Chapter Text
Wen Qing’s training with the Wen Sect’s healers continues under Wen-zongzhu’s supervision, but the sect leader is restless. Some days he ignores her, and everyone; focused exclusively on his cultivation and viewing everything else as a distraction. Other days he dotes in his own way; plays games or shares cruel confidences.
Her brother is quick to assure her that Wen Shenghua has kept his word about physically involving A-Ning in his work, but she can’t check; he – all three of them, really – are so busy.
Wen Shenghua always has been, but Wen Ning is with him now, while Wen Qing is occupied with absorbing the expertise of Wen Sect’s healers. Poisons and antidotes; curses and cures; the direct application of healing qi — though it exhausts her energy entirely, and she hasn’t figured out how to avoid vigorous scarring, Wen Qing has indeed learned to close a wound with a touch.
A-Ning, though— Wen Qing returns to the house one day to find Wen Shenghua still out, but A-Ning sitting cross-legged in the sun-baked courtyard, eyes screwed shut, his skin burnt pink in proof that he hasn’t moved for hours. Dismayed, Wen Qing drags him directly to his bedroom and nearly pours a pitcher of water down his throat.
“Baba says the foundation of my cultivation w-was flawed,” he says when she demands an explanation. “And… that’s why I—when. My qi…”
That makes no sense. They had the same lessons, growing up, the same careful, attentive oversight—if there were anything wrong, it should have been obvious—
“He c-correc— He fixed my technique. I just… have to catch up, now.”
She knows the latter statement is true. A-Ning should have condensed his core by now; would have, except the qi deviation set him back by years. This same loss of progress does give him the opportunity to change his technique without further unsettling his spirit veins and burgeoning core.
Still, the way she found A-Ning makes her fear his pattern of overwork. She brings her concerns to Wen Shenghua, who’s been her ally in this in the past. He brushes her off.
“If you have enough free time to fret like this,” he says, “then Ruohan is neglecting your education.”
The next day, he brings home a whirlwind-bound scroll of his own notes on acupoints, plus a reading list on the use of silver needles in medicine.
Before her next birthday she’s learned everything the senior healers can readily teach. If some of them have skill and experience she can’t yet match, she still outstrips them in the speed at which she picks up knowledge; in depth of potential and talent.
Wen-zongzhu says he’ll find experts outside the sect willing to further her training, but in the meanwhile her schedule suddenly opens up. She gives in to impulse, and uses the time to hover over her brother for the first time in months.
So it comes to pass that Wen Qing is with A-Ning and Wen Shenghua when Zhou Hairong is thrown down on the tile of the Sun Hall for striking his commander with killing intent. The man he attacked, she realizes, is some distant Wen cousin that Wen Qing helped patch up the night before. The next in command of Zhou Hairong’s cadre demands he be thrown out of the sect or else executed entirely. He has, after all, already had three major strikes in his disciplinary record on top of this last and greatest offense.
Zhou Hairong hardly notices Wen-zongzhu; it’s Wen Shenghua he stares down when he tells them, “Kill me, then. My only regret will be not taking that bastard with me.”
Fortunately for Zhou Hairong, Wen-zongzhu is having one of his distracted days. He eyes the proceedings with disinterest; with a gesture, he defers the decision to Wen Shenghua instead.
Wen Shenghua cants his head in acknowledgement. “Take him to the Fire Hall,” he says. When the injured commander’s second-in-command looks to protest, he adds, “Hairong is no concern of yours any longer. You’re dismissed. Ning-er, with me.”
A-Ning obeys reluctantly.
Wen Qing follows despite not being asked. She doesn’t want to go to the Fire Hall, and certainly doesn’t want to see a man she… has known, sort of, for half of her life, die in agony— But more than that, she doesn’t want A-Ning to see it.
Wen Qing is acquainted with death: from the healing offices, and from the Fire Hall at Wen-zongzhu’s hands. A-Ning, she’s fairly sure, is not. Wen Shenghua is too fastidious to kill by accident, and execution is not usually his job. She’s not sure why he’s taken charge of this case, when execution is exactly what Zhou Hairong has earned, under the sect’s bylaws.
But Wen Shenghua doesn’t have Zhou Hairong taken to any of the Fire Hall’s cruel devices. Instead they go to a partition with a plain flat table, one fitted with straps accommodating a variety of limb positions. He restrains the grim, unresisting Zhou Hairong himself, most of his body simply fastened down, but his right arm outstretched, pinned just below the elbow instead of at the wrist.
“Zhou Hairong,” says Wen Shenghua after the guards have gone. “Will you not argue your case?”
“...What’s the point?” Zhou Hairong says. “It doesn’t matter. It never matters. You don’t care why I attacked him, only that I did, when he’s a member of your thrice-cursed Wen clan and I’m only an outer disciple.”
“No,” corrects Wen Shenghua. “I care that he was your superior. You committed to obeying him, and then undermined his authority instead.”
“He does that himself,” Zhou Hairong replies viciously. “He’s vile—and useless, and shouldn’t be in command of anybody.” Zhou Hairong’s head jerks. “You said ‘was’. Is he dead?”
Wen Qing cuts in. “He’ll live,” she says.
“Fortunately for you,” says Wen Shenghua. “Else I could never justify sparing you no matter your potential.”
“What?”
“Ning-er, explain my reasoning.”
A-Ning collects himself a bit before he speaks. “That— The reports from his cadre… and comments from other commanders when there are hunts w-with larger groups… They make it sound like Zhou Hairong is the only reason his commander wasn’t drummed out for incompetence, uh, years ago.”
Zhou Hairong stares at them with consternation.
“He makes careless risks, and you pick up the slack with skill and aplomb. Until your patience runs out, and you’re sent to me for doing something foolish.”
Zhou Hairong bristles despite the way he’s strapped down. “My patience?”
Wen Shenghua lifts his brows lightly, as if to question Zhou Hairong’s indignance.
Then, “Of course, there must still be a consequence. Some assurance, I think, that you won’t raise a sword against your betters again.”
Zhou Hairong won’t raise a sword again at all. At least, not with that hand—Wen Shenghua makes sure of it. He neatly opens up the underside of Zhou Hairong’s wrist, cuts the flexor tendons, and then heals everything fast but sloppy so cultivation can’t fix the scarring. Quick, clean, and irreversible. Zhou Hairong will always struggle to close the fingers on his right hand.
Afterwards, voice and body shaking, Zhou Hairong speaks. “I hate you,” he says lowly. “And I hate him, and the sect—”
“You don’t,” Wen Shenghua speaks over him. “You hate that you’re on the outside of it. You hate that they ignore you, that you don’t know how to make anyone listen.”
He denies it with an exhausted toss of his chin.
“Yes. Ning-er, release him.”
A-Ning looks more even more pale and brittle than Zhou Hairong, but quietly moves to obey.
“You should have killed me,” Zhou Hairong insists.
“Your death would be a waste. You’ll answer to me from now on, see what I can make of you. I have your measure; you’ll be happier once you’re the one enforcing the rules.”
Wen Ning’s hands freeze, just for a moment. “Good luck,” he says tightly. He loosens the last strap without meeting anyone’s eyes.
Zhou Hairong’s former commander recovers fully under Wen Qing’s care. Half a year later, the man makes a bad call on a night hunt and gets five cultivators killed, himself among them.
When Wen Qing is fifteen, she leaves home for a three month apprenticeship with a cultivator and apothecary in Langya loosely associated with the Lanling Jin sect. It’s lonely, and her erstwhile teacher is unpleasant and insecure. She gains a great deal of experience in crafting prescriptions to treat the petty, vain, or imagined ills of obscenely rich non-cultivators, but for the most part she’s left to learn on her own.
It’s a great relief to return to the Nightless City, where A-Ning has shot up like one of the weeds in Popo’s garden. She realizes, with some dismay, that between her travel and the packed schedule that preceded it, she’s lost the trick of conversing with him naturally.
“How is your cultivation progressing?” she asks, for lack of any other ideas.
“...Slower than before.”
“Wen Heng said the two of you went on a night hunt?”
Requests for aid, and information on promising hunting areas, are accessible in order of seniority. Wen Xu goes on night hunts every week and brings the disciples he favors. A-Ning, who isn’t part of any cliques and doesn’t have any influential friends, has few opportunities.
“Heng-ge just, he only l-let me tag along.”
“How did it go?”
A-Ning shrugs uncomfortably.
“What happened? Did someone give you trouble—”
“It was fine, Jiejie. I w-wasn’t very good, is all.”
It’s clear that he doesn’t want to talk about it. She changes the subject, but perhaps not for the better.
“Has… has he tried to… you know—”
A-Ning stiffens. “No. N-no, there’s no n-need, he’s. Busy.” A-Ning clears his throat, then continues dully. “He’s busy, um. Training Zhou-qianbei. Better use of his time than—w-well. I’ve been... cultivating on my own.”
“Good,” says Wen Qing.
“Yeah,” A-Ning says. “Good”.
Wen Shenghua has wasted years of their lives trying to pressure A-Ning into work he doesn’t want and is fundamentally unsuited for. It’s a weight off Wen Qing’s shoulders to see that he’s finally moved past it and picked someone else.
Knowing Wen Shenghua’s attention has been diverted makes her feel better about leaving Qishan again.
Wen-zongzhu doesn’t like to be a guest of lesser sects; therefore, he sends subordinates to represent him abroad. Wen Shenghua is more useful within the Nightless City and only rarely joins these delegations, but Wen Qing is apparently now suitable.
In this way she passes another three months in a series of trips. She spends most of each visit being shown off by the recently retired former head healer, who acts as her escort.
Being a favored relative of Wen-zongzhu opens many doors. Every place she visits, her hosts trot out the best of their libraries. Some even share secret or family techniques for the sake of currying favor with her sect leader. Her part in this transaction is to absorb as much as possible—and to show herself off to best effect.
Even among cultivators, showing off at social events involves a lot of word games and painting and music. Wen Shenghua and Wen-zongzhu ensured her competence at these, but she’s not interested in impressing vapid young men, or in making friends she's not even likely to see again later—her time would be better spent with the books waiting back in her rooms.
The teacher arranged for her in her sixteenth year is a thousand miles better than the last—and a thousand miles nearer, too. Ke-daifu is a surgeon in Chang’an. His reputation among ordinary people is towering, but his tie to the cultivation world is thin; just one old acquaintance who serves as the head physician of some small, insignificant clan located on the road between Qishan and Qinghe.
The Wen Sect’s cultivating healers consider surgery to be beneath them. They disdain it as a solution, looking exclusively to spiritual techniques or alchemic medicines instead. Wen Qing, however, learns a great deal under the surgeon’s tutelage and loves every moment of it.
Ke-furen is as serious and businesslike as her husband, and their children are still in leading strings. In Chang’an, unlike Langya, there’s no pressure to make nice—the city is so large, and their patients so numerous, that the meticulous-but-brisk demeanor she finds most comfortable is also exactly what’s expected of her.
She’s extremely busy, which keeps her mind off missing A-Ning and Popo; and she does miss them, more so as the novelty of travel wears off. They send letters, at least. Popo keeps her abreast of negotiations for an engagement between Wen Heng and a girl from Popo’s maiden family, and otherwise mostly discusses her garden or asks after Wen Qing’s activities.
From A-Ning, it’s inconsequential things, reassurances of health. A few times, the gaps in A-Ning’s correspondence feel suspicious – most of all on the day she receives a scroll with a careful illustration of a spiritual sword and a pair of names in his best calligraphy. Qionglin. And Zhuguang—the sword that Wen Shenghua commissioned for him. A-Ning is a young man now, by the sect’s reckoning. He doesn’t mention what brought on the milestone, and Wen Qing tries not to wonder.
Her placement with Ke-daifu lasts well over a year, with interruptions for more travel on Wen-zongzhu’s orders.
At eighteen, Wen Qing is recalled to Qishan for a discussion conference. Over the last two years she’s developed her reputation carefully at her sect leader’s behest, and he wants her close to hand when he welcomes the other great sects.
A-Ning is taller than her now. She embraces him, and when he returns the gesture he does so carefully. Lightly. She feels as if she’s lost something.
It’s normal at large discussion conferences to hold a contest for some form of martial skill, and Wen-zongzhu has picked archery. The Wen sect has many talented cultivators who specialize in the sword, many members capable of crafting arrays and artifacts and treasure pills, but archery? Only Wen Xu and Wen-zongzhu himself are known for particular talent in it, and neither of them will be competing. A strange choice—as if Wen-zongzhu is unsatisfied with the current state of his juniors’ skills, and means to use this to pressure them into improvement.
A-Ning is excited, though. He says he started practicing as soon as it was announced— Not in the group training sessions, of course, not at the drill grounds. But he shows her his bow, and his carefully-maintained arrows, and then he shows her a less-traveled corner of the lower gardens where he’s set up a practice range. A nice senior showed him this place after catching him trying to use the drill grounds after curfew, and nobody else has found him here.
He demurs when asked to demonstrate his progress in archery, so Wen Qing changes the subject and asks about the senior who found his practice space.
“His name is Wen Yeyun,” A-Ning says. He pauses. “I’m not sure who he’s related to…? But. He’s nice.”
“How about… friends your own age?” Though she’s hardly one to speak on that matter. Still, she can hope—
“I’m, uh, practicing sword forms with Heng-ge,” he offers. Letting Wen Heng practice sword forms on him, he means, and most likely overexerting himself in the process.
This prompts her to ask after his health, and he says he’s been fine; the pills she perfected in Langya have done an excellent job at curtailing his headaches. Well. That’s good. He’s… happier than he was the last time she was here for any length of time. It’s good.
The next day, a group of junior disciples get caught vandalizing the drill grounds. While Wen Qing is attending Wen-zongzhu, they’re dragged into the Sun Hall to be made a firm example of.
A-Ning comes in too, is seated to the side with Wen Shenghua and Zhou Hairong; she makes eye contact with him for just a moment before he cuts his gaze away. A too-still youth, dark eyed, fine-clothed, looking past the furor and waiting for this to be over.
The disciples – just boys, mostly around A-Ning’s age – have less restraint in Wen-zongzhu’s presence than they should. They’re all speaking over each other, protesting that it was an accident, that they were drunk. For several long minutes, Wen-zongzhu allows them to struggle like trapped flies. Then he scoffs lightly, and orders a beating far in excess of the usual guidelines.
It’s not that he really cares about the state of the drill grounds. They were impertinent, and so he’s chosen to make them regret it… or perhaps they were just unlucky enough to find him bored and in the mood to see a show.
It makes no difference to Wen Shenghua, who steps forward smoothly and retrieves a heavy pair of rods from a servant. Wen Qing tenses, but he hands one rod to Zhou Hairong and keeps the other for himself. A-Ning isn’t involved. Good.
At that moment, one of the delinquent disciples calls out to Zhou Hairong. “Wait! Wait, you really can’t punish xiao-Lian!”
“Oh? And whyever not?” It’s Wen-zongzhu who responds, and the disciple who spoke pales abruptly.
“Zongzhu—” he sputters “—Zongzhu, it’s my fault, my brother, he was only there for me. I mean, to find me. He didn’t do anything, please.”
“Can you prove that?” Wen-zongzhu asks lightly.
“I—” the disciple glances anxiously at one of the boys who was in line to be beaten first. He must be ‘xiao Lian’. The older brother is clearly wracking his brain, but—
“No? Hm. Carry on, then.”
“Wait—”
A voice rings out. “T-the alcohol.”
At the center of the floor, Wen Shenghua lowers the rod; Zhou Hairong follows suit.
“Come forward,” says Wen-zongzhu, eyes narrow.
Tensely, A-Ning obeys. What is he thinking? He should know better—but he speaks again. “Zongzhu.” He glances towards Wen Shenghua. Then, resolve bolstered, gives Wen-zongzhu a careful and proper salute. “This Wen Ning rem- rememb— recalls. They claim to have acted from drunkenness. So, if—” he looks at the older brother.
“Zhou Ye,” the disciple provides quietly.
“If Zhou Ye is telling the truth, that m-means—if Zhou Lian didn’t drink, then he didn’t vandalize. If he did…”
“Go on, then,” says Wen-zongzhu.
Brusquely, Wen Shenghua pulls Zhou Lian up by his hair and smells his breath. “It’s clean,” he confirms stiffly.
Wen Ning and Zhou Ye have visibly relaxed, but it’s premature.
Wen-zongzhu’s lip curls. “It could be that his only involvement was making noise. Unless he’s as much a little vandal as the rest, and without the excuse of overindulgence in drink to fog his good sense.”
Moreover, Wen-zongzhu never likes to change his mind.
Wen Shenghua and Zhou Hairong carry out the beatings, two by two. Mirror images—Zhou Hairong grimly swinging with his good hand. Wen Qing can see the tremble in A-Ning’s legs as he returns to his seat.
Wen-zongzhu leans over. “That’s your younger brother, isn’t it, Qing-er?”
Her heart stops. “...And?”
“He doesn’t seem like much, but he’s actually a bit bold, isn’t he?” he asks, and she’s never feared anything more than this intrigued tone from her sect leader’s mouth.
“Not at all,” she says sharply.
Wen-zongzhu straightens again in his seat. “Shame.”
Afterwards, when they’re alone, Wen Shenghua furiously lays into A-Ning before Wen Qing gets a chance.
“Do not seek Zongzhu’s attention,” he hisses, and it feels strange to agree with him.
“I was— I wasn’t trying to!” A-Ning protests. “You say it’s important to get the, all the facts. And, it wasn’t fair—”
“He doesn’t have to be fair. He has to be strong, and it does no-one any good to send the message that they can get away with defying him.”
A-Ning examines the floor. “Sorry.”
“Don’t do it again,” Wen Shenghua says severely, and grips A-Ning’s shoulder tight enough to make him wince. “You... keep cultivating. Stay out of Wen-zongzhu’s way until I say you’re ready.”
Wen Qing furrows her brows in confusion. A-Ning, too, looks up inquisitively, but Wen Shenghua is already sweeping out of the room.
“Ah, w-wait!” A-Ning calls after him, and he pauses. “What… about the archery contest?”
Wen Shenghua looks back over his shoulder, as if weighing the tense line of A-Ning’s shoulders, the curled grip of his fingers on the edge of his sleeves—and then Wen Qing as well, his eyes on the lingering adrenaline-tremors she can still feel.
“I only taught you the basics,” he says.
“Y-yes, but I—”
“No,” he says shortly.
“But—if I— I want to m-make you pr—”
“No. Keep to yourself, I said.” He turns the rest of the way around so he’s facing them again. “Your ambition is good, filial, but—now is not the time. I will not have you exposed to scrutiny. Am I understood?”
At length, A-Ning nods.
Wen Qing thought she could safely skip the archery contest as it had nothing to do with her, so she learns about A-Ning’s involvement only afterwards, from Wen Heng.
He relays the episode with a little discomfort, a little shame. “He looked pretty upset when he left? You uh, might want to talk to him.”
After looking in several places, she finds him back in the same garden corner he showed her before. He’s not practicing, just sitting on a low stone bench, bow on his lap, picking at the string.
“A-Ning…”
He looks up sharply. “Jie.” He must see the worry on her face, because he hurries to say, “I’m fine. Really I am.”
“How can you be fine? That Jiang disciple made you lose face in front of a dozen sects—”
“No, that—that’s backwards. Wei-gongzi, he…” He flushes, smoothing a hand over the bow’s grip. “He was v-very kind.” He straightens his back. “Is it over? How did he do?”
Feeling somewhat useless, Wen Qing answers. “He won. Wen Chao was disqualified, apparently he’s spitting mad. He’s telling people Wei Wuxian and Lan Wangji schemed against him, tricked him into missing a shot.”
A-Ning’s lips twitch. “I doubt that’s w-what— I don’t think that’s true.”
“Well. Don’t let anyone hear you say it.”
“Mm,” A-Ning agrees easily. “...Jiejie, do you think I could be like Wei-gongzi? I mean, um, night-hunting, travelling…”
“He’s our age. And isn’t he Jiang Sect’s head disciple? He has responsibilities, I’m sure he’s not spending his days wandering jianghu.”
“N-no, I mean. It feels like he could be an errant hero. Like he’s… gallant, you know?”
“Why are you asking me this?” Wen Qing says hesitantly.
“Well.” He pauses for a moment to unstring his bow, coiling and uncoiling the string around his fingers as he continues. “It’s not what Baba trained us for. He expects—you know.”
Wen Qing feels her back stiffen. “What he expects,” she says primly, “is his own business. If he’s disappointed, that is not your problem.”
A-Ning hums dubiously. “And he has Zhou-qianbei now, anyway. ...Maybe, m-maybe if I could make something of myself out in the world, even if it’s not directly serving the sect, he’d approve… Ah, assuming I even could,” he adds, smiling in a way that makes her heart hurt.
Wen Qing bites down on an encouraging platitude. “I’ll approve,” she says instead.
“Mn,” he says, the smile turning more genuine as he finally looks up to meet her eyes. “Thanks, Jie.”
After the discussion conference, she waits for another study placement that never comes. Eventually, after weeks without any word or summons from Wen-zongzhu, Wen Qing steels herself and asks Wen Shenghua.
He answers readily. “You’ll not be travelling alone again, not soon.”
“I—have I done something wrong?”
“Not at all,” he says, and there’s an edge to his voice. “Ruohan is entirely satisfied with you—yes, you might as well know.”
So he tells her. One wouldn’t know it to look at them now, but the reach of the Wen Sect was sorely damaged before Wen Qing was born. Wen Ruohan has spent his life bolstering the sect’s power with his own; protecting its members, Wen Shenghua says, from their own weakness. It’s not enough; the younger generations have squandered his effort. The cultivation world circles them like drooling scavengers, and Wen-zongzhu will not have it.
Wen Shenghua has spent at least half a decade helping him plan, smoothing the way with velvet gloves and knives in the dark, and the Wen juniors’ humiliation at the discussion conference is the last straw. Soon, Wen-zongzhu will bring his efforts into the open.
That is, they’re going to go to war.
Wen Qing is forbidden to speak of it.
Time passes slowly and all at once. Wen Qing treats ever more frequent training injuries for members of the sect. Popo makes an extended stay at da-Jiu’s home, preoccupied with planning Wen Heng’s wedding.
Wen Shenghua attends long closed-door meetings with Wen-zongzhu, Wen Xu, and a rotation of lieutenants also surnamed Wen. He manipulates prisoners, Zhou Hairong his silent shadow. He coordinates agents, especially a man called Zhuliu—and she’s learned just enough of that one’s value to send her into an anxious tear of brainstorming and research. A-Ning is left to his own devices, except when Wen Shenghua bids him quickly break through the bottleneck in his cultivation.
A dozen or more sects fall into Wen-zongzhu’s hands and fly the Wen sect’s banners in place of their own. It is a campaign of espionage and politics more than force; Wen Qing has no involvement herself, and only knows any of what’s going on because Wen-zongzhu makes time with her to subtly gloat over games of weiqi. These minor sects have fallen with almost frightening ease so far, but despite Wen-zongzhu’s confidence she knows that ease can’t continue.
She is a doctor, and will be protected no matter what. But A-Ning… he told Wen Shenghua that he wants to be a hero, instead of an enforcer or a spy. Wen Shenghua seemed to accept the ambition, but… heroes distinguish themselves in battle. A deep fear sinks into her bones. A-Ning doesn’t belong on the battlefield. A-Ning can’t even bear the drill grounds.
But when she shares these concerns with him, A-Ning hums absently and asks what she knows about Yunmeng Jiang from her years traveling.
She’s been introduced to Jiang Fengmian and Jiang Yanli – at an event held in… Tingshan, she thinks – and she saw and was seen by other members of the Jiang sect at the recent discussion conference, but at the time she didn’t pay them any mind. She’s never been to Yunmeng, and the Jiang cultivators she’s encountered abroad have a way of talking a great deal while saying hardly anything about themselves.
A-Ning’s sparkling curiosity about them is just another reason to keep him away from the war she knows is coming.
His fixation has come out of nowhere, and almost anyone else would be better. Wei Wuxian is… well, he’s pretty? He apparently praised A-Ning generously before his victory, and he waved at him the next day in the banquet hall, and if that were the end of it she could simply be happy that A-Ning had, apparently, made an unlikely friend.
But it hasn’t been the end of it. She heard his name every day for two weeks. When she observed as much to A-Ning, he stopped speaking it— but months later Wen Qing still finds it, instead, in conspicuous silences and blushing distraction.
Unfortunately, he’s not the only one still obsessed with Wei Wuxian. Wen Chao’s grudge against the champions from that archery tournament, and especially Wei Wuxian, hasn’t lessened one bit. He’s happy to say so, whenever he deigns to stop fooling around and show his face in the Sun Hall. The thought of her brother still attached to Wei Wuxian should he fall into Wen Chao’s power fills Wen Qing with dread.
She tries not to think about it.
Then: the Cloud Recesses burn. Wen Shenghua flies out to Gusu the next day, and would have taken A-Ning except that A-Ning is down with a fever whose cause Wen Qing can’t track.
Wen-zongzhu demands disciples from a dozen or more sects including Jin, Jiang, and Lan for “re-education”, and she knows this is the next phase. It’s clear that everything will come to a head soon. She can’t decide what to do.
But she doesn’t need to decide anything, only do what she’s told. She’s ordered to select staff for a field hospital – in Yiling, a small and half-forgotten Wen outpost whose position on the Long River hints at his future campaign plans. She has two weeks to prepare.
Meanwhile, Wen-zongzhu tells her over tea that he’s putting Wen Chao in charge of intimidating the hostages—perhaps this, he says, will teach him some responsibility, force him to grow up. He could send Wen Ning too, he adds, to toughen him up. As a favor to herself and her father.
He laughs darkly. “Perhaps Chao-er will finally do something about that insolent Jiang disciple he keeps whining about, instead of running his mouth.”
Wen Qing can’t hear whatever he says next over the rush in her ears. Wei Wuxian, placed in Wen Chao’s hands? A-Ning can’t, mustn’t be there, no matter what Wen Shenghua might want. The future stretches in front of her, and she knows her brother would try to get between Wen Chao and Wei Wuxian, and it must not happen.
“Actually.” She’s interrupting, but too inwardly frantic to care. “I was thinking about my staff—may I take my brother along as my second?”
“Nepotism from Qing-er?”
She lets herself look caught out. “He’s… weak. He’ll be bullied.”
“That’s unusually sensitive of you.”
“I… It’s practical too; I don’t want a second who won’t listen to me.”
Wen-zongzhu chuckles. “Fine, no need to argue. Take him, then.”
She does. She pulls a handful of novice healers to be her assistants, gives A-Ning a couple days to find followers of his own, then rushes their departure so they’re out of Qishan fast.
When Wen Shenghua returns and finds her gone, and A-Ning with her, all he can do is send frustrated letters. The first one is a demand for A-Ning to return to Nightless City immediately. She burns it, and the rest of his letters she hides or throws away before A-Ning can find them.
She tries to keep him too busy to concern himself with the world outside of Yiling, especially the confusing gossip from Wen Chao's indoctrination bureau, or afterwards any other word of Wen Chao or Wen Shenghua.
It works, for a while. The office is in poor repair, the town sorely in need of cultivators’ attentions—the borders of the Burial Mounds outside the town even more so. A-Ning and his subordinates have to scramble to take advantage of the Double Ninth Festival for a suppressing ritual. There’s more than enough work to keep him distracted.
But Wen Qing misses a letter. A-Ning comes to her one evening and smooths the letter out on the table in front of her.
“Were you ever… planning to tell me?” He asks.
Wen Qing grits her teeth, skimming the text under his hands for clues, for excuses.
At length, she says, “You already knew about the war—”
“No, that he—that I’m n-not supposed to be here!”
“You are,” Wen Qing protests. “Wen-zongzhu assigned you himself.”
“You assigned me,” he says vehemently, leaning over the table. “I’m supposed to be—”
“What?” she hisses. “Under Wen Chao? Sailing for Lotus Pier right this second to occupy the Jiang Sect? Is that what you want?”
He jerks, stricken. “N-no. What? No, they’re—”
“No, you don’t.” Wen Qing continues. “Because you’re not like him—them. You’re good, and kind, and too gentle for your own good, and what you need to do is just. Listen to me, and let me protect you, and keep your head down so this stupid war can’t hurt you.”
A-Ning’s lips are white from being pressed together so hard. “I can’t just do nothing,” he insists desperately.
“What can you do?” Wen Qing rebuts.
“I—I don’t. Don’t. Know. I—”
To Wen Qing’s dismay, her brother’s eyes well up with frustrated tears.
“I’m sorry,” she tells him, but he takes the letter back, and folds it up, and returns to his duties without a word.
An hour later, he boards a boat to Yunmeng.