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Lan Qiren woke with the unsettling feeling of being under close scrutiny.
He rolled over and blearily forced his own eyes open. A-Ying crouched down beside the bed, staring at him intently.
“A-Die, wake up. I want to buy Mama a gift.”
Lan Qiren did not groan. Such a thing would be unseemly and betray weakness that his child would immediately glom upon as something to be exploited. “Can you ask Baba, A-Ying?”
“No. It has to be you.”
Behind him, Xiao Jingfei giggled against his shoulder. While far preferable to the way she’d screamed when he’d pulled the corrupted guai tusk out of her lower abdomen the night before, it also felt superbly unfair when he’d hoped to make up for staying up nearly to the dayspring by being allowed a few extra hours of rest.
Thwarted.
How deeply unfortunate.
Lan Qiren glanced over his shoulder and found Xiao Jingfei feigning sleep. Poorly. Her jaw shook with the attempt to keep the grin off her face. While usually he loved her grin, he did not love it this early in the morning when at his own expense.
“Why does it have to be me, A-Ying?” Lan Qiren Did Not Groan.
“Because Baba says you have better taste.”
Baba was a horrible saboteur and Lan Qiren was going to make him pay for this trespass. Somehow. Especially when he heard Wei Changze barely hiding a chuckle from Xiao Jingfei’s other side. This close to winter, Wei Changze usually slept in the middle, lacking a properly formed golden core to regulate his temperature. The nighthunt which had almost killed Xiao Jingfei had shaken them all. He didn’t care to think what might have happened if they’d encountered the guai without him, when he could still feel Xiao Jingfei’s blood on his hands…
Yes, perhaps a gift would not be amiss.
He rolled over to press a kiss to her forehead, brushed his fingers across Wei Changze’s cheek, then rose from bed with as much grace as he could muster. This early he rarely did the vaunted dignity of GusuLan justice.
Since A-Ying had already finagled breakfast out of the innkeeper, their son had little better to do than poke and prod at Lan Qiren as he enjoyed his own repast. He deliberately lingered over his tea to encourage patience, the subtlety of which completely unnoticed as A-Ying nagged at him the entire time to hurry up.
“Perhaps you might give consideration as to what sort of gift Mama would enjoy,” he finally said, half the pot still remaining but his own patience at an end. He suspected this meant A-Ying had somehow emerged victorious but did not care to consider such a thing too closely.
“A new pin for her hair,” A-Ying replied immediately. Lan Qiren nodded--hers had been damaged beyond repair during the fight. As a gift, it would be both practical and timely. “But…”
“Speak clearly and with purpose,” Lan Qiren reminded him.
A-Ying’s eyes dropped and his face twisted in guilt. “Maybe not one with a lotus?”
Ah. Lan Qiren could hardly chastise him for it. While Wei Changze still prized his connection to YunmengJiang, Xiao Jingfei had never particularly warmed to its master. Wei Changze held out hope such a thing might still happen and while Lan Qiren would never undermine either of his partners, he had long wondered if such a hope came more from Wei Changze’s ruthless optimism than any sense of reality.
“Not one with clouds then, either,” Lan Qiren said carefully. In a marriage of three, he’d found balance to be as important as compromise and affection put together. Love would never thrive if not rooted in equality.
A-Ying pursed his lips and then nodded. “What about a bunny?”
“I think you might like that, but I’m not sure about Mama.”
A-Ying grinned. “If she doesn’t like it, she can give it to me!”
“Then is it a gift for her at all?”
This pulled him up short. While A-Ying pondered the question, Lan Qiren took the opportunity to finish his tea.
Like all towns, the crowded marketplace had become the default destination for both locals and travelers. Though not as expansive as ones Lan Qiren had visited in the past, there were a number of vendors hawking their wares, with more than one boasting the ‘finest’ quality jewelry, decorations, and charms. Most of them did not live up to the promise, but one of the merchants did have a fair selection of such things. Lan Qiren paused to browse the offerings, carefully avoiding looking directly at the seller. He had never quite learned the art of haggling, much to Wei Changze’s amusement, and making eye contact always seemed to lead to him embarrassing himself by becoming flustered and paying full price.
(“A sheltered upbringing,” Wei Changze chuckled.
“Don’t be like that, A-Chang,” Xiao Jingfei ordered. Lan Qiren saw trouble brewing in the corner of her smile. “I was sheltered, too, but I’m excellent at haggling. It’s obviously a sign of something much more sinister.”
Lan Qiren decided to be generous and provide her with the opening she so obviously craved. “Dare I ask what you think that may be?”
“I’ve always worried that the only essential life skills which can be mastered by disciples of GusuLan need a rule inscribed about them first.”
“You--!”)
His eyes landed on a particularly beautiful piece; a silver stick tipped with a carving of twin mountains. When Lan Qiren turned to ask A-Ying whether it would suffice, he sighed to realize the boy had vanished into the knotted crowd around them.
Lan Qiren did not panic. If he panicked every time A-Ying set off on his own, his heart would give out well before he had the chance to even contemplate immortality. Their son proved relentlessly curious, industrious, independent, and singularly capable of finding (or causing) chaos with nothing more than his imagination and stubborn force of will. Traits he inherited from his mother. Ones completely anathema to Lan Qiren and everything he ever expected to desire from a family.
How fortunate the expectations of youth rarely reflected the realities of adulthood.
He checked the usual places first: vendors selling toys, sweets, shiny baubles and, more troublingly, weaponry. Most people of sense would refuse to sell dangerous items to a child, but such people were an unfortunate rarity and A-Ying could be very persuasive. That, at least, he attributed to Wei Changze.
A-Ying had either quickly lost interest in the pedestrian offerings or, terrifyingly, found something even more distracting. For A-Ying, distraction and destruction typically ended up being entirely too complementary.
He stopped in the middle of the roadway, irritating those around him, and centred himself to listen. He expanded his senses over the general din of the crowd--a man offering tanghulu, another hawking fine scarves--for the small noises. Ones that went unheard. A toddler crying at their mother's skirt as she haggled for their dinner. The distant bray of an irritated donkey. And then, in the distance--
His eyes snapped open.
Dogs.
A-Ying's fear of dogs manifested early; from infancy to hear Xiao Jingfei speak of it. Lan Qiren vividly recalled the horrible night she and Wei Changze stumbled up to the gates of Cloud Recesses, half-dead and calling for him, attacked by a yao on the road. Xiao Jingfei had exhausted her spiritual energy first in the fight and then by pushing past the point of her substantial limits to heal the wounds inflicted on Wei Changze and A-Ying. She'd been in a coma for nearly a week. A-Ying and Wei Changze still bore scars, A-Ying’s manifesting in a fear of anything remotely canid.
Lan Qiren could truthfully claim his decision to accompany them when they left Cloud Recesses struck the very moment Xiao Jingfei finally opened her eyes again. He had set aside his role as acting sect leader, fought the elders word and letter for what he felt would be the best replacement, seen the new provisional Lan-zongzhu settled before their departure, and not once had cause for regret.
He moved through the crowd, glaring everyone aside as he swept into one of the alleys lining the street, following the sound of barking and praying he had made an incorrect assumption. Even if he hadn’t, better to scare off the curs than allow them to cross A-Ying’s path.
Breaking through to the next side street, the baying of dogs drowning out the sound of the market behind him, Lan Qiren twisted around until determining the correct direction. And then, flying in the face of his usual decorum, he ran.
Turning another corner into a narrow side street, he stopped short when he saw A-Ying--his precious little boy--holding off a pack of three angry-looking dogs with nothing more than a desperate, terrified frown and a broken broom handle. The dogs themselves were obviously not feral: the ostentatious collars about their necks barely fit around the carefully groomed fur. There had to be owners nearby.
But the owners were not here and the dogs were attacking his son.
He leapt, landing between the sharp end of the broom handle and the closest dog. With a wave of his hand, he whipped forth a wave of spiritual energy, swatting them with the force of a half-dozen wasp stings and sending them skittering away with irritated whines. He did not dislike dogs and took no joy in forcibly driving them away. But they could not be permitted to hurt his child.
They took off, yipping for their owners.
A-Ying crashed into his back and buried his face against Lan Qiren's hip. The boy's words blubbered out in a tumblous collection of nonsense and sobs. He did not protest as Lan Qiren hoisted him into his arms, though most times he insisted that, at six, he was far too old for such indignities. A-Ying cried into his shoulder, adrenaline leaking out of his body now the danger had passed.
Lan Qiren waited until the crying had eased before wiping his son's face.
"It was very wrong of you to have wandered away," Lan Qiren scolded. "Those dogs might have done you true injury."
"I knoooooow," A-Ying warbled, tears threatening an imminent encore. "But I needed to!"
Lan Qiren almost dismissed the claim, but paused at the last moment. A-Ying had always been a filial, honest child. If he claimed leaving Lan Qiren's side to have been a necessity, he had a reason. Possibly a very poor one, but what seemed gold to one person might look like painted clay to another.
"Tell me," Lan Qiren said gently.
"They were chasing him, and I wanted to help!"
Following the wave of A-Ying's arm, Lan Qiren noted the presence of another boy for the first time. Probably only ten years A-Ying's senior, if even that. Bruises and half-dried blood covered his face like an opera mask. His clothes might once have been fine but had fallen into disrepair and looked two growth spurts too short for him in both the arms and legs. They were also wholly unsuitable for the imminent onset of winter.
A-Ying, sufficiently comforted, wiggled until Lan Qiren set him down and then ran towards the boy, who flinched violently backwards.
"It's okay," A-Ying said in a high-pitched, cajoling tone. He reached into his sleeve and pulled out a half-squashed bao which Lan Qiren didn’t care to wonder how long he’d kept tucked away for later. "Here. Are you hungry?"
The boy looked back and forth between A-Ying and the bun with honest confusion until he finally reached out and pinched it between two fingers, carefully plucking it from A-Ying's hand.
"Good gege," A-Ying cooed.
Enough of that. "A-Ying, he is a fellow human being, not a kitten you're trying to coax out from beneath a porch."
A-Ying shot him a patronizing glare which Lan Qiren regretfully recognized as having been plastered across his own face many times. "That's why I’m calling him gege instead of maomao, A-Die."
Next time, Lan Qiren swore he would stay in bed with Xiao Jingfei and Wei Changze could take their wretched spawn to the market.
The boy--a deeply damaged teenager--looked one tragedy away from shattering like porcelain carelessly dropped. He stared at the bun as though it might be his next great betrayer, but at A-Ying's encouraging wave took a tentative bite.
"Thank you," he whispered. Even his voice sounded beaten; when Lan Qiren peered closer, he spotted deep bruising around his neck. Someone had tried to kill him.
He tidily tucked his outrage away for future consideration. It would not do to scare the boys--either of them--any further.
"Are you still hungry? Because I had some dates, but I ate them, but there might be some roast nuts left in my bag. Hold on. I’ll check…" A-Ying dropped down beside his new friend, who immediately scrambled away. He curled his hands behind his back and threw himself backwards, hitting the wall behind him with a painful thud.
"Don't touch me," the boy begged. "I will hurt you."
"Why do you want to hurt us, gege?" A-Ying demanded, abandoning his search in favour of looking deeply betrayed.
"I don't," the boy insisted, his words a hard half-sob. "I don't want to hurt anyone. But it keeps happening." He slowly drew his hands out from behind his back. His palms had started to glow with an orange light, the colour found inside a half-banked coal. He clenched his fists and pressed them to his eyes.
"Pretty!" Wei Ying declared before returning to the search of his bag. A-Ying was nothing if not single-minded. The flippancy had the teenager lowering his hands once again, face contorting with confusion. "Here!" He dug out a single, slightly withered, apple and presented it with great relish.
The boy seemed not to notice, his eyes fearfully trained on Lan Qiren. It wouldn’t do.
“I am Lan Qiren. You’ve met my son, Wei Ying.”
Wei Ying hopped to his feet and bowed, sighing with long-suffering irritation when Lan Qiren nudged him into proper form. “Courtesy Wuxian, but my Baba says it’s too big for me to wear right now,” A-Ying supplied.
“Zhao Zhuliu,” their young friend replied artlessly. If he had been raised with manners, they’d unsurprisingly fallen well past the wayside, likely due to the abuse.
A dog barked in the distance and A-Ying stiffened, the blood draining from his face as he whipped his head towards the entrance to the alley. Lan Qiren leaned down and pressed his hand to A-Ying’s shoulder.
“You’re scared of dogs?” Zhao Zhuliu asked. A-Ying squeezed his eyes shut and nodded. “Then why did you help me?”
“You needed help,” A-Ying said.
Lan Qiren saw the shape of what must have happened in the words and how A-Ying edged towards the broken broom handle, still close at hand.
Zhao Zhuliu offered a tremulous smile. “Brave.” A-Ying grinned even as he shook his head. “You are.”
Lan Qiren couldn’t recall a simple statement ever sounding so melancholy.
“Thank you, gege.”
Suddenly, from the other end of the alley. "There! Kill it!"
And Lan Qiren found himself suddenly standing between half a dozen armed cultivators, and his son and his son's new friend. He kept his free hand hovering over Baiyue’s hilt, prepared for whatever mischief they might attempt. The dogs he’d scared off waited at their heels, hackles raised and tensed for command.
“Master Cultivator." They bowed, sloppily by Lan Qiren's standards, though probably sufficient for their own. The man in front straightened, his face losing all sign of courtesy as he spotted Zhao Zhuliu behind them. "If you'll excuse us. We have clan affairs to attend to."
Lan Qiren eyed them. Robes of middling quality, clumsy handling of their weapons, unrefined manners… given that the Yao wouldn't stray so far into Zhoushan, they had to be Zhao.
"Thank you, but my son and I are occupied at the moment. You may return here when we have completed our business."
He turned his back on them, hoping more than expecting they might leave; he had a feeling their 'clan affairs’ involved the brutalized teenager.
He was proven correct when the one in front scoffed in wordless irritation, followed quickly by, "I don't know what a Lan cultivator is doing in these parts, but this isn't any of your concern."
Incorrect; Lan Qiren easily thought of fifty-three disciplines which informed his desire to remain involved. He doubted the other man would either understand or agree and while Lan Qiren typically enjoyed correcting the ignorance of others, he felt this time his efforts would likely be wasted.
"There is no greater justice than actions taken in defense of the weak," he stated. One of the newest inscriptions on the wall. He'd helped transcribe it himself.
"'Weak'?" The man chuckled, low and ugly. "That thing? He destroyed my brother's golden core!" the cultivator in front finished at a roar.
Out of the corner of his eye, Lan Qiren saw the boy drop into a kowtow. "I'm sorry, Bobo. I only wanted Fuqin to stop hurting me."
Lan Qiren's hand tightened on his sword. Six Zhao cultivators would not be a problem for him if it came to it.
"And you think his trespasses were worth his golden core? You fucking wretch, your father was worth ten of you. And now he's useless."
"What happened?" Lan Qiren asked. He suspected he knew.
"That thing is a monster. If he touches you, he snuffs out your core like a candlewick."
The boy offered no defense. He took the words--‘wretch,’ 'thing,' 'monster'--as his due. If he continued hearing such things, he would ultimately start believing them to be true. Such a thing could not be allowed to pass; the worst monsters were the ones given form by self hatred.
There were forbidden techniques which could be used to burn a person’s golden core to ash. He somehow doubted Zhao Zhuliu had any understanding of them, given how ruthlessly the clans had scoured the world to destroy such knowledge. A child less than twenty years of age could not have learned them.
"I see. He taught himself this forbidden cultivation technique in a deliberate attempt to destroy your sect."
"No! Please," the boy gagged on his own desperation, "I can't control it."
The first of the swords came out with a swish of steel. "When we're done with you, you won't need to worry about it."
Lan Qiren slipped Baiyue from its sheath, not to fully draw it, but to give just a hint of the white steel. Gratifyingly, three of the men stepped backwards. "If he cannot control it and took no pains to learn it, then it is a sickness that might be cured. Not an evil to be eliminated."
“Say that when he’s destroyed your life.” The leader drew his sword. “The Zhao have always shown great respect to GusuLan. In deference to such warm relations, I order you: move out of the way.”
Lan Qiren whipped his hand out, fixing a string tautly between the two walls.
“Watch this,” A-Ying whispered behind them, “A-Die is going to kick their asses.”
“A-Ying, what’s the rule about unnecessary commentary during fights?”
“According to you or Mama?”
Before he could answer, the first Zhao cultivator sprang forward. Lan Qiren strummed out a single note, powered by a fraction of spiritual energy, and sent him flying back towards his companions. He knocked two of them to the ground in a graceless heap.
Lan Qiren glanced over his shoulder at his son. “Spending time thinking of witty commentary distracts you from the threat offered by your opponents.”
One of the aforementioned opponents began to charge. Lan Qiren didn’t turn around as he played another note and sent the man to join his friends on the ground.
“Mama says that only applies if it takes you a long time to figure out what to say.” A-Ying stuck his hands on his hips, a picture-perfect imitation of Xiao Jingfei. For a child who so diplomatically resembled all his parents, he seemed to have landed on their most irritating habits to emulate.
“We are going to have a chat about respecting your adversaries,” Lan Qiren replied.
A-Ying’s face twisted up sceptically. “You respect them?”
Lan Qiren looked towards the heap of Zhao cultivators. Had they been properly trained, they would more than likely already be on their feet and offering a response to his attack. How fortunate a coincidence they had not been.
“Showing basic respect to all living things is the mark of a great mind,” Lan Qiren reminded him instead of agreeing.
“Are you trying to turn this into a teaching moment?” the Zhao leader demanded, using his sword to push himself to his feet.
A-Ying rolled his eyes. “You’re not special. A-Die says everything should be a teaching moment.”
“Yes, and we’re going to have another one once we’re finished here,” Lan Qiren promised him.
A-Ying slapped his forehead, likely--correctly--assuming there would be lines in his future and then looked very carefully at Lan Qiren’s makeshift duxianqin as though contemplating if such a thing might be forestalled if the fight took longer. Lan Qiren fixed him with his more foreboding glare and A-Ying sighed and crossed his arms, huffily.
(That, Lan Qiren knew, he’d picked up from the young Jiang heir.)
The six ran at him at once, swords raised high. This time, Lan Qiren did not bother restraining his spiritual energy as he strummed one last note. The power behind it was enough to throw them all out of the alley and across the connecting road.
Once certain they would not rise again--not dead, but definitely unconscious--Lan Qiren released the string and tucked it away again with a flick of his wrist. He then turned back to the two boys behind him.
Zhao Zhuliu watched him with uncertainty. Slowly, though, his features hardened over, pushing down every hint of emotion until he might as well have been carved of stone. A defense reaction; one Lan Qiren had often utilized himself.
“I’m not a disease,” he whispered, preparing himself for the worst.
“No,” Lan Qiren agreed. “You are a person in need of help.” He straightened. “There may be a disorder in your golden core, Zhao Zhuliu, which reacts poorly when exposed to those of other cultivators. Such things can be controlled with proper discipline. I am willing to help you if you would allow it.”
“How?” The distrust had been sewed by clumsy hands long before Lan Qiren had come upon it; he took no offense.
“We’ll start by temporarily sealing your spiritual energy. It is hard to focus on a solution when you live constantly in fear of the problem.”
Wei Ying noticed Zhao Zhuliu’s trepidation immediately. "You don't have to worry. Die only looks scary. He's very brave and good. Once--" A-Ying's voice dropped to a whisper "--he fought the Violet Spider."
The boy blinked and turned his full attention back to A-Ying. "Really?" A-Ying nodded. "I saw her fight once when my father took me to Meishan. Did… did he win?"
“It was a tie,” A-Ying replied. He grinned. “That means both of them gave up because they didn’t want to lose face, but I think--”
“Yes, thank you, A-Ying,” Lan Qiren interrupted. While his son had been very attentive to the fight in question, Lan Qiren didn’t care to hear what he suspected the outcome might have been had they not come to a… mutual decision not to continue it. While Yu Ziyuan proved a very competent opponent, A-Ying’s bald description of the world often begat unwelcome reminders of the importance of humility.
Zhao Zhuliu nodded and braced himself, stretching his arms out to keep his hands away from Lan Qiren and giving him sufficient room to work. He looked prepared for a far worse fate.
The act of sealing another person’s spiritual energy posed significantly more challenges than sealing one’s own. A slip of the hand could result in actual damage to the recipient’s meridians. The wrong pressure might allow energy to leak through the seal. He worked with careful, diligent movements until Zhao Zhuliu buckled and grabbed his chest.
“I feel like I’m dying.” He looked as though he wanted to vomit before forcibly folding a painfully neutral mask back over his features. Lan Qiren suspected that with some coaching he might prove himself as inscrutable as any Lan elder. “Is this what everyone I touch feels like?”
“It’s temporary,” Lan Qiren reminded him.
His composure only broke when A-Ying ran back to him and grabbed his hand. He tried to rip it away, but Lan Qiren could’ve told him that once A-Ying got ahold of you it was next to impossible to remove him. He seemed shocked when, instead of screaming, A-Ying merely held on tighter.
“Don’t worry, gege,” A-Ying said, hugging him tight. “A-Die will fix you.”
Zhao Zhuliu hesitantly brought his arms up and wrapped them around A-Ying’s shoulders. A-Ying snuggled into his chest in a way that was likely not intentionally manipulative. It seemed to ease some of the older boy’s cares away, a quiet sort of softness gentling the stone.
“We’ll go to Cloud Recesses,” Lan Qiren said. “Their library will surely have answers.”
A-Ying gasped in delight. “Cloud Recesses is boring, but Lan Zhan is there, and he’s the best. I’m going to marry him someday--” Lan Qiren’s eyebrow twitched, quite outside his control, but he had long given up arguing that a child of six could not make his own marriage arrangements, “--and we’re going to be rogue cultivators like Mama, Baba and A-Die.”
Well, this certainly explained why A-Zhan had insisted on sleeping in a tent recently. Lan Qiren’s sister-in-law had written of it, at a loss to figure out why. At least now they had a culprit answer.
Zhao Zhuliu slowly rose to his feet, A-Ying still tucked into his arms. He met Lan Qiren’s eyes with a gaze much older than his physical years. “Thank you. I owe you a debt.”
“I will not have anyone beholden to me for a moral act. Now, come along,” Lan Qiren huffed. A-Ying turned his face to smile at him. “We need to collect my spouses before we leave Zhoushan.”
A-Ying rambled about their family as they exited the alley, though he shoved his face into Zhao Zhuliu’s shoulder as they passed the dogs frantically nudging at their fallen masters. Zhao Zhuliu pressed his palm to the back of A-Ying’s neck, holding him tight. Lan Qiren nodded his approval when the younger man met his eyes. How long had the simple comfort of touch been denied him?
“Die! We forgot to get Mama her gift!”
Lan Qiren eyed their new charge. “Don’t be so sure, A-Ying.”
A-Ying wrinkled his nose, but wisely decided not to argue the point. After a moment of squirming, Zhao Zhuliu placed him back on the ground where he grabbed one of their hands in each of his and hopped along between them like a cricket all the way back to the inn.