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Lan Qiren runs into them in Yueyang, of all places.
The Chang clan drives a hard bargain, but he walks out of their complex with a deal for reduced taxes on the silk trade between their regions and a sore jaw from clenching his teeth too hard. Politicking always makes Lan Qiren feel unpleasant, a prickliness under his skin. He wasn’t built for it; he’s too unyielding and too blunt, with none of his brother’s charm.
Not that the charm does him any good, he thinks sourly, stepping onto the street. He hasn’t had a conversation with Qingheng-jun in months; hasn’t had a meaningful conversation with him in years. If a war, however brief, wasn’t enough to bring his brother out of seclusion, he doubts anything would.
It’s afternoon in late summer, and the southern breeze sweeping up the street isn’t enough to cool the sweat on the back of Lan Qiren’s neck. He thinks the cold is much more civilized; sweating always feels like his body is betraying his dignity on some level.
Lan Qiren is supposed to be back to Gusu by tomorrow, but he has no desire to fly under this direct sunlight. Instead, he picks his way through the busy market to the first teahouse he sees, eager to sit in the shade without any eyes on him.
The teahouse is humble, but the service is good and Lan Qiren feels in no position to be picky. The tea is fine -- not up to his standards, but he couldn’t expect it to be. Tucked away from the busy street, he feels relievingly anonymous. Too many minutes talking to other people saps his spirit, and today he’s been conversing for hours. It’s hellish, frankly.
The boys catch his eye because of how much he dislikes sharing space with children. He likes his Lan students well enough, but with children outside the sect there’s no telling where they’ve been, why they’re so dirty, what exactly their hands are sticky with. He generally averts his eyes from street children in particular because the way they tug at his heartstrings is dangerous; he can’t afford to empty his wallet for every doe-eyed child that pouts in his direction.
But these children -- young men -- seem clean and well-fed. They are seated at a table over from Lan Qiren. “Pardon me,” says the eldest politely. “A pot of green tea for the table, when you have a chance.”
“Snacks?” says one of the younger ones. “Da-ge, I’m so hungry, we’ve been walking all day.”
The eldest laughs. It makes Lan Qiren blink. That laugh is oddly familiar. Eavesdropping is forbidden, of course, but he can’t be blamed for overhearing when these boys are not lowering their voices whatsoever. “Okay, okay,” the young man says. “And a couple servings of peanuts.”
Lan Qiren pulls himself from lingering thoughts about the trade negotiations and actually looks at the table of young men. There’s four of them -- the oldest perhaps is sixteen or seventeen, the other three eleven or twelve, clearly following the first boy’s lead. All four have swords at their hips, although they aren’t dressed like they belong to any clan that Lan Qiren knows. They aren’t even dressed like they all belong to the same sect.
“Don’t look so sad,” says the boy who asked for food. He’s wearing charcoal gray and dark red, and he’s got his elbows on the table. “Jiejie shouldn’t take too long, she only wanted fish.”
“Jiejie takes forever at the fish market,” another of the younger boys groans, slumping over onto folded arms. He’s wearing dark blue robes that are just a few inches too short. “We’ll be here until sunset.”
“Hmm,” says the eldest, not disagreeing. He’s dressed quite nicely in white and green, although now that Lan Qiren is looking closely, he can see a few leaves tangled into his ponytail. “Do you think this place serves dinner?”
“Do you think they serve wine?” the boy in red asks, looking around eagerly.
Lan Qiren swallows a scowl. Truly, the youth of today are unbelievable. But the oldest boy just laughs, and once again a shiver goes down Lan Qiren’s spine at the sound. “Ying-er, don’t be silly. Just because your mother lets you have a sip of wine at dinner--”
The woman bringing their tea stumbles on the step a few feet from their table, and the fourth boy, the only one who hasn’t spoken yet, rises at once to his feet to help her steady the tray. Good manners, Lan Qiren thinks approvingly, and then the boy turns and Lan Qiren gets a glimpse of his face.
It’s impossible. It’s impossible . He could be stepping back forty years to his own childhood, to that very face on his brother showing how to grip a sword for the first time. Lan Qiren makes a kind of choked noise, but thankfully it must be quiet enough that none of the young men hear.
Either he’s going senile at the age of fifty or --
His head is ringing, but all he can think is that the young man is the right age. It’s been just over twelve years since his sister-in-law’s second pregnancy was announced, and here is this boy, with that nose and that chin and that brow, already furrowed, just like his father --
He has his mother’s eyes, Lan Qiren thinks distantly. That’s the only difference he can pick out between this young man and his memory of his brother at that age. This boy has no forehead ribbon, of course, and his robes are dove gray, but his hair is done so tidily and his posture so neat that he could be mistaken for a Lan disciple anyway. It’s like looking at a ghost, except his brother is, if only technically, alive.
“Nice catch!” the boy in red, Ying-er, cheers, completely unaware of Lan Qiren’s turmoil ten feet away.
The oldest boy is talking to the woman bringing the tea, asking if she’s alright. He’s the right age too, Lan Qiren realizes. That laugh -- he’d spent hours hushing that laugh in the quiet of the central courtyard, in the dining hall, on walks in the woods. Lan Xichen, he thinks, swallowing down the lump in his throat. A name he’d picked, when the boy’s father showed little interest in the idea. The boy had laughed at everything.
“Do not laugh for no reason,” Lan Qiren had reminded him, time and again.
“I’m not,” Xichen would insist, as soon as he could talk. “Shufu, didn’t you see how silly that frog looked when he jumped? You would have laughed too, if you saw.”
Lan Qiren had indeed seen the frog jump, and had seen nothing amusing about it whatsoever. But his nephew had such a bright smile, and perhaps this was just a youthful interpretation of the majesty of nature, so Lan Qiren let it go. He steered the elders who wanted to complain about the young heir’s vapidity towards evidence of his prowess with his little flute, his elegant characters (well, for a small child), and his careful study from a young age.
He sees it now, in the way he pours tea. The oldest boy -- Xichen, it must be Xichen -- is the only one of them wearing wide sleeves, but he holds them properly out of the way as he pours. His back is appropriately straight, and what Lan Qiren can glimpse of his face, it seems that he is wearing a calm smile.
Xichen and his brother look… well. Xichen is a handsome young man, and now that Lan Qiren is looking, he can see both of his parents in his face. His brother still has the roundness of childhood in his cheeks, and both of them have healthy complexions. Their hair is long and glossy in a way that speaks to the care of a loving guardian -- although someone really ought to do something about those leaves.
“Don’t bother pouring one for me, Da-ge,” says the boy in blue. “It’s too hot for tea.”
Lan Qiren’s second nephew -- he feels an odd flash of shame at not knowing his name, although there is no possible way he could -- speaks for the first time. “It is never too hot,” he says gravely, “for tea.”
Ying-er bursts into merry laughter. “Lai Zhan is so dignified!” he proclaims. “I can never disagree with him when he talks like that.” He takes a bold sip, as if he really was drinking wine, and then yelps in pain.
Lai Zhan -- of course he took his mother’s surname -- puts a sympathetic hand on his shoulder.
“You’re so dumb,” the boy in blue scoffs.
“Don’t call him dumb,” Xichen chides gently. “Ying-er, are you okay?”
“Burned my tongue,” Ying-er says mournfully. “He can call me dumb this one time, that seems fair. Lai Zhan, maybe it is too hot for tea sometimes.”
“No,” Lai Zhan disagrees solemnly. “The tea is too hot for you. Weather has nothing to do with it.” He blows gently on his own cup as if to demonstrate how.
Lan Qiren can’t help but wonder who on earth these other children are. They’re addressing Xichen as their brother, so is it possible that Lan-furen had children by other men? His mouth sours at the thought of it. He had never much liked Lai Chunhua, but he can’t imagine her doing such a thing, not by design. But thankfully, the other two boys seem to be the same age as Lai Zhan, and they bear no physical resemblance to either of Lan Qiren’s nephews or his sister-in-law. Could she have remarried?
Just as he is beginning to ponder the legality of such a thing, Ying-er exclaims, “Jiang Cheng! Get your own peanuts!”
“You’re hoarding all three bowls to yourself!” retorts Jiang Cheng , a boy who was assumed dead three years ago when Lotus Pier fell. The clans had allied fast after that -- no one wanted to be the next Jiang clan, murdered for some perceived slight against the sect leader, women and children and all. “If you eat that many peanuts, you’ll throw up, I’m saving you from yourself--!”
“Boys,” Xichen intercedes again.
“Fine,” Ying-er whines. Who is he, then? “You can have one bowl. But these two are for me and I’m sharing them with Lai Zhan.”
“One bowl each is fair,” Xichen agrees. He’s a natural leader, clearly. His voice is level and calm and just faintly amused. Lan Qiren’s chest twinges with bittersweet envy for a world where he’d stayed in Cloud Recesses, where that mother of his hadn’t stolen him away in the night to a fate that up until today, only the gods knew. He would have been the leader Cloud Recesses deserved -- a better diplomat than his uncle, a better man than his father. Thinking about it makes Lan Qiren’s teeth hurt.
Lan Qiren watches his younger nephew sip his tea in proper silence. He never spent a day in Cloud Recesses outside his mother’s womb, but here he is, self-possessed in a way Lan Qiren could only dream of from the current crop of juniors. A surge of irrational pride builds in his chest; surely, this is some triumph of Lan genes, that he could come by his manners naturally.
It leaves the question of what to do. Xichen almost certainly has forgotten him by now; Lai Zhan would have no idea who he is. Lan Qiren wonders where their mother is. The Jiang boy mentioned an older sister, who is likely Jiang Yanli. He has no idea how they survived the Wen attack, or if it was Lai Chunhua who somehow knew to shelter them.
Lan Qiren is just narrowing his eyes at Ying-er in confusion when Lai Zhan says, so quietly that Lan Qiren barely hears it, “Wei Ying.” This must be Ying-er’s surname. It means nothing to Lan Qiren.
“What?” Wei Ying says. “Oh, do you want me to put your hair up? It is pretty hot out.” He reaches up and tugs the metal band out of his own hair, which spills, unruly, down his shoulders and back.
The Jiang boy watches this exchange, unimpressed. “You can do your own hair, San-ge,” he says dismissively.
Wei Ying sticks his tongue out as he stands up. “He just likes when I do it best,” he says. “Are you jealous? Lai Zhan, he’s just jealous that you don’t let him play with your hair.” He sighs dreamily as he picks the hairpin out of Lai Zhan’s hair. “Your hair is so pretty. Yours too, Da-ge.”
Lan Qiren watches in slight astonishment. Lai Zhan closes his eyes as Wei Ying begins gently pulling his hair through the hairpiece, twisting the sheet of straight hair into a careful bun at the crown of his head, held in place with Wei Ying’s own plain metal ring. He looks like nothing more than a pleased cat in the sun.
“There,” Wei Ying says, satisfied, sliding the pin back through. “Better?”
“Mm,” Lai Zhan confirms. “Thank you.”
Wei Ying ties his own hair back into a messy ponytail with none of the care he gave his friend’s. “No problem,” he says cheerfully, then leans over to grin at Jiang Cheng. “Want me to do your hair too?”
“Are you kidding?” Jiang Cheng says, with as much vanity as an eleven year old can muster. Wei Ying only laughs. “Oh, Jiejie!” Jiang Cheng sits up, looking as unabashedly eager as Lan Qiren has seen him yet. “Jiejie, tell Er-ge that he’s not allowed anywhere near my hair or clothes. He has no fashion sense whatsoever .”
Lan Qiren does recognize Jiang Yanli as she steps into the teahouse; she was old enough to accompany her parents to the occasional sect conference before Lotus Pier was destroyed. He vaguely remembers her as a pale, quiet child, sticking close to her father’s side. The young woman before him is still slight, but with a healthy rosiness to her cheeks.
“A-Cheng,” she sighs, tapping him on the nose. “Forgive us all for not living up to your sartorial standard.”
“Is it the fashion to show off your ankles?” Lai Zhan asks blandly.
“Shut up,” Jiang Cheng snaps. “I’m growing .”
“This is why I buy my robes too long and hem them,” Wei Ying says wisely. “Then I just let them out as I get taller.”
“Agh,” Jiang Cheng groans. “You are so embarrassing .”
“A-Li,” Xichen says warmly. “I think the boys are only going to get louder. Would you mind walking them outside while I pay?”
“Of course,” she says, herding them towards the entrance. “I’ve got some lovely white fish for dinner, I got the vendor down to about half the price and it only took an hour…”
Lan Qiren hurriedly digs silver out of his own pocket. He doesn’t like being caught off guard, but if he wants to speak to them, or figure out what on earth their parental situation is, he mustn’t lose them in the crowd. He is startled, then, when he looks up and finds Xichen sitting down in the seat beside him.
“Hello,” Xichen says, bowing very politely.
Unsettled and grumpy about it, Lan Qiren bows back. “Gongzi,” he says, disgruntled.
“I could see you watching us out of the corner of my eye,” Xichen says, not unkindly. A smile plays across his mouth. He certainly didn’t get that from his father’s side. “You Lans aren’t very good at eavesdropping.”
“I was not eavesdropping,” Lan Qiren says stiffly. “You and your compatriots were talking loudly.”
Xichen’s gaze is even. “You know who I am, don’t you,” he says plainly.
Lan Qiren clears his throat. “Lan Xichen,” he says, because there can really be no doubt about it now. Unlike his little brother, Lan Xichen has his grandmother’s dark eyes. Lan Qiren’s mother, stern as she was, had this same steady affect.
His smile fades. “I don’t go by that name,” he says. “I’m Lai Huan.”
His mother had given him his personal name. It makes sense that he would prefer it, along with taking her surname. That she would leave him nothing of his paternal heritage. “I see.”
“I just wanted to make sure you knew,” Lai Huan says, his face young and his eyes old, “that my compatriots and I are protected. Please don’t think of taking us back, or sending anyone after us. It won’t go well.”
Lan Qiren scowls. “Your mother,” he begins, “had her reasons to leave. But don’t let her tell you and that brother of yours that every Lan is like your father.”
Lai Huan blinks. “You knew my mother?” he says, visibly surprised.
“Mm,” Lan Qiren says reluctantly.
Lai Huan sits back, searching his face. “You must be part of the main family,” he says, almost to himself. “Your headband is blue.”
They had found Lai Huan’s own blue forehead ribbon trampled in the street in Caiyi.
Lan Qiren averts his eyes. “Don’t you even know your own uncle?” he says gruffly. “You weren’t so young that you would forget altogether.”
“Wait,” Lai Huan says. “Shufu?”
Lan Qiren drags his gaze back up; he will not be intimidated by his own teenage nephew. Lai Huan’s expression is open, even hopeful. “Yes,” he says, and then, without any forewarning at all, he is being hugged. He has not been hugged in… nearly twelve years. Since he was teaching his nephew his characters and Xichen had turned to embrace him in excitement, smearing ink across Lan Qiren’s knee because he had forgotten to set down his brush.
“I can’t believe I didn’t recognize you,” Lai Huan says into his shoulder. Lan Qiren raises one hand and pats him hesitantly, once between the shoulderblades. “Of course I remember you, Shufu. Even if I didn’t, A-Niang has told us what you did for her.”
There isn’t a lump in his throat. There isn’t. “I didn’t do anything,” he mutters. Speak properly, he scolds himself.
“Of course you did,” Lai Huan says. To Lan Qiren’s mortification, his dark eyes are shining with tears, a sight he certainly never witnessed on his own mother. “You let her go.”
It had been raining that night. The last freezing rain before the weather turned to snow, so heavy that it slid off Lan Qiren’s waxed paper umbrella in sheets. Between the dark and the rain, Lan Qiren might not have seen Lai Chunhua at all if he hadn’t heard her murmuring to her son, “That’s it, sweetheart, one foot in front of the other, I know it’s cold, I’m sorry…”
Lan Qiren had stopped, and she caught sight of him as he did. Her eyes were round with fear. Her stomach was round with her second child. Her five year old son was clinging to her side, struggling to stay upright in the frozen mud. In the moonlight, she looked too pale, and he almost snapped, “Lan-furen, you’ll make yourself sick, and the baby’s due any day--”
He didn’t. Little Xichen, who Lan Qiren had named, who he’d guided through nearly every day since he left his mother’s side, looked between them, confused. His mother was frozen. It wasn’t as though they could run, a woman eight and a half months pregnant and a five year old.
“Lan Qiren,” she said. Her voice was still low. She’d always called him that, just his name, which was probably for the best. The idea of her calling him didi, which not even his brother did, felt unpleasant all the way down to the pit of his stomach. “Don’t hurt A-Huan. Make sure they don’t hurt him. None of this was his idea, he’s only five, make sure they don’t--”
“Stop,” he gritted out.
She’d stopped.
He held out his umbrella.
Hesitantly, unsure if it was some kind of trap but clearly with no other option. Lai Chunhua stepped closer and took it.
It wasn’t baseless fear, he knew, that they would punish Xichen for his mother’s actions. They already had, in keeping them apart, and it wasn’t the elders who had had to carry a sobbing toddler out of his mother’s arms once a month for his entire life. It wasn’t the elders who had seen Lai Chunhua growing thinner and thinner between her first and second pregnancy until the doctors scolded her that she needed to start eating properly again, for the baby’s sake. If he did what the rules told him he ought to -- turn Lai Chunhua in for kidnapping her own son and ensure that her second child would likely never lay eyes on her after he finished nursing -- he would be breaking other rules. Do not take advantage of your position to oppress others.
“Do not tell me anything,” Lan Qiren said. He truly did not want to know what foolish plan she had cooked up to keep a five year old and an incoming infant safe on the road. “Just -- keep them safe.”
Lai Chunhua’s jaw tightened. There was a look in her eye suspiciously like hope. He’d never seen it on her before, so he couldn’t be sure. She didn’t thank him. She just said, “With my life.”
Lan Qiren had turned around and walked all the way back to his quarters in the pouring rain. It turned to sleet halfway through, and he had to shut his eyes very hard to not think about Xichen freezing to death in the back hill. For the first time in his life, he had not gone to sleep at nine, and he rose at five without having slept a wink. They realized Lai Chunhua was missing by noon, and then they’d found Xichen’s ribbon, that Lan Qiren had tied onto his head for five years straight, ground into the mud in Caiyi, and Lan Qiren had only been able to trust the word of a woman he didn’t even like --
“I didn’t do anything,” Lan Qiren tells his nephew. To his excruciating humiliation, his eyes are hot. “It was the best I could do.”
“She never forgot,” Lai Huan promises. “She told me and A-Zhan both. Do you want to talk to her? We’re staying--”
“No,” Lan Qiren says quickly. He doesn’t. Despite all of this, he still has to return to Cloud Recesses tomorrow, and he would like to lie as little as possible. Besides, he has nothing to say to Lai Chunhua -- the only things they share are fondness for her sons and disdain for Qingheng-jun. “But are you --” The word doesn’t want to leave his mouth. “--well?”
Lai Huan’s gaze softens. “Both of us are happy,” he says. “A-Niang raised us well. We’ve been traveling around with another family since I was nine or so -- you saw A-Li and Ying-er and A-Cheng.”
Lan Qiren abruptly remembers the existence of the children other than his nephews. “You travel with the lost Jiang heirs,” he says.
Lai Huan laughs. He’s grown out of his chubby cheeks, but his eyes crinkle the same way that they did when he was a small child. “Yes,” he says. “Wei-shushu found them hiding in the wreckage of Lotus Pier and he and Cangse Sanren took them in alongside their son.”
Lan Qiren’s world tilts on its axis; he truly did not think today could get any more bizarre. He needs his good tea, not this mediocre nonsense, his boiled tofu, and a good night of sleep, or he may well qi deviate. “You mean to tell me,” he manages, “that you and your brother have been spending all these years wandering the countryside with Cangse Sanren ?”
“Oh, you know her?” Lai Huan says brightly.
“Mm,” Lan Qiren says faintly.
“I have to go soon,” Lai Huan says. “I’ve kept A-Li and the boys waiting long enough. I’ll never go back to Cloud Recesses, Shufu, know that now -- but if you wanted to meet up again, I would. I could talk to A-Zhan and see if he would meet you too.”
Lan Qiren harrumphs. “I suppose I ought to,” he grumbles. “If only to make sure that Cangse Sanren is not raising you all up into hooligans and criminals.”
Lai Huan only laughs again. Lan Qiren has questioned his decision to look away many, many times over the years but perhaps he can take the way that his nephew still laughs for no discernable reason as proof that he is still himself. “Okay,” he says. He stands and bows properly. “I’m glad we met again,” he says. His tone is absolutely sincere.
Lan Qiren inclines his head. Lai Huan turns to go, and Lan Qiren says, without meaning to, “Wait.” Do not be impulsive, he reminds himself, but it’s too late. His nephew pauses, framed by the lazy sunlight spilling through the doorway. “Why don’t you call yourself Xichen anymore?”
“I don’t need any name that my father gave me,” he says. He doesn’t sound angry so much as matter-of-fact.
“I gave you that name,” Lan Qiren says, because he cannot permit Lai Huan to go around believing any falsehoods, but that one in particular rankles.
Lai Huan’s expression shifts to surprise. “Oh,” he says. “I didn’t know.” A soft smile crosses his face and Lan Qiren is slightly worried that he’ll attempt another hug. “Maybe -- maybe I’ll try it, then. Lai Xichen. What do you think?”
Lan Qiren grunts. “If you like,” he says, but Lai Huan -- Lai Xichen -- smiles like he voiced unambiguous approval.
“Thank you, Shufu,” he says. “For everything.”
His pack of other children are loud enough to be heard as he slips through the door -- “Da-ge, that took forever --” “Is everything okay?” “The fish will be rotten by the time we get home, ugh --” but they soon fade away into the bustle of the marketplace, presumably towards Lai Chunhua and Cangse Sanren and her husband, Wei something. It’s going to give him ulcers just thinking about that woman having anything to do with children, let alone his own nephews.
He will return to Cloud Recesses, where he has been acting sect leader for nearly twenty years now. Perhaps, he thinks heavily, it is time to start training one of the cousins as heir so that he might retire. He lets himself consider it -- handing over responsibilities he never wanted, returning to the classroom. Settling into the rhythm of a life not dictated by the political needs of the sect.
He pays for his tea, he stands. The heat outside has mellowed, leaving the early evening warm. Lan Qiren rarely feels things so trivial as contentment, but for the first time in almost twelve years, he feels -- at ease.