Work Text:
Once upon a time, (he used to tell his baby brother, crawled into his bed to escape night terrors,) There were too many suns in the sky. They baked the earth, yes, like an oven— no, they weren’t going to eat the earth, but it was still bad, And so finally the Yellow Emperor sent someone to deal with it.
Ranks of gold and purple descend through the mountain pass, rippling like a lake lit by sunset, their undefended backs turned to Unclean Realm. Nie Mingjue watches from the walls, autumn wind lashing his own shoulders with his braids, while Baxia hums against his back. Her bloodlust was only stoked, and not sated, by the narrow, bloodless victory of Nie Bingwen’s trial and stayed execution. Now even in the absence of any threat or prey she lurks in the back of his throat, iron tang and prickly, out-turned teeth.
Nie Bingwen kneels, a pace behind Nie Mingjue, his head bowed beneath the rise of the wall.
His saber is still in Nie Zonghui’s hands.
It should by rights belong to Meng Yao, but he is in no position to be responsible for a weapon like Zaimo.
“Nie-zongzhu,” Nie Zonghui says, nearly toneless, the cadence of a report, “Both the Jin and Jiang retinues have been dismissed. Zhao Qingbai is doing sweeps now for any intrusions into the security of Unclean Realm, but I do not think he expects to find any.”
What that means is, he was a little shit when Nie Zonghui asked, but there will be a full report waiting on his desk sometime in the early hours of the morning. Nie Mingjue snorts. Behind him, Nie Zonghui sighs.
“I’ve sent the most keyed-up disciples to a separate training yard to work off the stress. The rest have a shichen for meditation, at staggered intervals.”
“Good,” Nie Mingjue says, “A trial would have elevated tensions on its own. Having outsiders present, too… confer with the healers, make a list.”
“Zongzhu,” Nie Zonghui says— a bow, as well, from the way his voice shifts.
Nie Mingjue takes a breath— mountain air, cold and thin, that needs deeper breaths than the soup they have to swim through in the south, invigorating like nothing else— and turns away from the view of Qinghe to look down at his kneeling cousin.
Nie Bingwen doesn’t look contrite, or shamed, or even particularly submissive. Nor does he seem resentful or sullen. He kneels patiently, a slight frown creasing his face, clearly working something out in his head but not inclined to share it. He only looks up at Nie Mingjue after Nie Zonghui nudges him with the toe of his shoe.
“You have been judged. You have been punished,” Nie Mingjue says, and privately can’t stop turning it over in his head, that impossible moment when Jin Zixuan, son of a slain father, said indenture. “You understand the terms and circumstances of your service.”
Nie Bingwen’s frown deepens a little, but he nods.
“Meng Yao cannot hold your saber.”
His eyes flick to the blade in Nie Zonghui’s hands, automatic, but he only flexes his jaw and looks to the floor with another nod, tight and unhappy.
“I surrender it to Zongzhu. Until—” Nie Mingjue raises an eyebrow as Nie Bingwen looks up, his expression setting with familiar mulish stubbornness. “Until Meng Yao can take it back.”
Nie Zonghui smirks at the floor, just a flash. Nie Mingjue huffs, “You don’t get to make demands,” but he knows he doesn’t muster the appropriate degree of censure. It wouldn’t make an impact on Nie Bingwen anyway. All Nie are stubborn, but Nie Bingwen got an extra helping at birth and he hasn’t ever worked it off despite an abundance of effort. If there was anyone who could simply will Meng Yao’s recovery into existence, it would be him.
“Until Meng Yao can take it back,” he agrees, in recognition of a lost cause, and a little bit, in his own hopes. “Report to the healing pavilion. Perform whatever work they can find for you. If— when Meng Yao is moved, new arrangements will be made.”
Nie Bingwen touches his head to the floor— he knows the form of submission, if not the spirit— and Nie Mingjue dismisses him. Nie Zonghui hands over the saber with grave care, and leaves with him, probably to ensure that Nie Bingwen gets where he’s supposed to and does not invent new trouble on the way.
It is always strange to carry another man’s saber. Zaimo is not as heavy as Baxia, a slimmer blade, the metal almost black, but the edge just as sharp. Nie Mingjue has the impression of something grumbling, pacing, a disgruntled animal, but no real connection to the saber’s spirit, just an echo of it through Baxia’s snarl. He keeps his hand away from the hilt, gripping the flat, until it fades back into a background hum. Later, he will need to have a display mount brought to his rooms, to keep it in a position of honour. Sabers understand only one punishment, and few consequences. Zaimo would not tolerate being disrespected.
Shaking off the snarled energy of both sabers, he looks down into Unclean Realm, finally free of all unwelcome intruders.
In the courtyard below, Yi Xiakun is migrating from one group of men to the next, touching shoulders, broad open gestures and laughs, defused tensions left in the ripples of his wake.
The man he sent shot down all but one of the suns, because you need one to see by, and just one sun isn’t too hot; no, I know you get hot, but you don’t bake, do you? Crybaby. I’m sorry, come here, And when it was done, he got a prize for his work. It was an elixir that would make anyone who ate it immortal, so it was a very valuable prize.
There is nowhere in Unclean Realm that is barred to Nie Mingjue.
But there are places he avoids. Not so much that it would be noticed; never in a way that would compromise his duty to the sect. Just places that, if he does not need to be in them, one would not go to find him.
A corridor between the kitchen and the servant’s dormitory, where they had to spend hours scrubbing blood off the stone, a splash of red that oxidized copper-brown next to thick, sticky red-black blotches, where he imagines in the shadows that they didn’t get it clean enough. A courtyard in the family quarters, adjacent to one of the concubine pavilions, scorched to the sand after er-niang died and long-since replanted, the sand combed and the soot cleaned from the scholar’s stone. One of the outer disciple yards, where the echo of sabers and the unique angle of the shadows cast by the pavilions always summons a ghost in his heart. Corners and columns, scattered around his home, where unmeasured, purposeless violence spilled over and left a mark. Places, by and large, where he failed.
The healing pavilion is a particularly inconvenient place to add to the list. So he is not going to allow it to become a place he avoids.
(Meng Yao— Meng Yao, without question, a boy who has never had another name— bowing so deep that Nie Mingjue can’t even see his face, around a shy, breathless, “Nie-zongzhu.” No recognition. Not even hesitation. It leaves Nie Mingjue feeling unmoored.)
(He came through the Yin Fire’s fever intact, only to lose his steel trap mind in less than a month. To lose himself, sure as death.)
(This is what he came to Nie Mingjue to prevent.)
He has been loitering outside the healing pavilion, sandwiched between a pillar and the cool stone wall of an outer building, for nearly two ke by the time Nie Huaisang sweeps down the path.
Normally, even in traditional Nie grey, Nie Huaisang looks like one of his own exotic birds. He comes with elaborate embroidery and trimmings, as many bright jewel colours as he can justify sewing into his robes or beading into his braids. He floats along as if the ground barely has purchase on him, as if he is bouyed by his fluttering fan, expressing every emotion with drama and decoratively arranging himself in every self-directed scene.
Now, though, he drifts toward the healing pavilion in a stoney slump, fan covering most of his face and only occasionally twitching. His pace is slow, even reluctant, his free arm crossed over his chest and wedged beneath the elbow of the one occupied with his fan. Even the fan itself is strangely solemn, a grey misty mountainscape without Nie Huaisang’s usual splashs of colour or fantastical creatures.
His saber, as usual, is nowhere to be seen.
“What’s wrong,” Nie Mingjue asks, on autopilot as he comes out of the half-shady spot he chose for his sulk.
Nie Huaisang jumps and stumbles back a step, blinking huge eyes at him over the top of his fan for a startled moment before he flips it away. It is replaced by a huge, fake smile. “Aah, da-ge, nothing is wrong!”
Nie Mingjue gives him a flat look until he wilts, pinching his fan between the fingers of both hands and fiddling. He peeks up at Nie Mingjue from under his lashes. “Just, ah… well, it’s time for san-ge to be moved to his secure pavilion, and…”
Nie Mingjue frowns. “Is it not ready?”
“No, no, it is!” Nie Huaisang gets fluttery and excitable when he’s insistent— broad gestures with his hands, fan whisking the air. “I’m sure he’ll like it, I put him in a-niang’s old rooms again, with the little courtyard, the nice one with the pond, it’s safe enough—”
Nie Mingjue’s frown deepens. It was only a few months that er-niang was in that pavilion— their father moved her there before Nie Huaisang was born, anxious to keep her closer to him after da-niang’s death and especially while she was pregnant and fragile. She had still been a concubine when she moved in, and furen when she moved out, little Nie Huaisang cradled in her arms. It isn’t so close to Nie Mingjue’s rooms as to be unavoidable, but it is… close. But he supposes it was where Nie Huaisang arranged for Meng Yao to stay when they arrived, as well. It does not, at any rate, seem likely to be the problem.
“You look like you’re going to saber training,” he says, meaning: anxious and unhappy.
Nie Huaisang blinks again, then flips his fan over his face with his nervous, trilling laugh. “Aaaah, of course I’ll train later, da-ge…”
Nie Mingjue snorts. Nie Huaisang ducks his head, pretending to be abashed. Walking through those familiar motions seems to comfort him, at least— he perks up, shoulders straightening and the fluttering of his fan growing more elaborate.
“Truly, da-ge, nothing’s wrong. I’m— I’m sure everything will work out!”
If Nie Mingjue hadn’t practically raised his brother, he might believe that sunny smile. By the same token, he recognizes the stubbornness settling into Nie Huaisang’s spine with every twist of the fan. There won’t be any convincing him now.
“Fine,” he grumbles, stepping out of the way and letting Nie Huaisang breeze past him with a triumphant smirk.
At the last moment, as Nie Huaisang steps over the threshold of the pavilion, something bursts in Nie Mingjue’s chest, and he blurts out, “Tell him—”
Nie Huaisang pauses, turning his head.
Tell him what. He doesn’t even know you.
“…tell him he is. Welcome in Unclean Realm. For as long as he needs.”
Nie Huaisang opens his mouth, but Nie Mingjue is already turning on his heel and storming away to the training yards. Baxia hums metal songs under the thunder of his heart.
But! The man had a wife who he loved very much, and he didn’t want to leave her behind when he became immortal, well, because she would— ah, she would get old and grey, and he wouldn’t— like how cultivators don’t get grey as fast as other people do. No, it wasn’t to make him a cultivator… well, maybe. An elixir is like a golden core that you eat, maybe. Look, just listen, okay, So the man left the elixir in his wife’s care, while he went to find a way to make them both immortal together. But the man had a bad student, who resented his master’s success and wanted it for himself. So the student went to the wife while the man was far away, and he demanded the elixir.
Lan Xichen is wasting away in Qinghe.
He would never complain, of course. He has never been aught but kind when speaking of Nie Mingjue’s home, finding ways to add subtlety and elegance to a rough place perched on a mountain’s lip. It’s only by knowing him over the course of years that Nie Mingjue recognizes the way that the colder air, the harsher edges of the world here, wears on him. Add to it to strain of trying to play Meng Yao better, pouring out his spiritual energy to no apparent effect, and it’s little wonder that he is wan and listless at the meals Nie Mingjue invites him to. He eyes Xichen’s bowl critically and drops another braised mushroom cap into it, not for the first time wishing that he would eat something with bones. Lan Xichen gives him a weary smile.
“I should have told you when you first asked,” Lan Xichen says, picking with his chopsticks instead of eating, “I should have introduced you to him before then. But I was sure you would see his quality, and…”
“And you were ashamed,” Nie Mingjue says, “I remember.”
Lan Xichen only looks more miserable, his elegant mouth turned down and his eyes shining and sad. “Not of a-Yao! Only of myself.”
Nie Mingjue huffs. “It was true then, and is now. You don’t have to save face in front of me.”
Lan Xichen is not a person who fidgets. He sits in quiet repose, gently placing his chopsticks beside his bowl, and considers his words carefully. If he brushes his fingertips over the edge of his sleeve, it’s certainly not a tell that he’s anxious. Nie Mingjue bites down on an urge to reassure him, or to shake him, he isn’t sure which. He can’t say it any more plainly than he already has. If Lan Xichen still won’t trust him, there’s nothing Nie Mingjue can do about that.
“When Cloud Recesses was… occupied,” Lan Xichen says to his sleeves, “I fled with some of our library.”
“At the urging of your uncle,” Nie Mingjue reminds him, unable to refrain from jabbing at him with his own chopsticks, too impatient and frustrated to be polite, “To protect the secrets of your sect. That wasn’t dishonorable.”
Lan Xichen’s expression does not ease in the slightest. “Perhaps. The greater shame came later. I was afraid to go to our neighbor sects or our allies— what if I brought Wen to their thresholds? what if I was betrayed?— so I hid among common people. But even this I was unable to do with much success, for I found I knew so little of common people.”
Here, Lan Xichen hesitates, some deep and irrepressible uncertainty rising up. He picks up his chopsticks, puts them back down, picks them up again and with the resignation of a man committing to a principle, takes a bite. There’s probably a rule somewhere— do not be wasteful. The eating at least must give him time to think, for he finally continues.
“Sequestered in Cloud Recesses, only venturing into town for night hunts and sect business, I knew them as victims and petitioners, not as people. They were ideas to me— noble ideas! the simplicity of their toil and their small virtues, how could I not love these things? But living among them, between them, I saw finally their full character. I don’t mean to say they were cruel or villainous. But they were… complicated. And I did not know how to be one of them. I did not know where to get money to buy food, or clothing that would not give me away to the Wen at a glance. I did not know who to trust and who to watch.”
“…it was a-Yao who found me,” he says at length, still not meeting Nie Mingjue’s eyes. He smoothes down a thread of silk disrupted by his worrying, chopsticks hovering in uncommitted reluctance. “Hiding in a village woodshed. It wasn’t his village— he lived in the town a shichen’s walk away— but he bought most of his supplies there. They didn’t know he was born in a brothel, there, and would give him better prices. He explained this to me as if it was his own failing as he led me to safety, to a room I would have considered a closet in Cloud Recesses. He let me hide there with him, at great expense to himself. At least once, I know, he was… questioned by Wen soldiers.”
He takes a breath, shivery, and finally looks up at Nie Mingjue. “It would have earned him favour to tell them where I was, or to tell me what he sacrificed on my behalf. He never did.”
“You could have told me,” Nie Mingjue says, like pressing on a bruise.
Lan Xichen winces. “I know. It was petty and served no one but my own ego. I liked… having a secret with a-Yao. And I did not want to admit how helpless I had been.”
Having a secret with a-Yao. Nie Mingjue huffs, a familiar prickle of anger burning beneath his ribs, more hurt than outrage, more resentment than hurt. Baxia grumbles restlessly.
He swallows it all, coppery like blood from a broken nose, and adds a few bamboo shoots to Xichen’s bowl, half concern and half revenge.
“Tell me what he was like.”
The student had been trained by a man who could shoot down the sun, so of course he was stronger than the wife, because only cultivators let women fight; well it’s just the way it is, you know, it’s been this way forever, But she knew that he was a bad student who did not deserve to be immortal, and anyway, her husband had given her this elixir to protect. She was a good wife, and would not abandon her duty, even if duty meant she would have to do something very strange and dangerous.
She tried to tell the student to go away, and that her husband would be angry, but he didn’t care. He wanted the elixir, and he would kill her to get it if he had to. No, she doesn’t die. I promise. So rather than let the student have this valuable prize, that her husband had won by doing such a difficult thing, and that he had left in her care— the wife of the man who shot down the suns ate the elixir of immortality herself.
Nie Zonghui may not be half the deputy that Meng Yao was— frankly, Nie Mingjue despairs of ever finding his equal for that position— but he is a capable-enough administrator, and more than anything else, he knows his men. The list of cultivators he has concerns about is shorter than Nie Mingjue had feared, but he is confident that it is exact and comprehensive in every detail. The histories of his cultivators are all there, spelled out in ink, alongside all their personal failures and successes, the things that might activate or alarm them.
Nie Zonghui himself is not on the list.
Nie Mingjue, however, is. So if there is any respect in which Nie Zonghui has an advantage over his predecessor, it’s in the ability to deliver an insulting truth with utterly unflappable calm.
Nie Mingjue raises an eyebrow at him over the top of the scroll. Nie Zonghui, standing at attention with his most neutral expression, shrugs.
“For the record,” Nie Mingjue says, “Your concern is unwarranted.”
There is not so much as a flicker of emotion on Nie Zonghui’s face when he says, patiently, “With all due respect, Zongzhu— no, it is not.”
Baxia’s muttered rattle against Nie Mingjue’s back is, perhaps, both reply and evidence. Nie Mingjue sighs, gritting his teeth as he scans the rest of the list. “And your suggestion?”
Nie Zonghui is not really a person of silences. There are many among the Nie who are, men who would rather let all their communication be action if they had their way, or who don’t trust themselves to speak clearly and so choose not to speak at all. Nie Bingwen is often one of them, if not prompted correctly. When Nie Zonghui choose not to speak, however, it isn’t because he doesn’t know what to say or how to say it. It’s because he is letting all the things he could say fill the space without bothering to say any of them, until he finally picks one out of the air and flings it down in front of his interrogator like a gauntlet.
This time, he says, “Has Zongzhu considered that if he misses his companion, regretting the absence does not bring him closer?”
The spike of rage which drills into Nie Mingjue’s eye almost overshadows the gnawing despair. “He isn’t somewhere else,” he snarls, already hating each word, already wanting to wind them back into his mouth, but he’s already halfway into the rest, “He’s just gone. There’s no one there.”
Nie Zonghui studies him impassively, arms loose at his sides, a finger tapping against the hilt of one saber. Not a threat, but preparation to meet one— a reminder of the concerns that list represents. Only when Nie Mingjue has managed to contain the seething red wave trapped behind his teeth, breathing deep and shoving outrage at Baxia just to get it out of his chest, does Nie Zonghui say, flatly, “If Jin Guangyi forgot himself today, I would introduce myself tomorrow.”
And that, landing in the hollow place that Nie Mingjue’s evacuated anger has left behind, leaves silence in its wake.
After a moment, Nie Zonghui folds his hands into a perfunctory bow. “If this one oversteps, Zongzhu is welcome to send him away.”
“Go,” he growls, because he can’t find it in himself to say anything kinder.
Nie Zonghui goes.
He can’t be more than halfway down the hall before Baxia’s iron shriek rips through air, and wood, and into stone. Debris flies across the room in tremendous shattering crunches, mindless noise and violence and murderous desire for a moment unleashed and uncontained. It doesn’t matter what gets destroyed. It only matters that something does, that there is some evidence of his pain and her rage, their twin entangled red blade thoughts overflowing into the world. Nie Mingjue feels almost calm in the center of it, the eye of a storm, teeth clenched around the kind of cry that is only ever half rage. His heartbeat drowns out all but Baxia’s wretched roaring wrath and the mirror it holds up to that noise which will not escape his mouth.
His golden core burns in his chest like a captive sun.
There was a bright flash of light, but not hot and yellow like the suns— this light was cool and blue. Where there had been the wife of the man, now there was the lady of the moon, wearing silver and grey, like the colour of your robes but shiny; look, you can see her out the window if you— yes— that little sliver— And she rose into the sky, floating away from the bad student, who could do nothing to stop her and had won nothing from his crime. And she’s there still today, looking down from the night sky. And that’s why there is a one sun, and one moon.
(The man? He was left alone, I guess. I think he punished his bad student, probably, because that would be just. But his wife didn’t do anything wrong, and he didn’t do anything wrong. It just happened that way because someone else did an evil thing.)
(I guess it is a sad story.)
(Okay. Don’t cry. I’m sure you’re right. Maybe he did become a cultivator after all.)
(Maybe he kept one sun for himself.)