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Jin Zixuan is five years old when he first meets one of his father’s prostitutes.
Of course, he doesn’t know that’s what she is at the time. All he knows is that his father has a friend, and she is extravagantly pretty. He’s fascinated by her skirt, picked with golden patterns that shift and shimmer in the light, and the way her hands move, dancing through the air as she gestures and laughs. She frames his face with her fingers without quite touching him, and places one graceful fingertip over the cinnabar mark that his nannies are constantly having to reapply. She doesn’t argue with his father, just speaks softly and pleasantly. When she smiles at him, he wishes she was his mother, and is too young to know how cruel the thought is, or how completely that would change his own life.
He never sees her again. The next week, there’s a new woman.
It will be years before he understands that his father’s attention is rarely held.
(His mother throws a fit when she finds out. She shrieks, and throws things at his father, and clutches Jin Zixuan to her with her fingers curled in fierce claws. It is still early enough in their disastrous marriage for her to feel betrayed and wounded, for it to show in her face, in tears, in a voice that cracks and wheels. His father's answering apology is flat and bored as he placates the wife he didn't want.)
(Already, Jin Zixuan dreads becoming either of them.)
He’s never seen a qi deviation before. Not… up close. He had heard of several throughout the course of the Sunshot campaign, and seen Nie cultivators driven into ferocious rages across the field, as everyone had. Qi deviations couldn't be identified by the intensity of their attacks or the power of their forms-- the Nie were vicious and unrelenting opponents regardless-- but by the deterioration of their accuracy, striking out blindly at anyone who came within range, friend or foe. The recommendation was just to stay out of their way— let them drive themselves into the Wen, if at all possible. Let the other Nie decide whether they were recoverable or would be allowed to go down hard, bringing down as many enemies as they could.
Those incidents, even seen from a distance and through the haze of battle, bear nearly no resemblance to Jin Guangyao’s qi deviation.
It’s almost peaceful. Hardly anyone moves or speaks. The grey ranks of the Nie collect around the kneeling Jin Guangyao like ripples circling a stone, swaying like cobras, like paced breath. Jin Zixuan is keenly aware that he is the only man here wearing gold-- and the only man here who does not clearly understand what he sees. The Nie seem sometimes like a single organism, a united mass of steel, and discipline, and the wolf-grey stillness that precedes a savage wound. They share something alien through their sabers that the other sects can never quite grasp, and in moments like these it transforms them.
He wonders what they see, looking at Jin Guangyao's small grey-draped form, all the Jin gold leached out of him, neatly bowing with the shock of blood pouring down his face.
Zewu-jun's music seems to direct Nie Mingjue, like a dancer following a tune. He glides across the training yard with a predator's grace, always out of Jin Guangyao's view, until he can strike the blow which will remove him from the field.
Not fatal, Jin Zixuan reminds himself, watching his half-brother thrash in Chifeng-zun's arms.
Cold, sick anxiety spreads through his chest.
He is grateful that Nie-zongzhu let him carry Suihua.
Jin Zixuan knows who his father is. (Who his father was.) The hedonism of Jin-zongzhu had never been hidden, or even discreet. He loved beauty, extravagance, women, and wealth. Even in the midst of war, it was pleasures which consumed his attention-- what rare treasures could be uncovered by the turmoil, whether he would still be able to ferry his beauties into Jinlintai. It took months-- crucial months, in which a great deal of ground was lost-- for Jin Zixuan to convince his father that the war in the west was a Jin problem. Even then, he was unwilling to sacrifice much of his own insulated comforts to the cause.
Jin Zixuan knows that his father was not, by most standards, a good man.
But he had thought that he was a man.
(What Nie Mingjue describes is barely a dog.)
When dealing with the expectations of strangers, Nie Huaisang has always been a bit of a comfort to Jin Zixuan. Not particularly in their interpersonal relationship, which has been characterised mostly by a mutual polite disinterest in each other, but in comparison. Of course it was inevitable that they would be compared all their lives, along with Jiang Wanyin, Wen Chao, and the Twin Jades-- all the sect heirs in their generation, all nearly of an age-- but Nie Huaisang was in the unique and unenviable position of being "someone else's child" against whom one could inevitably be favourably compared. If one's cultivation faltered, at least one was always ahead of Nie-gongzi; if one's swordwork was sloppy, at least one was always more precise than Nie-gongzi; if one's manners were coarse, at least one was always more polite than Nie-gongzi! The only category in which he exceeded expectation was in gentleness, and no one favoured gentleness in a sect heir.
So it is an understatement to call it a shock when, in the wake of Jin Guangyao's qi deviation and during the anxious hours after as the healers work to stabilise him, it is Nie Huaisang who looks up from weeping pathetically against his brother's chest and immediately launches himself at Jin Zixuan.
At first, by instinct, Jin Zixuan tries to catch him, as if Nie Huaisang has simply stumbled. This illusion is dispelled by Nie Huaisang's grasping fingers clenching in Jin Zixuan's hair and wrenching. With his eyes red from crying and his lips peeled back from his teeth, Nie Huaisang far more closely resembles the qi deviations of his imagination. It might even be possible to mistake that for this, which would at least explain it. But Nie Huaisang's eyes are hatefully clear and the venom between his teeth is lucid and unmistakable. "You did this, you did this! San-ge was fine until you came!"
Jin Zixuan's inglorious squawk as his guan is wrenched from his head finally jars the stunned Nie Mingjue and Lan Xichen into action, both leaping forward to drag Nie Huaisang and Jin Zixuan apart-- Jin Zixuan far more gratefully than Nie Huaisang, who writhes against his brother's constraint like a furious cat, snarling, "It's all your fault!"
"Huaisang," Nie Mingjue snaps, but apparently the younger Nie is not interested in being chided, because he lunges at Jin Zixuan again with a wordless hiss.
Nie Mingjue snarls, shifting his grip on Nie Huaisang, and to Jin Zixuan's blank surprise, picks up his squirming brother entirely. His jaw clenches as Nie Huaisang's continued flailing catches him in the chest with an elbow. Without another word he storms away, Nie Huaisang still seething and shouting accusations in his arms.
"I didn't do anything," Jin Zixuan says, belatedly, although he doubts Nie Huaisang would have listened if he had tried. There is a wet tingle on his cheek, and when he brushes it away, his fingers come back red.
Nie Huaisang has his guan, he thinks, in a bloody clenched fist.
"No," Lan Xichen says. Jin Zixuan can't read his voice at all. "No, I don’t think you did."
Jin Zixuan was raised by what felt like the entire sect.
When he was young, it was mostly his mother's maids, pulling double duty as nannies for the sect heir. It was difficult for him to understand that he was their work, not their child-- that there was only one woman who could claim the right to being his mother, and that she was the one he saw and knew the least. He didn't grow up loving her, though he thinks he grew into loving her. Once he was old enough, when he could hold more than the most childish conversations and could be polite enough to sit through a tea, she spent more time with him and the maids were sent away. Gradually he stopped missing them, and resenting her. He understood that she was his mother, and they were just servants. She showed him as much gentleness and care and affection as she had, and he thinks it was enough.
It's not an unusual upbringing, for the gentry.
And of course once he was old enough to begin training his cultivation, he was surrounded by cousins of various degrees, instructing him and currying favour. A sect heir is a valuable child to develop any bond with, after all. In the end, the competition of his cousins amongst themselves, jockeying for position and sabotaging each other's efforts, largely prevented any one of them from spending too much time with him. Jin Zixun was the only one who managed to become his true confidant, and that was as much their fathers' influence as any other-- Jin Zixun was his uncle's child, the closest cousin he had, and nearly his same age. It was suitable for them to be friendly. It would smooth out any anxieties in the sect about potential arguments over succession by ensuring a close bond that would discourage usurpation or conflict.
They both knew that was why they were encouraged so early to be friends. This is the way things are done.
(When it is not done, Jin Zixuan knows, from listening to his tutor's history lessons and to his father's gossip equally, you get things like the Wen succession crisis that led to Wen Ruohan rising to his throne over a sea of blood. The slaughter crossed generations and left the Wen line devastated, nearly all the branches trimmed away. Five brothers, and countless cousins and uncles, all grasping for the same seat, could lead to nothing else. In the land of that eternal sun, driven by merit, only the most powerful and devious of them all would have any chance to succeed Lao Wen, and with little love to lose between them, there was no hesitation in the violence.)
(No one needs another Wen Ruohan, and that was true even when Jin Zixuan was young.)
(Arranged marriages are also the way things are done.)
(Sometimes, Jin Zixuan thinks now, he was very childish.)
Jiang Wanyin's reception at Unclean Realm is conspicuously different from Jin Zixuan’s. Purple-clothed Jiang disciples march in alongside him, shiny silver bells chiming at their belts. They are horribly young, aside from a few clear veterans who must have been adopted into the sect directly from the fields of Sunshot, former rogue cultivators or fellow survivors of the Wen's destruction of their original sects. Despite their questionable origins, all of them hew close to Jiang Wanyin, obedient and attentive and eager to earn some of his sparse praise.
Nie Mingjue welcomes them with as much warmth as he seems to possess, and Jiang Wanyin announces-- in public, as Jin Zixuan watches, his jaw tight but his gaze unwavering-- that the Jiang offer their "full support" to the Nie.
Jin Zixuan captures the feeling of wounded pride that sparks in his chest and crushes it as best he can. If Sunshot taught him nothing else, it taught him this-- his childish arrogance has no place in the adult world into which they have all been thrust. It would profit him nothing to argue about their respective receptions, when he brought enough cultivators to give teeth to demands he wasn't even sure of, and Jiang Wanyin came to relieve Nie Mingjue of that threat. It would be nothing but the shrill whine of an entitled child, and he must be better-- be more-- than that.
Jiang Wanyin is drawn into the privacy of the Qinghe mountains to discuss with his fellow sect leaders. Jin Zixuan is left outside to watch as the Jiang disciples cheerfully disperse among the Nie, purple robes flitting through the grey masses that seem impenetrable to Jin Zixuan but which they swim in like their native rivers. There are no golden robes in the mix. Jin Zixuan left all of his own cultivators at the gate, and he is sure his cousins-- Jin Zixun, still stinging from rebuke-- are still seething about it.
The Nie seem perplexed but amused by the Jiang. He sees a few smiles on grim faces. There is a strange way they move, breaking in clusters around the intruding Jiang, then swallowing them into the group, migrating across the yard, releasing their new chiming companions into different clusters. The Jiang move mostly alone or in groups of two or three, delicate-seeming against the massed rhythm of the Nie but slicing through them like surgical knives, unhinderable. Once or twice he sees sabers drawn and finds his own fingers twitching at Suihua's hilt, only to feel like a fool when the sabers are presented for the inspection of the younger Jiang, bright-eyed and curious. The ringing of bells seems to lighten Qinghe's oppressive mist.
It feels significant in a way he can’t quite articulate.
There are— were— five Great Sects, just as there are five phases. Do they counterbalance each other, then— metal promoting water, autumn ceding to winter? And if they do, what were the Wen, and how will their ongoing destruction unbalance those cycles? And what are the Jin, and how should he proceed among the luminaries of his generation? Where should he be yielding, and where else should he regulate?
And is all this ruminating leading him in circles that he is deeply underqualified for, having no head for philosophy?
The bells chime on.
After the closed-door meetings, after Nie Mingjue and Jiang Wanyin have no doubt made their alliance secure and pushed the Jin ever further to the fringes, Nie Mingjue and Lan Xichen return to the healer's pavilion to await word of Jin Guangyao's recovery. Jiang Wanyin and Jin Zixuan are left at equally loose ends. He takes it as a good sign that Jiang Wanyin does not entirely shun him.
(Jin Guangyao is his brother-- acknowledged, named, but now he hopes with sick misery that it was a lie-- but after being chastised by Nie Huaisang twice, he has no more illusions that his presence at the healer's pavilion would be looked on kindly.)
"Why," says Jiang Wanyin finally, clipped and tight, through a jaw that barely moves, "Did you come here?"
Jin Zixuan takes a breath, but it catches in his chest before he can form it into a thought. Eventually he manages to piece together, "My father was murdered."
Jiang Wanyin nods shortly, and after a beat, adds, "My condolences," in the flattest and least believable voice he has ever heard from the notoriously forthright Jiang-zongzhu.
Awkward silence descends, as it ever does.
"He might," Jin Zixuan says, delicately, testing it in his own mouth, "Have deserved... more formal censure."
There is nothing one can reasonably say to that, so it is really his own fault when more silence follows.
Finally, studiously watching his disciples mingling with the Nie, Jiang Wanyin says, "Jin Guangyao can not advocate for himself, now."
"He might recover," Jin Zixuan says, but it already feels inevitable that he will not. Qi deviation is such a... Nie affliction. If their own healers can't find what's wrong with him, can't rewind the threads of his mind, surely no one else will be able to.
"Until he does," Jiang Wanyin says, with what seems like the kind of stubborn optimism that rebuilds a sect from ashes, "The Jiang will take a special interest in his affairs."
Another sting. What is it, Jin Zixuan wonders and does not dare to ask, that makes Jin Guangyao the subject of so much loyalty? How does he earn the attention of the most powerful men in the Jianghu, again and again? Nie Mingjue was his commander, fine; Lan Xichen was his handler, fine. But Jiang Wanyin cannot have shared more than a battlefield with him-- no more than he shared with Jin Zixuan, or anyone else who waded through those bloody fields. Jin Zixuan barely remembers seeing Jin Guangyao-- Meng Yao, then-- and even when he did, it was as a shadow in Nie Mingjue’s wake. There did not seem to be anything so very special about him.
"The Jiang surely have enough of their own concerns," he says, and instantly regrets it.
Sparks glitter across Jiang Wanyin's fingers. "We will manage."
Before another restless silence can materialise, Jin Zixuan casts about for some topic which will remove them from the perilous ground of his family's disintegration. He lands, unfortunately, on Jiang Wanyin's. "I hope Jiang Yanli is doing well in--" Lotus Pier, which is no doubt still in ruins, being pieced back together by unfamiliar hands, fuck, "--Yunmeng," he chokes, and makes one last-ditch effort to recover with, "I am told Jin Guangyao was raised there also."
The look Jiang Wanyin gives him, cast sideways as he crosses his arms over his chest, violet electricity arcing across one hand more vibrantly now and drawing curious glances from his own cultivators, is entirely disgusted.
"Please give Jiang-guniang my regards," Jin Zixuan says desperately, as he makes a clearly overdue retreat.
(He doesn't know why his parents' marriage was arranged. Perhaps his mother's dowry brought wealth or influence to the sect. Perhaps it was a political arrangement to prevent some conflict. Perhaps it was just the whim of the generation that preceded them, as his own marriage arrangement to Jiang Yanli was the whim of their mothers.)
(He hopes it was worth what it did to all of them.)
(He suspects it was not.)
It takes a great deal of negotiation-- made more fraught by the fact that Nie Mingjue's mind is clearly elsewhere, likely in the healing pavilion where Jin Guangyao still rests, and his resentment of the intrusion is palpable-- but Jin Zixuan is able to secure the presence of a few Jin retainers for the trial of his father's murderer. The Nie meet them with distrust, though not quite the open hostility that Jin Zixuan had half-feared. At least sabers stay sheathed.
Jin Zixun is not making it easier, but the several sharp words that Jin Zixuan has been forced to have with him-- against his will-- do seem to have made some impression. He constrains himself mostly to silent sneering, and when he cannot abide that, merely muttered insults. Jin Zixuan suspects, from the sullen looks they receive, that the Nie at large have received at least one similar talking-to-- if he had to guess, from Nie Zonghui.
There is little of the ritual drama that Jin Zixuan would recognize from Jinlintai, in a Nie trial. At the appointed time, at the sun crests a mountain, Nie Mingjue simply stalks to the front courtyard of Unclean Realm, slams his saber into the ground with a resonant clang more striking than any bell, and orders Nie Zonghui to bring him the accused. The Nie ranks gather around him in a loose circle, their own sabers joining his blade-down in the dirt, although only Nie Mingjue's stands unassisted. From the corner of Jin Zixuan's eye, he could swear sometimes that it shivers, ripples of red light rolling down the dark steel. Perhaps it is only the reflections of dawn.
(But they do call him Chifeng-zun.)
For once, the Jiang disciples cluster around their sect leader, a knot of purple in the wash of grey. A moment’s study proves that no white-robed Jade of Lan is in attendance-- no doubt he is still at the healing pavilion, perpetually attempting to rouse Jin Guangyao’s mind from the wreckage. Jin Zixuan's own tiny contingent of gold robes lines up behind him, restless and impatient. They have, at least, been given a good place to observe the proceedings, far enough along the ring that Jin Zixuan will be able to watch the face of his father's killer as he is questioned-- to judge for himself the five hearings. He has little experience personally in judging these matters, but it will be his obligation now, and he has to hope that he will be able to see the truth there.
The man Nie Zonghui escorts to the courtyard is... unremarkable. He has the powerful build that nearly all the Nie do, but he is no broader or taller than his fellows, does not seem any more deranged or volatile. He walks in Nie Zonghui's wake calmly, unbound, and if it were not for Nie Zonghui carrying a third saber-- held before him on the flat of his palms-- while the accused walks without one, they might almost be simply comrades in their own home.
There is a part of him-- and not as small a part as he would like-- which resents that.
"Nie Bingwen," says Nie Mingjue, a deep, grim growl nearly as resonant as the clash of his saber, "You stand accused of the death of Jin Guangshan. Kneel."
Without a flicker of hesitation, eyes fixed unwaveringly on Nie Mingjue, Nie Bingwen kneels before his sect leader's saber. Nie Zonghui, still holding what Jin Zixuan realises after a moment of numb consideration is the murder weapon, moves to the side, not quite into the gathered crowd but out of the way.
"Do you contest the charge?"
"No, Nie-zongzhu," says Nie Bingwen. He doesn't sound any more like a murderer than he looks like one.
“Do you have any defence for your actions?”
“No, Nie-zongzhu. I witnessed a crime and intervened in it. My actions were my own and I would not change them.”
Jin Zixuan studies the man’s breath, the placement of his eyes, the tone of his voice… none of it seems dishonest. He is measured, firm, unremitting. His first thought is that Nie Bingwen must have diverged from the script, to make so blatant an admission of guilt and in the same breath accuse Jin Guangshan. Any trial at this level of political importance will, of course, already have its verdict known, its trajectory laid out to cause the least disruption, to achieve the most peaceful ends. But a glance at Nie Mingjue shows only the same grim, unflinching regard.
“Nie Zonghui,” he says. The man in question straightens and inclines his head over Nie Bingwen’s saber. “You were present for the killing. Why did you not intervene?”
“Nie-zongzhu… there are two reasons. For the first, Nie Bingwen’s reaction to… the crime that we witnessed was very fast. I was shocked by what I saw, and did not realise what Nie Bingwen would do until it was already done.”
“What is the second reason?”
With the placid unconcern of a frozen lake, Nie Zonghui says simply, “I would also have killed him for the crime.”
Every sect handles its justice differently. There are, of course, principles that guide them all, laws that apply to everyone— not quite the laws of the civilian world, of emperors and magistrates, but close enough to pass as cousins— but how those laws are administrated is the business of sect leaders and elders. A sect is, after all, really just a large, extended, complex martial family. Each one is subject to its patriarch.
A father can kill his son, if he so chooses— what he has given, he can take.
A son enjoys no such advantages.
This claim raises significant interest among the Nie. Previously silent, they now begin to mutter among themselves, clearly holding their head disciple’s judgement in great enough regard that such a pronouncement is tantamount in their eyes to a legal decision. It also raises significant consternation among his own Jin. Any conviction Jin Zixuan briefly enjoyed that the Nie trial would bear any resemblance to its Jin counterpart, that there would be the familiar give and take of political points wrapped around the veneer of civil justice, is long gone.
“What crime,” Jin Zixun demands, with real heat in his voice. It comes to Jin Zixuan, unforgivably late, that his cousin loved his father, too. “He was in his own quarters! You were all supposed to be gone!”
Nie Zonghui does not even favour them with a glance. He watches his sect leader, and only when Nie Mingjue gives him a slight nod does he say, chilly, “The crime was one of the ten abominations.”
Incest, Jin Zixuan thinks— against his will— as the muttering reaches a fever pitch and rises to open argument and demands. He does not quite manage to suppress a flinch.
For the first time, the kneeling Nie Bingwen flicks a glance at Jin Zixuan— a reflex, he thinks, warrior instincts, tracking a movement he didn’t anticipate. Jin Zixuan meets the eyes of his father’s killer for only a moment, before they glance up at his cinnabar mark and fall quickly back to Nie Mingjue. Nie Bingwen’s jaw tightens. Perhaps he realises who his observer is.
Jin Zixun, unprepared for this kind of accusation, flounders. “What— what? What gives him— you!— the right!”
“It is the duty of a disciple to protect and defend his sect leader’s family,” says Nie Zonghui, with a neutral lecturing tone he might as well have lifted straight from Lan Qiren.
“That bastard?” Jin Zixun snarls. Jin Zixuan should definitely be interfering in this. He should be stopping this. He should be shutting Zixun up.
“Perhaps,” snaps a bright, brittle voice— Jiang Wanyin, glaring imperiously at Jin Zixun out of the crowd, arms crossed and chin up. “This earnest Jin should mind his tongue in Nie-zongzhu’s court.”
“You—!”
“Enough,” Nie Mingjue booms, not shouting but loud, commanding, a battlefield voice. Jiang Wanyin’s mouth crimps down a few more degrees, but he inclines his head with something like apology. Jin Zixun seethes, but at least— mercifully— does it silently.
“The crimes of Jin Guangshan—“ Almost numbly, Jin Zixuan notes the way Nie Mingjue’s lips peel away from his teeth into something between a grimace, a snarl, and a sneer. The saber embedded in the courtyard seems to twist beneath his hands, making a metallic whine as if grinding against another blade. “—are not mine to judge. Nie Bingwen!”
“Zongzhu.”
“I am hard-pressed to call your actions murder,” he says— he never has, Jin Zixuan thinks, not once; killing is all he’s called it here— execution, once, in a letter that Jin Zixuan has more sympathy for now than when he received it, despite his reluctance. “But though I might call them righteous, I cannot call them just.”
Nie Bingwen bows his head without argument, fixing his eyes on the dusty earth. Nie Mingjue’s hands shift, slightly, on the hilt of his saber.
Jin Zixuan realises, quite suddenly, what he is going to do.
It’s strange. He’s spent most of his time here feeling as if he’s half underwater. It has seemed impossible that he would get real justice for his father’s death, for his too-soon rise to a power he feels ill-equipped to handle. Not here, on this cold and alien mountain, where even the air is so thin and brittle it seems to resent the draw of his lungs. He had prepared himself that, for biting back the resentment and the bitterness, for making the necessary sacrifice to preserve the fragile balance of their world, for never quite having peace. Who gets peace about their parents’ deaths anyway? Should it matter so much if he never gets the sight of his father’s dismembered head, the slack skin and lolling tongue, out of his mind?
(The open robes, the limp exposed member, the crushed hat half-hidden under a couch, the abomination—)
He had resigned himself to there being no real punishment for it. He had resigned himself to no real punishment, perhaps, being warranted.
And now he is quite sure— with a cut-glass clarity that’s only ever come to him on battlefields and in the wake of his own catastrophic mistakes— that Nie Mingjue is about to behead his own cousin over a death he transparently approves of. Chifeng-zun has separated the facts, has sliced neatly through them like trimming fat from meat. He has reached the only conclusion which is legally justifiable, and so he is going to carry it out. His own feelings on the matter do not enter the equation. Nie Bingwen killed Jin Guangshan, and for this he will die. Nie Mingjue is a proclamation, a judgement, a word away from it.
(If he says ‘execution’, he thinks, and it sounds more like Jin Guangyao than himself, There will be nothing more you need to do.)
(Nothing more you can do.)
(One head for another— isn’t that the gentry way? How civilised. How fair.)
“Wait—” he chokes, and has no idea what he’s going to say, and then, abruptly, knows exactly. “Nie-zongzhu… wait.”
A muscle in Nie Mingjue’s jaw ticks, but he turns his head just enough to give Jin Zixuan a thin look.
“I— As… as Jin Guangshan’s son,” not the only one, his minds howls, “And the inheritor of his sect,” better, “Would Chifeng-zun permit this one to… to sentence the perpetrator?”
For the first time, Nie Bingwen flinches, his shoulders rising defensively. Nie Mingjue’s expression twitches, slightly, but Jin Zixuan can’t read him enough to understand it. That the Nie in general disapprove, however, is abundantly clear— what had been half-hushed debates and arguments fall into an eerie hush, and the vast majority of the crowd is now glaring directly and unambiguously at Jin Zixuan. It’s almost a little reassuring to be extremely clear of where they stand.
“To sentence,” Nie Mingjue grits out, between clenched teeth, “Not to carry out.”
Perfect, he thinks, in that voice that is not Jin Guangyao but is perhaps the influence of Jin Guangyao or the ghost of Jin Guangyao, since he’s clearly not occupying his own body anymore. Jin Zixuan isn’t going to question it. He knows what he actually wants to do for once.
Jin Zixun grasps at his sleeve for a moment as Jin Zixuan steps into the open circle that seems to be all the Nie need for their courtroom. Jin Zixuan can’t pause to reassure him, to explain, and he’s sure he will be bombarded with questions the moment he’s done, but he’s gentle pulling his sleeve free. There are any number of things that are Jin Zixun’s fault— Jin Zixuan isn’t blind to his cousin’s character— but this isn’t actually one of them.
“Nie Bingwen,” he says, trying desperately not to sound breathless, to inject even a sliver of authority into his voice, “As the crime you have committed has damaged the integrity of my family, the only fair redress is for you to preserve what remains. I sentence you to eight years of indenture, in the service of my brother Jin Guangyao.”
(This is one of the first lessons that all heirs learn— someday, they will be their fathers. Someday they will be laws.)
From the explosion of noise that results, you might have thought Jin Zixuan had called for eight years of torture. The Nie are arguing furiously, shouting at each other and at him and at his cousins and perhaps just in general— he quite honestly cannot hear what they are saying. He can identify Jiang Wanyin’s voice, and the electric hum of his spiritual weapon, but the details are lost in the riot. He’s sure Jin Zixun has some very choice words and hopes they aren’t inflammatory enough that he’ll have to deal with brand new diplomatic incidents when this is over.
But Nie Mingjue is silent, watching him, eyes narrowed. And Nie Bingwen has looked up, a crease in his brow and a slight frown that Jin Zixuan thinks— hopes— is only confusion, not distress.
Nie Zonghui, he realises with a jolt, is smiling.
“Nie Bingwen,” says Nie Mingjue finally, in that hard, loud bark that somehow cuts effortlessly through the noise and silences it instantly, “You have been sentenced. You are stripped of your status and your privileges. All your property, your labour, and your life belong to Jin Guangyao for the duration of eight years. You will serve him dutifully in whatever capacity he requires.”
“Yes, Zongzhu,” Nie Bingwen says, in a flat, dazed voice.
“You are all dismissed,” Nie Mingjue snaps, and there is absolutely no mistaking it for suggestion— the Nie scatter like clouds. The Jiang, clustered around a scowling Jiang Wanyin, flinch— but to their credit they don’t move until he does, storming away without a word.
“What,” says Jin Zixun, a thin hiss that’s more betrayed than angry, “The fuck.”
“I will explain,” Jin Zixuan says, “Later.”
His dismissal is not as immediately obeyed as Chifeng-zun’s, but the Jin do finally withdraw when he gives them a pointed look, Jin Zixun stomping petulantly. That will be a problem— isn’t it always— but it is not happening right here, so he will take it.
Nie Bingwen is still kneeling, blinking at his sect leader’s saber with a blank expression, as if he’s still waiting for it to rise above his head. Cautiously, Jin Zixuan takes a few steps nearer, glancing at Nie Mingjue— all he receives is the same studying frown.
“You,” he starts, and immediately falters. This part seems… less simple. “I do not— I can’t— forgive you. But… you protected my brother. I know that. I want you to… I hope that…”
Nie Bingwen draws a deep breath and holds it while his eyes drift up to Jin Zixuan’s face. He seems to struggle, still, to hold his gaze there, to meet Jin Zixuan’s eyes, but he clenches his jaw and persists. He nods, something unreadable in his face. “This servant will protect Meng Yao.”
“You are meant to obey Meng Yao,” Nie Mingjue says behind Jin Zixuan, with a hint of exasperation breaking into his stern voice.
Nie Bingwen frowns, his expression setting mulishly. “This servant will do both.”
“He’s not… himself,” Jin Zixuan says, tight and thin. He can’t claim to know his half-brother well, but he knows the young-seeming, trembling, uncertain man in the Nie healing pavilion is not… right. “He may not… understand. But…”
Nie Bingwen blinks at him, once, twice, with the same stubborn expression. “This servant will obey the healers until he gets orders from Meng Yao. Meng Yao… will give good orders. He always does.”
It strikes Jin Zixuan, as it should have long before now, that Jin Guangyao— Meng Yao, then— was this man’s vice general. Of course— of course he will not flinch to listen to Jin Guangyao’s instructions, to obey and serve him in whatever capacity Jin Guangyao is capable of demanding. He learned to trust Jin Guangyao in the middle of blood and steel and smoke, and to the Nie a qi deviation is just a fact of life. It is not trivial to be indentured— it dishonours him significantly, a loss both of control and of face, a black mark on his reputation that will be exceedingly difficult to salvage, and one on the Nie in general as well— but how different is it, in day-to-day realities, from being a soldier?
“Good,” he manages, “I will… be attentive to my brother’s progress. And to yours.”
Nie Bingwen, after a moment of silent consideration, folds into a kòutóu, a little sloppy but sincere. “Jin-zongzhu.”
Jiang Wanyin catches him at the gate to Unclean Realm as both their retinues prepare, finally, to leave.
There is nothing relaxed or companionable in Jiang Wanyin’s posture, just the same ramrod tension he’s been holding, it seems, since the war began— hands folded back his back, spine rigid, expression flinty. He looks like neither of his parents, and both of them at once. Jin Zixuan fights an impulse to check his own robes for wrinkles.
“Why,” Jiang Wanyin says, not at all like a question.
Jin Zixuan hesitates. He has come up with a number of political justifications in the time since the trial, mostly to placate his furious cousins. All of them seem too flat and ineffective to present to Jiang Wanyin, suspended half in the shadow of the towering gate and half in the sunlight of the autumn jianghu beyond.
Finally, trying to choose his words carefully for once, he says, “I think we’ve all seen enough blood.”
Jiang Wanyin’s answering silence hangs in the air, like dust suspended in daylight. Jin Zixuan can tell he’s being judged, but for once isn’t sure of the merits, or the outcome. Around them, disciples move like dancers, perfectly choreographing the art of retreat and returning home.
“When your mourning period is over,” Jiang Wanyin says, biting through it, “You may call on Yanli.”