Chapter Text
“I have to go,” A-Niang said. She looked upset. Wei Ying nodded, and made his little wooden donkey gallop across the bedspread. He knew how to be good and patient. Sometimes A-Niang and A-Die were very busy.
A-Niang came and went inside and outside the door of their room in the inn. He heard her voice talking to other grown-ups.
She came back in, her sword on her back, and kissed his forehead. “Be good. I’ve asked one of the kitchen aunties to look in on you if we aren’t back by supper time. Auntie who helped us when A-Die wanted tea, remember?”
Wei Ying nodded. A-Die had had an ouch when they arrived at the inn. One of the aunties brought tea and also bandages. She sang a song for Wei Ying.
A-Niang swept a hand through the air, and talismans lit up around the room. So many bright, shiny talismans. Wei Ying recognized the ghosts-stay-away ward, and the no-person-of-ill-intent ward, and one of the other usual ones when A-Niang and A-Die both had to be ready to go somewhere or fight, the one that looked like a butterfly frozen on a lotus flower.
“If I’m not … if we’re not …” A-Niang’s voice faltered. She came over to Wei Ying and kissed his forehead. “I love you more than anything, A-Ying,” A-Niang said. “I love you always.”
“Love you always, too, A-Niang,” Wei Ying said. “Love A-Niang and A-Die,” he added. “Come back for supper, supper is important!” he scolded.
“I’ll do my best,” A-Niang said with a little laugh. There were tears in the corners of her eyes.
Wei Ying played quietly in the inn room, and took a little nap in the big bed. He made his wooden animals run all the way around the room, up Baoshan Sanren’s mountain – which was the dresser in the corner – and back down again to find true love and have a little Wei Ying baby.
Wei Ying was not a baby, he was a big boy, so when his tummy rumbled he got some of the dried fruit out of the saddle-bags and had a snack, and then he went back to lie on the big bed and kick his feet just a little because he wanted A-Niang and A-Die, and yell only a tiny bit.
He looked up when a sudden cold wind blew through the room. Something like black smoke was coming in the window. The ghost-stay-away ward flared brighter, sizzling, and then it went dark. All the talismans went dark. Even the lotus-and-butterfly.
Wei Ying threw the blanket over his head and whimpered.
Wei Ying was a big boy, but he was scared, but he also got hungry again because he was a fairly little big boy, after all. Eventually he took the blanket off his head.
Wei Ying wanted the kitchen auntie to come get him supper, and then A-Niang and A-Die would have to be there too, really soon, because he told A-Niang to come back for supper.
He went and knocked on the inside of the closed door to their inn room.
Nobody came to the door. He hadn’t been sure that would work. Knocking on doors was when you knew somebody was inside anyway. Wei Ying was already inside the inn room and he knew to stay inside because he was being good.
He sat down on the floor and tried to think of another game with his animals, but he couldn’t think of anything.
Then the innkeeper came and opened the door. He looked cranky, not cheerful like when he took A-Niang and A-Die’s money.
He came in and stepped right over the dark faded line of the burnt-out no-person-of-ill-intent ward on the floor, which didn’t show anything either way but Wei Ying still thought he looked a little scary.
“Hey, kid,” he said. His voice was trying not to be mean but mostly it sounded busy.
“You. Come here. Auntie had to go home because she got sick, but her cousin works in the kitchen here and she’s going to feed you something for tonight, okay?”
Wei Ying nodded, because he was a good listener, but he scooted into the corner because A-Niang hadn’t said that the innkeeper would come and get him; he wasn’t one of the right grown-ups, he wasn’t one of A-Niang and A-Die’s good friends, like the auntie with tea, or the purple man.
“Auntie will get me for supper?” Wei Ying asked, because the innkeeper had said her name.
“No, I told you,” and the innkeeper looked exasperated, “she’s real sick, her liver or something. Can’t have that here. Come with me now, kid, and you’ll get a real good supper. On the house, dammit.”
Wei Ying got up and walked over to the innkeeper. A-Niang always laughed when she talked someone into something extra, on the house. She loved haggling and bickering and winning at making bargains. A-Niang was so clever, and A-Die smiled watching her spin people around with her words, and Wei Ying was quick like A-Niang and sweet like A-Die, they told him so.
The innkeeper grabbed Wei Ying’s hand and towed him out of the room and down the hallway to the back stairs.
Wei Ying looked back over his shoulder, as they left the room, at the saddlebags with all their things that A-Niang and A-Die didn’t carry on them, and his toy animals scattered over the floor.
Auntie’s cousin was a girl who was a teenager, maybe, but pretty skinny and with stringy hair. She was wearing the same kind of clothes as Auntie and the other inn staff who worked in the back, rough cloth all in a dull blue for working, with an apron.
The girl told Wei Ying to sit down at a table in the kitchen and brought him a cup of watery tea and a big big plate of food, which was good because Wei Ying was hungry. The noodles were hot and spicy and delicious.
Afterwards she took him to the privy. Then she watched him wash up just his hands and face at the trough under the tap from the inn’s cistern.
Then she walked him back upstairs, to the chilly, mostly-empty room.
Wei Ying meant to pick up all his wooden animals and put them away, but it was dark and he wasn’t supposed to light candles and he fell asleep and forgot.
The next day it was almost the same thing. A-Niang and A-Die were still gone. Wei Ying really wanted A-Niang and A-Die to be done being gone already.
Wei Ying spent most of the whole day alone, playing quietly. Being patient and good. The girl came in two or three times, looking worried, and smiled when she saw him being good and staying where he was supposed to be and not making noises. She brought some food with her, and clean water for the drinking ewer and the wash pitcher, and changed the chamber pot.
In the evening she came back and took him downstairs for supper. This time it was soup and Wei Ying spilled a little on his front.
This time, after going out and washing up, she told him to sit down again at the table, and wait. When she was done with work they’d go home for the night.
Wei Ying dozed a little, warm from the nearby cookfire, in the noisy busy kitchen with people coming and going. He’d napped a lot already, but today was a hard day.
Then the girl took his hand, and they started walking outside, in the street. It was dark out and late and there were torches burning, but Wei Ying was not supposed to walk around in the dark.
The girl wasn’t a cultivator! What if a fierce corpse or yao attacked? They needed to stay in the wards at Wei Ying’s family’s campsite, or at least inside a building where the human intention of building up walls would hold off small spirits.
He yelled and yanked his hand and tried to tell her, and the girl slapped him.
She was crying, he saw when he looked at her, shocked. She looked like she didn’t know what to do.
“We’re going to my house,” she said. “You can’t stay at the inn and Auntie is too sick to take you, my cousin said so. Please, please be good.”
Wei Ying nodded and tried to be good while they walked in the dark, past lots of pitch-black scary empty alleyways. A house was a building. It would be fine.
The girl’s house was mostly one room, small and smoky, and there were a lot of cranky little brothers and sisters older and younger than Wei Ying, and a man who smelled like lots of wine, snoring on the bed.
The girl ran around trying to make sure all the kids had eaten and washed and pushing them to make them lie down in their sleeping spots, and she put a blanket on the floor for Wei Ying near the hearth and told him that was his spot.
He curled up like a cat and tried to get comfy. It was like camping except inside and there were more cranky people, and the girl was crying holding a baby that was crying too, saying “Please go to sleep, please go to sleep.”
So Wei Ying did.
In the morning Wei Ying woke up to a sound like a monster roaring.
He scrambled into a corner, getting his back to a wall automatically, and looking for the threat.
He watched the man who smelled like wine, no longer snoring, standing over the girl who had the same stringy hair as him, yelling, snorting like a bull, with his hands in fists.
He heard him saying “no more damn brats,” and “hard enough with you and your brothers and sisters,” and “useless as your mother.”
Wei Ying did not like hearing that. Mothers were very important and not useless. The girl had given him supper twice. He stood up.
He wasn’t sure what to do next – he didn’t have a sword or spirit-binding ropes and he didn’t know the talisman to fix the man if he was possessed – but it didn’t matter; he was too slow.
He watched the man punch the girl in the face. Saw her head snap back and bounce off the wall, and watched her fall down and go limp. She was still breathing but she wasn’t fighting at all, like a snared rabbit.
Saw the man stumble outside of the hut, still muttering and huffing to himself like a bear.
Wei Ying went and stood in front of the door, looking anxiously over his shoulder to the girl in the corner, but the man didn’t come back in.
The girl got up, rubbing her face. She went over in the other corner and changed her dress – Wei Ying hastily looked away, because he wasn’t supposed to look at big kids and grown-ups with their clothes off unless it was a place you were allowed to swim naked, like the lake with all the flowers.
Then she came over to him.
“I’m going to work,” she said. “I’ll give you breakfast. You shouldn’t stay here.”
Wei Ying nodded, and took her hand. He would be brave for the girl.
Brave and patient and good, until A-Niang and A-Die came back.
At the inn the girl gave him some scallion pancakes, and then she walked him outside to the street.
“There’s a park a few streets over. You can play there, I guess. And there’s a market. Some of the vendors will pay kids to run errands or sweep. You could help them set up and stay tidy and maybe earn a coin for lunch! That would be fun, right?”
Wei Ying didn’t think it sounded very fun, but it would be something to do and he was a good helper. He didn’t think he could go back inside the inn to their room and get new clothes and snacks and toys.
“My animals,” he said quietly, and the girl looked confused.
“There are some animals at the market. Chickens and things,” and shrugged. “I have to work. I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay,” Wei Ying assured her, because that was what you did when someone was sorry that they couldn’t help more. You reminded them that they were enough. A-Niang and A-Die did that for each other.
A-Niang told Wei Ying to be kind, and to remember the things that others did for you, not what you did for them.
The girl smiled at him, with a bruise on her cheek and her hair all messy, wearing clean shabby inn-worker clothes.
“You’re a good kid. Whatever your name is,” she told him.
“Wei Ying,” Wei Ying said quietly; but she was already gone.
Wei Ying went to the market and walked around in the bustle and hustle of it all, and looked at the people and the animals. Eventually he asked a very small very old man if he could help him by sweeping the ground in front of his stall full of pots and pans; the old man said yes, so he took the broom and did his best before giving it back. He didn’t earn a coin, but the plump auntie at the next stall over gave him a slice of melon that helped him feel less hungry and thirsty.
After that he was tired.
He found a doorstep that was wide and warm and sat there while the sun went down, sniffling.
Then it got dark, and cold, and spooky. Wei Ying cried, and tried to hold still.
Then it was morning, misty and early, and he hurt all over. His hands and feet were numb.
He got up, teary-eyed, rubbing at his snotty nose and saying ‘ow’, and went back to wait outside the inn.
The girl found him there and looked upset. She went inside with some of the other inn workers without saying anything, but after a while she came back out, holding something in her apron.
It was a hot steamed bun. Wei Ying had had them for breakfast a few days ago, with his A-Niang and A-Die. They had warm soft dough and sweet red bean paste inside.
“I can’t keep doing this,” she said, and went back inside.
After she left, Wei Ying hungrily took a bite out of the bun, and froze just after swallowing it when he heard a growl.
There was a lean, rangy, black-furred dog slinking around the corner. Its eyes flashed at Wei Ying. It was drooling.
Wei Ying was a brave boy. He liked doggies. You could pet them if A-Niang asked and their person said it was all right.
There wasn’t a person with this dog. It came up close and opened its mouth. Wei Ying shook.
The dog snapped and snarled at him. Wei Ying dropped the bun and ran off into the twisting alleys of Yiling Town.
Chapter 2: CODA: the purple man
Chapter Text
A man wearing richly embroidered dark purple sits on the edge of an immense curtained bed, alone.
He turns a wooden carving over and over in his hands. The lotus blossom of polished wood is recognizable, though the petals are a bit thick and unevenly proportioned. The dark wood was once sanded smooth, but the tip of one petal has been broken off.
"When you are the Sect Leader, and I am your subordinate..." he murmurs, quoting.
He rotates the flawed lotus, long ago carved with care by one still learning what it meant to hold a blade, in hands more calloused than those that first received the gift. He looks for the break, finds an edge dulled by wear but still jagged, and runs his fingers over it, over and over again.
Someone claps politely in the hallway outside, and waits for admittance. Jiang Fengmian does not immediately reply, either to dismiss the servant, or to give them permission to enter.
After a moment, "Can it wait, or does my lady wife require my attention?" he asks wearily, in a half-heartedly raised voice that's significantly muffled by walls and screens.
"Zongzhu," a deep voice replies, and he rises in response to slide the door open, paper rattling.
No mere maidservant, and no cultivator with the graces of a maiden attendant and the deadliness of a viper, waits outside. Instead, it's one of his father’s father’s last personal disciples. Therefore, both his martial uncle, and one of his sect disciples, now.
The older man's face is grim, as he holds out a plain training scabbard, Jiang standard issue, across both of his hands. Frank and unrestrained, without undue formality, he gives his concise report.
"Our westernmost patrol took out a nest of unusually voracious fierce corpses that had been a bandit den before succumbing to a curse-contagion. No severe injuries; our people worked well together. Lots of follow-up still to do, now. Beginning with—well. The weapons of several rogue cultivators were found among the bones and belongings of the victims. Among them, this sword."
In the unremarkable scabbard, a remarkable blade: Wei Changze's sword, as familiar to Jiang Fengmian as his own. Jiang Fengmian takes it in trembling hands. The wooden lotus falls to the floor, neglected.
"Cangse Sanren?" Jiang Fengmian asks.
The man shakes his head. "Not her sword, no. Men's and women's bones, many; but there's no telling whose, now."
"Were there...children?"
Again the headshake. "It's...almost impossible to say for sure."