Going Out and Coming Home

It didn’t start the night after they’d defeated the tree-trunk guai. It had started before that, somewhere in their time of journeying together, sharing a campfire and talking for hours on the road. That night was just the point where they had to admit to themselves that something had begun.

Wen Ning and A-Yuan had arrived in the village at noon, on the trail of a mysterious haunting case. For the last week, in each little settlement they reached, people had come up to the young cultivator in the fine white robes to tell him all about the strange knocking and banging everyone had been hearing lately. It was louder at night, and seemed to come from store-rooms or woodsheds. No one had been harmed—yet—but they’d always heard that in the village up the road, the same thing was happening, but worse.

In Bai Township, storage sheds rattled at night; in Cao Family Village, they did so throughout the day, too, but no one could tell why. In Sanqiao Village, A-Yuan and Wen Ning were taken to see a barn that had all but collapsed. It had shaken itself to bits as if caught in an earthquake, the neighbours told them. Still, even that wasn’t as bad as what happened on the road to Xiazhuang Town, where a flying stack of firewood had chased a man walking home alone on a moonless night!

Wen Ning had listened helplessly as the neighbours’ conversation had devolved into an argument over why, precisely, the man had been out walking so late at night, and whether it was his own home he’d been headed to, and whether Lao Xie the drunkard was a better witness than Qu Fan the scoundrel… He’d been relieved when A-Yuan had extracted them, with all the diplomacy he’d learned from Zewu-jun. They’d arrived at Xiazhuang just in time to see a woodcutter’s house burst into flames, sparks shooting up through the roof and smoke billowing from the windows.

It had barely taken Wen Ning any time at all to break through the house’s wooden wall and rescue the family trapped inside. He ducked out again through the ragged hole with a child under each arm and the woodcutter’s wife clinging onto his back. By that time, A-Yuan had already worked out what was going on. Had Mrs Guo’s husband chopped down any especially big trees in the last, say, six months?

Of course, they still had to find the tree trunk, and then they had to suppress the monster that it had cultivated into, Wen Ning trying to draw its waves of deadly-sharp splinters towards himself while A-Yuan played tunes of binding on his qin, infusing the music with his own qi.

“It wasn’t a yao,” A-Yuan said afterwards, panting for breath. His eyes were still lit up with the excitement of the fight. “No wonder Mrs Guo couldn’t remember anything strange about this tree. When her husband cut it down, it was still perfectly normal. It only cultivated into a guai after it had died.”

“So all the disturbances… were caused by the pieces of firewood Mr Guo chopped it into back then,” Wen Ning said laboriously. “Somehow it still kept, kept a connection to them?”

A-Yuan waited patiently for him to get to the end of the sentence, his bright expression not dimming. “Mn. We could have just told the villagers to burn that firewood first,” he joked.

“Maybe not the best plan.” Wen Ning willed the corners of his mouth to lift into a smile, and raised one arm to gesture at the ruined clearing all around them. There was a tearing noise.

“Oh! Ning-shushu—!”

Suddenly, A-Yuan was at his side, holding him steady with a strong arm while he pulled a bunch of wicked-looking wooden splinters from Wen Ning’s shoulder. They’d already torn his robe, so Wen Ning wasn’t really sure why A-Yuan was being so gentle about it.

“Does it hurt?” the boy asked him, brow creased with concern. He turned Wen Ning’s head from side to side. “At least your face isn’t injured. That would be… really…”

Would it make that much of a difference? Wen Ning wondered. He was already a frightening enough sight. A-Yuan, on the other hand, had an appearance to be proud of. It was dark where they stood, now that the eerie glow thrown off by the attacking guai had been extinguished. He bent forwards to check on him.

“A-Yuan’s face is…”

“Hmm?”

“Perfect.” Wen Ning’s fingertips brushed against A-Yuan’s cheek, the lightest touch he could make, and A-Yuan didn’t flinch away.

A-Yuan kissed him.

His mouth was hot and soft against Wen Ning’s cold lips, but he didn’t seem to mind. Wen Ning could barely react for surprise, and he could feel panic building: what was he even supposed to do when being kissed? Was A-Yuan going to stop and walk away? With an effort to be gentle, he cupped his hand around the back of his head, avoiding the long Lan ribbon even though A-Yuan had told him, weeks ago, that close family members could touch it—and weren’t they close, him and Ning-shushu?

A-Yuan sighed and pushed forwards, warming Wen Ning’s chest through his robes, and flung his other arm around him, pulling them even more tightly together. He was standing on his tiptoes to reach Wen Ning’s mouth with his own. Wen Ning tilted his head to make it easier for him and, then, finally—as if A-Yuan’s proximity had begun to heat up his cold flesh—he managed to return the kiss.

They stood in that clearing for a long time, kissing softly and holding one another tightly, surrounded by the mess of shredded bark and turf ripped open by the guai’s thrashing roots, and the moment couldn’t have been any more perfect.

“It’s… it’s wrong, A-Yuan.”

Wen Ning spoke even more slowly than usual, not because of his death-stiffened face or the stutter that only rarely troubled him, now, but because he was at a loss for how to explain himself any more clearly than he already had. Some weeks had passed since their first kiss in the woods. At first, both of them had been content to move slowly through this new territory, but this was not their first time having this conversation.

“How is it wrong, Ning-gege?” A-Yuan asked, rolling away from Wen Ning on the narrow bed just far enough to cross his arms. There was a petulance in his voice that didn’t match his status as a cultivated young gongzi, and it made Wen Ning feel all the more awkward right now to be reminded of the over-tired toddler he’d rocked to sleep in the Burial Mounds.

“Do you want me to tell you all the reasons again?” he asked. Truthfully, if it meant he could stay under the covers of this surprisingly comfortable inn bed with A-Yuan for longer, he wouldn’t even mind continuing this depressing argument with him, but at some point they’d have to get up and dress, and A-Yuan would have to eat breakfast. It would all be easier if they could turn the subject to something happier first.

“Firstly, we’re related,” A-Yuan recited, staring crossly at the wall above Wen Ning’s head. “But we don’t even know how closely related we are!”

Enough of their kin had died in the Jin work camps, or from being used as bait in Jin night hunts, that by the time the remnants of the Wen Clan had retreated to the Burial Mounds with Wei-gongzi, it was hard to piece together a full family tree. Wen Ning had not been surprised, when the two of them reached Qishan some months before, that the tablets and lineage records in the Wen ancestral shrines had long since been destroyed. What had surprised him was how disappointed he felt, revealing a hope he hadn’t known he was keeping alive.

“A-Yuan, I don’t care about that,” he said quietly. It wasn’t quite the truth. He had just discovered that he cared less about it than about being close to A-Yuan, loving him and making him happy.

“Secondly, you’re older than me,” A-Yuan continued, as if he hadn’t heard, but he uncrossed his arms and let them fall back between their bodies.

“I am.” Wen Ning hadn’t managed to convince himself as easily that this objection didn’t matter.

“Not all of that time should count. If you couldn’t move or speak or—or form memories, then you didn’t really live it, did you?”

Wen Ning was sure that if he’d had memories of those years underneath Golden Scale Tower, he would feel even worse about the question at hand than he did now.

“Even that doesn’t matter so much,” he said, instead of voicing that. “It’s true. I don’t feel any older than I did back… when we were all living in the Burial Mounds.”

“Then, Ning-gege—”

“I don’t want to hurt you,” he said, fiercely. “Look at me, A-Yuan. Really look.”

A-Yuan pulled him close and gazed into Wen Ning’s eyes. His own were filling with tears. This was the position they’d been in, just minutes before, when their sleepy morning kisses had become sensual and heated, when Wen Ning had felt A-Yuan’s length pressing hard against him and pushed him away, as little as he’d wanted to do it.

“Ning-gege is beautiful,” he said in a small voice.

“I’m a fierce corpse,” Wen Ning said, knowing he would be crying too if he still could. “I’m dangerous. I’m held together with resentful energy, and nobody knows what that could do to you, if we… did that.”

A-Yuan let out one little sob that turned into a barrage of them, and Wen Ning held him as carefully as he could and let him weep.

Of course, their luck would have it that by the time they finally got down into the inn’s main room, ready to eat—in A-Yuan’s case, at least—and settle their bill, two very familiar cultivators would be walking in.

“Little radish!” Wei-gongzi cried, dashing across the wooden floorboards to sweep A-Yuan into a momentum-fuelled hug. “We haven’t seen you in months! How are you? D’you know, I think you’ve got taller.” After a moment, he looked up. “Wen Ning! How are your travels going? Did you already get to Qishan? We saw Wen Qing just a couple of weeks ago, by the way. She’s doing very well.”

“Wei-gongzi,” Wen Ning replied, with a little nod. He didn’t feel up to even attempting a smile, but Wei-gongzi didn’t seem to notice, so perhaps his usual efforts were even less use than he’d thought.

“Aiya, please stop calling me gongzi all the time,” Wei-gongzi said with an extravagant gesture. “How long have we known each other? We’re practically family.”

“Lan-gongzi,” Wen Ning said over the top of Wei-gongzi’s head, as the man’s deliberate, graceful steps caught up to his husband, sending Wei-gongzi into another round of protestations over his formality.

A-Yuan shuffled backwards out of Wei-gongzi’s arms to greet his other father-figure, and before Wen Ning could quite process what was going on, the innkeeper was leading them all over to a table for four in a semi-private corner of the room and taking Wei-gongzi’s order for wine (“Just a little, I promise, Lan Zhan. It’s a special occasion!”) and whatever the local specialties were for breakfast, or perhaps it was lunch time already? (“Anything you want! Don’t worry, Lan Zhan is paying.”)

“Tell me everything about your adventures so far,” said Wei-gongzi, once they were all seated, “and then I’ll tell you all of ours, and Lan Zhan can fill in everything I forget.”

Marriage seemed to suit him. Despite the fact that he and Hanguang-jun had spent almost as much time on the road lately as Wen Ning and A-Yuan, he looked sturdier than Wen Ning had seen him since before the Sunshot Campaign, in his old body. He was so much calmer, too—so much less volatile than those days back in Yiling—that Wen Ning didn’t notice the searching gleam in his eye until it was much too late.

The table was square, with more than enough space on each side for a single customer to sit comfortably. Nonetheless, Wei-gongzi had quickly taken up a sprawling position that leant him against Hanguang-jun’s side and threatened to tip him fully into his lap. Hanguang-jun appeared serenely accustomed to this. With no need to eat and legs that didn’t get tired after even days of kneeling, Wen Ning perched nervously at the very centre of his side of the table. He and A-Yuan had got used to sitting side by side whenever they could, closer than two men usually would but still just about within the bounds of propriety. The distance between them now felt wide and cold. In the corner of his eye, he saw A-Yuan’s gaze repeatedly flicking back to it as he described their travels to the other two.

After a while, almost as if Wei-gongzi’s relaxed posture was affecting him too, A-Yuan slowly started to lean in Wen Ning’s direction. He didn’t seem to notice it.

“… and that was the exact moment that the boat capsized,” Wei-gongzi said, “and as we sank into the freezing river, I saw that it wasn’t a water ghoul we’d been fighting at all—”

His story was interrupted by a loud “Achoo!” from A-Yuan, followed by a smaller sneeze and some sniffles. “Sorry, Wei-qianbei. This sauce is quite spicy.”

“Poor little radish, you still haven’t got used to a decent level of chilli?” Wei-gongzi grinned and poured some of the violently red dipping sauce directly into his own bowl. “You’re really suffering—your eyes are starting to swell up.”

A-Yuan smiled weakly, as if his eyes hadn’t been pink and puffy since they’d first come down from their room. Wen Ning reached out to move some of the blandest-looking vegetables on the table into his bowl.

“Thanks, Ning-gege.”

He was almost certain he saw a flicker in Hanguang-jun’s expression at that—but after all, it was only what A-Yuan had used to call him when he was a little child, back when Hanguang-jun himself had been Rich-gege. Why shouldn’t he pick up that habit again, since the two of them had been travelling together for so long now?

He felt almost confident that they were avoiding all suspicion, right up until the food had all been finished and a waiter came over to pour them another round of tea. The man ought to have seen him around the inn plenty of times over the two days they’d been staying there, but apparently he’d never got close enough to notice Wen Ning’s extreme pallor or the black veins that clawed their way up his neck, above his tightly-closed robes. Wen Ning saw his hands start to shake, rattling the teapot’s lid. He was ready to catch the pot when the waiter’s strength failed, though not quite dextrous enough to prevent it from spilling a gout of tea across the table.

Still shaking, the waiter looked rapidly between the faces of the other guests at the table, the two upright Lans and Wei-gongzi, who was wearing a not entirely reassuring smile.

“This… this is…” he stammered.

“This gongzi is my guest,” Hanguang-jun said mildly.

The waiter dropped at once into a low bow, gulping apologies before backing away. Wen Ning reached for the paper napkins that had come with the tea and started blotting up the mess. He was at least as responsible for it as the other man, after all.

“Sorry, everyone,” he mumbled, head bowed to watch his pale, greyish hands work. It was still so strange, years after his death, not to feel the blood flare in his cheeks at moments like this.

“No apology is necessary,” Hanguang-jun said, while A-Yuan squeezed his forearm over his sleeve, and Wei-gongzi encouraged him volubly not to take himself so lightly.

The table’s surface was not quite even and the spilled tea had slid across it towards A-Yuan, who didn’t seem to have noticed, busy moving the last few bowls out of the way. Wen Ning caught it with a napkin before it could quite reach the trailing edge of his sleeve, and pressed the ends of his forehead ribbon in a fold of clean paper to draw out the tea from where it had soaked in.

When he realised what had happened, A-Yuan said nothing, just smiled at him with his eyes warmly lit up.

“I know it has, has dirt-repelling talismans,” Wen Ning admitted, “but it’s still better to keep it clean to begin with.”

On the other side of the table, Wei-gongzi cleared his throat. “It’s good to see you and Wen Ning are so close, now you’ve rediscovered your family connection, Sizhui.”

Wen Ning didn’t drop the ribbon, because—luckily—his fingers had frozen up at the sound of Wei-gongzi’s voice. Instead, he laid it gently back into the fall of A-Yuan’s hair and turned an innocent face to the others. Sometimes it was useful, having muscles that wouldn’t move to form an expression without a strong conscious effort.

A-Yuan said, “Mn,” and all the blushing that Wen Ning couldn’t do showed in his cheeks.

The cheerful mood was broken, despite Wei-gongzi’s efforts. Before long, Hanguang-jun had paid the bill for their meal, and Wei-gongzi was asking the innkeeper about available rooms and, ever so casually, quizzing him on recent supernatural events in the town. “We’re on the hunt for a ghost that’s been seen round here!” he’d grinned earlier. “But, now we’ve all met up, I’ve got to ask—it wasn’t just you, was it, Wen Ning?” The joke was even less funny now.

Wen Ning made his goodbyes and waited at the door for A-Yuan to finish his.

“We’ll see you soon,” Wei-gongzi said. “At the very least, you have to be back in Yunmeng for your Qing-ayi’s birthday next month, both of you.”

“Sizhui is strong and capable,” Hanguang-jun said, “but remember, if you are ever frightened or uncertain, there is no shame in asking your family for help.”

Wen Ning could see the strain in A-Yuan’s answering nod from the door. The two of them headed out and took a road leading southeast; they had no particular destination in mind, but they’d agreed that it would be good to see the ocean for the first time, together.

“Do you think we should have told them?” A-Yuan asked eventually, breaking the silence.

He had no idea, and no idea what his jiejie was going to say about it, either. Up until now, he’d been doing a fine job of not thinking about that. “It’s up to you,” he said.

“Mn,” said A-Yuan unhappily, and slipped his hand into Wen Ning’s as they walked.

Wei-gongzi had been right: jiejie was doing well. He remembered her complaining about the Yunmeng climate when they’d been sent to Yiling for the first time, assigned to the supervisory office there: it was too hot and too wet, none of her herbs would dry as they were supposed to, and the one good thing about it was that clueless Wen disciples stumbling about in the marshes were a useful source of leeches. She’d been so unhappy back then, though, as taut as an overfilled wineskin with all the fear and anger she couldn’t show. Perhaps she would have found things to complain about wherever they’d been sent.

Now, though the day was just as oppressively humid as any of the ones they’d passed back then, she was radiant. When they’d arrived, she’d hugged first him and then A-Yuan as long and as tightly as she could, and Wen Ning had been stunned by how much stronger her embrace was than when they’d parted, months before. She’d shown them all around her house, even the kitchen garden and the little creek that ran along behind the back wall; in the work room, he’d noticed a wooden warming cupboard for drying tea and herbs, ready to do duty once the rains began.

The three of them sat companionably in a corner of the courtyard, where a table and chairs had been set up in the dappled shade of a small tree. Jiejie and A-Yuan sipped tea and, now and then, took a pastry from a wooden box that had apparently been delivered the day before by Jiang-zongzhu himself.

“Will he be visiting again?” A-Yuan asked warily.

“Oh no, don’t worry,” jiejie said. “I’m spreading out my birthday visits. Jiang Wanyin came to congratulate me yesterday, Wei Wuxian and his husband come tomorrow, and for today and the morning I have you both to myself. That ought to be less stressful for everyone, I think.”

“And you get to celebrate for three full days,” Wen Ning said, and she responded with an impish smile. When had he ever seen his jiejie smile this much? Not since their childhood, surely.

She’d aged over the years, in the ways that he hadn’t got the chance to. With her meridians all but sealed and her cultivation restricted to the bare minimum required to carry out the work given her, her golden core had struggled to keep her alive, never mind as strong and youthful as she ought to be. There were wrinkles around her eyes, now, some not so faint; her shoulders had developed a slight stoop from years bent over books and crucibles in the dark. She was still his proud jiejie, as sharp and resolute as ever, but seeing her this way all of a sudden felt like missing a step on a familiar staircase, or being woken in the middle of a dream.

“I know what you’re thinking,” she said, interrupting his reverie. “I’ve got very brown this summer. I can’t say it bothers me. Every moment the sun is shining and I have a task that could be taken outdoors, I think, why not?”

“Why not?” A-Yuan echoed, looking up at the sky like the youth he was, one who couldn’t remember ever being hurt for his affiliation with the sun.

They ate a simple dinner; it looked every bit as medicinal as the Lan fare that Wei-gongzi loved to groan about. Afterwards, jiejie showed A-Yuan the library she’d been slowly building up. He listened to her describe the most interesting volumes with rapt attention—trying to work out, Wen Ning knew, whether she already had a copy of the medical text they’d brought her from the westernmost point of their journey together. It sounded as though she didn’t.

At the Lan-appointed hour, A-Yuan excused himself to the guest bedroom.

“It’s a new bed,” jiejie told him as he left. “I’m very proud of it—it should be big enough even for you, as tall as you’ve grown now.”

To Wen Ning she said, “You don’t sleep, A-Ning, and I’m not tired yet. Come and sit with me.”

The sitting room was warm after the heat of the day, the air close and still. Jiejie took her place on one side of the daybed, met his eyes, and said, “Wei Wuxian told me about running into you and A-Yuan on the road.”

“Ah…?” he managed.

“Mm. He said you’d got very close, and I can see that you have.” After a long silence, she sighed. “A-Ning ah, do you really think I’m angry with you? Tell me, is he good to you?”

Slowly, he nodded. “Always.”

“Are you good to him?”

“Yes!” he said vehemently. “I mean… I try to be.”

“I think you are,” his jiejie said. She leaned against his shoulder, the way they used to sit sometimes in the Burial Mounds, when it was too late and she was too exhausted to keep working to fix everything, and all they could do was keep each other company in the night. “A-Ning, our family lost so much. If there’s something that will bring you and A-Yuan happiness, I want you to have it.”

“But… doesn’t it bother you that it’s him? He was just a child when we, when we went to Golden Scale Tower.”

“He’s grown now,” she said. “Neither of us were there to see it or to take the credit for how well he’s turned out. We can thank Hanguang-jun and Zewu-jun for that.”

“We’re relatives.”

“Well, you don’t even share the same surname, these days.” There was something sad and wry in her voice. “I already knew you weren’t going to give me baby nieces and nephews to fuss over. If you two understand each other and want to share a coverlet, who is it harming?”

He put an arm around her shoulder and let his head drift to rest on top of hers. “Thank you, jiejie.”

At length, she straightened up. “Speaking of sharing a coverlet—it really is a good bed, the one in my guest room. I think it would even be big enough for two.” With another smile, albeit a sleepy one, she added, “Good night, A-Ning.”

Wei-gongzi and Hanguang-jun arrived by sword the next afternoon, swooping down precisely in front of jiejie’s front gate. Wei-gongzi clung to Hanguang-jun’s waist from behind, wrapped around him as if scared of falling, but he hopped deftly off the blade once it halted.

“Wen Qing!” he shouted out, as if she hadn’t seen them coming and wasn’t already pulling open the front gate. “Best and most fearsome of doctors, may you have fortune as boundless as the Eastern Sea and live as long as the Zhongnan Mountains!”

“Get inside, you menace, before you get me thrown out of town.” She dragged him in by the collar, Hanguang-jun following unperturbed, and then they fell into one another’s arms. Wen Ning’s jiejie squeezed him just as hard as she had him and A-Yuan. “He looks healthy, Lan-gongzi,” she said when she’d pulled back to take a look at him, and her voice was a little thick. “Whatever you’re doing to make this rascal look after himself, please keep doing it.”

“In this matter, I am Wen-daifu’s servant,” Hanguang-jun said seriously—but was it Wen Ning’s imagination, or was there a glint of humour in his eye?

Jiejie’s maid had laid out tea and refreshments in the courtyard, and the afternoon passed in unhurried conversation, much as the one before had. Wen Ning was nervous to begin with—as was A-Yuan, he could tell—expecting at any moment Wei-gongzi’s eyes to narrow in triumph, or fury to break through Hanguang-jun’s calm. It never happened, and eventually he stopped waiting for the˙blow to come. He let himself chime in when A-Yuan told them all about seeing the sea for the first time, about the smell of it that wrapped around you even a mile away, the rushing sound like the wind in a hundred-mile pine forest, the strange vertigo of a horizon with no land on it.

“Boundless, you see?” Wei-gongzi grinned, not quite meeting Wen Ning’s eyes, and quickly took a dumpling from the basket. In truth, he’d been a little subdued since they all sat down together. “Lan Zhan, haven’t you been practicing a qin piece about the ocean? You should play it for us.”

Hanguang-jun played, of course. The crisp notes of the qin built and retreated, built and retreated, and somehow they conjured up the experience of standing on the shore, feet sinking into pebbles and smooth-worn shells, watching the grey glitter of the sea under the clouds. Wen Ning twitched his hand towards A-Yuan, thinking better of it as soon as it moved.

He saw A-Yuan’s lower lip grow firm. Without looking towards him, A-Yuan reached out for Wen Ning’s hand and slid their fingers together.

Once the music was over and the conversation resumed, jiejie threw a warm glance towards the pair of them, but no one commented otherwise.

At dinner, the others ate egg soup with longevity noodles that Wen Ning had pulled with his tireless arms. Wei-gongzi leaned against Hanguang-jun and poured wine for jiejie and himself with a generous hand, chattering with her all the while about the strange things he’d seen out in the world, and all the ideas they’d given him. A-Yuan and Hanguang-jun were silent, of course, but every now and then Wei-gongzi would flick his eyes almost shyly towards Wen Ning, inviting him to talk.

“Thank you all for coming,” jiejie said, when the night had started to wind down. She’d opened her presents: the medical text from afar, which she’d been thrilled to receive, a handsome piece of calligraphy from Hanguang-jun, and a cunningly carved wooden box from Wei-gongzi. The wine had brought extra colour to her cheeks and a brightness to her eyes. “There’s no one else I’d rather spend today with. I’m still not used to it, though, are you?”

“Used to what?” Wen Ning asked.

“To us all being together and not… well, to be frank, not waiting to die.” She laughed, only a little wild. “Having the time to eat slowly and say what we need to tell each other—how unusual!”

“Well said,” Hanguang-jun commented. “With that in mind: Wen Qionglin, although it is Wen Qing’s birthday, I also have a gift for you.”

Wen Ning tensed, bracing himself for a reckoning at last. In the corner of his eye, though, he saw his jiejie nod approval. Laid across Hanguang-jun’s outstretched hands was a white jade token.

“It is similar to the one Sizhui carries, and will admit you to the Cloud Recesses at any time.” Dropping his gaze to the side, he added, “Shufu is not pleased, but I no longer see any reason not to let you come and go as you wish.”

Astonished, Wen Ning took the token and thanked Hanguang-jun as fully as he could. He’d only just stopped talking and tucked the precious jade away in his collar when his jiejie sat up straighter, a slender book in her hands.

“A-Yuan, this is for both you and A-Ning, but I’m giving it to you,” she said.

He took it and flipped through the pages. Over his shoulder, Wen Ning could see the narrow columns of his jiejie’s fine handwriting, interspersed with meridian diagrams.

“This is all the knowledge we collected, in the Burial Mounds, about how A-Ning’s resurrected body works,” she explained. “There are techniques to make it more comfortable for him—massage, acupuncture, geomancy in case the two of you are looking for a place to settle for a while.”

“Thank you, Qing-ayi,” A-Yuan said. His eyes were bright, too, and it certainly wasn’t from drinking wine.

“If you have any questions, of course you can come to me with them.” She took his hand in her own and squeezed it.

“Wen Qing!” Wei-gongzi protested.

“Or your Wei-qianbei, I suppose you can ask him as well.”

“That’s not what I meant,” he sulked. “Did you happen to—”

“Of course I made a copy for you too. Look, here.” She passed him the book and then poked him in the ribs, ignoring the resulting yelp. “Now it’s your turn, Wei Wuxian.”

“Sizhui, Wen Ning,” Wei-gongzi started. “I asked myself what you two needed, and there was only one real answer, so here you are…” With a rustle, he pulled out a small stack of talisman paper. The expression on his face was unreadable in the low lamplight. “You’re a quick student, Sizhui, so I haven’t drawn too many of these out—you’ll be able to pick up the design for yourself.”

“Thank you, Wei-qianbei,” Sizhui said, puzzled, and leaned forwards to take the talismans. He tugged his cushion closer to Wen Ning when he sat back down, close enough that their thighs brushed and Wen Ning could feel his body heat through all the layers of cloth in between. Together they peered at the brush strokes, until Wei-gongzi groaned aloud.

“My one condition,” he said, turning his red face to the ceiling somewhere above the table, “is that you don’t tell me anything about what you use these for.”

A-Yuan deciphered it faster than Wen Ning, judging by the way he jumped against Wen Ning’s side, but he was close behind. A talisman to neutralise resentful energy on or within a living body, and a powerful one at that.

“I promise, Wei-qianbei, and thank you,” A-Yuan said fervently.

“Thank you, Wei-gong—” Wen Ning said, and then broke off. “Wei-xiong, thank you.”

Wei-xiong stared at him, startled into laughter. “That’s what it took to get you to stop calling me gongzi?” he asked, and Wen Ning smiled back—he could feel it, the corners of his mouth rising up in a way that showed his true feelings for once, and they were all good ones.

Jiejie was opening another bottle of wine, A-Yuan was nestling into his side, Hanguang-jun was making no move to go to bed, Wei-xiong was still chuckling softly, and Wen Ning was happy.