Since returning home from the discussion conference, Nie Huaisang has kept as busy as he ever is, which is both very much and not at all.

Over the past month, he’s paid three trips to the sabre tombs to cautiously attempt a few new methods of suppressing the blades’ resentful energy. None were successful, but thankfully only one of their forays actually angered the blades any further than their usual state, and none of the disciples were hurt worse than a golden core could patch up overnight. Beyond that, it’s just been the usual tedium: his current head disciple—a competent but forgettable man eight years Nie Huaisang’s junior, son of a minor retainer—drops off the day’s mail, and Nie Huaisang puts aside some competent but forgettable poetry he’d picked up in Gusu.

There’s a letter from the foreman of the temple project, informing him of their progress. He should pay the site a visit soon, but he’s not sure of the next time he’ll have a good opportunity to head to Yunping. He sets that one aside, for now, in the pile for non-urgent matters he still wants to take care of himself, as opposed to the much thicker one on the other side of the table, which is for minor concerns he will foist on a clerk at the earliest opportunity.

Midway through the stack of bills for services rendered and reports of minor fierce corpse activity in this village or that, things get a little more interesting; there’s a letter stamped with Jiang Cheng’s seal. Nie-zongzhu, it reads: I hoped to discuss further the unresolved concerns brought forth at the discussion conference. I was disappointed to find your delegation left the Cloud Recesses before we were able to continue our conversation. I would like to visit the Unclean Realms before the first snow— and so on and so forth.

If he knew that bringing in a few guest cultivators was going to lead to Jiang Cheng breathing down his neck, he might’ve at least chosen different ones; it’s been months and he’s got hardly anything to show for it, as far as the sabres are concerned.

The next letter is a very polite and humble inquiry from a father of little means, asking as to what he would need to offer in exchange for Qinghe Nie to take on his daughter as a disciple. These sorts of requests come along every so often. The sect’s intake of disciples has slowed somewhat in the years since da-ge was killed, but they’ve remained steady enough; incompetent sect leader or no, having a child raised by a great cultivation sect is something of which many ordinary people could only dream. He hasn’t been concerned about keeping up the numbers, though now and again the senior disciples bring it up as politely as they can. They’re afraid of losing face in front of the other sects, understandably so.

He’s not going to let the sect die out, obviously, but can he be held at fault for wanting to stem the tide a little, until he's got things a little more in hand? After all, every disciple who trains with Qinghe Nie is his responsibility; each sabre that begins to harness killing intent in a new student’s hand, Nie Huaisang may as well have placed there.

✥

Midday arrives, he tires of lying to himself about the likelihood that his work will get any more interesting by staring at it, and so Nie Huaisang elects to meander, just to feel the wind on his face.

Some of the older juniors are running through sword forms in the practice yard; it’s cool enough at this time of year for exercise under the beating sun to be comfortable instead of stifling. “Nie-zongzhu, you've arrived just in time. Care to join us?”

The crowd of disciples share a laugh, not bothering to hide it; they know they won't get in trouble. It’s a back-and-forth they’ve all been exchanging for a little while. One of the training masters will invite Nie Huaisang to lead the day’s practice, and Nie Huaisang will come up with an excuse as to why he can't possibly, but please ask him another day and it would be his pleasure. Humour taken at his expense is hardly taken at any expense at all, and it’s surely better to let his disciples acknowledge the fact their sect leader is weak and non-martial than have them whisper about it in private. It’s less likely to cause discontent in the ranks if they all feel like they’re in on a good-natured joke, and, when mingling with the disciples of other sects, at least Qinghe Nie cultivators can boast of how their sect leader isn't one to punish ordinary cultivators for unreasonable offences.

Back when he still went to sabre practice—so, a long time ago—one of the other juniors had commented with what, in retrospect, it’s clear was more envy than malice that if Nie-er-gongzi just put some effort into training, he could bulk up easily, just like the sect leader and Nie-gongzi. Huaisang had pushed him into the dirt. In a contest of strength they were woefully mismatched, but he had surprise on his side; no one had any reason to expect Huaisang to give them a shove.

Da-ge had walked him to their father’s study to be disciplined, and Huaisang felt his curious stare on the top of his head the whole way. It was far from the first time he’d knelt before his father to make apologies, but the reason for it was new. Huaisang had never gotten into a fight before. His father was silent for a long time. Like da-ge, he didn’t know what to make of it. He thinks they might have been glad to hear that it was possible after all to get Huaisang riled up enough to defend himself, but even Huaisang was aware that his explanation for what had happened didn’t make sense. It wasn’t as though he’d been insulted.

He didn’t lie to them, but he couldn’t just come out and say, I don’t want to look like you. He’d already learned that there was a difference between telling untruths and keeping secrets, and that there were things no one wanted to hear him say out loud.

In the end, Huaisang got lucky: his long-anticipated growth spurt never came. Instead, a few years later, da-ge’s new deputy took one of Nie Huaisang's ink-stained hands in both of his own and said, Nie-er-gongzi, your fingers are so delicate. At the time, he’d thought that Meng Yao was commenting on their size, but, many years later, he wonders if instead Meng Yao referred to Nie Huaisang’s absence of calluses. Perhaps Meng Yao was not paying him a compliment, all those years ago, though he delivered it like one.

Now, at the edge of the training yard, Nie Huaisang blinks owlishly at his disciples before smiling and flapping his hands: Oh, no, please, anything but that. “You’re too kind! But your good master there looks like he’s got a whole routine planned out. I, ah, wouldn’t want to interrupt.”

✥

Nie Huaisang has, for a long time, bathed at odd hours. He likes the quiet. That evening, he washes himself perfunctorily, not particularly lingering, and throws a robe around himself immediately upon getting out of the water, without looking down at his own body. He’s always done this; he can’t remember the last time he took all of his clothes off around another person.

Most of his life, he had attendants for this sort of thing, but when his most recent one asked for permission to leave his service to go marry a commoner from some backwater town, Nie Huaisang, being a generous sort, let him go, and he never got around to finding another. As it turns out, he has reason to be cautious about such things.

The evening dimness is forgiving; his reflection in the mirror looks young. He combs his hair, watching the reflection of tines pulling oil through the strands to keep them from drying out in the crisp Qinghe air.

This is, he thinks, how it goes: later on, the moments in the memory are blurred by panic, so it’s hard to tell how exactly things unfolded. What he remembers is combing his hair, watching himself in the mirror, and noticing his robe is hanging partially open, untied. He pulls it around himself a little tighter, tugging at the lapels, and the side of his finger brushes over something on his chest that feels odd, swollen and a little sore—

He yanks the comb through a knot hard enough to make himself wince and then sets the comb down, his hand trembling.

He pulls the rest of his clothes around himself and folds his arms across his stomach to keep warm; he feels a sudden draft wafting through the room. He is sitting on the edge of the bed with his feet dangling over the side, and he taps his toes against the floor arrhythmically just to do something with his body. Then, after some time has passed, he cautiously lifts his right hand to feel through the cloth.

Beneath his hand he feels a very small, budding curve of flesh that did not exist for most of his life. He doesn't let go so fast, this time; he feels around, cautiously, with his fingertips, mapping out the shape, the almost painful tenderness of the skin to the touch.

On some level, he didn’t think it was actually going to work. Until now, there have been no changes he couldn’t be sure weren’t the product of too much attention paid. That’s fine, he’d thought, with not insignificant relief; wasn’t the point of it really just qi regulation, in the end? He hardly uses his cultivation for anything more strenuous than snuffing out candles without crossing the room, but Nie Huaisang has no idea what it looks like for those of his family line to grow to old age. When he thinks about himself getting older, there’s a point where his imagination fails to carry on. He can’t help but think that one day something will catch up to him, whether qi deviation or a more mundane sort of hereditary madness.

Now that he knows that it is working in that way, he should stop while he can, before it goes any further and people can notice. He ought to. The fact something has occupied one’s mind with morbid curiosity since it was first thought of does not mean it should translate into anything real.

He’d never liked being naked to start with, so it doesn’t make much of a difference if he just needs to hide it, for a while. It’s easy to obscure what's underneath one’s clothes when one is wearing layers upon layers of robes, and he used to dress loose. It’s an advantage of living somewhere cool, and he has poor circulation.

He goes through all of the clothing he still has in storage, looking for the cuts of his old days; more comfortable, and more forgiving to the body. He runs his hands over the textures of different silks and thinks about the way they hang on his frame, how well they layer with others, how accurately they hug the shape of the form underneath. Some of his robes from back in the day aren’t in his possession anymore; no doubt casualties to one of his occasional midnight sprees of weeding out everything that reminded him of Meng Yao which he could afford to be rid of.

His hands linger on a piece of sable silk. He remembers an afternoon spent sending up motes of dust, swirling in the candlelight: Mo Xuanyu poured over the embroidery of some of Nie Huaisang’s cast-offs with obvious longing, and grumbled about how he wished he wasn’t so tall.

Nie Huaisang left a half-empty jar of wine under his desk before attending the cultivation conference. The taste bears out that it’s been sitting, opened and forgotten, on a floor for weeks, but after the first few mouthfuls he stops noticing.

Really, there isn’t much difference between this and the way he's been living his life for as long as he can remember. There have always been things he's kept to himself, even when he was young, while da-ge still lived. It’s not really lying. And even when it is, a lie can be comforting, like a warm blanket to cocoon oneself inside.

He never put away his writing set before leaving for Gusu; uncharacteristically careless of him. He’s always taken good care of his things, at least those things he likes. There’s a half-written letter on top of the desk, and at a glance he remembers why he started it. He pushes his loose hair back over his shoulders, out of his way, and begins wetting the ink.

When he left off, he had been saying something about the weather and the turning of the seasons: The leaves are changing already, er-ge. Such an early season, this year. Remember when you and san-ge came together to visit me around this time? That must have been five or six years ago. San-ge brought me a case of very expensive incense, and he never would tell me where he bought it. I still have some. I can send it to you, if you like.

He’s not sure what, exactly, he’d intended to communicate when he began writing it a few weeks back. Surely not anything important, or else he would’ve delivered the letter in person instead of letting it sit on his desk in Qinghe and gather dust. It hardly matters, since er-ge never replies to his letters anymore. Nie Huaisang doesn’t know whether he even reads them.

It would be a waste of good paper not to finish it, so he dips his brush. I was in the Cloud Recesses recently for the conference. I thought about paying you a visit. I'm not sure His Excellency would let me near the Hanshi, but I like to think you’d open the door if I knocked. You’ve always been accommodating with your time. I am grateful for that.

His calligraphy is messier than it should be, considering he hasn’t had that much to drink, and he doesn’t need to embarrass himself in front of er-ge anymore. He leaves the letter at that, signing off simply with his name. He could call himself Lan Xichen's affectionate didi, as he once would have, but that might be laying it on too thick. He would like a reply, one of these days, or at least he thinks that he would. He can’t imagine what it would feel like to actually get one.

He hasn’t been called anything other than Nie-zongzhu in a long time. There are times when he finds himself absentmindedly missing the sound of his name in Jin Guangyao’s voice. He keeps writing to er-ge in hopes of some more familiar address, but so far for naught.

He’s not sure what he’d do, were he in Lan Xichen's place. He’s not strong enough to survive it, shutting himself off from the world forever. It’s the nature of a younger sibling to want a hand on the shoulder, even if he doesn’t need it anymore.

He stays at the desk, staring at his own name drying on the page, until his eyelids are falling shut and he’s listing over to the side. Only then does he crawl into bed, pulling the blankets over himself as if to hide from an invisible watcher, and only then, in the dark, does he let his hands roam underneath his robes. Each time he touches his own skin, feeling the contours of his own body, familiar and strange, it sets his heart racing, scares him in a way that little has since that day at the temple.

The fourth time Nie Huaisang wakes up that night, he decides he may as well just get up.

✥

Early frosts have come, and the ground crunches underfoot in the silvery dawn; the sun has not risen high enough yet for the light to be warm.

Da-ge’s body was lost for almost fifteen years, but everyone knew he was dead. After the story of what happened at Carp Tower became widely known, no one was foolish enough to hold out hope. No members of the Nie inner family line within living memory have been able to outrun qi deviation unless they were taken by something else first. Had he not seen da-ge qi deviate before his own eyes, Nie Huaisang may have held onto vain hope that his brother had vanished into the wilderness or gotten lost somewhere in Lanling in the midst of a fugue, but ever since the first time da-ge had turned Baxia on him without recognition, Nie Huaisang had known, in the pit of his stomach, that they were close to the end, though he did all he could to avoid having to admit it.

That night in Lanling was clear under a sickle moon. Jin Guangyao had held him back, wrapped up in his arms for safekeeping. San-ge had always looked out for him, but he’d never spared Nie Huaisang the truth, and so when, a few days later, Jin Guangyao gently told him that there was no point holding out for a miracle, Nie Huaisang had asked him to take care of the funeral preparations on his behalf. He had thanked him for it.

The ancestral shrine in the Unclean Realms is a cold, quiet place, where any approaching footsteps can be heard far in advance. It’s not unusual, among this company, that da-ge’s body itself hasn’t been buried; the two of them saw the remains of some of their forefathers down in the death chamber of the sabre tomb. Nie Huaisang used to come here to burn joss sticks and talk to his brother. It’s far enough away from the rest of the sect compound that he wouldn’t be overheard. He would tell da-ge about his day, or ask for advice on the problems of his current supplicants. Apologize for mistakes that went unspecified. Even here, it wasn’t safe to speak some things out loud.

Da-ge’s body now rests with his in a coffin in Yunping, but the kind of things Nie Huaisang has to say to him he refuses to speak within earshot of Jin Guangyao, so he kneels in the family shrine, as he’s always done, and addresses only da-ge.

“There was another accident the other day. I thought we might have been onto something, but the sabre just went flying around the tomb. By the time we calmed it down, it’d broken a few walls.”

Baxia had its own death song. It whistled through the air a way no mundane blade could. Spiritual weapons have their own hungers; even wielded by a will as strong as Nie Mingjue’s, his sabre sometimes seemed as though it could leap out of its sheath and devour someone whole.

He speaks softly, as not to have to hear his own voice echoing back at him off of the walls. “No one told me the truth about the sabres until we visited the tomb together, da-ge. Was that just because I didn’t cultivate enough? Did father tell you before he died, or did you only find out afterwards?”

It must have been harder for da-ge to learn the truth than it was for Nie Huaisang. Baxia was a part of him, nearly. Even after death, it absorbed its master’s will. It must have hurt to learn that his descendants would be burdened with it even after he was gone.

What would the sect look like if he sat the parents of every prospective new disciple down and told them the truth about what they would be getting themselves into? It’s not as though they’ll all qi deviate—no one would send their children to the Unclean Realms, if it were that simple—but the way of the sabre won’t lead anyone to immortality. Qinghe Nie cultivators are formidable in battle, the backbone of any force; it’s understandable that power like that couldn’t be bought without a price. Some junior disciples would still be willing to continue with their training, if they knew exactly what they were risking, but surely not all of them. Nie Huaisang didn’t, did he? Then again, he’s changing now. Perhaps it’s in his nature as a Nie to transform into something other people would hardly recognize and can’t understand.

He doesn’t know whether he could’ve tried it, were da-ge still alive. Nie Huaisang already disappointed him enough as it was.

In the silence of the shrine, Nie Huaisang watches the incense curl and spiral up to the ceiling, and feels the familiar wash of guilt through his stomach, like nausea. It’s been so long, and he still doesn’t know how to live with the feeling. Or live without it.

✥

At his desk—not the one in his own bedroom, but the one in the room where he continues the never-ending work of trying to patch up his ancestors’ leaky boat—Nie Huaisang blinks away his missed hours of sleep for just as long as it takes to nod through the morning reports from the various people who have things to tell him. After they’ve left him alone, he folds his arms on the surface of the desk and lays his cheek on his sleeve. If he closes his eyes he will fall asleep, which sounds quite nice but will leave him with a sore neck, so his gaze drifts around the room. Like the rest of the official halls, it’s all gleaming metal, heavy lines, and a few pieces of art he’s installed over the years to soften the look of things a little. Pride of place in here is one of Xichen-ge’s paintings: the valley surrounding the Unclean Realms as seen from a great height, like the side of one of the surrounding peaks, or the blade of a sword in flight.

The Unclean Realms taught Nie Huaisang more than he realized, when he was younger, about beauty. Whenever he’s away for too long he misses the bracing clarity of the air and the austerity of the interiors. Art is balance, the delicate intertwined with the harsh. This is something Jin Guangyao understood less and less over the years; the longer he spent at Carp Tower, the more extravagantly tasteless his gifts for Huaisang became. Everything was so gilt and shiny the form itself was clouded. A fan, after all, should be a beautiful thing, but it has function. If it can’t keep you cool in the summer heat, it’s just a waste of materials.

Nie Huaisang doesn’t suit this place, but he has made it suit him a little more than it did when he was born. If all that remains when he’s gone is some rooms made a little more harmonious, he supposes that will, at least, be something.

Nothing he has to take care of today can’t wait for tomorrow, and he’s tempted to crawl back into bed and sleep through the rest of the morning like he used to, but he’s already sitting down, and getting into bed would require first getting up, which sounds like more trouble than it’s worth.

Without sitting up, he reaches out for the stack of unanswered mail. Unfortunately, most of it remains unanswered because he doesn’t want to answer it, and his feelings have not changed. Jiang Cheng’s charming self-invitation is still in want of a reply, and if Nie Huaisang doesn’t get back to him soon he’ll probably do something ridiculous.

It’s not even that he’s opposed to seeing Jiang Cheng; he does wonder whether there’s any truth to the premises of Jiang Cheng’s letter—whether he actually harbours any serious suspicion that Nie Huaisang is recruiting shady characters for his own version of Jin Guangyao’s treasure room cabal, or whatever Jiang Cheng thinks might be happening—, or if he just wants to get sucked off again. If it’s truly only the latter, that’s fine, but he doesn’t want to give him any ideas about what half of an evening at the Cloud Recesses means for the relationship between their sects, or what people can and can’t demand of Nie Huaisang. If anyone has accusations to make, they can go ahead and make them, but he doesn’t intend on making it any easier; he’s had enough of people rooting through his ancestors’ graves. Even so, it’s hard to feel much urgency about secret-keeping now that Jin Guangyao is dead. It’s been a while since he had reason to be genuinely afraid of anyone.

His hand hovers over the page until a drop of ink threatens to fall, and then he begins to write. Jiang-zongzhu, your company is always welcome here. I’ll let you into all of my treasure rooms, so you can do as much exploring as you like. I promise there won’t be any nasty surprises. We do still have some puppies here, too, like I was telling you about at the Cloud Recesses, and I think you like that sort of thing?

He folds up the letter, and when at last he summons the will to get up and find someone to send it for him, he first loops back to his own bedrooms. He wouldn’t want er-ge to feel left out.

✥

Jiang Wanyin arrives like a turbulent wind: you can feel his approach before you can even hear him. Something prickles on the back of Nie Huaisang’s neck, and not long after a guard comes scurrying to announce that Jiang-zongzhu has arrived without a retinue.

Alone, ah? Well, he ought not to let an old friend get lonely in the reception chamber.

They bluster through greeting courtesies, but once they run out of those Nie Huaisang plucks the edge of Jiang Cheng’s sleeve between his forefinger and thumb. “Come on, Jiang-xiong. Let’s play weiqi.” Jiang Cheng lets himself be led like this for a surprising number of steps before shaking his arm free with an acidic hiss of breath, to which Nie Huaisang cheerfully Sorry, sorry, sorry-ies as they make their way down the hall.

“I thought my letter was clear about wanting to discuss serious matters with you. I see it wasn’t clear enough.”

“We can talk while we play. It’s my house, so you’ll have to indulge me.”

What, does Jiang Cheng want Nie Huaisang to sit on the throne and hear Jiang Cheng out in the middle of Blades Hall like a stranger? Nie Huaisang once held Jiang Cheng’s hair back for him as he vomited into an immaculately groomed Cloud Recesses bush. They’re beyond such formalities, and besides, the chair really is uncomfortable.

And it’s not a pretense; Nie Huaisang does like weiqi, and he’s short on opponents. He doesn’t like to play the same person too often.

“I’m out of practice, so you might have to go easy on me.”

“If we’re playing, I’m going to play properly.”

Nie Huaisang sighs. “Just don’t hold it against me if it’s over too quickly.”

Weiqi was the only gentlemanly art da-ge could stomach, and they used to play together occasionally, before their father died. Da-ge was only interested to the extent that the game could be used to think about military strategy, but Nie Huaisang found it easier to follow along when it was a question of pieces on a board. However, it was Meng Yao, not da-ge, who was Huaisang’s favourite opponent. He’ll never know whether Meng Yao ever figured out that Huaisang used to throw matches just because he could tell that Meng Yao liked to win, and Huaisang liked Meng Yao.

They don’t play in silence, like real, serious weiqi masters would; how stuffy and unbearable. Jiang Cheng takes black, Nie Huaisang takes white, and they exchange opening plays. Nie Huaisang adds, “I used to be better. While everyone else was fighting in the war, I was here, and there wasn’t much else to do.”

Da-ge was away from home during the war, of course, but Huaisang pestered the skeleton crew of retainers to play matches whenever he was bored of his solitary pursuits, and occasionally allies and friends would stop at Qinghe to resupply on their way to and from the Qishan borderlands—Xichen-ge came by a few times, and Jiang Cheng himself once or twice.

Jiang Cheng responds to that noncommittally, and then he glances across the board at Nie Huaisang with a steely look in his eye. Nie Huaisang shifts in place, obligingly.

“I don’t see any of these guests of yours. Did you hide them away before I could get here?”

“I think the wandering life just called for them again.”

Last week, he waved farewell to the last of his rogue cultivator houseguests. Things are already less lively, but he’s not too sad to see them go. Keeping tabs on a bunch of strangers eating him through house and home had its drawbacks. He doesn’t particularly enjoy being anyone’s benefactor, anyway. There is a comforting simplicity to belonging to a hierarchy, and it’s never hard to puzzle out what anyone wants out of him, when they see him as a sect leader before anything else. Still: he misses being unimportant.

“I’m pretty curious what Jiang-xiong thinks I could’ve been learning from them that could worry him so much.”

“Qinghe Nie’s never been particularly concerned with innovating cultivation techniques under your leadership. What’s changed?”

“Oh, but that’s exactly it. The elders had been nagging me for so long to put a bit more effort into the sect, so I thought doing some learning exchange would be the simplest option that wouldn’t require me to… you know. Do things.”

Jiang Cheng gives him an unimpressed look, but he’s making moves each turn, so he can’t be having such a miserable time, really. He’s not half-bad at weiqi; certainly better than Nie Huaisang remembers him playing during the war, though Jiang Cheng might’ve just been distracted at the time.

Back then, Nie Huaisang had to spend too much time sitting on da-ge’s big chair to hear the plaintive requests of widows and displaced peasants and feel acutely aware of his own inexperience. He’d been more annoyed than ever that da-ge had sent Meng Yao away for reasons he wouldn’t even give Huaisang a straight answer about. He should have been there, helping Huaisang figure out things to say and assuring him everything would be alright in the end.

The days were blurs of vague dread; he worried about da-ge in an abstract sort of way, in between letting the elders tell him what to do with the war refugees, complaining about being shut up in the fortress instead of being allowed to go ride around the countryside, and spending too long fantasizing about the ridges of Wei Wuxian’s neck. Even though Nie Huaisang was relieved every time they got news from the front of da-ge’s safety, it was hard back then to imagine that anything could actually hurt him. He seemed as indestructible as the mountainsides.

Ever since the temple, his life has felt like Sunshot all over again: aimlessly passing the time at home, as if any day now da-ge is going to stride through the doors and tell him, It’s over, Huaisang. You can get down from that throne now.

Nie Huaisang surveys the array of white stones on the board and taps his finger on his chin as he contemplates which of them would make the best blood sacrifice to probe Jiang Cheng’s defenses. People are intimidated by Jiang Cheng, with good reason, but especially here, under his own roof, Nie Huaisang can look past the sect leader and see the worn-down, harried bachelor who, in casual settings, is just as stilted as he was at nineteen.

“Hey, Jiang-xiong. When was the last time you were here? Da-ge’s funeral?”

Across the board, Jiang Cheng looks up at him, and for once his expression is hard to read. “Yes.”

“I didn’t realize it’d been so long. I would’ve invited you sooner.”

“I don’t do much casual travelling.”

“Ah, of course. You’re a busy man.” The stones on the playing field have begun to form coalitions, gathering together in force and numbers, the stragglers hanging, vulnerable, in the empty expanses of the board. Jiang Cheng’s style tends towards the defensive; he likes to feel secure, with his feet dug into the earth and his weapons pointing outward. Nie Huaisang tuts his tongue and floats his hand indecisively over the board, a piece in hand, his fingers wiggling in the air. “You spent some time here during the war. Does it look any different to you now?”

“I wasn’t paying much attention to the decor.”

“Fair enough, fair enough.” Nie Huaisang places his stone. “You’ve done a good job with Lotus Pier, though. It’s very stylish.”

Jiang Cheng’s head is bowed over the board to consider his next move. He doesn’t lift his neck again, but his eyelashes flicker as his gaze darts up to Nie Huaisang before returning to the game. “Thank you.”

Accepting a compliment he can’t take as a backhanded insult seems to pain him. The sight of it is perversely satisfying, like biting into something tart.

“Frankly, Jiang-xiong, I don’t think you get enough credit for your artistic eye. Sure, the Lans are very cultured, but the Cloud Recesses aren’t very welcoming, are they. Sleeping there makes me feel like I’m in prison.” Jiang Cheng doesn’t acknowledge this; he still hasn’t placed his next stone, and his right hand is held in a loose fist on the table next to the board. He tightens his grip as Nie Huaisang speaks, and Nie Huaisang’s eye is drawn to the blue of his veins, which a lingering summer tan can’t hide completely. Here, Jiang Cheng’s thirty-nine years are beginning to show; young men don’t have hands like these.

“Your guest rooms are much nicer. Did you decide on the furnishings yourself? If so, I have to—”

“It’s hard to decide on a move when I can’t think,” Jiang Cheng interjects, as wrathfully as one can while the ridges of one’s ears are faintly pink.

Nie Huaisang blinks with shock, his mouth falling open, and he laughs involuntarily. Giddiness rises in him like a rush of blood to the head.

Talking at someone is only fun for so long. That’s all being a sect leader is: talking and talking to people bound by courtesy to listen to you. It’s so fucking dull. A relief, then, to face one’s equal, and no less an old friend who is inclined to interrupt you whenever you ramble. He likes it. It’s one of Jiang Cheng’s best qualities.

Their pieces make gentle clacks as they’re set in place, troops assembling across this most accommodatingly smooth field of battle. It’s Nie Huaisang’s turn, now: he surveys the situation. Da-ge would have said, Look here, Huaisang, look at the thickness of his defenses; he’s hemmed you into the corner of the board. And so Jiang Cheng has. The impenetrable line of black pieces have pushed Nie Huaisang’s white stones into a position of no return. His back is up against the place where the wood ends in a neat right-angle. Soon, it will be settled. Nie Huaisang’s luck has run out. But just as he once teased da-ge, Just think how much harder it would be if the board had hills, like in real life, the illusion fails here, too; for even as Nie Huaisang lets out a disappointed sigh, all but conceding defeat, he thinks, but in reality there are no corners, there is no board. There is always a place to move beyond the field of play, if you can only imagine it.

Nie Huaisang wrinkles his nose. “Oh, I walked into this, didn’t I.”

It was Meng Yao who got him into the habit of throwing games, but he’s kept it up ever since. The tricky thing is to determine the right point at which to fail; it’s harder than it looks, to make it believable. But no one likes to lose, and people are better company when they aren’t nursing wounded pride. Jiang Cheng, doubly so.