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Ningguang stands at the pier’s edge, the water-speckled wind stinging her face, tossing up waves, and ushering ships. Despite the marketplace behind her teeming with sweat and spice, despite the fishy musk of the harbor, in facing the wind, she is cleansed. The purity of a wind scented with nothing but saltwater fills her lungs. This close to where people dwell, it isn’t as sweet as it would be in the middle of the ocean, where the cloud-like ships glide onwards, but they are not the heavy perfumes of the Jade Chamber. For it, she is cleansed.
And she is reminded of a connection, however tenuous and sentimental, fool she is to admit it even in the privacy of her own mind. These are the pierside cousins of the wind and water that are Beidou’s companions. If Ningguang could speak the elements’ language, what would they say? Would they speak of Beidou’s glories the same way they spill from her alcohol-tinged lips? Would they flatter her more, witnesses to her exploits; or less, for the embellishments she surely colors her stories with?
Ningguang breathes in, wondering if the air feels as wonderful in Beidou’s fickle wherever as here, the stability of home.
The sea, sailors will sigh, is a cruel mistress. True enough, Beidou admits, but its unpredictability is precisely what makes the sea beautiful: to sail in fear is no life at all. To live you must be willing to die, and the sea offers the greatest thrill, the mightiest coin flip of it all. Big rewards for big risks.
Besides. There is a crueler woman in the world, and she, for all of her renunciations of Beidou, never spurns her. The sea will see Beidou until it drowns her; Ningguang, too, must put up with the occasional loss at chess until Beidou's bones settle at the bottom of the sea. From water she came and to water she will return.
Beidou inhales. This far out at sea, everything is salt: in the prickly wind, billowing their sails; encrusted on the ship’s hull; flavoring the very air itself. The purest broth, water and salt. It provides. It nourishes, and Beidou flourishes.
Of course, the profit that pirateering offers is part of why she is enamored with this life. A few days ago, they'd caught a bandit crew poaching salt from the Guyun Stone Forest and stole it back. It was high-quality, the kind of salt with no aftertaste but itself. Perhaps less would be sent to Liyue than had been lost. Perhaps some could be gifts. Ningguang would like it, this piece of her nation, edible to make it a part of herself as wholly as she could. It has always been fitting Ningguang's Vision is Geo, the very earth that mothered her; and that now, with her influence, she reciprocates.
For all the ivory Ningguang believes comprises her, in the center of her being is her heart, beating warmly and proudly. Arrogance, greed, and a desire to prove herself had led to her political rise, but she would not have striven for such heights if love of Liyue was not her most basic foundation.
Beidou licks her lips. Would the ocean salt taste as good to Ningguang as it does to her?
The hum of silence reigning in the Jade Chamber is interrupted by the thump of boots, growing louder, succeeded by the smell of honest sweat and brine.
Beidou has returned. Ningguang does not have to glance up from her paperwork to know.
A leather satchel dangles in front of Ningguang, obstructing the paper she’d been signing. “Gotcha somethin’,” Beidou says.
Ningguang puts down her ink brush, and, internally, tucks away the thrill that had swelled in her chest. “Good morning to you as well, Beidou. How were your travels?”
“Are you serious? I come in here with a gift and you don’t want it right away?” Beidou slides on top of the desk and makes herself comfortable, one leg swinging off. The side slits of her qipao conceal little, and as she moves her leg, blessed by sun, Ningguang glimpses skin that has not been so intimate with the summer. Ningguang swallows dryness in her throat, hurriedly deciding to scowl at Beidou—the desk is made of good wood and should not be used as furniture—but, as ever, Beidou doesn’t care for proper social conventions.
“I was being polite,” Ningguang says, flicking Beidou’s thigh as chastisement. It only makes Beidou grin and move further up the desk. Ningguang sits back, refusing to be pulled in; she is not the tides. “Besides,” she adds, “each time you saunter here, seeking me personally, you have some sort of tale you’re eager to share.”
“And I do this time, too! But I wanted you to have this first.” She puts the satchel in front of Ningguang's hand.
Ningguang considers it and Beidou’s aberrant behavior. “You stole that, didn’t you?”
Beidou cackles, slapping her thigh, finally hopping off the desk, but not without leaving her leg’s mark on the desk. “Caught already!”
“Then I will absolutely not take this,” Ningguang says, pushing the satchel away, “and I will pretend we didn’t have this conversation.”
“Aw. After all I went through, you’re going to reject me?”
“Yes. Have you any legal news to report?”
“Nope. Sorry to disappoint, O Esteemed Tianquan. I was hoping my gift would be enough, but cruel are a woman’s ways.”
“As you yourself are aware.”
Beidou laughs. “Maybe.”
“Are you going to tell me why you are giving me something stolen?”
“Not unless you open it first!”
Ningguang’s look is flat as stone. “It is stolen, Beidou. It would do you well to remember that though you may exist outside the law, I am the law.”
“You’re also boring,” Beidou sighs, running a finger down the desk, the gloss of her skin’s oils caught by the morning light.
Ningguang grips Beidou’s wrist. “You are aware someone will tell me of your exploits regardless?”
“Yeah.” Her eyes glitter, and Ningguang could drown in them. “But unless you open that, it won’t be from me.”
“Then I suppose it will not be from you.”
Beidou sighs and slips her hand free of Ningguang. With an insouciant salute, she leaves. Ningguang’s breath trembles out of her. It is a problem how easily the staff let Beidou in; it's as if she lives here. Ningguang will have to talk to them.
Somehow, she never finds the time for that.
She eyes the satchel, left behind on purpose. Beidou knew Ningguang would have to open it to determine what had been lost, and if its owner could be found. For something so small, unless it is unique, she doubts she can.
Curiosity is bright in her mind, brighter in her soul. What would Beidou give her? She reaches for the satchel and unfastens its knot.
At its bottom are crystals, tiny as grains of sand, but clear as ice. Sugar? Heavens forbid, narcotics?
She removes her nail guards and glove to press her forefinger onto the crystals. They stick readily to her skin, and carefully she tries them with the tip of her tongue.
Salt.
Home is the Alcor, but returning to Liyue and remembering how to walk on land offers a kind of comfort, too.
Beidou likes evenings at the harbor. Its busyness calms because wise sailors departed in better light, and so the water can be viewed freely, magnificent in its sunset dapples. On the open ocean, you greet the lack of direction like an old friend. But on the shore, with the water stretching but into one direction, wavering to the slightest roundness at a distance the most hardened sailors cannot fathom, Beidou is humbled by what she does. It makes her fall in love with it again. And while she watches the ocean like she’s never beheld it, at her back, the people she loves shout their happinesses, only some of them aided by alcohol.
Yes, the harbor calms, lovely for it. But the city thrives.
She’s been hopping from place to place, sampling everything Liyue has to offer in food and drink. At sea, this she also misses—meat just-seared, spices just-harvested, alcohol just-fermented. She catches up with her land-dweller friends, exchanging bawdy stories, toasting to long, joyous lives. Her wandering ends at the Third-Round Knockout, feet kicked up on a table, swigging rice wine, idly watching people pass by. As the fortunes would have it, around the corner is Wanmin Restaurant. A favorite of Ningguang’s, Beidou knows, though not from being told by Ningguang herself. Funny, that.
Light condenses itself into fine, long hair, streaming at the corner of Beidou’s good eye. Of course she turns to it, this anomaly in the night, this resemblance to—
Ningguang, who peers over her shoulders, left and right, before settling at a table outside Wanmin Restaurant.
You aren’t discreet at all, Beidou thinks with a smile. She spots Dugu Shuo loitering nearby and waves him over.
“Yes, Captain Beidou?” he asks her, bouncing on the balls of his feet.
“Can ya do me a favor? Find a flower vendor—doesn’t matter who—and buy a lily from them.” She brandishes a few mora and flips them to him. “A glaze lily.” She flashes another mora. “Then come back here for the other half of your payment.”
“Yes, Captain Beidou!”
He doesn’t take long. He hands the lily to her with utmost care, but Beido shakes her head. She puts the other mora on his palm. “Now go to Wanmin Restaurant,” she says, tilting her head in its direction, “and give the lily to the Tianquan.”
“The Tianquan?!” he squeaks.
She shushes him, squinting about, worried they’ve been overheard. Doesn’t seem so. “She’s not as scary as she looks! She’ll be very thankful to you and will give you another coin for your troubles.”
“Are you sure?”
“Very! She loves little kids. She might even smile! The crescent moon would be jealous of it, y’know,” Beidou says, feeling her own mouth tug up at the corners.
“Should I tell her it’s from you?”
“No. Tell her it’s from— hmm.” She drums her fingers on her thigh. Then grins. “Tell her it’s from a very handsome and strong secret admirer. Stress the ‘strong’ part.”
The boy nods and scurries off.
Beidou smirks. She almost envies the moths circling Wanmin Restaurant’s lanterns; watching the Tianquan receive an anonymous flower will have the patrons gossipping for days. But she won’t risk giving herself away by going over.
She fills her spoon with broth, spiced and salted to her tolerant tastes, and almost drops it when she sees Ningguang approach the Third-Round Knockout. Her head is held high, eyes easily finding Beidou, not letting go. Dugu Shou is skipping away, happily palming six coins he did not have before.
“Oh, damn you, Ningguang,” Beidou mutters to herself.
Ningguang only has a street to cross, but the people out at these late hours bow in her direction, or else they proudly call her by title. The ripple of her adoration quivers to a stop with Beidou, who looks up at the woman who leads a nation and thinks of her name and her name alone.
“Hi, Ningguang,” Beidou chirps. She motions to the seat across from her. “Change your mind about your dining venue?”
Ningguang places the lily on the table. “What’s this?”
“A lily?”
“And you bought it for me because…?”
“Well,” Beidou says, “you weren’t supposed to know that part! Unfortunately I forgot how you work. Silly me.”
“That isn’t answering my question.”
Beidou’s smile is steadfast. She reaches for the lily, twirling it between her fingers. “You’re so busy with politics you forget that a flower can just be a flower.” She stands, the difference in their height blooming between them, and takes a step toward Ningguang. She curls a finger under Ningguang’s chin, tilting it up toward her, hearing Ningguang gasp, feeling the flutter of a mad heart—but that cannot be Ningguang’s; Beidou does not press upon her pulse point.
As delicately as the florist who’d cut the lily this morning, Beidou tucks it behind Ningguang’s ear. “There,” she says, retracting her step, leg aching with the wobble of a seaward ship and not the solid ground beneath her feet. “A flower.”
Ningguang’s hand twitches. She hides it behind her, as if caught in a theft, and clears her throat. “I see. I suppose I should thank you.”
“And I suppose,” Beidou says, sitting back down, “that I should say you’re welcome. And, because I’m very nice, I’ll ask you if you’ll join me for dinner.”
“I’d just ordered at Wanmin…”
She gets lightly on her feet. “Then I’ll have to join you there, huh? I’ll buy.”
“I am the Tianquan. That is bordering on insult.”
“Then it’s decided! It’s your treat.”
Ningguang looks at Beidou, a woman feared by men on the seas, and does not flinch. She gives a half-smile, and even in that, the beauty of the moon is a farce. “Come, then.”
Beidou pays her tab and follows Ningguang across the street, giddy at the whispers trailing behind them. At Wanmin, there are already two bowls of soup awaiting them, one so red with spices that Beidou’s eyes water. Beidou laughs as she slides onto the seat opposite Ningguang. “Look at you, treating your relationships like you’re playing chess!”
“It wouldn’t hurt you to think this far ahead, either.” Ningguang picks a fried lotus root with her chopsticks. “If you had, perhaps you would believably enlighten me as to why you returned the salt stolen from the Guyun Stone Forest except for a very conspicuous two hundred pounds.”
“I don’t have to lie about that. I’m a pirate! You’ll find the salt in Liyue’s circulation soon, like you will the money it earned us.”
Beidou is awfully fond of Ningguang’s glower.
“I’m kinda sad I wasn’t the one to tell you about it,” Beidou says. She blows air on her spoonful of soup. “Did ya try the salt, though?” She sips the soup. It immediately dizzies her in that toe-curling, hair-raising, spine-tingling enticement the eldest chefs of Liyue have mastered. She makes a shrill noise, pleasure as much as pain.
Ningguang averts her gaze. “I will admit I had a taste, if only to determine what you had given me.”
Beidou grins. “Wasn’t it amazing? I dunno if you’ve ever been far out on the ocean, but it tasted exactly like the air there does. Unbelievably pure. Just salt.”
“Oh. It was,” Ningguang says.
Beidou doesn’t wield words like Ningguang does, even the breaths between them carrying intent, but in all her time wading in and out of Ningguang’s life, she’s learned to hear what’s there as much as what isn’t. Ningguang hasn’t been on open water and regrets it. If Ningguang were anyone else, it would be a sin. As the Tianquan, there is scarcely time in her day for sailing.
Cold, unlike anything she has eaten tonight, fills Beidou’s stomach.
“Try the chicken,” Ningguang says. “They encrust it with salt, and it seeps into the meat. It’s delicious. Although,” she adds, with a wry expression, “I don’t think it’s the type of salt you would have preferred.”
“The salt I would have preferred…”
The cold in Beidou’s stomach thaws as an idea drops in her mind, crystallizing as she mulls it. She smiles to herself. Then, to keep Ningguang from guessing her thoughts, she asks, “You like the flower?”
Ningguang thumbs the lily at her ear with shy tenderness. “It would be foolish to dislike flowers.”
Around Ningguang, Beidou’s smile is impossible to sink.
Ningguang holds the letter to her chest like an amulet, though she could not say whether it is one of good luck or bad. Her city is as familiar to her as the lines on her palm; even at night, aided by little but the starlight and paper lanterns threaded overhead, she walks with confidence, knowing where the potholes are, which streets will be less crowded.
At the harbor, however, every ship is the same. Looming, dark masses, sails flat with tonight’s stale air; some are bigger than others, but that does nothing to help her find Beidou’s ship. She’d hoped there would be an obvious mark. Maybe Beidou herself.
“He-e-ey! Over here!”
Ningguang spins in that unmistakable voice’s direction. Ahead, the shape of a person, crafted in turns by the dark and silver starlight, waves at her from aboard a ship.
That answers that.
Ningguang hastens her step and watches Beidou jump down, flip, and land on the wharf with such force Ningguang’s teeth clack.
“You jump off ships? With your thick skull, if you had timed that wrong, you could have broken through the wharf!” Ningguang says. “How would you have paid, with legitimate money, for its repairs?”
“I always find a way out of trouble! But relax, I do that all the time. I won’t fall. Builds muscle.” Beidou pats her leg. The starlight knows where to fall—and where not to—to accentuate her strength.
Ningguang crosses her arms. “You are far too reckless.” Something in her gives, and it slips into her voice. “But here I am, per your request. What is the urgency? I had to cancel two meetings for this.”
“This is gonna be way better than meetings, trust me! Here,” Beidou says, extending her hand, “come aboard.”
Dumbly, Ningguang says, “What?”
“She’s not the Alcor, if you’re wondering why she’s shrunk. I’m borrowing my buddy’s. But she’s a fine ship, too. She’ll do.”
“Why must I go on a ship?”
“Because you’ve never been on open water, and who better to show you how incredible it is than me?”
There is never a truly quiet moment in Liyue Harbor, but for a moment—with no wind to flap at sails or bring waves lazily to shore; with the desolate but never lonesome night; with them at wharf’s edge when no sailor would dare venture out—for a moment, all is still.
“I never told you that,” Ningguang eventually says.
“No, but it’s because you didn’t say it that I knew. Remember at dinner the other day?” Beidou circles around her, and though the night is warm, a shiver travels down Ningguang’s spine. “You were surprised when I said the salt from Guyun Stone Forest was like the salt you smell out on the ocean. So! I’m here to fix that. Obviously we can’t go very far because the wind’s not in our favor tonight, and if we go too far we won’t be back in time for your imminent duties, but we can pretend.”
Ningguang’s scoff is soft. She turns her head away from Beidou, and thank the heavens for the night, smothering the tiniest curve to her mouth. “I canceled meetings for this,” she says again, softer, to herself.
Beidou doesn’t hear. She puts a hand at the small of Ningguang’s back, guiding her forward gently. The suddenness of it, without permission, and at the Tianquan, would be a punishable offense—were Ningguang anyone else. But it’s just her and Beidou, two women bereft of titles in the starry night.
They walk up the gangplank, the wood sturdy under their feet. When Ningguang lands on deck, she stumbles a moment, not expecting the sway of a docked ship to be this pronounced. But Beidou is quickly grabbing her hand, steadying her.
“Thank you,” Ningguang says, pulling away after a moment. After a moment. “Now what? Are we waiting on others, or can you sail alone?”
“This isn’t a huge rig, so yeah, I can do it. Hang tight for a bit!”
The darkness is too rich to discern what she is doing, though should it have been morning, Ningguang would not be able to describe what Beidou is doing. Tugging ropes there, securing them elsewhere; she’s running down the length of the ship with such ease that Ningguang needs no sunlight to know Beidou is grinning. It isn’t Beidou’s ship, but it will embrace the ocean just the same.
Whatever Beidou does, it has the ship creaking offshore as it moves. Ningguang grips the ship’s side and imagines her feet tethering themselves to the wood, unyielding. The further the ship strays from the pier, the more her illusion fades; the wind may have bothered itself to a whisper, but the ocean is restless. The city shrinks into the distance until it’s a mere suggestion jutting from the water keeping Ningguang from home. She looks the other way: water, too, incomprehensible without land to anchor her. It’s disorienting, but it’s not terrible—it’s simply another world. One Beidou wanted to share with her.
She hears footsteps behind her, feels the ship give way when Beidou, beside her, leans on the ship. “You good there?”
“I’m fine,” Ningguang says, straightening. She finds the center of her weight, focusing on its balanced distribution between her legs. “I can see why your legs are toned.”
“What’s that? You know how toned my legs are, huh?”
Ningguang is at a loss for words.
Beidou laughs. “So,” she says, “you smell it yet? How different it is to be here than by the pier?”
Ningguang takes a slow breath in. “It’s— fresh,” she says, amazed. “We aren’t too far out either, are we?”
“Maybe ten miles. But it’s far enough from people that you can appreciate what the ocean’s supposed to be like.” She pats her pockets. “I have one more thing—ah! Here ya go!” She tosses something at Ningguang, who catches it easily.
She raises an eyebrow. “Another satchel? What, is it sugar now?”
“No, it’s still the fancy salt! To complete the experience.” She goes up to Ningguang, untying the satchel. “Taste and smell are tied together to memory. I’m not about to make the Tianquan lap up seawater, so we’ll do the closest thing and give you some fancy salt. Then you’ll realize what you’re missing out on, sittin’ in your Jade Chamber all day.”
“You say that,” Ningguang says, “as if I could simply leave it.”
“You’re here, aren’t you?”
Ningguang smooths her already-smooth skirts. “It’s one night. You come to Liyue Harbor easily enough, but you could not live there, could you? I am the opposite.” She hadn’t realized it until speaking it. She commands Liyue itself while Beidou commandeers its waters. Each a half to complete Liyue’s prosperity.
“Yeah,” Beidou mumbles. “You’re right.”
The pearl that is Ningguang’s heart layers itself once more. She peers inside the bag. “Please tell me this is the last of the stolen salt you have in your possession.”
“Hmm. You’re—as you said yourself—the law, so I don’t think I will, thanks.”
Ningguang chuckles. She takes off her nail guards, peels off her glove, and dips her finger into the salt. She is about to bring it to her lips when Beidou says, “Wait.”
“What is it?”
“Close your eyes when you try it. Then take a deep breath in.”
She obliges Beidou, seeing darkness behind her lids nearly like the night’s. She raises her hand, sensing her finger’s proximity to her mouth, and she savors the salt before she breathes in air so pure a god could have exhaled it. Its saltiness is almost sweet; it coats her tongue and her lungs as if it wants to be part of her. And she would let it.
When she opens her eyes, Beidou is close, watching her with intent even the night can’t blind her to. “Good, huh?”
“Yes,” Ningguang manages. “Yes.”