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Chapter Text

When Wen Qing is five and A-Ning is four, Baba begins giving them attention for the first time.

Baba has an important job with Wen-zongzhu, so he’s rarely been home before— And when he has, he’s never played with them: only watched quietly, A-Ning curled against his side while Wen Qing dug in Popo’s garden or practiced writing or helped Popo make sweet pastes to bake in snacks.

It had been Wen Qing and Popo’s job to take care of A-Ning, who was too small when he was born, and is still very small, and gets sick all the time. Wen Qing had to be patient when he couldn’t play with her; patient when he didn’t hardly talk even though Wen Qing had been talking for ages.

Wen Qing is not very good at being patient, but she is good at taking care of A-Ning. She’s the best at finding him even when he hides, always so quiet, in a corner somewhere. And even though he wouldn’t just say so, she can always tell when he’s too hot or too cold, or when he needs to lie down and cover his eyes because his head hurts.

Baba doesn’t know how to do any of that, or how to hug A-Ning the way that he likes, like he’s a giggling sack of rice and Wen Qing or Popo have to squeeze as hard as possible or he’ll fall down.

But A-Ning finally starts talking, and Baba takes interest.

Suddenly A-Ning talks a lot, sometimes so much and so loud that he gives himself a headache on accident. Baba says he’s not very good at it— A-Ning stumbles and repeats himself, like he’s stored up so many words that now they’re all trying to spill out at once.

Wen Qing already has a lot of practice paying attention to A-Ning, so she understands him fine even at his most jumbled. She thinks she probably understands him better than anyone, except that Popo has a way about her that makes the words slow down and come easier, so it’s hard to tell.

Baba is the opposite at first. A-Ning wants to chatter when Baba is home more than any other time, but this makes Baba frown. He tells A-Ning that he needs to control himself, and sits him down to practice poems and tongue-twisters over and over, until A-Ning always talks really carefully when Baba is in sight.

After Baba is satisfied with A-Ning’s progress, he’s home more often, and for longer. At night he tells stories and has A-Ning and Wen Qing repeat them back like with the poems. He tells them to ask him questions about them, and to answer the questions he asks in turn.

He tells stories about princesses and immortals and assassins and travellers and animals, and Wen Qing likes a lot of them, but the story he tells the most is about a scorpion, and Wen Qing hates it. It is a sad story, and the scorpion is awful and the frog is stupid and the turtle is especially stupid.

She complains about this once, and Baba agrees to a different story with a laugh. "It's not bad for a girl to have strong opinions when she's still young," he says, and tells another story about immortal princesses.

She doesn’t bring it up again, though, because when Baba tells the scorpion story he asks a lot of questions, and A-Ning likes to answer them. Baba pats him on the head, and says, “That’s very good thinking, Ning-er”, and A-Ning glows with happiness.

When A-Ning is happy, it’s very easy for Wen Qing to also be happy. So she drifts off a lot of nights to the sound of A-Ning stumbling through the reasons why a princess would marry a prince if she was in love with a soldier instead, or why the frog would let the scorpion on his back in the first place when the frog knew that it would sting.

When Wen Qing is six and A-Ning is five, Baba starts teaching them both to cultivate. This means more recitations, and it means meditation, and it also means unarmed combat forms.

A-Ning likes all of it a lot, but he also gets overwhelmed sometimes and has to stop, and then he’s upset because he has to just watch Baba and Wen Qing work and can’t join in. He practices as much as he can, especially on days like that after Baba has left; every time Wen Qing turns around she sees A-Ning trying to perfect one form or another.

Unarmed combat bores Wen Qing, but it’s A-Ning’s best subject. He gets very close to perfect, but then when he gets frustrated or distracted or relaxed his stances and steps always end up just a bit too wide; his strikes overcommitted, unbalanced.

Wen Qing wishes he wouldn’t practice so much. It makes him upset, and it makes his headaches and intermittent fevers worse.

Baba stops him from overtraining when he’s home, but most days it’s up to Wen Qing. Even when she distracts him with something else more fun like a book or a snack, it doesn’t make his mood go away so much as just papers it over with a pretty pattern.

Popo is better at dealing with A-Ning, at these times. She has this way of asking him to sit down, of offering a snack or a drink or a game, that A-Ning and Wen Qing are both helpless to resist.

When A-Ning feels really bad about his progress, Popo can draw him away from practice by insisting she needs his help cooking dinner. They don’t have any servants, after all, because Baba doesn’t like other people in the house, and cooking can be a lot of work! Wen Qing knows this is really just an excuse to make him rest, but A-Ning is younger, so he falls for it every time.

Anyway, A-Ning enjoys cooking almost as much as Wen Qing enjoys exploring Popo’s herb garden and brewing potions with random combinations of roots and leaves and flowers. That’s Wen Qing’s favorite activity, except maybe reading, especially after Popo shows her how to reduce sarsaparilla and honeysuckle with a twist of qi to brew a jelly that makes A-Ning’s headaches go away.

Wen Qing wants to be just like Popo when she grows up.

Shortly after A-Ning turns six, Popo takes Wen Qing and A-Ning to visit their da-jiu. Wen Qing didn’t know they had a da-jiu.

His house is further downhill, but it’s bigger than theirs and has lots of servants. When they arrive, their da-jiu greets Popo, and he looks at Wen Qing and A-Ning like he’s angry about something.

“He looks like his father,” says da-Jiu.

“Looks are as far as the resemblance goes,” says Popo. “Our A-Ning is a sweet boy, very eager to please.”

Da-Jiu grunts and turns away. Popo throws a concerned look at Wen Qing and A-Ning, tells them to play in the garden, and goes after him.

“My son,” Wen Qing hears her say as she walks away, “It’s not their fault…”

In the end, da-Jiu doesn’t speak to them. They have a cousin, though! His name is Wen Heng, and he’s only a little older than Wen Qing but he insists they both call him Heng-ge. He’s very pushy, but A-Ning doesn’t seem to mind.

The three of them play hide and seek. At first, Heng-ge is best at it because it’s his house and he knows all the hiding places. After a few rounds, though, A-Ning starts winning. When Heng-ge is the seeker, he has to give up every time and ask Wen Qing to find A-Ning.

Afterwards, Popo brings them and Heng-ge snacks. Heng-ge takes more than his share. He clings to Popo when it’s time to leave, and won’t let go until his mother makes him.

When Wen Qing is seven, and A-Ning has just turned seven too, Baba tells Popo that they’re big enough to come with him to work. Popo seems upset about that. Wen Qing thinks it’s probably because she’ll be very lonely at home without them. Wen Qing and A-Ning are very excited to go. They’ve never seen Baba’s workplace before.

First they go to the Sun Hall in the Palace of Sun and Flame and meet Wen-zongzhu, and he pats their hair and prods their faces and tells them he knew them when they were very small. Then he introduces his own eldest son Wen Xu, and tells Wen Qing and A-Ning to call Wen Xu ‘tang-ge’ like he’s their cousin, and pinches Wen Xu’s ear when he makes a face at A-Ning.

Wen Zongzhu says he has another son too, but he’s with a nursemaid because even though Wen Chao is older than them, he’s nowhere near as well-behaved.

Then Wen-zongzhu tells Baba there’s a Wen outer disciple who’s being ‘ob-sti-nate’, and Baba gives Wen Qing and A-Ning a long and considering look, then tells them both to come along.

There’s a plaza at the foot of the stairs that lead to the palace, and he takes them to one of the two-story buildings that ring its edge. The gold-painted signboard above the door declares it the Crucible Room. He says that the man Wen-zongzhu mentioned has been bad, though not so bad that Wen-zongzhu would deal with him himself.

“My duty is not to punish him,” Baba explains, “rather— to correct his behavior.”

She knows that Baba corrects A-Ning’s behavior when he makes him practice tongue twisters. Wen Qing doesn’t know how the outer disciple has been bad. Perhaps he’s also bad at speaking?

The man stands in the center of the room. He’s dressed as a senior disciple, but he looks young so he must not have been one for very long. He has a small mole on his jaw, and shiny hair, and he looks very angry with Baba.

Baba sends Wen Qing and A-Ning to sit at the side of the room. He stands in front of the man, and his face goes smooth and watchful, and he speaks.

“Zhou Rong. This is the second time you’ve been sent to me for insubordinate behavior,” says Baba.

“I only told him I wouldn’t—” He looks at Wen Qing and A-Ning and cuts off, jaw clenched. “Fine. Just get it over with,” Zhou Rong grits out. “Thirty strikes. I know.”

“If you know, do better.”

Zhou Rong glares up at him, then, in a way that looks scary. He curls his fists, and shifts like one of the forms Wen Qing recognizes from their unarmed combat practice with Baba, and—

“None of that.” Suddenly Baba jabs a finger into a series of three spots on Zhou Rong’s front, and Zhou Rong freezes in place. Baba pushes at his shoulder so he’s knelt on the floor. “Thirty is a bit low, I think,” says Baba. “What say we start there, and continue until your attitude improves?”

And then Baba takes down a bamboo cane from the wall, and he does a short limbering stretch, and says, “This is not a punishment, Zhou Rong. This is correction.”

And then he hits him.

He hits him, again and again. It’s loud, and Zhou Rong makes these awful gasps, and when A-Ning looks away Baba turns in their direction for a moment and tells them to pay attention, and.

And then he keeps going.

They have never seen Baba like this before, except that every line of his body and facial expression is as calm and relaxed as always. Wen Qing is afraid to move— Even her face is frozen.

A-Ning, next to her, grips the fabric of his robes until it wrinkles. He looks the way he does when a headache is coming on. Like everything is too loud and too big and too bright, and he’s holding himself back from flailing until the thing that’s upsetting him just please goes away.

It doesn’t go away. Not until Zhou Rong lapses into stoic, pained sobs. Baba stops and waits a few long moments for the crying to peter off. Then he raises Zhou Rong’s head and says something Wen Qing can’t hear.

Zhou Rong responds with a single shaky nod. Baba’s smile, then, is like when she or A-Ning give the right answer to one of Baba’s questions. She thought she liked that smile, but suddenly it’s chilling.

When it’s over, and Baba – Fuqin – crosses the room to fetch them, A-Ning flinches away and bursts into tears.

By the time Wen Qing turns eight, Fuqin has brought them to the Crucible Room on nearly three dozen occasions. A-Ning tried to stay behind, at first, standing slack and silent and wide-eyed. The look in Fuqin’s eyes frightened Wen Qing. She had to drag on A-Ning’s arms, cajole him, until he walked on his own.

They go with him twice per week. Sometimes it’s like that first time. Sometimes it’s a quiet day when nobody has done anything that can’t be handled by an immediate superior instead; on these days, they kneel together on the hard wooden floor of the Crucible Room while Fuqin quizzes them on sect bylaws or on weights of cane and lash.

Sometimes there is more than one person in trouble, or there are other adults in the room watching; Fuqin says this is because he is ‘making an example’. Their own presence is never questioned. A Wen educates his children how he sees fit.

Other times, Fuqin puts Wen Qing and A-Ning in a sitting room in the Palace of Sun and Flame and leaves alone or with Wen-zongzhu. He comes back smelling of blood.

Baba’s work doesn’t extend only to Wen disciples and cultivators. One day, they are in the Sun Hall with Wen-zongzhu and both his sons. Guards bring a non-cultivator in elaborately embroidered round-collar robes to the center of the hall, and Wen-zongzhu tells Wen Xu and a disgruntled Wen Chao to run along.

Wen-zongzhu sits on his throne with scornful inattention. The… prisoner? is some kind of official, or a landowner, or a merchant— Wen Qing doesn’t think he can be all three, but the things he says make it unclear. And he says so many things.

Fuqin manhandles him, and makes threats, and shouts questions until the official is stuttering worse than A-Ning ever has. Then Fuqin paces slowly and gives the official time to think, and look around, and simmer in his own dread until he spits stream of apologies and promises and meaningless babble.

The official looks over at Wen Qing and A-Ning, at one point.

Somehow they scare him, too. She wonders what it is that he sees, when he looks at them. Two too-still children, dark eyed, fine-clothed for a visit with Wen-zongzhu, not looking back at him so much as looking past him and waiting for this to be over.

In the end, Fuqin strikes this man only once; slaps him across the face, a metal ring on his finger turned to leave a scratch across the official’s cheek. Though he was dragged in, the man walks out alone on wobbling legs.

Father asks if they understand why today was different. Wen Qing shakes her head, lips sealed shut. Father looks at A-Ning. Softly, hesitating, A-Ning says that the official looked very afraid.

“Yes.” Says Fuqin. “Remember this. Fear is a better motivator than pain.”

A short while after that day, the man from the first time, Zhou Rong, is brought back to the Crucible Room. Despite how that time ended, he stares Fuqin in the eye, defiant. He doesn’t try to explain himself, only fills the silence between strikes with creatively foul language.

Fuqin ignores this. Strikes, and waits. Makes it impossible to guess when each new blow will land. Suspense, then fear, then pain. In the end, Zhou Rong is reduced to sobbing apologies and grasping at the relief of Fuqin’s quiet approval.

Wen Qing leaves the room with an uncomfortable sense of vertigo at how much he changed over the course of a half-hour.

When Wen Qing is ten and A-Ning is nine, their maternal cousin, Heng-ge, starts attending the group sword training with the other children their age. These training sessions are optional: they are members of the Wen clan of the Qishan Wen, and to be a Wen is to look to one’s parents as one’s first and most important teachers— Fuqin had planned to start them on the sword himself. A-Ning wants to attend the group session, though, and Fuqin agrees and sends them both.

There are a lot more boys than girls, and they’re all more like Heng-ge, rude and thoughtless, rather than quiet and attentive like A-Ning. The instructor is terse, and he teaches very slowly but also explains poorly.

Wen Qing is desperately bored and frustrated. Fuqin would move them along faster. She could be gardening right now, or reading.

At least it’s fine for A-Ning, at first. For a week they only do drills, and where Wen Qing is going out of her mind from repeating each move until the instructor has micromanaged every child present, A-Ning settles into the repetition the same way he always has since their cultivation practice started at home.

She worries, though, because the instructor doesn’t stop them for water nearly often enough. She’s been experimenting with different formulas to help prevent A-Ning’s headaches, but they won’t help if he gets heatstroke while the instructor fusses for a quarter-hour over the footwork of each child present. A-Ning persists, though, even when she can look over and see the pain-tension in his frowning face.

In the second week after they switch to paired drills, her fear is realized. While the instructor is distracted with loudly correcting the apparently horrible posture of an older girl, A-Ning’s exhaustion catches up with him. He overextends and strikes his drill partner on the head. The both of them are badly startled by this, then taken aback when his partner starts bleeding from the scalp. A-Ning apologizes, stuttering, and offers to fetch a bandage. Wen Qing excuses herself from her own partner.

The other boy starts shouting, and their instructor rushes over. He says that A-Ning did it on purpose, had been glaring at him, and Wen Qing doesn’t understand. Can’t he see how upset A-Ning was, is? He was only frowning because he was tired— His confusion and guilt couldn’t be more obvious if it was written in characters four feet high. But the instructor must believe the boy, because he turns to A-Ning and asks – shouts, really – why he did it.

A-Ning tries to describe the whole sequence of events, but Wen Qing can see his words backing into a tumble. The instructor is too tall, and too close to A-Ning; he’s scaring him. Wen Qing tries to get between them and explain to the instructor herself, but the instructor tells her to shut up, and pushes her out of the way, and then—

When she recovers her balance, A-Ning is even guiltier and even more scared. The instructor is on the ground, staring up at A-Ning in horrified indignation.

After that everything gets very loud and starts happening very quickly.

The instructor dismisses the class. He says A-Ning committed a serious offense by shoving him, and he’s taking him to the head of discipline for punishment. He grabs A-Ning by the back of his robes and marches him uphill; Wen Qing was dismissed with the others, but she follows on their heels. Taking her actions as permission or encouragement, some of their classmates also trail behind.

They reach the plaza below the Sun Palace, and the instructor takes a hard right and heads towards the Crucible Room. But… that’s Fuqin’s room. The instructor is taking A-Ning to Fuqin? Her breath curdles in her lungs. But— No, no, he can’t.

As usual, there is an attendant posted at the Crucible Room’s door. He looks at A-Ning and Wen Qing with great alarm, but lets A-Ning and the instructor inside and leaves to fetch Fuqin from his office upstairs. The instructor turns, then, and orders Wen Qing and the other children to stay outside. They hover at the threshold.

Wen Qing hasn’t been able to see A-Ning’s face during all of this; he’s been in front of her, and also mostly looking at his feet. Now, though, he cranes his head around as much as he can with the grip the instructor has on the back of his robes, and Wen Qing hurts. He’s been crying. He looks almost dazed, like his feet have kept up but the rest of him hasn’t. He looks back down, his neck flushed with humiliation.

When Fuqin enters the room, the instructor does not wait to be acknowledged. He starts telling what happened immediately, and he tells it wrong, as if A-Ning started it, which he didn’t. Wen Qing is a moment from bowling into the room and saying so, when A-Ning looks up and chokes out a sob that sounds like ‘Baba’.

A-Ning rips himself out of the instructor’s grip and throws himself at Fuqin, hides his face in Fuqin’s waist. The way the instructor freezes, then, is terrified – and terrifying. His mouth is still open, but no sound comes out. A few of the older students, who had been gawking before with intense morbid curiosity, now look between Wen Qing and A-Ning in a surprised and wary fashion.

In all of this, Fuqin is still as stone. He does not smile or frown. He does not wrap an arm around A-Ning’s shaking shoulders, does not run a thumb over his damp cheek. He waits, and when the shaking stops he nudges A-Ning to let go of him and stand up straight.

He looks at Wen Qing, then, and tells her to come in and close the door. She does, and is surprised that her hands don’t tremble as the last sight of her nosier classmates disappear behind the wood.

He asks A-Ning, then, if what their instructor said is true. After three false starts, A-Ning finally replies that he hadn’t meant to, and it was an accident, and when he pushed Wen Qing he just reacted— Fuqin’s eyes narrow at that, glancing at the man in question.

“That was careless, Ning-er,” says Fuqin. Then: “Carelessness. Sloppiness. Acting without thinking.” He pauses for a long moment, eyes fixed on A-Ning’s smudged face.

“You are not being punished,” says Fuqin, and Wen Qing feels her shoulders slump in relief, but then he continues. “This is correction. You need control.”

Fuqin tells A-Ning to kneel. Wen Qing can’t see A-Ning’s expression, but it must mirror her own: betrayal, yes. Shock. Surprise, and a sense of foolishness for it. She wants to protest, but her tongue is frozen. A-Ning kneels, and his hands form fists in the fabric over his legs for just a moment before he flattens them. A-Ning closes his eyes harshly. Opens them with an unsteady breath. Stares ahead.

Fuqin selects a rod from the stand against the back wall. It’s not a heavy rod, but still one they have seen him use before, on a teenaged disciple who started crying after only two blows. Fuqin says A-Ning will receive twenty-five: ten for the lapse of attention that resulted in striking his classmate. A ridiculous consequence for the kind of accident that’s usually settled with a casual apology, but—Wen Qing and A-Ning are not allowed to be careless. Then another fifteen for thoughtlessly striking his teacher, and that, Wen Qing knows, is an appropriate standard sentence for his age and level of cultivation. Striking a superior is a major infraction of the bylaws of the Wen sect.

Fuqin doesn’t use any mind games. He delivers the blows at a steady pace. A-Ning is silent and upright, though he sways a little with each blow and tears track down his cheeks. It probably takes three minutes total. For Wen Qing, it feels like hours and she cannot breathe. Fuqin’s face looks exactly the same way that it always does, in this room. But this time it’s A-Ning, and he is still so small for his age.

On the twenty-fifth blow, A-Ning finally lets out a single small sniffle. He places his hands on the floor in front of him, and bows, and says he will do better.

Fuqin smiles, like A-Ning has given the right answer, and in that moment Wen Qing despises him.

When A-Ning stands, he does so with a careful stiffness. Wen Qing wants to help him up, but something in the air tells her it would be a mistake. He wipes his eyes with trembling hands, and bows again. Fuqin nods, and then he turns to their instructor and asks if he is satisfied. Wordless and pale, their instructor nods.

“Good,” says Fuqin. “Now let us discuss the appropriate chastisement for laying a hand on my children.”

What comes next is worse.

Afterwards, when she is alone, Wen Qing throws up. When they return to sword-training the following week, the instructor has been replaced.

Chapter Text

Wen Qing is ten and A-Ning is nine, and they have learned that they are not safe, and not safe to be around.

They have watched Fuqin correct hundreds of Wen disciples and cultivators, and every time he’s been in perfect control. Every time, he’s been… not fair, fairness doesn’t come into it, but exactly as cruel or as kind as he needs to be to get the desired result. In most cases: obedience.

It was the same when he beat A-Ning, but their sword instructor, after— Wen Qing couldn’t tell whether Fuqin was still in control, when he beat the sword instructor. She couldn’t tell what the desired result was meant to be, either. He had been…

Wen Qing has nightmares about that day. Sometimes, they’re simply a memory of A-Ning’s beating. Her memory of it is sharper than she’d like – Fuqin’s cultivation path sharpens her senses; the sun that illuminates, that reveals, that guides – despite herself she’d noticed and understood every hidden signal of A-Ning’s upset and pain, and every moment of their instructor’s punishment afterwards.

Other times, events blur together until what happened to their instructor happens to A-Ning instead, or sometimes it’s herself or A-Ning in Fuqin’s place, stepping on the man’s arm until it craaaacks—

Anyway. The only difference between their sword instructor and every other person who’s entered the Crucible Room… is his involvement with them, with Wen Qing and A-Ning. So. They are not safe to be around.

At A-Ning’s request, they return to sword training with the children their age. Wen Qing doesn’t get it— The sword is boring and the group lessons are slow-paced. Popo says it’s because A-Ning wants to make friends, but doesn’t he already have her?

If that is why, though, then his hopes are disappointed. Whispers follow them. For half a week, they’re both carefully avoided. Then, their new instructor is ready to return them to pair exercises. A-Ning blanches white, and asks to sit out.

The instructor denies the request and assigns him to a partner, but for the rest of the day A-Ning pulls every blow. Even when the instructor comes back and scolds him for it, he strikes at half-speed. He blocks at half-speed too, leading his partner to hit him multiple times.

The other boy starts giggling after every painful exchange, and Wen Qing really, really wants to tell on him, because his behavior is awful and that’s no way to treat your practice partner. He’s hitting A-Ning on purpose at this point; he deserves to be punished.

A-Ning must guess her intentions, though, because he catches her eye and shakes his head desperately.

Wen Qing leaves it be.

After that, at the next session, the other children stop skirting around A-Ning; they start calling him ‘coward’ and ‘weakling’ instead. Wen Qing makes sure to partner up with him herself in pair drills, or else she’s sure it wouldn’t stop at name-calling.

A-Ning won’t talk about it, so Wen Qing finds herself complaining to Wen Heng instead.

“He kind of is, though,” says Wen Heng. “He’s so shy— And he’s afraid to follow through in training, where a cultivator has to trust his martial brothers to be able to defend themselves.” He speaks pompously. He’s parroting what their new instructor told A-Ning earlier.

It’s not exactly that he’s afraid they won’t defend themselves, thinks Wen Qing, but Wen Heng hadn’t followed them to the Crucible Room that day. He doesn’t understand.

When Wen Qing is eleven and A-Ning is ten, Popo says they’re past old enough to wander around the Nightless City on their own, or even go down to the town at its foot, where non-cultivators run restaurants and inns to cater to the traders that pass through on their way between Chang’an and the far west.

Popo gives them purses, once a month, to spend on street food and trinkets. Wen Qing mostly saves hers for a greater treasure: books. There’s a bookbinder in town, and a couple street vendors who reliably buy secondhand volumes off the merchants traveling through.

Wen Qing has to sift through their entire stocks to find the really good ones. They carry nothing on cultivation – anything really esoteric is offered directly to the Wen sect’s archivists, and not offered for sale to the mundane people in town – but now and then she finds botany guides or translated volumes on medical theory from far away.

One day, she thinks that A-Ning is settled and reading a collection of adventure stories while he waits for her to finish looking through the wares of a book merchant from the capital. When she looks up, though, he’s gone.

Wen Qing panics. Only a little. Popo told them to stay together, because even though they’re big kids now they’re still kids.

When she finds A-Ning only a street away, though, it isn’t a relief. Because he’s not alone— He’s surrounded by their classmates from sword-drills, and they’re laughing and jeering and one of them is kicking him and he’s on the ground and he’s just letting them—

Wen Qing marches up to them and hits the one who’s kicking him with her new book, and then she threatens to report them to the head of discipline for infighting in front of the general public. If she’s not entirely proud of invoking their father, at least it works: they run away.

After a moment, A-Ning uncurls a little.

“Thank you, Jiejie,” says A-Ning. “I… I didn’t know wh-what to do…”

Wen Qing is bubbling with anger at the other boys, and with residual worry over A-Ning’s disappearance. Once she’s checked him over, she scolds him. “You should’ve run! Or told them off, like I did. Why did they surround you like that, anyway?”

A-Ning jerks, then uncurls a little more. Hesitantly, he raises his arms and reveals a scruffy ball of fur.

“They— She’s just small, see?” The kitten mewls piteously. “I think her m-mother left her, in the alley here. They w-were, were…”

He trails off, but the kitten’s ear is cut and bleeding, and her tail is crooked. Wen Qing can guess what they were up to.

She sighs.

“We’ll take her home,” she tells A-Ning. “I’ll patch her up.”

Though it’s all called “the Crucible Room”, Fuqin’s workplace is not actually limited to the single large room that makes up most of its ground floor. The ground floor also has a small room stuffed to the brim with disciplinary records. In addition to this, the building has a second story as well as a basement level.

As they grow, Fuqin acquaints them with the records— And with his offices on the second story, from which it sometimes seems like he keeps track of everything that ever happens in the Nightless City.

When Wen Qing and A-Ning are both eleven, Zhou Rong, the first person they ever saw disciplined, is brought back to the Crucible Room again. Fuqin appraises him with a quiet dissatisfaction.

“You are better than this, Hairong,” says Fuqin.

Zhou Rong – Zhou Hairong, now – is angry, as he was the last times they saw him. It’s different from before, though: a quiet, jittering thing that seems to live in his chest and then claw its way out when he speaks.

“Get it over with,” he says.

His eyes cut to Wen Qing and A-Ning.

“Just— Send them out, would you? They’re just kids—”

With a dangerously even tone, Fuqin interrupts. “Because you are not a Wen,” he says, “there are some things I suppose you cannot understand. Here is one: it is not your place, or anyone’s, to interfere with the education of my children.”

Zhou Hairong’s mouth clicks shut, but there’s something fractious in the line of his shoulders.

Fuqin assesses these reactions, and tilts his head, and seems to come to a conclusion. “Pain doesn’t teach you anything, does it Hairong? Do you not want to be better?”

Fuqin’s tone grows so dangerous, so coldly disappointed when he says this, it makes A-Ning let out a small noise of alarm.

“What is it, Ning-er? Do you have something to say?”

“Um.” A-Ning looks from Fuqin to Zhou Hairong with a measure of trepidation. “He m— He. Must want to do better. Maybe he… just doesn’t know how?”

It’s a blatant bid for clemency. A-Ning can’t help himself. He has to be forced to speak in public, but when he does it’s half-likely to be in someone’s defense— But this time it’s going to get him in trouble.

But it doesn’t. Fuqin huffs quietly, thinks for a moment, and then says, “Perhaps you’re right.”

He grabs Zhou Hairong by the arm and hefts him to his feet, and indicates to Wen Qing and A-Ning that they should follow. By now, Wen Qing knows enough to have misgivings. Still, she obeys.

They follow Fuqin and Zhou Hairong upstairs, to a small, empty room with a pallet on the floor, and a tiny window high on the wall, and a door that bars shut from the outside.

The hallway is lined with a half-dozen doors just like it. Some of them are closed. Wen Qing hasn’t paid them any mind before, but now she examines them warily.

Fuqin pulls a slim volume out of his sleeve, presses it into Zhou Hairong’s hands, and then shoves him into the room. “You’re familiar, of course, with the principles of our sect— As laid down by the founder Wen Mao, and built upon further by his successors.”

“I’m familiar,” Zhou Hairong agrees uneasily.

A joyless smile on his face, Fuqin continues. “Clearly you are not familiar enough. Review them. You’ll have no distractions here. When you can recite every principle from memory, then you’ll be allowed to return to your regular duties.”

It only takes Zhou Hairong a day to review the book well enough to describe its contents from memory, but Fuqin doesn’t let him out. First, he says the order must also be the same as written. Then the exact wording. Then, when Zhou Hairong recites, it has to be perfect, without hesitation and without a single muddy tone.

In the end, he’s isolated for six days before Fuqin declares himself satisfied that Zhou Hairong has internalized the lesson. Zhou Hairong leaves the room with his rage cracked open into a hushed agitation that buzzes, aimless, under his skin.

He takes twenty strikes, bruisingly heavy but straightforward, for each day he missed of his regular duties. Then he’s dismissed.

“I didn’t want this,” A-Ning murmurs when it’s over, his hand tangled nervously in the draping end of Wen Qing’s sleeve.

“What was that?” asks Fuqin.

“I— He w-won’t get puni— n-no, I mean, he won’t… come back, right? He knows the rules n-now, he won’t get in trouble?”

Fuqin replies before Wen Qing can say anything. “Plan what you mean to say before you speak.”

A-Ning shrinks a little.

“As to your question: we’ll have to wait and see.” His voice darkens. “If he does…” He trails off, shaking his head thoughtfully.

Wen Qing hopes they don’t see Zhou Hairong again. For A-Ning’s sake, at least.

When A-Ning turns twelve, Fuqin tells them again that they’re ready for something new. Wen Qing and A-Ning both understand enough by now to dread this, but they can do nothing but follow. He doesn’t like being questioned.

It’s not one of their regular Crucible Room days, and Fuqin does not take them to the Crucible Room. Instead, they go to the Palace of Sun and Flame, but not to the Sun Hall. Fuqin leads them through a minor labyrinth of hallways and down a flight of stairs.

Then, somewhere behind and below the Sun Hall, they exit out into another chamber nearly as large, the space broken up into smaller spaces by standing screens. There are no windows, so it’s all lit by braziers spaced along the walls and across the floor.

The chamber reeks of lye, but underneath that Wen Qing can also detect a persistent smell of blood and waste. So can A-Ning—she can see his expression shift from general anxiousness to specific dismay as he’s overwhelmed by his nose.

The chamber is quiet, but every step they take echoes into the high ceilings.

“Wait here,” says Fuqin, and heads down the hall outside.

Wen Qing tries to comfort A-Ning, but he brushes her off. “It’s- it’s fine,” he says quietly. “The smell— I’ll adjust.”

They both already know what this must be. What this must mean. Fuqin has left them in the rooms above and come back smelling of blood since they were small; when A-Ning started reading adventure books where – now and then – villains threatened the heroes with torture, they had to… make their own connections. Fuqin certainly wouldn’t be performing surgeries or engaging in great battles within the walls of the Palace of Sun and Flame.

Fuqin re-enters the chamber, followed by a pair of guards with a manacled, blindfolded prisoner between them. The prisoner looks like a cultivator, though her robes are too much of a mess to guess what sect. Not one of the most influential, anyway. She seems terrified, but she keeps resolutely silent as she’s marched forward.

Fuqin takes each of them by a shoulder and leads them deeper into the chamber. Wen Qing tries not to look too close at the sights revealed as they pass each set of screens — strange tables, strange chairs, chains and manacles and knives and odd and unsettling devices; all empty now, but now and then a persistent stain on the floor or the wood of a chained chair or the fine paper of a screen.

The prisoner is led, shivering, to something like a slab tilted between horizontal and upright. At last she struggles, but the guards overpower her, bind her to the slab with leather straps at the waist, neck, arms and legs.

Fuqin dismisses the guards back to the chamber’s entrance. “I’ll call for you once we’re done here.”

The guards took off her manacles when they bound her to the table, but Fuqin leaves the blindfold in place.

“Wen-zongzhu may join us later,” Fuqin tells Wen Qing and A-Ning, “so be on your best behavior.”

It’s the prisoner that responds—not with words, but by loudly spitting.

“So indelicate,” Fuqin comments dryly. “Do you understand why you’re here?”

“I don’t know where ‘here’ is,” says the prisoner. She must have a pretty good idea, honestly, but the blindfold allows her the pretense. Fuqin ignores her, looking at Wen Qing and A-Ning and waiting for an answer. A-Ning won’t say anything; he’s busy frowning anxiously at the fear-sweat forming on the prisoner’s forehead. Wen Qing just doesn’t want to play along, so she remains silent too.

It doesn’t matter: Fuqin tsks quietly and then explains anyway.

“Discipline is simple, but control? Control is more sensitive. It can require… more creative problem-solving.”

The prisoner shivers.

“What does that have to do with her,” Wen Qing asks flatly, and the prisoner jumps a little at realizing there are other people in the room.

“Our guest,” says Fuqin, “is sister to a sect leader who recently undercut our own sect for a lucrative escort contract that had previously been entrusted to us for a full generation.” If he were smiling, it would be all teeth. “She’s going to help us make sure her brother regrets his insolence.”

The prisoner shakes her head, summoning up a measure of bravado. “My brother will come for me,” she says. “You can’t do this— Your Wen Sect, you think you can just kidnap members of other clans and no-one will stop you?”

“Yes,” says Fuqin. He turns back to Wen Qing and A-Ning. “Ning-er, you’re still too young to be respected as a disciplinarian, but that won’t matter here. It all uses the same skillset, anyway—it’s time you start practicing.”

A-Ning jolts, looking back to Fuqin with hunted eyes. “I— I don’t understand.”

“I’ve already taught you all you need to know to change her mind,” Fuqin insists. “Patience, and timing, and finding the right levers. I’ll tell you what to do this time, but pay attention, make note of her tells. That goes for you as well, Qing-er.”

A-Ning is struck dumb. For her part, the things that Wen Qing wants to say wouldn’t go over well. This woman has done nothing wrong. He has no right to tell A-Ning to hurt her. Besides, this… retribution against some minor sect seems petty.

To stall, she speaks to the last point. “Why do we need to make her brother regret anything? Isn’t it just business?” She searches around for a moment. “Can’t… If it’s that important, couldn’t we just sabotage their escort work and ruin their contract?”

Fuqin lets out an amused huff. “Clever. Make no mistake, I plan to arrange for that too. But it’s important we send a very clear message as to what happens to people who cross the Wen sect.” He taps the prisoner’s face lightly. “Your brother deserves a personal touch, guniang. I’m sure you understand.”

He lays a hand heavily on A-Ning’s shoulder. “Come on,” he says, and hands him a thin, sharp knife from the table next to the slab.

A-Ning lets out a helpless little noise.

Fuqin shakes him a little.

“I— I don’t w-want to, Baba.”

“Is that a fucking kid?” There’s an edge of horror to the prisoner’s voice. Fuqin ignores her.

“Good,” he says instead, and Wen Qing feels a moment of startled hope that cracks when he continues speaking. “You don’t have to like it. You shouldn’t like it. You’re learning a skilled trade, not playing a child’s game.”

The knife is loose in A-Ning’s hand, and Wen Qing is afraid it’s moments from dropping onto his foot. Fuqin corrects his grip. It’s a different grip than they’re trained to use for the sword; different, too, from the way they’ve been taught to hold a small knife for self-defense when there’s no sword to hand. Delicate, almost, though A-Ning’s hands tighten nervously the moment Fuqin lets go.

“Now,” says Fuqin, pulling the prisoner’s sleeve loose of the strap on her wrist and folding it up, “We’ll start with knife control; that’s foundational. Try a cut to the back of the arm here— As shallow as possible while still breaking the skin. If it takes several attempts to get it right, that’s fine for now.”

The look on A-Ning’s face is worse than the time he got in trouble at sword training. Wen Qing breaks in. “Fuqin, couldn’t I do this instead—”

“You will get your turn,” Fuqin returns sharply. “Right now I am instructing my son. Be patient.”

Wen Qing’s temples throb from the force of her clenched jaw. What patience? It’s not that she wants to, but A-Ning—

He makes a step toward the slab. The prisoner, hearing it, speaks up again. “Hold on,” she pleads, “Hey, you don’t have to do this. You sound like a good kid, yeah? Think about this—”

“Oh, do shut up,” says Fuqin. “Don’t be missish, Ning-er. Nothing will go wrong while I’m here.”

When A-Ning continues to hesitate, Fuqin narrows his eyes pointedly. He grabs the woman’s arm and points. “Here. Now.”

A-Ning raises the knife reluctantly, every line of his body tense, hands trembling.

“No— No no no, let go of me—”

“Now,” says Fuqin, and A-Ning jolts. The knife, razor sharp, sinks deep into the meat of the woman’s arm, and A-Ning gasps sharply when he pulls it loose again.

The prisoner lets out a fearful wail as blood drips thickly towards her wrist, and A-Ning freezes.

Fuqin brushes his hand over the wound, closing it with barely more than a thought. The woman lets out another shocked noise, arm jerking.

“Try again,” he says.

A-Ning shakes his head, eyes flicking from the knife to the blood congealing on the prisoner’s arm, to the quietly terrified expression on her face and the tears beginning to dampen her blindfold.

Fuqin’s nostrils flare. “Don’t be discouraged. You won’t improve if you don’t practice.” He grabs A-Ning’s wrist, raising the knife by force, and A-Ning shakes his head furiously, pulling back against his grip.

“N-no, no, I don’t like it, Baba don’t m-make me—”

“L-listen to him, don’t hurt me, please, let me go and my brother—he’ll do what you say—”

“Fuqin… A-Ning doesn’t want to—”

“Did I raise you two to be this sensitive?” Fuqin asks exasperatedly. He moves behind A-Ning, one hand covering A-Ning’s on the knife and the other at his shoulder to hold him still, and tries to lower the blade to skin again.

A-Ning drops to the floor, seizing.

Wen Qing feels a shriek leave her throat. She throws herself down next to him, trying to turn him on his side.

Fuqin looks down at him, aghast. “Ning-er, that’s enough dramatics. Wen Ning, enough.”

A-Ning doesn’t respond: he’s half-conscious, his eyes rolled back in his head and whimpering breathlessly in pain. Wen Qing checks his pulse, but it’s not— It’s not his headaches causing this, nor his susceptibility to unbalanced body temperature.

“Baba,” says Wen Qing, “I think A-Ning is having a qi deviation.”

“Are you kidding me,” says the prisoner, voice tinged with hysteria.

“What?” Fuqin’s expression shifts from frustrated to intensely focused. He crouches down, laying a hand on A-Ning’s stomach and closing his eyes. When he opens them again, they’re colored with relief.

“Reversed flow,” he says. “Heavens know how he managed it in the first place, but I can treat it. He’ll recover.” He lifts A-Ning into his arms, holding him tight against his chest so he can’t shake.

Fuqin doesn’t run, but he walks out of the chamber briskly. Wen Qing shoots a backwards glance at the prisoner, then follows. At the door, Fuqin tells the guards to put the woman away again, then heads upstairs and lays A-Ning down on a couch in one of the sitting rooms.

For half an hour, Fuqin tries to stop the shaking, to unwind unstable eddies of cultivation energy, to soothe perverted flows that threaten A-Ning’s core and organs in a fashion not unlike a self-destruction. Reversed flow qi deviations are not uncommon in the Wen sect’s cultivators. They’re usually trivial, and easy to catch and fix before they cause any damage. This one, though, is writ larger than any that Fuqin has seen before, than any that Wen Qing has read about.

Every time Fuqin stops for a moment, all his progress is lost like sand slipping through his fingers. He’s growing tired. He’s growing frustrated— Worried, as worried as Wen Qing who looks on with her heart in her throat.

“This should be simple,” says Fuqin. “I can’t—” He grits his jaw. “Qing-er, fetch a healer. Fetch the senior healer, if you can get him.”

And leave A-Ning? When he’s like this? A-Ning had gone to the sect’s healers before, when he was young, and they never helped him any. They only said he was naturally frail, and it was pointless to fight it, and it was left up to A-Ning and Popo and Wen Qing to prove them wrong.

“I— Can I treat him?”

He looks at her sharply. “Your brother is in danger, this isn’t the time to—”

“I’ve always looked after him!” Wen Qing protests. She feels tears welling; a sign of weakness, but she can’t regret them. “I— Please, let me try, tell me what to do.”

Fuqin looks down, laying a hand on A-Ning’s hair and stroking once.

“Alright,” he says.

Later on, she won’t be able to pinpoint why her attempt is any different than Fuqin’s. She follows the steps he tells her, does exactly what he must have already tried, but with her eyes closed and her senses open everything she feels just… flows. Everything Fuqin tells her slots against everything she’s read and tried and thought about, and makes sense.

She strains her reserves of spiritual energy to their young limit, wills for A-Ning to understand that he’ll never have to do that again, that she’ll make sure of it somehow, somehow, if only he gets better, and: he calms under her hands. A thunderstorm inside him lapses into gentle rain just as her energy is about to give out.

She opens her eyes, and Wen-zongzhu is there.

“How interesting,” he says, and the way he looks at her is uncomfortable, almost weighing. “Shenghua, bring Qing-er to see me, later. I believe we should discuss her education.” He leaves – in the direction of the Fire Hall – without waiting for an answer.

A-Ning hasn’t woken, but he’s only in a restful sleep now. Fuqin is gripping her shoulder almost tight enough to hurt, and his voice is a little hoarse when he tells her, “Good. Good girl.”

It takes a few days for A-Ning to wake, and it will be months before his body and his cultivation recover fully.

When he’s first able to leave his bed for a few minutes at a time, Fuqin begins talking to them both about returning to their interrupted lesson. Wen Qing is aghast. After what happened to A-Ning, he wants to try again?

“You can’t!” she protests impulsively.

The corner of Fuqin’s lip twists. “Qing-er,” he says, “you’re getting a bit old to be so willful.”

“It made A-Ning qi deviate! He could have died!”

Fuqin takes her hand. “I know that was very frightening for you,” says Fuqin, “but you’ve misunderstood something. Your brother’s qi deviation was because he’s been rushing his cultivation behind my back. A person doesn’t qi deviate just from their emotions running high, do you understand?”

Wen Qing looks to A-Ning to take her side, but he looks down, lips pressed thin. He knows the cause, but he can’t contradict Fuqin like this. Or perhaps he does think it’s his fault: it’s true that he has always, always pushed himself too hard.

But so what? Maybe because he was reckless, because he trains with a compulsive, uncontrolled zeal, that made his risk of a qi deviation higher, but he’s always trained too hard— Wen Qing has never been able to stop him, and even Fuqin hasn’t been able to stop him for long. Even so, this never happened before.

Over the next few days, she says as much to Fuqin repeatedly. She pushes the matter until his long patience breaks and he snaps at her, and then she waits and pushes it again. She bargains, and she begs, and she crosses her fingers when she calls A-Ning weak, and cowardly, and offers herself up in his place.

Finally, Fuqin puts an end to the matter.

“Enough,” he tells her forcefully, over a dinner they’re sharing alone since A-Ning is asleep upstairs and Popo is visiting Da-jiu. “Continue this crusade, and there will be consequences.” He softens. “Don’t put me in that position, Wen Qing.”

She hesitates. “But, A-Ning—”

“If his physician believes it’s so dangerous that he draw blood, so be it,” he says, but this time Wen Qing knows better than to let her heart lift. “Hands-on practice can wait,” Fuqin finishes, and there it is, the other boot. “We can work up to it.”

More time will be enough, thinks Wen Qing. It will have to be.

But Fuqin is not finished. His voice hardens. “Considering the danger, I expect you recommend that I withdraw him from the public sword drills as well. I’ll take over the rest of his training myself. Do you wish to continue with the other junior disciples, or join him at home?”

Her stomach sinks – she can’t fathom why, when the other children treat him the way they do, but A-Ning values the public drills so much – but she agrees, and says that yes, they’ll both give them up from now on. It wasn’t really a question, anyway. Wen Shenghua had already decided this was the price.

Wen Qing has turned thirteen by the time everything settles—not back to normal, but into its new normal.

Before that, just after she makes her agreement with Wen Shenghua, Wen-zongzhu calls for her as he said he would. He tells her and Wen Shenghua that he’ll be sponsoring her training as a healer, starting immediately. They thank him graciously.

He says, also, that he would be most gratified if she agrees to attend him, on a regular basis. Of course, he adds, since he’ll be drawing her away from her regular lessons, he’ll see to her education personally. Wen Qing and Wen Shenghua agree, of course. Wen-zongzhu wasn’t truly asking.

When they return, Wen Shenghua is quietly furious.

“You were supposed to be your mother’s to train,” he tells her. “A daughter, to be an herbalist like she was, and a son to be the sect leader’s right hand.” He clenches his jaw so hard she can see the muscles working. He seems like he wants to say more, but in the end he leaves the room instead, headed for A-Ning’s sickroom.

She never knew that their mother was an herbalist. She asks Popo about it.

“Yes,” says Popo. “I’m sorry, A-Qing, speaking of her was—” she sighs. “I taught her everything I know, but she was better than me. She saved Shenghua’s life once with medicines she refined, before they married.”

“I wish I could learn from you, or from her, instead of the head healer.”

Popo sighs affectionately. “It’s for the best. It was only ever a hobby for me, and I think you’ve already surpassed her just from your books. Besides, you aren’t satisfied just with herbalism, are you?”

That’s true. She wants to know everything she needs to if A-Ning ever has another qi deviation. She wants to fix up people the way she did their cat, xiao-Ping. She wants— She remembers how Wen Shenghua closed that prisoner’s wound with a touch, and she wants that fiercely. She’ll have it, training under the head healer. She’s grateful, really, that she won’t have to learn it from him.

Her schedule is packed full of taking lessons from the sect’s healers, or shadowing them, or assisting them in their work.

Two days each week, she attends Wen-zongzhu. Usually this is in the Sun Hall; in a chair at the bottom of the dais. She cranes her neck to listen to his stories and play poetry games and recite summaries of whatever she’s been learning last.

Sometimes, though, Wen-zongzhu takes her to the Fire Hall. He says this is because he needs a healer to hand, and wouldn’t she value the practice? But Wen Qing is fairly sure that’s just an excuse. He watches her carefully-still face while she heals up a wound so he can open it again; laughs when he finds things that can make her flinch. He enjoys this—torture, that is. He enjoys hurting people, where Wen Shenghua only takes a dispassionate satisfaction in it.

The worst part of this is that Wen-zongzhu is eloquent and charming. It would be impossible to forget what she’s seen him do, but he laughs and cajoles and acts as if the stench of human suffering is perfectly reasonable, or a petty trifle.

It’s terrifying. He is terrifying.

The one day each week that she still spends with Wen Shenghua and A-Ning is almost soothing in comparison.

Wen Shenghua takes them to the Crucible Room, or his office, or the Fire Hall, and he is quiet. He tells them only what he feels they need to know. He narrates everything he does in the same clinical fashion, whether it’s organizing a dossier on an outer disciple or breaking a captured spy to thorough, desperate confession.

He keeps his word, too, even when Wen Qing isn’t there. A-Ning is made to listen and understand everything Wen Shenghua does – as Head of Discipline, and as spymaster, and as anything else Wen-zongzhu asks – but he’s not made to lift a blade to anyone.

Not yet.

Chapter Text

Wen Qing’s training with the Wen Sect’s healers continues under Wen-zongzhu’s supervision, but the sect leader is restless. Some days he ignores her, and everyone; focused exclusively on his cultivation and viewing everything else as a distraction. Other days he dotes in his own way; plays games or shares cruel confidences.

Her brother is quick to assure her that Wen Shenghua has kept his word about physically involving A-Ning in his work, but she can’t check; he – all three of them, really – are so busy.

Wen Shenghua always has been, but Wen Ning is with him now, while Wen Qing is occupied with absorbing the expertise of Wen Sect’s healers. Poisons and antidotes; curses and cures; the direct application of healing qi — though it exhausts her energy entirely, and she hasn’t figured out how to avoid vigorous scarring, Wen Qing has indeed learned to close a wound with a touch.

A-Ning, though— Wen Qing returns to the house one day to find Wen Shenghua still out, but A-Ning sitting cross-legged in the sun-baked courtyard, eyes screwed shut, his skin burnt pink in proof that he hasn’t moved for hours. Dismayed, Wen Qing drags him directly to his bedroom and nearly pours a pitcher of water down his throat.

“Baba says the foundation of my cultivation w-was flawed,” he says when she demands an explanation. “And… that’s why I—when. My qi…”

That makes no sense. They had the same lessons, growing up, the same careful, attentive oversight—if there were anything wrong, it should have been obvious—

“He c-correc— He fixed my technique. I just… have to catch up, now.”

She knows the latter statement is true. A-Ning should have condensed his core by now; would have, except the qi deviation set him back by years. This same loss of progress does give him the opportunity to change his technique without further unsettling his spirit veins and burgeoning core.

Still, the way she found A-Ning makes her fear his pattern of overwork. She brings her concerns to Wen Shenghua, who’s been her ally in this in the past. He brushes her off.

“If you have enough free time to fret like this,” he says, “then Ruohan is neglecting your education.”

The next day, he brings home a whirlwind-bound scroll of his own notes on acupoints, plus a reading list on the use of silver needles in medicine.

Before her next birthday she’s learned everything the senior healers can readily teach. If some of them have skill and experience she can’t yet match, she still outstrips them in the speed at which she picks up knowledge; in depth of potential and talent.

Wen-zongzhu says he’ll find experts outside the sect willing to further her training, but in the meanwhile her schedule suddenly opens up. She gives in to impulse, and uses the time to hover over her brother for the first time in months.

So it comes to pass that Wen Qing is with A-Ning and Wen Shenghua when Zhou Hairong is thrown down on the tile of the Sun Hall for striking his commander with killing intent. The man he attacked, she realizes, is some distant Wen cousin that Wen Qing helped patch up the night before. The next in command of Zhou Hairong’s cadre demands he be thrown out of the sect or else executed entirely. He has, after all, already had three major strikes in his disciplinary record on top of this last and greatest offense.

Zhou Hairong hardly notices Wen-zongzhu; it’s Wen Shenghua he stares down when he tells them, “Kill me, then. My only regret will be not taking that bastard with me.”

Fortunately for Zhou Hairong, Wen-zongzhu is having one of his distracted days. He eyes the proceedings with disinterest; with a gesture, he defers the decision to Wen Shenghua instead.

Wen Shenghua cants his head in acknowledgement. “Take him to the Fire Hall,” he says. When the injured commander’s second-in-command looks to protest, he adds, “Hairong is no concern of yours any longer. You’re dismissed. Ning-er, with me.”

A-Ning obeys reluctantly.

Wen Qing follows despite not being asked. She doesn’t want to go to the Fire Hall, and certainly doesn’t want to see a man she… has known, sort of, for half of her life, die in agony— But more than that, she doesn’t want A-Ning to see it.

Wen Qing is acquainted with death: from the healing offices, and from the Fire Hall at Wen-zongzhu’s hands. A-Ning, she’s fairly sure, is not. Wen Shenghua is too fastidious to kill by accident, and execution is not usually his job. She’s not sure why he’s taken charge of this case, when execution is exactly what Zhou Hairong has earned, under the sect’s bylaws.

But Wen Shenghua doesn’t have Zhou Hairong taken to any of the Fire Hall’s cruel devices. Instead they go to a partition with a plain flat table, one fitted with straps accommodating a variety of limb positions. He restrains the grim, unresisting Zhou Hairong himself, most of his body simply fastened down, but his right arm outstretched, pinned just below the elbow instead of at the wrist.

“Zhou Hairong,” says Wen Shenghua after the guards have gone. “Will you not argue your case?”

“...What’s the point?” Zhou Hairong says. “It doesn’t matter. It never matters. You don’t care why I attacked him, only that I did, when he’s a member of your thrice-cursed Wen clan and I’m only an outer disciple.”

“No,” corrects Wen Shenghua. “I care that he was your superior. You committed to obeying him, and then undermined his authority instead.”

“He does that himself,” Zhou Hairong replies viciously. “He’s vile—and useless, and shouldn’t be in command of anybody.” Zhou Hairong’s head jerks. “You said ‘was’. Is he dead?”

Wen Qing cuts in. “He’ll live,” she says.

“Fortunately for you,” says Wen Shenghua. “Else I could never justify sparing you no matter your potential.”

“What?”

“Ning-er, explain my reasoning.”

A-Ning collects himself a bit before he speaks. “That— The reports from his cadre… and comments from other commanders when there are hunts w-with larger groups… They make it sound like Zhou Hairong is the only reason his commander wasn’t drummed out for incompetence, uh, years ago.”

Zhou Hairong stares at them with consternation.

“He makes careless risks, and you pick up the slack with skill and aplomb. Until your patience runs out, and you’re sent to me for doing something foolish.”

Zhou Hairong bristles despite the way he’s strapped down. “My patience?”

Wen Shenghua lifts his brows lightly, as if to question Zhou Hairong’s indignance.

Then, “Of course, there must still be a consequence. Some assurance, I think, that you won’t raise a sword against your betters again.”

Zhou Hairong won’t raise a sword again at all. At least, not with that hand—Wen Shenghua makes sure of it. He neatly opens up the underside of Zhou Hairong’s wrist, cuts the flexor tendons, and then heals everything fast but sloppy so cultivation can’t fix the scarring. Quick, clean, and irreversible. Zhou Hairong will always struggle to close the fingers on his right hand.

Afterwards, voice and body shaking, Zhou Hairong speaks. “I hate you,” he says lowly. “And I hate him, and the sect—”

“You don’t,” Wen Shenghua speaks over him. “You hate that you’re on the outside of it. You hate that they ignore you, that you don’t know how to make anyone listen.”

He denies it with an exhausted toss of his chin.

“Yes. Ning-er, release him.”

A-Ning looks more even more pale and brittle than Zhou Hairong, but quietly moves to obey.

“You should have killed me,” Zhou Hairong insists.

“Your death would be a waste. You’ll answer to me from now on, see what I can make of you. I have your measure; you’ll be happier once you’re the one enforcing the rules.”

Wen Ning’s hands freeze, just for a moment. “Good luck,” he says tightly. He loosens the last strap without meeting anyone’s eyes.

Zhou Hairong’s former commander recovers fully under Wen Qing’s care. Half a year later, the man makes a bad call on a night hunt and gets five cultivators killed, himself among them.

When Wen Qing is fifteen, she leaves home for a three month apprenticeship with a cultivator and apothecary in Langya loosely associated with the Lanling Jin sect. It’s lonely, and her erstwhile teacher is unpleasant and insecure. She gains a great deal of experience in crafting prescriptions to treat the petty, vain, or imagined ills of obscenely rich non-cultivators, but for the most part she’s left to learn on her own.

It’s a great relief to return to the Nightless City, where A-Ning has shot up like one of the weeds in Popo’s garden. She realizes, with some dismay, that between her travel and the packed schedule that preceded it, she’s lost the trick of conversing with him naturally.

“How is your cultivation progressing?” she asks, for lack of any other ideas.

“...Slower than before.”

“Wen Heng said the two of you went on a night hunt?”

Requests for aid, and information on promising hunting areas, are accessible in order of seniority. Wen Xu goes on night hunts every week and brings the disciples he favors. A-Ning, who isn’t part of any cliques and doesn’t have any influential friends, has few opportunities.

“Heng-ge just, he only l-let me tag along.”

“How did it go?”

A-Ning shrugs uncomfortably.

“What happened? Did someone give you trouble—”

“It was fine, Jiejie. I w-wasn’t very good, is all.”

It’s clear that he doesn’t want to talk about it. She changes the subject, but perhaps not for the better.

“Has… has he tried to… you know—”

A-Ning stiffens. “No. N-no, there’s no n-need, he’s. Busy.” A-Ning clears his throat, then continues dully. “He’s busy, um. Training Zhou-qianbei. Better use of his time than—w-well. I’ve been... cultivating on my own.”

“Good,” says Wen Qing.

“Yeah,” A-Ning says. “Good”.

Wen Shenghua has wasted years of their lives trying to pressure A-Ning into work he doesn’t want and is fundamentally unsuited for. It’s a weight off Wen Qing’s shoulders to see that he’s finally moved past it and picked someone else.

Knowing Wen Shenghua’s attention has been diverted makes her feel better about leaving Qishan again.

Wen-zongzhu doesn’t like to be a guest of lesser sects; therefore, he sends subordinates to represent him abroad. Wen Shenghua is more useful within the Nightless City and only rarely joins these delegations, but Wen Qing is apparently now suitable.

In this way she passes another three months in a series of trips. She spends most of each visit being shown off by the recently retired former head healer, who acts as her escort.

Being a favored relative of Wen-zongzhu opens many doors. Every place she visits, her hosts trot out the best of their libraries. Some even share secret or family techniques for the sake of currying favor with her sect leader. Her part in this transaction is to absorb as much as possible—and to show herself off to best effect.

Even among cultivators, showing off at social events involves a lot of word games and painting and music. Wen Shenghua and Wen-zongzhu ensured her competence at these, but she’s not interested in impressing vapid young men, or in making friends she's not even likely to see again later—her time would be better spent with the books waiting back in her rooms.

The teacher arranged for her in her sixteenth year is a thousand miles better than the last—and a thousand miles nearer, too. Ke-daifu is a surgeon in Chang’an. His reputation among ordinary people is towering, but his tie to the cultivation world is thin; just one old acquaintance who serves as the head physician of some small, insignificant clan located on the road between Qishan and Qinghe.

The Wen Sect’s cultivating healers consider surgery to be beneath them. They disdain it as a solution, looking exclusively to spiritual techniques or alchemic medicines instead. Wen Qing, however, learns a great deal under the surgeon’s tutelage and loves every moment of it.

Ke-furen is as serious and businesslike as her husband, and their children are still in leading strings. In Chang’an, unlike Langya, there’s no pressure to make nice—the city is so large, and their patients so numerous, that the meticulous-but-brisk demeanor she finds most comfortable is also exactly what’s expected of her.

She’s extremely busy, which keeps her mind off missing A-Ning and Popo; and she does miss them, more so as the novelty of travel wears off. They send letters, at least. Popo keeps her abreast of negotiations for an engagement between Wen Heng and a girl from Popo’s maiden family, and otherwise mostly discusses her garden or asks after Wen Qing’s activities.

From A-Ning, it’s inconsequential things, reassurances of health. A few times, the gaps in A-Ning’s correspondence feel suspicious – most of all on the day she receives a scroll with a careful illustration of a spiritual sword and a pair of names in his best calligraphy. Qionglin. And Zhuguang—the sword that Wen Shenghua commissioned for him. A-Ning is a young man now, by the sect’s reckoning. He doesn’t mention what brought on the milestone, and Wen Qing tries not to wonder.

Her placement with Ke-daifu lasts well over a year, with interruptions for more travel on Wen-zongzhu’s orders.

At eighteen, Wen Qing is recalled to Qishan for a discussion conference. Over the last two years she’s developed her reputation carefully at her sect leader’s behest, and he wants her close to hand when he welcomes the other great sects.

A-Ning is taller than her now. She embraces him, and when he returns the gesture he does so carefully. Lightly. She feels as if she’s lost something.

It’s normal at large discussion conferences to hold a contest for some form of martial skill, and Wen-zongzhu has picked archery. The Wen sect has many talented cultivators who specialize in the sword, many members capable of crafting arrays and artifacts and treasure pills, but archery? Only Wen Xu and Wen-zongzhu himself are known for particular talent in it, and neither of them will be competing. A strange choice—as if Wen-zongzhu is unsatisfied with the current state of his juniors’ skills, and means to use this to pressure them into improvement.

A-Ning is excited, though. He says he started practicing as soon as it was announced— Not in the group training sessions, of course, not at the drill grounds. But he shows her his bow, and his carefully-maintained arrows, and then he shows her a less-traveled corner of the lower gardens where he’s set up a practice range. A nice senior showed him this place after catching him trying to use the drill grounds after curfew, and nobody else has found him here.

He demurs when asked to demonstrate his progress in archery, so Wen Qing changes the subject and asks about the senior who found his practice space.

“His name is Wen Yeyun,” A-Ning says. He pauses. “I’m not sure who he’s related to…? But. He’s nice.”

“How about… friends your own age?” Though she’s hardly one to speak on that matter. Still, she can hope—

“I’m, uh, practicing sword forms with Heng-ge,” he offers. Letting Wen Heng practice sword forms on him, he means, and most likely overexerting himself in the process.

This prompts her to ask after his health, and he says he’s been fine; the pills she perfected in Langya have done an excellent job at curtailing his headaches. Well. That’s good. He’s… happier than he was the last time she was here for any length of time. It’s good.

The next day, a group of junior disciples get caught vandalizing the drill grounds. While Wen Qing is attending Wen-zongzhu, they’re dragged into the Sun Hall to be made a firm example of.

A-Ning comes in too, is seated to the side with Wen Shenghua and Zhou Hairong; she makes eye contact with him for just a moment before he cuts his gaze away. A too-still youth, dark eyed, fine-clothed, looking past the furor and waiting for this to be over.

The disciples – just boys, mostly around A-Ning’s age – have less restraint in Wen-zongzhu’s presence than they should. They’re all speaking over each other, protesting that it was an accident, that they were drunk. For several long minutes, Wen-zongzhu allows them to struggle like trapped flies. Then he scoffs lightly, and orders a beating far in excess of the usual guidelines.

It’s not that he really cares about the state of the drill grounds. They were impertinent, and so he’s chosen to make them regret it… or perhaps they were just unlucky enough to find him bored and in the mood to see a show.

It makes no difference to Wen Shenghua, who steps forward smoothly and retrieves a heavy pair of rods from a servant. Wen Qing tenses, but he hands one rod to Zhou Hairong and keeps the other for himself. A-Ning isn’t involved. Good.

At that moment, one of the delinquent disciples calls out to Zhou Hairong. “Wait! Wait, you really can’t punish xiao-Lian!”

“Oh? And whyever not?” It’s Wen-zongzhu who responds, and the disciple who spoke pales abruptly.

“Zongzhu—” he sputters “—Zongzhu, it’s my fault, my brother, he was only there for me. I mean, to find me. He didn’t do anything, please.”

“Can you prove that?” Wen-zongzhu asks lightly.

“I—” the disciple glances anxiously at one of the boys who was in line to be beaten first. He must be ‘xiao Lian’. The older brother is clearly wracking his brain, but—

“No? Hm. Carry on, then.”

“Wait—”

A voice rings out. “T-the alcohol.”

At the center of the floor, Wen Shenghua lowers the rod; Zhou Hairong follows suit.

“Come forward,” says Wen-zongzhu, eyes narrow.

Tensely, A-Ning obeys. What is he thinking? He should know better—but he speaks again. “Zongzhu.” He glances towards Wen Shenghua. Then, resolve bolstered, gives Wen-zongzhu a careful and proper salute. “This Wen Ning rem- rememb— recalls. They claim to have acted from drunkenness. So, if—” he looks at the older brother.

“Zhou Ye,” the disciple provides quietly.

“If Zhou Ye is telling the truth, that m-means—if Zhou Lian didn’t drink, then he didn’t vandalize. If he did…”

“Go on, then,” says Wen-zongzhu.

Brusquely, Wen Shenghua pulls Zhou Lian up by his hair and smells his breath. “It’s clean,” he confirms stiffly.

Wen Ning and Zhou Ye have visibly relaxed, but it’s premature.

Wen-zongzhu’s lip curls. “It could be that his only involvement was making noise. Unless he’s as much a little vandal as the rest, and without the excuse of overindulgence in drink to fog his good sense.”

Moreover, Wen-zongzhu never likes to change his mind.

Wen Shenghua and Zhou Hairong carry out the beatings, two by two. Mirror images—Zhou Hairong grimly swinging with his good hand. Wen Qing can see the tremble in A-Ning’s legs as he returns to his seat.

Wen-zongzhu leans over. “That’s your younger brother, isn’t it, Qing-er?”

Her heart stops. “...And?”

“He doesn’t seem like much, but he’s actually a bit bold, isn’t he?” he asks, and she’s never feared anything more than this intrigued tone from her sect leader’s mouth.

“Not at all,” she says sharply.

Wen-zongzhu straightens again in his seat. “Shame.”

Afterwards, when they’re alone, Wen Shenghua furiously lays into A-Ning before Wen Qing gets a chance.

“Do not seek Zongzhu’s attention,” he hisses, and it feels strange to agree with him.

“I was— I wasn’t trying to!” A-Ning protests. “You say it’s important to get the, all the facts. And, it wasn’t fair—”

“He doesn’t have to be fair. He has to be strong, and it does no-one any good to send the message that they can get away with defying him.”

A-Ning examines the floor. “Sorry.”

“Don’t do it again,” Wen Shenghua says severely, and grips A-Ning’s shoulder tight enough to make him wince. “You... keep cultivating. Stay out of Wen-zongzhu’s way until I say you’re ready.”

Wen Qing furrows her brows in confusion. A-Ning, too, looks up inquisitively, but Wen Shenghua is already sweeping out of the room.

“Ah, w-wait!” A-Ning calls after him, and he pauses. “What… about the archery contest?”

Wen Shenghua looks back over his shoulder, as if weighing the tense line of A-Ning’s shoulders, the curled grip of his fingers on the edge of his sleeves—and then Wen Qing as well, his eyes on the lingering adrenaline-tremors she can still feel.

“I only taught you the basics,” he says.

“Y-yes, but I—”

“No,” he says shortly.

“But—if I— I want to m-make you pr—”

“No. Keep to yourself, I said.” He turns the rest of the way around so he’s facing them again. “Your ambition is good, filial, but—now is not the time. I will not have you exposed to scrutiny. Am I understood?”

At length, A-Ning nods.

Wen Qing thought she could safely skip the archery contest as it had nothing to do with her, so she learns about A-Ning’s involvement only afterwards, from Wen Heng.

He relays the episode with a little discomfort, a little shame. “He looked pretty upset when he left? You uh, might want to talk to him.”

After looking in several places, she finds him back in the same garden corner he showed her before. He’s not practicing, just sitting on a low stone bench, bow on his lap, picking at the string.

“A-Ning…”

He looks up sharply. “Jie.” He must see the worry on her face, because he hurries to say, “I’m fine. Really I am.”

“How can you be fine? That Jiang disciple made you lose face in front of a dozen sects—”

“No, that—that’s backwards. Wei-gongzi, he…” He flushes, smoothing a hand over the bow’s grip. “He was v-very kind.” He straightens his back. “Is it over? How did he do?”

Feeling somewhat useless, Wen Qing answers. “He won. Wen Chao was disqualified, apparently he’s spitting mad. He’s telling people Wei Wuxian and Lan Wangji schemed against him, tricked him into missing a shot.”

A-Ning’s lips twitch. “I doubt that’s w-what— I don’t think that’s true.”

“Well. Don’t let anyone hear you say it.”

“Mm,” A-Ning agrees easily. “...Jiejie, do you think I could be like Wei-gongzi? I mean, um, night-hunting, travelling…”

“He’s our age. And isn’t he Jiang Sect’s head disciple? He has responsibilities, I’m sure he’s not spending his days wandering jianghu.”

“N-no, I mean. It feels like he could be an errant hero. Like he’s… gallant, you know?”

“Why are you asking me this?” Wen Qing says hesitantly.

“Well.” He pauses for a moment to unstring his bow, coiling and uncoiling the string around his fingers as he continues. “It’s not what Baba trained us for. He expects—you know.”

Wen Qing feels her back stiffen. “What he expects,” she says primly, “is his own business. If he’s disappointed, that is not your problem.”

A-Ning hums dubiously. “And he has Zhou-qianbei now, anyway. ...Maybe, m-maybe if I could make something of myself out in the world, even if it’s not directly serving the sect, he’d approve… Ah, assuming I even could,” he adds, smiling in a way that makes her heart hurt.

Wen Qing bites down on an encouraging platitude. “I’ll approve,” she says instead.

“Mn,” he says, the smile turning more genuine as he finally looks up to meet her eyes. “Thanks, Jie.”

After the discussion conference, she waits for another study placement that never comes. Eventually, after weeks without any word or summons from Wen-zongzhu, Wen Qing steels herself and asks Wen Shenghua.

He answers readily. “You’ll not be travelling alone again, not soon.”

“I—have I done something wrong?”

“Not at all,” he says, and there’s an edge to his voice. “Ruohan is entirely satisfied with you—yes, you might as well know.”

So he tells her. One wouldn’t know it to look at them now, but the reach of the Wen Sect was sorely damaged before Wen Qing was born. Wen Ruohan has spent his life bolstering the sect’s power with his own; protecting its members, Wen Shenghua says, from their own weakness. It’s not enough; the younger generations have squandered his effort. The cultivation world circles them like drooling scavengers, and Wen-zongzhu will not have it.

Wen Shenghua has spent at least half a decade helping him plan, smoothing the way with velvet gloves and knives in the dark, and the Wen juniors’ humiliation at the discussion conference is the last straw. Soon, Wen-zongzhu will bring his efforts into the open.

That is, they’re going to go to war.

Wen Qing is forbidden to speak of it.

Time passes slowly and all at once. Wen Qing treats ever more frequent training injuries for members of the sect. Popo makes an extended stay at da-Jiu’s home, preoccupied with planning Wen Heng’s wedding.

Wen Shenghua attends long closed-door meetings with Wen-zongzhu, Wen Xu, and a rotation of lieutenants also surnamed Wen. He manipulates prisoners, Zhou Hairong his silent shadow. He coordinates agents, especially a man called Zhuliu—and she’s learned just enough of that one’s value to send her into an anxious tear of brainstorming and research. A-Ning is left to his own devices, except when Wen Shenghua bids him quickly break through the bottleneck in his cultivation.

A dozen or more sects fall into Wen-zongzhu’s hands and fly the Wen sect’s banners in place of their own. It is a campaign of espionage and politics more than force; Wen Qing has no involvement herself, and only knows any of what’s going on because Wen-zongzhu makes time with her to subtly gloat over games of weiqi. These minor sects have fallen with almost frightening ease so far, but despite Wen-zongzhu’s confidence she knows that ease can’t continue.

She is a doctor, and will be protected no matter what. But A-Ning… he told Wen Shenghua that he wants to be a hero, instead of an enforcer or a spy. Wen Shenghua seemed to accept the ambition, but… heroes distinguish themselves in battle. A deep fear sinks into her bones. A-Ning doesn’t belong on the battlefield. A-Ning can’t even bear the drill grounds.

But when she shares these concerns with him, A-Ning hums absently and asks what she knows about Yunmeng Jiang from her years traveling.

She’s been introduced to Jiang Fengmian and Jiang Yanli – at an event held in… Tingshan, she thinks – and she saw and was seen by other members of the Jiang sect at the recent discussion conference, but at the time she didn’t pay them any mind. She’s never been to Yunmeng, and the Jiang cultivators she’s encountered abroad have a way of talking a great deal while saying hardly anything about themselves.

A-Ning’s sparkling curiosity about them is just another reason to keep him away from the war she knows is coming.

His fixation has come out of nowhere, and almost anyone else would be better. Wei Wuxian is… well, he’s pretty? He apparently praised A-Ning generously before his victory, and he waved at him the next day in the banquet hall, and if that were the end of it she could simply be happy that A-Ning had, apparently, made an unlikely friend.

But it hasn’t been the end of it. She heard his name every day for two weeks. When she observed as much to A-Ning, he stopped speaking it— but months later Wen Qing still finds it, instead, in conspicuous silences and blushing distraction.

Unfortunately, he’s not the only one still obsessed with Wei Wuxian. Wen Chao’s grudge against the champions from that archery tournament, and especially Wei Wuxian, hasn’t lessened one bit. He’s happy to say so, whenever he deigns to stop fooling around and show his face in the Sun Hall. The thought of her brother still attached to Wei Wuxian should he fall into Wen Chao’s power fills Wen Qing with dread.

She tries not to think about it.

Then: the Cloud Recesses burn. Wen Shenghua flies out to Gusu the next day, and would have taken A-Ning except that A-Ning is down with a fever whose cause Wen Qing can’t track.

Wen-zongzhu demands disciples from a dozen or more sects including Jin, Jiang, and Lan for “re-education”, and she knows this is the next phase. It’s clear that everything will come to a head soon. She can’t decide what to do.

But she doesn’t need to decide anything, only do what she’s told. She’s ordered to select staff for a field hospital – in Yiling, a small and half-forgotten Wen outpost whose position on the Long River hints at his future campaign plans. She has two weeks to prepare.

Meanwhile, Wen-zongzhu tells her over tea that he’s putting Wen Chao in charge of intimidating the hostages—perhaps this, he says, will teach him some responsibility, force him to grow up. He could send Wen Ning too, he adds, to toughen him up. As a favor to herself and her father.

He laughs darkly. “Perhaps Chao-er will finally do something about that insolent Jiang disciple he keeps whining about, instead of running his mouth.”

Wen Qing can’t hear whatever he says next over the rush in her ears. Wei Wuxian, placed in Wen Chao’s hands? A-Ning can’t, mustn’t be there, no matter what Wen Shenghua might want. The future stretches in front of her, and she knows her brother would try to get between Wen Chao and Wei Wuxian, and it must not happen.

“Actually.” She’s interrupting, but too inwardly frantic to care. “I was thinking about my staff—may I take my brother along as my second?”

“Nepotism from Qing-er?”

She lets herself look caught out. “He’s… weak. He’ll be bullied.”

“That’s unusually sensitive of you.”

“I… It’s practical too; I don’t want a second who won’t listen to me.”

Wen-zongzhu chuckles. “Fine, no need to argue. Take him, then.”

She does. She pulls a handful of novice healers to be her assistants, gives A-Ning a couple days to find followers of his own, then rushes their departure so they’re out of Qishan fast.

When Wen Shenghua returns and finds her gone, and A-Ning with her, all he can do is send frustrated letters. The first one is a demand for A-Ning to return to Nightless City immediately. She burns it, and the rest of his letters she hides or throws away before A-Ning can find them.

She tries to keep him too busy to concern himself with the world outside of Yiling, especially the confusing gossip from Wen Chao's indoctrination bureau, or afterwards any other word of Wen Chao or Wen Shenghua.

It works, for a while. The office is in poor repair, the town sorely in need of cultivators’ attentions—the borders of the Burial Mounds outside the town even more so. A-Ning and his subordinates have to scramble to take advantage of the Double Ninth Festival for a suppressing ritual. There’s more than enough work to keep him distracted.

But Wen Qing misses a letter. A-Ning comes to her one evening and smooths the letter out on the table in front of her.

“Were you ever… planning to tell me?” He asks.

Wen Qing grits her teeth, skimming the text under his hands for clues, for excuses.

At length, she says, “You already knew about the war—”

“No, that he—that I’m n-not supposed to be here!”

“You are,” Wen Qing protests. “Wen-zongzhu assigned you himself.”

“You assigned me,” he says vehemently, leaning over the table. “I’m supposed to be—”

“What?” she hisses. “Under Wen Chao? Sailing for Lotus Pier right this second to occupy the Jiang Sect? Is that what you want?”

He jerks, stricken. “N-no. What? No, they’re—”

“No, you don’t.” Wen Qing continues. “Because you’re not like him—them. You’re good, and kind, and too gentle for your own good, and what you need to do is just. Listen to me, and let me protect you, and keep your head down so this stupid war can’t hurt you.”

A-Ning’s lips are white from being pressed together so hard. “I can’t just do nothing,” he insists desperately.

“What can you do?” Wen Qing rebuts.

“I—I don’t. Don’t. Know. I—”

To Wen Qing’s dismay, her brother’s eyes well up with frustrated tears.

“I’m sorry,” she tells him, but he takes the letter back, and folds it up, and returns to his duties without a word.

An hour later, he boards a boat to Yunmeng.