Work Text:
Lan Wangji had been missing for nearly five months when Lan Xichen arranged his marriage to Wei Wuxian.
The thing was done as well as two war-weary clans could manage, though no one apart from Lan Xichen and Jiang Yanli were party to the arrangements. A pair of paper effigies took the place of the deceased bridegrooms, and a spare tent—hastily vacated by a pair of Jiang Yanli’s shidis, who took up residence with a shixiong for the evening—served as their nuptial chamber; and when the rites were over, Wei Wuxian’s memorial tablet was sent back to rest in the Cloud Recesses’ grand ancestral hall.
“I have not made a tablet for Wangji,” Lan Xichen confessed, when Jiang Yanli asked if Wangji and her late shidi were to be honored together. “I cannot say that hope has prevented me so far—it has been too long. But—”
“But inscribing a memorial tablet would feel as if you had made it so that he could never return,” Jiang Yanli said softly. “I know. I felt the same when—when it was A-Xian.”
As far as Lan Xichen knew, Jiang-zongzhu had asked his sister not to make a tablet for Wei Wuxian, either. He was certain that his shidi still lived, though he could not explain why it was so: and neither had he given Jiang-guniang leave to have Wei Wuxian’s spirit married off to Wangji, so both the ghost-wedding and the inscription of the tablet had been carried out while he was away from camp.
Little changed after the wedding. Wangji was still gone—Lan Xichen could not yet begin to conjure the word dead in relation to his brother, even half a year after his disappearance—and battle grew no easier, though Lan Xichen was no longer a stranger to bloodshed.
And then, halfway through the sixth month, a young Jiang disciple barged into the healing tents with a grin on his round face.
“Zewu-jun,” he cried, as Lan Xichen came to meet him. “Our young mistress sent me with a message—she has received word from Jiang-zongzhu, and he has seen Hanguang-jun! He was hiding in Yan’an all this time, with our Wei-gongzi—and he is coming to the camp this week, though da-shixiong will not travel south for another fortnight.”
Lan Xichen’s medicine tray crashed to the ground.
“What?”
* * *
When Wangji arrived at the Jiangling camp three days later, he explained that he had strayed into Qishan in search of Wei Wuxian.
“Why didn’t you send word?” Lan Xichen cried in anguish. “A-Zhan, I thought you were dead! Shufu has already gone into mourning, and I—”
He sat down on a basket of linens, overcome. “If you had only sent a message—!”
But it was beyond Wangji’s power to send any sort of message, as Lan Xichen soon learned. In Qishan, he found that the Wen had been forcing ordinary civilians into their ranks; and when he overheard a Wen cultivator threatening a farmer with the lives of his wife and child, Wangji emerged from the woods nearby and killed the cultivator on the spot.
“I have been guarding the civilians of Yan’an these last six months. Forgive me,” he said heavily, laying a hand on Lan Xichen’s shoulder. “If I had sent word, I would have betrayed my position—or worse, theirs. But they are safe now; the Wen will not touch them. Wei Ying has constructed a ward rooted in Yan’an which will keep the Wen from entering any township there with evil intentions; and once he is satisfied that it will last in his absence, he will return to Jiangling.”
Lan Xichen nodded, still so shaken that he would have fallen if not for Wangji’s grip on his robe: and then he frowned, for one piece of the mystery still remained unsolved.
“What of Wei-gongzi?” he asked. “You went to Qishan to search for him; but what was he doing there?”
At this, a shadow crossed Lan Wangji’s face.
“I do not know,” he murmured, lowering his head. “Wei Ying would not tell me.”
The mention of Wei Wuxian ought to have reminded Lan Xichen that he had news to relay to his brother, but he was so relieved by Wangji’s return that he could think of little else; and when he recalled the ghost-wedding, later that night, he stared up at the roof of his tent and cursed aloud for the first time in his life.
* * *
Amid the commotion of Wei-gongzi’s arrival at camp the next week, Lan Xichen and Jiang Yanli decided that they would break the news to their respective brothers separately.
“A-Zhan will not take it well,” Lan Xichen said in a low voice, when Jiang Yanli came to discuss the matter under the pretense of bringing him fresh lingzhi from the supply wagons. “I will tell him first; and perhaps you can tell Wei-gongzi after a day or two.”
“A-Xian will take it worse, I think,” Jiang Yanli replied. “He’s very fond of Lan-er-gongzi—and in his eyes, what we have done will seem like a great unkindness to him.”
Lan Xichen sighed. “Perhaps it was, since they both returned safely. But if—if Wangji had been lost to us, and Wei-gongzi was not—do you think he would have objected to a minghun then?”
For a moment, Jiang Yanli did not answer. But at length, she said:
“Certainly he would have objected. But he would have treasured that minghun, all the same.”
With that hopeful aside, she withdrew; and Lan Xichen steeled himself and dispatched a sentry to fetch Wangji, who had—if Lan Xichen’s ears were to be trusted—been having an explosive argument with Wei Wuxian on the other end of the camp.
“Brother,” Wangji said, when he entered. “What is the matter? Yan-shidi said that you had—”
He looked at Lan Xichen and frowned. “He said you had something to tell me which I would not like to hear. Is Shufu well?”
Lan Xichen assured him that their uncle was quite well; and then, without delaying further, he confessed the full truth of what he and Jiang-guniang had done.
“There is nothing in the sect precepts about how the law would judge a situation like this,” he said miserably, as Wangji’s face began to redden. “In cases where a man returns alive from battle to find that his parents arranged a minghun while he was away, he simply proceeds as if it were a contract-marriage, and the bride remains wedded to him—but she would have agreed to be his wife, and Wei-gongzi had no more say in this matter than you did.”
Silence.
“Jiang-guniang and I have told no one else,” Lan Xichen said, as Wangji sank onto the cot across from his. “There were two Jiang disciples who may have guessed—but Jiang-guniang swore them to secrecy, and Wei-gongzi’s tablet—”
Wangji lifted a hand to stop him. “I am not angry,” he said.
“You—you’re not?”
“No.”
“But—but why not?”
In answer, Wangji stood and called out to the little sentry, who was keeping watch a few zhang from Lan Xichen’s tent.
“Go to the Jiangs’ side of the camp and tell Wei Ying that I will be joining his hunting party at noon,” he said. And then, as soon as the boy was out of earshot: “Wei Ying knows of my feelings, Xiongzhang. Our time in Yan’an was so fraught that I could not keep them hidden.”
A flicker of hope stirred in Lan Xichen’s breast. “This brother sees. Does he return them?”
“He does,” Wangji said shyly. “He will not be upset when he hears of the minghun; and nor am I, for that matter. But that spirit-tablet must be destroyed as soon as possible, lest…”
“I sent a letter to the Cloud Recesses as soon as we heard that the both of you were well. Most likely, the tablet has already been disposed of.”
“That is good, then.”
He glanced at his shoes and smiled, clearly recalling some tender moment with his heretofore-unknown husband; and at the sight of him, Lan Xichen bit back a smile of his own before recalling that the two had been arguing before Wangji came to his tent.
“Didi,” he ventured, “I heard raised voices before you arrived. Were you and Wei-gongzi quarreling?”
“Not exactly. Wei Ying was injured in Qishan, so I wanted him to visit the healing tents instead of going hunting with the shidimen; but he would not listen. And then he asked whether I would have stayed back after suffering such a minor wound—so I confessed that I would have gone hunting first and sought out a healer afterwards.”
Unbidden, the corners of his mouth curled upward. “But then Wei Ying laughed, and promised that he would ask Jiang-guniang to tend to him in the evening since I had been so honest.”
“I am glad to hear it,” Lan Xichen said, laughing. “Go on then, A-Zhan. Don’t keep him waiting!”
* * *
Lotus Pier, Yunmeng to the Unclean Realm, Qinghe
Lan Zhan,
Thank heaven that you and the rest are all safe at the Bujingshi. Your messenger talisman went to Yidu first, so I did not hear what had become of you until the wounded soldiers at the old camp found the letter and sent it on to me—and not a moment too soon, my heart, for I have scarcely dared to sleep since we parted. I spent the last two nights pacing the floors at Lotus Pier, wondering why there had been no news from you; and now that I know you are well, it is high time that I answer the question you asked me a fortnight ago.
I have no desire to annul our marriage, xingan. I know that you said our courting was barely begun—that you did not wish to press me into a hasty wedding, or to separate me from Shijie and Jiang Cheng so soon after Uncle’s passing—but there is no telling if both of us will live to see the end of this war, and if I must die, I mean to be buried as your lawful spouse, and not only the Jiang clan’s da-shixiong.
You spoke of a grand wedding after the war’s end; but I cannot think of such things until Wen Ruohan is slain and our lands made safe again, and nor can I stand to think of undoing the good that has already been done for the sake of a future I might never see. I am already yours, and wish to remain so in all ways; so let us say no more about an annulment, and instead look forward to meeting one another again.
I must stop here, since Yu-shidi is due to set off with the post in an hour. Look after yourself until I come to you, sweetheart, and don’t be rash; for having known you, I could not bear to endure without you for the world.
Your loving husband,
Wei Ying.