Chapter Text
Zhang Chengling stood with his hands locked behind his back, chin lifted, as Wen Kexing paced around him. It was taking everything in him not to let a smile twitch at the corners of his lips, or to follow the older man’s pacing with his eyes. He could not look at Wen Kexing’s face; the arch, faux-philosopher look would undo him.
“Very good,” Wen Kexing finally pronounced. He struck out suddenly with one hand, and Zhang Chengling had only an instant to react, twirling into the familiar motions of the Swift Moving Steps, letting his momentum guide him away from the sharp turns of the fan. The sharp slice of air against his cheek told him he had almost been an instant late in one of his turns. He reached out, and—thwack, the butt of the fan caught squarely in the palm of his hand.
Zhang Chengling fanned his face lazily, imitating the twisting motions Wen Kexing preferred. “Shishu, that’s cheating,” he said, a smile creeping over his face.
“But it does me good to see my Chengling remembers his basics.” Wen Kexing paced closer, and with a snakelike movement, he caught Zhang Chengling’s face between his hands and squished it. “Your master will skin me alive if he comes home and finds that I’ve let you forget his teachings.”
Zhang Chengling squirmed away. “Get off! Like I could forget, with all these disciples around. Speaking of which, I have to go find Xingming, find somebody else to bother—I mean, train.”
“Isn’t Bi Xingming in town?” Wen Kexing called after him. “Chengling?” he heard him add when he was almost out of the courtyard, almost forlorn, and just before he passed out of earshot, “huh.”
Bi Xingming was in town, Wen Kexing was usually right when it came to where the disciples were, but Zhang Chengling had only needed the excuse to get away. His feet found their own way, leading him to the markers where Cao Weining and Gu Xiang were buried. He had no offerings prepared, but he reached into his pockets and found some of the sweets he carried for the youngest disciples—new, and precious, and what Wen Kexing didn’t know about him bribing them to like him wouldn’t hurt him. He laid them out, and made his bows to both of them before settling on his heels.
“Aiya,” he said. “You’d call me an idiot, probably. Or maybe you’d agree with me. Your master should be happy. He is happy.”
Most days—most days, now, Zhang Chengling could handle the mention of his master’s inevitable return. Wen Kexing hoped past the point of reason, when it came to Zhou Zishu. Anyway, he had no reason not to hope: Zhang Chengling had mourned in private; his master’s choice to march to his certain death was a secret between himself, Prince Qi, and Wu Xi. It was not a secret he ever intended to tell. Wen Kexing grew steadier by the year, but his hope was unfailing and almost childlike, even as Zhang Chengling left childhood behind.
“He should be here. If nothing else, shishu is a terrible matchmaker,” he said. He dashed away a tear, then tipped his head up towards the spring sun. Spring always made him think of Zhou Zishu; it had been springtime when they met, and when they parted. “I don’t know what I’m saying. Maybe I will go find Xingming after all.”
The possibility pulled at him, but it was nearly time for him to lead the voluntary training, and Zhang Chengling wasn’t eager to shrug off his responsibilities or the trust placed in him. He shed a few more tears, and washed the marks of them away with water from a cold stream, then returned to the house.
This training met not in a yard, but inside the house itself. The three disciples who met him there were from among the original eighteen who had come to them from the Window of Heaven. Zhang Chengling smiled at them as he settled in at his table. “I hope that everyone has had time to review the pages I assigned. Today, we will be working through a problem together.”
On the table was a device he had made a few years ago, half-disassembled. It was one of the Longyuan Cabinet’s creations, and he gently prodded as the three men before him worked together to figure out how to piece it back together. They were still new to these teachings, and they had the luxury of spending time learning it.
“No, here,” Shi Jiahao said. “See how it turns it?” He fit a thin rod into one of the cogs on the intact portion of the device, delicately using it to spin the cog. Bian Yehui nodded, observing over his friend’s shoulder. They were doing well; he would let them work until they ran into difficulties.
Within half a shichen, he was kneeling between Bian Yehui and Cai Heng, demonstrating the way to infuse vital energy into the delicate sigils engraved on the main cog of the device. It was tricky work; in something so small, precision rather than power was needed. He was just thinking that they would return to this point the next lesson when Bi Xingming burst into the room.
“Shidi,” Zhang Chengling said reprovingly, before he caught sight of Bi Xingming’s face. He put a calming hand on Cai Heng’s shoulder as he stood, flicking the other hand to keep the others seated. He went to the older man and steered him outside. This close, Bi Xingming’s wide eyes combined with the too-fast huff of his breath to paint a rather alarming picture. “What is it, Xingming?” he asked.
Bi Xingming closed both hands over his shoulders and steered him around, pointing him towards the gate. “On the road,” he said shortly. “I have to show you.”
“My class—” Zhang Chengling said.
With a huff, Bi Xingming leaned back and poked his head through the door to the room they had left. “You are all dismissed,” he said. Technically, he did outrank all of them, except for Zhang Chengling, but the others looked to Zhang Chengling for confirmation.
“Yes, all right.” he said. “We were about done, anyway. Practice your control.”
“What is it?” Zhang Chengling asked as Bi Xingming hustled him out of the gates, letting a tone closer to an aggrieved child come out now that they were alone.
Wordlessly, Bi Xingming shook his head. He guided Zhang Chengling into a stand of flowering trees he knew well. Sitting at the base of one of the trees, a straw hat pulled low over his face, was a man in rough-spun dove grey robes. “I brought him as fast as I could,” Bi Xingming said to the man. “I still don’t know why you had to be so secretive, shifu—”
Shifu.
Zhang Chengling’s heart fell like a stone, and he crashed to his knees beside the man, reaching up as if to sweep the hat off and stopping just short. The man lifted his hand, impatiently shaking his sleeve back in a gesture so familiar he was sure even before he recognized the hand, even before the hand tilted back the hat to reveal his master’s gentle smile.
“Xingming, please give us privacy,” Zhou Zishu said, his eyes not leaving Zhang Chengling’s face. He heard a rustle behind him, and then quick steps, until it was just him and his long-dead master. Zhang Chengling opened his mouth to speak, but nothing would come out; all he had was trembling lips and the tears blurring the man in front of him. Warm, calloused hands caught his face, smoothing his tears away with the pads of his thumbs.
Zhou Zishu rose onto his knees. “Ah, my little disciple, you’ve grown almost as tall as me,” he said, passing an open hand from the top of Zhang Chengling’s head to his hairline to measure. He smiled like there was nothing the matter, but then again, he always had.
“You were dead,” Zhang Chengling finally managed. “Un-under rock and snow and—with Scorpion King and Duan Pengju.”
Zhou Zishu shook his head. “Explanations later, but I am alive. Know that I did not stay away from you for so long on purpose, either. Chengling, Chengling.” He cupped a hand on the back of his neck, pulling him forward, and suddenly Zhang Chengling was clinging on to the front of his robes like a child. He had mourned Zhou Zishu quietly. He welcomed him back with sobs as loud as the ones he had wanted to utter when he had lost him.
All the while, Zhou Zishu hushed him, running a hand gently over his hair. When Zhang Chengling finally pulled back, scrubbing a sleeve over his eyes, Zhou Zishu said wonderingly, “Look at you.”
“What?” he said.
His master laughed. “You’re a man,” he said. “Four years. I missed so much. You must tell me soon.” The mirth dropped slowly from his face slowly as he looked up in the direction of the house, rebuilt on the site of the old one. “Chengling, Lao Wen, does he think—”
Zhang Chengling shook his head. “He still thinks you’re with Prince Qi and the Great Shaman looking for a cure. He gets letters.”
Zhou Zishu’s eyes sharpened. “Letters?”
“When your original time was up, he got…” Zhang Chengling could feel his cheeks burning. This was taking the lie farther than Zhou Zishu had ever asked. “I didn’t like him looking like that, so he got a letter from Prince Qi updating him on the search and telling him they’d managed to hold it off for a while longer. They don’t come very often.”
Zhou Zishu sat back on his heels, and the next laugh was almost a sigh. “Thank you.”
“I made a promise,” Zhang Chengling said. He took a deep breath, then stood, offering a hand to Zhou Zishu. “You should come to the house. Shishu will want to see you, and there are disciples who haven’t met their shifu yet.”
Zhou Zishu’s eyes widened in delight. “Will they want to meet this stranger?” he said, raising an eyebrow.
“You are their shifu,” Zhang Chengling said firmly. “Your place has always been waiting for you to come back to it. They listen to their shishu, and sometimes to their da-shixiong, but they will love meeting Zhou Zishu, the lord of Four Seasons Manor. They’ve heard so many stories already.”
Warm fingers grasped his, and Zhou Zishu pulled himself to his feet. “I can hardly keep them waiting, then,” he said.
His master wasn’t the resolute version of himself that had left Zhang Chengling. There had been a kind of peace there, but one that was closed off; for him alone. In his face now was the peace he had exuded at Four Seasons Manor before everything fell apart, like a warm breeze that wrapped them all up in it, buoyed by them and uplifting them in return. Zhang Chengling had missed it like the sun on a grey winter’s day.
Together, they walked up the road to the house, and Zhang Chengling saw it anew through his master’s eyes. The front courtyard remained the same, its defenses rebuilt by Zhang Chengling, but the gate between them and their destination was something new.
“Shishu designed it,” Zhang Chengling said. Deep brown timber was still prominent, but there were more intricate carvings along the eaves, flowing clusters of flowers that looked as if they were blown by the wind, alternating in panels that depicted each of the blossoms that gave Four Seasons Manor its name.
A smile passed quickly across Zhou Zishu’s face. “I would not have thought to do it, but it suits the place,” he said. He raised a hand and pushed the gate open, stepping inside. The courtyard held a dozen young disciples, boys and girls, ranging from children taking their first steps into martial arts at the traditional age to ones nearly as old as Zhang Chengling had been when he started. Wen Kexing was running them through a drill, and he did not look up when the gate opened. They paused, and Wen Kexing stepped among them, correcting stances and offering commentary. Halfway across the courtyard, he glanced up and froze, eyes going wide.
His smile, wide and disbelieving and brighter than the sun, broke across his face before Zhou Zishu made it two steps forward. He crossed the remaining distance in a flash, reaching up to catch Zhou Zishu’s arms. “I thought you were still too sick to write,” he breathed, searching Zhou Zishu’s face.
Zhang Chengling stepped back, hands at his sides, schooling his face. Truth or lie, it was up to his master now. He would back whatever he said.
But Zhou Zishu didn’t say anything yet, only took Wen Kexing’s hand and pressed the fingers to his wrist. Wen Kexing looked down, then frowned in concentration, and suddenly his face cleared and he laughed. Turning, Zhou Zishu’s wrist still in his hand, he looked at the staring disciples. In his teacher voice, he said, “Disciples, you must greet the master of this sect. This is Zhou Zishu. Show him your respect!”
And smiled his most mischievous smile up at Zhou Zishu as a dozen children knelt and bowed to Zhou Zishu. “I accepted them in your name,” he said softly. “Are you pleased?”
Neither of them would have had to ask, looking at Zhou Zishu’s face. It held that tentative joy, almost teary, that said, Is something so good really for me? “Very,” was all he said.
He went among the disciples then, greeting each of them and learning their names, with Wen Kexing trailing after him. Zhang Chengling remained behind, watching them. This was how it should be. This was how it should have been years ago. He was happy, but he had questions, and the weight of his lies and responsibilities still rested heavy on him.
Most days, Zhang Chengling was happy without his master, without his father and brothers, without Gu Xiang or Cao Weining or any of the family he had lost. He had learned grief and acceptance along with his martial arts. Today, one of those lost was miraculously returned, and he had no idea how to move forward.
Wen Kexing, unsurprisingly, decided that a last-minute celebration was in order, so what Zhang Chengling did next was start organizing the kitchen. He dispatched Bi Xingming back to town, and Cai Heng rinsed his hands and joined him. “Where do we start, Old Man?” he asked.
Zhang Chengling snorted. “Don’t let shifu hear you call me that, he might be offended,” he said. He shoved a handful of vegetables towards Cai Heng. “Chop.”
The rhythmic sound of the knife started up, and Zhang Chengling started in on his own pile, the sound reigning for a minute. Then, Cai Heng’s soft voice: “Will he really be offended?”
Zhang Chengling glanced over his shoulder. Cai Heng had always been timid. It had been strange to Zhang Chengling at first—hadn’t he trained in an assassin organization?— but his keen-edged focus and grace with a sword explained much. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have made that joke with you,” Zhang Chengling said. “He won’t be offended; he likes having Wen Kexing around, and you know how he is.”
“Will you be offended?” Cai Heng said, even more quietly, the sound of his knife not stopping.
He shook his head, then swallowed, trying to phrase why the old nickname stuck like burs under his skin with the reality of Zhou Zishu here. Bian Yehui had bestowed it long before he started teaching them Longyuan Cabinet techniques, when there were just twenty of them here.
“I’m already...older than he ever expected to see me,” he said finally. “You all do it because it was funny when I was fifteen and teaching disciples older than me the Swift Moving Steps, but it feels different now that he’s, and I’m…”
Cai Heng snorted quietly. “Forgive me, shixiong, but you are not old. Older than you should be, maybe, for your age, but not old. But if it bothers you, I’ll stop.”
“I know you’ll stop if asked,” Zhang Chengling said.
“Bian-shixiong would never wish to upset you either,” Cai Heng said.
“He just saw Wen Kexing and took after his shishu’s example,” Zhang Chengling grumbled. “No, it’s fine. I don’t want to change how we are with each other just because our master is home.”
They were at the peak of the bustle, two more disciples having joined them to help, when the late afternoon light sent a long shadow across the floor. “Don’t just stand there hovering,” Zhang Chengling said when it didn't move, wiping sweat from his forehead. “We need…” He looked around for a task to give the newcomer, then realized that it was Zhou Zishu. “Shifu! Sorry.”
Zhou Zishu just shook his head. “You can cook now,” he said.
Zhang Chengling, who had a sizzling pan that needed his attention, just grunted an affirmative. He remembered some crack Zhou Zishu had made once, about gentlemen not cooking. “We had lots of willing hands for cleanup and building in the beginning, but not a lot of us could cook,” he said, freeing up just enough attention for words. “Jingli, the—thank you—Shishu got too busy after a while, so I—”
A disciple cleared their throat behind Zhou Zishu, who apologetically stepped aside. “You’re busy now, and I’m in the way. Tell me later; I only came to tell you that Bi Xingming has the wine sorted.”
Zhang Chengling did throw an incredulous look over his shoulder at that. “Are you a messenger now?” he asked. “Who sent you with that, Xingming? He should come himself.”
The corner of Zhou Zishu’s mouth lifted. “Lao Wen sent me, of course.”
“Tell your junior that he should know better than to order you around,” Zhang Chengling shot back, but this time he was smiling. “Get out of my kitchen.”
Zhou Zishu did not argue with that, and Zhang Chengling could not hear whether he laughed; but it felt less strange to have him here when he was too busy not to act like himself.
Four Seasons Manor did the absolute best it could on such short notice. When Zhang Chengling entered the hall, it glittered with light. Someone had found colorful paper decorations and hung them, as if it were a festival. Behind him, two lines of disciples carried dishes of food, and he could see wine already on the tables. Zhou Zishu already sat in the place of honor, with Wen Kexing at his left hand. The sight was like a drink of warm wine, sending tendrils of golden fire from his chest to the tips of his fingers and toes.
There was an empty place at his right.
Zhang Chengling stopped in front of the host’s table and bowed, and Zhou Zishu gestured to the empty seat. Zhang Chengling took it without a word, settling in and looking over the people gathered. There were the eighteen disciples who had helped rebuild Four Seasons Manor, of course, but there were also the new ones: daytime students invited to stay for the meal, others whose families had sent them from farther away to live under their roof and learn.
“How many are there? Is this all of them?” Zhou Zishu murmured.
“Not quite all,” Zhang Chengling said. “Some returned to their families for the night; this is most, though. You have thirty-six disciples, including myself.”
“I met—eleven, no, twelve of the new ones this afternoon; the other five?” Zhou Zishu asked.
Wen Kexing leaned in then. “You met the beginners, Ah Xu; those who still need special attention. They were all accepted in the last year. The more experienced disciples train in Four Seasons Manor techniques together in the mornings before breaking off for individual study and training in the afternoons. We have gathered many books here, and I teach my father’s style to those who are interested, while Chengling has begun to teach a few of his brothers the methods of the Longyuan Cabinet. We are starting to gain a reputation as scholars.”
“Or dilettantes,” Zhang Chengling said.
“We never listen to hot air,” Wen Kexing said, mock-scolding.
The last of the food had been served, and Wen Kexing reached to pour Zhou Zishu some wine. “You should toast us,” he said, smiling up into Zhou Zishu’s eyes, and Zhou Zishu accepted the cup from his hand, their fingers brushing for a moment too long.
Zhang Chengling’s eyes narrowed, then he lifted them to Zhou Zishu’s face, catching sight of him just before his eyes flickered away from Wen Kexing’s face and fixed on the crowd before him. “The first toast is for the good hands which guided Four Seasons Manor in my absence,” he said, lifting the cup.
The hall murmured agreement, and drank with him.
As wine burned in his throat, Zhang Chengling watched his master and his master’s junior and thought: I was not wrong, those years ago, about what they both meant to each other.
Four Seasons Manor was at peace; Wen Kexing had been reborn as the second disciple of its master’s generation, and no one else; and Zhang Chengling had a second chance now to see the two men who had taken him in cemented at one another’s sides. He had carried the fragile glass of Wen Kexing’s heart for years now. He would not see it break now, after all this work.
Wen Kexing called another toast—to the miracle of their master’s return—and Zhang Chengling threw back his wine and shouted with his fellow disciples, letting their joy carry to the rafters.