Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

General Pei Ming is waiting. He stands against the wall, his arms folded, bored by the splendor that’s already become familiar during the three days he’s spent in the Heavenly Court. Everything here shines. Every single goddamn thing is gold or silver or jade, and every other man is a king, and all the women are mild and chaste and boring. All the  palaces are impossibly high, and the gods fly between them like birds, untouched by the constraints of earthly forms. Pei Ming could fly like that. He could step onto the empty road of the air, and trust in his newfound divinity to keep him safe. He’s not sure he wants to. 

It’s been a strange three days since he ascended, but the strangeness has been a gift. He doesn’t want to be reminded of earthly powers and earthly conflicts. He doesn’t want to think about his snapped sword or his dead lieutenants or the way his beloved capital burned at last, destroyed by an enemy that Pei Ming thought was a friend. But here he is, thinking, because he’s got nothing better to do. He’s trapped. The head literature god, Jing Wen Zhen Jun, has summoned him to his palace, and now Jing Wen Zhen Jun is making him wait. 

Just as Pei Ming is beginning to seriously weigh the merits of cutting his way free of the temple, there’s a sound at the door. Slowly, so slowly, the doors to Jing Wen’s inner palace open, bringing with them the smell of incense and flowers and ink. A woman appears in the doorway. 

Her robes are black, and she stands like a window into night, dark against the shining background of the palace. Her long, dark hair gleams, reflecting the peculiar light of heaven, and her eyes are dark and sharp and cold. She walks like a monarch, and her gaze lands on Pei Ming like a bucket of cold water. It feels like he’s been asleep ever since he ascended from that final battlefield; it feels as if the whole Heavenly Court has been nothing but a dream. But, here, now, he’s awake. 

“Jing Wen,” he says, and bows respectfully. 

The woman doesn’t smile, but her lips press together as if something’s amused her. She bows. “This lowly one is only a deputy of Jing Wen Zhen Jun,” she says. Bullshit. Servants don’t walk like that.. “I am called Ling Wen, and Jing Wen has sent me with his apologies. He has been inexplicably delayed, and begs your pardon.”

The words don't match the tone, or the voice. Ling Wen delivers them like she's reading an uninteresting script. Pei Ming, bored of pleasantries, decides to try and coax a more genuine reaction out of her.

“I don’t forgive him,” Pei Ming says, throwing out a line just to get a reaction. Ling Wen’s face doesn’t so much as flicker. 

“You can leave,” she says. Interesting.. Ling Wen doesn't have any reason to dislike Pei Ming, not yet, so there's something else at play. Pei Ming would wager money that Ling Wen doesn't like her godly patron.

“That’s quite the suggestion,” Pei Ming says, and circles closer. Standing face to face, Ling Wen is quite tall for a woman, but Pei Ming is taller. He could fit the little circle of her waist in his hands. 

“I am merely pointing out your available options,” Ling Wen says, and it’s so very polite. She’s watching his right hand to measure the chance that he’ll go for his sword. Interesting. Not a soft goddess, then. Whoever Ling Wen is, she’s seen some violence and seen it up close. 

“Are you a martial goddess?”

“I am honored to be one of Jing Wen’s deputies here in the hall of literature,” Ling Wen says, and the total lack of emotion in how she says it carries a world of meaning.

“But before, you were from Xu Li,” Pei Ming says. They have the same accent. 

“I was,” she says. 

“And yet, I don’t think we’ve met before, though you speak as if you’re from the capital.”

For the first time, a smile crosses Ling Wen’s face. It’s like catching a glimpse of the sun after days of fog. Pei Ming loves it when women smile. 

“Perhaps you’ve heard my words,” Ling Wen says. “I wrote ‘Against Xuli’. It won the literature prize that year.”

Ah. 

Of course. ‘Against Xuli’ came into the capital like a wildfire. There was a period when you couldn’t turn a corner without hearing it discussed, and then the king made it illegal, and there was a period where you couldn’t turn a corner without hearing it whispered. Pei Ming hadn’t thought much of it at the time. He had been on campaign at the time, and the business of the capital hadn’t seemed like any business of his. He’d been so damn naive. 

“A lot of people hung from the gallows for those words,” Pei Ming says. 

“You must know what that’s like,” Ling Wen replies. “You’re a general.”

“What a cold-hearted thing to say,” Pei Ming says. Ling Wen doesn’t deny it. Pei Ming could do all sorts of cruel things to try and unsettle her, but Pei Ming doesn't like to act like that. Pei Ming wants to play. Everyone in the heavenly court is so goddamn polite, and all that politeness is just so boring. 

“Do you play weiqi?” Pei Ming asks, pivoting. There’s a board in the waiting room, the stones sitting quietly in their splendid boxes. Pei Ming wonders if Jing Wen has ever used it, or if he just displays it to pretend to be a master of the four arts. 

“I do,” Ling Wen says. 

“Come and play with me,” Pei Ming invites. “Since we’re stuck waiting.”

That rare smile crosses Ling Wen’s face again, and she rises and goes to the board. The container filled with black stones goes into her hand, and the white stones go to Pei Ming. 

“Ah, I like a woman who’s not afraid to make the first move,” Pei Ling says, and Ling Wen scowls at him. Wordless, she lifts a stone and places it on the field like a declaration of war.

Chapter Text

The earthquake wakes Pei Ming from his slumber. He’s awake in an instant, and in that instant he takes everything in: the trembling of the walls, the creaking of the roof, and the distant, ominous rumble as the Heavenly Court shudders and sways. The tremors are getting more frequent. As the earthquake continues, the little official in his bed stirs, and Pei Ming slides his hand over her shoulder, wordlessly comforting her. The tremor ends. She drops back into sleep, but Pei Ming, now fully awake, rises from the bed and begins to dress himself.

He taps his fingers from his temple and finds silence. Complete and utter silence. The Heavenly Communication Array must be down. There’s a flicker of static, and something like a voice, speaking incomprehensible words, and then the array flickers back to life. He’s hit with a series of pings as everyone’s messages flood in at once. 

“My temple’s collapsed!” a martial god announces. 

“I told you to improve your foundation before adding a floor!” his neighbor scolds. 

“Is everyone else okay?” someone asks. 

“Is it over?”

“Who’s going to fix this? @lingwen, can you fix this?” That gleaming gold text belongs to the Literature God of the South, a young man who seems absolutely convinced that he could do Ling Wen’s job better than she could. He’s been in the Heavenly Court for less than a year, and Pei Ming gives it another year at the most before Ling Wen flattens him beneath her heel. 

“Am I the god of architecture?” Ling Wen replies. “My scrolls are everywhere right now. Would you like to come pick them up?”

The god doesn’t respond. Pei Ming leaves that chat to send Ling Wen a private message.

“Scrolls, huh?”

“I’m fine,” Ling Wen responds. “My scrolls aren’t any worse than usual, but that idiot doesn’t need to know that. How are you and your oversized tower?”

“My tower is as thick and tall as always ; )” Pei Ming responds. 

“Unfortunate,” Ling Wen replies. 

“Would you like a picture?”

“Absolutely not,” Ling Wen replies. Satisfied that he’s riled his friend enough, Pei Ming turns his attention to the pile of private messages accumulating in the Heavenly Array. At the moment, his tower is the tallest tower in the Heavenly Court, and several officials want to know his secret. 

Pei Ming ambles over to his balcony and sits, his legs dangling over the edge, and spends an entertaining few minutes lying to every fool in his inbox. He says one thing to one person, and another thing to the next, and when he’s finished entertaining himself he sits and stares out over the changed skyline of heaven. 

It’s been a year since Jun Wu brought all of heaven spiraling down in flames, and at last the splendid palaces of the upper court have begun to rise again. The skyline changes daily, the horizon swarming with golden pillars and silver statues and bright roofs as every official strives to outdo his neighbor. From the top level of his palace he can see it all- every scaffold and every brick, every person from the most incompetent official all the way up to Ling Wen. It’s a good view. 

The earthquake has brought all the gods out of their palaces, and the city looks like an anthill, the streets swarming with officials. Hundreds of new gods have ascended since the “Great Calamity”, and each one is stupider than the last. Pei Ming doesn’t think much of the new officials or the way they talk about Jun Wu, as if he was a disaster and not a person. Jun Wu was very powerful, it’s true, but he began as a human being like any other. There will be gods like him again. Secretly, so secretly that even Ling Wen doesn’t know, he’s a little glad that Jun Wu annihilated the old city. The place was getting boring.

A ping sounds in his ear, and he checks his messages to find that Pei Su has contacted him. 

“How’s the palace?” he asks. 

“If you ever came up, you would know,” Pei Ming replies. It’s not that he’s furious with Pei Su, but it annoys him that his protege is so rarely in heaven. He spends all his time down on the earth with that Ban Yue. 

Pei Su’s response is delayed, and when it comes it reads “What use would I be to you in Heaven?”

Pei Ming doesn’t respond. Pei Su has been sulky ever since the whole problem with Ban Yue, and Pei Ming hates sulking. What’s the point? He leaves the Communication Array entirely and heads down to check on his temple. He’s only been a few minutes in his main hall when there’s a knock on the outside and the sound of brisk footsteps. Ling Wen has let herself in. 

“Noble Jie, how shameless, to just come like that,” Pei Ming teases, even though they’ve both got the keys to each other’s palaces.  

“Come in ,” Ling Wen says, emphasizing the in. “The door was open.”

“How scandalous. What will people say?”

“The same things they always say.”

“ ‘Oh fuck, here comes Hua Cheng’? ” Pei Ming says, imitating the voice of an official neither of them like. This gets a laugh out of Ling Wen. Pei Ming isn’t always this silly, but there’s something about Ling Wen’s deadpan seriousness that brings it out in him. It’s always a small triumph when he can make her smile. 

“I do hear that a lot,” she admits. “I’ve started timing my talks with Xie Lian for when I want to get rid of annoying visitors. No one wants to stay over when Hua Cheng is glaring daggers at them.”

“Can’t imagine why,” Pei Ming says. “How’s the array?” 

The heavenly city is kept aloft by a massive array that runs beneath the streets, and it’s the failures of this array that cause the earthquakes. The tremors have become more and more frequent in the past months, and Ling Wen’s been working on the array day and night in search of the cause. 

“We’ve made a breakthrough,” she says, and sighs. 

"Progress? Then why so gloomy?" Pei Ming asks. Ling Wen fixes him with an intent stare. Some people interpret Ling Wen's stares as hostile, and sometimes they are, but more often they're just the default set of her face. Ling Wen isn't going to fake a smile just for the benefit of the people around her. Finally she comes to a decision and speaks, her tone half-serious, half-teasing. 

"I could part with that information for a price," she says slyly, and Pei Ming laughs out loud. When Ling Wen solicits bribes, it only ever means one thing. 

"Where do you want to go for lunch?" he asks, grinning. A small answering smile slides across Ling Wen’s face and is gone in an instant, and then she’s back to pretending at seriousness. 

“Hm,” she says, pretending to think about it. “I am in the mood for crab.”

“What a coincidence,” Pei Ming says, and makes her wait on him for a few seconds as payback. “ I’m in the mood to chat with a friend.”

“A friend?” Ling Wen says, and glances behind her like she’s looking for someone. “Pei Ming, don’t say such horrible things.”

“You wound me,” Pei Ming says, and clutches dramatically at his heart.

“Not yet, but if you come a little closer…”

“As if you could.”

“I’ll bribe someone to do it,” Ling Wen replies. 

“Hmm, yes, there is a martial official you’re on close terms with, isn’t there? What was his name? Pei Min?”

“I’ve never heard of him,” Ling Wen says shamelessly. 

“You really hurt me,” Pei Ming says, clutching a hand to his heart. “I’m going to drown my sorrows by eating all the crab.”

“All of the crab?”

“Every crab beneath heaven,” Pei Ming confirms. “Unless someone stops me.”

“I guess I have no choice,” Ling Wen says. “For the sake of the seafood restaurants of the world, I will go with you.”

“What a noble sacrifice,” Pei Ming says dryly.  “Shall we?” 

Ling Wen nods. 

They go get lunch. 

The Three Treasures is a splendid building overlooking the Pearl River in Guangzhou. The owners are respectful, the waiters are fast and discreet, and the food is always exquisite. Shi Wudu and Pei Ming and Ling Wen have spent many long afternoons here chatting and drinking and gossiping over plates of geoduck clam and suckling pig and roasted squabs. It feels as if at any moment the Water Master might appear on the stairs and pull up a seat, gesturing for Pei Ming to pour him tea, but he won’t ever come here again. 

It’s strange, losing old friends. To Pei Ming, this will always be Shi Wudu’s favorite seafood restaurant, but no one else will know that. Eventually a new Water Master will appear, and his court will resume somewhere else, and this restaurant will be remembered, if it’s remembered at all, in connection with Pei Ming’s name. But even so, he’ll guard it. Shi Wudu kept this place standing through decades and decades of invasions and unrest, and Pei Ming will pick up where he left off. 

“So,” he says once he and Ling Wen have finished eating. “What’s so important you couldn’t talk to me about it anywhere in the Heavenly Court?”

“You know that Jun Wu created the array which we are currently using to keep the Heavenly Court afloat,” Ling Wen says. Pei Ming nods. “He designed it for himself. If there was a previous version of the array, we don’t have it. Only this one.”

“So it doesn’t work without him?” Pei Ming guesses. Ling Wen shakes her head. 

“It works, or the Heavenly Court wouldn’t be floating at all. But without a central focus, it’s unstable. The whole system is designed to route through a central palace. There has to be a god to channel it. There has to be an emperor.”

“Is that all?” Pei Ming says. “Just pick someone.” He meant it as a joke, but Ling Wen goes very quiet and very still. For a moment, all Pei Ming can hear is the murmur of the river as it flows by, the waves lapping and overlapping and pushing against the banks. 

“I have,” Ling Wen says. “You.”

“Me?”

“Who else in Heaven could do it?” Ling Wen asks, and Pei Ming scrambles to find an answer. 

“Xie Lian!”

“He hasn’t got a palace. He would have to be in Heaven more often to qualify, and besides, there would be riots. He’s too closely tied to the Ghost City.”

Pei Ming wants to name the other martial gods, but Quan Yizhen shouldn’t rule a playground, never mind a city. Feng Xin and Mu Qing would fight to the death for such a position, and Lan Qingqiu is better than Quan Yizhen, but only somewhat. Hua Cheng could rule, but he shouldn’t. Everyone else is too petty for the position. The strain would destroy their palaces, and then it would destroy them. Pei Ming’s words stick in his throat. 

“You,” he chokes out at last. “You could do it.”

“I’m afraid not,” Ling Wen says, and her smile is a little sad and a little bitter. “My time has come. In a few days, my heavenly calamity will arrive at last.”

Chapter Text

Ling Wen's first game of weiqi against Pei Ming begins only minutes after they've met, and she begins it half in fear and half in fury, internally railing against Pei Ming's voice and his words and his beauty. 

Ling Wen’s never been a fan of handsome men. From her first days as a shoe-seller to her time now as Jing Wen’s lackey, she’s never met a single beautiful man who wasn’t a complete bastard. Men all love themselves so much, and they expect her to love them too. It's a joy to crush their expectation into dust. But of all the beautiful, arrogant, clever men she’s ever fought, this Pei Ming is the most beautiful and most terrible of them all.  Ling Wen can barely look at him. Everything about him - his face, his smile, his voice, his words- is a lure. 

“How shy you are,” he says teasingly. “You won’t even spare me a glance?” 

Ling Wen keeps her eyes firmly locked on the board. “I’m concentrating on the game,” she says, though they both know the real game has nothing to do with Weiqi. 

“Don’t take it so seriously,” Pei Ming advises. This, too, Ling Wen ignores. She should never have agreed to play with him, never have been drawn into his conversation. Ling Wen ascended from being a prisoner to a maid, and she can return to being a prisoner whenever Jing Wen chooses to fabricate an excuse to do so. If this Pei Ming chooses to, he can provide that excuse. Win or lose, there’s no winning for her- the best move would have been not to play. 

She places her next piece. 

“What a defense,” Pei Ming says, and there’s a sly amusement in his voice. “Were you a fine lady in your mortal life? You play like you’re accustomed to it.”

Ling Wen used to play often. Ling Wen used to take her board to teahouses and make her rent by scamming rich idiots into playing her for money. Pei Ming is as rich as any martial god, but looking at this board state, Ling Wen’s not sure she would bet money on her victory. 

“I was a shoe-seller,” she says, and looks up to enjoy Pei Ming’s flinch. 

“You don’t act like a shoe-seller,” he says. 

“How should I act?” Ling Wen asks.

“You should give me a kiss,” Pei Ming says slyly. The next line in this play is for Ling Wen to offer to play him for it, but she’s not going to take her cues from Pei Ming.  

“I’m out of kisses,” she announces. “Ask Jing Wen if he has any extras.”

“I don’t want to kiss Jing Wen,” Pei Ming protests. 

“I don’t want to kiss you,” Ling Wen replies. 

“Why not?”

“Take your move,” Ling Wen says, and gestures to the board. 

“How heartless,” Pei Ming exclaims, but he’s still smiling. Ling Wen wonders if he ever stops smiling, or if life is just a series of victories to him. 

“Thank you,” she replies.  The adoring look Pei Ming gives her suggests that she’s said something truly romantic. The look is feigned. It has to be. But there’s a small, wretched part of her that wants his interest in her to be real. Once, just once, she’d like things to be easy. She’d like to live in the world where men are good and kind, and merit is rewarded, and handsome generals come and rescue virtuous maidens from their oppressors. Instead, she lives in this world. 

“A good philosophy,” Pei Ming says. “It’s important to see things clearly. But you know, ruthlessness isn’t everything.” He leans in, closer and closer, the board the only obstacle between them. He’s very close when he finally speaks, and his voice is a low rumble as he says: “Charm matters too.”

He places his stone on the board between them like a challenge. 

“Are you charming? I hadn’t noticed,” Ling Wen responds.

“You have,” Pei Ming says warmly. He links his thumb and forefinger around the circle of her wrist. “Your pulse is coming fast.”

Ling Wen snatches her wrist back, her whole body warm with the unexpected contact. No one’s touched her since she came to the Heavenly Court. Jing Wen considers himself too good for her, and all the other gods have followed his lead. Day to night, it’s just her and the tables. But lonely as she is, she’s no idiot. Disrespect is not to be rewarded. 

She puts her fingers on Pei Ming’s wrist and takes his pulse. 

“Your pulse is racing,” she lies bald-facedly. “Perhaps you’re sick? You should go home.” Pei Ming’s smile slips from his face, briefly replaced with shock, before he starts to laugh. 

“How could my heart not race at seeing such beauty?”

“Close your eyes,” Ling Wen replies. It’s dangerous to be so rude- Pei Ming could cause a huge amount of trouble for her if she offends him. But he doesn’t seem in the least bit offended. He seems delighted.

“I won’t,” he says. Ling Wen is measuring her response when the door slides open and Jing Wen Zhen Jun, the bastard himself, comes strolling in. 

“Not now, we’re in the middle of a game,” General Pei quips. He doesn’t take his eyes off her. 

Jing Wen doesn’t like that at all. However, he’s got a reputation to uphold, so he walks over to the board and says: “I’m glad you were able to find a way to amuse yourself.” His smile lands on Ling Wen and becomes more fixed and more furious. “How kind of you to accompany the General, Ling Wen.”

“It was my honor,” Ling Wen says politely. “General Pei, I have the honor of introducing my esteemed patron, Jing Wen Zhen Jun.” 

“The honor is mine,” Jing Wen says, surveying the board. “Don’t let me interrupt your play. Whose turn is it?”

“Mine,” Ling Wen says. She places her next stone in a bad spot, resigned to throwing the game. It wouldn’t be worth it to win in front of Jing Wen. He hates other people’s victories, and he particularly hates to see Ling Wen do well. Pei Ming glances at the token, and then over at Jing Wen. Unseen by Ling Wen’s boss, his eyebrow rises fractionally. 

“It would be rude to play in front of such an esteemed guest,” Pei Ming says. He pops her token off the board and places it in her hand, then folds her fingers over it and winks. For a brief, dangerous moment, Ling Wen wants to tell him everything. She’s not interested in taking a lover, no matter how successful or handsome or charming. But an ally against Jing Wen- she could desperately use an ally. 

The moment passes, and Pei Ming and Jing Wen move into the usual boring conversations that happen when people meet for the first time. They talk about high society and kings and queens that they’ve known, and Ling Wen is left to stand there, useless as a lamp. She hates these conversations. 

Later, when the lights are as dim as the heavenly court ever gets, she thinks about Pei Ming’s voice when he said “Jing Wen” and the way he bowed. Ling Wen had forgotten what it feels like to be respected, and even that scrap has her starving for more. She wants her own desk. She wants to be able to close her door and know that no one will enter, and she wants her own palace, and her own honors, but no one’s ever going to hand them to her.

She’ll have to take them.

Chapter Text

Ling Wen has always suspected that she was meant to ascend. It’s a common delusion among the appointed officials of the lower court; no one wants to admit they’re only in the Heavenly Court due to someone’s else’s mercy. Everyone wants to be special. Everyone wants to be chosen. And yet, there were so many signs in Ling Wen’s favor, so many opportunities that never came. Jing Wen came to her in her cell the night before she was due to be executed for her treasonous words, and he saved her and brought her to Heavenly Court. But why save her? To show mercy? Would Jing Wen, that proud, vicious bastard, ever show mercy to a rival who humiliated him in his own field? No. Never. 

Jing Wen brought her to the Heavenly Court for his own reasons. By appointing her to the Lower Court, he robbed her of a seat in the Upper Court. A newly ascended Literature Goddess who had already beaten him once would have been a danger to the prestige of his palace. A new lackey was not. After a month of Ling Wen shining the tabletops at his temple, who would have believed her when she said “I should have ascended”? No one. 

Even Pei Ming doesn’t believe her. He leans back, and for a moment it’s quiet at their table, the muted sound of distant conversation drifting up to them from below. Pei Ming always likes to eat on the top floor of his favorite restaurant. He takes a sip of his tea before speaking. 

“Literature officials don’t generally have Heavenly Calamities,” Pei Ming says, glossing over the fact that officials of the Lower Court never have them. Ling Wen doesn’t hold it against him. Despite her background, Pei Ming’s always backed her up. 

“Do you know how Shi Wudu changed Black Water’s fate?” she asks, changing the topic. “I do.”

Pei Ming regards her warily. They’re friends, but Ling Wen is verging on very dangerous territory.  

“Don’t you find it strange, how many new officials appeared after Jun Wu was toppled? Haven’t you ever asked yourself, what determines who ascends? What determines who descends?” Ling Wen is whispering now.  “If one fate can be changed, why not more of them?”

“What are you saying?” Pei Ming asks. 

“I’m saying that for centuries Jun Wu has shaped the Heavenly Court in his image, deciding who ascends and who doesn’t.” 

Ling Wen can see the moment when Pei Ming gets it. Jun Wu would never have wanted her to grow in power; she was too useful as a lackey. Like Jing Wen, he wanted her to do all the work while he continued to receive the credit. Pei Ming’s eyebrows draw together in an expression of concern, and then he reaches across the table and takes her hand. It’s an uncharacteristic gesture for him; he must truly be worried. 

“There’s been a new Heavenly Calamity almost every two weeks among the martial gods since Jun Wu was toppled,” he says. The disasters have been continuous, one after the other, pummeling the mortal world with floods and fires and droughts. Some of the gods have survived their trials. Some haven’t.  

“Making up for lost time,” Ling Wen says. 

“And you’re next in line… Noble Jie, how much time do you have?”

“This morning, I woke up from a familiar dream,” Ling Wen says quietly. “The week before I was due to be executed, I dreamed of the same thing every night. There is a shrine high in the mountains, and beyond it there is a gate. Jun Wu went here. Shi Wudu learned of it from a lost book, offered to the canals. Everything in the Heavenly Court is built from the foundations of that place.”

“And your heavenly calamity is to go there?” Pei Ming asks. 

“I suspect the difficulty will be in returning," Ling Wen replies. 

Pei Ming’s hands are warm over her own. They tighten ever so slightly, as if he doesn’t want to let go. They’ve been friends for decades on decades, but she’s rarely seen him so upset. It’s not in his nature. But so many unthinkable things have happened in the past year, from the destruction of heaven to the imprisonment of the heavenly emperor to the death of Shi Wudu. 

If it were her, if Pei Ming was facing down possible death, then…

Well, she’d be upset. Pei Ming certainly seems concerned; his brow is furrowed in thought. She gives Pei Ming a few more moments to process, and then gently withdraws from his grasp. Pei Ming will have to manage his own feelings. As the one who’s been thinking about this for years and years, she’s not surprised. She’s excited. All those decades of combing through Jun Wu’s actions, and at last she’s able to see clearly what was hidden from her before. Finally, after waiting for so long, it’s her turn to speak. 

“So, Ole Pei,” she says, and reaches across the table to clap him on the shoulder. “You’re the emperor now. Congrats! I already made the changes in the array this morning. With any luck, it’ll serve to stop the earthquakes for now.”

“Whoa, whoa whoa. Hold up there, Noble Jie. This morning?”

“Yep,” Ling Wen says, and beams at him. 

“You know, you should really ask these kinds of things first,” Pei Ming mutters. 

“You might have said no.”

“I would absolutely have said no,” Pei Ming corrects, scowling. 

“There’s really no one else,” Ling Wen says gently. “If I come back, I’ll be able to change the array to share the strain more evenly.”

“If?” Pei Ming says. 

“People will think you’re in love if you worry like that,” Ling Wen tells him. Pei Ming doesn’t laugh. 

“It’ll all go to hell without you,” he says, and his voice is hoarse. Ling Wen refuses to join him in worrying. Whatever happens will happen, and she won’t do herself the disservice of flinching in advance. 

“The arrow’s on the bow,” she says. “It’s time to shoot.”

 “Is there anything I can do to help?”

“As it happens, I am going to hell,” Ling Wen tells him. “Mt. Tonglu, to be more specific. I need to talk to Jun Wu. Do you want to come along?”

Pei Ming exhales, looking frustrated. 

“Sure,” he says at last. “With the way this day is going, I might as well.”

Xie Lian is waiting for them in the innermost part of Mt. Tonglu, the part that leads directly to Ju Wu’s prison. He stands against the high black gate, his arms folded, his constant shadow at his side. Today Hua Cheng is shaped like a beautiful woman, her clothes cut indecently low, her arms slung around Xie Lian as she clings to him. 

“Ling Wen, Pei Ming, what a surprise to see you here,” Xie Lian says. 

“Likewise,” Ling Wen replies. She hadn’t expected to encounter any opposition on this trip. Mt. Tonglu is off-limits to most gods, and while Xie Lian and Hua Cheng can go anywhere they want, why would they want to come to Mt. Tonglu? How did they know she was here?

“But not a surprise to see me?” Hua Cheng drawls. 

“I would never expect His Royal Highness to appear without you,” Ling Wen responds. “It would be like a face without eyes.”

“Imagine that,” Hua Cheng drawls, playing with the strap of her eyepatch. “Are you trying to hurt my feelings?” Ling Wen gives Hua Cheng her politest, most calm expression. 

“I apologize. I wasn’t aware you had feelings.”

“Ling Wen,” Xie Lian interjects hastily. Next to Ling Wen, Pei Ming has gone tense, probably wondering if she’s expecting him to fight Hua Cheng if things go wrong. She’s not. Xie Lian would never allow things to escalate all the way to a real fight. 

“Why are you here?” Xie Lian asks, trying to steer the conversation back to safer grounds. Behind his shoulder, Hua Cheng gives Ling Wen an utterly joyless smile. It’s not that Ling Wen isn’t afraid of him, but the approaching deadline of her heavenly calamity has made her brave. Besides, devastation or not, Ling Wen’s never been one to grovel. 

“I need to talk to Jun Wu,” Ling Wen replies. “The Heavenly Court is on the verge of collapsing.”

“Ah, so nothing urgent,” Hua Cheng says. She circles around, tucking her head beneath Xie Lian’s chin. Her small form does absolutely nothing to diminish the menace emanating from every one of her actions. 

“Is the court really about to collapse?” Xie Lian asks politely. 

“The array that keeps the court afloat has become unstable,” Ling Wen says. She brought some scrolls for her own reference, and she unrolls one and hands it to Xie Lian. It’s nothing but a diagram, but Xie Lian won’t like it. Martial gods never like scrolls. Xie Lian unfurls the scroll and squints politely at the array, and then it’s gone, dissolved in a swarm of butterflies. 

“Your problem is that your redirect is gone,” she says contemptuously. 

“I’ve already reassigned it, but I need to confirm the transfer in person before sending the changes through,” Ling Wen replies. 

“How boring. I suppose he’s your new focus,” he says, gesturing with his chin at Pei Ming. A sneer twists his mouth.  “Gege, do you want to be the ruler of heaven instead?”

“No,” Xie Lian says, looking shocked. “Is it really that bad?”

“Heaven? It’s terrible,” Hua Cheng says pleasantly. 

“But is it going to collapse?”

“It might. But if gege doesn’t want to be ruler, it’s not his problem.”

“Ling Wen, is there anything I can do to help?” Xie Lian asks. 

“All I need from you is that you step to the left,” Ling Wen tells him. It’s not the most polite way to frame her response, but Ling Wen doesn’t have time to murmur reassuring nonsense. To Xie Lian’s credit, the response doesn’t seem to unnerve him. He steps aside. Pei Ming draws even with Hua Cheng and Xie Lian, and then they’re through the roadblock and down into the miserable winding dark of Mt. Tonglu. 

Pei Ming, impossibly, seems cheered. 

“Your smile came back,” Ling Wen says as they walk. “I didn’t know you could lose it.”

“Aw, were you worried?”

“Never, but I was curious.” They chit-chat as they walk, and while Mt. Tonglu is a wretched, vicious place, filled with the stench of smoke and the distant wailing of the unquiet dead, it’s a bearable misery. Pei Ming makes it bearable. Ling Wen would never come here alone. 

Finally, they reach the pool of lava where Jun Wu sits, chained to the wall, attended day and night by his little priest.

“Ling Wen,” he greets, and he doesn’t seem surprised at all. “I see you’ve come to say a few words on your deathbed.”

Chapter Text

(one century before Xie Lian's third ascension) 

When Ling Wen arrives at the hot springs, Shi Wu Du and Pei Ming have already arrived and stripped down to undergarments and skin. Pei Ming is quite the display, all muscle and scars, his hair slung lazily over one shoulder as he floats idly in the spring. The hair isn’t doing much to cover him. Shi Wudu is more conservative; he’s kept his towel and his dignity, and is sitting in the water up to his chin, his eyes closed. He gives Ling Wen a faint nod as she walks by. 

“Noble Jie!” Pei Ming says brightly. "See anything you like?"

"A hot spring.”

The water master’s choice of hot springs is, of course, sublime. The water is clear, the springs surrounded by fragrant trees and medicinal blossoms, the baths beautifully carved. Steam rises from the pools towards the clear sky, and in the distance, the snow-capped peaks provide an elegant backdrop to the springs. The mightiest emperors and most beautiful concubines have bathed in these springs, and now Ling Wen is here. 

“The water master’s taste is always excellent,” Ling Wen says. “My thanks for sharing with us.”

Before Shi Wudu can reply properly, Pei Ming comes splashing over, interrupting whatever he was going to say. Shi Wudu gives him a flat stare. “It’s lovely, but a frog seems to have fallen in.”

“Boil it,” Ling Wen suggests. 

“You two delicate harem flowers have some nerve calling anyone a frog,” Pei Ming says. 

“Harem flowers?” Shi Wudu repeats incredulously. 

“You’re more delicate than my spear, and look at Ling Wen!”

Ling Wen is in her male form. It lies over her like a suit of armor, protective and restrictive, but she's learned to live with its limitations. Her female body might feel more natural, but her male body is safe. It’s the body her followers think she should have, the body of an imposing, serious young man, and it shields her. It lets her be seen the way she wants to be seen. 

Unfortunately, it does nothing to prevent Pei Ming from splashing her. 

“Must you?” Ling Wen says, and Pei Ming smiles back sunnily, his long hair swirling in the water around him. His biceps are almost as wide as her waist. The first time Ling Wen saw him shirtless it knocked the words right out of her, and only the fact that Pei Ming couldn’t interpret her blank stare saved her.  The man is an idiot, and something like a friend, and so beautiful it verges on the absurd. Just when Ling Wen thinks she’s gotten used to it, it ambushes her all over again. 

“If you start splashing, I will drown you,” Shi Wudu says flatly.  Ling Wen is grateful for the interjection. 

“Why not drown him now and save yourself some time?” she suggests, and slips into the hot springs besides them. The water closes over her legs all at once, and it’s warm and yielding, like the perfect embrace of blankets in the perfect bed. Ling Wen sighs. She closes her eyes, and mercifully Pei Ming leaves her alone. The sound of whispering drifts to her from across the water, and then that, too, dies down to nothing and Ling Wen is left to the stillness and calm of the springs. 

It’s warm. Ling Wen’s limbs are light, her tired back supported by the weightless push of the water, her tense muscles slowly uncoiling. Slowly, so slowly, her aches start to slip away. She inhales, and feels the water press against her as her chest expands, her body making ripples in the pool. Her eyelids are heavy; she lets herself so slack, and surrenders to the overwhelming stillness of the pools.

When she opens her eyes she finds that Shi Wudu and Pei Ming have gathered on the other side of the pool, and are idly murmuring to each other. Pei Ming has his arm around the water master’s shoulder, and is gesturing enthusiastically, and Shi Wudu is watching him intently, a small smile on his face. Ling Wen doubts he even knows it’s there. 

She swims over.  The water is strange against the skin of her imagined body. In her life below she never had the opportunity to strip down and swim; the first time she went into the hot springs was the first time she’d ever been so deep.  Shi Wudu laughed at her struggles, but he also showed her how to float, and Ling Wen’s always been grateful for that. 

“You look like a steamed bun,” Pei Ming says.

“Don’t try for a bite.”

Pei Ming gives her a grin with too many teeth in it. “What a suggestion, Noble Jie,” he says. 

“Do you understand the meaning of ‘don’t’ ?” Ling Wen asks. 

“He doesn’t,” Shi Wudu asserts. “I don’t think he can even read.”

“Ah, yes, let me take out a scroll and get some reading done. In the hot spring. Truly the best place for ink,” Pei Ming retorts. 

“Ling Wen Zhen Jun, do you have a scroll for him?”

“Where do you expect me to get it from?” 

“I don’t know, you always seem to have a scroll on you,” Pei Ming replies.  

“It’s true… you should get a deputy, ” Shi Wudu suggests. For once, Pei Ming nods his head in agreement. “It’s not a problem if you can’t appoint anyone. Just ask. I’ll bring them up for you.” His gaze is heavy on Ling Wen’s bare skin, and Ling Wen has the uncomfortable impulse to sink deeper into the water, to hide. It’s a stupid impulse. There’s no hiding from the water master, not here. 

It just stings, to be reminded that she never ascended, that she’ll never be able to appoint her own officials, never be able to grow her own palace. Even if she’s Ling Wen Zhen Jun now, she’ll always have to do her own work. 

“The Water Tyrant is really too kind,” Ling Wen says. Of everyone above and below the Heavenly Court, she’s the only one who dares to call him such a thing to his face. No one else would dare. In the mouths of his enemies, it’s a curse, an admission of jealousy and an accusation of wrongdoing. For Ling Wen, it’s the closest she comes to flattery. 

Shi Wudu’s smile is terribly handsome. There’s a high, cold pride in it, but there’s a little warmth too. He likes being called the water tyrant, though he’d never admit it. He runs a finger along the edge of Ling Wen’s face, and water trails after his fingers. He loops it over her like a scarf, making it move in a way that water could never move, wrapping her in warmth. 

“What’s the use of power if you can’t be kind to your friends?” Shi Wudu asks. His voice is low, his eyelids half-lowered, drops of water clinging to his dark eyelashes. 

“Power doesn’t need a reason,” Ling Wen tells him. “Like rain, it just is.”

“Even the rain has a master,” Shi Wudu says, and turns his attention to Pei Ming. “Isn’t that right?”

Pei Ming’s mouth twists unhappily, but he doesn’t reply. 

“I prefer the water,” Ling Wen teases. “It’s more supportive.”

“Oh, but you were calling me a tyrant a moment ago,” Shi Wudu says, pretending at outrage. “You, who can strike terror into every palace in heaven with a single form.”

“Not your palace,” Ling Wen says. 

“No, not my palace,” Shi Wudu agrees. Ling Wen’s not sure when they became friends, real friends. In the beginning, they were tied together by nothing more than the promise of mutual destruction, but Ling Wen has allowed herself to be won over. She knows all of Shi Wudu’s terrible secrets, and in exchange for her silence Shi Wudu has provided her with gift after gift: hot springs, banquets, long outings by the riverside spent in idle relaxation. It felt natural on her part to give him a few favors in exchange, and at some point she stopped counting. There wasn’t a need to. 

 But if Shi Wudu brought up a mortal to serve as her underling, that underling would be his spy, and Ling Wen doesn’t want that. Not even from a friend. Ling Wen’s knowledge is the most valuable currency she has, and she won’t open up her treasure hoard to just anyone. 

“I would hate to impose on the water’s master’s generocity,” Ling Wen says. “Besides, one of his underlings might wash away all my ink. I’ll do fine on my own.” 

Shi Wudu’s lips press together. He’s amused. Right here, right now, he could pop her head off her body like a child plucking a flower. He holds her gaze a long moment, and then the water subsides, returning to its dormant state. 

“Fancy trick,” Pei Ming says. “ Noble Jie, why don’t you just bully some of those delicate little flowers who ascended as weavers and painters? I’m sure some of them can sort papers.”

“You’d be surprised how incompetent people can be,” Ling Wen says. 

“I wouldn’t,” Shi Wudu says.

“No, you wouldn’t,” Ling Wen agrees. “Pei Ming is right here to demonstrate.”

“Shi Wudu, control your wife,” Pei Ming says. 

“If my first wife wants to bully my second wife, it’s none of my business,” Shi Wudu says. Pei Ming’s look of outrage is so profound it causes Ling Wen to burst out laughing. Even Pei Ming’s splashing can’t get her to stop, and she retreats behind Shi Wudu’s shoulder, still wheezing. 

“It’s okay, you can be first wife,” she stutters out through her laughter. Shi Wudu doesn’t say anything, but there’s a mean little smirk on his face. Pei Ming sneers at the two of them and retreats to the far side of the pool. The two of them watch as he rises out of the pool, his back muscles rippling as he rises and and heads to the next pool.

“What a beautiful idiot,” Shi Wudu remarks.

“Only the highest quality idiots for us,” Ling Wen replies.

“You could ask him to appoint you a deputy,” Shi Wudu says. Unlike the Water Master, Pei Ming generally can’t be bothered to scheme against his friends. A deputy appointed by him would be far less likely to report back to his master. It’s a kind suggestion to make, but...

“Some favors shouldn’t be asked for or granted,” Ling Wen replies. 

“You’re very careful, aren’t you, Ling Wen Zhen Jun?” 

“I’m not a person that can be crushed by work, but I can be crushed by other things. Why exchange something steady for something unsteady?”

“You say that, but being a maid is steady work,” Shi Wudu says. 

“It’s steady work for maids. Not for me.” Shi Wudu is watching her, weighing her. Ling Wen turns to face his scrutiny, matching him gaze for gaze. She learned her lessons in the darkness of that prison where Jing Wen found her: never bow. Never look away. Never let them see you flinch. 

“So why hide your ambitions?”

“Why show them?”

“You’re the Queen of Heaven,” Shi Wudu says. “You’ve got the Emperor’s ear. You know everyone and everything, but what do you want?”

It’s a blunt question, an honest question, the kind of question that draws blood. For Shi Wudu, Ling Wen is willing to answer it honestly. She thinks about the stained garment that she keeps hidden in her palace, and about the way blood peels and sticks as it dries on your skin, and about the muttered accusations that follow every step she takes. She thinks about the body she has, and the body she could have had, and the hundred scars that criss-cross Pei Ming’s back. She weighs the way he looks at her, and the way Shi Wudu is looking at her right now. Ling Wen could find someone to love her, if she really wanted it, but there are better things than love. There are things only Ling Wen knows, places only she could go. There are things she wants, and things she’s willing to wait for. 

“From my dear friend Shi Wudu, a few moments together is all I need.” 

Shi Wudu laughs. 

“Is that really all?”

“The other things I want, no one can give me. When I get a chance, I’ll take them. Until then, I can wait. What do you want?”

“I’m a modest man,” Shi Wudu says. “Domination of all the waters of the sea and river is good enough for me.” Ling Wen laughs. 

“What are you two whispering about?” Pei Ming calls. He’s getting back out of the pool, and there’s water streaming in rivulates from his long dark hair and along the broad lines of his shoulders and down the strong lines of his chest and over his legs. 

“Why don’t you want that?” Shi Wudu asks. 

“Not my kind of man,” Ling Wen replies. 

“No? What’s your kind of man?”

“Are you going to get one for me?” 

Shi Wudu just smiles. 

Pei Ming comes swimming over to them. There’s a bucket of bottles of alcohol floating in the springs; Shi Wudu brings it to them with a gesture, and Pei Ming pops the top off the bottles and pours. Ling Wen hands the glasses out, and the three of them toast each other under the vast light of the approaching evening. 

Chapter Text

Pei Ming dreams of cities on fire. In his dreams, the roar of the hungry flames is everywhere, so loud he can’t hear his own heart beat, louder than words, louder than sound. He dreams of inhaling ashes and the hot smoke smell of burning buildings. He dreams of screams, of civilians that burn and bleed and die with their city, all heaped together on the same funeral pyre. In his memories, he is always victorious, and he goes through the cities laughing, his unbroken shining blade in one hand.

As he walks, a slow creep of dread comes over him, until at last, forced to a stop, he finds himself at the gates of Xu Li. He looks down, and finds that the sword in his hand is shattered, the hilt heavy and useless, and he throws it away. Now the men that are fighting are men that he knows, and the buildings that are burning are the buildings that he loved. It doesn’t matter. It’s all gone. It’s been gone. 

Pei Ming walks slowly through the fire, and as he goes, he stares, trying to remember the way Xu Li looked. He must have ridden his horse triumphantly up the streets a hundred times, and yet now he’s not sure. Was this teahouse really here? Was it next to this villa? The flames allow for no clear answer. 

He’s only dreaming, but it’s a long time before he can bring himself to wake up. When he does, he finds himself in Ling Wen’s palace, stretched out sideways on a couch that’s too short for him. There’s a crick in his neck. He’s been drinking. 

Ling Wen glances at him from over the top of her desk, and Pei Ming remembers all at once why he’s here. His pulse is too fast, his body overflowing with qi. Ling Wen did something at Mt. Tonglu, something Pei Ming felt, rather than saw. He’s linked to the Heavenly Array now, and it aches. It hurts in a way that nothing’s hurt Pei Ming since he was alive. 

“It’s not like you to fall asleep,” Ling Wen observes. Pei Ming doesn’t need sleep. None of them do. After the first century Pei Ming got out of the habit of eating regularly; given a thousand years more, he thinks he would stop breathing. Godhood is similar to being alive, but it’s not the same.

“I didn’t want to be awake,” Pei Ming says, and immediately regrets saying something so true. Now that he’s awake he’s nervous and achey, electric with the knowledge of Ling Wen’s incoming trial. It’s miserable, watching a friend die. He’s had two heavenly calamities since arriving in the Heavenly Court, one of them only a few months ago, and neither of them bothered him this profoundly. 

He must be getting old. There was a time when his whole life was battles and waiting for battles, a time when he could drink with his men knowing half of them would die the next morning and not feel a thing. Or- no. It wasn’t that he felt nothing. It was that there was something more important, something that mattered more than anyone’s life, including his own. 

“What’s it like, being the focus of the array?” Ling Wen asks. Being the Emperor, she means, though it’s not a title that means anything at the moment. 

“Heavy,” Pei Ming mutters. He can close his eyes and feel the weight of the Heavenly Court and all the buildings on it, the footsteps of a thousand gods like a headache building beneath his skull.

“Why didn’t you want to be king of Xu Li?” Ling Wen asks, and the question startles Pei Ming out of his pain. 

“What a goddamn question, Noble Jie,” Pei Ming says. Ling Wen bares her teeth in a predator’s smile. 

“You know me,” she says. “Always friendly.” 

Pei Ming frowns at her. He inhales, feeling the cool air of heaven settle deep into his lungs and holds it there for one long breath.

“No one fights a war by themselves,” he says at last. “Your officers have to trust you. Your soldiers have to obey you, and it’s better if they want to obey you. On the battlefield, men die alone, but they live together. I liked that.” 

When Pei Ming thinks back to the time before he ascended, he doesn’t think of war. He thinks of his officers and his friends and the girls at the brothel back in the capital who knew his name. He thinks of the cheering crowds that shouted and screamed and showered his troops with flowers as they made their triumphant entry into the capital, and he thinks of sneaking out of the palace in the early hours of the morning to go buy dumplings from the only shitty stand that was still open at that time. He’d known so many people back then, and every single one of them had been someone he was glad to know. 

“Kings are alone,” Pei Ming finishes. He thinks of Jun Wu, sunk to his thighs in lava, tended by his fluttering little priest, and he thinks of all the other kings he’s known. Power is a moat, and the greater the power, the wider the distance. Jun Wu’s power was absolute, and it divided him absolutely. 

“Is that all? You didn’t want to be alone?” Ling Wen sounds astonished, and her innocent scorn stings more than any attack. For a half-moment, Pei Ming looks at her, really looks at her, and sees a stranger. He sees a beautiful woman in a severe robe, a brush in her right hand, her mouth wet with Pei Ming’s wine, cold down to her stone heart. Ling Wen has been alone since the day she was born.

He doesn’t know what to say to her. 

The conversation lapses into silence, and then Ling Wen leans over and pats his shoulder. “I’m sorry,” she says. “It’s just- you’re so alone now.”

Is he? It’s true that he hasn’t bothered to learn the names of most of the new heavenly officials- they annoy him with their reverence and their bluster, the way they’ve all got something to prove to him. None of him can beat him in a spear-fight or a game of qi, and none of them know where his accent is from. Has it always been like this? Or did it happen after Shi Wudu died? Did it happen in pieces, one dead friend at a time, until there was no one left? Who is even left for him to lose?

“I’m not alone,” Pei Ming says. “I have you.”

Ling Wen snorts, but a gentle smile curves her face. “Was that worth giving up the kingship for?” she asks. 

It was. 

“Let me ask you a question,” Pei Ming says. “Why don’t you have a husband?”

“Why would I want one?”

“Why would I want to be king?” Pei Ming replies, mirroring her answer. Ling Wen considers him for a long moment, and then she sighs. There’s a certain weight on her, something dark and heavy that makes Pei Ming believe her when she says that the hour of her trial is drawing close. 

Pei Ming will miss her so terribly if she dies. 

“What paperwork could possibly be so important that you’ve got to plan it at this hour?” he asks. 

“I’m planning my funeral,” Ling Wen says blithely. Pei Ming immediately regrets having asked. 

“That’s bad luck,” he says. 

“The funeral? At that point I don’t think my luck will matter.”

“Noble Jie,” Pei Ming says, and sighs. He crosses the room and steals her brush, and In a rare moment of mercy, Ling Wen permits him to do it. She even lets him draw on her hand, though when she catches the shape of the character she snatches her hand back. It's an old blessing from an old god, the sort of thing people used to scrawl on their armor for luck. 

“If you’re just going to be jittery, you can leave,” Ling Wen says. That’s Ling Wen alright, unmerciful to the last. 

“Then who would you turn your knives on? Really, I’m doing you a favor.”

“It’s not like you to be skittish,” Ling Wen says. 

“It’s not like you to have a heavenly calamity,” Pei Ming retorts. Ling Wen holds out for a moment before cracking a smile. 

“Fair enough,” she says. “Let’s get drunk.”

One bottle of wine turns into two, and two turn into three and four, and after that Pei Ming loses count. It doesn’t matter. Pei Ming can drink a lot, but there’s a lot to drink. The world has gone pleasantly hazy and distant, and Ling Wen has gotten cuddly in the way she only does when she’s buzzed. Her long legs are slung over his lap, her head resting against his shoulder. She stares up at him with the glazed, fascinated attention of the drunk. 

“See anything you like?” Pei Ming teases. 

Ling Wen seizes one of his cheeks and squeezes it unmercifully. “Why are you always fishing for compliments? You know you’re handsome.”

“Ah, but do you know it?” Pei Ming asks, and Ling Wen retreats, letting go of his face. They’re so close. Pei Ming takes one of her hands and folds it between his own. “Do you know how beautiful you are?”

Ling Wen ascended when she was young, and it always amuses Pei Ming to see the interplay of her unfinished, delicate features, like a flower just beginning to bloom, and her severe personality. The flush of alcohol has stained her face rosy pink, and it makes her look like the carefree teenager she probably never was. 

“You always say that,” she protests, but she doesn’t try to take back her hand. “You even said it to Shi Wudu, despite your policy of allegedly not liking men.”

“Shi Wudu was as pretty as a man can get,” Pei Ming informs her seriously. It’s possible that he, too, is a little drunk. They don’t talk about Shi Wu Du when they’re sober. 

“He said that I was very handsome when we slept together, so there.”

“He what?”

Pei Ming takes a long drink just to annoy her. 

“Pei Ming! Did you sleep with Shi Wudu?”

“Why not?” Pei Ming asks. “Wouldn’t you?” Shi Wudu was bad-tempered and protective of his dignity, but Pei Ming has a thing for severe, ruthless beauties. It’s more fun when you can get them to bend.

Ling Wen’s eyebrows are high over her half-lowered eyelids, and the look she gives Pei Ming is scorching. He smiles sunnily in return. “You really have no shame,” she says. 

“I see what I want, and I get it,” Pei Ming says, smiling. “Don’t we have that in common?”

“I want very different things than you,” Ling Wen grumbles. She takes another drink, and then, as if she can’t stand it, “Shi Wudu? Really?”

“Really,” Pei Ming says. Ling Wen smacks him in the shoulder. 

“How did you hide this from me?”

“You always stop paying attention when I start flirting,” Pei Ming says cheerfully. “It’s a shame. I really like you.”

“You like everyone,” Ling Wen says, and finishes the bottle. 

It’s true that Pei Ming will sleep with pretty much anyone. Flirting and sex are two of his favorite games to play and he’s very good at both.  But it’s also true that he likes Ling Wen, likes her in a way that has nothing to do with her hair and her waist and the way her mouth looks when it’s wet with liquor. They’re friends. 

“Ah, but I like you in a different way than I like other people,” Pei Ming says. He could probably make this point better if he wasn’t drunk, but Ling Wen wouldn’t listen to it if she was sober. “I like you because you’re mean.”

“What an endorsement. You’re really selling yourself.”

“Do I need to sell myself?” Pei Ming asks. He gives Ling Wen his most dazzling smile, and she covers his lower face with her hand. 

“Stop that,” she says. “Stop handsomeing at me.”

“Do you think I’m handsome?” Pei Ming says, delighted. 

“Rocks on the moon think you’re handsome,” Ling Wen says. “It’s a known fact.”

“Do you, Noble Jie, think that I am handsome.”

“You have a face.”

“Do I?” Pei Ming responds. They make the mistake of looking at each other, and it becomes impossible not to burst into laughter. Pei Ming overflows with it, laughing until his stomach aches. He can feel his face stretching wide, his stomach taut, his lungs struggling to breath as he wheezes with laughter. Ling Wen is no better. She only laughs like this when she’s drunk, and it’s so bright and big and pretty. 

Pei Ming pulls her fully into his lap, and she makes no move to resist. She settles in with a comfortable little wiggle that Pei Ming wouldn’t believe if he hadn’t seen it himself. 

“You’re very handsome,” Ling Wen says, and it’s almost wistful. She pinches his cheek in one hand and pulls. “If only you weren’t such a bastard.”

“Hey,” Pei Ming protests. “You like that about me. It’s our common interest.”

Ling Wen giggles. “Pei Ming, you never managed to keep interest in a girl longer than a few years,” she says very sincerely. “If you slept with me and then stopped talking to me I’d have to assassinate you, and I don’t want that.”

“I’m touched. I also don’t want you to assassinate me.”

“Then why are you trying to sleep with me, huh?” Ling Wen demands drunkenly. 

“I don’t think it would be like that,” Pei Ming says. “I haven’t lost interest in you in the last couple of centuries, why would I lose interest because we had sex?”

“I don’t know,” Ling Wen says. “I don’t know how any of this works.”

Pei Ming laughs. “Let me show you,” he says. It’s an offer he’s made a hundred times across a thousand years, an offer he’s made in bars and hot springs and on battlefields and in this room, in this office, and on this couch. No one’s ever turned him down as many times as Ling Wen; no one’s ever held his interest long enough to warrant so many invitations. No one else’s eyes are so dark; no one else holds heaven in the palm of her hand. No one else has such a smile. Pei Ming’s been turned down a hundred times, but today, tonight, is not a night like other nights. 

Tonight, Ling Wen doesn’t lean away. Already close, she presses closer, her lips half-parted, her breath barely felt against his lips. 

They kiss. 

Pei Ming’s whole body is hot with Ling Web’s closeness- with the arch of her neck, and the weight of her body against his, the long fall of her glossy hair. He wants to leave the marks of his mouth all over that delicate white skin, but first, a kiss. Their first kiss. 

When they part, Ling Wen’s pale face is pink with embarrassment, her eyes wide and startled. Pei Ming wants to kiss her again, and again, and again. 

“You,” she says, and it’s almost whispered. “I… we can’t do this.” It’s a real effort to let her slip out of his arms, but Ling Wen would be furious if he tried to hold her against her will.

“Why not?” Pei Ming asks plaintively. 

“I’m,” Ling Wen says, and she presses her lips into a flat line. “Are you trying to sabotage me?”

“No, absolutely not,” Pei Ming says. He spent the night before his last trial with a beautiful martial goddess from the west, and it was extremely relaxing. “I thought it might help.”

“It won’t,” Ling Wen says fiercely, and then she exhales. Her expression softens, and she unfolds her arms. “Maybe some other time,” she says, and Pei Ming’s treacherous heart begins to beat faster. Why not now? It asks. But it wouldn’t help Ling Wen concentrate, and Pei Ming wants to help. 

“Are you going to schedule it in?” he asks. Ling Wen sneers at him. She finds a chair not too far from the couch and sinks into it, a bottle of wine in one hand. Pei Ming wants her back in his lap, her long hair trailing over his arm, the warm weight of her pressing against him. 

“When I get back,” Ling Wen says. “Maybe.”

“When you get back,” Pei Ming agrees, and then they drink together, their last drink of the night. 

In the morning, the calamity. 

Chapter Text

It begins as a single drop of ink. Ling Wen’s inkstick cracks.  It fractures. It bleeds like a lost body, scattering darkness across the surface of her desk. Ink overflows. The signs and placards of Heaven grow blurry, the names of palaces and halls warping and fading. The lines begin to twist. Lying in his bed, Pei Ming is startled from bleary sleep by a sound like a shout in his ear. 

“Wake up!” 

Pei Ming stumbles into consciousness and reaches for his spear. It comes easily to his hand. He’s alone. He’s standing in the mess of his palace, surrounded by bottles. He doesn’t remember coming here. He doesn’t remember leaving Ling Wen. He steps forward, disoriented, and feels the earth shudder beneath his feet. He stumbles. The lines of the floor are smeared and indistinct, the boundaries running together. He can’t see. He finds himself stumbling through his palace, his shoulders clipping the wall as he accelerates, struggling towards the exit. Ling Wen, where is Ling Wen?

There’s a sound in his ear like the sound of war, like a hundred battles happening all at once, and it takes a moment before he understands that what he’s heard is the sound of a hundred messages being sent at once. He doesn’t open any of them. There’s a louder sound, a sound that trembles in his lungs, a sound that shakes Heaven. 

The calamity has begun. 

Heaven is tilting. People are lying on the ground, blood streaming from their ears, open-mouthed, gasping like hooked fish. A black dust blows through the streets, smelling of ash and animal fat. Pei Ming breaks into a run. The streets are trembling. He takes to the air. Below, the bodies are shaking as Heaven heaves, the people gathering in disorganized throngs, and it’s like war. It’s like being alive again. He should have known. 

A heavenly calamity always strikes the people who most rely on a god’s protections, and who is more reliant on Ling Wen then the people of the heavenly court? Who stops the quarrels, who paves the streets, who dispenses justice? Who decides who owes what? Ling Wen. And now Ling Wen is gone.

Pei Ming arrives at Ling Wen’s palace just in time to be overwhelmed with light. A strange new array appears under Ling Web’s palace- it flares and shines, and Pei Ming has to close his eyes against the burning splendor. The heat from the visitation scorches his skin. Later, he will learn that at this moment the heavenly array was filled with a scream, a deafening howl of absolute fury, and then the array crashed. In the moment, he doesn’t even feel his burns, or notice the shudder of the earthquakes that rattles all of heaven. All he can think of is his friend. 

He runs into the palace, his heart trembling in his chest, and finds it empty. The scrolls are scattered like snow, and all their pages are empty. All of Ling Wen’s careful precautions are dust now, and her halls are empty. The shine of Pei Ming’s armor is his only light. Disarmed, desperate, running from room to room, he chases himself through the palace until at last he comes to the center room. 

It’s there, in the middle of Ling Wen’s palace, in a place he’s never seen before, that he finds what he’s looking for. It’s a small room, a room with no windows and many doors, a room where the floor is papyrus and the walls are silk, a room with a raised altar in the center. Ling Wen is gone. But where her body lay, an outline in black has appeared on the white altar. 

+

Before Heaven, before the jail cell, before people hung from the gallows and from the trees for Ling Wen’s words, before Bai Jing’s death, there was the alley. It was a small alley, not far from Ling Wen’s house. At a young age, Ling Wen had learned how to swing out the back window of her room and climb down the side of the house and scamper away. She was young, but not stupid, and so her footsteps inevitably took her here, where she knew the people and the people knew her. 

The gang on third street grew and shrank, but it was composed of a core number of children. There was Shi Honglin, who later was a rebel leader and stormed the palace with fire and sword, and Feng Jianyu, who fought at her side. There were the Zhao siblings, quiet and serious, who left the city when the plague became too serious and never returned. And there was Ling Wen and Bei Jing, the unstated ringleaders, who came whenever they could and brought whatever food and drink they could steal. 

Strange, to be a child again, and stranger still to shimmy her way down the side of the building, buns stuffed in her sleeves, and make her way to the back alley. The city is quiet and sticky with heat, suffocating under the weight of summer. Those who can leave for cooler climes have already left, but Ling Wen’s father is not a rich man, and he will only grow poorer as the wars and rebellions take their toll on the security of the state. 

Ling Wen walks into the alley, and finds Bai Jing waiting for her. Her half-brother is the same as he always was, a tall, splendid idiot with an easy smile and ideas . Ling Wen’s whole family had thought that joining the army would cure him of his idealism, but it had only made it worse. Good old Bai Jing. He died as he lived, doing the right thing in the wrong moment. 

“Hey there, little sister,” he says, grinning.

“Big brother,” Ling Wen says. It’s been a long, long time. But this is her calamity, isn’t it? It’s her past. The greatest regret of Ling Wen’s life is that she didn’t join the rebels until after her brother was dead. 

“Hey, whatcha looking so bummed out for?” he asks. 

“Don’t say whatcha,” Ling Wen retorts, but the sentence brings a little smile to her face. She and her father were always trying to get Bai Jing to speak properly, but he insisted on keeping his provincial accent long after they’d moved to the city. “What are you doing here, huh?”

“Why wouldn’t I be here? This is where I’m from, after all.”

“Where we’re from,” Ling Wen says. Bai Jing is wearing the uniform he wore before his first deployment, the uniform they were all so proud to see him wear. Under the collar, Ling Wen can just see a glimpse of a shapeless sack. It’s the Brocade Immortal. He’s the Brocade Immortal, but he didn’t live forever. He died, and Ling Wen lived for a thousand years before seeing his face again. She reaches out and pinches his cheek, hard, and Bai Jing winces. 

“Hey, hey,” he says. “Hands off!”

“Or what?” Ling Wen says. “You’ll tell your mom?”

“I’ll defend myself!” Bai Jing says, laughing.

“Fat chance of that.”

“Hey! That’s a little harsh. Haven’t I been defending you? I don’t even have arms or legs half the time, and I still kept you safe, even in Mt. Tonglu.”

“You call that safe?”

“You survived, didn’t you?” Ling Wen wants to ask him how much he remembers, but the words stick in her throat. She doesn’t really want to know. 

“I did,” she says, and it’s Bai Jing’s turn to pinch her cheek. 

“Cheer up,” he says. “Come on. You have an appointment to get to.”

They leave the alley behind and go down the main avenue, Bai Jing pointing to this and that as they go. “Do you remember the dumplings they used to sell there? We would get them in the winter, and then race to see who could eat them before they got cold.”

“I remember,” Ling Wen says. “You would always put extra dumplings in my bowl, because you thought it was unfair that your mother didn’t feed me enough.”

“I should have fed you more, look how skinny you ended up,” Bai Jing says, and nudges her shoulder. “You picked a bad time to ascend.”

“Wasn’t my choice,” Ling Wen says. 

They round the corner and pass the fish market. When the rebellion started, they hung the bodies of the rioters and rebels above the  entrance, and used the broad tables for a different kind of butchery. Bai King glances at the scaffold as he walks past, and Ling Wen glances at him. You were dead by then, Ling Wen thinks, and you never had to see the city like that, filled with bodies and smoke. 

“I saw other cities in flames,” Bai Jing says. “I was a soldier, after all.”

“Yes, but they weren’t this city,” Ling Wen replies. They pass the fish market, and the overpowering smell disperses, replaced by the smell of flowers and perfume. Ling Wen never visited the red light district, and as far as she knows, Bai Jing never did either. 

“I really hate your boyfriend,” Bai Jing confesses. “He’s the least respectful person I’ve ever met. Absolutely awful.”

“Do you mean Pei Ming? He’s not my boyfriend.”

Bai Jing looks at her and pulls a face like he’s just found a worm in his apple. “Whatever you say, little sister.”

“It’s none of your business, anyway,” Ling Wen retorts, and she knows that she’s sulking. 

“It absolutely is,” Bai Jing retorts. “Who else is going to look after you?”

No one. No one looked after Ling Wen. Five years after his initial deployment Bai Jing was an officer and a rising star; seven years later he was dead. The emperor, terrified of the encircling rebels, pulled his forces back to defend the capital, and Bai Jing and his forces were left unsupplied and undefended, easy pickings for the incoming force. Ling Wen’s only consolation was that her father was not alive to see it; the sickness of the previous summer had taken him, and he’d died sure that his son would quell the coming uprest. 

The night she heard of her brother’s death, Ling Wen didn’t cry. There was no one left to cry with. There was no one left to cry with. The riots and the famines had carried off her old friends, making them into corpses or rebels, and there was no one left who would have cared to hear the news. That night, Ling Wen sat down at her kitchen table and wrote out a screed in her brother’s handwriting, railing against all the failures that had brought them to this day. 

“Against Xuli,” the words that made her a god. It was a statement of rebellion, a statement of fury,  a wish and a threat. Before six months had passed, against Xuli would be on the lips of every man in the country, and Ling Wen would be on her way to the gallows. 

“Where are we going?” Ling Wen asks. This is a dream, or a nightmare, or a vision, but it’s not Xuli. There are no words here and no letters, and the shapes that pass them in the street have forms but no faces. Behind them the dream-fisherman are butchering rebels on the chopping block and serving them up, and to the left and right the capital is burning, exactly as Ling Wen saw it burn in the end. 

In front of them, the high palace, the palace that Ling Wen trampled underfoot in her first real act of divinity. Jing Wen was worshipped in that palace, and Ling Wen knocked his statues to the ground and crushed them beneath her heel. This city died. It is a different city now, the wars of Ling Wen’s age forgotten. Only Pei Ming remembers. Only Pei Ming speaks in the sweet accent that Ling Wen learned at her father’s knee.

“We’re already here,” Bai Jing says, and indeed, they’re standing in front of the Imperial Library. When Ling Wen was alive, she would have given anything to stand in this building, but now it’s so small. Her own palace is bigger. She spent months wishing with all her heart to have been born a man, and the honors which seemed so large and so distant are so small now. 

Bei Jing moves to go in, and Ling Wen grabs his arm. 

“Wait,” she says. “My calamity is in there, isn’t it?”

“Your calamity is now,” Bai Jing tells her.

“Never mind that. Bai Jing, is it really you? My brother? You died.” Ling Wen swallows down the memory of her rage. Before Bai Jing died she was an ordinary girl, but after he died she was a rebel, her heart forever turned against the system that killed him.  

“It’s me,” Bai Jing confirms. “I was meant to ascend, but I stayed on the battlefield. I died the same day I ascended, and became my own burial shroud. But this is your memory. When I’m not in it, I don’t remember me.” There’s something wistful in his voice. “I’d forgotten what it was like to be able to reach out, to touch… They took my limbs while I was alive. I remember that.”

“I’m sorry,” Ling Wen whispers. 

“What could you have done? You were a shoe-seller.”

“Anything,” Ling Wen whispers, her throat rough with grief.  “I should have done anything.” Strange, to remember what it was like to be utterly powerless, and stranger still to recall that she used to sell shoes. She’s been ten times longer in Heaven than she was on earth, and yet the memory persists. 

She and Bai Jing stare at each other, and then Ling Wen reaches out and raps him on the forehead. “Why would you stay instead of ascending? You could have gone to Heaven. All these years, we could have been together.” The thought is almost too painful to stay out loud; Ling Wen is struck by a terrible longing for the past that never was. 

“You know why I stayed,” Bai Jing says quietly. 

She does. A man like Bai Jing would never abandon his country, no matter the odds, no matter the moment. He would never abandon her. There are tears in her eyes; how long has it been since she cried? The air smells of ashes, and the dead bodies are hanging from the trees, and the memories that Ling Wen thought were buried are hammering at her heart. 

“Come on,” Bai Jing says. Hand in hand, they go into the palace. 

+

It’s been a hundred days since Ling Wen vanished. Pei Ming meets the dawn in his bed, breathless and sleepless, nerves frayed by the weight of the Heavenly Capital. His body is a speck of dust, a single note in Heaven’s cacophony. A second’s lapse in concentration can have him lost for hours, caught up in the footsteps of strangers and the rise and fall of foreign voices. Did Jun Wu do this? Did he listen to this daily chorus, or did he know a way to block it out? Pei Ming is desperate enough, but he’s not going to Mt. Tonglu, not now. 

Surely any day now, any moment, any minute, Ling Wen will return. How long can a calamity last? Pei Ming refuses to believe that she’s dead, but what are the other options? There’s been no body; maybe there will never be a body. The thought makes him sick. He rises from his bed very carefully, every step as light as he can make it. He picks his way past a forest of wine bottles to his pantry, opens a new bottle and drinks. 

The Literature God of the South is advocating for Ling Wen’s palace to be demolished; he’s declared himself the new head literature god in her absence. He’s rounding up hangers-on and bribing his way into public opinion, and Pei Ming doesn’t know how to make him stop. Rong Guang was his shadow, his sword in the night, and Pei Ming was the daylight charge, the obvious distraction. If the Water Master were here, he could make it stop, but Shi Wudu is dead and gone. It’s just Pei Ming and his headache and his rapidly dwindling supply of wine. 

He fumbles open another bottle and chugs it down in one go. In the east, the light of the sun is just beginning to break over the edges of the Heavenly Court, and Pei Ming can feel every inch as if it were his own skin. He is the city; the city is him. He sits on the floor, surrounded by bottles, caught up in nothing. It’s a week before he remembers to breathe. 

+

When Ling Wen was very young, she dreamed of taking the Imperial Exams. In her dreams, she knelt in front of the King with all the other scholars, and she received the honor of having her name called first. She was very young then, but smart enough to know that she was smart, smarter than any of the other students who came to learn at her little provincial school. She had a whole daydream of how it would go: the test, the ceremony, the king, the honors. She cried for a whole day when she learned that women couldn’t take the test, and her stepmother beat her for being troublesome. 

In her daydreams, the honor of scoring first always came with a prize, and the prize was this: access to the splendid imperial library, heaped high with more books than Ling Wen could read in a lifetime. It’s been centuries since she last thought of these childish dreams, but now, as she walks through the doors of this impossible palace, the memories come flooding back to her. 

This is the library she dreamed of, heaped high with forbidden knowledge. There are bookshelves stacked against bookshelves, scrolls heaped on scrolls. No one is inside. No servants, no masters, no one to tell her what to do or where to go. She walks down the aisles, surveying the carefully labeled shelves and plucking any treasure that looks interesting into her arms. 

When her arms are full, she finds a little library book and starts to read. She used to love reading. Morning to night, any moment when she could get away from the boredom of her housework, she would sneak into the house library and start to read. It didn’t matter what she could find: classics, songs, stories, advice, treatises, laws. Any set of words was a delight, and every scroll was worth reading. 

She can’t remember the last time she read something for fun, and not for work. 

She settles into a corner, and starts to read, the words flowing over her. The scroll is a puzzle, half the words written in a dialect she doesn’t quite know, but she learns as she goes along. It’s an explanation of fate. It’s a story, it’s a puzzle. 

After a while, she raises her head, distracted by some distant sound. Wasn’t there someone with her? Something, somewhere, that she was supposed to do? She doesn’t remember. She sits and listens, half-hoping that some sound will remind her, but there’s no sound at all. There’s just the silence of the library. No mother, no father, no boss, no servants. No one to call her away or tell her what to do. 

It’s just Ling Wen and the library.

She ducks her head and goes back to reading. 

Law.

Theory. 

Myth. 

Explanation. 

Word to word, link to link, 

all the way from when humans first scraped metal against bone to carve out the first letters. A ladder reaching back into the past. A record of fate. 

Ling Wen turns the page, and sees the dot on her left hand, and remembers. It comes back to her all at once: Pei Ming, The Heavenly Capital. The earthquakes. Bai Jing, and her strange memories of the burning capital. 

“Bai Jing,” she calls. “Bai Jing!” She goes running through the library, row after row, and barrels directly into Bai Jing. 

There’s a seam in his face that’s coming unstitched. 

“You finished your book. I wasn’t sure whether you would.”

“Why didn’t you,” Ling Wen begins, and then she takes a step back. Is this thing really her brother, or only another illusion? “Why didn’t you wake me up?”

“I couldn’t bear to disturb you. You looked so happy, surrounded by all your books. Happier than I’ve ever seen you. You could stay here forever, you know.”

Ling Wen hesitates. Bai Jing’s skin has taken on a rough texture, more like cloth than like human skin. Beneath the fraying seam at his forehead, there’s nothing. He’s empty on the inside. “Bai Jing, why are you here?”

“I never had a Heavenly Calamity,” he says. It isn’t an answer. “I don’t want one. I don’t think I want to be a ghost, either.”

“What do you want?”

Bai Jing simply shakes his head. 

“We should get out of here,” Ling Wen says, and grabs his hand. She turns, intending to drag him with her, but he doesn’t move. His hand is rough, painfully inhuman. It doesn't matter. Ling Wen will love him even as a monster, even as a collection of strings, even as a burial shroud. 

“You should get your book first,” he says. Right. The earthquakes. The books. The array. Ling Wen was looking for a way to save the city. Ling Wen was looking for a way to save Pei Ming. 

She finds the section. She starts to search through the scrolls, and when she finds the right one, she starts to read it. Just in case. It’s fascinating. It’s a complicated subject and a complicated art. She’s always loved seeing the systems that hold everything together, the way kingdoms and empires rise and fall on small things like the supply of silver, the cost of tea. 

She doesn’t know how long she stands there, reading. She only knows when she comes back to herself, Bai Jing is standing in front of her. He’s missing the left half of his face, now. Unstitched, it opens into a void. The shock of it has her heart racing. 

What is this thing? Why is it in front of her? She was rushing, she knows, but she can’t remember why. There was a city, once, a city that hung on the clouds, a city filled with human vice and human ambition, but that was a very long time ago. Cities rise and fall, and Ling Wen never forgave that one for what it pretended to be. There was something there, though. Something that mattered.

There was-

There was someone-

There was a promise she made, another shining idiot with a beautiful face, a ruthless, perfect idiot, a general who claimed to love her. She can’t remember his name, but she remembers-

“When I get back,” she says to herself, and the words are so loud in the silence of the library. She begins to walk, the thing trailing behind her. They go so slowly, and they pass so many interesting books along the way. Books of power, books of fate, books of knowledge. She could rewrite history. She could remake the world with a swipe of her brush. She could change what’s been and what will be, but-

“When I get back,” she repeats to herself. There’s a face in her memories, a face that’s been with her across centuries. A man she knows better than she knows herself, a man who’s waiting for her to return. 

She reaches the exit. 

There’s a scroll on a podium just before the doors. It’s a story. A long story, the story of a girl who became a literature goddess and then the Queen of Heaven. Ling Wen isn’t interested in the end. She flips to the beginning of the story, skipping over hundreds of years, until she finds the earliest section. 

“They sentenced him to be drawn and quartered, and then he died,” the story reads. “But his spirit lingered on, determined to protect his remaining family.”

Ling Wen bites into her thumb until blood wells from the torn skin, and with her own ink she scrawls a post-script. “He protected his sister for many years, until at last she ascended, and he was free.”

There’s the sound of fire, louder than ever. Bai Jing’s arms are over her shoulders, hugging her like he used to do when they were both still alive, holding her like the comforting wrap of a robe over her shoulders. 

“Go,” he whispers. They’re at the doorway. Ling Wen takes a step forward. 

Ling Wen wakes up.