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~~~ PART 1 ~~~
The Lan aren’t like the other hill sects, who descend into the lowlands and take whoever serves their need or their fancy. The last time a Lan left the borders and brought someone back, he lived the rest of his life in seclusion to atone for the transgression. (Lan Zhan does not say what connection he has to this man, or to the woman he took.) The Lan strictures are firm: they take only those that cross into Gusu of their own volition. If someone has stepped into Lan territory, it is presumed that either they came intentionally, or their fate has guided them there. In such cases, the Lan will be obedient to fate.
“I dunno, Lan Zhan, still sounds like kidnapping to me,” the boy says in his lowland lakeside drawl. Lan Zhan is trying not to be fascinated by the shapes the boy’s accent makes, the way his words curve around the tones. “If I — or, heck, no need to get personal, if someone just happens to wander up in these hills, with no ruttin’ clue that a step here or there will make all the difference, and then you take him up into your clan and tell him he can’t leave, how is that any different?”
Lan Zhan marks another demerit for swearing. He is in charge of overseeing the boy’s punishments — he is in charge of overseeing everyone’s punishments. That particular aspect of his sect duties has never weighed as heavily on him as it has in the last week, since he first saw the boy leaning against a tree just inside the border, a jug of liquor in his hand.
He does not answer the boy’s question. That first encounter showed him everything he needed to know about the boy: his impudence, his irreverence, his glib way of countering the strictures Lan Zhan has carried in his heart since infancy. It’s better not to talk to him. Better not to encourage him to keep talking, in those lithe, shapely tones of his.
There is no stopping the boy from talking, though, just as there is no stopping the boy from committing offense after offense, and being sent to Lan Zhan to oversee the necessary discipline. Lan Zhan has never been so thankful that his role is only to carry out the punishments, not to devise them. There is something unseemly and unrestrained in the methods that come to his mind when confronted with the boy’s laughing insubordinance.
“How many times do I need to tell you to call me Wei Ying?” says the boy, smile flashing up at him. For all he complains about his compulsory residence here, his smile is a constant light. He seems especially determined to beam it toward Lan Zhan.
“You will be given your new name when the elders deem you ready,” Lan Zhan replies.
The boy snorts. “I thought you Lans weren’t supposed to lie, and I don’t see how bullshitting is any less than a lie. You and I both know that ain’t gonna happen.”
“It could, if you applied yourself.” A thread of doubt winds around his heart even as he says it. Lan Zhan cannot picture the boy serene and compliant, arrayed with the other Lan initiates, kneeling to receive his ribbon. Something about the image feels wrong, even as he disciplines his own heart to believe more earnestly.
“Like I said, we both know.” The boy is slouching again, at that angle which lets him look up winningly into Lan Zhan’s eyes. Lan Zhan marks another demerit for posture, next to the one he’d placed a minute ago for swearing. “I’ll be escaping any day now.”
Lan Zhan’s fingers clench around his brush. The boy has tried to escape three times so far — four, if their first encounter is included, when the boy had set down his liquor jar and stood up grinning, ready enough to spar with a stranger, not realizing the stakes. Each time, it has been Lan Zhan who fought him to a standstill, fought with all his might until the boy looked up in his lockgrip and said, “You win again, Lan Zhan,” with a grin and a tone that sent fire shooting through Lan Zhan.
“To join the Lan is an honor many strive for,” is all he says. He’s said it before, and it frustrates him, the way the boy just shakes it off. The boy is a skilled cultivator and a strong fighter; Lan Zhan is certain he could do well in the sect if he would only try.
“I’m sure it is,” says the boy lazily. “But the name my mama gave me is good enough for me.”
The way he says ‘my mama’ hits Lan Zhan with a pang. He knows the boy’s parents are dead; after the second escape attempt, Lan Xichen had asked him if he was trying to get back to his family. Lan Zhan had understood, with some surprise, his brother’s intent: if the boy missed his family so much, they could be brought here too, despite the stricture that only those who make their own way to Lan territory can be brought into the sect. He’d heard rumors of the rules being bent thus, but never expected his brother to countenance such a thing.
It came to nothing, though, as the boy said that his parents had died long ago, and the family that raised him — he’d given a little laugh and said, “Well, anyway, it’s just me now, so don’t go kidnapping anyone else on my account.”
He hasn’t spoken of family except that once, and Lan Zhan has taken him to be careless and unattached. But his voice wraps warm and almost reverent around the words: the name my mama gave me. It tugs at something in Lan Zhan’s own heart. It has been twelve years since he heard his mother speak his name.
Lan Zhan has always been diligent in his martial arts, but at the next demonstration, several weeks after Wei Ying’s arrival, he sees his uncle’s eyebrows rise in surprised approval. He realizes he has been pushing himself harder, working to keep pace with Wei Ying. They spar every day now, unless Wei Ying is being disciplined, and sometimes at the start of a match Wei Ying says, with his sparkling eyes, “Hey Lan Zhan, if I win this one, can I go?”
“Ridiculous,” is all Lan Zhan ever says, but it hides a little surge of fear. He does not know what he would do if Wei Ying did slip his grasp one day and vanish over the border. His days have become fully occupied with the slim, clever young man. The constant chatter and pealing laughter are a continual disturbance to the peace and stillness that is supposed to prevail in Gusu, but in the rare hours of silence, Lan Zhan finds his ears straining to catch Wei Ying’s voice.
Gusu is a good place: peaceful, ordered, and righteous. Lan Zhan is thankful to the fate that caused him to be born here. He wishes that Wei Ying could be similarly thankful to the fate that caused him to wander here. If he would only turn his sharp mind and boundless energies to earning his place as a full member of the sect, he would certainly succeed, and Lan Zhan would rest easier.
A quiet corner of Lan Zhan’s mind suggests that a Wei Ying that would be acceptable to the Lan elders would no longer be the Wei Ying that Lan Zhan’s heart bounds to see. This is a disloyal, almost heretical thought, and he suppresses it.
The world outside Gusu is not so peaceful. Lan Zhan sees his brother’s worries growing heavier, and eventually persuades him to share them. It is the Wen, of course. The Wen sect have been expanding their territory for years, absorbing smaller sects, and it seems they are becoming bolder. They have even moved against some of the lowland sects. Lan Xichen fears that they are preparing to move against the other major hill sects.
It is difficult to believe. The Wen must know the others will unite to keep one sect from taking over, and even if they absorbed every small sect in the hills, they could not hope to stand against the Nie, the Jin, and the Lan together.
“They could if they’ve got armies of the dead,” says Wei Ying, when a few of the young Lan are gathered and talking nervously after sparring. Several of the listeners hiss in shock. “What? Those rumors never made it up to Gusu?”
“It would be a heresy,” says Lan Zhan. “A sacrilege.”
“Sure,” says Wei Ying. “Also a right handy way to build up your troops, if you care more about that than about staying not-heretical.”
“Demonic cultivation is unstable,” Lan Zhan answers, more sharply than usual to cover the uneasy feeling in his own gut. “If they are using such methods, it will corrupt their bodies and minds.”
“A man might choose to do it anyway,” says Wei Ying. “At least it’d be gorram useful to know how.”
Uncle comes on them at this moment, and, red-faced with rage, orders Wei Ying off to the copy shed for punishment.
Lan Zhan supervises Wei Ying as he chisels Lan strictures into a large stone tablet. Lan Zhan is ordinarily silent while Wei Ying works. Today, however, his mind is troubled. Perhaps it is only right to take this opportunity to do some teaching.
“Do you understand why what you said was wrong?”
Wei Ying takes it as an invitation for a break and wipes sweat off his forehead. “Swearing,” he says with a grin. His eyes say, I know better and I know you know I know. Lan Zhan had never been teased before Wei Ying came. He had not been prepared for how thrillingly invasive it feels.
Steadying his breath, he makes the correction. “You expressed curiosity about a method that is forbidden.” Wei Ying is so clever, so inquisitive, so fearless. It is Lan Zhan’s own fear, not Lan principles, that make him add, “It is also dangerous.”
“Ah, Lan Zhan, what’s life without a little danger? If there’s gonna be an army of the dead on the field, I’d just as soon be the one controlling it.”
“It is forbidden!” Lan Zhan repeats sharply. He could not say why the anxiety is pressing on his chest so hard. “It will do untold harm. You cannot seriously think of attempting it.”
“I’m not saying I’d be pleased about it. But I reckon some of the Yao cultivators might’ve wished they’d taken it up, when they saw that Wen banner coming.”
“Yao?” Lan Zhan isn’t familiar with the name.
“Lowland sect that got smashed up. You didn’t hear?”
He hadn’t noted the sect names in the report that had his brother worried. The lowland and hill sects have little to do with each other, so they did not mean anything to him. It’s a small shock of realization that they might mean something to Wei Ying. Wei Ying has never discussed where he came from before setting foot in Gusu, and Lan Zhan has never asked. One is supposed to leave past attachments behind.
It is, perhaps, a slight transgression that he asks now. “Did you — know them?”
Wei Ying shrugs. “A little. Leader was a blathering old windbag, always had to repeat whatever it was the last important person said, just like he’d thought of it himself. Still. Don’t like to think of them being taken down just because the Wen sect’s got an itch to run the world.”
When Wei Ying finishes inscribing the tablet he hoists it onto his shoulders without being prompted. He will carry it all the way to the Gusu border and set it up. It’s a common punishment; there are quite a few new tablets at the border since Wei Ying came among them. Ordinarily he chatters and complains and tries to cajole Lan Zhan into taking a turn carrying it, or letting him fly it out on his sword. Today he is uncharacteristically silent.
When they reach the border, Wei Ying sets up the tablet with practised hands, then turns and looks at Lan Zhan.
Lan Zhan thought he knew what it was to hear Wei Ying beg; he has wheedled and whined to be spared a punishment, to sleep later, to find something to give his food a little more flavor. His eloquent pout and long-lashed, mournful gaze are dramatic and pitiful — Lan Zhan wonders, sometimes out loud, how he can have so little shame.
In this moment, Lan Zhan learns that he has never heard Wei Ying truly beg. His voice is calm and low; he does not smile as he says, “Lan Zhan. Please let me go.”
It’s so quiet but something about it twists in Lan Zhan’s heart like a knife. He opens his mouth and finds that he cannot say anything.
“Please, Lan Zhan. I need to go now. Please don’t stop me.”
He can’t move. There are two voices thundering at him, as Wei Ying takes a step toward the border. One is his upbringing, the strictures he has spent his life repeating and upholding, the ordinances of fate. The other is his own desire, so strong it feels like need, to have Wei Ying remain by his side. He stands perfectly still while both voices roar, and Wei Ying takes another step, and another. Then he is over the border. Then he is pausing, giving Lan Zhan a small sweet smile. Then he is gone.
Lan Zhan is disciplined for failing to prevent his escape. It does not hurt as badly as the ringing absence of Wei Ying’s laugh, or the doubts lodged like shards in Lan Zhan’s heart.
Months pass, and the threat of war goes from a worry, to a fear, to a certainty. The Wen with their half-dead army have swept through the lowlands, destroying even the largest sect there. Nobody doubts that they will come for the other hill sects now. It is only a matter of time, and the time is getting short.
Lan Zhan is patrolling the borders when he hears a rustle in the thicket, too heavy to be any beast of these hills. His sword flashes out toward it, and he hears a familiar voice yelp.
He calls Bichen back to his hand and steps toward it, crossing the border. “Wei Ying?”
Wei Ying steps out of the thicket. “Hey, Lan Zhan.” There is a wound on his arm where Bichen struck; possibly this is why his voice is so flat. Lan Zhan steps forward, stricken, to examine it. Wei Ying tenses as he comes near. Lan Zhan cannot blame him.
“We are over the border,” he says quickly. “And I would not —” he had been going to say, I would not take you in, in any case, but he is not quite prepared to speak that heresy out loud. He hopes Wei Ying knows it anyway.
“I know,” says Wei Ying, and for a moment Lan Zhan’s heart warms at being understood, until Wei Ying adds, “I stood this side on purpose.”
“I’m sorry for hurting you,” says Lan Zhan, and he is looking at the sword wound, but he does not only mean the sword wound.
“It’s nothing,” Wei Ying answers. Up close, Lan Zhan can see that his cheeks are thin, that there is several days’ sparse growth on his jaw. He does not smile, but he does not pull away as Lan Zhan channels spiritual energy to the wound.
“Came looking for you,” says Wei Ying when the wound is healed and Lan Zhan has, with reluctance, let his arm go. “Came to ask a favor.”
“Name it.” Before this moment Lan Zhan would have said that it was Wei Ying’s smile that had dazzled him, turned his head and shaken the foundations of his heart. That does not account for the way he is moved by Wei Ying now, hollow-eyed and thin-lipped. It does not account for the sudden realization that, whatever Wei Ying asks, he will do everything in his power to grant.
“You’re mustering against the Wen, yeah? I want to join.”
“You want to join us in fighting the Wen?”
Wei Ying nods. At Lan Zhan’s steady, questioning look, he says, “I’ve a mind to take down a Wen commander or two. Do it better with some men at my back, and I — ain’t got none.”
Lan Zhan hears the faint crack in his voice and thinks again of the news from the lowlands. He nods slowly. “I will ask.”
The argument with his brother and uncle is prolonged, but Lan Zhan wins it. They have seen Wei Ying’s fighting strength, and the need for more strength overcomes their wariness. The only stipulation is that Lan Zhan take full responsibility for Wei Ying, if they bring him to the field.
Lan Zhan could ask for nothing more.
Lan Zhan sees his first army of glassy-eyed undead three weeks later. The numbers amassed against them are not as chilling as the unnatural stillness of the ranks, or the way their first movement of attack is a single step in perfect unison.
Wei Ying is at his side when the armies meet. The thrill of fighting side by side carries Lan Zhan over the initial horror of meeting the dead in battle. They have fought each other so often, in earnest and in play, and they know each other intimately. He knows when Wei Ying is feinting and where his next stroke will fall; Wei Ying knows where his unguarded spot is and where to move to cover it. They move around one another in perfect synchrony — he feels Wei Ying’s presence at his side, at his back, almost as an extension of himself.
Together at the vanguard, they cut a savage swath through the Wen army. It draws attention; draws a wave of attackers aimed directly at them. Lan Zhan assesses the scene quickly; too many to take on at once, but if he could win a few seconds to pull out his qin —
Wei Ying seems to read his thought; he becomes a blur of motion, striking too fast to damage their attackers, but wide and unpredictable, holding them off for a space. Lan Zhan rises into the air, summons the qin, and delivers a rippling chord that cuts through the advancing wing, sending them tumbling into the ranks behind them. Wei Ying looks up at him with a fierce smile. It occurs to Lan Zhan that this is the happiest he has ever felt.
The combined forces of Lan, Nie, and Jin are powerful enough to drive the Wen back nearly to the edge of their own territory, but each victory is fragile and hard-won. Worse; as the fighting continues, their armies shrink while the Wen army grows. Every one of them knows, by now, the shock of seeing a former brother-in-arms standing dead-eyed in the opposing ranks. It haunts them all, and fills Lan Zhan with a more general dread: how does this end?
He is, on balance, glad that Wei Ying is beside him in the watches of the night. The nearness of him in the quiet stirs Lan Zhan’s blood, which is difficult in its own way, but it is better than being haunted by the faces of the dead. Sometimes Wei Ying rolls onto his side and looks at him, eyes glittering in the dark, and the wanting squeezes so tightly around Lan Zhan’s chest that he cannot breathe.
After this is over, he thinks, and does not finish the thought. He thinks of Wei Ying coming back to Gusu; he thinks, sometimes, of himself elsewhere. It is surprisingly easy to be elsewhere, with Wei Ying at his side.
It is the verge of winter when they launch a daring attack around the Wen flank. They know the fighting will have to cease soon; the winter wind and snow that scours the hills all winter long will make battle impossible. If they have to break for winter, it will be to their disadvantage: Wen Ruohan’s dead armies can be replenished more fully than their living ones. They are desperate to secure victory now. It is decided that Nie Mingjue will try to move close enough to assassinate Wen Ruohan, while a diversionary force makes a strong attack at the other end of the line.
In the war tent, Wei Ying’s and Lan Zhan’s eyes meet. Lan Zhan volunteers to lead the diversionary force, knowing that this is what Wei Ying wants too. His heart glows; they are powerful together, and nobody hesitates to grant him the command. His heart glows. It was your fate, after all, that brought you to us, despite your objections. He looks into Wei Ying’s eyes, and hopes he sees this, how good it is that they fight side by side.
For months afterward he will ask himself what caused it. Was it a slip of attention on his part, or Wei Ying’s, in the moment of battle? Was it only his imagination that Wei Ying lowered his guard with a flicker of intent in his eyes? Or was it this moment in the tent, a jolt of hubris, of greed, believing that fate had marked him for glory and for a beautiful man? He will ask himself, and find different answers, depending on the day, and the color his despair has put on.
Whatever the cause, it happens. One moment they are fighting as one, breathing as one — then there is a clamoring wrongness, and Wei Ying is gone from his side. He is being dragged away by a large Wen soldier, a living one, one of the commanders. For a second his eyes meet Lan Zhan’s in the clash, and in them is nothing but calm.
Lan Zhan forgets everything — the rest of the fighting forces, the plan which he is to support — in his frantic lunge after Wei Ying and the soldier that carries him. For a moment he is unstoppable — he cuts a ferocious gash through the horde of mingled living and dead that attack them. But his attention is all forward, toward Wei Ying, and he leaves his back unprotected. He feels a strange tugging sensation, and looks down to see something emerging from his chest that should not be there.
It’s dark where Wei Ying is. Been dark a long time. Nothing down here to measure days by, and no point to it if he could. It’s been a long time.
He’s not alone, but he might as well be. The others chained here, they’ve been here longer, and something’s been done to ‘em. They’re all cultivators, he thinks, or used to be. They feel all hollow and drained now, and when the kid comes to feed ‘em he has to coax the thin porridge through their lips.
One of them is Wei Ying’s brother.
He’d come here aiming to avenge Jiang Cheng. This whole dark cell lit up like the sun for a minute, when Wei Ying found out there was a chance to save him. He’s just as broken-down as the others, but he’s breathing. Wei Ying can work with that.
Down here he can feel the resentful energy simmering all around, thick and choking like black smoke, like the day his home burned. His body wants to push it away but he lets it in instead, lets himself get curious about how it feels, how it moves. He can figure out anything he sets his mind to, he’s sure of that.
He gets curious about other things, too. The kid who comes to feed them — there’s something off about his energy, something strange. Wei Ying’s still trying to suss out if it’s safe to talk to him, if it’s safe to let on he can still talk. The kid is gentle, apologetic even with the ones who don’t seem to hear or see anything. Wei Ying suspects he don’t want to be here any more than they do.
Then there’s the doctor that’s come to check on them a few times. She’s not gentle or apologetic, but there’s something in the way she scolds the kid, like she’s worried about him. Like she cares about him. Wei Ying can maybe work with that too.
Sometimes there’s a presence at the door, and a pulling feeling deep at his core, like his insides are being dragged right out of him. It hurts. It leaves him feeling dizzy and sick to his stomach, retching dry after it’s done.
Sometimes he has dreams like he’s being gnawed on, like he’s being eaten alive. Sometimes he doesn’t know whether they’re really dreams. Night and day, sleeping and waking, none of it means much down here.
He trains himself not to pull away from the horror of that gnawed-on feeling but to let it happen, to pay attention. It’s hurting him, it’s changing him, but he’s not going to let it hollow him out. If he’s changing, he’s gonna change into something that can bite back.
Lan Zhan has a few fitful moments of awareness: a pain that cuts through him, faces hovering over him in blurred concern. When he finally wakes fully, he is in his own room in Gusu.
By the time his brother is summoned to his side, Lan Zhan has thought it over and come to understand everything Lan Xichen will tell him: that it is the dead of winter, that the war is paused but not ended, that he was badly wounded. He asks, with faint hope, about the one important thing he does not know.
“Wei Ying?”
“Either dead or a prisoner.” Lan Xichen understands him well, understands him enough to add, “I’m sorry.”
The enforced lull in the battle draws on for agonizing, wind-bitten months. Lan Zhan would resent the time more, but he needs every day of it to get back into fighting shape. Lan Xichen’s face creases in worry every time he sees Lan Zhan training. Lan Zhan knows his brother would prefer him to rest, to stay home when the battle resumes. He wastes no time arguing. When the Lan go out from Gusu, he is beside his brother on his sword.
The end of the great hill-sect war is a thing of legend; the tales run from the battlefield, arriving home ahead of the weary warriors. The story even passes into the towns of the commonfolk, to whom the cultivators are both hero and bogeyman. Everybody tells how the great leaders of Nie, Jin, and Lan were met with an army that was ten times the size of their own, led by Wen Ruohan’s two shining sons. The stories tell it differently: whether one leader quailed in fear and was bolstered by the others, or whether they charged forward as one. However they tell it, the next part is enshrined in story: how a single black-clad figure rose to stand on a high peak, holding no weapon but a jet-black flute, and began to play. How the armies of the dead turned on one another, and on their living commanders. How the great Wen sect was felled in a single day.
Nobody tells of Lan Zhan, first to walk amid the carnage when all has gone still. Nobody sees him go to the foot of the hill where the black-clad cultivator stands. Nobody sees the way his heart is rent by the man’s bloodshot eyes and hollowed cheeks; perhaps nobody would have been able to tell even if they had been nearby to see. Very few people have ever been able to read Lan Zhan’s heart.
The man on the hill lowers his flute and looks down as if surprised to see him, as if he is something from a dream.
“Wei Ying,” Lan Zhan whispers.
“Lan Zhan,” the man says, with a smile that is thin and strange. “You did make it. That’s good.”
Lan Zhan can see the clouds of resentful energy around him. In that moment he feels no triumph, no gratitude, nothing but fear for Wei Ying. “Come back to Gusu with me.”
Wei Ying shakes his head slowly. His smile grows wider and sadder. He takes a step backward, watching to see if Lan Zhan will give chase. Lan Zhan is rooted to the spot. Wei Ying takes another step, then rises into the air and is gone.
~~~ PART 2 ~~~
Wei Ying lies in the dark and wonders if there’s some kind of record book down in the lows for how many different times a man’s been kidnapped by hill sects. This is his third time, so he figures he might hold the record if there is one. Not the best thing he’s ever been famous for, but not the worst neither.
That about covers this kidnapping experience too. Not the best — could hardly be that, with no pretty white-robed hill boy to tease — and not the worst. Maybe being a prisoner of war wouldn’t count toward the record, but he thinks it should. He oughta get something for going through all that, especially since he stopped being a war hero and turned into a public enemy. He wonders what the cultivators who snatched him up this time would say if they knew who they’d grabbed.
That’s the kicker, the really funny part, although he can’t tell the joke to anybody. Wei Ying used to worry, going into town with any of the other Wen remnants, that they’d somehow get into trouble because of him, or because of Wen Ning. His face isn’t that recognizable — his wanted posters are downright insulting — but he fretted over it every time. And after all that worry, it’s Wen Qing that got them picked up. She stops to help one commoner collapsed in the road, and next thing you know she’s been nabbed by hill cultivators, with the two most wanted men on the planet along as collateral.
He’s been in worse spots. It’s a small sect that’s grabbed them, by the looks of it, and so far they’ve taken the three of them for commoners. They’ve practically been commoners, these last couple years, holing up and trying to scratch out a living like any ordinary folk. It shouldn’t be too hard to keep up the act until they can escape. Wen Ning’s a little tricky, on account of being dead, but no one’s likely to suss that out unless they get real close. They just need to lie low until they find their chance.
Wei Ying and Wen Ning are set to farm laboring while Wen Qing tends the whole roomful of sick and injured folk the sect have let go untreated. He can tell from the snap of Wen Qing’s eyes just what she’s thinking, every time she comes back from that sickroom at the end of the day: If these cultivators would stoop to learn even a little bit of commoner medicine they wouldn’t have these problems. She’s ranted about it before, the way the hill sects are holding themselves back, keeping so separate from the rest of Jiangyin, the rest of the ‘verse. If she drinks a little she’ll go on and on about the advantages of cross-training, the insights commoner medicine brings to cultivation healing and vice versa. Wei Ying doesn’t understand half of what she says, but he lets her talk. She does the same for him when he needs to talk through his own ideas, and besides, she saved his brother’s life. He’d listen to her rant right through to the end of the world, just for that.
The farm work ain’t so bad. The ground’s better than what they had to work with down in the lows, the little burnt-out waste they found that no one from either world would fight them for. A lot of hungry days, that first year. They’d dug their livelihood out of the ashes and it had almost started to feel like home, a little place just for him and the Wen refugees he’d found. Never quite safe, though. Wars leave all manner of ugliness behind them, and this little world don’t have room in it for a demonic cultivator, a not-quite-dead man, or anyone surnamed Wen. Once they’d gotten to where they didn’t have to fear starving, Wei Ying had thought about longer-term survival, and turned his eyes to the stars.
They have a ship now. Once Wei Ying set his mind to the problem, he’d started going down to the main portside town, hanging out at the shipyards, drinking alongside offworld crew and portside mechanics and listening to ‘em talk. Talk turned to casual friendliness, turned to picking up some odd jobs tinkering on ships that needed an extra hand. Never took much pay for those jobs, but what he did he squirreled away. It wasn’t for the money, mainly. He needed money for what he had in mind, but he needed the learning more. How a ship runs and how to keep her running, and just how big the ‘verse was off Jiangyin. Out there had its own wars and its own ugliness, but Wei Ying reckoned there was room enough between those stars for him and his people to live a life. For little A-Yuan to grow up safe and free of fear.
When Jiang Cheng worked out what Wei Ying was planning, he yelled for a solid hour. Wei Ying yelled back some, but mostly he listened until Jiang Cheng ran out of steam. He couldn’t make any of the rightful arguments without making Jiang Cheng ashamed, which he had no mind to do. Jiang Cheng is alive because of Wen Ning and Wen Qing, and there’s no ledger in the ‘verse big enough to mark Wei Ying’s debt to them on account of that. He’ll do what he’s gotta do to keep them safe.
And the rest of the Wen, the ones that hadn’t had a damn thing to do with Wen Ruohan except sharing his name, well, in a way he owes them too. After the war the hill sects envied and feared Wei Ying, and they hated and feared the Wen, and what with Wen Ning being brought back to life it all kinda got mixed up, and Wei Ying doesn’t fancy anyone’s chances of separating it into anything rational. Best for everyone if the whole lot of them get clean away, and that’s what he’s aiming to do.
Jiang Cheng asked why he couldn’t send them off on a ship and stay behind. That coulda worked, maybe. But Jiang Cheng has been trying to build alliances with the hill sects, and Wei Ying wants him to. What happened to Lotus Pier, before, that can’t happen again. Carrying Wei Ying and his whole chancy reputation, that’d just be a stone tied around Jiang Cheng’s neck. A stone around Jiang Cheng’s neck and a leash around Wei Ying’s. He’s not keen on that idea. He and the Wens have that in common too: they want to be something other’n what the war has made them.
So Jiang Cheng yelled for an hour and Wei Ying let him, and then he didn’t see him or shijie for two months. And then Jiang Cheng met him and handed over a stick with enough credits to buy a ship, and stormed away before Wei Ying could argue or say thanks or do anything but take it.
Wei Ying fell in love with the ship the minute he saw her. She’s old but she’s solid, and her name felt like a sign: Ningjing, same as Wen Ning, and just what he’s hoping for for all of them. Peace and calm, a place to rest.
So now they’ve got a ship, and Uncle Four’s been taking piloting lessons, and the only reason they aren’t out between those stars right now is that Wei Ying had kinda wanted to stick around long enough to see shijie’s baby born.
He’s got plenty of time to kick himself for that, between long work shifts and long hours in the male laborers’ hut, where he has to lie mostly quiet because he doesn’t want to say anything that will tip the others off that they ain’t what they seem. Wen Ning is good at sitting quiet. Wei Ying is rotten at it, and when he’s tired of berating himself for not getting them all off-world the second he could, he switches to brooding over what they’ll leave behind. It’s not so much the people he’ll miss — he’s already been missing them, seeing them as rarely as he does, and Jiang Cheng says he’ll get in a wave setup at Lotus Pier so they can talk even from the sky. He can’t miss them much more than he already does; what he’ll be leaving behind is the chances. The chance that on any old day, unexpectedly, he might get to hug his brother or sister. The smaller chance that still lights him up sometimes, that he might see an old friend walking the streets in his fine white robe.
It happened once. Wei Ying had taken A-Yuan into the city and lost him for a second and found him clinging to the very last person Wei Ying had ever expected to see. He’d stuck around, bought them lunch. Lan Zhan had looked real good. Kinda sad, but everyone was kinda sad now. He’d let A-Yuan crawl right up into his lap like he belonged there, and for a second Wei Ying had felt sad too. But it had been a nice day, a real nice day. That was the kind of chance he’d miss, once they were off-world. Not like he expected anything like it to happen again, but there was always the chance.
Right now he doesn’t want to see Lan Zhan or anyone he knows, though. Lan Zhan wouldn’t give them away — he knows that for certain, right down to his bones — but it would be a complication, and Wei Ying needs things to stay simple. They’ve just got to keep quiet and lie low until the chance comes to make their run.
Six days in, Wei Ying is starting to piece a plan together. He’s been taking note of the daily routines, spotting which of the bored cultivators supervising them is the most bored and likely to let them slip without noticing. Getting the best sense he can of where they are on the mountain and how to get back to the lows where the others are waiting. He’s thinking it’s about time to snag Wen Qing over so they can talk out a plan and be ready to make their break.
Then one morning, on the way to the field, a gorram rockslide hits, and Wen Ning gets between their whole party and a boulder twice his size. That raises some questions, even for the bored cultivator guards, and from that point things get decidedly un-smooth. Wen Ning panics, grabs Wei Ying, and runs. Of course they’ve got to circle back to get Wen Qing and that lets several more cultivators have a good look at them — not so much their faces as how they fight. Wei Ying sees the shock in one cultivator’s eyes when he realizes who they’ve got here.
They make it into the woods, but they don’t know these hills and their pursuers do. They can hide for one night, two, but every time they make a break for the lowlands, someone’s guessed where they’ll go, and they’re driven a different way. It’s not just the one sect chasing them now: he’s seen Jin colors and Nie colors, one or two Lan. He hopes Jiang Cheng has enough sense to stay out of this.
They should have just gotten on the gorram ship when they had the chance. He tries to say sorry to the other two as they’re crouched in hiding and working out the next best escape route. That just gets Wen Qing saying sorry for getting them nabbed, and Wen Ning saying it for giving them away, and really Wei Ying shoulda known better than to start up the apologies with those two.
They all agree to save their breath and keep looking for a way out.
Lan Zhan has spent much of the last year traveling. His brother asked once what he was looking for, that he kept leaving home. There are many answers, all true. He is looking for trouble, and finding it more often than he would ever have dreamed within the small ordered world of his sect. He has been gaining a reputation for appearing amid chaos, offering help not just to Lan, not just to cultivators, but to anyone who needs it.
He is looking for stability, new ways to anchor himself in a world that shattered open and proved so much wider than he’d once thought. He needs a framework within which to live his life, and the old one is broken.
He is, yes, looking for Wei Ying. Not simply to encounter him — he has done that once, for one precious brief afternoon. That meeting taught him what he had not wanted to learn earlier: that the person he is and the person Wei Ying is cannot come together, cannot stay together, without one of them agreeing to break. It has always been true, even as they have changed through their first, second, and third meetings. He is looking, now, for the version of himself that can live alongside whatever version of Wei Ying it chances to meet. He thinks he is closer to finding it; he will not know until they meet again.
Lan Zhan returns to Gusu after many weeks away, to find a clear undercurrent of agitation among his sect brothers. He seeks out Lan Xichen at once.
Lan Xichen never lies to him, but he will not give him the truth until Lan Zhan is back in his own small house, the door closed behind them. Then he tells him: Wei Ying and the Wen boy he brought back to life have been found and cornered in the hills. Large parties from every sect have gone to hunt them. Any day now, they will be caught.
Lan Zhan makes for the door, and his brother bars him.
“Didi,” he says, “you must understand. For the Lan to interfere would start another war.”
Lan Zhan almost does not care about that. He almost thinks, If the hill sects would tear themselves apart over saving a good man, then let them be torn. He does not care very much for those people. He does care for his brother, though. His brother is working to change things, working with a few others to make their world less unjust. His brother has always been the patient one.
“I understand that you cannot interfere,” he says, only a little coldly, because he truly does understand.
Lan Xichen understands too. “Didi,” he says, more softly, “you are also Lan. You are my second in command. You cannot act on your own.”
Lan Zhan only stares back at him. There is nothing to say to this. Lan Xichen looks at him for a long time, and then sighs.
“If you went to interfere, I would have to make it clear that your actions are not the Lan sect’s actions. It would have to be the discipline whip.”
The discipline whip is cruel and crippling. It is only used against traitors to the sect. Too many strokes can destroy one’s cultivation altogether. In all his life, Lan Zhan never imagined a future where it would be used on him.
From the pain in Lan Xichen’s face, neither has he. “Please,” he continues, almost a whisper. “Please do not make me do that.”
Lan Zhan still has nothing to say. Lan Xichen waits a little longer, then sighs again. For the first time since they were small children, he touches Lan Zhan’s face and kisses his forehead, just above where the ribbon lies. Then he goes out, closing the door behind him.
Lan Zhan has been living in his mother’s house. There is a lock on the outside of the door, designed to be unbreakable even by a strong cultivator, like his mother was, like he is.
Lan Xichen does not engage the lock as he leaves.
They’ve found a hiding spot, a tiny little tucked-away cave, and so far none of the passing cultivators have been good enough to spot the deflecting wards Wei Ying put around it.
Wen Qing is not as cheerful about this as he’d like her to be. They’ve lived and worked together for too long, long enough that he can see her eyes saying things like We’re still cornered, and They haven’t moved from this area for hours, they know we’re here even if they can’t find us.
Wei Ying can admit it’s a problem. He’s working it.
They’ve been crouching there for four miserable, silent hours, hearing and seeing their pursuers walk by, when a voice calls out.
“We have no desire to harm the living,” the voice says, so right away Wei Ying knows it’s not a Lan. “Surrender the abomination, and the rest of you can go free.”
The abomination. So that’s the angle they’re taking. Wei Ying grips Wen Ning’s shoulder. He doesn’t dare even whisper with someone outside so close, but he tries to say it with his grip. You’re my friend. You’re the kindest man I know. I’ll protect you to my last breath.
The voice keeps talking, going on about how Wen Ning’s very existence is a threat to the right and proper order of things, how they can come to an accord if they’ll just give him up. Talking about him like he’s a thing. Wei Ying just holds tight to Wen Ning’s shoulder and waits for it to pass. They’re doing this because they can’t find them. They’re doing this because they’ve got a pack of angry, hurt, riled-up people and they need some target to let their anger loose on. Maybe they even mean it for now, maybe they’d let Wei Ying and the other Wens go, but someday they’ll need another target and he knows just who it’ll be.
The voice moves farther away, walking down the hillside through the brush. Just as it’s starting to fade out of earshot, it begins its proclamation all over again: “We have no desire to harm the living! Surrender the abomination, and the rest of you can go free.”
So they can look forward to hearing that all night.
The speech is taken up by other voices, coming from near and far over the next few hours. Wei Ying is trying to make use of it, trying to get some kind of guidance from the pattern of their movements. It would help if he’d eaten or slept more than tiny snatches here and there, but a man on the run can’t be picky. It’s only been a few days. He just needs to engineer their escape and then he can sleep sweet on that beautiful old hunk of a ship that’s waiting for them.
“Wei-gongzi,” Wen Ning whispers, at a time when all the voices are far away. It’s starting to get dark.
“No,” he says firmly. “We’re gettin’ out of here, all three of us, you hear?”
“But I think — if they would really let you and Jiejie go — you could go meet the others. Then you’d all be safe. I want you all to be safe.”
“Then you’d best be ready to come aboard and protect us when we go offworld. You think there’s nothing dangerous out there in the ‘verse?”
Wen Ning smiles, sweetly and sadly, like he knows just what Wei Ying is trying to do. “I’m worried, though. What if the others come looking for us? Or if someone goes and finds them?”
“You’d best have more faith in your Popo than that. She won’t let that lot do anything foolish. And if worst comes to worst up here, she and Uncle Four’ll see they get offworld just the same.” He says it as boldly and brashly as he can. He doesn’t entirely believe it. He’s been worried about the same thing.
The night wears on, and the voices keep coming. Surrender the abomination — surrender the abomination — surrender —
Wei Ying’s trying so hard to think of something. He’s so tired.
“Jiejie,” whispers Wen Ning, sounding broken and hopeless in the dark.
“I know,” she murmurs back. She cradles his head against her shoulder. In the glimmer of moonlight, Wei Ying can see tears shining in her eyes.
For a minute all the voices are silent, or out of earshot. For a minute it’s just crickets and the rustle of the wind, and the soft sound of Wen Qing stroking her brother’s hair. Then the cry goes up again, startlingly near: “We have no desire to harm the living! Surrender —”
Wen Qing’s breath hisses in as if she’s been stabbed. Wen Ning’s head comes up. He meets her eyes. She takes his hand, and they nod at each other.
There’s a conversation happening here, and Wei Ying don’t like it. Through clenched teeth, barely at a whisper, he says, “Don’t you two even think about —”
Wen Qing puts a hand over his mouth. “Thank you,” she whispers, “and I’m sorry.”
He sees the flash of a needle, and then blackness.
It’s still dark when he opens his eyes again. The monotonous voices are gone, and so are Wen Ning and Wen Qing. He staggers to his feet — she got him good, he’s all wobbly still, but he’s moving, he’s moving, panic is driving him forward into the night.
He follows some faint sight or sound or instinct until he hears voices, sees torchlight. His head is pounding. There’s no room for cleverness or calculation; his whole body is driven forward on one thought: No. No. No.
He breaks into the clearing where they’re gathered: a hundred or more cultivators around a pyre heaped higher than their heads, and Wen Ning tied up at the top. How did they tie him strong enough to hold? No. A problem for later.
Someone at the foot of the pyre is struggling and shouting. He can’t hear the words, but he knows the voice. Wen Qing, Wen Qing. She’s furious and pleading, she who’s always so dry and cool. He’s a little mad at her right now, but that’s for later too. He’s running through the woods, trying to get there in time. In time to do what? He doesn’t know. He’ll work it out when he gets there.
It’s hard to run and watch at the same time. The next thing he sees, Wen Qing is climbing the pyre, wrapping her arms around her brother. Leaning her head against the side of his. A man steps forward, torch in hand.
No. No. No. Wei Ying summons a surge of resentful energy and soars over the crowd. Even as he does it, he can feel something’s wrong, something’s not working right, but he lands where he meant to and sends the man with the torch tumbling back into the crowd. The cultivators pull back from him and Wei Ying isn’t waiting, he’s got his dizi out already and he starts playing, ready to unleash —
Nothing. There’s nothing. They’ve done something to the ground, or put a binding in the air, or maybe it’s his own damn fuzzy head, but the resentful energy that’s been there at his call ever since he dragged himself out of that hellhole prison — there’s hardly anything there.
The first line of the cultivators had drawn back at first — he’s still a legend, after all — but they start to move closer now. He sees one man he recognizes, Jin Guangshan, standing well back of the front line, looking satisfied. This was planned, he realizes. They’d been driving him here. They’d been ready.
Well. He’s down two forms of cultivation, but he can still fight. “You want them, you come through me,” he sneers at the crowd.
They don’t seem keen on making it a fair fight. They come for him three and four at a time, all of them wielding their full spiritual energy behind their blows. He takes hit after hit and at some point, hearing something in his body break, he knows this is it. He’s not making it out of this one.
He keeps fighting anyway. It’s not like they’ll pull their blows if he stops. Besides, his friends are behind him. He’s going to go down fighting, and he’s going to go down as close as he can be to someone he loves.
One hit sends him staggering back against a slope that clatters and shifts. Oh. The pyre. He looks up to the top, sees Wen Ning and Wen Qing there, looking down at him. He thinks they might be crying. He tries to grin up at them, but a warm gush leaves his mouth and slides down his chin. He touches it and looks. Oh yeah, that’s red, dark red. That’s bad.
Something else splashes over his robes, lower down, and he frowns, confused. He can probably spill enough blood to soak himself, if that’s what they’re after. Then he smells it — oil — and sees a torch approaching. Oh, they’re going to use him to light it. Is that funny? He thinks that’s kind of funny, or symbolic maybe is a better word.
Hell, he’s never gonna be able to tell anyone else. It can be funny if he wants it to.
The torch is coming closer.
There’s a gleam of white in the sky and he’s fixed on it, mesmerized by it, before he even knows what it means. There’s the ripple of white fabric, the shine of a sword, moonlight on dark hair. Beautiful. He wonders if this is a dying thing, if he gets to see the most beautiful sight in the world right before he dies. That’s alright, if it is. If that’s what it is, he’ll take it.
A chord of music ripples over the crowd, knocking them flat, torches and all. The man in white is coming closer. He’s getting real fuzzy, but Wei Ying hangs onto consciousness with all his might. He thinks he knows what face it’ll be, and he wants to see it. Just once more, he wants to see it.
There he is. Hey Lan Zhan, he says with his mind, knowing there’s no way his body is saying anything. Lan Zhan’s lips move, and then everything is dark.
~~~ EPILOGUE ~~~
They’ve been in the sky ten days now. Wei Ying doesn’t remember three of ‘em; it’s just a week since he woke up in medbay, with Wen Qing at his head and Wen Ning at his side and, of all people, Lan Zhan standing there in the corner. Took another couple days before Wen Qing decided he was fit to hobble around, and Lan Zhan was there for most of ‘em. Didn’t talk much, just sat and watched, and when Wei Ying tried to move made him lie back down and got whatever he wanted for him.
“Just like old times,” Wei Ying joked, because it made him feel funny, the way Lan Zhan was just there and helping him to things. “You sitting there watching me do what the boss said I gotta do.”
Lan Zhan considered it for a minute. “Not very much like old times,” he said at last.
“No, I guess not.”
He still hasn’t gotten up the courage to ask Lan Zhan why in the ruttin’ hell he’s on the ship. He’s gotten the why of it, Lan Zhan showing up like a big damn hero and getting the three of them out of there, but not the why of it. Makes no damn sense, Lan Zhan here in this old rust bucket with Wei Ying and a bunch of folk who got nowhere else to be. He wants to ask but he’s scared of the answer.
Truth is, Wei Ying likes having him here. That was a face Wei Ying never expected to see again and now it’s here every day: crossing his path in the cargo hold, across the table in the mess, checking in when Wei Ying’s been down in the engine room a long stretch to see if he needs anything. Sometimes Lan Zhan just sits there, right by the hatch where he’ll be out of the way, and lets Wei Ying talk at him while he works. It’s real nice, real comfortable, and Wei Ying could get used to having him around. He could definitely get used to the way little A-Yuan follows Lan Zhan around the ship and copies everything he does, or the way Lan Zhan answers every single question A-Yuan asks, perfectly serious no matter how off the wall the question is. It gives Wei Ying a whole mess of feelings he don’t know how to deal with.
It is three months since Lan Zhan left his home for the last time. Recently their business took them near enough to Jiangyin to send and receive a message from his brother. It was good to see his face. Wei Ying says that when things have settled down on Jiangyin more, they can make landing and visit. Wei Ying says this anxiously, as if he is offering the future as an apology. Lan Zhan is trying in every way he knows to let Wei Ying see that no apology is needed.
Lan Zhan likes the constant hum of the ship under his feet, in his ears. When there is a change in pitch or rhythm he asks Wei Ying what it means, and Wei Ying is always delighted to be asked. He watches Wei Ying pour the fire of his love and attentiveness into the heart of the ship, learn her every need, understand the meaning of the smallest sounds and shudders. Lan Zhan is not jealous. He lives on a world kept alive by Wei Ying’s passion; it is more than he could once have hoped for.
He does not know if he will ever go back to Gusu. He will always love it, and it will never be his home again. The thought is an ache, but a tolerable one. He is still learning how to be this new person. He has time.
As soon as Wei Ying sees the cloud-covered hills on the little backwater planet they’re dropping a shipment to, he begs Wen Qing for a couple days of shore leave. They can all use a break, so she agrees, and Wei Ying hauls Lan Zhan up into those hills as quick as he can once their business is done.
He worked it out a while ago: Lan Zhan can’t go home on account of what he did for Wei Ying and the Wens. It’s been eating at him ever since. Lan Zhan don’t seem unhappy — Wei Ying even kinda thinks he smiles more than he used to — but Wei Ying hates the thought that he hasn’t got a choice. The least he can do is give Lan Zhan a nice day someplace where it might feel a little like home.
They ramble a while through the pretty scenery, woods and hills and nary another soul to be seen. When their legs are good and tired they find a spot by a mountain stream to rest. Wei Ying sort of accidentally ends up with his head in Lan Zhan’s lap. He’s been getting comfortable like that more and more lately, and Lan Zhan don’t seem to mind. Today he rests his hand on the top of Wei Ying’s head, and it makes Wei Ying’s heart start up a little patter.
“It’s nice up here, right?”
“Mn,” Lan Zhan answers.
“I bet there’s lots of places like this we ain’t seen yet. Places a man could settle down if he — if you wanted.”
“Settle down?” Lan Zhan’s got a little frown, like he’s not sure what Wei Ying is driving at. Wei Ying ain’t entirely sure himself, but he started this, so he plows ahead.
“I just mean to say — life on a ship ain’t everyone’s first choice. If you wanna go somewhere else, find some other kind of life — whatever you want, you just say the word and we’ll get you there.”
“Wei Ying.”
He likes the way Lan Zhan says his name. It seems to mean more, coming outta Lan Zhan’s mouth. “Yeah?”
“I want to be where you are.”
“Oh.” That patter in Wei Ying’s heart starts up even faster. “Oh, okay. If you’re sure.”
“I am sure.”
Lan Zhan’s hand is still resting on his head. Wei Ying reaches up for the other one, that’s lying in the grass, and when he touches it Lan Zhan takes his hand and holds it tight.
They stay like that for a while, listening to the birds and the sound of the stream. When Lan Zhan says he’s ready to go home, he’s looking down the hill, where Ningjing is waiting for them. Wei Ying makes bold to take his hand again when they’ve stood up, and they walk together like that, all the way down the mountain.