Chapter Text
It happened so fast, so unbelievably fast, that even as they stumbled through the streets of Yiling, Jiang Yanli was not sure how they got there.
They had been traveling for days, and her feet hurt. She was still in the soft soled house shoes she had been wearing when they left Lotus Pier, and they were starting to rip apart. As Wei Ying dragged them through the town, his small eleven-year-old body radiating outsized authority and certainty, people glanced at them curiously but stepped out of the way. Even dirtied and exhausted, they still looked like the children of gentry, after all—the children of Yunmeng Jiang.
“This way, this way, here…come on!” Wei Ying was pushing and pulling them forward until they were in a dank, old alley way. A’Cheng recoiled, but Yanli grabbed his wrist and yanked him along. Even being older and (just barely) taller than he was, she should not have been able to maneuver him so easily, but she was certain he was going into shock.
Wei Ying was banging on a door half sunk in the ground, as if it had once been the entry to a basement to a part of a house that wasn’t there anymore.
“Open up, Lao Wang!”
“What the fuck do you want?” An ancient man in a twisted body pulled the door open. Jiang Yanli was not certain he actually had any teeth. “Who the fuck are you?”
“Wei Ying!”
“The fuck?”
Wei Ying groaned in frustration and shoved the old man backwards into the room, pulling on Jiang Yanli who in turn dragged A’Cheng along.
“Hey!”
“It’s me! Wei Ying!” Wei Ying said loudly, slamming the door shut behind him.
“You brat! Where the hell have you been?”
“I told you I got picked up by the Yunmeng Jiang sect, like, ten times already.”
The man looked more like a human yao than a person, wrinkled and bent with watery, clouded eyes he used to size Wei Ying up as he leaned heavily on a battered old cane. While he bickered with Wei Ying, Yanli stood very still next to A’Cheng, who did not appear to be entirely present. He had not been entirely present since his panic attack outside the gates of Lotus Pier, simply following along obediently and quietly the whole trip.
“Ying’er,” Yanli said softly, which brought Lao Wang and Wei Ying up short. “Where are we?”
“And who are you?” Lao Wang added, poking a long crooked finger at Wei Ying’s chest.
“I’m Wei Ying!” Wei Ying threw his arms up in the air in frustration.
“I know that! I mean them! Dressed too nice to street rats. I can’t use ‘em.” He banged his cane on the ground and sat down with a loud thump.
Yanli did not like the sound of that.
“That’s not why I brought them here, you wicked old man,” Wei Ying said, rolling his eyes. He turned to Yanli. “ShiJie, this is Lao Wang, pickpocket master of Yiling. I knew him when I was…when I used to live here.” He ended up looking down at the dirt floor and shuffling his feet.
“Oh.” She did not know what else to say.
“Been gone too long! You’re out of practice. Can’t use you either.”
“I’m not stealing for you!” He glanced over at Yanli. “Uh, not that I ever did. Because I didn’t! That would be wrong.”
“Then why the fuck are you here?” Lao Wang banged his cane on the floor again.
Yanli let go of A’Cheng and stepped forward, not too close, but certainly far closer to a grown man than her mother would have approved.
Her mother.
She bowed. “Lao Wang, I apologize for my brother bringing us to your home. We are in a desperate situation and need a place to hide.”
“ShiJie,” Wei Ying whined softly.
“No, Ying’er, there is no point in lying. Everyone…everyone will know soon, anyway.” She held back a sob.
“No!” A’Cheng shouted and broke for the door. Wei Ying, obviously acting on instinct, tackled him to the floor before he could even grab the handle. The boys wrestled on the ground, shouting incomprehensibly at each other. Yanli knew who would win—who always won, and why that had really been such a burn to her mother’s pride. She stood there and sobbed while her brothers bloodied each other, unable to do anything to stop them.
“Ah, shit.” Lao Wang got up, waddled over and casually as tossing kittens around threw the boys apart with his cane and a martial arts move she had never seen before. There was a moment of quiet before A’Cheng broke down in sobs, and Wei Ying scrambled over to hold him tight.
Yanli knew she should do the same thing. She should be strong for them. She should hold them and tell them everything would be all right. All she could do was stand there and cry.
“What happened, child?” Lao Wang asked softly, staring at the tangle of her brothers. His hands were firmly set on his cane, but there was something soothing about his presence in that moment. It helped that he wasn’t actually looking at her when she started to speak.
“Father…Sect Leader Jiang found out that my brother and I are not his children. Our mother was an adulteress.” She took a deep breath, wrapping her arms around herself, starting to shake. “He…he kicked us out.”