Redwood and Lotus Seeds

She kept the comb. She made him leave without her—turned away from him and listened to his heavy footfalls going up the dungeon stairs, and then counted one hundred breaths before she even lifted her gaze from the filthy floor—but she kept the comb.

She folded it back into its blue-and-white silk wrapper and tucked it into her sleeve. By the time she'd recovered her sword Zizhen from the chest where it had been locked, the keys still slippery with the blood of the guard who'd carried them inside his collar, Jiang zongzhu and his disciples were nowhere to be seen. That was good. It meant she didn't have to conceal her horror at the gallery of death that the Supervisory Office and its courtyard had become. Wen Qing barely had the strength to keep herself up and moving, let alone keep up the mask of professionalism that hid her dangerous emotions—which was to say, all of them.

Here was a body in Wen red and black, its face purple from strangulation, the cords of its own helmet tightly wound around its throat. Here was a corpse half in and half out of a raised pool, which had been used to grow lotuses until the Wen sun had risen over Yunmeng. Black hair twisted on the water surface in place of broad green leaves. Here were bodies—no, they were men and women she had known, who had treated her with the respect due to the great physician even after her trespasses against Wen Ruohan had been exposed. Their faces could have come out of the pages of one of her manuals of remedies for poisoning.

Like the guards in the dungeon, each of these people had died in a different way when the flute music and the roils of resentful energy had taken over the supervisory office. Only Wen Qing had been spared, huddling in the corner with her face turned away. She'd wondered if—she'd thought perhaps she recognised—but no, Jiang zongzhu had held Wei Wuxian's sword and told her that he didn't know where his shixiong was.

She didn't have the time to think about his offer, or how quickly he'd retreated when she told him what she'd need to take it up. She didn't have the energy to waste on imagining what might have happened, if Jiang Wanyin had not backed down. Once she was outside the gate, Wen Qing drew Zizhen and took up a shaky stance on it, facing towards Qishan. If she made it there before the news arrived any other way, perhaps her uncle would take mercy on her. Perhaps she would be able to take care of A-Ning still.

"Wei Wuxian!" Jiang Cheng was running as soon as he hit the dusty ground, Sandu following him and sheathing itself with barely a thought from him. He wasn't being quiet or subtle at all, but his shixiong didn't turn, didn't even acknowledge him. Wei Wuxian's shoulders were tense under his usual dramatic black silk, and the knuckles stood out on the hand that gripped Chenqing.

"Wei Wuxian," he repeated, halting at his side and adding the bite of authority he hated to use on his shixiong, without which he might not answer at all.

They stood on the edge of a steep bluff over a trail, dry soil barely held together by the dead roots of wild grass. Off to one side, slowly settling clouds of dust marked where the caravan of Wen prisoners had disappeared. When Wei Wuxian turned to face him, his hair was tangled from the squalling wind Jiang Cheng had seen from afar. There was a light in his eyes that Jiang Cheng would have stepped back from, before all the battles they'd fought and won together. He swallowed anyway, mouth suddenly dry.

"Are you here to scold me for using resentful energy against our allies, zongzhu?" Wei Wuxian asked, the challenge harsh in his voice. Black smoke still rilled off the flute in his hand.

Jiang Cheng ignored it. "You saw the prisoners go past?"

"Fifty or so, with that lout Jin Zixun leading them," he snarled.

"Did you recognise any of them?"

He couldn't keep the strain out of his voice. Wei Wuxian finally seemed to realise that Jiang Cheng wasn't here for the argument he was trying to have; his eyes cleared slightly, and refocussed on his sect leader's face.

"You're still looking for her, Jiang Cheng?" he asked, more softly than he spoke to anyone but a-jie, these days. A charge that Jiang Cheng hadn't consciously noticed went out of the air—whether it had come from Zidian or Chenqing, he wasn't sure.

Jiang Cheng dropped his gaze, looked out over the sun-scorched hills to cover it up. "I haven't found her yet, so..."

"Wen daifu is stronger than she looks," his shixiong told him. "And every bit as clever as she seems. She'll be all right."

"If she's got caught up in trouble, trying to protect Wen Qionglin," he started, not quite able to finish the sentence. "There's the rest of her branch of the clan, too. She wouldn't abandon them, would she?"

Wei Wuxian merely grunted. Apparently even he couldn't come up with a retort to Jiang Cheng's fears.

He had nothing left to say, unless he wanted to reprimand his right-hand man after all, and if he started then when would he ever stop? Still, he didn't leave. The two of them looked out at the ugly landscape in silence, until Wei Wuxian broke it.

"How big was the Wen sect before the Sunshot Campaign, would you say?" he asked idly.

"The largest of all the Great Sects," Jiang Cheng replied. "Hundreds—thousands, if you count the outer disciples. Just look at the size of Nightless City."

"Does it seem to you as if we should have taken more of them prisoner, in that case?"

Jiang Cheng narrowed his eyes. Wei Wuxian was the picture of nonchalance, flute spinning between his fingertips, the corners of his mouth quirked up: a show only a fool would have been taken in by. It didn't seem like there was anyone else within earshot, but that was still too much of a risk to take—Jiang Cheng tried his best to glance around them without giving it away, strained his hearing for a stray breath or footstep.

"Jiang Cheng ah, so suspicious," laughed his shixiong. "You know even I don't listen to the words I say. Come on, we should move. Don't want to keep xiandu waiting."

Right, there was a victory banquet tonight. "If you'd brought Suibian with you, it wouldn't take you so long to get back there," Jiang Cheng snapped, drawing Sandu from its scabbard with the whisper of a well-oiled blade.

"Maybe I like the walk, hm?" He spun Chenqing a final time before shoving it through his belt.

"Don't be late," Jiang Cheng growled, and let Sandu carry him away before he heard Wei Wuxian's response.

The tug on his sleeve came just after he'd swept his hands over his outer robe one final time, just before his foot made contact with the lowest step on the stairway up to Golden Scale Tower. Jiang Cheng did not stumble; instead, he turned his head and scowled at whoever was presumptuous enough to grab at a sect leader.

Presumptuous enough to grab at him, stealthy enough that Jiang Cheng hadn't noticed his approach, and of high enough rank that the Yunmeng Jiang disciples he'd passed hadn't dared to stop him before he reached their sect leader. Of course, it could be only one person.

"Whatever this is, it can wait," Jiang Cheng hissed. Yunmeng Jiang was the last of the Great Sects to enter the banquet, but there were other, less important delegations held up behind them. The Jin retainers stationed twenty steps above them had already started to look worried.

"No. This cannot wait," said Wei Wuxian. "You and I need to speak right now. Before you get in there."

"You are delaying your sect leader from an official event hosted by our most important ally." He did his best to keep his voice down, but he knew from experience, largely with Wei Wuxian, that it had a tendency to carry when he was upset. "An event to which you were explicitly not invited, in case you hadn't noticed."

"Jiang Ch—"

He jerked his arm out of Wei Wuxian's grasp. "Stop embarrassing us both and go back to Yunmeng."

"I found her, Jiang Cheng."

The glare and babble of cultivation society assembling for a Jin banquet dropped away, as suddenly as if someone had deployed a silencing talisman. Everything outside of himself and his shixiong took on a hazy cast.

"Where is she now? How did you find her?" He had turned fully towards Wei Wuxian and clutched at his forearm, fingers wrapping round the leather guard. Wei Wuxian's jaw was clenched. Anger sparked in his eyes. There was no slight figure in red shielded behind him.

"She's safe, for now," he said quietly. "But it's like we thought might happen—her brother."

"What does she need?"

"Get me into the banquet with you. There are answers I can only get from Jin Zixun." Wei Wuxian's lip twisted when he said the name, and Jiang Cheng felt himself echoing the sneer. "Once I've got them, let me take it from there. The Jiang Sect doesn't have to—to get involved."

Their eyes met for what felt like a long moment. Who said you don't represent the Jiang Sect? warred with Who said I wouldn't get involved for her sake? and battled with If you dare cause trouble for a-jie's engagement, again— In the end, he simply gave a sharp nod.

"My head disciple ought to stand at my right. Get over here."

Qiongqi Pass was hell on earth.

Rain fell down in freezing sheets, sluicing the very ground out from underneath their feet as they struggled uphill, deeper into the work camp, the weight of their soaked-through robes dragging them backwards. He'd never seen a storm like this inland. It was too loud to hear one another without shouting at the top of their voices, too dark and disorienting to keep track of the Jin cultivators guarding the site.

At first, Jiang Cheng had tried to reason with them, or at least impress them with his authority. He'd ordered his disciples to round up the guards and keep them out of the way, uninjured if possible. That changed, too quickly, when a Jin cultivator barged past him to slide his sword through the back of one of Jiang Cheng's men, ripping the blade back out of the Yunmeng indigo silk and a fountain of dark blood with it. After that, he let Zidian slice their path through rain and Jins both.

Two disciples heaved their gurgling, convulsing brother back towards the carriage they'd taken from Lanling and the last one, Liu Dong, followed in Jiang Cheng's lee. He had no idea where Wen Qing and his shixiong had got to; nor could he see any other Wens in this blasted quarry. He hoped the prisoners had somewhere dry to shelter from the elements, unlikely though it seemed. All he could do was keep lashing out with Zidian's crackling purple force, toppling the guards that continued to run up to them.

Jiang Cheng had led a sect to victory in the Sunshot Campaign. He had killed men before, and he had seen what Wei Wuxian's unorthodox cultivation could do: ghostly women tearing flesh from bone, coils of resentful energy wringing Wen Ruohan's puppets apart. That didn't stop his heart clenching when they reached a turning point in the path, onto a plateau that was hidden from below. Something big flew towards him—a human body in sodden robes, whirling through the rain.

Snatching Liu Dong by the arm, he ducked away to one side before springing back into a crouch, Zidian spitting sparks at his wrist. The howls of the creature in front of him chilled his blood. Shit, it had to be a fierce corpse. Were the Jin playing at demonic cultivation too, now? Or had it just crashed in to the work camp, now of all times, drawn by the resentment of the mistreated prisoners?

No matter. It was huge, furious and lurching directly towards him.

Channeling all the spiritual energy he could muster from his golden core directly into his weapon, Jiang Cheng swung the whip first to one side and then to the other. When it reached him, he would be ready.

The fierce corpse was almost upon him. The whites of its eyes flashed violet, catching Zidian's glow. He lifted his hand.

It was by sheer chance that, just at that moment and just for a breath, the wail of the storm winds dropped—low enough that he could hear the insistent plaint of Chenqing, and Wen Qing's scream.

"A-Ning! A-Ning!"

He couldn't redirect his swing in time.

Zidian whistled down, off-centre from his original aim but not far enough to miss Wen Qionglin. It hit with a blaze of light and a crack that echoed up into Jiang Cheng's shoulder. When he could see clearly again, there was a jagged rift in the rocks at his feet. Wen Qionglin lay prone in the mud with his sister hunched over him, sobbing.

He stood there, paralysed with shock, until Wei Wuxian appeared behind the siblings, flute in his hand. He'd picked up a bamboo hat at some point, probably from one of the Jin, but it had slid off the back of his head and swung uselessly at his back. Jiang Cheng watched as he crouched down to examine the body, pulling at its eyelids and pressing his fingers to its throat. He forced himself to approach.

"Is he—?"

Wei Wuxian shook his head. "Just subdued for now. I got him down just in time to avoid Zidian."

"He is a fierce corpse, though. Isn't he? Dead before we got here, I suppose."

"Mn." Pulling at Wen Qing's shoulders, Wei Wuxian drew her slowly upright, but it was clear she wouldn't be able to walk on her own. "Can you carry her, Jiang Cheng? Liu shidi and I can carry Wen Ning."

"You want us to take—that back with us in the carriage? Wouldn't it be better to deal with it here?" He regretted his words instantly, as Wen Qing tried to throw herself back down onto her brother's corpse. Wei Wuxian caught her around the torso and she hung suspended in his arms, face unrecognisable with grief.

"Just do as I say, all right?" Wei Wuxian snapped. "It's not just these two. We can't leave anyone here for the Jin to find them."

Jiang Cheng squinted into the gloom. Sure enough, now that the fighting had stopped, stooped and ragged figures were starting to approach them. "All right," he sighed. "Time is tight. Let's go."

By the time they'd scrambled back down the ravine and loaded up the evacuees for the journey away from Qiongqi Pass, it was well into the third watch. The Jiang disciple who'd been stabbed through the lungs was dead. The other two had restrained those guards still left alive inside their watch-house, found the stables and prepared the horses there.

Into the carriage went the two dead bodies, propped up like living men. Ghastly though it was, Wen Qing would have to travel with them. ("I can ride the sword," she'd insisted, back in Lanling, shaking with exhaustion. "We don't have time to hire transport." It was the only time he'd ever heard her tell a lie.) At least Wei Wuxian would be at her side; he no longer even made excuses for not carrying Suibian. Jiang Cheng wasn't exactly happy about his shixiong and his—whatever Wen Qing was to him—travelling back to Lotus Pier crowded together like that, but he had to admit, if two corpses, an old woman, and a three-year-old child weren't effective at chaperoning them, nothing would be.

They'd almost made it out of the camp, back onto the the road, when their little train had to stop. A pale figure stood in their way: Lan Wangji, immaculate underneath a painted white umbrella.

"Sandu Shengsou," he said, voice as expressionless as his face always was.

"Hanguang jun," Jiang Cheng replied. Raindrops rolled like a bead curtain over the edge of the hat Wei Wuxian had pressed upon him before they'd set off. "You're too late to stop us, and if you came here to help us, you can do it by getting out of our way."

"Where is Wei Ying?" he asked, as if he hadn't heard a word Jiang Cheng had said.

"Wei Wuxian is head disciple of Yunmeng Jiang. If you have business with him, you're welcome to write to Lotus Pier." Jiang Cheng pulled his horse's head round, blocking Lan Wangji's view of the caravan with its body. The man still ignored him, gaze lifted to where, behind him, Jiang Cheng could hear the splash of hurried footsteps. Wei Wuxian skidded the final few chi to where Lan Wangji stood.

Jiang Cheng rolled his eyes. "Whatever he says, Wei Wuxian, we won't let him take you back to Gusu tonight," he called out, loud enough to reach the Jiang disciples behind him too. Wei Wuxian looked back and nodded his acknowledgement. Then he took a step even closer to the Lan, and their conversation was drowned out by the rain.

"Lan Zhan is going to escort us to Lotus Pier," Wei Wuxian reported, after a fraught few minutes. His eyes were red, from what emotion Jiang Cheng couldn't tell.

It wasn't like they could afford to turn down an additional skilled cultivator on their side. Scowling at Lan Wangji—perhaps it would be hidden by the rain—he offered his thanks, and then yelled at his shixiong to get back in the carriage. The journey home was going to be long.

Wen Qing didn't think she would sleep, squeezed into the corner of the carriage between Wei Wuxian and the wall, as far as she could be from the dead little brother she'd failed to protect. She was cold to the bones and the road jolted them all painfully, against the hard seats and against each other. A-Yuan whimpered quietly. She meant to reach out her hands to take him from Popo, knew that was what she ought to do, but somehow her arms just wouldn't move. Her feet were so chilled they hurt. After a while, the moisture in everybody's clothes started to rise up into the air, but it didn't feel any warmer, just more damp.

She folded an edge of the curtain against the wall and rested her forehead on it, letting it bump softly there as the horses walked onwards and the wheels turned. Her eyes slid closed: she could only tell from the gritty soreness of them. Then, somehow, without expecting it, she woke up to find it was almost light.

Lotus Pier had been taken over by the Wen before Wen Qing had been moved to the Yiling Supervisory Office. She had never visited it in the fragile pretend-peace that had existed before Wen Ruohan's aggression became overt, and after Wen Ning had rescued the two Jiang boys, she'd avoided any topic even tangentially to do with their sect. It was the clear sign of a guilty conscience, she knew, but she'd hoped that keeping her head down and her excellence as a physician would continue to keep them both safe.

Well, it hadn't.

In any case, she'd never seen Lotus Pier before. It's big, she thought dully, as servant guided her down a walkway in the greyness of dawn. A door slid open to reveal a neat room with a clean, made-up bed behind the screen. They have so many rooms here. As she sank slowly onto the covers, too tired to really understand what the woman was telling her in the Yunmeng dialect, she realised at last: that's because nearly everyone here was killed.

She woke to sunlight and birdsong outside the fine paper window, a tub full of water in the main part of the room, and covered bowls laid out on the small table. Warming talismans had kept the bathwater and the food steaming gently. Wen Qing had no idea what time or even what day it was, but the practical part of her knew that she should take the opportunity to eat and wash before doing anything else.

She felt better for it, she had to admit. Clean clothes in Jiang lilac had been laid out on top of a chest, so she could make herself decent before whatever negotiations were to come. After that, there was nothing to do but wait. There were no books in the room, no herbs to sort or decoctions to boil, and she couldn't even polish her sword: Zizhen had been taken from her by the Jin. Wen Qing closed her eyes and began to meditate.

At the soft noise of the door opening, she leapt up. It wasn't a servant, as she'd thought: Jiang Yanli hesitated at the threshold. Wen Qing dropped into a deep bow. "Jiang guniang, this humble one thanks you for your hospitality."

Jiang Yanli bowed in return, though not as low. "Please, Wen Qing. We're friends." As she walked into the room, her eyes sought out the bowls on the table and a small smile lit her face to see them empty. "I didn't want to disturb you if you were still resting, but it's been a day and a half. We thought you might have come to find us by now."

"Come to find you?" She cast an involuntary glance towards the door.

Jiang Yanli looked quickly back at it too. Her brows drew together and she said, "Wen Qing, you weren't locked in! You're a guest here at Lotus Pier."

"Of—of course." Embarrassed, she could feel her cheeks colouring.

"Come with me," Jiang Yanli said, taking her arm and leading her outside, where the walkways were lit in the deep peaches and mauves of the slowly setting sun.

They went first to a dining hall, where forty or more of the Dafan Wen, wearing blue and violet, were eating at long tables. It was disorienting to see their faces, so familiar and beloved and, she had feared, gone forever, amongst the colours of their sworn enemies. Wen Qing let her aunts and cousins hug her until the breath started catching in her chest and Jiang Yanli drew her tactfully away, slipping her a handkerchief from her own sleeve.

"Where are the others?" she asked, once she was more composed. "There was an old woman, and a little boy, and at least two older men who weren't there in the hall."

"Our doctors are looking after some of your family still. No one is badly injured; mostly, they just need rest and feeding up. Would you like to—" Jiang Yanli shook her head at Wen Qing's expression. "Of course you would. We'll go there next."

Finally, when the clouds over the lake still glowed but servants had begun to go about and light the lamps that hung from the eaves of every pavilion, they reached an informal stone table with five stools set around it. Two of the seats were already occupied by Jiang Wanyin and Lan Wangji. The two men sat in silence, not exactly unfriendly towards one another, but not amiable either. Wen Qing squared her shoulders and refused to allow herself to shrink back behind Jiang Yanli. She was here on their sufferance, yes, but she still had her dignity.

"Jiang zongzhu. Lan er-gongzi." She bowed, and they returned the greeting. "On behalf of my family, I offer our deepest thanks for your assistance."

"Is A-Xian still not here?" Jiang Yanli asked softly. "He promised me he would eat with us."

"Of course he isn't," scoffed Jiang Wanyin.

"I'll go and ask him again." Before she could move, however, Lan Wangji had stepped soundlessly away from the table.

"I will fetch him," he said.

Left behind with the Jiang siblings, Wen Qing took her place and accepted the tea that a servant poured her. I have my brother and my family to look after, she had told him, years ago, in that bloody dungeon. You can save me, but can you save them all? A-Ning was... no, it hurt too much even to think of him. Jiang Wanyin had rescued so many of the others, though, more than she could have saved alone. Tucked inside her borrowed robes, next to her heart, that redwood comb burned.

"I hope our hospitality is to your liking, Wen guniang," he said stiffly.

"Jiang Sect has been very generous," she replied.

Another breath, and Lan Wangji was returning, sombre in his white robes and tailed by a Wei Wuxian who didn't seem to have slept since she'd last seen him. When he'd stumbled upon her in Lanling, he'd been proud to the point of arrogance in his sharply-tailored black robes, vibrant with youth and outrage—even if the lines of strain had been visible, to her knowing eye. Now, he seemed dazed. He followed Lan Wangji with his eyes fixed on the man's broad shoulders, not looking about at his surroundings, even when he nearly tripped on an unexpected step. The shadows under his eyes looked hollow, his hair was drawn into a simple tail at the back of his head and, when he sat down and reached for his tea, she saw traces of something red-brown dug under his fingernails.

Dinner was a subdued meal. Jiang Yanli fussed over her brother and shidi, Jiang Wanyin said little, though he glanced across at her a noticeable number of times, and Lan Wangji's silence felt uncharacteristically like one with words behind it, building up without outlet. When he excused himself to retire for the night, something passed between him and Wei Wuxian like a lightning bolt. Wen Qing looked away. It wasn't her business.

"Wen Qing," Wei Wuxian said. He licked his dry lips, gaze darting away and then back to her. "I have something to show you, if I may."

It was her brother.

Her didi, her A-Ning, grey and motionless under strings of talismans and a dark blanket, dark enough to hide bloodstains.

"Careful," Wei Wuxian murmured behind her, "there's an array under the bed. You don't want to scuff it."

She had been reaching out to him, unconsciously. "A-Ning," she whispered. He looked so young. He always had, awake or asleep, his gentle spirit unconcealable. It wasn't right for him to be so motionless. She twisted away, unable to bear it, and found herself staring up at Wei Wuxian.

"Are you waiting for me to thank you?" Wen Qing demanded. "He's dead. He already died once. Why won't you let him rest?"

"I can bring him back," he said. "Believe me, Wen Qing. I'm working with an entirely new method of cultivation, and I know it's possible—"

She shoved him in the chest, more pushing her own light body away from his than pushing him out of her way, and ran for the door. Jiang Wanyin was waiting outside it, in the golden light from a suspended lantern, and she wheeled away from him as well. All these Lotus pier walkways looked the same. Wen Qing didn't stop running until she'd made it back to her own room.

She slammed the door shut and traced the sloppiest silencing talisman of her life in the air before it. Then she threw the comb into the opposite wall, as hard as she could, and then she screamed.

They ended up in the kitchens, just the three of them in the glow of a single lamp. He'd managed to stop a-jie from actually cooking anything; she'd compromised on boiling water for tea. It was funny, though, the warm rush of safety and nostalgia that had come over him when she'd reached for the big vegetable knife. How many hours had they spent here in their childhoods, hiding from their parents' fights or making up after their own squabbles?

"Can you do it?" he asked Wei Wuxian now. His shixiong had pushed himself up onto the work surface and then doubled forwards over his own lap, holding his face in his hands with the fingertips pushed into his eye sockets. It looked painful, and Jiang Cheng did not care.

"Yes," he said. It came out muffled. "I can, I promise I can. Just got to keep working at it."

"A-Xian, you need to rest as well," a-jie chided him.

"I wonder if I could make a talisman to replace sleep..." he mumbled. Jiang Cheng smacked him on the shoulder. Wei Wuxian squawked and flinched over-dramatically, as if Jiang Cheng had actually hurt him.

"Boys." She fixed each of them with the loving smile that said she knew they could behave so much better. The water had come to a rolling boil and she poured it over the tea leaves.

"She told me," Jiang Cheng said, speaking not to either of the others but into the warm dark air of the kitchen itself, "'I am a member of the Wen Clan, after all. I have my brother and the rest of my family to look after.' And I knew she was right. I couldn't rescue them and take care of the Jiang Sect too. There was hardly anything left here. We'd been searching for Wei Wuxian for months by then—we didn't know if you were even alive."

He heard his shixiong make a wounded little noise into his hands. In his peripheral vision, a-jie opened her mouth as if to speak, but said nothing.

"We were part of a grand campaign to destroy her whole clan, her whole sect. How could I marry her, knowing how much of Wen Ruohan's trust she held, let alone take an entire side branch of the Wen under our roof? And so I just—walked away from her. I don't even know if she kept the token I gave her." Jiang Cheng ran his thumb over Zidian, curled quiescent over his right hand and wrist. It had been the right decision, hadn't it? If not that, then the only decision he could have made.

If Wei Wuxian wanted to criticise him for it, he would remind him of the number of Wen soldiers he had personally killed, or perhaps of what they had both done to Wen Chao. He would spare a-jie the details, of course.

"A-Cheng." She moved in front of him with tiny steps, as if trying not to startle a small animal. Her pale green dress wavered before his damp eyes. "You wanted to marry Wen Qing?" He felt a stab of guilt for never sharing this with her, though the war hadn't given him the chance. "Do you still?"

"If she'd have me," he said. His own voice sounded so pathetic, suddenly, and what he'd said so absurd, that he let out a bark of helpless laughter. It rang off the walls, ugly. Of course Wen Qing would take him, if that was the only way for her to save her family. He'd always known she was at least as obedient to duty as he'd had to be.

"How do things stand with Lanling Jin now?" asked Wei Wuxian. He'd leaned back against the wall, eyes screwed shut.

"Zixuan wrote to me today," a-jie replied. "So did Madam Jin. Both of them are worried that if Yunmeng Jiang doesn't repudiate all ties to the Wen, Jin zongzhu will never agree to reinstate the betrothal." She chuckled, a dry sound with no humour in it. "Madam Jin also begged me to join her at Golden Scale Tower, where she can be certain I will be safe. Safe from what, exactly, she didn't say."

"She didn't have to," Jiang Cheng said. "Jin zongzhu wrote to me and made it very plain." He moved to where the three tea cups sat on the side, picked up the nearest and took a long sip.

"We have disciples standing watch overnight? And the wards have been checked and strengthened? Who did you send to do it—you should have called for me, Jiang Cheng, why didn't—"

"Wei Wuxian! Who do you take me for?" he roared. "Everything is under control. Who was it who rebuilt this sect from nothing, huh?" He took a deep breath, held it, and blew it out slowly: it didn't help a bit. Slamming his cup down onto the wooden work surface made him feel a little better, though. "The Venerated Triad swore their brotherhood oath exactly to prevent this from happening, do you realise that?" he asked. "The other sects don't trust you, Wei Wuxian. Jin Guangshan wants your Yin Tiger Seal—he even told me that our sects could work out the 'little matter of war spoils' so long as you delivered it into his hands."

"Wen Ning was a spoil of war, is that what he's saying?" snarled Wei Wuxian. "That three-year-old child, is he spoils of war? What about Wen Qing?"

"Wei Wuxian, shut up!" Zidian flashed and squirmed on his wrist. He paced to the other side of the room, leaned his forehead against the doorframe. "You're missing the point. Why would three of the Four Great Sects swear allegiance to one another and leave out Yunmeng Jiang? It was to show that if we—if I—lose control of you, they will put us down together."

"If you lose control and let me, for example, rescue prisoners of war from torture and death at the hands of the Jin."

"For example."

They were all silent for a while. A-jie poured more tea and tried to press a cup on Wei Wuxian, but he waved it away, instead pulling out Chenqing to spin it extravagantly from hand to hand.

"We can't hold out against Lanling Jin, Qinghe Nie and Gusu Lan all together," Jiang Cheng said at last. "I'll have to send a messenger first thing tomorrow morning—no, I should go myself. We won't have to return the Wens to the Jin, just... free them to make a life elsewhere, outside of our protection."

"Oh, and how long will that last?" Wei Wuxian snapped.

"I have a responsibility to the Jiang Sect!" Tears welled up in his eyes and, at his next blink, spilled wildly down his cheeks. "I know Wen Qing and Wen Qionglin saved our lives, I know we owe them something for that, but it just can't balance out Yunmeng Jiang, I can't make it work!"

Wei Wuxian didn't yell back at him. Jiang Cheng's balance was off, without that answering force. His shixiong just sat there, holding his terrifying black flute across his lap in a white-knuckled grip.

"What if," Wei Wuxian said at last, slowly. "What if there was something else that we owed them?"

"A-Xian, what are you talking about?" a-jie asked.

"Back—then. When you lost your core, shidi. You remember how much time I spent preparing everything to take you to Baoshan Sanren's mountain?"

He nodded mutely.

"I searched all around Yiling for my shizun's mountain, and I couldn't find it." His eyes were downcast, focused somewhere past the stone floor. In the guttering lamplight, Wei Wuxian's face looked more drawn than it had all evening. "In the end, I confessed to Wen Qing what I'd told you, that I'd promised you my shizun could heal your core, but I couldn't keep that promise. I knew—" His breath hitched. "I was afraid you were going to die, Jiang Cheng. And Wen Qing told me she knew of a way to do it."

"I don't believe you." He wasn't angry, just matter-of-fact. Right now, Jiang Cheng didn't seem to feel any emotions at all.

"It was her that you met, up on that mountain. She had an assistant, didn't she? That was Wen Ning."

"It's not possible."

"She was the greatest doctor of Qishan Wen," Wei Wuxian said, a strange pride flicking up the corners of his mouth. "Probably the greatest doctor of our generation. If anyone could do it, anyone at all, it would be Wen Qing."

He didn't remember the procedure; the bitter draught Baoshan Sanren... Wen Qing? had given him had drifted him away into dreamless sleep, until he washed up in a hollow of grass on the mountainside, his core re-ignited. All he'd had to show for it was a tender pink line in his flesh, the scar tissue already knitting him back together.

Had Wen Qing's narrow fingers dipped inside him there?

"A-Cheng." A-jie was smiling. "Should we start planning a wedding?"

If Wen Qing could do the impossible, perhaps he could, too. "I'll ask her," he said, softly.

The days at Lotus Pier passed rapidly, so fast they left her unsettled, like water flowing out of a clock's reservoir that would not be refilled.

The rest of the Dafan Wen were still segregated from the Yunmeng Jiang disciples, taking their meals in the same dining hall but at different times and sleeping in rooms off one particular courtyard. Wen Qing, however, had met the Jiang head doctor in his office right after her first Lotus Pier breakfast, and politely refused to leave until she was given work. She understood why some of the physician's disciples had asked to be given different duties, on the days that she was there. Nonetheless, it was this or give up her own sanity.

Jiang Yanli took tea with her every afternoon, offering a new kind of cake or local treat each time. "Have you had fresh lotus seeds before, Wen Qing?" she asked, once. "They're not in season just yet, of course, but when the summer's here we'll take a boat out on the lake and pick them ourselves." The thought of spending the summer here—or anywhere—made her temporarily too bewildered to speak.

"Has my brother spoken with you?" Jiang Yanli asked on another day.

"Which one?" She'd noticed that Jiang Yanli treated Wei Wuxian like her didi, rather than her shidi. Both he and Jiang Wanyin were keeping their distance from Wen Qing, though, and she said so.

Jiang Yanli's disappointment was clear but shortlived: a golden Jin butterfly message fluttered down and perched, swaying, on her earring to relay a message from Jin Zixuan. With the delicate colour that rose in her cheeks, she looked suddenly beautiful. How desperate could their situation truly be, if Jin gongzi and Jiang guniang were still keeping up their lovers' correspondence?

On the other hand, although Lan Wangji had never properly left Lotus Pier, he spent half his time on the sword between here and Gusu. Every time he stepped lightly down into the main courtyard, his face looked darker. He would find Jiang Wanyin to deliver a terse account of whatever he'd been doing, and then stride off to pin down Wei Wuxian, usually in the dark room Wen Qing pretended didn't exist. Sometimes they argued, in the Swords Hall or out on a pier where the whole sect had to pretend they didn't notice the tears in Wei Wuxian's eyes, or the greasy black smoke that licked at his fingertips and his hair. Sometimes qin music would ripple out through the window of Wei Wuxian's workshop, and even Wen Qing felt a knot in her heart start to loosen.

At the sounding of each watch of the day or night, the disciples guarding the gate of Lotus Pier and the archers out in boats on the lake gave up their position to a fresher group.

Deliveries of medicinal herbs came in nearly every day. It was her duty to sort them for storage, and soon they would run out of jars to hold everything.

She'd recovered the comb from the floor of her room the same evening she'd cast it away, of course. When she dined with the Jiangs and not with her own family, she found her eyes returning again and again to Jiang Wanyin's strong hands, the crease between his eyebrows, the occasional, surprising vulnerability of his mouth. When will you make up your mind? she wondered. When will you ask me again? But perhaps he had made his decision. It didn't seem likely that he would give them up, not with the preparations he had already made for a siege, but perhaps he was saving the Dafan Wen for his own reasons of justice or mercy, not to win her hand.

It shouldn't have been so disappointing.

Then there came the day when the door of that hated chamber was slid open with a bang, just as Wen Qing was creeping past it to her own bedroom with her face turned away. Faint curls of resentful energy rolled over the threshold, rising into nothingness like the lake mist at dawn. The notes of Lan Wangji's qin floated out to fill the courtyard. She froze, heart in her mouth, unable to look.

"Jiejie!" cried her brother's voice, and Wen Qing whirled around and ran into his arms.

A-Ning didn't need to eat, but he sat next to her throughout the midday meal and let her squeeze his hand as often as she wanted to, beaming back at her every time. He looked better than she could believe: pale, yes, and far from supple, though Wei Wuxian claimed that could be improved with massage and some refinements of his technique. He'd started to explain the details of his collaboration with Lan Wangji, how Gusu Lan's musical cultivation had balanced out his own command of resentful energy, but Jiang Yanli had tapped his forearm and told him in no uncertain terms to keep that topic for outside of mealtimes. Wen Qing had shot her a grateful expression. In the future, she would want to know every detail of their feat, but today all that mattered was that her didi had returned.

She let the others explain the political situation to A-Ning, and the danger that threatened every Wen and Jiang at Lotus Pier. When he turned his worried face to her, she searched for what reassurance she could offer and found very little. The water was still streaming out of the reservoir.

"Whatever happens, we must be grateful to Jiang zongzhu and the whole of Yunmeng Jiang," she said at last. Her didi nodded and repeated his thanks for the third time since they had all sat down.

Suddenly, Lan Wangji cleared his throat. The empty bowls had just been carried away by servants, removing his Sect-imposed obligation to be silent, but so much fell under Hanguang jun's definition of 'frivolous speech' that they were all—except possibly Wei Wuxian—unused to hearing his voice. "Having discussed the matter at length," he said, "Lan zongzhu and I believe that formalising the relationship between Yunmeng Jiang and Gusu Lan would greatly reduce the current tensions between the Four Great Sects."

Wen Qing and Jiang Yanli met each other's eyes across the stone table, equally perplexed. A-Ning, of course, had no idea what was going on. Jiang Wanyin, meanwhile, had folded his arms and sat back from the table, a look of grim satisfaction on his face.

"Wei Ying," Lan Wangji began seriously, only to be interrupted by Wei Wuxian lurching up from his seat and backing two steps away.

"Do not associate with evil, Lan Zhan," he said wildly, a high colour in his cheeks. "Isn't that one of the most important rules of your sect?"

"Wei Ying is not evil." He rose gracefully to his feet. "Wei Ying once said that he considered me as his lifelong confidant."

"I..." Wei Wuxian shook, clearly caught between bolting from the pavilion and diving towards Lan Wangji. The tension went out of him all at once; reaching out for Lan Wangji's hands, he said dreamily, "I still do."

Wen Qing sipped tactfully from her tea cup. She considered the treatment she might recommend for the handful of sick disciples under the sect doctor's care, and wondered whether A-Yuan was big enough now to start learning cultivation alongside the very youngest Jiang disciples. The lotus flowers were starting to open all across the lake; how long would it be until their seeds were ripe?

Eventually, Lan Wangji spoke again, a little out of breath. "The Lan Sect will be able to host the ceremony of sworn brotherhood within the week. I hope this is convenient for Jiang zongzhu."

"When has Wei Wuxian ever been convenient?" Jiang Wanyin returned, but there was no heat to it. "Tell your brother that Yunmeng Jiang is happy with whatever arrangements Gusu Lan has already planned."

Lan Wangji and Wei Wuxian sat back down at last, though Wei Wuxian scooted his seat as close to his future sworn brother's as he could bring it. Jiang Yanli offered her excited congratulations to the pair, and Wen Qing clasped A-Ning's hand one last time for courage.

"Jiang zongzhu," she said quietly, noting how swiftly she had his full attention. She drew a thin parcel out from the collar of her robe; Jiang Wanyin's eyes widened as he recognised the patterned silk. "A long time ago, you asked me to leave the Wen Clan. Back then, I could not, but I kept the gift that Jiang zongzhu left with me." The thin fabric fell to the boards at her feet, leaving the redwood comb in her hand. She breathed in deep, steadying herself as much as she could. "You said then, if anything ever happened in the future, I could come to you and ask for help. So much has happened since then, and the only thing I have to ask is, if I left the Wen Clan today, would I find a family to take me in?"

"Yes," he said, "yes," and his big hands wrapped around her small ones, Zidian pressing against her knuckles and the comb that she'd carried with her for so long held tightly by both of them at once.

"Why did it take you so long to ask me?" she said, faintly appalled at the tears that coloured her voice. "Didn't you know I've been waiting?"

"I couldn't be worthy of your hand until your brother was well again," Jiang Cheng said, immediately spoiling the effect of such a romantic, storybook line by ducking his head and grimacing in embarrassment. I love him, she thought, and then, startled, How long has that been true?

A-Ning hugged her, and Jiang Yanli hugged both her brothers, and Wei Wuxian hugged everybody twice. Wen Qing and Lan Wangji congratulated one another in a more restrained fashion. By the time the group of them reached the courtyard where her family was staying, she was giddy with joy for the first time since she was ten years old. As soon as Uncle Four saw them all together, she knew, it would be an all-night party—and she was right.

Jiang Cheng bore the celebration of the Dafan Wen, and all those Jiang disciples who joined them as the news spread throughout Lotus Pier, for as long as he honestly could.

It wasn't that he wasn't overjoyed himself–he had just got what he'd wanted for years, hadn't he? Wen Qing moved among her extended family with the sure-footed grace he'd always admired, toasting and exchanging her soft words with every cousin present, and he would have been content just to watch her. He would. The way that she kept looking back at him, though, as he stumbled along in her wake; the way that she stepped towards him to make each introduction, not close enough to touch but so near that he could feel the faint warmth of her... every time she did that, he felt joy and pride wash over him again. Wen Qing had accepted his proposal. Wen Qing had, honestly, proposed to him. How could he not be overjoyed?

He was going to have to remember all these family members' names and exactly how they were related. He'd better get started now.

Jin Guangshan wouldn't be happy about this wedding, but he wouldn't dare to go against the Lan, would he? However Lan Wangji had convinced Zewu jun to accept this alliance, Jiang Cheng was in both their debts for it. Not to mention his ridiculous shixiong... Across the courtyard, Wen Qionglin was allowing that little boy to swing off his arm like a tree branch. Once the other sects knew that Wei Wuxian had this kind of unnatural power, what would happen then?

Wen Qing was looking at him, he realised, a shade of concern in her huge eyes. Of course, this was to all intents his engagement party. He shouldn't let himself get lost in calculations now.

"I'm sorry—" he started, but she interrupted him.

"Is there somewhere more private we could go, Jiang Wanyin?"

Jiang Cheng nodded jerkily. He put out his hand for hers, and started as she slid her warm fingers into it.

Together, they walked to a pier he knew would be empty at this time of day. On the river itself, boats slid past from time to time, carrying bundled goods or transporting travellers; he and Wen Qing could hear them, faintly, but rustling tree branches hid them from sight on this little inlet. The water was almost clear beneath them, the late afternoon sun warm despite the clouds that brushed across its light and then away.

He kept her hand in his, but couldn't bear to look her in the face. "You don't have to do this, you know," he said to the boards of the pier. "If it's to protect your family, know that I would defend them anyway. If it's because of what Wei Wuxian did for your brother..."

He owed so much to so many people, and perhaps the most of all to Wen Qing. Without his core, none of what lay around them would exist, and he couldn't even thank her; Wei Wuxian had insisted on his and a-jie's silence on the matter. The least he could do was free her from any obligation to him.

"Jiang Wanyin." She said his name again, more firmly, and took his other hand to tug him around to face her. "Look at me."

Turned up towards him, her pale face was gilded by the slanting light. A golden ornament bobbed in her hair; a-jie must have given it to her, because she certainly hadn't had it in Lanling or at Qiongqi Pass, but he couldn't imagine it suiting anyone else so well. "I know I don't have to marry you," she said, so softly he might almost have missed the reproach in her words. "You would never have trapped me into it. That's why I had to ask you."

"Then..." There was something here that he was supposed to say, he knew, but what was it?

"Because you're a good man." Wen Qing spoke instead. "Because you understood what I had to do, back then, and because I—think I understand you. Because you're better than your word." A spark lit her eyes and her mouth twisted wryly. "Not because of your shixiong, but because of how you are to him, and with your sister."

Jiang Cheng's mouth was dry. "I've admired you since we met at Cloud Recesses," he whispered, "and every moment I've spent with you since then—every heartbeat—has only shown me more clearly how right I was to do so." He hadn't been at his best for a lot of those moments, he knew, and if he thought too much about it he would crumple from embarrassment. "Lotus Pier could not hope for a better mistress. And I—I could not dream of any woman more beautiful. Or more honorable. Or more intelligent."

He was starting to ramble, but he just couldn't hold it back. Now, of all times!

Lifting one hand from his own, Wen Qing laid her palm along his cheek. Her fingertips landed lightly on his ear; the pad of her thumb was so close to his lips. Gratefully, he stopped talking.

"For one more reason, too," she said, "because I love to look at you. And I would very much like to be kissed."

The warm pressure of her hand against the side of his head stayed the whole time he leaned down towards her, moving with the inevitabilty of a swan gliding from flight onto the lake's glassy plane. When their lips met, every other thought was swept away in the sheer rightness of it.

Jiang Cheng's eyes had closed of their own accord. He felt her fingers slide into his hair, felt her other hand lift up to his shoulder and realised he was holding onto her waist, drawing her as close to him as he knew, suddenly, she always ought to be.

The boards of the pier creaked lightly under their slowly shifting weight. The river ran by, as it always had. Somewhere very close, his disciples were safe and strong, and his family, both new and old, were celebrating the future together. Wen Qing loved him. He was happy, deeply happy.

It took more than a brotherhood oath and a wedding to calm Jin Guangshan down, of course. Still, the new tie between Lan and Jiang took a lot of the power out of his bluster; Hanguang jun was too universally respected for any of the minor sects to dare move against his sworn brother's sect.

When she and Jiang Cheng announced the date of their marriage ceremony, a beautiful lacquered box arrived from Golden Scale Tower with Lianfang zun's congratulations. It contained Zizhen, as sharp and bright as if she'd cleaned it every day it had been gone from her.

Another year passed before the final echoes sounded of everything that had happened in those years that changed the world, between her meeting A-Cheng at Cloud Recesses and marrying him at Lotus Pier. They were travelling to a banquet in Lanling, one hosted by Yanli and her husband rather than Jin zongzhu himself, who was dying or at least ill, so the rumours had it, of every well-deserved disease under the sun.

Somewhere outside of Laoling, the bumpy carriage ride and A-Cheng's constricting brocade robes got the better of his temper. "What are you even doing here, Wei Wuxian?" he complained. "A-Qing can't travel by sword in her condition, and a sect leader has to arrive in this style, unfortunately for me. What excuse could you possibly have this time for leaving Suibian behind?"

"Husband, be patient with him," Wen Qing said. She was very tired, all of a sudden, of pretending that there was nothing wrong with Wei Wuxian, no crack to the very centre of him that would need to be patched up for the rest of his life. Let Wei Wuxian explain it however he liked; A-Cheng would never need to know about his sacrifice. The Core-Melting Hand had terrorised Yunmeng and its surroundings for long enough, after all.

"Listen to me. Your shixiong hasn't had a golden core since before the Sunshot Campaign," she said. "That's why he never carries his sword. It's probably also why he can cultivate with resentful energy the way that he does, and how he won the war against the Wen."

She knew at once, from the horror and hurt in A-Cheng's eyes, that she'd misstepped. "But in that case, why did you never restore his core, like you did with mine?"

"How did you know about that?" she asked.

On the opposite side of the carriage, his back pressed against the silk-hung wall as if he could slip through it and disappear, Wei Wuxian was paper-white and gulping silently for air.

They didn't attend the banquet that evening; instead, Wen Qing sent a servant ahead to request that the delegation from Yunmeng Jiang be brought up to her and A-Cheng's guest quarters as soon as they arrived at Golden Scale Tower. It was a hard night of tears and confessions, revelations that had to be repeated as first Lan Wangji, then A-Ning, and at last Jiang Yanli and Jin Zixuan joined them in their rooms.

Was it worth it? she asked herself, as, at long last, she curled up around her husband under soft and expensive Jin sheets. It had to be, she answered. Everything that had been revealed had been done out of love, and none of them, she knew, could have kept those secrets for the rest of their lives. Back at home in Lotus Pier, A-Yuan was being looked after by her popo, and more of her cousins, aunts and uncles were alive than she'd once dared to hope. A-Ning was the next best thing to alive; in some ways, he was healthier than he'd been since childhood. Wei Wuxian was asleep in his sworn brother's arms, and A-Cheng was asleep in hers.

It had been worth it.