Chapter Text
As Wen Ning returned to their campsite with an armful of firewood, he saw the last flicker of golden light wink out in front of Lan Yuan. His young cousin sat cross-legged on the ground in his blue and white robes, his brow furrowed. He probably wasn’t worrying about the dirt, although Wen Ning would have been if his robes were that light-colored.
“Was that another butterfly message from Jin Rulan?” Wen Ning asked, setting the wood down, and kneeling, to start building the campfire.
A-Yuan nodded, his hand absently sketching the space where the butterfly had been a moment before. “He wants to know why we haven’t come yet.”
Jin Rulan was an impatient child. And after all the time Wen Ning had spent in Carp Tower, even…asleep…the last thing he ever wanted to do was to return there. But he still felt very bad about not having gone yet, for all kinds of reasons, the first of which was that he knew that A-Yuan wanted to.
“Jin Ling also said that it’s not Lanling that we should go to,” A-Yuan said. “He says it’s Lotus Pier.”
Wen Ning cocked his head in confusion and then said, “…I—I don’t think that…I’m welcome in Lotus Pier.”
“Jin Ling doesn’t seem to think it’ll be a problem,” A-Yuan said, bemused. He didn’t need to say, for the both of them to think, that just because Jin Rulan thought that didn’t mean it was true. Jin Rulan had half grown up in the Jiang sect, and didn’t seem to always remember that he wasn’t actually in charge of anything in Yunmeng. “Ning-ge…if it’s Lotus Pier, and not Carp Tower…would that be all right?”
Wen Ning busied himself with the fire for a few moments, waiting until the spark was properly lit, and had caught the tinder, and then fed it kindling, until it was safe to give it a solid branch of dry wood. He himself could hardly feel the heat, but A-Yuan scootched close to it, appreciative, as the sun had already set, and the evening air would be cooling quickly.
“I’d just really like to see her,” A-Yuan said quietly, warming his hands over the fire. “I hardly even remember her…but we don’t have to, if you don’t want to, Ning-ge.”
“I want to!” Wen Ning assured him. Even if it meant going to Lotus Pier, which he didn’t really want to, although he wanted not to go to Lotus Pier much less than he wanted not to go to Carp Tower.
Wen Ning did want to see his sister. Even though he’d never imagined that she might have survived along with him, and even though he still did not understand how or why she had.
Jin Rulan’s first letter had been jarring and imperious and comically abrupt:
Please tell the Ghost General that his sister, the physician Wen Qing, is alive, and that he should come and see her soon. She is well and being treated as an honored guest. Tell him he shouldn’t worry because she is very safe and there is no chance she will be harmed. You can tell him that he has my word as Jin-zongzhu on it.
—Jin Rulan, Jin Sect Leader
It hadn’t been all that long ago, to Wen Ning, that he’d known for a fact that his entire family had died. It also hadn’t been that long ago that he’d found out little Wen Yuan, A-Yuan, had somehow been saved and protected, and raised up as Lan Sizhui, Hanguang-jun’s favored disciple.
Wen Ning wasn’t sure what to expect he might find out about the circumstances of A-Jie’s survival.
But A-Yuan wanted to see her, and of course Wen Ning wanted to see her, so he nodded, and said, “You should write back to Jin Rulan and tell him we’re coming.”
A-Yuan’s warm smile, at hearing this, would have been reason enough.
***
“Are you nervous?” Jiang Cheng asked Wen Qing, the night before Wen Ning was supposed to arrive (according to Jin Ling, who’d taken on the role of go-between surprisingly cheerfully; Wen Qing thought that Jin Ling didn’t have many actual friends, and was enjoying the novelty). She was in the bath, and he sat behind her on a padded stool, tilting her head back so that he could pour warm water through her hair, rinsing the soap out of it.
“No. Of course not.”
Jiang Cheng huffed a little, not believing her for a moment. She couldn’t see his face, with her eyes closed to keep the water out of them, but she didn’t have to; she could picture it perfectly in her own mind. It would be a soft look, a tender look, a face immensely pleased, at the opportunity to cosset her this way. She’d been surprised, the first time she saw it; she never saw him show it to anyone but her.
Jiang-zongzhu likes taking care of people! Which worked out well, for Wen Qing found that she actually quite liked being taken care of, at least when it was Jiang Cheng doing it.
He was right, though. She was nervous.
Jiang Cheng had asked her if she was nervous because he knew exactly why she would be. Because here in this room they shared at night, in warm darkness where they dared to touch each other, skin to skin, there was nothing she couldn’t say to him. It had been on the first night, with her face pressed into his chest, safe in his embrace, she’d been able to admit: I haven’t actually seen A-Ning in a long time. Not even his body, I mean. I stopped asking to see him years ago. Because every time they showed him to me…they would hurt him.
She couldn’t have told anyone else that; she would not have dared to confess to anyone else that—after that, I just did whatever Jin Guangyao told me to do. For all I knew they could have gotten tired of A-Ning, decided they didn’t need him anymore, burned him in truth. I wouldn’t have known.
Nervous wasn’t the right word. Terrified was. Even though she knew Jin Guangyao and Xue Yang were both dead and gone, and that Wen Ning was free, and that he’d had his mind somehow restored to him—Wei Wuxian, she thought, Wei Wuxian had to be responsible for that; Wei Wuxian was the miracle worker for brothers—the thought of seeing him filled her with a nauseating anxiety, a panic-inducing dread anticipation of what always came, when they’d let her see her brother.
“I’m a little nervous,” Wen Qing admitted, and leaned her head back against his chest for comfort. He let her, with a ghost of a laugh, even not protesting that her wet hair was leaving a damp spot on his inner robes. He just dropped a lingering kiss on her forehead, and brought up a hand, to stroke her cheek, and curled the other arm around her chest, half-cradling her.
It helped that at least she didn’t have to try to explain it to Jiang Cheng. He also knew what it was like, to have someone you had to protect, the most important person that there was—and to fail them terribly, and half-destroy yourself trying.
***
“For Heaven’s sake!” Jin Ling said, exasperated, hopping off Suihua, and walking over to Lan Sizhui. “Do you need directions? I know you both knew the way to Lotus Pier! It’s not hard, you know, you can just follow the river!”
Lan Sizhui was so self-conscious about their late arrival that he almost wanted to pretend that they had been lost. But he decided that would have been even more embarrassing, so instead, he said “Jin-zongzhu,” and bowed deeply, a gesture appropriate for a sect leader, and his cousin did the same beside him.
Jin Ling frowned, and said, “Oh, there’s nobody else around, you don’t have to do that!” He bowed back anyway, though, and to both of them even, not excluding Wen Ning, who blinked slowly, as if he was surprised to be acknowledged with courtesy. (Lan Sizhui himself was a little surprised.)
“I’ll escort you into Lotus Pier,” Jin Ling said, and they fell into an easy rhythm of walking, side-by-side, Wen Ning trailing behind them.
“Is that really all right?” Lan Sizhui couldn’t help asking. “Even though you’re Jin-zongzhu now?”
“Jiujiu doesn’t mind,” Jin Ling said, waving his hand dismissively.
“If you don’t mind my asking, how did—Wen Qing end up in Yunmeng? We thought, when we got your first letter, that perhaps she’d been in Carp Tower, as—as Wen Qionglin was.” Lan Sizhui almost slipped up and called her Qing-jie, before he caught himself. But he wasn’t quite ready to have that conversation with people who didn’t already know, yet. Jin Ling was being strangely civil to Wen Ning—civil for Jin Ling, anyway—but Lan Sizhui didn’t know how he’d feel about the fact that his friend was actually another Wen.
“She was,” Jin Ling confirmed. “Shushu…he had her locked up in a cell the whole time.”
“Oh, that’s awful,” Lan Sizhui said, although perhaps it wasn’t really a surprise. It would have been stranger to hear that she hadn’t been, even if for some reason, Jin Guangshan had decided to spare her life after all.
“B-but—she’s not harmed?” Wen Ning put in for the first time.
Jin Ling shook his head, turning to look at him. “No. Um. Shushu—I think he kept her around because he thought she was useful, being a great doctor and all. So he didn’t hurt her. And it might have been bad, when we first found her, because there are still people who thought she should be executed, but Jiujiu had her taken to Lotus Pier right away, so no one could try anything until we had the question settled.”
“That’s good, I guess,” Lan Sizhui said. “I suppose if two great sect leaders agree about something like that, it carries a lot of weight with everyone else.” He knew the Lan wouldn’t have been the ones calling for Wen Qing’s execution, and it was hard to imagine Nie-zongzhu taking a stand on anything at all, so it was probably the minor sects.
Jin Ling looked gloomy, as he admitted, “It was mostly Jiujiu. People really listen to him! Especially when he gets grumpy and lets Zidian do that bzzzt thing. Nobody wants to make him angry.”
Lan Sizhui, personally, didn’t think he’d ever seen Jiang-zongzhu anything less than grumpy, but Jin Ling had half grown up with him, so presumably he’d witnessed a wider range of emotions in his uncle during that time. Sort of the way a lot of people seemed to find Hanguang-jun difficult to read, although Lan Sizhui had never had a problem with that at all.
“I did help, though,” Jin Ling continued, in a more cheerful voice. “I was completely right about Jiujiu and Wen-daifu getting married!”
“About—what?” Lan Sizhui and Wen Ning said in perfect unison.
***
Jiang Cheng nudged Wen Qing’s bowl of congee a little closer to her, reminding her that it existed. It wasn’t exactly her worst morning, but it wasn’t one of her better ones either, and they were both short on sleep. She’d woken in the middle of the night, trembling like a peachick in a cold wind, and she’d cried, violently, and asked him the same questions she’d asked him so many times already.
A-Ning can speak, can’t he? she’d said, almost hysterical. He must be able to, if he’s spoken to you—and what about his gait, how does he walk? (Jiang Cheng knew about the feet.) Did you see whether his feet were—on the right way? And his hands—can he—can he hold things at all?
(Fierce corpses normally didn’t hold things very well, but Wei Wuxian, of course, had made sure that Wen Ning was a better kind of fierce corpse. But Xue Yang had written down his ideas for hammers and knives and the fine articulation of Wen Ning’s undead hands. Jiang Cheng knew that Wen Qing had seen Xue Yang do some of it.)
“He can speak,” Jiang Cheng had assured her again, pressing a cup of the calming tea his chief physician had prescribed for her, early into her stay at Lotus Pier, into her shaking hands, and helped her drink it. They’d started keeping it close at hand, in the bedroom, so as not to announce to all of Lotus Pier—well, to the night shift guards anyway—every time Jiang-furen was having a bad night, by making a trip to the infirmary to fetch it.
I sometimes wish Wen Ning couldn’t speak! Jiang Cheng thought. The things he said to me— “And he walks cleanly. He can hold things.” I promise you that he can hold things in those hands; he had a firm enough grip, when he was shoving Suibian straight into my face! “He still has his eyes, and his hands…his hands might be cut up just now, but I think that was from fighting Baxia.”
From fighting Baxia, he’d said, like it meant nothing to him, when it meant everything. From saving Jin Ling from Baxia! was what he really meant. But Wen Qing knew about that. They knew just about everything about each other, these days.
Wen Qing had pressed herself against his chest, asking without asking to be held. Jiang Cheng had curled his arms around her, holding her close to him, and she’d sighed in relief, as she did.
And then, she asked: “Do you still blame my brother for what happened to Jin Ling’s father?”
She didn’t tell him he was wrong if he did. She didn’t ask, what will happen to us if you do? She didn’t say that she’d leave, if his answer was yes, I do. Wen Qing already made her choice, and Jiang Cheng had made his. His answer wouldn’t change anything between them. She just wanted to know.
Still, Jiang Cheng hadn’t been able to answer right away. He’d breathed in and out slowly, weighed down by the warmth of someone else beside him in the night, skin to skin. Wen Qing’s presence beside him made it easier to think, to work through the feelings that swirled inside him like a storm. He’d finally managed to say, “…A-Ling has chosen to forgive Wen Ning.”
Wen Qing had shifted against his chest, and there was the faintest glimmer of pre-dawn light coming through the window, illuminating the pale oval of her face, calmer, now, quiet and considering. “If that grudge belongs to anyone, it belongs to him,” Jiang Cheng had told her. “It’s his father that died. If A-Ling has set it aside…” Jiang Cheng’s fingers clutched at each other, over her back. “I don’t have the right to carry it for myself.”
Wen Qing had pushed herself up a little away from him, the better to tilt her head back and look him in the face, with her beautiful dark eyes. “But you’ve got a new grudge against A-Ning, now.” There was some kind of sardonic amusement in her voice. It wasn’t funny, that Jiang Cheng kind of hated her brother, but it also was; it was a strange absurdity they’d been tossing back and forth between them. Wen Qing believed him, that Wen Ning had been cruel, even though she couldn’t seem to understand how or why he ever would be.
“That one is entirely on him,” Jiang Cheng had said, venomously.
Wen Qing had actually laughed a little, in the hovering moment between dark and dawn, and she stretched up until she could kiss him, soft lips meeting his mouth. “Fair enough.”
Neither of them had slept again, after that conversation, but they’d gone back to bed and dozed, lying in each other’s arms, until well after the sun had risen over the horizon, and they’d had to get up for breakfast.
”You’ll feel better with some food in you,” Jiang Cheng told Wen Qing now. “Please eat.” Wen Qing obediently picked up her bowl, and began to spoon the porridge into her mouth. Mechanically and without much interest in her food, but at least she was eating. Jiang Cheng considered asking the kitchen to prepare a different set of dishes, and then dismissed the thought; the food was fine, and not the cause of her subdued appetite.
Instead, he told her, “You don’t have to do this.”
Wen Qing looked at him over the lip of her bowl, still, for a moment, before she set it down. “I do,” she said, with a sigh. “I have to see him with my own eyes. I will never sleep peacefully, unless I can see for myself that he’s really all right.”
***
Jin Ling spent the rest of the walk to Lotus Pier answering questions about the very unexpected news he’d delivered to them so casually: a marriage, about which they’d not heard a thing, even though any sect leader’s wedding ought to have been a huge piece of news, and especially a great sect leader like Jiang-zongzhu’s wedding. Lan Sizhui was half-convinced he’d misunderstood what Jin Ling was saying, until Jin Ling patiently explained it for the fourth time.
“Jiujiu and Wen-daifu have been in love forever,” he told them. “Their fates have always been entwined, but circumstances kept them apart. Now they can finally be together!”
Lan Sizhui had glanced at Wen Ning, wondering if this could be true, and Wen Ning, who looked bewildered, shook his head.
“Um…how did you know?” Lan Sizhui asked. “About them being in love?”
Jin Ling kicked a stone in their path, and then hopped forward to kick it again, which reminded Lan Sizhui that Jin Ling was still kind of a kid. “Jiujiu’s just—he’s happy, whenever he looks at Wen-daifu.”
“What about Wen Qing? Is she in love with Jiang-zongzhu?”
“Well, she agreed to marry him, didn’t she? So I think so!”
Lan Sizhui was not wholly persuaded by this, and he knew that Wen Ning wasn’t, either.
“Anyway, the whole thing was my idea. I told Jiujiu if they got married, everyone would realize that they’d always been lovers torn apart by fate, and they’d stop saying things like ‘Why does Jiang-zongzhu shelter this Wen-dog instead of executing her, is he not righteous, is he not a filial son to his murdered parents’ and so on. And I was right! You should have seen how fast my whole senior council shut up, when I told them about the marriage! They might not like it, but now everyone knows how serious Jiujiu is about protecting Wen-daifu, and no one’s going to go against him on it.” He said this with grim satisfaction.
Lan Sizhui was still a little doubtful about the being-in-love part, based mostly on Wen Ning’s continued air of confusion—surely, if anyone would have known if his sister had formed a romantic attachment to someone, it was Wen Ning—but he supposed he could understand getting married for protection. He himself had been protected by absolute secrecy, his birth name unknown even to himself, until very recently. But Wen Qing’s name was a notorious one, and secrecy probably hadn’t been an option for her, once her existence had been revealed in Carp Tower. And probably Jiang-zongzhu was the only person around right now strong enough to protect her, besides Hanguang-jun, of course, who certainly was not available for political marriage! (Lan Sizhui had seen the way Hanguang-jun looked at Wei-qianbei.)
He wasn’t entirely sure what had moved Jiang-zongzhu to make such a sacrifice for Wen Qing, when of course the Jiang had a long-standing grudge against the Wen. Maybe he just decided it was finally time to get married? His enduring state of singlehood had been the topic of not-entirely-kind gossip at each of the handful of cultivation conferences Lan Sizhui had been brought to, as a junior Lan disciple. After all that, Jiang Wanyin was probably tired of listening to people tell him about how wonderful marriage was.
***
The first time Lan Sizhui had visited Lotus Pier, he hadn’t much gotten past the dock. He’d been too drawn to the Ghost General—not even realizing at the time why he felt that way, only that there was something….familiar, something important about him—and he’d wanted to stay and talk with Wen Ning more than he wanted to follow his friends inside.
Now, actually entering the inner bounds of the Pier, with Ning-ge by his side, he was a little awed. Lotus Pier was beautiful. Lan Sizhui’s aesthetic tastes were heavily informed by his upbringing—nothing could be more pleasing in his eyes, than the green-and-grey peaks of a mist-clad mountain, and the serene calm of the white-robed figures who traversed it—but Lotus Pier was a true pleasure to look on, a perfect, lush harmony of aquamarine and lavender, of water and sky. Everywhere he looked, he saw some piece of exquisite craftsmanship—intricate, fragile wooden window frames that must have taken a hundred hours to carve apiece; pillars studded with carved, mother-of-pearl inlay—side by side with the simple and natural beauty of the world: a great jagged boulder, unapologetic in its seat, or a stream or a pond that had been left to its regular course, with just a simple bamboo footbridge across it, or a path trodden around it, cast over with gravel.
“Lotus Pier is very beautiful,” Lan Sizhui told Jin Ling sincerely, who flushed happily, even though he’d just grown up here part of the time, and probably had no hand in guiding the interior decorating. It had been one of his homes, though, and maybe that was enough to make him feel proud of it, anyway. Lan Sizhui would have been suppressing a blush of his own, to see someone gaze with such admiration on the Cloud Recesses for the first time. “Ning-ge, have you ever been here before?”
“Twice,” Wen Ning admitted, while Jin Ling raised a questioning eyebrow at Ning-ge. “I didn’t pay a lot of attention either time. It is nice, isn’t it?”
“Jiujiu did a lot of this,” Jin Ling said, proudly, ignoring Wen Ning. “He hired all the craftsmen himself, and gave them sketches and designs. He even did some of the carpentry himself. He built that footbridge we just walked across.”
Lan Sizhui blinked, trying to imagine Sandu Shengshou sitting on his ankles to swing a hammer. “Really?” Behind him, Wen Ning had turned back to prod the bridge with his boot, as if newly concerned for some structural weakness, even though they’d all three trod across the footbridge without a single squeak.
“Really!” Jin Ling said. And then added, “I know because I watched him. He hammered his thumb building it and I learned my first swear word.” He then pronounced it.
“Jin Ling!” Jiang Wanyin, aka Sandu Shengshou, aka Jiang-zongzhu barked, and whoops, they’d come right up to the main hall without noticing, and they’d clearly been anticipated. Jiang Wanyin was dressed in dark clothes, layers of deep purple and indigo blue, with a shining silver eight-petaled lotus guan on the crown of his head, and Sandu seated on his belt. His hands were fisted on his hips, and he looked restless. He said, crisply, “Watch your mouth! Or I’ll have you run a hundred laps around the Big Lake!”
“You can’t make me run laps around the lake, Jiujiu! I’m Jin-zongzhu now!”
“Who’s a sect leader? You’re in my house; I’ll make you run laps if I want to!”
Jin Ling let out a delighted cackle, and he bounded forward to hug his uncle, who hugged him back, but stared grimly off at the horizon as he did. Jiang Wanyin almost conspicuously avoided looking in Lan Sizhui and Wen Ning’s direction, as he eventually patted Jin Ling’s head, and then pushed him away.
“I see you finally made it,” Jiang Wanyin said. Lan Sizhui could see that he was very clearly speaking only to Wen Ning, although then his eyes moved to Lan Sizhui, and he said to them both, “Wen Qionglin, Lan Sizhui, thank you for coming. Please enjoy the hospitality of Lotus Pier, for the duration of your stay.”
“Thank you for having us,” Wen Ning said, and for the first time in the relatively brief time they’d had together, Lan Sizhui heard barely-suppressed loathing in his voice. “Jin Rulan said that my sister is here.”
“I’m here, A-Ning,” a woman’s voice said, familiar. Jiang Wanyin was joined at the front of the main hall by someone that Lan Sizhui simultaneously knew and didn’t know at all. He was surprised to see Jin Ling’s spiritual dog, Fairy, cheerfully trotting at her feet.
She wasn’t very tall, and there was a sharpness about her that made Lan Sizhui remember hunger. Next to Jiang Wanyin, she almost looked like a ghost: her clothes were pale lavender over indigo. Her hair was drawn up into a familiar peak, though, and for some reason, this was how Lan Sizhui recognized his cousin, Wen Qing. He hadn’t seen her since he was three or four years old.
“A-Jie,” Wen Ning said quietly. “You’re really alive.”
She nodded, seeming almost self-conscious of that fact, and then slowly stepped down from the hall entrance and made her way to them, her eyes never moving from Wen Ning’s face; Fairy followed her partially down, and then settled at Jiang Wanyin’s feet, seemingly content to stay there. Wen Qing almost brushed against Jiang Wanyin as she passed him, and in fact—Lan Sizhui thought their hands did touch, just for a moment.
Maybe there was something to this “in love forever” thing after all.
Wen Qing stopped in front of Wen Ning and raised trembling hands to rest on either side of her brother’s face. “A-Ning…you’re really…” She blinked, and there were tears slipping from her eyes. “You’re awake,” she choked out, and then had to take one of her hands back to clamp over her mouth, for a moment, before she visibly took control of herself.
“Wei-gongzi found nails in my head. When he took them out, I woke up again,” Wen Ning said simply.
“Do you remember anything before that?”
Wen Ning shook his head. “Nothing after the nails,” he said. “Going in, I mean.”
Wen Qing said, in a clipped voice, “Good. That’s good. Some things aren’t worth remembering.”
“Um,” Lan Sizhui said, not really sure if this was the right moment or not. “On the subject of remembering things. Do you by any chance—remember me?” Some part of him had hoped that she’d instantly recognize him, without prompting, the way Ning-ge had.
Wen Qing, who hadn’t, in fairness, been paying attention to much else besides Wen Ning, turned to him in some confusion. “I don’t think we could have met…?” Although for some reason she glanced over at Jin Ling, who looked as baffled as she did.
“Jiuma—this is Lan Sizhui; he’s my friend,” Jin Ling said, which made Lan Sizhui happy to hear, even though he’d been pretty sure before now that they were in fact friends. “I don’t think you could have met.”
Right. Wen Qing wouldn’t have had many chances to meet people, especially young people. Because she’d been locked up in a prison cell for sixteen years. No wonder she was confused! Lan Sizhui flushed in embarrassment.
Wen Ning came to his rescue. “This is A-Yuan,” he told his sister. “Hanguang-jun rescued him. He took him to be raised in Gusu Lan.”
“A-Yuan?” Wen Qing’s eyes widened. “Rescued? How? When did Hanguang-jun come to Carp Tower? I never saw him…if he was there, why didn’t he—” she visibly cut herself off.
Why didn’t he save anyone else, he thought she was probably thinking. “Hanguang-jun found me in the Burial Mounds,” Lan Sizhui explained. “We think Popo left me behind, when she went to Carp Tower.”
“Popo left you behind?” Wen Qing said sharply. “You weren’t even three years old and there was no one to watch you—Wei Wuxian was in no state—we all agreed to go together!” She pressed a hand against her forehead, as if her head ached. “We agreed to stay together, whatever would happen. What was she thinking?”
“Sh-sh-she probably th-thought we were going to L-L-Lanling to die,” Wen Ning said quietly. “She was right, A-Jie.”
Wen Qing had gone horribly stiff, and closed her eyes, barely breathing. Until she shuddered, and said, “No. You’re right. She…would have been right about that. Lanling Jin never hesitated to kill children. Not when they were named Wen.”
Jin Ling shifted uncomfortably, but didn’t protest. Fairy, still sitting at Jiang Wanyin’s feet gave a distinct canine whoof, just loud enough that Lan Sizhui could hear it even at a distance, and he looked up, and met Jiang Wanyin’s sardonic gaze.
Lan Sizhui’s attention came back to Wen Qing as she reached out her hand to him. He took it eagerly, and she examined his face closely. Now that her surprise was wearing off, she seemed pleased, even a little excited, as she said, “You know, you look just like my tangdi Sun-er, when he would have been about your age? I can’t believe I didn’t see it right away.” She was smiling now, and it felt very real, and wonderfully warm.
That was Qing-jie. She wasn’t warm all the time, but there was a comforting sense of pressure from her interest in your well-being that was distinct and unforgettable. She recognized him as one of own people, and Lan Sizhui—who was remembering a little bit more about before he’d been called Lan—liked the way that it felt.
“That’s what I said!” Wen Ning said also smiling, for the first time since they’d gotten here. “Just like Sun-tangge, right?”
Maybe it had been a good idea to bring it up now. Whew!
But Jin Ling was staring hard at Lan Sizhui, and Lan Sizhui turned to him a little guilty, and said, “I’m sorry I didn’t mention this before. I actually—didn’t know until very recently. I apparently had a bad fever after Hanguang-jun rescued me, and I just…forgot everything. I didn’t remember my early childhood at all, until after I met Ning-ge, a few months ago.”
“Oh, that’s okay,” Jin Ling said. “It wouldn’t have made a difference before Jiujiu and Wen-daifu married, anyway.”
“Pardon?”
“We wouldn’t have been related then!”
“Related?” Lan Sizhui, Wen Ning, and Jiang Wanyin all said in an asynchronous, slightly horrified chorus.
“Wen-daifu is my aunt now, and if you’re some kind of cousin to her, that makes you some kind of cousin to me, too, but I can’t work out in my head which one,” Jin Ling admitted. “This is cool, though! All my other cousins are Jin, and they’re horrible.”
Lan Sizhui, baffled by this, became aware that Jiang Wanyin was now also eyeing him speculatively. He flushed again. If I’m related to Jin Ling through Qing-jie’s marriage…that means I’m related to Sandu Shengshou now, too! He really had not thought about that, when he’d wanted to come to Yunmeng to meet Wen Qing again. Although it’s not like he’d known she’d married Jiang-zongzhu, until a few hours ago!
“Perhaps we can untangle it over lunch,” Jiang Wanyin said a little dryly. “Now that we’ve gotten the introductions out of the way, and we’ve found that we are all…apparently…family, here.”
***
Lunch was awkward. Wen Ning and Jiang Wanyin gave off stiff, frosty vibes with one another. Jin Ling wasn’t cool to Wen Ning, but also clearly wasn’t comfortable speaking to him directly, and preferred to speak to Lan Sizhui. Wen Qing was easy with Jin Ling, and moved with Jiang Wanyin in some entirely silent manner where they barely needed to say a word with one another to communicate. She was uncertain with Wen Ning and Lan Sizhui, however; hungry-eyed, but hesitant.
Lan Sizhui sitting to Jin Ling’s right, could easily observe the way uncle and nephew squabbled over food, with Jiang Wanyin casually shoveling braised turnips and turnip greens into Jin Ling’s bowl, and Jin Ling scowling and picking the greens right out and delivering them to his uncle. They were so funny about it, it was almost like watching a puppet show. Lan Sizhui didn’t quite miss, though, that when Jiang Wanyin picked up a dish of mushrooms, he filled Wen Qing’s bowl first, before Jin Ling’s or his own.
That was right—Qing-jie liked mushrooms, didn’t she?
More than radishes, she sighed, in his memory. Ah! She’d been the one feeding him at that meal, and of course it was a very radish-heavy dinner; they’d eaten a lot of radishes back then.
You like mushrooms, Wei-gege had observed, seeing how single-mindedly Wen Qing pursued them, picking them first to eat, out of her scanty portion of Ning-gege’s stir-fry.
“More than radishes,” she’d said, flushing lightly, and given her last mushroom to Lan Sizhui, who’d gobbled it up with the easy greed of a child who didn’t understand that grown-ups could get hungry too.
Wen Qing here and now, in Lotus Pier, leaned across the table to slip a cluster of steamed oyster mushrooms into Lan Sizhui’s bowl.
He could see that she still had a whole bowlful of food left for herself, so it was easy for him to smile at her in gratitude and shove them into his mouth.
***
Jiang Wanyin stood up from the table, at the end of lunch, and said that he and Jin Ling had to go talk about Sect Leader business by themselves. He asked if Jiang-furen wouldn’t mind showing their guests around Lotus Pier. He didn’t say it, but Lan Sizhui understood that the Wens were being given private time together.
Wen Qing didn’t give them a tour. She took them straight out to one of the lake docks, a smaller one, unoccupied, with just a little boat tethered to it, Fairy trotting faithfully at her heels.
Wen Qing sat right at the water’s edge, stripping her boots and socks off, and dangled her feet in the water, as Fairy settled down beside her, and panted contentedly. She sat back on her hands, tilting her head back, and looked up at the late afternoon sky, bright blue and sun-streaked. Her dark hair spilled over her shoulders and down her back, and there was warm golden light on her face. She closed her eyes, and smiled.
Lan Sizhui thought that she looked happy.
He wasn’t sure what he was supposed to do, but on impulse, he took his own boots off, and dipped a toe into the water. It wasn’t nearly as cold as he was expecting. He made an inadvertent noise of surprise.
Wen Qing opened her eyes and looked over at him. “It’s warm, isn’t it? It’s because it’s so late in the summer,” she said. “The lake sits under the sun and absorbs the heat for half the year. The water is warmest in early fall, and keeps some of the warmth even through the winter.”
Lan Sizhui made an interested noise. “The streams in Gusu aren’t like that at all!”
“Those are mountain-fed,” she said, pushing herself up straight. “They’re different.”
“Qing-jie knows a lot about water,” Lan Sizhui said.
Wen Qing laughed. “I know what Jiang-zongzhu tells me. The Jiang know everything about water.”
Wen Ning, silent, radiated annoyance. Wen Qing didn’t seem to notice, but Fairy stood and resettled herself next to Wen Ning. After a moment, Wen Ning hesitantly held out a hand for her to sniff, and when it wasn’t rejected, he stroked her head.
Lan Sizhui kicked the water, enjoying the splash it made, and then did it some more. Wen Qing leaned out over, as if she was trying to look deep into the lake itself.
Behind them, there was a pattering of feet, and a young Jiang disciple that Lan Sizhui had sort of noticed following them but not worried about came jogging up behind them, then stopped, within grabbing distance of Wen Qing, and said, very unhappily, “Jiang-furen!”
Wen Qing straightened up, and then twisted her head to look at the girl. “Wan-shimei, please go back. There’s nothing to worry about here.”
“Jiang-furen, please,” the young woman said, pained. “You know I have orders.”
“I’m not going to swim,” Wen Qing told her, exasperated, but not sharp. Next to Wen Ning, Fairy woofed softly.
The Jiang disciple hesitated, and then reluctantly withdrew, although not without a respectful bow.
“What was she worried about?” Wen Ning asked, speaking for the first time. “What kind of orders?”
Wen Qing cackled, tossing back her head, and staring up at the sky again. It was a little off-putting. “She was worried that I might take off half my clothes and try to jump into the lake.” She kicked her own foot in the water, and then did it a few more times, apparently pleased by it. She didn’t answer the rest of Wen Ning’s question.
“A-Jie, you can’t swim,” Wen Ning said.
“I can, now, but I’m not very good at it yet,” Wen Qing said, a little more normal. “Jiang-zongzhu is making sure that I learn. Everyone in Lotus Pier learns to swim.”
“I wonder if I could learn,” Lan Sizhui said. “I get sick whenever I travel on the water. Maybe learning to swim would help.”
“You get boatsick?” Wen Qing asked, turning to look at him. “There are medications that can help with that. I can ask Tao-daifu to prescribe them to you, before you leave, for the next time you need to be on a boat.”
“Oh, thank you, Qing-jie! That would be so helpful.”
“Who is Tao-daifu?” Wen Ning asked.
“Tao Junjie. He’s the senior physician here in Lotus Pier.”
“He reports to you?”
Wen Qing shook her head, with a slight smile. “Tao-daifu is very capable. He doesn’t need my help.”
“He should want it,” Wen Ning said, mutinously, and then looked down and rubbed Fairy’s furry head. “A-Jie’s skills and knowledge are valuable.”
Wen Qing’s smile took on a brittle edge, and she reached out to bury her own hand in Fairy’s thick pelt, scratching vigorously. “Tao-daifu and I have an understanding. It’s—it’s fine, A-Ning. I’m not practicing right now because there’s no need.” She drew her feet up out of the water and sat cross-legged on the dock, tucking her wet toes into the crooks of her knees. “A-Yuan, tell me about the Cloud Recesses. A-Ning and I were there for a summer, but you grew up there, so you must know so much more about it.”
***
Lan Sizhui told her everything he could think of, everything that crossed his mind. Wen Qing seemed enraptured by it. So did Wen Ning, although he’d heard some of it already. He seemed happy to hear the same stories a second time, though, even the really boring ones.
“This Lan Jingyi sounds like he’s a friend,” Wen Qing said, during one story.
“He is!” Lan Sizhui said, with Fairy’s heavy head flopped over his leg, cradled in his hands. “He’s my best friend! I’ve known him forever.”
Immediately after saying this, he felt ashamed, because obviously he hadn’t; he hadn’t known Lan Jingyi forever; he’d only known him almost as long as he’d been with the Lan. And these were almost the only two people in the whole world who knew that he hadn’t always been with the Lan. And who might even be hurt to hear him say it that way, as if he’d had no past with them.
But Wen Ning and Wen Qing just smiled fondly at him. In his lap, the sleeping Fairy made contented canine dreaming noises, and Lan Sizhui bent over her and scratched her ears gently. In her sleep, her tail wagged lazily for a moment.
“It’s good that you have such good friends,” Wen Qing said, still smiling. “If I ever meet Hanguang-jun again, I’ll have to thank him, for everything he did, to help you grow up safe and happy.”
“He’s always been so kind to me,” Lan Sizhui said, as if that could encompass the lifetime of quiet, gentle warmth that Hanguang-jun had offered him. “Zewu-jun was as well. There was a time when Zewu-jun himself used to take me to see Hanguang-jun during his convalescence.” Lan Xichen was such an easy person to be with. His hands were always warm, when they held yours.
Wen Qing’s face didn’t change, but Lan Sizhui thought that he could see her thinking.
“Lan Wangji was ill?” she finally asked. “I knew he was in seclusion for a while.”
Lan Sizhui nodded. “He was badly injured on a night hunt. Some terrible prey that had claws, I think.” He’d never gotten the details, but he remembered the sight of the long, bloody streaks on the bandages of Hanguang-jun’s back.
He remembered—Lan Wangji’s eyes slitting open, his arm reaching out, shaking, to offer his palm to Lan Sizhui—and after a moment, after just their bare moment of connection, Lan Wangji’s hand slipping out of his, his eyes sinking closed again.
“It’s all right,” Lan Xichen told him, that time, and many times to come. “Your…your Lan-gege’s not feeling well, but he will get better. He likes to see you, so we’ll keep coming as long as you want to, A-Yuan. Just not right now.”
“I want to stay!”
“Wangji is sick,” Lan Xichen said gently. “When people are sick, we have to leave them alone to get better, so we’re not in the way. Wangji has doctors, and his doctors are going to look after him and make sure he gets well.”
A-Yuan had shoved his fingers in his mouth. “I want to stay…”
“We can’t stay right now, A-Yuan,” Lan Xichen told him again. “I want to stay, too, but we can’t.”
“Claws?” Wen Qing pursed her lips. “Anything sharp enough is a claw, I suppose.” She looked extremely dubious. “It must have been a legendary beast, to lay out a cultivator of his capabilities for three whole years. He and Wei Wuxian got battered back and forth, fighting the Tortoise of Slaughter, and they were both walking within a week. Because they were idiots! They shouldn’t have been. But they were walking.” She sighed deeply. “Maybe the Lan are more solicitous of their children when it’s not imminently wartime.”
That did not sound right to Lan Sizhui, but he set the thought aside for now, and he just focused on Fairy’s flicking ears.
***
The five of them sat again for dinner together, in the family quarters. Jiang Wanyin asked politely whether they’d enjoyed seeing Lotus Pier. Lan Sizhui said that they had, even though they hadn’t really seen anything, besides a very nice lake.
Jin Ling slumped over the table in the most outrageously childish display of pretend-exhaustion that Lan Sizhui had ever seen, moaning that his uncle had worked him too hard, during their afternoon spar.
“I thought you were discussing sect leader business,” Wen Ning said.
“You’re the one who didn’t stretch properly,” Jiang Wanyin told Jin Ling, mercilessly, between mouthfuls of braised pork and ginger over rice. “It’d serve you right if you snapped a ligament one day.”
“Wen-daifu, what would happen if I did snap a ligament?” Jin Ling said, barely raising his head, but looking hopefully towards Wen Qing.
“If it was in your leg, you wouldn’t be able to walk,” Wen Qing informed him. “Ligaments curl up like this when they’re severed.” She rolled up a loose lock of her hair over her finger, to demonstrate. “They don’t come back on their own. Sometimes surgery can fix that, but not always.”
“Could…Qing-jie fix such a thing?” Lan Sizhui asked, curious.
Wen Qing took her hand out of her hair, and stirred her soup with a spoon, before she said, “I’ve done it, yes.”
“A-Jie is a very skilled surgeon,” Wen Ning said. “That patient was able to walk normally after a few weeks of recovery.”
“We’re very lucky,” Jin Ling said, sitting up a little, and dragging his bowl towards him. “Jiujiu was smart to marry Wen-daifu. If I ever do snap a ligament, I’ll be okay.”
“Why do you call her that?” Lan Sizhui asked. “You keep saying ‘Wen-daifu,’ instead of calling her your aunt.” He hoped it didn’t sound chiding, but he really was wondering.
Jin Ling sat up straight at that, like a civilized person eating dinner and not a spoiled child being wildly indulged. He looked at Wen Qing, whose mouth twitched, but made no comment herself. “Because I knew this esteemed person first as a doctor,” Jin Ling said. “And it was only much later that she became my aunt. If she hadn’t been a great doctor, she could never have become my uncle’s wife.” Jin Ling stood up, and bowed very deeply to Wen Qing, who was surprised enough by that to set down her bowl of soup.
She reached out to lift Jin Ling from his bow, and held his hands in hers. Her lips parted, as if she meant to say something, but then she didn’t, just shaking her head slightly.
“I don’t understand,” Lan Sizhui said.
“Wen-daifu saved Jiujiu’s life, eight years ago,” Jin Ling said, his eyes shining. “He was poisoned in Carp Tower and she cured him. He would have died, if not for her. So she could never have become my aunt, if she wasn’t a doctor, first.”
Wen Qing smiled a little at this, and raised a hand to Jin Ling’s cheek. “I’m happy that things turned out as they did,” she said. “I’m so very happy that I was able to be married to your uncle, and I’m glad that in doing so, I could also become part of Jin-zongzhu’s family.”
***
“A-Jie,” Wen Ning asked Wen Qing in the hallway, after dinner, holding back and letting everyone else move on ahead of them. “Are you really happy to be married to Jiang Wanyin?”
Wen Qing looked surprised at the question. But she wasn’t a blushing maiden bride, with no thought in her head besides her new groom; she was A-Jie, she was Wen Qing, she was his sister, the most capable person he’d ever known. Why was she surprised at such a simple question?
“Of course I’m happy to be married,” she said, slowly, almost confused. “Why wouldn’t I be happy?”
“You don’t have to be married just for protection,” Wen Ning said. “Jin Rulan told us about that.”
“A-Ning,” Wen Qing said slowly. “I…” She looked down at her hands, folding them against herself as she always did, when something was worrisome. “It’s true that I needed—need—safety, but of all the possible options I had for that…getting married was my first choice,” she finally said. “A-Ning, let’s walk.”
She extended a hand and he took it, a little reluctantly. “Not the dock,” she muttered to herself. “If it’s not Wan Shihang, it’ll be someone else.” She ended up leading him to a small room, empty of anything but furniture, with a large window overlooking the lake. It looked like it hadn’t been used in a little while, but Wen Qing moved confidently in the space, lighting a lamp without having to hunt for it. Out the window, the sun was setting over the water. It was pretty, all streaks of pink and purple and orange.
“Jiang-zongzhu and Jin-zongzhu have been protecting me since the moment they found me in Carp Tower,” Wen Qing said, gazing out the window, at the sunset, and the shingles of light still reflecting off the restless water. “The marriage was Jin Ling’s idea, yes. And it was for my protection, yes. But it wasn’t the only reason why. It wasn’t even the most important reason why.”
“A-Jie? Are you…in l-love with Jiang Wanyin?” Wen Ning couldn’t imagine it. He personally considered Jiang Wanyin to be a deeply unlovable person.
“I wanted Jiang Cheng from the first moment I laid eyes on him, in the Cloud Recesses,” his sister said. “I didn’t think I could ever have him. But I wanted him.”
“Does he…love you?”
If Jiang Wanyin did love Wen Qing—if he’d loved Wen Qing back then—why hadn’t he helped her? Why hadn’t he helped their family?
Young men in love were supposed to do great deeds, to win the objects of their affection. They were supposed to risk everything. Sacrifice for them. Choose them. Wen Ning himself had tried. It hadn’t worked; he hadn’t won anything. But at least he’d tried, when he’d had the chance.
“Oh yes,” Wen Qing said, with a bittersweet smile. “Jiang Cheng loves me. He’s loved me as long as I loved him. I could tell, even back then—he was so obvious about it, it was a wonder that no one else seemed to notice. We were all just children, though; maybe no one else was paying attention. I didn’t feel like a child, but I know now that I was one.” Wen Qing finally turned from the window and took Wen Ning’s arm, smoothing back his sleeve, and turning his hand over, examining it, for some reason. After a minute, she released it, and then took the other one, giving it the same treatment.
“I, I d-didn’t know,” Wen Ning managed to say. “Why…why didn’t you ever say?”
“What was there to say?” Wen Qing asked. “Even back then, it was only a dream. I knew what Wen Ruohan was intending to do. I was spying on the Lan, looking for Yin Iron, for him. And then, after Lotus Pier was sacked—how could we possibly ever have been anything, after what happened to Lotus Pier? To Jiang Cheng’s father and mother, to his whole sect? After what our cousin did to him?” Wen Qing looked at him, helplessly. “When he opened his eyes for the first time, after you brought the Jiang to Yiling, after you brought him to me—that was the first time I ever saw him look at me with—ah!” She bit her lip. “I hated the way he looked at me. It was what I deserved, sitting there in Yiling and keeping house for the people who massacred his family. Knowing that I might have turned them away, if it hadn’t been you, bringing them—I deserved it. But I hated it.”
“I’m sorry,” Wen Ning managed to say. He still didn’t like Jiang Wanyin, but he was very upset by the thought that his sister had been sad this way.
He couldn’t be sorry, even now, that he’d chosen to help Wei Wuxian—even with the awful way that had turned out; even privately thinking, then and now, that maybe it would have been better if he’d brought him three corpses, instead of two bodies and one living shidi who would become a dead weight heavier around Wei Wuxian’s neck than any corpse could have been. He’d helped Wei Wuxian because Wei Wuxian needed help.
He was just a little sorry now, not to have realized that he’d caused his sister more than just worry in doing so. Wouldn’t it have been better if she’d never had to see Jiang Wanyin in that wretched state, never had to see contempt or hatred in the eyes of someone she’d wanted for a lover? Wouldn’t it have been easier for her to move on, if he’d simply died with the rest of the Jiang?
“The thing is,” Wen Qing said, looking at her lap. “That wasn’t the last time we saw each other, during the war. He came back to Yiling later, and he found me in the prison. He freed me. He offered me shelter with the Jiang.”
“He did?” Wen Ning was startled to hear it. “A-Jie, why didn’t you take it?”
“Because it was just for me,” she said, lifting her head.
“Because—you were the only one he cared about—” Wen Ning realized, and he actually felt hot. Wen Ning never felt hot anymore. “That’s not fair. He’d give you protection, but only if you’d abandon us. You’d never abandon us!”
“A-Ning,” Wen Qing said, “Back then, Jiang-zongzhu offered me what was actually in his power to give. Shelter for one person who’d give up their name. Right after the Wen slaughtered the Jiang! It wasn’t enough, so I said no. But he tried. It was already more than anyone could ever have had the right to ask of him. I don’t resent that he didn’t offer me an impossible dream he could never have fulfilled, and neither should you.”
Wen Ning, who was more than happy to resent Jiang Wanyin’s unwillingness to do so, just said, “And now you’re married.” He tried not to be as sullen about it as he felt.
“And now we’re married,” Wen Qing said. “Because what was impossible then is possible now. Because things are different now.”
Things are different now because almost all of our family is dead, and so they’re not a problem for the Jiang, Wen Ning thought. Things are different now because Jiang Wanyin can have what he wants without paying a price to have it.