Work Text:
The man with the vicious grin comes to Carp Tower during the three days Jin-er-furen is in labor.
It seems all of Lanling is in a tizzy, those three days: healers arguing with each other, Jin Zixuan pacing every hallway in the tower at once, officials and kitchen-maids and gardeners and Jin Zixun's wife all making the walls ring with parittas for safe birth. No one pays any attention to a new, unsettling smile.
“Nice flute,” Xue Yang says to Su She, perched on the edge of a hidden table. His feet swing above the ground like a child's.
“What do you want?” Su She asks warily, lip curled. He kneels on the floor in what he, and only he, calls perfect Moling Su posture. He is as far from Xue Yang as the room will allow.
“Nothing,” Xue Yang, wide-eyed. “I just think it's a nice flute.”
Back and forth, his feet move in the air. Su She returns to his study of musical notation.
“Just wondering,” Xue Yang says, “do you think Hanguang-jun's fucking the Yiling Patriarch?” He stretches like a cat, fingers outstretched. “Is that why you went with the flute instead of the guqin?”
“You –”
“I don't think so, personally,” Xue Yang continues over him. “They're hungry for it, don't get me wrong, should've seen Hanguang-jun glare while Wei Wuxian got his hands all over me, but I don't think they have the balls for it. Bad news for you –”
“I'll kill you –”
“Su Minshan,” Jin Guangyao says, appearing from the shadowed door. His arm is an iron bar between them. “Xue Chengmei. Behave yourselves.”
News comes to Carp Tower on sweat-soaked horses and raw voices: Jin Zixuan is dead. So is his cousin. The Burial Mounds are bordered now in blackness and bone and swirling death, high as a wall. Arrows shot into it break apart into rust and rot. No bird or horse or dog can be persuaded to go near it.
“Your counterfeit Lan screwed up,” Xue Yang informs Jin Guangyao. The latter is bent over a desk, rubbing at his temples through his hat; Xue Yang slouches against the wall, black as mold against the blue. “Wei Wuxian spotted what was up, took the Ghost General and hightailed it out. After he killed him, I mean. I could try bringing him back first, if you want to start with a ghost ass-kisser.” He tilts his head, considering. “Gonna need some cake if you want me to stitch all his bits together, though. It's gonna take a while.”
“Su Minshan was a loyal help to me,” Jin Guangyao says. “You goaded him.”
“Yeah,” Xue Yang says. “So? He still screwed up.”
Jin Guangyao looks at him with the disdain of a born gentleman and the viciousness of a starving rat. “Don't overestimate your usefulness, Xue Chengmei,” he says.
“Yeah, yeah. So do you want him back or not? You should probably send someone out with a rake, if you do.”
“You're exaggerating. It's not helpful.”
“Only a little.” Xue Yang pulls a knife from nowhere just to flip it back and forth between his hands. “Whaddaya say?”
Jin Guangyao sighs. “Give it a try. If it doesn't work, move on to a whole body. If you can't restore his mind, kill him again and let him rest.”
“Whatever you say, boss.”
Jiang Yanli does not sleep more than a quarter of a night for the first three days of her widowhood. She refuses to be in a separate room from her son. She eats food when it is brought to her, but, when asked what she would like, says “It doesn't matter.”
Yao-zongzhu offers condolences on the death of her husband and the terrible, treacherous ingratitude of her family's ward. Gossip cannot agree on what she says, or whether she says anything at all, but a dozen people can bear witness that he left the room openly shaking.
At last Jin Guangshan himself commands her to give her son over to a nursemaid for a while. He will not leave until Jin Ling is out of her hands. He tells her, “Rest a while, you poor sweet child. What a terrible thing this has been.”
He leaves her room and sets out into Lanling to buy himself some comfort, from the same places where he buys whatever other emotion he feels like having. Jiang Yanli does not go to bed. She wanders Carp Tower instead, choosing at each forking corridor the emptier path.
It leads her down into shadowed cellars. (The room behind the mirror is still Jin Guangshan's domain, packed with treasures but not meaning.)
She is seeking the deeper solitude that comes with no one knowing where she is. She does not expect to come around a corner and find a man in dark robes like her brother, bent over a high table covered in a bulging cloth.
“Oh!” she says. “I'm sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt. I didn't realize anyone was down here.”
“Yeah, you're not supposed to,” he says. He braces his elbows on whatever the cloth covers – it gives under his weight – and starts trying to thread a needle. The smallest finger of his left hand sticks up like the tail of a contented cat. It is the most casually anyone has spoken to her in days. Weeks. “What'd you come down here for, then?”
“Oh, nothing much,” she says. “I just – wanted to be out of the way. Excuse me.”
“Oh yeah,” he says. “With the dead husband and all. And the brother, right? Everyone talks like he was a servant, but he didn't act like one.”
She freezes. “You knew a-Xian?”
“Met him once,” Xue Yang says. His tongue sticks out the corner of his mouth. “Cheeky guy, he was fun.” A smile steals hesitantly onto her face, because yes, that's a-Xian. “Hey, you any good at threading needles? I'm shit at it.”
“I can do it, yes. Here.” It's a relief to be of use to somebody. She holds thread and needle close to her face, eases the cord through the eye. “What is it you're working on, if you don't mind my asking?”
He plucks the needle from her hand before he says, “Making my own Ghost General.” No point in making her drop it when he would just have to thread it again, after all. “Well, making the honored Lianfang-zun a Ghost General for his dad, if you wanna be exact about it. Not that this guy was ever much of a general.”
She is absolutely frozen. “Who... who is it?”
“Minor sect leader,” Xue Yang says, and pulls back the cloth. Su She is a mosaic of a man, pieced together. Xue Yang has begun repairs at his torso; the chunks of arm and finger, crude-hewn pieces of thigh, are mostly unattached. “Don't know if he'd try it on your husband or not, but it's not like he could get the body. Same with the cousin. But no one cared about this guy.” He rolls his eyes. “Barely had a personality in the first place, don't know how we're gonna tell if I bring it back.”
“Oh.” She braces her hand against the wall. “Is it true, then? That Wen-gongzi is... is himself, in his mind?”
“Wen-gongzi, huh? Sounds like it.” He considers for a moment. “Probably easier to stitch the head back on while I can still move the rest of him around pretty easily, right? Fuck, I hate sewing. Shoulda held out for a different corpse.” He starts in on Su She's throat; his stitches are loose and messy. “He was a little nuts when he killed your husband, but hey, Nie Mingjue goes pretty nuts when he's fighting, and he's not dead yet. Knew a guy who said he'd sell you daikon in Yiling market if you found him. The Ghost General, not Nie Mingjue.”
“Oh.” She lowers her head; white fabric falls over her face. He whistles as he sews. He's got the head at slightly the wrong angle, but he doesn't care enough to rip stitches back.
“So,” he says, “are you pissed at your brother or not?”
“Why does it matter?” Her voice is very far away. “Why does it suddenly matter to anyone what I think?”
“It doesn't,” he says, shrugging. “I'm just bored. I tried to put money on it, but nobody would take the bet. I figured you were,” he adds. “Seemed like you liked your husband. Kid came along pretty soon, and he's a Jin, not like he wouldn't just go fuck someone else if you didn't feel like it.”
“A-Xuan is not his father,” she says coldly. Her voice wavers. “Wasn't his father.”
“I mean, still isn't,” Xue Yang says. “So are you saying he did make you fuck him, or are you saying you really were at it like happy little rabbits?” He's got most of Su She's head reattached by now. “Wait, I guess raping you would count as being the same as his father. I forget if they still call it rape if he's your husband.”
“He treated me with nothing but respect from the day of our betrothal,” she says. It has the rough air of someone stamping on his outstretched fingers. He's kind of impressed.
“Which betrothal?” he asks, with a last sloppy stitch. He starts tying off the knot. “Didn't you have like three?”
“Two,” she says, “the second by our choice. And we – we had our disagreements, before then, but in the way you're speaking of, he was a perfect gentleman.”
If he actually cared about pissing off nice people, he'd be a wilted puddle on the ground. He fortunately does not. “Nice for him,” he says. “And you, I guess. So, if you're telling me about how things were in your marriage bed, gonna answer my question about your brother? I won't lie, I thought you were probably gonna slap me by this point, but if you're playing nice...”
“Of course I'm angry with my brother, you idiot!” Her voice cracks like a cup in a too-tight grip. “He killed my husband, or got him killed, or – something. I'm furious. But he's my brother and I love him, and that – that doesn't change.”
Shame settles over her, multifaceted; she addresses the part of it that she can. “I – I apologize, gongzi. I've been horribly rude.”
He bursts out laughing. “Wow,” he says, through the last of his cackle. “You know I'm just here to fuck around with demonic cultivation in the basement, right? Nobody gives a shit if you're rude to me. Well, I could kill you, I guess,” he admits thoughtfully, and flips a knife out of his sleeve to cut the end of his thread off the needle. “But you'd have to call me way worse than an idiot, I don't care. You'd be pretty boring to kill. Would you even try to fight me off?”
Her laugh is a ragged thing, far hollower and more awful than his. “It seems to be a family vice,” she says softly. “To be to ready for our deaths. A – my parents' family, I mean, not my husband's.” Another laugh. “I'm not a very good wife, I suppose. I still... I still think of my parents' house as home.”
“And you're not willing to hate your brother 'cause of your husband, either,” Xue Yang says, nodding. It's not an accusation, he's just matter-of-factly following her logic. “I mean, who cares? Who's a good anything?” He shrugs. “Anyway, you did your job. Got a son the first time, too.”
“That's not all a marriage is.” Her voice is resolute, patient, like she's explaining to a stubbornly wrongheaded child.
“Coulda fooled me,” he says. “Hey, can you thread my needle again?”
She does.
She keeps coming down to the cellars of Carp Tower, when she cannot sleep and Jin Guangshan orders her to set her son aside like a task. She does not smile in that dark workroom, except when Xue Yang says something so shocking that it startles her into a shaking laugh.
Xue Yang likes to talk, and doesn't hide much in his words; he's rude, but it's blatant, open, takes no thought at all to find or to counter. He leaves her with no silences to fill.
He asks her about Wei Wuxian. He wants to know about demonic cultivation, of course, but he simply asks – “He ever do it around you? You remember how he did it?”
It's such a relief to be asked instead of hinted at that she answers: “He tried not to use it where I could see, but – once or twice. It was... it was all in the flute, I think.”
“Damn,” Xue Yang says, “I'm tone deaf as fuck. Hope the dead don't care.” He goes back to stitching Su She's toes back on his foot.
Later that night, as he rips back the stitches on Su She's left middle toe for the fourth time, she asks, “I – oh, this is awful, but... well, I suppose if you do give him his mind back, he would probably rather have all his toes, it just looks like you're having a lot of trouble –”
“I don't give a shit what he'd rather,” Xue Yang says, “but there's way fewer superfluous bits on a person than you think. Lose one or two toes and they stumble all over the place. Fingers are even worse.” He holds up his left hand for emphasis. “Believe me.”
“Of course.” She nods; her eyes are wide and worried. “Forgive me, but do you mind if I ask what happened to it?”
He blinks at her in real surprise. “Mind? What? Furen, you really need to figure out that I don't care what you say.” He tells her the story: the sweets, the carriage, the broken promise. Seven years old.
“Oh,” she says. “That's... that's terrible, Xue-gongzi. I'm so sorry.” She sets her hand on his arm, like she would for her brothers. “I wish I'd been there.”
He blinks at her. His eyes are wide and shocked like a wary animal – not a dog or a wolf or even a horse but something like one of the Gusu rabbits. His mouth trembles. He licks his lips, mouths the words once as if for practice before he says them: “Thank you.”
“Of course.” A gentle squeeze of his arm again; she steps away. She hadn't thought she would surprise him so much. Have so few people been kind to him?
He stretches his arms above his head, swings them to resettle his shoulders. “It's all right,” he says, grinning. “I killed the whole family, so it worked out. Right down to the last dog.”
“Oh,” she says again, wincing. “All of them? That's – that's not very fair.” Her voice is very small, in the dark beneath Carp Tower.
“So what?” he asks. “When's anything fair?”
She does not answer.
Well – it's explains why he's so unused to kindness, these days. But he's a lot older than seven now. Between this present and his past must stand ranks of people who ought to be ashamed of their cruelty towards a child, even if now she should be ashamed to care about his grief.
He asks her, “Hey, where'd he get the idea to use the Ghost General's mind, anyway?”
“It's not like that,” she says. There is a seat in the corner of the room for her, now, a delicate thing of blue and gilt like everything in the floors above. She doesn't use it very much; he has to stand to work at the waist-high table, and she does not like to look up at him. But it's there. “That's not how a-Xian is. He would have – he would have gone out there to save Wen-gongzi's life in the first place, and then when he was too late... he decided not to be too late.” She shrugs, a tiny motion. “Wen-gongzi was such a kind person. No one remembers that anymore, but he was just. A gentle soul.” Her face crumples for a moment. “I think it must have been the death, I think something must have gone wrong when a-Xian brought him back. I don't think he could ever have done such a terrible thing, before.”
“Huh,” Xue Yang says. “Probably, yeah.” His hands are still, for a moment, on the flesh of the man who drove Wen Ning into temporary madness. “Everyone snaps if you torture them enough, though. Just gotta push 'em right. The soft ones get weird with it, but they do it.”
“Oh, maybe,” she says, and drags the back of her hand across her eyes. “I don't know what I want to be true anymore, Xue-gongzi. I don't want it to be a-Xian's fault and I don't want it to be Wen Ning's fault and I don't... oh, I don't want him to be dead.”
She can have everything but the last one, actually. It might be interesting to tell her so. Fun to see what she would do. It's probably not worth the beating he'd get before being cast out, and the food is good at Carp Tower, so he doesn't. But he does toss her a candy. “Here, eat that,” he says. “I've heard too many people crying today, I'm bored of it now.”
She laughs. It's pretty awful; it's awful in a way that he finds pretty. “Well, I'll leave if I start to bore you,” she promises. Her fingers shake on the wrapper.
“No way, that's even worse. Just be interesting.”
“I'll do my best.” She pauses, head bent over the bare candy. “You're the only one who believes me, you know. That he did it for Wen Ning's sake, and any... any fearsome general-ing was an accident.”
“Why wouldn't I believe you?” he asks. “It's not like it'd matter if you lie to me, I'm not gonna stop trying it.”
“Neither are any of the others,” she says softly. And he, unlike all of the others, does not seem like he would believe Jiang Cheng any more than her. She would like him for that alone.
“I spent a while in the kitchens today,” she says, holding a small plate of dou sha bao. “I – I like cooking, you see.”
“Wait, you made those?” His eyes narrow on the plate like a hunter sighting a quarry. “Did you bring them down here 'cause I get some?”
“Of course,” she says. “I don't – a-Ling is too young to eat them, and there aren't... I don't have that many people to feed, anymore.”
She could feed her sweets to Jin Guangyao, and he would be grateful. She did so often, in the year that her husband was still alive. She could offer them to her mother-in-law, or to Jin Guangshan.
“Have as many as you like,” she says, and Xue Yang grabs two in each hand and stuffs a fifth into his mouth. She laughs at him, and it's the softest laugh she's heard from herself in months.
“So, you cook?” he asks her. It's four nights later; food hasn't come up in since she brought him the dou sha bou. “Like, for fun? You just make desserts?”
“...Yes?” she says. “I mean – I've always enjoyed it, I'm best at soup but I do like making buns, and I'm good at jellies –”
No one has ever asked her so many questions about her cooking. He is far more enraptured than he was with her brief accounts of demonic cultivation. She might talk more that night than she's done in all the long weeks since her husband died.
“Hey,” he says, as the lamplight gutters over them both. He's still stitching Su She up; several pieces of his right arm turned out to be in the wrong order, and the odds are too high that it'll fuck up his resurrection attempts. If he ever actually gets that far. “You wanna help me, if you're gonna keep being here while I work?”
She is silent for a long moment. Her fingers tremble slightly against the table.
“Oh, why not,” she says, at last. “What's the harm?”
The same thought returns to her a week after that. Even for them, it's the deep hours of the night when she ties the last stitch into place on Su She's chest. Xue Yang holds the flaps of skin in place for her.
“Nice,” Xue Yang says. “Guess I'll start the real cultivation tomorrow, I'm not gonna get shit done before everyone starts waking up.” He shrugs, props his elbows on the tabletop next to Su She's arm. “Want me to lick your pussy before we go to bed? We've got time to kill.”
She ought to be shocked; she is shocked, or at least she's startled. She ought to slap him. She ought not to have helped him stitch together a man so he is better suited for unholy experiments. She ought to be in a room high above this one, with a son who she has not been ordered to give over to another servant. She ought to be in her living husband's bed. She ought to be home at Lotus Pier.
She has been proper and sweet and good all her life, except for the one sin that she and Jiang Cheng always shared, their refusal to hate Wei Wuxian as their mother demanded of them. And yet here she is, down in the dark of the cellar, dressed in widow's white, and the only person in the world who knows who she is these days is a murderer who just asked if she would like him to lick her pussy.
Oh, why not? What's the harm? What more harm can anything do her now?
Jiang Yanli and Jin Zixuan had three terrible, mortifying nights in their marriage bed, before he pulled his softening cock out of her and said miserably, “You know I want you to tell me if you don't like it, right? Please, a-Li?”
After that it was wonderful. Neither of them reached their climax that night, but the dawn found them still intertwined with each other, giggling into each other's bare skin. They figured out, between them, what taking each other to bed could be like, what they both enjoyed, all the ways they could find pleasure in each other.
Xue Yang is not like that. Xue Yang goes to his knees in front of her, right where she stands before the table. He jerks open all the layers of her robe, pulls down her drawers, yanks her thigh over his shoulder, and licks at her like he's licking custard out of the shell of a tart. She has to grab at his hair, whisper, “Wait – wait, I'll fall –”
He smirks against the crease of her thigh. “I'm that good, huh?” His fingers dig into her hips; he lifts her, puts his mouth back between her legs while she's still in the air, and drops her on the table's edge. He rubs his thumb between her folds, follows it with his false finger – the texture is different, the firmness of it, and it makes her shiver. “Get you smeared all over me,” he murmurs. “You're making a mess, Jin-furen, I wanna fucking eat you –” Jin-er-furen is her title. He really does never leave the basement, then, or never listens if he goes.
“Isn't that what people call it?” she pants. “What you're doing?” She tries to lean back, flinches away as she bumps up against Su She's dead hip. Her self of yesteryear yelps in baffled horror, but she died – when did she die, anyway? With Jin Zixuan? When a-Xian left? When Lotus Pier burned? Does it matter? “Using your mouth like that, isn't that, I don't know, the professional term? In brothels and things?”
“Fuck you're hilarious,” he says. “Hell. Fuck. Pretty sheltered gentry ladies. Who knew?” She has no idea what he's talking about, but then he closes his mouth over the place where she would always guide her husband's fingers, and she no longer cares, because she can't think anymore and it's the sweetest relief that anyone has offered her in all her life.
Xue Yang eats his handler's sister-in-law out – fuck, the professional term, is this what people mean when they say somebody's cute? – until her thighs tremble like the ground in earthquake. She convulses against his tongue and he just keeps going, holding her hips down as she squirms. Gets his mouth right on her clit while she's sensitive and sucks until his vision goes starry. He works his fingers into her. He opens her up with his tongue.
“Hey, you one of those women who can come all over my face?” he lifts his head long enough to ask her. “You ever let your husband do that to you? It feels great, I like it in my eyelashes, all over my mouth – it's even more fun when they feel bad about fucking you, they get so appalled, if I get my hand on my dick and keep my mouth open so they can see their come on my tongue I can watch 'em get all guilty and get off no matter how little their dick is –”
“I don't feel guilty,” she pants, clawing at his hair, “I know I should but I'm so tired, a-Yang, I'm so tired, I don't care anymore, I don't have to feel anything but your mouth right now and that's all I want –”
He has to grab his dick over his robes, he just has to. “Shit, really?” he pants against her cunt. “Damn. Wow. Still want you to squirt all over my face if you can, it's hot anyway, come on.”
“I'll try,” she says, and drags his head back down, and holy shit, if she hadn't been raised in the gentry she would fuck like a wildcat. He'd pay for this; he'd pay gold.
She does, in fact, squirt all over his face. He fixes his mouth over her and keeps working until he has enough that he needs to swallow. He eats her out until she's leaning on Su She's re-stitched ribcage like a pillow on a bed, and then he keeps working on her till she comes a third time – squirts a little, not as much – and he wants to keep going but his jaw is so fucking sore, at this point, and he's chafing his cock through layers of robes, and he likes pain but he hates waiting.
“Okay, so,” he says, lifting his head, “so now what you're supposed to do is help me out. I'm not picky about it, just gimme your foot –”
“What?” she asks, blinking at him. Her face is bright red; her hair is a ruin. “I – my – all right? What... what am I supposed to...”
“Just put it on my cock,” he says, getting his robes open. “C'mon, Jin-furen, you don't gotta do shit –”
“But my foot – um, well, all right, I mean – am I supposed to take my shoe off?”
“Fuck, I don't care,” he says, laughing. Yeah, definitely cute, he gets it now. “Yeah, hell, if you can do it fast, skin's nice and I can use my hand whenever –”
“I – I'm sorry, my fingers are shaking, I'm sorry, a-Yang –”
“Oh, for fuck's sake,” he says, as a bead of precome wells out of him. “Gotta do everything myself around here –” He yanks her shoe off, her stocking, throwing them both heedlessly to the corner of the room. She squirms forward all on her own, settles her foot over his cock as gently as a butterfly landing on his skin. She doesn't pull away when he grinds up into her. He's leaked enough to be goddamn wet but not enough for it not to hurt a little, but pain's always more fun when it comes from someone else.
“You really like this?” she asks. “I – I can –”
He grabs her ankle, rubs her foot back and forth over his cock. “What do you think?” he asks, humping up like an animal. He can see her cunt twitch, and when he moans it's only half on purpose. “C'mon, Jin-furen, get me off with your foot.”
“Yanli,” she says. “Or – please, just don't – something else. Not a-Li, but not – not that.”
“Sure, jiejie,” he says breezily, guiding her foot so he can use it best. “Pull my hair again, I leaked a little every time you did it –” She does, and he moans so loud it might wake up Jin Guangyao high above them. He wants it to, suddenly. He wants someone to see the snow-white lotus of Carp Tower, the woman too sweetly innocent to condemn even the Yiling Patriarch, with her pussy flushed and swollen from his mouth as she lets lets him smear precome all over the arch of her pretty foot.
He'd have to kill anyway who saw, though, for the same reasons it's so hot that she's letting him. Would she be pissed, or would she be grateful? Fuck, if she appreciated it – if she licked all the blood off him and fucked him on top of a body he killed for her – she's already fucking him with a body right by her hand, it's halfway there –
He doesn't just come on her foot, he comes on her calf and her thigh and her robes, on his arm and his chest and his chin. His balls ache, wrung-out.
“Hey,” he says, shoving her robes to the floor, “hey, bend over.”
“Over the table?” she asks, shedding the rest of her underthings.
Already she has lost count of how many times she has betrayed her virtue with Xue Yang. She has done nothing that will conceive a bastard – and won't – but she will not pretend to herself that that matters, or that it's anything except that she doesn't want to be caught.
“Yeah, yeah,” he says, unfastening his belt, “I wanna fuck you.”
She stops, her palms already on the wood. She glances over her shoulder. “I won't risk –”
“Yeah, I know,” he says, rolling his eyes. “You worry too much, jiejie, but whatever, I know. I'm gonna use your ass, I brought oil.”
“I – oh?” She and her husband tried this, just once; it was one of their giggly nights, one where she yelped a bit and they got oil on everything in the room and they ended up laughing about how anyone managed this, and in the end he just took her the usual way, her legs hooked around his hips and both of them chuckling into each other's skin with leftover amusement. It was lovely, but everything that made it good is lost now.
“Yeah, don't worry,” he says, “I take it up the ass all the time, I know how to be gentle.” He grins, crowding up behind her. The fabric of his robes is soft against her skin. “I mean, in theory. I will, though – like I said, I even got you oil. Besides, it can be fun when it hurts. Trust me.”
She does laugh, after all, as she bends over the table. “You know,” she says, “I think I do. Isn't that funny?”
His fingers, tracing down her back, go still. “What?”
“Not for everything, of course,” she says. “But – oh, everyone else I know kills people too, you just aren't sorry about it, and what difference does it make whether you're sorry?”
“You can't see what I'm doing back here,” he says. He sounds angry. “I could kill you.”
“That's not different from anyone else either,” she says softly. “Look, you already have everything you want from me. Unless you really want to risk getting me pregnant, I suppose, and you've been very quiet about it if you want that.”
“Nah, don't give a shit,” he says. “I might want to hurt you just for fun, though.”
“If someone I trust is going to hurt me,” she says, “I'd rather it be on purpose this time.”
“Really?” He laughs. His laugh is always wicked, but this one sounds as ugly as hers does these days. “Okay, jiejie, sure.” His fingers twist into her hair and yank; her hairpin clatters against the floor somewhere. “You want me to hurt you?”
She didn't mean that, exactly, but while it hurts like hell, she doesn't mind. “Didn't you ask me to slap between your legs last week?” she asks. “Ah, why not? Why not?” Her breath is coming faster. She's wet. “What does it matter anymore, a-Yang? Hurt me or don't, I don't care.”
“Shut up,” he says, and bites her shoulder, hard. “Shut up.”
“Ah! Ow!” Her knees nearly buckle; she drops to her elbows, stomach pressed against the table. It's empty now; she probably wouldn't have done this with a dead man staring her in the face. Xue Yang has given up on Su She, is waiting on another body. Jin Guangyao will bring him one. She hopes her brother-in-law isn't going to kill someone to get it. There's plenty of bodies in the world, after all.
She used to care more about these things. Fifty men vanished into the Burial Mounds last month, trying to breach the walls of death and bone. Three weeks ago a supposed demonic cultivator was whipped to death in Lotus Pier, in full view of the sect. Nine days ago she found a chambermaid in torn robes weeping in the servants' hallway nearest her father-in-law's room. She could do some tiny thing about the last, at least: she gave the girl a purse of gold and a letter of introduction to bring her through any door that the name Jin-er-furen could open. Meanwhile she continues to let Jin Guangshan call her my dear child and tell her what a good daughter-in-law she is, what a blessing.
What does it matter anymore what anyone does? She can't change them. She loves the ones she loves and she hates the ones she hates and all of them do what they wish no matter how hard she tries.
Xue Yang's teeth are still in her shoulder. His good hand is in her hair; his bad hand digs four bruise-prints into her left shoulder.
“I didn't mean I don't care about you, a-Yang,” she promises. Pushes herself off her elbows to press her right hand over his left, tenderly, like he's not leaving marks on her. “I just – it's just pain. What does it matter?”
For a moment he's very still. Then he sighs, “Ah, fuck,” against her ear, and lets go of her hair to plant his hand instead between her shoulder blades. “Down,” he says, and shoves, until she's face-down on the table. It's rough and careless and she likes it. His cock is only half-hard when he rubs it against her hip.
“You ever take it like this before?” he asks her. She shakes her head, but he's already saying, “Doesn't matter, if you did it was so long ago you'll be all tight again, if I go right in I won't even fit. Might as well be nice about it.”
“Could you take off your robes?” she asks softly. “I like when you do.”
“Ah, fuck,” he says again, in weary disgust. He does that sometimes, but when he does, it usually means yes. Sure enough, he pulls away, and she hears fabric start to hit the floor.
What he's brought must be meant as hair oil; the room fills with the smell of osmanthus. This seems like a wasteful way to use it, and she'll smell like it all day, but, oh, what don't they waste in Carp Tower these days? And she likes osmanthus.
He is achingly gentle as he opens her up. It feels like a gift, from such an ungentle man. His fingers are alien inside her, more so even than her husband's cock on her wedding night – she used to open herself up the conventional way, back in her bed at Lotus Pier. First so she would know what it was like when it came time to marry, then just because she liked it. She's never done this.
“Oh,” she grunts, when he replaces his fingers with his cock. “Oh, that's –” And here she is, she's laughing with Xue Yang inside her. “That didn't feel nearly as big in my mouth, a-Yang!”
“Yeah, that's how it works,” he says smugly, and rocks in and out of her. “Go on, relax, it'll go easier.”
“Can – can you – in me – not where you are, I mean, I mean – the other –”
“Jiejie,” he says, laughing too. His cock trembles inside her; it feels good. She used to love when Jin Zixuan laughed while he was inside her, the way she could feel his joy all through her body. “Come on. Just say, a-Yang, I want you to put your fingers in my pussy while you fuck my ass.”
“Yes,” she says. “Yes, that, please, please –”
“Missing the point,” he complains, but he pulls her hips back onto him and wraps his arm around her waist. She's slick all down her thighs; she suspects there's going to be drips on the floor where she stood. He sinks two fingers into her, all the way to the knuckle, and she cries out and clenches down on his hand and his cock both.
It's his left hand inside her now; he used his right, before. She appreciates that. It seems cleaner this way.
She lets the table take her weight and lets him fill her until there's no room for grief.
She's not sure if she finishes or not. She's not sure if that's supposed to be a thing you can be unsure of or if her body is strange in this, but she loses herself in the pulsing heat and at some gradual point it turns from urgent to contented. She doesn't know if that's meant to happen, but even if it is strange, it brings her peace. So much about her is strange anyhow, it seems. Look at all the people she cares about.
When he's close, he shoves her forward until her breasts crush painfully against the tabletop. The wood is damp under her cheek. Oh. She's been crying. He digs his fingers into her hips and spills as deep inside her as his cock can reach.
She likes it.
His breathing slows. He stays inside her as he goes soft.
Eventually he shifts. His fingers prod at the back of her skull until she turns her head enough to look back at him. He's studying her like a new page of notes, one he hasn't figured out.
“Huh,” he says softly. His thumb collects a streak of wetness from underneath her eye. “Did I do that?”
“Mn.” She shakes her head. “No. I just... ah, a-Yang. Aren't there enough reasons?”
“Fuck, fair enough,” he admits, and leans in, warm all along her back. He licks her cheek, sloppy and long, lapping up her tears.
“A-Yang, what are you doing?”
“Just trying it,” he says, like that explains anything. She lets it go. He fucked some peace into her; he can lick her tears while it lasts, if he likes.
The next time he sees her cry – the next time she cries at all – is the first time he goes down to the workroom and finds her there already. She is perched on the edge of the table that now holds a stranger's body, sobbing quietly into her hands.
“Huh,” he mutters, and steps around her, starts painting symbols onto dead skin. His shoulders are tight, uncertain. She keeps crying, slow and soft.
“Hey,” he says, after a few minutes, “I haven't killed anyone in a while, I'm getting bored. Who do you think I should pick?”
“I –” She sniffles. “I'd rather you didn't, a-Yang. You have a body already, don't you? Can't you just... kill a pig or a chicken or something?”
“Nah, no fun at all,” he says, curling a radical over a rib. His calligraphy is surprisingly nice. “Pigs don't beg. They're not that different from humans once you cut 'em up, though. You sure you don't want me to kill someone? Bet the ribs would work well in that soup you said you made.”
“It's not the ribs that are the problem,” she says, wiping at her eyes. “There's plenty of pigs in Lanling, but I can't get the lotus root.”
“Can't help with that,” he says, shrugging. “Steamed buns are better anyway.”
“I might make some tomorrow.” She sighs. “A-Yang, I don't want you to kill anyone, but could you just... hold me for a moment? Not take me to bed, not tonight, just...”
He wrinkles his nose at her in offended confusion. She giggles, watery and frail. She's about to say it was a silly request, to ignore her, when his left hand wraps tentatively around hers. Her fingers are curled like a badly-made fist; he coaxes them straight. He doesn't look at her, or say anything, or stop painting the characters that he hopes will turn a dead man into a monster.
She's grateful.
After that it becomes an ordinary thing, the crying. It has been a year since one brother killed her husband. No one has seen him since. She has seen her other brother only twice in this past year.
Xue Yang licks her tears from her face if she weeps while their bodies are pressed together. If she stretches out her hand, he takes it. If there's work he can't do one-handed, he makes her do whatever he can't. If she does neither, he ignores her until she's done.
He offers to kill for her. He rolls his eyes and asks her who set her off this time. He asks her who she likes least in Carp Tower. She answers them all with a shake of her head.
“Shh, a-Ling, please, please, shhh...”
“Hey, what the fuck?”
Jiang Yanli blinks, lifts her head. She hasn't been watching where her feet take her. The night is cold and damp around them.
“Oh,” she says. “I wasn't thinking, I just came down here – he's fussing so much, he won't sleep, and I –” Her face crumples. “I can't settle him,” she whispers. “I, I kept having to let the nurses take him at night, Jin-zongzhu insisted, and now I don't know what to do –”
Jin Ling is three years old; her husband is three years dead. Her father-in-law has, at last, stopped taking her son away and putting him into a nursemaid's hands, stopped calling her overwrought and fragile. She stayed a chaste widow for less than a hundred days.
It is the dark of the night, and she can't make her son stop crying.
“Smack him,” Xue Yang suggests.
“No!”
“Just a little. Ugh, fine.” He digs in his pocket. “Hey. Bratlet. Take this and shut up, okay?” It's a candy, of course. “Your mom's gonna start crying and then I'm not gonna get anything done tonight.” The strange voice and the promised treat startle Jin Ling out of his sobbing. He reaches out.
“Say thank you,” Jiang Yanli prompts him, bouncing him gently on his hip.
“Ank,” he says obediently. Xue Yang laughs.
“Yeah, he's your kid all right,” he says, and pops the unwrapped candy straight into Jin Ling's mouth. Jin Ling blinks, opens his mouth to scream, and then registers the taste and sucks industriously instead.
“Down,” he says around the candy.
“No, Lingling,” Jiang Yanli says, bouncing him gently. He scowls. “It's not safe.”
“Psh, yeah it is,” Xue Yang says, unexpectedly. She blinks at him.
“A-Yang,” she says, “this room is full of torture implements.”
“Yeah, on the walls.” He waves his hand. “Kid comes up to my knee, he won't reach anything.” He shoves the inkstone and brush away from the edge of the table, beyond the reach of little hands.
He's right. All the sharp-edged iron things are too high on the walls for Jin Ling to reach. The floor is bare. She sighs.
“Okay, Lingling,” she says. “Down, just for a little.” Her hands hover around his waist for an extra moment before she stands; he looks around, toddles over to the wall, and sits with a decisive thump to suck on his candy. Xue Yang leans his hip against the table.
“You brought your fucking kid down here?” he asks.
“Don't swear, please, he repeats everything,” she says, sighing.
“So don't bring your fucking kid down here,” he says. Jin Ling is not listening to him, fortunately. “What the hell, jiejie?”
“I wasn't thinking,” she says, and rubs at his face. “I just... oh, a-Yang, he's around worse men then you all the time, at least I don't – you're not – at least you don't pretend to be anything else.” She looks at him. “If you try to hurt my son, you'll have to go through me, you know.”
“Yeah, whatever, I know,” he says, and starts grinding ink again. “Who's worse than me, anyway? I'm offended.”
She looks at him, and her face crumples.
“Ah, come on, don't do that,” he says, and comes around the table to grab her hand. “Come on. I just shut up the kid, I only have so much candy. Who's doing what?”
“Jin-zongzhu,” she whispers. Her face does something awful. Xue Yang whistles.
“The old creep? What'd he do?”
“Oh – it's nothing, really, he's done so much worse to so many people, I just – I caught him trying to look down my dress again this morning, and I just, I'm his son's widow, surely he wouldn't... but he raped his best friend's wife, did you know? It's why Jin Guangyao didn't get married in summer, it's because she was his half-sister.” She blots her eyes on her sleeve. “He almost married her anyway, but then Qin-furen came to me, and I had to tell Qin-guniang, and... oh, it was awful. And I'd still rather he hold a-Ling than his father, if I have to let one of them do it,” she adds viciously, “but – ah, a-Yang, it's all monsters here. At least you don't pretend you're protecting me.”
“Shit, no wonder he was so moody last summer,” Xue Yang says. “You were all weepy then too, is that why?”
“Some of it.” She sniffs.
“Was the old creep the rest of it too?” Xue Yang asks.
“Oh, some of it.” She sighs. “Him, and my husband, and a-Xian, and... oh, everything.”
“Yeah, well, one of them's dead and the other one basically is,” Xue Yang says. She tilts her head.
“Yes?” she says. “That's what... I don't understand.”
“Hmph. Don't worry about it.” His eyes are strangely far away. Suddenly, like he's made a decision, he lifts her hand to his mouth and kisses her smallest finger.
Three days later, Jin Guangshan is found dead in his bed. His eyes are gouged out and left as mangled jelly on the sheets. His cut-off testicles are stuffed into the empty sockets. His cock is buried in his mouth; his tongue is pinned to the wall above his head. Needles in his throat held him still as he died.
It was blood loss that killed him. His sheets are soaked in red.
The killer is found within the hour. Xue Yang has not even bothered to wash the blood from his sleeves.
Xue Yang is to be beheaded, by decree of Lianfang-zun. Slow slicing is suggested, but it would allow him too much time to speak.
His execution is not public. Jiang Yanli is there anyway, because she brings the full weight of Yunmeng stubbornness to bear. She is the only woman in the room.
Xue Yang is dragged into the courtyard in chains; the only time he stumbles is when he first sees that she is here. Her face been humbly downcast since she first set foot in the room, but she looks the condemned man in the eyes.
He smiles.
He's well aware of how they shelter her, what it took for her to be here. The lotus of Carp Tower fought to watch him die. That's fun. There's a satisfaction in that, something to keep him amused right to the end, if he gave Jiang Yanli some kind of taste for blood.
It was a good kill. He enjoyed doing it. That and an innocent stained and ruined – that's a good note to go out on.
The sword hits Xue Yang's throat off-center, because he is not looking straight ahead when he dies. It misses his windpipe, instead bites deep into the meat on the left of his neck. It's still a killing blow; it finds the vein. The blood is very red in all Carp Tower's gold and blue.
Xue Yang doesn't even seem to notice the blow. He does not look away from Jiang Yanli. She does not look away from him. As the blood wells up, she mouths, Thank you, a-Yang.
Jin Guangyao watches his favorite tool die, and his shock and solemnity are mostly unfeigned. He thought Xue Yang would die swearing or smiling, not with the rapturous devotion of a martyr on his face.
Jin Guangyao is packing up the workroom with his own hands when Jiang Yanli steps through the shadowed door. He is holding a pair of pliers at that moment; he sets it carefully down.
“Jin-er-furen,” he says. “This is a surprise.”
“Oh,” she says, blinking. “Is it really?”
“It is,” he admits. “I can see I have not paid you enough attention, these last years. I must offer my most humble apologies.”
“Please, Lianfang-zun,” she says. “Don't trouble yourself on my account.”
“Jin-er-furen is too gracious.” He bows to her over his hands. “I believe we have much to discuss.”
She does not bow back. She has always done so in the past, as consistently as Zewu-jun, and so he does not hate her for it as he would hate any other resident of Carp Tower who did the same.
“Yes,” she says. “I believe we do.”