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“Crimson Rain Sought Flower,” Xie Lian said, smiling down at the wood block as he chopped vegetables for dinner. Mantou stood with the vegetables, reared up on his hind legs to watch Hua Cheng and Naili.
Hua Cheng smiled and Naili clicked her beak. “Taizi Dianxia,” he replied.
“Naili!” his daemon said and hopped off his shoulder. Before Xie Lian’s shocked eyes, she changed from a crow to a dog, looking not unlike the lean street curs of any of the many villages he and Mantou had wandered through in their long life. Naili’s tail wagged and her tongue lolled out of her mouth in canine delight and Mantou laughed.
“What are you doing?” Hua Cheng asked Naili, a frown crossing his face. “We know who you are.”
Naili’s tail continued to wag. “I know,” she said. “I was just feeling left out.”
Seeing that Hua Cheng’s frown didn’t fade, Mantou ran to the edge of the counter and leaped off. “Catch me, Naili!” he cried.
Yelping, Naili shifted from a dog to a grey monkey with a mane of copper fur. She extended her long hands and caught him in her dark grey hands. Xie Lian carefully didn’t react to their play, turning to smile at Hua Cheng.
The Ghost King looked pained. "That’s the first time you’ve called me that,” Xie Lian said, hoping to distract him from whatever made him frown so severely at his daemon. “It feels very different than when others call me by that title.”
It seemed to work, and Hua Cheng turned to look at Xie Lian, a smile tugging at his lips. “Oh?” he asked. “How so?”
“It sounds much more sincere when you say it,” Xie Lian said as Naili put Mantou on the ground and transformed into a stoat as well, with shimmering chestnut fur and a throat as white as newly-fallen snow.
The two of them bounded and chased each other around the shrine, under the offering table and over the sleeping mat. Though neither Xie Lian nor Mantou said anything about it, it confirmed their private curiosity whether Naili and Hua Cheng had a “normal” range to their bond.
Was it just a long bond? Or did they have no range at all?
Xie Lian was curious but he wasn’t about to ask just yet, not sure of his own boundaries with the infamous Ghost King beside him. To keep himself from asking, Xie Lian said, “You were the groom that took me out of the bridal carriage on Mount Yujun.” He blushed when he saw Hua Cheng’s smirk and realized that his words had another meaning.
From where he was beneath the offering table, Mantou rose to his hind legs. “The Ghost Groom,” he said, and Xie Lian turned to look at the difference between Mantou and Naili, who stopped to stand beside him. Now that she wasn’t hiding their nature, Naili’s fur seemed brighter, as if made of polished pearl and burnished metal; beside her, Mantou’s cream- and ash-colored fur seemed drab and plain.
He looked like a human’s daemon; she very much looked the part of a god’s.
“Well,” Xie Lian amended. “You pretended to be the Ghost Groom.”
Hua Cheng flashed him a smile that almost seemed shy. “I wasn’t pretending to be a groom,” he said. “Much less the Ghost Groom.”
Behind them, their daemons returned to their play, this time with Mantou chasing Naili; catching her, they wrestled in a writhing ball of cream and chestnut fur.
“If you weren’t pretending, then why were you there?” Xie Lian asked. Realizing how that sounded, he turned quickly to find that Hua Cheng’s expression was amused and full of good humor. Still, he added, “Not that I wasn’t grateful for your rescue.”
Hua Cheng’s face split into a wide smile. “Gege didn’t need this one’s help. You would have figured it out very quickly.”
Xie Lian found it odd that Hua Cheng spoke of himself using singular pronouns, rather than “we” to include Naili; when he spoke of Xie Lian, he used plural pronouns as was the typical practice. Then again, Hua Cheng was a Ghost King—that would mean that to gain his title, he would have had to die. It was highly likely that Naili wasn’t his true daemon, given their discussion in the ox cart however-long-ago. Ghosts didn’t have daemons; when they died, the daemons they had as humans would explode in a shower of gold.
So who was Naili? Hadn’t Hua Cheng, in the form of San Lang, say that false daemons could be created if a ghost was strong enough? Was that what had happened with Naili?
He didn’t ask, though; it wasn’t his place, and he wasn’t sure how Hua Cheng would react. So many times he had heard that Crimson Rain Sought Flower was mercurial and had a fierce temper. He was clearly fond of Xie Lian, but he didn’t want to find the limits of that fondness by asking insensitive questions.
“If San Lang believes that we would have figured it out, then why was he there?” Xie Lian asked. “Not that we’re not thankful for your help,” he added. “But we certainly wouldn’t have found the answers so quickly.”
Hua Cheng’s smile was surprisingly boyish. “That question has two answers,” he said, stepping over their wrestling daemons to walk around the shrine. “The first reason is that I was there for you; the second reason is that I was passing by and have a lot of free time. Which do you think is more believable?”
Without looking at him, Xie Lian reached for an onion and began chopping it. “Well,” Mantou said playfully, rearing up on his hind legs to crane his head way, way back to look up at Hua Cheng. Politely, Hua Cheng stepped back so he wouldn’t have to bend quite so much. “You seem to have a lot of free time.”
Seeing that Mantou had stopped playing and was staring up at Hua Cheng, Naili did as well, copying his pose before falling backwards with a little laugh. She transformed into a heron and then a crane and then a butterfly that landed on Mantou’s head.
That seemed to startle Hua Cheng into laughing, though Xie Lian wasn’t sure if it was from the antics of his daemon or Mantou’s words. He would guess the latter, though.
Done, Xie Lian loaded the chopped vegetables into the pot and covered it. Turning, he found that Hua Cheng had seated himself at the table and was watching him curiously. “How did you know that I was Crimson Rain Sought Flower?” he asked.
Once more, Mantou decided to answer. He scrambled up the leg of the chair and seeing his destination, Naili transformed into a cat and allowed him to climb up her back to reach the table. Standing on his hind legs, Mantou looked up at Hua Cheng, who politely leaned closer.
“Well,” Mantou said as Naili became a butterfly once more, moving to perch on Hua Cheng’s wrist. “You are fearless, all-knowing, and wear all red. Who else could you be but the Crimson Rain Sought Flower, whose name is feared by all?” Then he laughed. “We used many ways to test you, suspicious of your nature, but your disguise is flawless—to be expected from a high-level ghost such as yourself.”
Naili became a crow, glossy and black, and preened her feathers smugly. “And me?” she asked.
“You confused us,” Mantou said candidly. “Because ghosts don’t have daemons, but after our discussion in the cart, we wondered if you might be a crafted daemon.”
“Does that upset you?” Hua Cheng asked.
“No,” Mantou replied. “Because you may be a created daemon and you may be seen as unnatural in the eyes of many, but you feel just as real as any other daemon. It doesn’t matter to us that you were not born as humans together, because you are still you.”
Unlike Hua Cheng, who used singular pronouns to describe himself, Mantou used the plural form, combining both Hua Cheng and Naili. Both cocked their heads to the side, looking nearly identical in their surprise.
“Gege is wise,” Hua Cheng said at last and Naili became a cricket and then a quail. He flicked her tail and she turned to peck at his fingers, waddling over to stand behind Mantou.
They were interrupted by the sound of the little ceramic pot rattling and then moving on its own, bumping against the door to the shrine again and again. “Watch the soup, Mantou?” Xie Lian asked, as he moved to the door and opened it, watching the little pot roll out before moving to follow.
“What do you think I can do if it burns?” Mantou asked, not moving from his spot on the table. “Xie Lian, I can’t even reach the counter!”
Xie Lian closed the door behind him and walked out to where Ban Yue’s pot rose on its own. “Ban Yue?” he asked quietly. “Are you awake?”
Her transparent form appeared beside the pot, which remained firmly shut. She sat with her arms wrapped around her knees, staring up at the dark sky filled with a blanket of stars. Stubbornly, she kept looking at the sky as he moved to sit beside her.
“General Hua,” she said quietly. “I’m so sorry.”
“Whatever for?” he asked.
She tipped her head down, still not looking at him. “I failed you. I tried my best but it still wasn’t enough. I’m afraid that I have disappointed you.”
Xie Lian sighed and hesitantly put a hand on her head. She was an incredibly strong ghost, but her powers were still limited. As a child, she had tangled, matted hair that Xie Lian had always tried his best to keep nice and neat; now her hair seemed more like clumps than individual strands, and reminded him of those early days with her in his shadow.
Against his hand, she trembled, and he gently nudged her until she leaned against his side. A lifetime ago, Mantou—then called Jian—would have cuddled with her daemon. Her daemon would have taken on one of his preferred forms, a jerboa or a marbled polecat, and Mantou would groom him while Xie Lian hugged Ban Yue close.
Now a banished god held a Savage ghost, and neither of their daemons were nearby, and Mantou had no one to comfort, anyway.
“I’m not disappointed,” he said, which wasn’t quite true. He was disappointed to learn that she had died so cruelly, that she remained by choice to suffer her death over and over again. He was disappointed that the best choice that lay before her led to the deaths of an entire city and the ruin of an entire kingdom. He was disappointed that he couldn’t have given her better choices, or a chance at a better life.
But he wasn’t disappointed in her , and he told her so.
“I think,” he said carefully. “That you did the best you could. You were given a difficult hand by Fate, and a difficult choice, and I think that you made the choice you could at the time. It’s not for us to decide whether it was the right choice.”
Ban Yue leaned more against him as if relieved by his words. “General Hua,” he said. “Where is Jian?”
Behind them, the door opened and Mantou streaked out, skidding to a stop on the grass in front of Ban Yue. “I’m here!” he cried. He scrambled up to perch on Xie Lian’s knee, careful to not touch Ban Yue’s translucent form. “Oh, Ban Yue, it is wonderful to see you again.”
“Jian-laoshi,” Ban Yue said, her lip trembling. “Huagu is dead.”
Mantou’s clever little paws opened and closed as if he wanted to jump into her lap and let her curl him against her throat the way she used to do with her daemon. “Oh, Ban Yue,” he said. “I’m so sorry.”
“Ke Mo killed him,” she said. “And they pulled us apart. They said that it was to teach us a lesson for betraying Banyue and for opening the gates and leading to a massacre. They said that the blood of everyone was on our hands.” She brought her cupped hands up to her throat as if holding an invisible creature, perhaps a tiny little jerboa, to her pulse. “I still think we made the right choice, though. Does that make me evil?”
Mantou wrung his little paws. “No,” he said confidently, despite his fidgeting. “Evil people do evil things because they want to, not because they felt that it was the right thing to do. As Xie Lian said, you made the best choice you could. And if that was an evil thing, then what you did afterwards proves otherwise: you chose to stay, to appease the angry ghosts you left behind.”
For the first time, Ban Yue turned to look toward Xie Lian. She was really looking at his daemon, but Mantou was as much Xie Lian as Xie Lian was Mantou, and they took the victory for what it was. “I have a daemon,” she whispered. “It doesn’t feel right, after I got Huagu killed.”
Xie Lian looked around, for once remembering the scorpion-snake that had so politely asked to be taken with Ban Yue. He had emerged from the shadows as they left the Sinner’s Pit to head back to the caravan and had coiled on the stairs in front of them.
He was an odd-looking daemon, but he now wondered if it was a matter of spiritual energy: Hua Cheng, being a Ghost King and a Devastation-level ghost, had a flawless disguise, but Ban Yue, being a Savage, didn’t. Perhaps Naili’s pristine feathers and shimmering glow was as much an effect of spiritual energy as the scorpion-snake’s lumpy scales were.
“Is he nearby?” he asked and then remembered that he had tucked the scorpion-snake daemon into the pot with Ban Yue.
Ban Yue shook her head. “He is sleeping,” she whispered. “He is tired.”
“Ah,” Xie Lian said understandingly. “What is his name?”
“Peili,” Ban Yue whispered, ducking her head down.
Xie Lian squeezed her tighter against his shoulder and Mantou looked helplessly up at him. Peili—to apologize, to make amends. Her sorrow and regret was aired every time she said his name; she had crafted a daemon that encapsulated her reason to remain as a ghost. Remembering Peili’s shape, a scorpion-snake, he realized that she had turned her new daemon into a tool with which to carve more pain into her very being; the new soul she had crafted for herself was as much to punish herself as to fill the void left behind by Huagu.
“I’m sorry, General Hua,” Ban Yue said again, shivering against his side. “I’m sorry, Jian-laoshi.”
Mantou looked helplessly up at Xie Lian, who squeezed his arm tighter around Ban Yue’s transparent form. “Why are you apologizing?” he asked.
“I wanted to do right by you,” Ban Yue said. “I wanted to save the world, just like you wanted to, but all I did was get a kingdom killed.”
Surprised, Xie Lian nearly jumped away but realized that it would be taken poorly by Ban Yue who needed the comfort. “What?” he asked, his brow furrowing.
“You said that,” Ban Yue said.
Embarrassed, Xie Lian looked up and over her shoulder and found Hua Cheng standing a polite distance away. Naili was a dark smear in the tree above him, and Xie Lian couldn’t quite see what form she had taken but he thought that it was some kind of bird.
“I don’t think I did,” Xie Lian said, which was not quite true. He had certainly said such a thing when he was young, but he doubted that Ban Yue would know such a thing. But Ban Yue didn’t lie, so he must have said it; he just couldn’t imagine being so shameless, and he couldn’t imagine when it could have come up.
“En,” Ban Yue said. Her voice wavered from her earlier distress but she was adamant. “You had asked what I wanted to do when I was older and you said, ‘my dream was to save the world; the common people.’ I remember thinking, me and Huagu, about all the times you saved us. And how you helped us and we thought that maybe we could do something good too.”
Mantou groaned and Ban Yue pulled away slightly in surprise; Xie Lian let go of her to press his face to his burning cheeks. “Ah, Ban Yue, why would you so clearly remember such a thing that was so randomly said?”
“General Hua,” Ban Yue said hesitantly. “We had thought that those words were so earnestly said and meant. How can we not remember them? You said many things like it.”
“Oh no,” Mantou groaned. “Ban Yue, surely…”
Ban Yue looked so pained, looking back and forth between Mantou and Xie Lian, that the daemon fell silent. “General Hua was always so kind and wise,” she said. “We wanted to be just like him and Jian-laoshi. You also told us to do what was right, and that even if we should fail we should always get up with determination.”
Though Ban Yue didn’t seem to be able to hear him, Xie Lian and Mantou could both very clearly hear Hua Cheng’s low chuckle.
Turning slightly, Ban Yue faced Xie Lian and Mantou. “General Hua,” she said gravely. “I only wanted to save the common people, to do as I thought that you and Jian-laoshi would do, but all I did was destroy the kingdom. Something was wrong, I did something wrong and I failed; do you know what I did? Do you know where I went wrong?”
Sighing, Xie Lian opened his arms and allowed Ban Yue to tuck herself into his shoulder again. Mantou wrung his paws, desperately wanting to comfort her but being unable because of taboo. “I’m sorry, Ban Yue,” Xie Lian murmured into her clumped hair. “I don’t know the answer to that question. How does one save the world? How does one save the common people? I didn’t have the answers back then, and I still don’t.”
Ban Yue made a soft sound of understanding and misery. “For the past two hundred years, I feel as if I have done nothing. How have I failed this much?”
“You are not a failure,” Mantou told her firmly. If anything , they both thought but didn’t say out loud, we are the failures, to have left you behind; to have lived for eight hundred years and have done nothing .
They didn’t expect Ban Yue to immediately believe them, but she nodded as if she did and shifted to curl her arms around her legs once more. She stared out at the stars, over the terraces of Puqi Village’s farmlands.
“Stay out here as long as you like,” Xie Lian murmured, running a gentle hand over her hair.
Mantou climbed up his shoulder as Xie Lian stood and made his way back to the shrine. Hua Cheng and Naili, now in the form of a sleek white cat, followed them and closed the door behind them.
“Ah,” he said quietly. “Ban Yue remained in Banyue willingly. She wasn’t trapped there, and allowed Ke Mo and his men to murder her over and over to vent their resentment.” He sighed and Mantou rubbed his face comfortingly against Xie Lian’s cheek. “If General Pei Junior didn’t want to leave those soldiers and wanted them to disperse, but couldn’t allow the heavens to find out, couldn’t he have sent a clone to take care of them?”
He turned to watch Hua Cheng shrug. Naili jumped up on the table and began washing a paw, feigning disinterest in their conversation. “Clones aren’t as strong as the real person,” Hua Cheng replied. “Pei Xiu’s clone wasn’t strong enough to take on that many Banyue soldiers, so feeding them the living was the fastest and easiest way to disperse their resentment.”
“Why was he rushing?” Mantou asked. “I would have thought that he wouldn’t care too much about how long it took, so long as it was kept under wraps.”
To his surprise, it was Naili who answered. “Maybe it was because he was upset,” she suggested. “That Ban Yue hung so many times to disperse their resentment. Maybe he felt that she was unfairly bearing the weight of their crime as well as the bite of the noose. Maybe he finally decided to get off his ass and do something about the problem he helped to create.”
“Hmm,” Xie Lian murmured. “He certainly cared for Ban Yue while he was alive,” he said thoughtfully. “Is that why he decided to use mortals? To feed the resentful spirits?”
Hua Cheng shrugged and folded himself into the chair. “Heavenly officials see little value in the lives of mortals,” he said quietly, at such odds with his indifferent demeanor. “To many, the lives of mortals are little more than ants. For a high-ranking heavenly official like Pei Xiu, who wanted to keep such a thing from being discovered, killing several hundred mortals is no different than killing ants.”
The thought was distressing and deeply frustrating. Gods, who relied on the worship of mortals to give them power, were as much servants as they were gods; that they valued human lives so little, despite once being human themselves, had always and would always upset them.
Mantou changed the subject and said, “it seems odd that clones don’t have the same power; yours is quite powerful.”
Hua Cheng looked amused. “Of course,” he said. “But I am the real thing.” Naili began washing her whiskers, and Xie Lian wondered if another form of Naili appeared for each of Hua Cheng’s clones as needed. Could he potentially have many daemons?
Again, now was not the time to ask.
“This is your real form?” Mantou asked, and Xie Lian put him on the table beside Naili.
“Not mine,” Naili said. “I don’t have a real form.”
Hua Cheng glanced at her, and then looked at Mantou. “Yes,” he said. “One hundred percent authentic.”
Leaning close, Xie Lian inspected Hua Cheng’s face; his finger moved before he could stop it and poked Hua Cheng’s nose. While Xie Lian and Hua Cheng both looked surprised, Naili burst into laughter. However, once Hua Cheng recovered from his surprise, he only looked amused, his brows rising as if waiting for an explanation.
Unable to explain himself, Xie Lian straightened and cleared his throat. “Not bad.”
“Oh?” Hua Cheng asked, joining his daemon in laughter. “What’s not bad?”
“What we mean ,” Mantou said as Xie Lian covered his burning face with his hands. “Is that it is very well made.”
“This skin?”
Xie Lian cleared his throat. “En,” he said. “But...ah…”
“But what?” Naili prompted when he trailed off.
“Can we see your real face?” Mantou asked.
Naili and Hua Cheng both froze in a peculiar way. As if betraying their unease, Naili changed from a cat to an osprey to a kite and finally to an owl; she fluffed her wings and slowly settled them while Mantou ran up to her.
“Don’t take it to heart,” Xie Lian assured them.
“We didn’t mean to upset you,” Manotu added. Naili peered down at him with her dark owl eyes before turning into a stoat once more.
“I’ll let you see it someday,” Hua Cheng said, once more using the singular “I” rather than “we”. “If there’s a chance.”
Xie Lian smiled as Mantou and Naili once more began to play-wrestle on the table. “Then we will wait,” Xie Lian vowed with a smile. “Until the day you can show us. For now, let’s rest.”
For a long moment, Hua Cheng regarded Xie Lian as if he were a puzzle that the Ghost King could not figure out. No, as if he were a precious treasure whose value was so high that he could not calculate it. Then he smiled, a strangely soft expression crossing his face. “Yes,” he said in a peculiar tone of voice.
He apparently called to Naili, who stopped her wrestling and galloped over, tucking herself on his chest when he lay down on the rumpled sleeping mat. It was the first time they seemed to act like human and daemon together, rather than two separate entities.
Mantou followed, adopting a similar pose on Xie Lian’s chest, partially tucked into his robes. With the air lighter, they talked about many things, with many things also politely left out—about Ghost Kings (but not their daemons, or if they had any), about words said rashly (but no less sincere), about the Heavenly Capital and the Ghost Realm.
Most of all, they did not question how a god and a ghost might still lie beside each other on a rumpled sleeping mat. They did not talk about how, at some point, Naili and Mantou both climbed down from their humans and curled up together in the space between them. As a viper, Naili curled around Mantou so that he was propped up in her coils, and she lay her head over his body as if to act as a blanket.
Mantou woke first as Naili, still in the form of a viper, shifted. “I’m sorry,” the other daemon whispered, her forked tongue flicking out to brush Mantou’s whiskers. “Go back to sleep,” she added.
Yawning, Mantou climbed out of her coils and stretched, blinking blearily up at Hua Cheng who was dressed and standing beside the door, and then at Naili who had returned to her crow form to watch him.
“Ah,” Mantou said, sounding unsurprised and resigned. “You’re leaving.”
Hua Cheng visibly hesitated. “There is something that I must take care of.”
“I cannot stay here,” Naili said, for once without her excited flair. She was as somber as her dark feathers, and her eyes—orange today—were strangely serious.
Mantou rubbed his eyes with his paws. “You will make him sad,” he said, glancing at Xie Lian and then back at Hua Cheng. “But you do as you must. We will be happy to see you again, if you decide to return—you’re always welcome here.”
An unreadable look crossed Hua Cheng’s face. He bowed. “Gege is very kind to this San Lang,” he said at last.
“We’re fond of you,” Mantou said and glanced back at Xie Lian. “Let us talk outside before he hears us and wakes.”
Hua Cheng opened the door and allowed Mantou to gallop out on the porch first, following at a respectful distance. “Is this not too far?” he asked.
Mantou didn’t answer but reared on his hind legs to look up at the Ghost King. Obligingly, Hua Cheng sat at the edge of the porch to make it less difficult. “Why are you surprised that you are welcome?” he asked.
Naili clicked her beak. “You are gods,” she said. “Hua Cheng is a Ghost King, and I am just a hollow imitation of a daemon. Why would you want us here?”
“It is as we said in the Sinner’s Pit,” Mantou said firmly. “It doesn’t matter if you are an emperor or ghost or demon. If we like you, then we like you.”
Hua Cheng and Naili had near-identical non-expressions. At last, Hua Cheng turned away and reached into the sleeve of his robes. “Gege,” he said carefully. “Will you look after this for me?”
“For me”, he had said; not “for us”. Mantou did not mention it. He held out his paws and accepted the shining crystal ring that Hua Cheng carefully handed to him. It shone in his paws, peerless in its beauty. Carefully, he bunched up the fine silver chain so that he could more easily carry it back to where Xie Lian, oblivious, slept.
“We will take good care of it,” he said gravely.
Something like a smile crossed Hua Cheng’s face. Naili looked very intently at the ring and then at Mantou. “Thank you, gege,” Hua Cheng said and Naili clicked her beak again. “This humble one begs you to go back to sleep. There is still some time before the sun rises, and gege should get his rest.”
Mantou looked up at Hua Cheng and then at Naili. “Safe travels,” he said gravely. “And if you find the time, we’d appreciate a visit—if we could have the temerity to make such a request of Hua Cheng, the Crimson Rain Sought Flower.”
Bowing her head, Naili hissed a muffle laugh. Hua Cheng gave Mantou a thin smile. “Perhaps not the Crimson Rain Sought Flower,” he said. “He is too cruel for gege. But San Lang would be more than happy to oblige gege’s request.”
Hua Cheng bowed and with a low laugh, Mantou bowed back. Straightening, he found that Hua Cheng and Naili were gone. Looking down at the ring gently clasped in his paws, Mantou wiggled back into the shrine.
He put the ring on Xie Lian’s chest and nudged his hand until it gently clasped it. “Mm?” Xie Lian asked tiredly. He didn’t wake and didn’t ask about the strange thing in his hand; with his other hand, he cupped Mantou close.