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The wind whistles sharply across the entrance to Demonsbane Cave, like a child blowing across the top of an empty bottle. Just inside, Wei Wuxian and the fourth Wen uncle are engaged in a spirited debate, one of many in a series. Water drips pointedly from the stalactites, punctuating their raised voices.
“Noxious odors!” Wei Wuxian says. “What ‘noxious odors’? That’s the smell of brilliance, si-shu. We are raising our crops in an atmosphere of wild invention and limitless possibility.”
“It’s the smell of blood and death and bile. Also mildew, I think—forget draining the pool, we should seal off the cave and set you up in one of the lodges. I worry about your lungs.”
“Lungs! What lungs? Uncle, have you not heard? The Yiling Patriarch has no need of air to breath. He eats the hearts of unwed maidens, then the livers of any valiant fools who seek revenge. He excretes poison from his very pores, befouling any water source you try to drown him in.”
Si-shu clicks his tongue. “The Yiling Patriarch is the Yiling Patriarch, but Wei Wuxian’s lungs are vital to— Wei-furen, good afternoon.”
Wen Qing stops abruptly on the threshold of the cave, face like the view down the shaft of a nocked arrow. Si-shu pales immediately, dropping the shriveled, wilted carrot he was holding in his haste to bow. “My apologies, Wen-guniang, very many apologies, all of the apologies, in fact—”
Wen Qing rolls her eyes, dismissing him, and the hapless man shuffles his way out of the cave, pausing intermittently to bow more times. “You’re lucky he slunk away like that. You were going to lose that argument,” she tells Wei Wuxian once he’s out of earshot.
“Never,” Wei Wuxian scoffs. “The Yiling Patriarch never loses arguments. He can summon the spirits of great orators past to make incontestable points for him. Also, congratulations on our wedding. Sorry I couldn’t be in attendance, it seems it was held while I was toiling away in the fields, or else in town, taking all kinds of abuse from the shopkeepers just to sell a measly sack of radishes. Very inconsiderate of the organizers, excluding the poor groom this way.”
“The fact that it slipped out like that means they’re saying it behind my back,” Wen Qing grumbles, setting a basket of—bless her, talisman paper—on the wide, flat rock that Wei Wuxian privately thinks of as their finest table.
“Eh, they want to think of us as Wei-zongzhu and Wei-furen, what’s the harm?” he shrugs, perching on the edge of the table to rifle through the basket. “I don’t think we’re in danger of becoming overly traditional.”
“We’re not a clan, you’re not a clan leader, and I’m not your wife,” Wen Qing snaps, wiping her hands on her skirts and looking down at him, which he knows she likes to do, so he doesn’t feel too chastened by it. “It’s been nine days since the last time one of our people was snatched off the path, and he lost an ear before we could get to him. But you’re right, why not get comfortable?”
Wei Wuxian cocks his head. “So you admit they’re our people?”
Wen Qing sighs, but reaches down and places two fingers over the pulse point on the exposed underside of his jaw, which she does sometimes. He’s definitely forgiven. “Alas, I can’t imagine what it must be like to lose an entire ear,” he says, because he knows she knows he cares a lot about the ear. Wen Qing snorts and withdraws her hand without saying anything, so he must be either fine or beyond help. He never asks which it is.
Wen Qing sits down next to him, and Wei Wuxian leans back on his elbows, taking a moment to appreciate the stillness. The sound of a minor squabble filters in, and outside he can see a handful of her clansmen comparing notes on how best to wield a trowel. Wei Wuxian had thought cultivator training was relentless, but heavens, farming.
“I’ll be a Wen in life, in marriage, and in death,” Wen Qing says after a while. Wei Wuxian watches the back of her head. “It’s not something I’m ashamed of.”
“I know,” he tells her. When she leaves, he devotes himself to scribbling talismans, sketching new sigils and trying to sort out workable prototypes from the dross. A couple of his drafts would really be something, given high-quality paints and a bolt of decent cloth. He works best on days like this, buoyed by temporary abundance and less cautious with the paper than he should be.
He can hear Wen Qing outside, settling the trowel dispute with ruthless efficiency. She really is a great partner, he thinks, smiling down at an attempt at an air purification talisman. It's the one true constant in his life these days.
***
“You need to move the toilets,” Wen Qing says, frowning down at the little slice of heaven that is Wei Wuxian’s new lotus lake. “They’re much too close to the main camp, and soon the amount of waste is going to be a public health hazard.”
Wen Qing is joy and sunshine embodied, she really is. Wei Wuxian can’t explain it. Seeing her just makes him feel better. “Ah, Wen-guniang, can we not take a moment to admire the miracle that is creation?”
“I’m already using this moment to admire two fools kneeling in a puddle.”
“Lake,” Wei Wuxian pouts. He had been considering lying down in the mud at the bottom directly, just to see if it has the same rejuvenating effect on him as it does the delicate, yellow-green lotus shoots. He and si-shu are already up to their knees and elbows in it.
“Pond,” Wen Qing allows. “Pond that will soon be contaminated with human feces, if you don’t push the boundary on the north side back about half a li so that a team can start to dig.”
“Half a li?” Wei Wuxian gasps. Si-shu, whose head has been whipping back and forth between the two of them, gasps too. “Half a li is going to take—”
“Do you have something else to do?” Wen Qing asks si-shu, gesturing to the camp behind her, which most days seems to be comprised solely of unfinished tasks and optimism. Si-shu scrambles out of the pond, a mud stain spread across the seat of his pants, and bows squelchily before scampering off. Hopefully his next task is laundry.
Wen Qing lowers herself to the nearest patch of dry earth, crossing her legs properly. Wei Wuxian moves to the edge of the pond so they can talk quietly.
“Half a li is going to take days,” he tells her. “Most of our waterproofing supplies, and at that range I can’t guarantee it won’t create a weak point in the boundary. The energy on the north side is—”
“I know,” Wen Qing says. “But it really should be further. Half a li is as close as we can safely make it. And the north side is—”
Wei Wuxian sighs. “Downhill. Nature really doesn’t want this to be easy for us, huh?”
“No it does not,” Wen Qing says, and they’re both quiet for a moment.
“Okay,” Wei Wuxian says, closing his eyes. The light and breeze are gentle today. Just occupying the Burial Mounds with the living goes a long way towards countering resentful energy. Eventually, this too will be a problem. “Hey, you’re not still mad at si-shu, are you?” he asks. “Because if you want, I can make him prostrate himself at your feet or something. Just until you feel better.”
“Si-shu can deal with si-shu’s problems,” Wen Qing says. “He’s a grown man.”
Wei Wuxian cracks an eye open to look at her. She’s tilted her head back, letting the sun fall on her face. So much of vanity has gone away here. “Aw,” Wei Wuxian teases. “Poor innocent si-shu. He just wants to live out his days in the garden, playing with his plants. He’s never hurt a fly, and yet, he’s incurred the inexorable wrath of the great Wen Qing.”
Instead of laughing, Wen Qing stiffens like a current has passed through her. “Wen Ruobing is a brilliant agriculturalist,” she says, meeting Wei Wuxian’s gaze directly. “During the war, he was sent to the supervisory office at Lotus Pier to conduct an agricultural survey on how to best supply our armies.”
Wei Wuxian feels cold. “He’s still an innocent,” he says, swinging his legs out of the pond to face her fully. “He never lifted a sword, he—”
“I know you know people starved in Yunmeng,” she says. “There are no innocents, just levels of abstraction.”
An arrow, finding its mark. “If I thought in terms of retribution,” Wei Wuxian says. “If I ever do again.”
“I know. I’m glad you don’t.”
“The thing I hold on to,” he tells her, because it feels important that she understand, “is that despite everything, there are still children.”
Wen Qing stands up and comes to sit beside him at the edge of the pond. “There are,” she agrees.
“Innocents.”
“Yes.” He sees her consider the lotus shoots, pale flesh bravely curling up from the water. “And beautiful things. And an honest day’s work.”
“I’ll get right on the toilet thing, I swear.”
“That,” she says, smiling softly, reaching out to gently brush her knuckles against the nearest plant, “is something I will believe when I see it.”
***
“We need to start training cultivators,” Wei Wuxian says, emphatic.
“I can think of nothing more likely to bring the four clans down on our heads,” Wen Qing retorts, shaking out the bedlinen she’s holding with a snap before continuing with her folding.
Wei Wuxian presses on. “We don’t know that for certain.”
“We absolutely do,” she says, and for all intents and purposes, she’s correct. There is a reason that she’s the one at his sickbed, when there are an uncountable number of more important projects she could be using her time and capabilities on. There is a reason that they’ve told everyone he’s absolutely fine, rather than explaining that he completely botched a flame radical and set his arm alight working on a simple warning talisman.
There are a lot of wild stories about the Yiling Patriarch, but some of them are true. Even way up in the Burial Mounds, they’re not nearly as shielded as Wei Wuxian would like them to be. His best and most cynical guess is that someone is talking.
It’s not a priority yet. A lot of things aren’t priorities yet.
“It’s like the toilets,” he says. “It’s not urgent until it’s urgent, but the second it is, we’re finished.”
“And yet you still haven’t fixed the toilets,” she mutters under her breath.
“Really? Right now?” he asks, incredulous, and she gestures her apology, picking up a needle and thread to begin working her way along an unraveling hem. “Something like this happens again, but a little worse. How long until the wind and rain render our defenses paper-thin?”
“Only you know the answer to that,” she says, conceding his point, but still stern. “Which is why you should be very careful, so nothing like this does happen again.”
“I’m always careful,” Wei Wuxian says, and the sad part is, he’s being honest. He’s not sure what happened with the warning talisman, but whatever it was, it will happen again. He suspects he’s not seeing as well as he used to—up close, things seem to blur together. He can’t be sure, though. The change happened so slowly. “But say I’m struck by lightning from the clear sky tomorrow. Say a century from now, I pass quietly in my sleep. Unless I’m the last living man in this graveyard, someone who knows what they’re doing needs to wake up in the morning and check the wards.”
Wen Qing sighs and lays her mending aside entirely. “Zhao Fei is pregnant,” she admits.
Wei Wuxian struggles further upright on his sagging sack of straw that passes for a bed. “See! We’re in this for the long haul! How do you know? Who even is that?”
Wen Qing waves her hand, which means she just knows. “She’s the one Wen Tangcun’s been eyeballing. I don’t know if it’ll— she’s old for it, and the air and water here, you know. But I take your point.”
“So you agree, we have to start training. As soon as possible.” Wei Wuxian loves being right, and lets that feeling carry him away from the danger of becoming too attached to the idea of a baby in the village.
“The fact that we have to doesn’t change the fact that we cannot. What are you even imagining? The only one young enough to learn to intuitively understand the flow of energy, much less consider developing a golden core, is Wen Yuan. I’ve already given popo some exercises to do with him, things that look like children’s games to the unpracticed eye. If you sit him down and start drawing qi diagrams, we’ll be surrounded within the month. He won’t live long enough to lift a sword. As we are, we’re not worth the losses, but in no scenario will Lanling allow a new generation of cultivators to follow down your path.”
“So, what, then,” Wei Wuxian says hotly. “We do nothing? Just lay down and wait for death to come?”
“Better nothing than suicide,” Wen Qing hisses, leaning in to brandish a finger in his face. “And that’s what it will be, if you send out a squad of farmers with a half-baked understanding of spell construction to wave talismans around. Forget Jin Guangshan, they’d be in serious danger from themselves.”
“Then what do you propose we do!” Wei Wuxian exclaims, pushing her hand away from his face. He hardly feels the way his healing burns crack and begin to bleed again. “I’m serious, Wen Qing, I need you to tell me what to do. I can’t be the single point of failure here, I can’t. I need somebody to share the load.”
Wen Qing folds her hands back in her lap, uncertain. “We start with me,” she says carefully. “The things I need to know, if you’re gone— we start with me, tomorrow. Then we take advantage of what we have. Our education. Hardworking people. The seclusion of this place. We have time, Wuxian, to come up with something. You aren’t dead yet, and I won’t be giving up until it’s the only path that’s left to me.”
Wei Wuxian looks at her cautiously. She’s a tiny thing, even smaller than his sister, but she always sits up tall. Her golden core is so strong he sometimes imagines he can still feel it, like the brush of fingers across a phantom limb. “Okay,” he mumbles, a little embarrassed that he yelled. “I’ll make a list in order of priority. Thank you for helping.”
“We’re helping each other,” she says, and look, she can still make him feel better. “But first you need more ointment. You’re bleeding through your shirt.”
***
For the Mid-Autumn Festival, A’yuan and popo put on a shadow play. They’ve scrounged up a couple of old sets of light inner robes to use as a screen, and the puppets are cobbled-together bunches of sticks and leaves from the forest, supplemented by A’yuan’s grass butterfly. The entire village is in attendance, gasping and cheering at all the right moments as A’yuan narrates a slightly confused version of the tale of Chang’e rising to the moon. It might be the best thing that has ever happened to Wei Wuxian.
A’yuan is both delighted and embarrassed by the attention, his tiny dimpled face peeking out from behind popo’s skirts as people solemnly congratulate him on his performance. Wei Wuxian bids everyone farewell as they file out of the cave, then settles down near where Wen Qing is poking at the remnants of the dying fire. It’s always cold here, but getting colder by the day.
“That was great,” he says, watching the faint light play across her face. “That was a great day, wasn’t it?”
“It was,” she says, and pats the ground next to her. Wei Wuxian pulls his hair out of its tie, then tugs the edge of her skirt out from under her leg so he can lie down and put his head on it. Her fingers sink into his hair, and he sighs happily. “A’yuan is a treasure.”
“I wish we had ten of him. We could start a cuju club.”
Wen Qing hums in agreement, running a thumb hard along the meridian down the center of his scalp. They’re quiet, Wen Qing watching the fire, Wei Wuxian the way the shadows flicker across the ceiling. After a while, he says, “I’ve been thinking about Baoshan Sanren a lot recently.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. Did I ever tell you she was my mom’s master? My— shipo, I guess.”
“You did,” Wen Qing says.
“Right, I did. Anyway, I’ve been thinking about how she used to take in the orphans. And where they’re going now, if nobody can find her.”
Wen Qing’s hand pauses mid-motion, and he knows what she’s about to say. “We can’t—”
“No, I know we can’t manage anything like that.” Wen Qing relaxes, continuing the sequence of manipulations she was doing. “I’ve just been thinking about what it takes to achieve that kind of legitimacy. Outside of the traditional clan structure, I mean.”
“For Baoshan Sanren, it was talent and determination, I think. Which we have to spare. Presumably some measure of arrogance, which, again.”
“Right,” Wei Wuxian says, waiting for the qualification.
“But Baoshan Sanren never had a Qiongqi Path.”
Wei Wuxian closes his eyes, and there it is, burned into the backs of his eyelids. “Every time I play it over in my head, I think…”
Wen Qing presses her palm to his forehead. “As much my fault as yours,” she murmurs, and heavens, he has so many things to be grateful to her for.
Wei Wuxian clears his throat. “Anyway, I heard, last time I was in town, that some loser is setting up a whole new clan in Moling. I mean, an embarrassment of a person. Got himself completely banned from Gusu, which, believe me, is pretty hard to do.”
“I remember watching you try,” Wen Qing says gravely. “What’s his source of support?”
“Lanling, so that exact path is obviously out.”
From what he can see of her face, upside-down and half-lit, Wen Qing looks thoughtful. “So you’re picturing something in between the two?”
Wei Wuxian sits up, dislodging her hand. “I don’t know how it would look,” he says. “I can’t quite see it. A clan, but not a clan, what even is that? But I want to be able to protect our people’s children without being punished for it. I want there to be more of them. I don’t want our people to be afraid to love, and I want the lost ones to find their way to us. I want A’yuan to have friends his age. Every little boy needs—” and then he chokes on it, absolutely cannot get the word out. She hears it anyway, and for a moment there’s a third person by the fire, standing just between them.
When he’s gone, Wen Qing turns to Wei Wuxian. “You’d need to marry,” she says, in a tone like she’s telling him to eat his vegetables.
“Okay,” Wei Wuxian agrees. It’s a reasonable step. Very traditional. Power and vulnerability all rolled together, in a way.
“You’d need to marry a woman,” she clarifies.
“I could marry a woman,” Wei Wuxian says, confused, and Wen Qing looks genuinely surprised.
“Really?” she asks, and huh, he hadn’t realized that she knew. It’s true, though—duality has always been the most natural thing in the world to Wei Wuxian.
“Really,” he affirms, and he can see her process and accept that. She really is a good woman. “What else you got for me?”
“Mm. I mean, surely it will be a thousand small things. How do we train our own defenders while guaranteeing our methods don’t leave these hills? Treat with the main clans without acknowledging their authority over us? Preserve our borders, but, I don’t know, let the post come and go. It’s a lot to reconcile. The work of a lifetime.”
Wei Wuxian reaches over and squeezes her hand. “So we reconcile it. Haven’t you heard? The Yiling Patriarch can cause a lifetime of woe in the space of an afternoon. Surely he can be as efficient in the pursuit of order and justice.”
He intends it to be funny, but isn’t quite expecting Wen Qing to burst out laughing. “Oh, Wuxian, I’ve seen your living space,” she cackles. “Let’s not be too hasty.”
“Fine, fine,” he grumbles, shifting to bump her knee with his own. “Two afternoons.”
She bumps his knee back, wiping a tear from her eye that he should probably be insulted by. He can nearly see it, then: what a whole lifetime would look like here. Almost impossible to achieve. Importantly, not quite.
On a day full of so many good things, it’s hard to imagine that they could fail.
***
The years are long, but the days are short, and sometimes bloody-awful. A tree falls in the forest. It lands on one of the lodges. Reconstructing what they already had will take weeks, and the man whose leg got crushed in the accident will not stop screaming and moaning.
There’s a little voice in the back of Wei Wuxian’s mind that says he should shut him up already. Another whispers that it would be a kindness. He’s not sure either is his own.
There’s a minute where he thinks that Wen Qing can hear them too, because she comes out of the cave with blood up to her elbows—the acoustic effects are unbearable—and tells him to take A’yuan into town and sell some radishes.
“What, are you trying to get me out of here?” he snarls, dimly aware of the way his hands are shaking. He clenches them into fists at his sides, and it doesn’t stop. “Am I in the way somehow? What was I supposed to do about a tree, hm?” A fucking tree. A completely regular tree, rotten from the inside like everything else in these cursed, stinking hills. A tree, and now this guy might not even make it, and it’s— “This isn’t my fault.”
“Does the sun rise and set on your say-so?” Wen Qing snaps. There’s a little smear of blood on her face. “We’re going to need more money, fast. And do you think this is any place for a child today?”
The way she’s watching him is cold, those big, dark eyes narrowed in judgement. It makes him more aware of his body. He’s breathing like a spent warhorse, and he takes a facsimile of meditative breaths to calm down. “Wen Ning,” he says, and his general appears at his side. Always listening, that one. “Get A’yuan and the cart. We’re going.”
It’s a relief just to get out of earshot. The forest is all wind and rattling leaves, but those things are a comfort in comparison. Very little of the yin energy Wei Wuxian had pulled in when he heard the crash was used in fixing the small tear that resulted in the boundary, and he realizes it’s still cycling through his system, aimlessly destructive. He releases it slowly back into the dirt as they walk. Once he’s stable, he turns back to the cart to pick up A’yuan, who’s— oh, he’s been crying.
“Hey, buddy, hey, it’s okay,” he says, bouncing the kid a little on his hip. “Xian-gege’s got you. Everything’s going to be okay, you understand?” A’yuan cries harder, but he wraps his tiny arms hard around Wei Wuxian’s neck, pulling at his hair. Wei Wuxian rubs small circles on his back and figures this is just another kind of energy that needs to be let out.
It’s a few hours’ walk into town, which gives everyone time to calm down. A’yuan assents to being put back in the cart before Wei Wuxian’s arms give out, and it’s hard to maintain his usual level of sulking self-loathing over the fact that he needs Wen Ning to do the heavy lifting these days when A’yuan is losing his tiny mind with delight over getting to see a bird.
Wei Wuxian feels nearly human by the time they reach the market. He and Wen Ning get the stall set up, and A’yuan toddles off to play some kind of game involving string with the other children. The market isn’t unfamiliar to him—Wei Wuxian takes him on selling trips as often as possible so that he won’t grow up all weird and unlikeable. It’s probably an unnecessary precaution. A’yuan is so sweet, and he charms all the shopkeepers in a way Wei Wuxian himself never managed at that age. He really likes all the colors and smells and different people.
Wei Wuxian wonders if A’yuan understands why they can’t live here all the time. It’s hard to believe that the town exists in the same world as the Burial Mounds, much less in the same little slice of Yiling. It’s like the air itself is lighter, or there’s something different in the spaces where air isn’t. The ground gives differently under their feet.
A lot of the time, Wei Wuxian wants never to go back into the hills. It would be very easy not to. He pictures it often: he would simply scoop up A’yuan and the money, and they would spend the night in an inn with a real bed. In the morning, they would head off down the road. Wei Wuxian would find work of any kind, it couldn’t matter less, and neither of them would ever look back.
He always feels sick with guilt when he thinks like this. It sits in his gut like an infidelity of the worst kind. The feeling redoubles whenever he packs up to head home—going back a crime against the very notion of forward progress. This is the problem with life in the Burial Mounds. The margin of error there is drawing ever tighter, eating away at the space left for them to grow. He can’t remember the last time they managed to make anything better, rather than just not-worse.
Wei Wuxian spends a lot of his time dreaming up inescapable traps. He understands the irony of this pursuit completely.
“Shushu, I won!” A’yuan exclaims, running over to Wen Ning while waving a handful of dirt that is apparently the mark of a champion. Wen Ning crouches down and opens his mouth to congratulate him, and A’yuan chooses the moment to accidentally release the dirt clod directly into his face. “Oops,” A’yuan says, and looks over to Wei Wuxian to see if he’s in trouble. Wei Wuxian sighs and forcibly diverts himself from the path of his melancholy.
“A’yuan, don’t throw dirt in people’s faces,” he says. “It’s not good for them if it gets in their eyes and mouth. Also, it’s rude.”
“Not good for shushu?” A’yuan asks dubiously, peering at Wen Ning, who hasn’t actually spit out the dirt yet. The man is so constantly suspicious-looking, it’s a wonder they haven’t been dragged off and pilloried on that basis alone.
“Shushu is special,” Wei Wuxian allows. “But it’s still rude.”
A’yuan throws his arms around Wen Ning and kisses his cheek in apology. He didn’t get that from Wei Wuxian or Wen Qing. He didn’t get that from popo either, actually. Wei Wuxian diligently refuses to wonder whether he is what happened to A’yuan’s parents. Instead, he lifts the kid by the armpits and swings him up on top of the cart.
“Okay, now it’s time to look cute and help me sell some radishes,” he says.
Not many people buy radishes. They’re not a top-tier vegetable, and they’re easy to grow. Mostly, they sell a scant handful at a time, as an afterthought to other, better vegetables. Running a radish-only stall is like dueling from the low ground, which is why, when two men come by in need of a full sack of radishes for inconceivable purposes, Wei Wuxian is as polite as he can possibly be.
The men are talking about the Yiling Patriarch. This is not an uncommon occurrence—many people are talking about the Yiling Patriarch at any given moment, and at least some of them are bound to do so in front of the Yiling Patriarch himself. Wei Wuxian listens to the stories so that he can know what he’s up against. Sometimes, he contributes a little. That way, even if they are awful, they’re at least flatteringly so.
“All of his magic is blood magic, you know,” the taller of the two men says. “That’s the real reason he’s keeping all those people in that charnel house. He needed their exact type—too mangy to be missed, too craven to fight back. The kind to grovel, pissing themselves in fear of the last exit available to them. Every time he goes to draw a sigil, he drains them a bit further.”
“Of course, he uses his own blood for anything that requires real power,” Wei Wuxian elaborates absently. He’s trying to isolate the very best of the radishes to pack for them, hoping to score a repeat customer. “There’s simply no other substance like it. The blood of his conquests is mostly for experimentation, or else for drinking. I hear he brews a very fine wine of it, so potent it would put down any but the highest-level cultivators for a week, at least.”
“A month, you mean,” the shorter man says. “I heard that too. Of course, that’s not all he uses them for, if you know what I mean.”
The taller man chuckles. “I hear his tastes in… concubines, shall we say, are voracious. Disturbed, by almost any human standard.”
Wei Wuxian slows his movements, eyes still focused on the radishes. “That I didn’t hear,” he says, wondering who else might have. “Do you really think he spends his time on such matters? With the amount of death and destruction he causes every night—”
“No, it’s true,” the shorter man continues eagerly. “And the worst of all— have you heard of the woman Wen Qing? She was once quite a respected physician, but the herbs went to her mind and she led her people straight into the jaws of the beast. Now, she pays the price of his protection with her body. Worse still,” and here, he lowers his voice to a conspiratorial whisper, “she likes it.”
Wei Wuxian’s hands stop completely. “I heard,” he says levelly, but quite loud, “that she’s a brilliant cultivator in her own right, just as feared as the Yiling Patriarch, but better-loved, and all the more powerful for it. I heard she treated with that devil to save her people, and now she’s holding his body together with her hands. I heard that her influence is the only reason Goldscale Tower is still standing.”
The taller man laughs out loud. “What kind of fairy tales are you listening to, laoban? If she’s holding his body together, it’s not with her hands. She’s a—”
The word he uses is much less kind than “concubine.”
Wei Wuxian can see, with perfect clarity, the streak of blood on Wen Qing’s face that morning. It was just above her left eyebrow. “You should be ashamed,” he says, in a voice that, if these fools knew anything, they would know to run from. “You should die of shame.”
“What the—”
“Talking about business you know nothing of. Making up stories. Feeling so small and so stupid, you resort to using this kind of language in front of a child,” he says, gesturing at A’yuan, who is watching them with wide eyes.
The man is, somehow, still laughing. “Me, small? Me, ashamed? Look at yourself, you little bastard. If one of us is going to waste away in our humiliation, it isn’t going to be me. Come on,” he turns to his companion. “We’re leaving.”
The men take their business to an inferior radish vendor, and Wei Wuxian ends up having to load nearly their entire stock back onto the cart so that Wen Ning can pull it back up into the hills. By the time they return, it’s nearly dark, and most people look too worn to even greet them.
“You should have shut your mouth and let them buy the radishes,” Wen Qing says, when A’yuan breaks his heart a little by repeating what he heard. She will never be as proud as she is practical.
The injured man has gone completely quiet. Wei Wuxian is having trouble remembering what his name was.
***
Wei Wuxian and Wen Qing sit out by the lotus pond one night, bare feet sunk deep into the mud, faces turned up to the half moon. Wei Wuxian is there on medical advice; Wen Qing is there to keep him company.
Her instructions to him have been getting weirder lately; many have the strange and desperate feel of a delaying tactic. He would complain about the midnight outing, what with winter setting in and frost riming what’s left of the blossoms, but he never feels cold at all anymore. They talk quietly, so their voices won’t carry to their people in the lodges.
“A’qing,” he says.
“Wei-gongzi,” she replies, corrective, teasing.
“Wen Qing, Wen-guniang,” he amends. “Will you marry me?”
Wen Qing is silent, but she doesn’t seem surprised. “Why?” she asks, still watching the moon in its slow path.
“Because I love you,” he says. It’s all sincerity—there is absolutely nothing to hide between them. “Because you’re my partner, and I want to be your husband. Because I want children, and if we wait for the time to be right then that will never happen. Because I think being married to you is the best thing I can still have.”
“What world is there for the children of the Yiling Patriarch?” she asks. It’s exploratory—she’s poking around to see where it hurts.
“Whichever one we make for them.”
“And do you think they’d have a chance?”
“Yes, I do,” he answers. “Just a chance, but that’s enough. There are things in life worth losing. You want to ask me what I’m picturing, I know. I’m sorry, but I’m not picturing us at all, Wen Qing. I don’t even know how to. When I dream idly, I picture my children at home in Lotus Pier. They’d go to school in Gusu, and I’d get chiding letters about the trouble that they cause. I’d see you twice a year at conferences, pass you notes. Maybe we’d sneak a drink together after dinner. We would never see this place again.” She opens her mouth to cut him off there, but he presses forward. “It doesn’t matter what I’m picturing, because it isn’t real. This is. I’ll take what I can get, and I’ll be grateful for it. I know none of that is our world. That doesn’t change the fact that I love you, and it doesn’t change the fact that I’ve always wanted to be a parent.”
“Most days,” she says, “it feels like I’ve been a parent for my entire life.”
They both turn at once to look at Wen Ning, who is the only other person in the camp who is awake. He is always awake. This night, he’s over in the turnip patch, picking bits of leaf out of the soil. He goes away inside when no one is around. It’s a part of whatever’s been different in his head since he woke up—that slow way he’s moving backwards through time.
“The world should think better of you,” Wei Wuxian says, watching her watch her brother. “You deserve it.”
“So do you,” she says softly, and oh, that’s where it hurts.
“A’qing,” he says, and they’ve been so quiet, but this scrapes its way out of his throat, hoarse and scared. “I don’t think I want to be the Yiling Patriarch anymore.”
Wen Qing throws her arm across his shoulders, and he curls into it until his forehead is resting on her thigh. Her hand slides to his back, and she rubs small circles there in a rhythm for him to breathe along to. “I’m sorry,” she says, and he knew she wouldn’t actually say yes. He just hopes that she can explain it to him. “Ask me again someday. Ask me in a few years, on a day that we know for certain will be better than the day before.”
“Why?” he asks.
“Because despite everything,” she answers, “I don’t think you have any idea how much it will hurt.”
They sit together like that for a long, long time.
***
Another hour in the fields, with absolutely nothing to distinguish it from the ones on either side.
“Where do you think we’ll be in five years?” Wei Wuxian asks. He’s bored, and it’s kind of a joke, but Wen Qing reaches out and wraps her hand around his wrist. She’s got great hands—cool, with long fingers and short, clean nails. Wei Wuxian loves them, and they know him, have been inside him, a steady, tearing, grinding, grounding pressure on the most frightening day of his life. Her index finger meets her thumb around his wrist, and his skin looks ashen next to hers.
“In five years,” she says, and he knows she doesn’t think he’ll make it. “In five years I think you might have finally reconfigured our waste system the way I told you to.”
***
There are still so many good days.