The child was born in autumn, like her father, so her hundredth day falls in midwinter. This is less of a concern than it might be elsewhere, because Yunmeng’s seasons are warm and lush, besides the occasional torrential rains. If the lake ever freezes, it’s only crinkled frost at the edges, where the surface meets the bank: the kind of ice that can be snapped with the press of a finger.
Wen Qing has always been diligent, and no less here than elsewhere. Yiling was never a region of particular glamour; Yunmeng is larger, more important, and its ruling sect is kept busy. Its people are, as a rule, friendly and lively. They trade extensively in fish, rice, and vegetables of all kinds. The land is warm and fertile, well-suited to growing things. She corresponds daily with town magistrates, trade captains, and the variety of smaller clans who look to Yunmeng Jiang to settle their disputes.
She has been able to avoid seeing members of the other great sects since the massacre at Heavenly Nightless City, but this could not last. Seasons change, people grow older, and in what feels like the flicker of a candle flame being blown out, her daughter has reached the age of her public debut. Wen Qing spends a week preparing a stack of invitations, and as she stamps the letters with her husband's seal, she wonders if Yu Ziyuan ever did the same, or if Jiang Fengmian handled all his own affairs.
✥
The banquet has ended, the guests have been shown to their rooms, and Wen Qing has overseen the return of her daughter to the nursery. She usually doesn’t linger here, but she’s tired, and she is sitting in one of the chairs intended for the wet-nurses when she hears the wood-on-wood murmur of a door sliding open.
A gentle, whispered voice: “Wen-furen—”
She doesn’t look away from the sleeping form in the bassinet. From the doorway, Jiang Yanli murmurs, “Forgive me. I shouldn’t disturb you.”
Wen Qing breathes in and out, purging herself of feeling, and shifts her body until she faces the door. “What is it, Jin-furen?”
There's something about the quality of Jiang Yanli’s silence. Her brother could be read by anyone who looked at him, but her wide, wet eyes are full of judgments she refuses to reveal.
“Would you mind giving me some company on the walk back to my rooms?”
Would she? She’s not sure she’s considered whether or not she wants something in some time.
Wen Qing glances once more at the squalling thing beside her, finally asleep and so swaddled in blankets it could be nothing but a pile of cloth, and thinks, I don't know what I have to give you. The cask has been emptied. I've given it all.
Walking the halls of Lotus Pier after dark with Jiang Yanli is the most pleasant interaction she’s had with anyone since their guests arrived. Her sister-in-law isn’t one to fill silence with meaningless chatter. They share silence until they reach the guest wing; a few paces out from the door of the suite she was given, Jiang Yanli murmurs, “I was curious whether you’d keep going by Wen-furen.”
“Do you disapprove?”
Jiang Yanli holds back the edge of her sleeve with one hand and pulls on the door’s handle with the other. Her face is cast in shadow from the low evening light, so her smile is only half-visible. “Not at all. You may not know, but our mother went by Yu-furen all her life.”
Something shivers down her spine, but nothing on Jiang Yanli’s face indicates she meant anything by it. She inclines her head and leaves Wen Qing in the hall, and Wen Qing makes her way back to the sect leader’s wife’s apartments alone.
She’s heard that, on the day Lotus Pier fell, Wang Lingjiao sat on the throne that still heads the great hall and gave Yu Ziyuan advice on how to run her household. To those few Jiang disciples who survived the Yunmeng Supervisory Office, Wen Qing no doubt looks much the same.
When she was a little girl, Wen Qing's father took her to the dungeons beneath Yiling. He held a torch aloft to light the way for them, and Wen Qing held the bottom of her skirt so not to trip herself as she followed him down the stairs. She was a little afraid; not of the darkness, or the iron bars on the doors of the cells, which looked like animal cages, but of the odor. As soon as they were underground, the air smelled unclean, like a festering wound. Wen Qing had seen wounds before and had a strong stomach, but she'd never been anywhere that stank as though the air itself was rotting.
He slid aside a small iron panel built into one of the cell doors at his eye-level, and placed the torch in a sconce at the wall before picking her up by the armpits and lifting her to see through the gap. She spluttered—she was nine years old—and she didn't want to look, but she didn't want to disappoint him by looking away. Wen Qing was not a coward.
Inside was a man, who she supposed was a bad man, but at that moment she didn't think that he looked like one; he looked small, and sad, and sick. She wondered if he was to be locked up here forever, or if he was awaiting punishment, and if so, what form it would take. She wondered if he had been anyone important.
Father shortly set her down and knelt to look her in the eye. He explained that the man was a cultivator, like them, who had done something awful, and he was to stay here until the elders had decided what to do with him. She nodded, unsure what she was supposed to say in reply. Maybe nothing; he placed a hand on her head, stroking over her hair, and led her back out of the dungeons into the light.
About a month later, she asked her mother why he'd taken her there. She was grinding herbs with the small mortar and pestle she'd been given for her own when she was eight and placing the powdered product into bowls for her mother. Her mother had hmmed, not looking up from her hands as she measured the powder out on a scale.
“When you’re older, you might have to decide what happens to bad people,” she’d replied, and that night, under her blankets, Wen Qing wondered what it was he did that was so awful. She hadn’t considered that cultivators could be criminals, too. Wasn’t the point of cultivation to become righteous and cleanse the world of resentment?
It was seven months from then, more or less, that the dancing fairy came alive, and Wen Qing left Yiling for Qishan with her brother, confused and clinging to her skirts. She didn’t think about the man in the Yiling cell. She rarely had reason to visit the dungeons below Heavenly Nightless City, though she knew them to be much more cavernous than those under Yiling. The handful of times she visited her uncle’s prisoners, she was called to intervene upon someone who had been interrogated too harshly but was too valuable to let die. She kept focussed on her work, and didn’t let her gaze wander around the surroundings, lest she see something she’s better off not knowing about.
✥
Wen Qing is incarcerated in that same cell below Yiling for a little less than three months. She judges this by the frequency with which she is brought water by the guards. They know she is a cultivator capable of sustaining limited inedia for short periods of time, and so they are not particularly attentive to her, but she is not one of the immortal ones who can truly live on air; they have to feed her and let her drink every so often, though she braces herself for what’s to come every time she hears the stomp of boots down the hall.
She sleeps in fitful lapses, at inconsistent times, usually with a-Ning tucked into her side. It’s two rations of water into her imprisonment when she wakes to an empty cell, with nothing more left of a-Ning than the place the dust was disturbed by his sleeping form. She doesn’t know how they managed to remove him without waking her.
When she hears footfalls coming towards her again on the other side of the heavy wooden doors, she doesn’t bother to prepare herself. She doesn’t even look up until the doors have been pulled open and she notices the unfamiliar lilt to the men’s voices.
Her mind is slow from hunger, so she only identifies their Yunmeng accents when she hears the one cultivator mutter to the other, “Shit, go get Jiang-zongzhu. I think this one’s still alive.”
Her rescuer, such as he is, stands before her today as Jiang-zongzhu, but when he sees her and blurts out, “I didn't think our paths would cross again. What did they do to you?”, Jiang Wanyin’s face is as open and nervous as when they first met at the Cloud Recesses.
She’s woozy and light-headed. Her mouth has the stale tang of dehydration. She had not been tortured in any way that shows on the body, besides the usual unpleasantness of starvation, but the way Jiang Wanyin looks at her, one would think she’d been scarred horribly. Has he never seen a refugee before? Hasn’t he been fighting a war? Surely even Yunmeng has vagrants.
They exchange clipped inquiries. He’s in search of Wei Wuxian; she hasn’t seen him since he limped down the mountain, and she can tell it frustrates Jiang Wanyin when she can offer him no leads.
She wonders whether he’s jealous of the easy treatment she's earned herself, considering the state in which Jiang Wanyin was brought to Yiling the last time he was in the city. He interrogates her with a furrowed brow, brusque but clearly confused and concerned. Is he surprised to find her here? Surely he wasn’t so naive as to think the Qishan Wen would spare her if she was found out to have aided him. Shouldn’t he, of all people, know their capability for punishment?
"You've saved me before. If you are willing to leave the Wen Clan, I..."
She turns over his words, her mind slow with starvation and disuse. "A-Ning. They took A-Ning away. He's still in Qishan."
It’s as if he hasn’t heard her. "Wen Qing. Leave the Wen Clan. I... I can—"
Her temper rises, quicker than she’s prepared for. She’s had no target for her anger for three long months, and how can he fail to understand? He has a brother, too.
“Jiang-zongzhu, what can you do? I'm still a member of the Wen Clan. I have a little brother and a family to take care of. You can protect me, but can you protect the lives of all my family members?”
Does he think she’d go with him without bringing her people? Without binding them to her in a way that matters? When he turns to her, his eyes are lost and desperate, like a little boy. She is starving and dirty, no doubt smelling rank as a pig. What does he see, when he sees her? He desired her once, and apparently still does, but surely any moment now he’ll see sense. He could kill her on the spot with the golden core she gave him and be held up as a hero for it. Yet, she pities him. Maybe if her cousin had waited a few years, Jiang Wanyin would have been ready for this burden. She hasn't seen him since he left the mountain, but he was not ready then, and he isn't now.
“What if—” He pauses, fighting with himself as to whether or not he ought to speak what's on his mind, and it’s only then she takes the possibility seriously that he might do something rash.
“What is it, Jiang-zongzhu?”
“If I—if we—” He summons some of his battlefield mettle, and looks her in the eye. “Come back to Lotus Pier. I could protect your brother, when they find him.”
“I have nothing to offer you. There will be no dowry, or gifts.”
“I don’t care about that.”
“My uncle will not give his consent. People will say you forced me. They may question your honour.”
Why is she doing her best to talk him out of it? Surely she should seize this opportunity by two hands, while she still has it. Nothing more fortunate is likely to come her way, for her or for the rest of them—even if the Qishan Wen were to recover and crush the rebellion for good, she was put here by her own cousin. But she doesn’t want him to rescind the offer, either; now that she’s back on her feet, she feels a nearly painful pricking sensation of hope in her chest at the thought of seeing sky and grass again. She wants him to know, she supposes, where they stand with one another. It's better for both of them if he’s aware that this is an act of desperation, lest she be accused later of lying or leading him on.
He frowns. The prospect of his honour being called into question has distracted him from his floundering, boyish embarrassment, as she thought it might. “You were locked up. I rescued you.”
“If you’re serious, I’ll accept. But I want to know you've considered the consequences. You're a sect leader. You could make an offer for any other woman.”
“I don't want—”
She blinks at him, slowly, and watches the discomfort and guilt play out on his face. Wen Qing was not at Lotus Pier in the aftermath, but a-Ning had told her, in his halting, tender way, how it had looked. The stench of blood and smoke and wine. The way that he hadn't been sure, at first, that Jiang Wanyin was alive when he found him.
“Alright.”
It takes a moment to register for him; she realizes, watching his expression become washed over with confusion and shock, that he didn’t expect her to accept, and this provokes more curiosity in her than anything he’s yet done. She respects a willingness to take risks, despite bad odds.
✥
They exit the dungeon together, she no longer in chains but still following behind him, still flanked by his men; no one who watches could mistake her for being free. She wonders how much the men who'd accompanied Jiang Wanyin into her cell had overheard, once he banished them back into the hall.
Lan Wangji stands outside, a beacon of untainted white amidst the scene of destruction and death that has been made of the courtyard where she spent her childhood. Corpses sprawl across garden beds that have nourished healing herbs for generations. The living men dressed in Jiang colours, assemble quickly as they near. Perhaps it's natural for the disciples around them to look to their leader, but she feels the weight of their eyes. The Second Jade of Lan watches their approach impassively, his eyes catching on her for a moment before sliding back to Jiang Wanyin. She is dirty and visibly starved, and perhaps it would be wise to appear meek, reducing the chance anyone could see her, or any of her family, wherever they are, as a threat. She can’t make herself do it; she has never liked to make herself small, and no amount of cowering will change the fact that she looks no different from the Wens who ravaged these people’s homes.
Wen Qing turns up her chin and keeps her eyes fixed on some indeterminate point far off in her field of vision. Let Lan Wangji think what he will of her. She has seen him, in her position, brought low before those who hate them; she knows that he did the same.
During the Sunshot Campaign, all the Jiang cousins of any note died at the hands of Wen Qing’s own kin. Wen Qing ought to be glad that no one remains with the authority to throw her out on the street, but if there were only someone to whom she could reasonably abdicate, she would leave willingly. She has skills. She could take her child and go as far as it takes to reach a place no one knows her family name. But there is no one, and so Wen Qing has been allowed to remain mistress of Lotus Pier, despite having no father, brother, husband or son left alive to fix her to the place. Her daughter is, in a sense, the last living Jiang; her aunt belongs to a different family, now, the only living member of the family who hasn’t married into another sect.
Wen Qing didn’t expect Jiang Yanli to linger any longer than the celebration. Jiang Yanli has a child of her own, after all, waiting for her at Carp Tower. Wen Qing would have been exhausted at the prospect of having to continue to entertain any other guests, but Jiang Yanli has conducted herself as unobtrusively as if this were her own home, which, of course, it is.
She expected Jiang Yanli to fuss, to flutter around her with a surfeit of attention until Wen Qing is able to satisfy her with repeated insistence that she’s alright. But Jiang Yanli has stayed at arm’s length since returning to Lotus Pier, for the most part; the steadiest reminder of her constant presence is the hot meals left without fanfare on the desk Wen Qing has set up, for now, in her quarters.
They’re her own quarters, now, though she never spent enough time at Lotus Pier while Jiang Wanyin was alive for them to feel like her own. Most of the original furnishings were destroyed or taken away during the Wen occupation of Lotus Pier and its subsequent reclamation by Yunmeng Jiang—or so she’s heard—and she herself bought the desk newly-made the previous year. Even so, in Wen Qing’s mind she works at Yu-furen’s desk, just as she sleeps in Yu-furen’s bed and eats at Yu-furen’s table.
She can go almost a full day without seeing Yu-furen’s daughter unless Wen Qing looks for her. As far as Wen Qing can tell, Jiang Yanli has spent her days back at Lotus Pier cooking, though they have a full kitchen staff, tending to her niece, though they have wet nurses, and whiling away the rest of her time in sitting rooms and gardens, tending to her needlework, like any well-tempered gentlewoman.
On the fourth day after the celebration concluded, Wen Qing invites Jiang Yanli to take dinner with her in her own rooms, and forbids her from cooking.
It is an unfittingly sombre day; evening falls prematurely in the afternoon when storm clouds roll in from the west, blotting out the sun and turning the surface of the lake black and reflectionless. “It might rain tonight,” Jiang Yanli offers, as she spoons out each of their portions of rice. It’s the kind of self-evident observation that would annoy Wen Qing if made by someone else, but Jiang Yanli isn’t telling Wen Qing anything new. She’s asking how Wen Qing feels about this. It's a habit of hers, Wen Qing has come to know; sometimes it's spoken and other times silent, but Jiang Yanli makes it her business to discern whether those around her are happy, and, if not, whether it's something she has the power to fix.
“Yes, I think so.”
“I was glad to see so many people at the celebration, but I’m grateful it’s over.” The corner of Jiang Yanli’s eyes crinkle, as though this were a scandalous admission. “I think all the attention was making her fussy.”
Wen Qing nods; her sister-in-law has good instincts about these things. She’s better with the baby than Wen Qing is, by far. Wen Qing is comfortable around children, but Jiang Yanli is warm. She holds her niece at every opportunity; Wen Qing has watched her through open doorways as Jiang Yanli carries a-Xia around the courtyards, murmuring to her and occasionally picking reeds or strands of grasses around which she may clench her tiny fist. What does she tell her? Wen Qing wouldn’t presume to ask.
Wen Qing visits her daughter each day at dawn and dusk, and each time she walks to the nursery with a dull, irrational conviction that she’ll open the door to see an empty cradle, like she’s been stolen away in the night. Each time she’s proven wrong, but the sight of her, sleeping or crying or, rarely, awake and quiet and blinking around the room, isn’t enough to settle her. She’s never able to suppress the need to pick her up to feel her uncanny lightness, or, if she’s resting, brushing the precociously thick mass of hair into order with her fingertips.
Despite that, Wen Qing rarely speaks to her child. She doesn’t know what she would say.
What kind of household is a widow and a little girl? A sad story, for others to look at and count their luck. Or, from another angle, a lame animal hobbling through a field while eagles watch from a tree. And what a tragedy to lose such a man: so young, and brave, and capable of anything. How do you grieve someone like that? They saved each other, shared a life for a little while, whatever kind of life it was, and now—what’s left of it? He was young. He made her feel old, but that was nothing new.
What, she wonders, will she be able to one day tell her daughter about her father without lying? Perhaps she won’t need to. Whatever doubts anyone may have had about the young Jiang-zongzhu while he was alive, his death has made him a hero: the sect leader who gave his life to save the world from his villainous brother.
Her daughter may come to resent her, brittle and alive, compared to the shadow of a hallowed father she never met. She will never have to grapple with his temper, his naivete, or the way that he always looked around for approval so clearly anyone could smell it on him, like wolves scenting the blood of a wounded calf.
She may have that. We are all entitled to nurse our private bitternesses. But Wen Qing will not lie to her; she’s spent enough time holding Wei Wuxian’s secret inside of herself. There’s no room for anything else.
Surely there are things she can speak well of. He survived a great deal of hardship. He loved his elder sister very much.
Dishes, emptied of food, are exchanged for tea. Wen Qing insists on pouring this time; the readiness with which Jiang Yanli serves others is almost unnerving. As she reaches for the pot, the light catches on Zidian’s surface, and she realizes that Jiang Yanli’s eyes have been tracking her wrist all evening.
“I’ll need to return to Carp Tower soon. I’ve already been gone a little too long, I shouldn’t make them worry.”
“I understand.”
“Would I be able to ask a favour of you before I leave, Wen-furen? Only if it’s no trouble.”
“I’m sure it won’t be.”
“Would you use your needles on me? I haven’t been in the best of health this past year.”
No need to ask why. She remembers Jiang Yanli as a sickly person, ever since they first met at the Cloud Recesses, but, though Jiang Yanli was never tortured or imprisoned, the body cannot bear sorrow forever. When Wen Qing lays down at night, every year she’s lived weighs like a bull standing on her back.
“Of course.” She cups her tea between her palms, feeling its warmth, and adds, “Though you may need to come back in the future for regular treatment, if you want to see consistent results.”
She wakes in a grey-furnished room, quiet and tidy, and immediately distrusts the stillness. Her first thought is of a-Ning: she can't see him and doesn’t know where he is, and the pit of her stomach ices over before he remembers she hasn't seen him in months, and not knowing where he is is nothing new. It settles into a familiar, queasy dread, though it's not enough to quell her appetite; her body is malnourished and fighting to regain what was lost.
The door opens while she’s lost in thought, and she fails to fully conceal her flinch. The visitor is only Jiang Yanli, returning from wherever she was. She’s dressed like a peasant; they managed to find Wen Qing clothes somewhat befitting a gentry woman, so there must be some drapers in Qinghe who still have finer cloth, but the homespun weave suits Jiang Yanli better than one might expect. On some well-to-do young mistresses, it would look like a costume, but Jiang Yanli carries herself with a sincere lack of vanity.
“Ah, Wen-guniang. I’m sorry to disturb you.”
“You haven’t.”
Jiang Yanli steps closer, all gentle concern. Wen Qing doubts this is an act; it’s been this way every time Wen Qing has been around her. “Are you feeling alright?”
She nods, twice, and puts on a smile she hopes is reassuring.
Upon their arrival at the Unclean Realms, Wen Qing was put up in chambers adjacent to Jiang Yanli's, ostensibly to keep her company, though she suspects in part to ensure no one breaks in after drinking too much, eager to kill another Wen. She has passed through Qinghe only once before the banquet following Wei Wuxian's return. It's rather quaint in comparison to Qishan, but larger than Yiling, and it's packed to the rafters with cultivators now, nearly all of whom look at her with undisguised malice whenever she leaves her rooms. She’s been permitted implicit freedom of movement, but she knows that straying too far from Yunmeng Jiang disciples while she’s here would not be wise, so for the last few days, she has made rounds among the wounded with Jiang Yanli. Everywhere she walks she draws the eye of people who, at best, see her as Sect Leader Jiang’s spoils of war, but with the kinds of losses they’ve taken, they can’t afford to turn away a competent doctor.
Wen Qing walks with Jiang Yanli to the banquet held that evening in Wei Wuxian’s honour, and is seated by her side. She avoids bearing the brunt of the suspicious gazes, however; the food has hardly been served before Wei Wuxian is taken to task for his lack of a sword, and he leaves the hall, liquor in hand, not long after. Lan Wangji’s seat remains suspiciously empty.
She hasn’t spoken to Wei Wuxian alone since his return, and each time she’s seen him at Qinghe he’s had the kind of smile on his face that makes you want to wipe it off. He’s always been arrogant, but this has no warmth to it. As soon as she can find an acceptable opportunity to leave the banquet, Wen Qing goes looking for him. She finds him leaning against a pillar in a darkened courtyard, his arms folded across his chest and his gaze on the murky night sky.
He looks to the side, and upon seeing her Wei Wuxian gives her a salute which, to his credit, is more polite than anything else he’s said or done all evening.
“Wen-guniang.” He’s skinnier and more exhausted than even he looked at the Yiling Supervisory Office, but he does offer her a thin, crooked smile, which makes him look like himself. “Congratulations on your engagement.”
His tone is odd. She nods, and he looks back out into the garden.
She’d wanted to speak with him, but now that she’s here she doesn’t know what she wanted to say. The words that eventually come out of her mouth are the ones she’s been holding within her since she left the dungeon; she doesn’t so much decide to speak them aloud as have them burst forth. “Have you heard anything, when you were—” He blinks at her, slow and canny, waiting to see what she says— “away, about where they might be keeping a-Ning?”
Wei Wuxian huffs, something between a snort and a laugh, and drops his gaze before shaking his head.
She nods and folds her hands together within her sleeves. Out of doors, Qinghe is chilly in the evening.
“I’ll help you find him, if he’s still lost after all this.” He laughs, a little more convincingly, this time, and looks back at her. “It’s only fair, right? I owe you one.”
Her blood flares with dull irritation, and she turns to face him with her gravest face, the one forged as much through decades of sisterly scolding as facing the members of her uncle’s court. “Do you really think you'll be able to hide it from him much longer?”
Wei Wuxian gives her a sideways smile, but doesn’t meet her eyes. “He doesn't suspect anything. Why would he?”
His hand keeps straying to the flute on his hip before he remembers what his body's doing and pulls it back, as if he's clinging to it out of habit rather than conscious intent.
“Whatever you’ve been using to—”
He interrupts her, which takes her aback; she can’t remember him doing that to her before. “Don’t say ‘I told you so,’ Wen-guniang.”
He's drunk, she realizes, drunker than she's ever seen him. He had a reputation at the Cloud Recesses, of course, but that was just youthful mischief, or so she'd thought. This is belligerent and ugly. There’s a doctor’s instinct she’s developed that tells her when it’s no longer worth expending much energy on a patient who doesn’t want to recover. She feels it now.
“You know what you’re doing, I suppose.”
“As do you, right?”
To that, she has no reply, and after they have been standing in silence for long moments, he salutes her once more—she thinks this is only half-sardonic—and pushes himself off his pillar to wander away into the night. She stays in the garden, watching his back as his black-clothed figure fades into the night.
It’s not long before she can hear footsteps coming toward her again. She doesn't turn to look; she doubts anyone who would come to harm her would approach so tentatively. When the footfalls stop, she hears an unconvincingly-casual voice, still not quite familiar to her; it takes her a moment to place him.
“Wen-guniang,” Jiang Wanyin begins, and she feels a mixture of exhaustion and idle curiosity before she drops her gaze from the moon to look in his direction.
“Jiang-zongzhu.”
“Have you seen Wei Wuxian?”
She nods. “I spoke with him earlier. I'm not sure where he went.”
He curses under his breath, too low for her to make out the words—not that it matters, the intent is clear enough—and curls his hands into fists. However, he doesn't turn on his heel and continue his search; he remains where he is, watching her under the moonlight, looking like he wants to say something else. She waits a moment longer, giving him an opportunity, should he choose to take it; when he doesn't, she takes a half-step closer to him.
“Is something on your mind?”
He looks like he's steeling himself, and she can almost feel the release of tension through his body when he says, “There's something I meant to give you.”
Jiang Wanyin reaches into his robes, withdraws a small bundle of cloth, and extends it out to her. After letting a moment elapse in her surprise, Wen Qing takes it from him. She unwraps the silk to reveal an engraved wooden comb, neither lavish nor cheap. When she takes it from him, his hand remains in the air between them, hovering, before he withdraws it and lays both his hands at his sides with visible effort.
In the dim light, he might be blushing. It could be a residual glow from the banquet, though she didn't see him drink any more than the requisite toasts.
“Where did you get this?”
“In Caiyi Town,” he says, and his face colours further. That long ago? It shouldn’t surprise her, yet it does.
She raises her eyebrows, and he blinks helplessly. “I meant to give it to you before, but there was never a good time.”
It's a gentlemanly thing to do, she thinks, to try and communicate feelings he doesn't know how to speak, but in this case it strikes her more as boyish than artful. It's not as though she didn't have an idea of the way he felt, before they entered into all of this, but things were different at the Cloud Recesses, when she had no reason to believe their paths would continue to cross. Just like he did in the dungeon cell, he looks at her as if she could run him through, if she chose to.
She absently remembers that in a few months she will be this man's wife, with all the expectations that follow. When she looks at him she feels neither desire nor repulsion. He's simply a headstrong young man with a way of clenching his jaw that lays bare every thought in his head.
She lacks the temperament to be a truly good wife; she knows herself well enough to know this. Oh, she can manage a household, and do her duty. She will not talk back disrespectfully. She will raise any children under her care. All this she’s already proven herself capable of. But if her heart is capable of loving a man, of feeling alert to his touch and longing for his attention, it's given her no indication thus far.
“It's not too late to call it off, you know,” she replies evenly. She holds the comb in her hand, bundled in the scarf he’d wrapped it in for safekeeping, but doesn't put it away, yet. If he wants to take it back, he has only to reach out and pluck it out of her palm.
His brow furrows. “Is that what you want?”
“If you're having second thoughts, I understand.”
“I gave you my word,” he says, and he looks earnest, though a little frustrated; she's pricked at his pride, she suspects.
He looks at his elder sister like she's the source of everything good in the world. It's not so different from how he looks at Wen Qing: there's more blushing and flusteredness involved, but his eyes are always wide, like he's beseeching her for guidance.
The idea of being tied to him—it could be worse, she knows. In her heart, she's always prepared herself for the prospect of worse, if ever her uncle decided she was more use to him as a tool of marriage alliance than a physician. But it had never happened; he needed her. She's spent years unsure whether or not she ought to be grateful for that.
Jiang Wanyin is prideful enough not to let others disrespect her in front of him. He doesn't have a reputation for running after other women, or any other vices she can think of. But the rest of their lives is a very long time, and a cold, hard weight calcifies in the pit of her stomach as she looks into his uncertain eyes and thinks about the golden core resting in his body. If he finds out—and for how long can it remain concealed, when Wei Wuxian is already drawing attention to himself? She doesn't know what to expect from Jiang Wanyin when he discovers the truth. She's seen him in despair before and isn't eager to see it again, and for her own part, Wen Qing is in no position to easily weather accusations of lies, or betrayal.
He must be aware of what people are saying. Since Wei Wuxian’s return, new worries seem to be setting in for Jiang Wanyin at just as fast a pace as relief. Is he beginning to understand that, though Wen Qing may have put herself on the line, he has risked just as much? She had little to lose and nowhere else to go but begging on the streets or into a prison of another kind. He has a reputation to maintain, a face to save. Her name, among the people on this side of the war, is enough to condemn her.
There are five types of girls unsuitable for marriage: those from a rebellious family, those from a dissolute family, those whose families have produced criminals for more than one generation, those from a family of lepers, and those whose male elders are all dead. No Wen that she knows of is leprous, but other than that, she ought to be grateful that Jiang Wanyin has no parents to consult and enough clumsy desire to make commitments he may come to regret.
Her fingers close around the comb in her palm. She wraps the little parcel in the cloth it came in and tucks it away in her robes. He smiles a little, stuttering and irrepressible. He's scared too, she realizes. It's small comfort, but comfort all the same.
“Wen-furen.” Lan Xichen pours tea, first for her, and then for himself; she is generally immune to beautiful men, but his movements are so graceful it’s difficult to take her eyes away from his hands. “Do you still prefer to be addressed that way?”
“It’s fine.”
“You’re entitled to call yourself Jiang-zongzhu. The sect will look to you for leadership for a while yet.”
“Thank you, Zewu-jun.” She recognizes his support for the boon it is, but the idea of insisting that the disciples back at Lotus Pier refer to her as their sect leader is ludicrous. When they say “the old sect leader,” they mean Jiang Fengmian; when they say “the young sect leader,” it’s Jiang Wanyin they speak of. To her face, they call her Wen-furen. When she isn’t around, she doesn’t know the names they use, though she can guess.
“I was glad to see your daughter looking so healthy.” Lan Xichen attended the hundred days celebration, leaving Lan Qiren in Gusu to look after sect business temporarily. Lan Wangji did not come to Lotus Pier, and there was no mention of him within her earshot at any point, but he hasn’t been seen outside the Cloud Recesses in over a year, so she doesn’t take it as a slight. “She takes after both of her parents strongly.”
Wen Qing hears the true message: the Gusu Lan hold no credence to the whispered rumours that the child is a bastard, conceived after Jiang Wanyin’s death in an attempt to seize control of Yunmeng Jiang, or just to save her own skin, depending on how power-hungry the speaker believes Wen Qing to be. Nonetheless, his words produce an echo of the uneasy recognition that strikes her whenever she looks at her daughter. How strange it is to see something that came out of your own body that has traces of another person in its face.
Four months have passed since Jiang Yanli returned to Carp Tower, and it is the first time since Wen Qing’s child was born that she’s left Yunmeng for more than a few hours at a time. Yunmeng Jiang has business with Gusu Lan on the subject of lumber, and Wen Qing has business with Lan Xichen on the subject of politics.
She knows better than to try appealing to Nie Mingjue; he despises all Wens for what her uncle did to his father, and rumour also tells that his temperament has worsened since the end of the war. Lan Xichen is her only hope.
“Lan-zongzhu, may I ask your honest opinion?” Lan Xichen nods, and she sits a little straighter. “What do you think it would take Yunmeng Jiang to buy Jiang Yanli back from Jin-zongzhu?”
No visible shock plays out across his perfect face, but he takes his time to sip thoughtfully before replying. “I’ll admit, I didn’t expect this. I would have to give it some thought. May I ask why Wen-furen wishes to do so?”
“She hasn't been well. It would do her good to return to a familiar place.”
“You’re a very thoughtful sister-in-law.” He pours them both a little more tea. “But I have no authority over anything within the Lanling Jin sect. I'm unsure what advice I can give you.”
“I've heard that the rebuilding of the Cloud Recesses was financed by the Lanling Jin. Is that true?”
At this, he looks taken aback; after a moment, he nods. “A-Yao has been extremely generous.”
“Surely he has some sway, now that he is the heir.”
“His position is precarious. He cannot afford to displease his father.”
“Yunmeng Jiang was also razed by my uncle's men.” She has not referred to Wen Ruohan as her uncle since he died. She is unsure why she does so now. “We have had to rebuild without such support.”
Jiang Wanyin would have been too proud to accept any without something given in exchange, even were it offered, but she leaves this unsaid. Rather than receive gifts from Lanling Jin, Yunmeng Jiang paid out. She has seen the records in the study detailing the cost of Jiang Yanli's dowry: jewelry and lavish clothing, wooden chests full of porcelain. Wen Qing remembers the lengths to which Jiang Wanyin went to find the funds to supply his sister’s new family properly, to ensure no one could accuse him of giving her away for cheap.
Lan Xichen inclines his head respectfully. “Yunmeng Jiang has proven itself strong and resourceful.”
“If Jiang Yanli were to return to Lotus Pier, I believe it would secure stability until a-Xia comes of age.”
“And what of her son?”
“Compromises can be made.”
“Would she be content with a compromise?”
Wen Qing does not respond immediately, and the honourable Zewu-jun offers her one of his serene smiles which could mean anything or nothing. Did he teach Lianfang-zun to smile like that, or was it the other way around? Whichever the case, she has seen the look before.
Before she can answer, Lan Xichen asks her another question. “What would you do with yourself then?”
“Try and live quietly.”
He laughs, and sets his cup down. “Wen-furen, how much do you know about my parents' marriage?”
She blinks. “Qingheng-jun spent most of his time in seclusion. I don't know anything else.”
“It’s a long and complicated story, so I won’t trouble you with it. I only brought it up because I can understand how you feel about the position within which you've been placed. But I would caution you, Wen-furen, about the temptation to recede from the world.”
Look what happened to your brother and Wei Wuxian, he doesn’t say, but it rings out in the space between them.
“Was your mother good to you, Zewu-jun?”
He looks down to his finger, tracing the rim of his cup. Her eyes are pulled to it as well, mesmerized by the soundless elegance of his movements, so she can’t see his face when he speaks. “I remember that she was kind. But I’m not sure that being kind is all that’s required to be good.”
In the end, the Sunshot Campaign is decided not by any of its generals, but by two men of dubious repute. Wen Ruohan is slain on the steps of the Hellfire Palace by a little-known cultivator shortly revealed to be one of Jin Guangshan's illegitimate sons. Before his assassination, the tide of the battle for Heavenly Nightless City was turned by Wei Wuxian, revealed to be in position of a mysterious Stygian Tiger Seal, which allowed him to combat Wen Ruohan's puppets.
The conditions of the wartime agreement are thus: the surviving Yiling Wen sect members are to be indentured by the Yunmeng Jiang sect as reparations for the massacre at Lotus Pier, with the stipulation that those suspected of having knowledge of the whereabouts of the Yin Iron, or having aided in the war effort on behalf of the Qishan Wen, may be summoned to Lanling for questioning at any time by the newly-appointed Chief Cultivator. The remnants of the Qishan Wen are to be kept under observation by the Chief Cultivator until such time as they are proven not to pose a threat to the other sects. All of Wen Ruohan's direct bloodline have been extinguished, with the exception of his niece, who will wed Jiang Wanyin as a show of compliance. Her brother and other immediate family members are still unaccounted for, but they are all old, young, or sickly enough to be generally accepted not to pose a threat.
Public reception to these terms is mixed: some call the deal too lenient towards the Wen survivors, while others question why Yunmeng Jiang and Lanling Jin should receive the bulk of the forced labour when the Cloud Recesses was also put to the torch and the Unclean Realms occupied by the Wen-dogs for almost a year. Still others point to the rumours that Jiang Wanyin found his new wife-to-be half-dead in a Wen torture chamber: how honourable could such a marriage be?
The skies at dawn on Wen Qing’s wedding day are pink as a new scar. The surface of the lake ripples under a harsh wind; it is the first time she’d seen the waters surrounding Lotus Pier less than still, and her sister-to-be assures her that this level of squalling is unusual. No one says anything about inauspicious omens. They are already thinking it clearly enough.
The halls of Lotus Pier, still under reconstruction, are draped in red cloth for the occasion. During the formal, public engagement process, Yunmeng Jiang had provided the bridal gifts—lotus pods, farm equipment, ceramics—to be given back to them on Wen Qing's behalf, to preserve face, but surely no outside onlookers were fooled; what would Wen Qing have to give? If it weren’t for Yunmeng Jiang’s generosity, she’d be shivering in a work camp somewhere outside of Lanling.
The biggest trouble, in the handful of days before the ceremony, was how to find the appropriate level of elaborate furnishings to receive high-ranking guests. They were, after all, at war until recently, and Yunmeng was not quite back to its prior state, for all Jiang Wanyin’s efforts. Two days before the wedding, Wei Wuxian and Jiang Wanyin got into a heated argument—the heatedness was one-sided, while Wei Wuxian was sullen and evasive—over Wei Wuxian's erratic hours. He'd taken to stumbling into the practice yard past midday, if he surfaced from his rooms at all.
She had wondered if her dread would give way to relief the closer she got to the day, but it remains, even in the morning when she’s dressed in the finest clothes she’s ever worn, her face made up, her hair done up elaborately. She’s not afraid, exactly. What’s to come is nothing she should be unprepared for. She’s not some sheltered girl who’s never left her family’s village. Her husband-to-be is handsome, she supposes, and more to the point respected, wealthy and powerful. She ought to be counting her blessings and praising heaven with every breath; in the eyes of the rest of the world, she ought to be rotting in a mass grave. Compared to that, how bad could it be to become a sect leader’s wife, even if people speak of her as if she’s hardly better than Wang Lingjiao?
For the ceremony, the survivors and new recruits of Yunmeng Jiang congregate in full force. For her part, there are a handful of the Yiling Wen that they have so far managed to locate, dressed in the best garments peasants in exile can possess; they hang back at the furthest edges of the halls, trying not to attract any more attention.
He’s solemn during the tea ceremony, but Jiang Wanyin smiles during the feast, at first in small glimpses, and then deeper, more free as the evening goes on and he receives toasts in his honour. He looks sweet and very young, and manages not to let stress overtake him completely even when Wei Wuxian begins to speak agitatedly with another guest in a situation that Jiang Yanli thankfully defuses before it can disrupt the proceedings.
She can't say whether or not she wishes a-Ning were here. He might worry for her, and she doesn't think she could take the sight of him sad on her behalf.
The day rushes past her, the colours bleeding together. By the time they find themselves in the bridal chamber, she feels nothing but a sombre sense of purpose, and would like to get over with the inevitable.
After the door closes behind them, Jiang Wanyin stands motionless in the middle of the room, looking stricken.
“If—I—Wen-guniang—”
She sits on the edge of the bed. Blinks.
“Jiang-zongzhu?”
When she extends her hand to him, after a moment, he doesn’t move to take it. He can’t suppress the visible tension in his body; he isn't far from wringing his hands.
How old is he? She realizes she doesn't know. Younger than Wei Wuxian, older than a-Ning. A sect leader, all the same. Nie Mingjue led Qinghe Nie at fifteen. In name, she led the Yiling Wen at fourteen, though she was living in Heavenly Nightless City by that time. Jiang Wanyin is a man, though a young one, and he will adjust. He must.
“You don't need to call me that.”
“Husband, then.”
A frustrated flare of his nostrils; with her or himself?
She cannot claim to be comfortable with this. She thought herself beyond nervousness about something so mundane; she hasn’t thought of herself as a girl since the Dancing Fairy came to life and rendered her a-Ning’s only family, but she is surprised to find herself feeling uncertain, here.
It’s not such a terrible task, she reminds herself. The two of them came close to a brawl in that wine shop, and she had come away tingling from the feeling of his body pressed against her own. There must be something there she can work with. She has not touched another person like that, feeling the surge of animal force, in a very long time. Under Jiang Wanyin’s uncertain gaze, her stomach curls with unease.
He marshals his courage. “We don't have to—do anything. We can just sleep. If you'd rather.”
He’s so uncomfortable he looks like he might prefer that option himself. She almost wishes he was straightforward about it, instead of this hemming and hawing, wanting her enough to make her aware of it but not enough to reach out and take what he wants. If he did, she would know what she's in for, and would be able to predict him. It would be easier, in some ways, if she could hate him.
"We can't avoid it forever," she replies, attempting some form of gentleness. I don't want to give anyone basis to question my legitimacy, she thinks, and more harshly, I don't want you to be able to dismiss this and claim it was only ever a show, should you change your mind.
She made this gamble before the war had even ended; she can’t come this far without paying for what she’s purchased. She’s been through much worse to survive. She stood by and watched as her uncle’s puppets tore living men into shreds; she slept on cold stone floors in the cells below her father’s own ancestral home and had common guards tell her to kowtow for a handful of stale bread.
Jiang Wanyin’s brow creases as he looks over her, his fingers opening and clenching in the fabric of his robe by his sides. She can’t stand it any longer: she reaches up with a steady hand and pulls the veil away from her own face.
“Come here,” she says, the gentleness gone, and pats the sheet by her side. At last, he gives in, kneeling on the bed, tipping her towards him slightly with the shift in weight.
In the end, it’s not so complicated. As layers are shed, she can see the remaining scars from Wen Chao’s whipping on his chest and back. She can feel the energy of the golden core inside him flow through his meridians, steady as a heartbeat. Though healed enough to hardly be visible, she knows the wound is there; she could touch it, trace her hands over it, if she chose. No doctor can undo an injury, only attempt to repair it.
He moves like he’s afraid: of his own body, of his desire, of her. Back then, on the mountain, she held him down as he thrashed. The sedative did its job, but his body had still reacted with instinctive flinches. She hopes he has no recollection of the feeling of Baoshan Sanren's hands, the scent of her hair, or the timbre of her voice when she’d spoken, low and confident, as Wen Qing imagined an immortal would.