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In the first rush of discovering Xiao Jiu alive, Yue Qi forgets his new standing, his reputation, everything he’s spent the last four years building. None of it is as important as Xiao Jiu recognizing him, and defending him. None of it is as important as the look in his eyes when he asks, “Why didn’t you come back for me?”
None of it can compare to the void that opens in his throat when Xiao Jiu doesn’t scold him for apologizing, or for failing, and instead turns away with bitterness in his smile, jagged edges turned outward as he says, “What good does that do me?”
Yue Qi has no answer. There is no explanation that can wipe away the pain in Xiao Jiu’s eyes, or the guilt settling like ice in his own stomach.
“Someone will come check on that signal soon.” Xiao Jiu turns his back fully, staring into the trees like he might bolt for the shadows, like a ghost Yue Qi will never see again.
“Come with me to Cang Qiong,” he blurts, pleading.
Xiao Jiu looks over his shoulder, his expression too still to read.
“You can be a disciple there,” Yue Qi steps to his side, reaching for his arm only to hesitate under the strength of the glare that greets him. “We can be martial brothers,” he finishes, not even trying to to keep the hope out of his voice: a dream nurtured for three years, then buried in ashes, now rising anew.
“Cang Qiong has a good reputation,” he continues when Xiao Jiu doesn’t respond, trying to remember what they’d known before he left. “Every peak has a different specialty—I’m on Qiong Ding, the first peak.”
“Diplomacy,” Xiao Jiu observes. So he has heard more, these past years. He looks over Yue Qi’s shoulder. “You’ll have a chance to use that, soon.”
Three elder cultivators wearing the red armbands of Immortal Alliance Conference healers are quickly approaching. Yue Qi puts himself between them and Xiao Jiu.
“Follow my lead,” he murmurs, and Xiao Jiu snorts. Yue Qi – Yue Qingyuan settles his face into a mask of grateful relief, and prays that Xiao Jiu has learned more tact than he displayed as a child.
It goes well enough. The healers are suspicious, of course, when they see the bodies, but Yue Qingyuan’s reputation is good for this much: if he says the Huan Hua disciples were dead when he arrived, and that the wandering cultivator attacked him on sight, they won’t question him. Still, he chooses his words carefully, speaking truth that glosses over the rest as if it never existed.
Xiao Jiu joins in without prompting, as smooth as any small con they ran as children. There are no tears, now, but he’s still convincing when he says that he’s sure the man would have killed him next if ‘Yue-qianbei’ hadn’t intervened.
Perhaps that, too, is truth in the end. Xiao Jiu gives so little away now. Yue Qi will have to learn how to read him again.
The healers let them go when another firework brightens the sky to the south. One stays behind to deal with the bodies, and Xiao Jiu requires no prompting to start moving east, walking quickly in silence until they’re well beyond a cultivator’s range of hearing. No demonic beast disturbs them, but Yue Qi keeps a close eye on the shadows.
Under the cover of a bamboo forest, Xiao Jiu stops and turns, his expression inscrutable.
“How do I get into Cang Qiong?” he asks.
*
The plan is a good one. Better than Yue Qi’s original impulse, as always, even if a small part of his mind still whispers that it’s unnecessary, that simply asking would have worked. Xiao Jiu has always been proud. If there is a chance to earn his place and prove his defense of it, he will take it. Approaching the Cang Qiong Peak Lords with a pouch of golden beast beads and good standing in the Conference rankings will more than make up for missing the usual initiation trials, and make a better impression than any words Yue Qi can say in support of him on their own. And hunting together will give Yue Qi more time to assess his skills, so that his recommendation is thorough enough to be up to Shizun’s most rigorous standards.
There are still three days left in the Immortal Alliance Conference, after all. Plenty of time to start making Xiao Jiu’s name.
Barely any time at all, to start learning how Xiao Jiu has changed in four years.
His cultivation has grown since their childhood, though not as much as Yue Qi might have expected if he’d had real training. Yue Qi’s opinion of the man he called shifu—Wu Yanzi, Xiao Jiu calls him now—dips from censure to active disgust as he watches Xiao Jiu fight. Xiao Jiu is quick and efficient with his plain steel sword, and inventive in his use of projectiles, but there’s no technique to it, and no cohesive style. There’s no guidance evident in his movements, no real difference from how he fought as a child beyond the greater freedom to use qi techniques, and a slightly longer reach. He discovers, late in the afternoon after they’ve faced an eight-striped wolverine-bat together, that Xiao Jiu hasn’t even been taught to meditate, or to cycle his qi properly. Whatever the dead man was teaching him, Yue Qi doubts it was a true cultivation path.
That night, Xiao Jiu makes talismans by flickering firelight, and his brush strokes are sure and smooth. This, apparently, Wu Yanzi did teach, building on a skill in reading and writing that Yue Qi is left to assume was learned at the Qiu mansion. Talismans for light and heat, for bindings, for spiritual seals, for destroying ghosts, these Xiao Jiu knows.
Despite his best efforts, despite their shared history and every trick Yue Qi has learned in the past four years, Xiao Jiu refuses to speak of anything but their plan and Cang Qiong. He consents to learn and practice meditation, and lets Yue Qi hold his wrist to monitor the flow of energy as he experiments with circulating his qi. He asks questions about the types of monsters that have been brought to the gorge, and which would be considered the most valuable. He listens intently to descriptions of Cang Qiong’s Peak Lords and inter-peak politics and asks no questions about Yue Qi himself. Any question concerning how Xiao Jiu has fared, what he’s learned or hopes to achieve, is either ignored, deflected as unimportant, or countered with another question. Sometimes agitation or anger will bleed through his impassive mask, but they are only small flares of heat. Without anger, Xiao Jiu presents only cold efficiency, with no sign of the child who used to share his amusement with a fierce grin, his secrets accompanied by defensive glares and grasping hands at once.
It will take time to earn his trust again, Yue Qi reminds himself, and the ice of his guilt settles deeper into his bones. He should have been faster. Better. Less impulsive, as always.
He should have kept looking, no matter what people said had happened to the Qiu household.
Xiao Jiu has a bedroll in a qiankun pouch, but no tent, and meager rations. Yue Qi sets up his own tent and offers the best of his own food, but even this is apparently a misstep of some kind. Xiao Jiu glares at the tent, then lays out his bedroll as far from Yue Qi’s as possible. The food he eats in silence, as Yue Qi tells him about Cang Qiong’s kitchens, about Qiong Ding’s festival celebrations and the feasting that will follow the end of the Conference.
He banks the fire while Xiao Jiu walks a ward around their camp – another skill Wu Yanzi deigned to pass on. It’s not a ward Yue Qi has seen before, designed as much for concealment as for protection, but it will do the job.
Xiao Jiu’s inner robes are worn and thin by the light of the dim glowstones he sets next to his sword. They look no better by the light of the nightpearl folded inside Yue Qi’s own bedroll.
Xiao Jiu stares at the nightpearl, a cultivator item worth more than anything they ever dreamed of owning, and Yue Qi wishes he’d thought more quickly, thought to hide it as soon as he saw the glowstones. Xiao Jiu has always had good night vision, and never needed such things for himself.
Xiao Jiu says nothing, his face as still as a clear pond, and Yue Qi's relief and hope curl inward as shadows stretch between them. He wishes he could make himself say: Anything can happen in the darkness of a sealed cave, worse things than we ever imagined in the cold of a long night. Wishes he could force the words from his throat: I’m sorry, you’re here but I’ve dreamed your death so often, I just need to see you. I’m sorry, I was too late for you. I’m sorry.
Apologies have already been rejected several times today. Instead, he offers a spare blanket, and a spare robe, but Xiao Jiu shakes his head.
“No need,” he insists, shoving his glowstones back into his qiankun pouch. He turns away and lies on his side, and doesn’t speak again.
Yue Qi tracks the shift of his shoulder blades as he breathes and thinks about the dull, flickering glow of rock chips presented as a gift in a child’s small hands, and the smoky flames that have haunted his dreams for months and months now, and he cannot make his eyes close.
He watches Xiao Jiu breathe in the soft light of pearlshine until the sun rises.