrutiny made it harder to move materials, commission blacksmiths, and communicate openly though.
Now that Huaisang was recovering they’d even suggested taking him back to Qishan. Luckily his younger brother took “ill” whenever such ideas were tabled. If his fragile health and Qishan’s toxic atmosphere hadn’t clashed so violently, Mingjue might not have even gotten him back after the other sect heirs escaped. It was rarely so fortunate that Wen Chao had little patience for invalids, even when they were his only remaining hostage.
The Wen were still on the move. Smaller sects burned. Lan Xichen remained missing. So did the Jiang heirs, though it seemed more likely that they’d be found at the bottom of a river.
And through it all he had to deal with an engagement designed to vex and undermine him.
Wen Ruohan’s response to the letter Nie Huaisang wrote came just a few days later, suggesting (demanding) that the wedding take place before the end of the month. He claimed the stars were aligned for a fortunate wedding on the 18th, a lie so blatant it was almost offensive. Any date so close to a solemn holiday like Tomb-Sweeping day couldn’t possibly be auspicious. The proposed date apparently went terribly with the bride’s birth chart too. Huaisang had opinions about such matters and Nie Mingjue listened, aware that his brother was wise in matters of lore.
“It’s not like next month is better, Wen-guniang has a tricky set of numbers for summer weddings— rats conflict with horses but she also has conflicts with goats and snakes thanks to her birth hour and day. At least there won’t be a ghost festival right before the nuptials if we put it off till next month though.”
“Mmm.” Nie Mingjue could see his reflection in Baxia’s surface. The usually soothing activity took on a new edge of anxiety when faced with the idea of a Wen assassin. He had few memories of Wen Qing on her own. She was just a flash of red at Wen Ruohan’s side, and that was enough to make him mistrust her.
“The only reason he wants to push it now is that the month after next is so awfully unlucky.” Huaisang kept ranting. “He’s afraid we’ll stall until Hungry Ghost month and he’ll lose a whole lunar cycle. Of course if he weren’t trying to rush he could wait until autumn— anything after the eighth month could be accommodated with your charts.”
“Huaisang, we’re not actually trying to plan a wedding.” Mingjue reminded him.
“If we were, we’d be going about it all wrong.” His brother finally stopped his frantic pacing. “Still, we can work with the 18th, right?”
It depended on when the Wen party arrived. Lan Qiren intended to use Tomb Sweeping Day as a cover to collect sect leaders at Cloud Recesses and hold a formal referendum on war. It was a surprisingly underhanded move for one of the Lan, taking advantage of filial obligation to violent ends. The suggestion was slightly mitigated by midletter clarification that, since the meeting was at midnight, they should still tend to their duties in the morning before setting out.
“It’s a tight timeline,” he acknowledged. “We can work that to our advantage. Telling the rest of the sect leaders of this latest development may sway them; Jin Guangshan won’t like the idea of a pliable Wen bride being forced on either of his heirs so his sect can be usurped.”
“Okay. Okay.” Huaisang clapped his hands together. “Stalling then, keeping them from arriving too early.”
At least there were no indications that Wen Ruohan wanted him to journey to Qishan to fetch his poisonous betrothed. A bridal procession full of foes arriving was better than the Nie being manipulated into enemy territory.
In the end, it came down to a matter of hours. He left the afternoon of Tomb Sweeping day, Wen-guniang and her entourage were due to arrive the next morning.
The plotted wedding did have one advantage, it threw the Wen Supervisory Office off balance. They were too busy planning for the wedding to pay a lot of attention to the Nie clan’s movements, which allowed for some more flexibility in gathering people. Wen Xu was going to come escort his cousin himself (and presumably supervise the nuptials at sword point) but before Nie Mingjue could arrange for a convenient uprising in Liting, he received word that Wen Xu would be too busy trying to track down rebels instead. Some small clan the Wen had tried to subsume had escaped— an increasingly common occurrence— and on the way killed a handful of Wen soldiers. Obviously such a slight had to be avenged.
It was very easy to distract Wen Xu, his pride was only matched by his fury. Without the Wen heir’s forces, the newborn Supervisory Office of Qinghe had to send half a hundred of their troops to Qishan to escort the bride and her dowry back.
It was a perfect opening, one that Nie Mingjue had to take advantage of, regardless of the timing.
A few hours after dawn, it was decided, the Nie would attack and take the Supervisory office. They hoped Nie Mingjue would be back by then but it wasn’t a sure thing. Making it from Gusu to Qinghe in less than five hours required flying at speeds most humans, even skilled cultivators, couldn’t withstand. Not only were you controlling your sword, you were also cycling qi to protect your body from the cold, thin, yin suffused upper air and cushioning your own body from the drag. There and back in one night was a challenge worthy of an immortal.
Nie Mingjue thought he could make it, if the meeting didn’t run too long.
If it did, he was confident that his disciples would be able to take the supervisory office alone. “Place the barriers, rush through the gates and kill them all,” he told Nie Zonglai and Nie Zonghui. “Don’t hold back just because I’m not there.”
“And your wife, zongzhu?” Nie Zonglai asked with great gravity, making Nie Mingjue grind his teeth. This faux engagement haunted him.
“If they show up then you should kill them too— we can’t have word get back to Qishan.”
In the end the meeting at Cloud Recesses ran late. It also went better than Nie Mingjue could have ever hoped.
Xichen was alive. All the small discrepancies of the past month, the disappearances, the tiny rebellions, the clans who escaped the Wen entirely, were apparently a result of him, travelling and trying to build popular support. All told he’d gathered dozens of smaller clan leaders who Nie Mingjue wouldn’t have thought bold enough to stand up against the might of the Wen. Individually they each could contribute one or two disciples, combined they made a much greater force.
Alongside Xichen was the Jiang heir, also hale with eyes hungry for revenge. Losing one parent to Wen Ruohan gave Nie Mingjue a slow simmering anger, to lose a whole sect… he could see bubbling in Jiang Wanyin venom enough to kill a thousand men. It could be useful, that sort of anger.
A downside of the greater size of the meeting is that they needed more time to come to their consensus (that the Wen must be driven from the land, that their crimes must be repaid in blood). Nie Mingjue expected to negotiate with Lan Qiren, Jin Guangshan, and the heads of the Qin, Ouyang, He, and Yu. Instead there were a hundred voices clamouring to be heard. Even if they all had the same grievances, this only made it take longer to come to the inevitable conclusion.
News of the attempt to force Nie Mingjue into a marriage did, predictably, sway Jin Guangshan somewhat, as did the pressure of so many wounded peers. He claimed friendship with Jiang Fengmian, with Jiang Fengmian’s son in front of him begging for vengeance he could not stand aside and maintain any reputation.
The Sunshot Campaign, they named it, just as the sun rose over the horizon. Pink clouds dusted the sky as Nie Mingjue set off and the icy early morning light threatened to blind him.
Racing through the air above cloud cover, in the bright high atmosphere that few cultivators flew in, he made good time home. Nevertheless, the journey took four and a half hours. As he circled above Qinghe he could see the subtle shimmer of the barrier already deployed over the Supervisory Office, preventing the Wen from sending up signal flares. As he flew lower he could hear the faint sounds of battle.
He landed and rushed to join the rout.
Scattered, caught off guard, and more than out numbered, the Wen soldiers fell easily enough. The tricky part was keeping them on the ground so they didn’t disturb the net array; it would hold up against fireworks, Huaisang had warned, but not a physical attack so they needed to keep the cultivators from flying up or targeting the edges.
Blood rushed through his ears and blood spilled freely onto the ground. When he saw the flock of shadows pass above them— four swords with a sedan chair suspended between them, a long train of flying figures burdened by luggage, people and goods flying past for interminable minutes— he turned to Nie Zonglai.
“We left a hundred men at the Unclean Realm in case they arrived early.” Zonglai reported. That was almost exactly as many people as he estimated had just gone overhead.
“Send reinforcements back just in case,” Nie Mingjue ordered. They’d all but cleaned up the Supervisory Office, they could spare a large part of their force. It was a short flight from the old tax office in town that the Wen had appropriated to the Unclean Realm and a small concession to an older brother’s eternal anxiety.
Zonglai disappeared to make orders go from word to action, leaving Nie Mingjue pushing forward. He cleared rooms with silent efficiency, slaughtering adversaries and then moving on. A handful, non-cultivators and servants by the looks of them, surrendered, he left them for his men to deal with.
“We don’t have room in the fortress for prisoners,” this was true, their lack of space in an old stone stronghold designed by Nie Mingjue’s ancestors to be sturdy rather than flexible was one of the reasons they’d gotten away with putting up their unwelcome houseguests in an auxiliary building, “But we can keep them here for a time.”
He itched to get home, to make sure his brother was safe. It must have shown because Zonghui nodded quickly. “Zongzhu, I can take care of matters from here.”
The courtyard of the Unclean Realm, where disciples often did their exercises, was ankle deep in red. Wedding colors had come to Qinghe after all. Every dead cultivator sprawled on the ground was wearing a brighter shade of scarlet than the usual Wen lackeys, a color made for celebrations. The fine lacquered sedan in the center of the square was a deep burgundy and crimson-splashed with blood.
“Casualties?”
“Nine and some injuries,” shouted the nearest senior disciple. Most of the Nie cultivators had already been dragged off the scene, though a few of the more grievously wounded were being triaged on site.
“Where’s Huaisang?”
“In the small receiving room, zongzhu. He—” Mingjue was already gone, stalking off in a swirl of robes to find his brother. The boy’s tendency to insert himself into dangerous situations meant that he wouldn’t be satisfied until he saw him safe with his own eyes.
Sure enough, Huaisang was in the chamber off the great hall where the Nie took guests. Sitting across from him at the table was a young woman swathed in arterial red, crowned with jewels.
Baxia was in his hands in an instant and the only thing that kept him from dragging her to her feet and taking her head was how quickly Huaisang had moved between them.
“Da-ge!”
“Huaisang.” As the blood rushed out of his head he was forced to admit that the Wen woman wasn’t a threat yet. Even if she’d brought poison, there was no tea laid on the table. Her hands were folded neatly in her lap. When he had borne down upon her, she’d only turned and set her face, pressing her lips so as not to flinch before the final blow.
“Nie-zongzhu,” she nodded then averted her eyes.
“Da-ge, Wen-guniang and I were talking. We may have come to an arrangement. Sit, please?”
Reluctantly, he let himself be pulled down to the third side of a table that was truly only made for two. The edges of his robes laid over a few of the spreading layers of the Wen’s wedding disguise, until he yanked his hems closer. “Huaisang, the time for negotiating is over. The clans have all agreed to declare war on Wen Ruohan.”
Huaisang smiled. “Oh, perfect, because Wen Qing just agreed to betray him.”
Checking her face for confirmation was a futile measure. First, she was a Wen, suckled on deceit and sent on a mission of infiltration. Second, her makeup was heavy enough to make it hard to tell exactly what was going through her mind. Was she truly pallid with worry or was that just rice powder on her cheeks? And the red-lined eyes, could they do that with a brush and creme? He thought he’d seen similar fashions on ladies in Lanling.
“Nie-gongzi,” Wen Qing said in a brittle voice. “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves.”
“I do not have time for traitors,” Nie Mingjue told his brother and the snake at his left shoulder.
“And I have none for allies who forgo empathy in favor of blind hatred. Do you think I’m eager to give up all I’ve ever known? I was proud of my family once, Nie-zongzhu. I’m still proud of the name they gave me and you seem determined to wipe it from the earth. But Wen Ruohan has cast me aside and I cannot let my brother suffer for my pride. If he will suffer here as he has suffered at Wen hands then you should take up your sword and end me now, for we will find no common ground.”
It was remarkable how as the tirade poured from her lips, she remained statue still. Her shoulders were even, her back straight, while her mouth moved frantically.
(No, that wasn’t quite true, she trembled as she spoke , tiny movements that would almost be unnoticeable were they not elbow-to-elbow at the small table.)
“I will not ignore the crimes you have committed.” Nie Mingjue insisted, feeling like he was being manipulated and unable to explain why.
“What crimes?” Wen Qing snapped. “I’m a doctor. I heal people. I have never done anything but heal people.”
It’s true that he’d heard her name bandied about by physicians on a few occasions. It was not her first distinction. Most of her notoriety came from Wen Ruohan, his favor of her, her presence at his side. Her science came after her family associations, stemmed from it and was bolstered by it.
“We— we have no evidence of that.”
“Da-ge.” Huaisang interjected softly. “We do. She’s the one who sent me home from Qishan. She’s the one who saved me.”
For the first time Nie Mingjue looked at their unwelcome guest with something other than outright suspicion. “Explain.”
Huaisang looked smug. “She told them they needed to send me home or I’d die, even though I was only queasy, and they did.”
“Not you,” he rolled his eyes and gestured at the woman. “You, an accounting.”
“Nie-gongzi was sent to me with qi syncope and an exacerbation of an old metal condition. The air in Qishan can aggravate the lungs, which is bad for such ailments, so I told them that it would be prudent to send him home.” she paused, letting tension build, a move that made him violently flashback to Meng Yao’s precise mannerisms. “I may have put it in more extreme terms.”
“She shouted at them that if they didn't let me go I might perish within the week," he said with relish. "And she helped us escape Wen Chao once on the hunt for the Yin Iron, da-ge.” Huaisang added with a flourish. Nie Mingjue was beset on all sides and had to relent.
They had proof of her good faith, at the very least. It was possible that this was all a long ruse to earn Nie Mingjue’s trust, but Wen Ruohan had not exactly been a long term planner as of late and the marriage was… rushed. If it was a plot, why not implement it two months earlier?
“You said you have lost Wen Ruohan’s backing? How?”
“I sheltered someone I shouldn’t have. As a doctor I couldn’t turn away a patient. It got back to him and my brother and I were taken into custody. This was his way of disposing of me; if you killed me I was already a traitor and no loss, if you didn’t then he could use A-Ning to manipulate me into killing you.” Again, her rendition of events was clinical but she couldn’t disguise the small tremor in her folded hands, the tightly wound resentment beneath her voice.
Nie Mingjue wanted to bury his face in his hands.
Her story was good. Almost too good, designed to inspire sympathy in him personally. Huaisang’s willingness to vouch for her went a long way towards winning him over— whatever frivolities his brother might indulge in, he was a good judge of people.
Still, his mind lingered over the possibilities.
Was she there that night in Qishan? The night his father was called to visit Wen Ruohan, the night everything ended (though he did not realize it quite yet). He remembered Wen Xu there, a smirking face he spent most of the evening glaring at, ignoring the drama between the adults in favor of childish rivalry. They were both too old to be sticking out their tongues at each other, as the children of sect leaders that behavior had never been appropriate on the public stage, but it came close in the throne room of Nightless City as Wen Ruohan broke his father’s spirit in front of him.
If he strained his memory he could visualize another figure, rib high in scarlet, in the shadows at Wen Ruohan’s other side. Wen Chao, perhaps, though his boorishness and short attention span always made him a poor observer of diplomatic affairs. Or, maybe, the woman next to him, already Wen Ruohan’s favorite young relative, already renowned for her talents, watching the blade stressed to breaking with her thoughtful dark eyes.
“What exactly,” he choked on the first words, “Would you want out of a deal?”
“Safety for my brother. Ideally for the rest of my family, the Dafan Wen.” She made no mention of herself, but a traitor would want to make a show of being selfless.
“I can’t guarantee anything about your brother if he’s still in Wen Ruohan’s hands. In fact, your betrayal all but assures his death.”
How old was the child? He couldn’t be that young, Wen Qing’s parents were dead, he was certain of that. He also wasn’t old enough to have been brought up in any political conversations, despite his sister’s status.
“I thought of a plan for that too, da-ge!” Huaisang popped back into the conversation. He was chewing on something, some snack he’d pulled from his sleeves as negotiations dragged on. If they dawdled any longer he’d find a book. “We’ll pretend Wen-guniang is a prisoner; say you can’t kill women or doctors or doctor-women on account of your massive amounts of honor. They probably won’t try to save her but they won’t worry either since you hate Wens. Wen Ning should be safe that way.”
Loosely drawn as the plan was, Nie Mingjue couldn’t find any immediate flaws with it. “Fine. Fine. And what exactly would we gain from this arrangement?”
“I don’t have the most recent troop movements or plans but I can give you my information about general capacity. The earlier Supervisory Offices and their possible garrisons. A full map of Nightless City, those are hard to come by, as well as some of the land nearby where I’ve gathered herbs.” A moment of hesitation later, she stopped. “That’s all.”
The urge to lie his head on a solid, cool surface washed over Nie Mingjue again in a wave. He turned to his brother. “I don’t suppose I have any choice in this?”
Huaisang pouted. “You can’t kill her. She saved my life! I’m maximizing our resources.”
“Then she’s your responsibility.” Nie Mingjue decided. Returning his attention to the problem at hand, he laid his hand on the table decisively. “Wen-guniang,” the honorific tasted bitter as medicine, “In return for your cooperation and the aid given to my brother, I will endeavor to help your brother and members of your family if we find them. I can safely do no more. In return, you will not raise a hand against my clan or the Sunshot Campaign.”
A ghost of a smile flickered on her face. “Oh, is that what you’re calling it? Ambitious. Yes, fine, agree to all terms.” She gave Nie Huaisang a despairing look, as if to say, are you happy now? That, at least, they could agree on.
Nie Mingjue cleared his throat. “The, ah, the engagement is off.”
A cutting look, made more dramatic by still crisp wedding makeup. “I wouldn’t have guessed if you hadn’t told me.”
“I’ll have the dowry accounted for and put into storage, we’ll deal with it after the war.” Better that it be classed as spoils, so no one could attach this would-be bride to Mingjue’s name. A shame their usual actuary had been exiled. “If there are personal items of yours in there, tell Huaisang so he can get them for you.”
“Thank you, Nie-zongzhu.”
He’d had enough; he got up from the table and fled. “Find somewhere to put her,” he told Nie Huaisang as he left the room. “And explain this to Nie Zonglai on your own.”
It wasn’t even noon yet.
When Nie Mingjue finished mustering his troops, giving a rousing speech, meeting with his immediate lieutenants, making battle plans, revising battle plans, eating dinner, and making arrangements for deceased disciples, he went to bed.
Family rooms were at the very heart of the fortress, all clustered together, a remnant of a time when interiority meant safety. Heading to bed it was easy to spot Nie Huaisang with his arms full of books and folded red clothes, making his way down a small corridor, easy to see his destination.
Wen Qing stood in the doorway to the women’s courtyard, abandoned these last 13 years, a bloody vision in the rooms his mothers had once called their own.
A cry came, wrenched out of his chest, miserable enough to make even Huaisang turn.
“Da-ge!”
“What— why?” More regimented words didn’t come to him.
His little brother’s brows drew together. “We really don’t have much room. It seemed like the best choice. What’s wrong?”
They were short on space. Normally at least a fourth of the Nie disciples were out on hunts or patrols, they rotated through the Unclean Realm on careful orbits to avoid overcrowding, but Nie Mingjue had called them all back in preparation for the wrath of the sun. Men and women were packed shoulder to shoulder in the dormitories, they'd put all the usual guest rooms to work housing the mass. It was a temporary crunch, soon they would be off to battlefields far and wide. It didn't make it any less inconvenient for prisoner storage.
Over Huaisang’s shoulder, the Wen woman watched, appraising.
“It’s nothing,” Nie Mingjue lied. “Just put her in one of the empty rooms.”
Huaisang’s face clears. “Oh, right! Don’t worry, we’re not moving any of da-mu or xiao-mu’s stuff!”
He had been so young when niang had died. It made sense, Mingjue thought as he stumbled away, that this place would not be holy to him.
Amazing what a difference a few years could make in memories.
Nie Mingjue’s first memories were of learning swordforms from er-niang, still da-shijie then, in the small courtyard with the sun overhead and the persimmon tree drooping. Still young enough to toddle over to his mother after the impromptu lesson was over and ask to nurse, it remained in his mind as a series of images, a lingering recollection of warmth. Da-shijie whirling a blade over her head, stones under his feet and hands as he launched himself at her, giggling as he was carried by strong arms back to niang's lap.
Amidst the wilderness of her husband’s home, that little box was his mother’s refuge. She filled her rooms with inkwash paintings, folded paper masterpieces, painstakingly arranged wildflowers, and people of her own. Fuqin was allowed there, she did love him in the end, but he was not an installation the way da-shijie was. The head female disciple of the sect had, at some point before Mingjue was born, moved in.
"Ruirong keeps me from catching a chill at night," niang would say.
Niang was niang, soft and small, sweet-tempered, prone to winter illnesses and anemia, always supportive of the son who almost killed her in labor. Da-shijie was da-shijie, the one who guided him through his forms and paces, who taught him how to master a blade, who was always there at niang’s side at the end of the day. Fuqin was who Nie Mingjue was meant to be when he grew up, bold and gentle, always busy, head of a sect and inheritor of a legacy.
When he was six, da-shijie had become er-niang and he’d been told he might soon have a younger sibling. None of that troubled him as much as the prospect of leaving his mothers’ haven soon. A boy of seven needed to live apart, they told him sympathetically. Only the idea of having fuqin nearby all the time tempered his fear.
Huaisang had arrived in a burst of blood and screaming a few months before Nie Mingjue was to move. Niang and er-niang and the new baby spent all their time cuddled up in the sick room; niang had taken over nursing to let er-niang recover her vitality. Nie Mingjue spent every spare hour outside of lessons sitting with them, cuddling the baby to let niang dote over the invalid, falling slowly in love with his new brother.
Those rooms were where they had lived.
Those rooms were where niang had died.
It was inevitable, in many respects. She loved Huaisang from the moment she saw him, loved him as er-niang’s child, as her son’s brother, as a baby who wouldn’t grow up doomed to a slow sword death (she'd always known Mingjue's fate). Without her assiduous care, he might have died a sickly newborn. Instead she coddled him safely though infancy and kept on coddling.
(Er-niang allowed every second of it. A chance to escape back to her previous duties, avoid all the tedium of childrearing and swoop in with fuqin at the end of the day to deliver sweets and kisses, suited her perfectly. Besides, she would always indulge niang’s desires.)
Mingjue remembered—
There was a time when he was visiting his mother in her rooms. Er-niang was there too and they were all enthralled by the clever one year old Huaisang had become. They kept blowing him kisses and offering him toys, trying to attract his attention. The effort was futile, he refused to be distracted from his task: shredding niang’s expensive mulberry paper and trying to shove it in his mouth.
Whenever Mingjue tried to take it away from him he’d ball up his little fists and wail, a heartrending sound, and inevitably the paper would be returned.
“My little silkworm.” Niang pressed her face against his head, breathing in his baby scent. “Did I mention I have a courtesy name for him? My mulberry baby.”
“Jiejie,” Er-niang said disapprovingly. “Already?”
Niang just smiled. “Mm. And one for the next baby.”
Elegance reigned in this office. Two warriors could feel out of place. Despite having a terrain disadvantage, er-niang crossed her arms and stood her ground. “I’m not doing that again.”
Horror briefly overtook the bright joy on niang’s face. “Of course not! You nearly died. If I want another baby it’s my responsibility.”
Moving closer, kneeling next to the desk, er-niang looked at her. “And do you?”
Huaisang (that wasn’t his name yet, that would come later, when er-niang found the folded calligraphy in niang’s desk and swore that he would never be called anything else, nevermind that four was too young for a courtesy name) chose this moment of weakness to gnaw experimentally on an inkstick. The taste made him scream and all other concerns were quickly forgotten so that the baby could be soothed once more.
But by the time Huaisang was three, niang had pushed past the doctor’s concerns to get pregnant again. She wanted a daughter, she said. Nie Mingjue suspected it was because Huaisang had just begun to toddle after him on adventures around the fortress. It was lonely in that courtyard and all the visits in the world couldn’t make the Unclean Realm a place fit for a gentler heart.
She’d bled too, as er-niang had, and this time the bleeding hadn’t stopped.
After her death the courtyard had been cold. No wonder er-niang had scorned it, no wonder Nie Huaisang had slowly wormed his way into Nie Mingjue’s room, moving himself out of his childhood bedroom too early because the alternative was to sleep alone. The courtyard in Qinghe’s center had become a gangrenous wound, dead flesh too close to the heart to cut away.
As soon as the required mourning for niang was up, fuqin raised er-niang up as a wife, ignoring whispers of scandal and tradition. Anything was worth it to secure Huaisang’s position, even if he and er-niang couldn’t even look at the boy half the time. They both bounced wildly between absolute indulgence, willing to give him whatever he wanted whenever he wished, and desperate discipline, trying to protect the last scrap of their wife from injury by pushing him into training he hated.
Nie Mingjue grew up with three parents. At times it seemed that his brother had none at all.
When he spoke of them he spoke of them as ancestral spirits, with all the respect that necessitated. Nevermind that er-niang, who gave birth to him, lived until he was ten; to him she was xiao-mu. The woman who nursed him and doted on him was da-mu. A big mother and a little mother, both abstract as fairytales.
The room he shared with his brother until their father died, the room he still dwelt in, that little bedroom traditionally given to the Nie heir, had more weight to him then a dead woman’s boudoir.
Why not put a prisoner whose sect leader killed their remaining two parents, one directly, the other by slow sapping as she fought to protect the child-leader she once tutored, in the rooms their mother made her own?
It was too late to fight anyone, to work out the grief in his lungs, so instead Nie Mingjue carried himself back to his bedroom and cried.