Archive of Our Own ^beta

There was a weak link in the chain that bound Nie Mingjue’s hands. He discovered this almost as soon as he was captured, but he did not break the link right away. He did not break it when his captors left him alone in a prison cell in the Fire Palace. He did not break it when Wen Ruohan and Jin Guangshan paraded him out at the victory banquet of the Wen forces. He did not break it when Wen Ruohan made him a present to his vice-general—the newly legitimized bastard Jin Guangyao.

He waited until after the long journey back to Lanling, when he had been brought into the new residence given to Jin Guangyao and the servants had been dismissed. Then he snapped the weak link and put his hands to Jin Guangyao’s throat.

Jin Guangyao looked at him with hard eyes. There was fear in them, but it was an immaterial kind—not the fear of a rabbit that scurries away from a predator in a panic, but the fear of a stag that shows the whites of its eyes, yet nevertheless lowers its antlers and charges the wolf. Nie Mingjue felt a soft sword wrap around his neck.

For a moment, they gazed at each other.

“It takes longer to die from a slit throat than a broken one,” Nie Mingjue said. “You think I won’t be happy to send us both to hell together?”

“I believe Chifeng-zun would be very happy,” Jin Guangyao said. “And I believe Nie Huaisang would be very unhappy thereafter.”

Nie Mingjue’s hands tightened instinctively.

When the Jin Sect had turned and revealed its continued loyalty to the Qishan Wen, the sects of the Sunshot forces had not all suffered equally. Some of the smaller sects—the ones that had traditionally allied most closely with Lanling—had immediately turned as well. The Gusu Lan and Yunmeng Jiang had bowed. How could they do otherwise? They had suffered too greatly from the burning of Cloud Recesses and the massacre at Lotus Pier, not to mention the fact that the first disciple of the Jiang was still missing. Even if they’d had the strength to continue the war, they could not do so without the Jin Sect’s funding.

Only the Nie had persisted, bashing their own heads on the wall until they cracked, until blood spilled on the ground and boiled in the heat of the burning sun. Among the few survivors, only Nie Huaisang had escaped chains.

He had wept bitterly and begged for death, but Wen Ruohan merely smiled and accepted him as a ‘guest’ of the Qishan Wen. He would live in comfortable rooms, and have good things to eat and all the ink and brushes he liked—after all, wasn’t Nie-er-gongzi known for his artistic skill and his peaceful nature? Hadn’t Nie-er-gongzi been the only one of the Nie to sensibly refrain from making war against the Chief Cultivator? The other survivors were distributed among the loyal sects, their cultivation locked away—and Nie Mingjue, at least, further shackled with the knowledge that, as long as Huaisang was in Wen Ruohan's palm, he still had something left to lose.

“It was you who convinced Wen Ruohan to keep Huaisang comfortably,” Nie Mingjue accused. “He was never anything but kind to you—you would not leave him to die.”

Jin Guangyao said coldly, “Mingjue does not know what I would do.”

That was true. Nie Mingjue let go of his neck. The soft sword tightened, and blood trickled down from all directions. His breath caught—but a moment later, Jin Guangyao released the sword and called for a servant, who brought clean cloth. Jin Guangyao sat Nie Mingjue on a cushion and stemmed the wound with his own hands, then tied a bandage around it.

It would scar.

⚭⚭⚭⚭⚭⚭⚭⚭⚭

The first night in Jinlintai, Nie Mingjue refused to change into the orange and yellow linen uniform of the Jin, to eat the spare food leftover from Jin Guangyao’s meal, or to sleep on the pallet provided for him. He was a prisoner—he wore his prison robes and knelt in the corner of the room until dawn.

Jin Guangyao rose early.

“Mingjue,” he said. “Will you go to the family kitchen and bring up breakfast?”

“I will not.”

“Will you fetch water for me to wash?”

Nie Mingjue only glared at him. Jin Guangyao’s face didn’t register his disapproval at all. He simply went to the door and sent other servants for food and water. When they arrived, he didn’t offer to let Nie Mingjue wash—but he did set aside food once more, and this time Nie Mingjue ate it. Jin Guangyao had summoned a cultivator to file away the long chains that he had worn last night, but those had mainly been for humiliation—spelled metal cuffs remained at his wrists and ankles, and they were more than sufficient to suppress his spiritual power. He could not practice inedia like this.

When Jin Guangyao finished his meal and dressed for the day, he commanded Nie Mingjue to accompany him; again Nie Mingjue refused, and again Jin Guangyao failed to reprimand him. He simply left, locking the door behind him. Nie Mingjue got up and investigated the room. It was thoroughly locked, with talismans to reinforce it—the windows and the doors couldn’t be opened, and there were no weapons that he could find. Jin Guangyao had taken both the soft sword and the knife from under his pillow.

He had hoped to find something that would help him take down the Wen and the Jin, but there was nothing. Jin Guangyao had only recently arrived—he must have hidden any important papers in an external office or a library, and there had been no time for them to migrate to his private residence. There were some books, some clothes and accessories, a fine set of the four scholar’s treasures, a tea set, an altar with Meng Shi’s tablet, and a wall hanging that he recognized as having once hung in the finest guest room of the Fire Palace.

Over the course of the day, Nie Mingjue broke everything he could find. He ripped through cloth, smashed porcelain, cracked the ink stick into small pieces and ground them against the wall hanging. The only things he left untouched were the altar and the chamber pot. When he was finished, he returned to kneeling on his pallet.

Jin Guangyao was annoyed when he returned late in the evening.

“When I was a boy,” he said. “A visitor gave my mother a puppy. He said it was a very clever and brave dog who could be trained to perform all manner of tasks—but the first day she had it, all it did was chew up her shoes and furniture and piss on the floor. She wanted to get rid of it, but I begged her to keep it and promised her faithfully that I would train it better.”

“I am not your dog,” Nie Mingjue snarled.

Jin Guangyao directed other servants to clean up the mess and remove the damaged items, and replace them the next day from the Jin stores. He went to bed.

Nie Mingjue had not slept all day, in case Jin Guangyao came back—but now he was tired. He sat back and stretched his legs out in front of him, not comfortable enough to give in, but enough that he could rest.

“You’ve always been a liar,” he said suddenly.

“What do you mean?” Jin Guangyao asked sleepily.

“When Huaisang showed you the birds he kept, when you first came to Qinghe—you told him you never had any pets.”

“I never did.”

“The puppy—”

“On the second day, it chewed up my mother’s favorite cushion, and bit me when I tried to stop it. My mother had it drowned.”

The room was quiet once more.

⚭⚭⚭⚭⚭⚭⚭⚭⚭

On the second day, Nie Mingjue waited for replacements to come from the Jin storage, but the only thing that arrived was another desk, and scholar’s tools. He dutifully smashed those, too; Jin Guangyao was more annoyed with him that evening, and snapped at him to behave.

The morning of the third day, as he left, he threatened Nie Mingjue with chains and a beating if he persisted in making a nuisance of himself. Nie Mingjue sat in the sparse room for most of the day, waiting. When no one came and it was getting late, and he felt himself going mad trapped in his own skull—finally, he went to the altar, the only thing left to break. He smashed the bowls on the floor and tore through the offerings, and then he looked at the memorial tablet itself.

Rage was simmering hot beneath his skin, and a part of him wanted to crack the tablet with his bare hands… but a better part resisted. When he looked at the characters for Meng Shi’s name, he couldn’t help but complete the phrase—shi hua, poetry and paintings. His own mother had hua in her name.

“You raised a snake and a liar,” he told the tablet. “I’m sorry if that was not your intention.”

He knocked the tablet aside.

That evening, when Jin Guangyao returned to the room, he was instantly furious. Nie Mingjue was kneeling on the pallet, as usual; Jin Guangyao came and slapped him. He was not a strong cultivator or a large person, but he was still a cultivator, and Nie Mingjue’s head snapped to the side with a sharp inhale.

“Take him to the courtyard and beat him,” Jin Guangyao ordered the guards.

Nie Mingjue was no stranger to pain, nor to the humiliation of being made to kneel in the courtyard for punishment. He tried to count the blows, but Jin Guangyao must have been truly livid—he lost count, not helped by the fact that this was the first time since he was a very small child that he could not rely on his golden core to manage the pain.

He tried to get up when the discipline master was finished, but he stumbled. His knees had gone numb from kneeling on the stone, and his muscles had seized. His back throbbed with a hot, persistent pain that ached down to his bones.

Two of the Jin guards hauled him to his feet and began to lead him down the path, but they weren’t returning to Jin Guangyao’s residence.

“Where—” he started to ask.

“Er-gongzi ordered you to be bathed after your punishment,” one of them said, wrinkling his nose. “So that your wounds stay clean, and because he is tired of the stench.”

“Does the stench of a Nie beast ever fade?” the other guard asked.

Nie Mingjue, with the greatest reluctance, allowed himself to be dragged to the baths. He washed himself and forced his ears to turn to stone against the guards’ crude witticisms. His prisoner’s clothes were taken away to be burned; he was dressed at last in trousers and an inner robe of Jin yellow, and walked back to Jin Guangyao’s rooms.

Meng Shi’s tablet had been returned to its proper place, with additional offerings as apology, and the room had been righted. Some of the furnishings had been replaced with plainer things. The bedding of Nie Mingjue’s pallet had been changed.

Jin Guangyao was sitting at the desk, writing. He looked up at the intrusion.

“Lie down, Mingjue,” he said, pointing at the pallet. “I want to examine the injuries and make sure the discipline master has not been too enthusiastic.”

Nie Mingjue told himself he complied only because it was what he wanted to do. He lay down on his front. One of the guards approached Jin Guangyao and said something to him in a low voice. The susurrus of the brush halted.

“Ah.”

The guards left. Jin Guangyao finished his work and put everything away

“Take off your clothes,” he said. “I have ointments here.”

Nie Mingjue took off his inner robe and lay back down, but Jin Guangyao didn’t move. A combination of anger and embarrassment brought red to his cheeks, but after a small hesitation Nie Mingjue removed his trousers as well. He turned his face away.

Damn you, he thought.

Jin Guangyao didn’t comment on the absence of a cock between Nie Mingjue’s legs—not at first. He knelt at his side and uncorked two bottles. He applied one to the places where the skin had split. It stung, but Nie Mingjue bit the inside of his cheek hard to keep from making any noise. The other was a bruise ointment, which he applied to all the unbroken skin, rubbing it in dutifully. His body was small, but he had big hands with strong, sure fingers.

“I had wondered why Father didn’t object to His Excellency giving me such a present,” he said after a moment. “The commanding general of the opposing forces is a kingly gift. But now I understand.”

“What do you understand?” Nie Mingjue asked grudgingly.

“Naturally, it is assumed that any man given a valuable war prize with a cunt should make use of it,” Jin Guangyao said in a bland voice. “But Father has no appreciation for the male form, and likely considers you to be quite ugly. I beg pardon for the rudeness, Mingjue.”

Mingjue’s knuckles cracked with the force of his fist. He turned his face and looked up at Jin Guangyao.

“Doesn’t it follow, then,” he asked. “That your father insults you by giving you such an ugly prize?”

He thought he had scored a point, but Jin Guangyao’s lips formed a tight, strained smile.

“It does,” he admitted. “I suspect Father is also amused at the possibility that a bastard son of a whore might further debase himself by fathering a bastard son of a slave.”

He moved to stopper the ointment bottles; Nie Mingjue reached out and grabbed his wrist. This time, Jin Guangyao was not prepared for the assault. He startled and jerked his arm back uselessly, and was clumsy in calling up the soft sword.

“If you put a child in me,” Nie Mingjue said, his voice deadly sure. “I will cast myself down the stairs until it’s dead. I don’t care if I die, too.”

Jin Guangyao looked at him with a curious expression.

“Do you care if Huaisang dies?” he asked.

Nie Mingjue felt a muscle in his forehead jump, but he maintained a stubborn silence. It was bad enough that his brother was a hostage for his sake; bad enough that he was responsible for the massacre and enslavement of his entire clan. Every man had a breaking point, and for him it was this. He would not bring one more innocent soul into this living nightmare.

Jin Guangyao nodded slowly and thoughtfully, and Nie Mingjue’s heart lurched. He realized, belatedly, that he had just tacitly offered his body for Jin Guangyao’s use, as long as he did not get pregnant from it. In all honesty, he was not sure if pregnancy was likely—he had been practicing cultivation of the body since he was ten years old, and the result was that his breasts had never grown in, he could grow facial hair, and he had never suffered from monthly cycles. But the masters had all assured him that it was possible, particularly if he let his cultivation lapse, and Nie Mingjue had never tested fate in that way.

He had no intention to do so like this.

“You won’t have the option to cast yourself down the stairs if you don’t leave this room,” Jin Guangyao pointed out.

Nie Mingjue looked at him silently.

“Serve me properly,” Jin Guangyao suggested. “Maybe you’ll have a better time defying me that way, too, rather than sitting in this room and throwing temper tantrums.”

Nie Mingjue sat up and wrapped himself in his inner robe. Then he turned his back on Jin Guangyao and stubbornly pretended to be asleep, until he drifted off.

⚭⚭⚭⚭⚭⚭⚭⚭⚭

The next day, Jin Guangyao asked Nie Mingjue to bring breakfast, and he did. He had to ask one of the guards for directions, and was then chastised and had to ask a serving girl instead, who looked at him with contempt. He visited the larger kitchen that fed the slaves and servants, too, but they looked at him with horror when he suggested he intended to eat at the same time as his master. He should have risen earlier, they scolded. Once again, he grudgingly accepted scraps from Jin Guangyao’s plate.

It seemed that Jin Guangyao was being cautious, because he did not risk bringing Nie Mingjue out before other cultivators. He spent the day working in his residence instead, although he sometimes tested Nie Mingjue by ordering him to do things like fetch water or open the windows. Once, Nie Mingjue took the opportunity to snoop through the storage room for anything that might be useful to him.

“Come here,” Jin Guangyao said without looking up, when he returned with the incense that had been requested. When Nie Mingjue got close enough, Jin Guangyao smacked him. “That is for delaying,” he said. “And snooping around. Perform your tasks promptly and diligently, Nie Mingjue.”

For half a month, things went like that. Jin Guangyao began to take short errands out of his rooms, with Mingjue acting as a personal body slave. He was testing his control over Nie Mingjue in environments that were low-risk; they went to some of the less-popular gardens, training grounds and libraries at odd times, to the kitchens to talk to servants. At no point did they encounter anyone of higher rank than a mid-level disciple, no one Jin Guangyao would care to be embarrassed in front of.

Nie Mingjue bided his time. His rage, as blazing as a fire at first, had settled down into a glowing coal. It would not do to burn himself out too quickly. He was fond of action, but he had waited many years for his revenge against Wen Ruohan, and he could wait still. Especially when he was parted from the bloodthirsty call of his saber. He missed Baxia with a persistent ache in his chest… but even with his cultivation leaving him more vulnerable to cold and pain, he had to admit that his thoughts were clearer than they had been in years.

One day, Jin Guangyao settled in the library and spent the better part of an afternoon meeting with every upper servant in Jinlintai—the steward, the stablemaster, the head cook, the head laundress, the housekeeper. Most of these meetings were simple review, as he compiled a minute accounting of everyone who worked to keep the sect running, every new arrival, every vacancy left by the war.

Nie Mingjue listened. He had never had Jin Guangyao’s incredible memory, but he was determined to know exactly how many of his people had ended up in Lanling, and where. He listened as he stood unobtrusively by the back wall with his head down, as he ground new ink for Jin Guangyao to use, as he adjusted the shade over the window. When he was sent to fetch wine, he hastened back so he could listen as he poured it for Jin Guangyao and his latest guest.

“So, you have tamed your beast!”

His blood ran cold. Jin Guangshan laughed, and it was all Nie Mingjue could do to keep the wine ewer upright and intact. He badly wanted to crash it over Jin Guangyao’s head, but he set it down and retreated to his spot by the wall. He fixed his eyes on the soles of Jin Guangyao’s shoes and held his hands behind his back, so tightly his knuckles cracked.

“I have, Father,” Jin Guangyao said smoothly. “Nie Mingjue had some talents as a general, after all. He knows that some battles can only be met with surrender.”

“Is that so?” Jin Guangshan snorted. “I would not have guessed him capable.”

You are a coward and a traitor, Nie Mingjue wanted to snarl in his face. Worse than Wen Ruohan, who can claim madness, and worse than your bastard son, who can claim filial piety. You may have survived the last war, but you will not survive the next.

“I will not stay long—I was merely passing by on my way into town. You have what you need?”

“Yes, Father.”

“Good. You must devote yourself to such matters, A-Yao. When people do not know their place, it can only bring mischief.”

Jin Guangyao bowed his head silently. Nie Mingjue cast his mind back over the day, and tried to recall if he had heard anything of actual sect business—anything to do with disciples, night hunts, sword training, building up Jin Guangyao’s weak golden core. He could recall nothing. His head was too full of Nie names to take in anything else.

“The Nie girl in your retinue,” Jin Guangyao began, and Nie Mingjue almost jumped out of his skin. “I trust Father has no complaints?”

Jin Guangshan rolled his eyes and stood.

“My complaint is that all of Qinghe contains nothing but cows and mountain goats. Aside from that, the girl is fine.” His eyes flickered up to Nie Mingjue, and he sneered. “Not as dour-faced as some.”

He left. Nie Mingjue waited until he could reasonably have made it to the end of the hall.

“Who?” he demanded.

Jin Guangyao had picked up his pen and continued to write, without acknowledgement. Nie Mingjue counted to ten, until he could speak without shouting.

“Zhuzi.” 

“Yes, Mingjue?”

“Who is working in Jin-zongzhu’s retinue?”

“Nie Weizhen.”

He was ashamed that his first instinct was relief.

Nie Weizhen was his second cousin. She was fearless and tough—but not like most of the Nies. Bamboo, not oak, flexible and clever when others were blunt and stubborn. She had berated Nie Mingjue on this point more than once, and her instincts usually proved correct. Furthermore, she was only three years younger than him, and he had once done her the distinct favor of distracting her father when they had stopped in to check the inventory of a weapons store room and Nie Mingjue, entering first, had opened the door to find Nie Weizhen and one of his junior disciples in a state of… some disarray.

He resented it. With every fiber of his being, he resented it. But there were younger women among the Nie, more delicate women. Virgins. If there was anyone who could tough it out, anyone who might even, perhaps, fool Jin Guangshan into doing what she wanted without appearing to do so—it was Nie Weizhen.

He added her name to his mental list. Someday he was going to burn Jinlintai to the ground. On that day, Nie Weizhen and every other Nie in this accursed trash heap would be at his side, and Jin Guangshan would be at his feet.

⚭⚭⚭⚭⚭⚭⚭⚭⚭

After that, Jin Guangyao began to have Nie Mingjue accompany him almost everywhere. It was galling—Nie Mingjue was forced to grit his teeth and ignore it when Jin Zixun and other young men he could snap in half with one hand laughed at him and jeered at how far the estimable Chifeng-zun had fallen. Worse were Jin Guangyao’s sly allusions to the fact that he retained some of his usefulness, which inevitably silenced the other person immediately.

When Nie Mingjue’s rage began to clear, however, he found himself puzzled by those remarks. Why would Jin Guangyao suggest that Nie Mingjue’s body was as powerful as it had ever been? He was an attendant—his duties didn’t include feats of brute strength. Surely it could only be taken as an allusion to sex, and even if everyone in Jinlintai knew that Nie Mingjue was misaligned, they would still deride Jin Guangyao as a cut-sleeve if they heard him gloating about the appearance of a bigger, stronger, rougher-looking man in his bed.

The answer came a few days later, when Jin Guangyao was invited to take lunch with Madam Jin and Jin Zixuan. By now, Nie Mingjue had been all over Jinlintai, with three main exceptions: Fragrance Hall, and the residences of the sect leader and his madam. He was not unhappy to have avoided them this long.

While Jin Guangyao was inside, Nie Mingjue stood at the door. He was supposed to keep his gaze respectfully lowered at all times, but with no one around, he could not stop himself from looking out over the blossoming courtyard garden instead—and then, when he heard the door, he glanced over and saw Jin Zixuan coming out. The sect heir stopped in his tracks and turned his head so they would not make eye contact. But he did not go away just yet; he was clearly debating whether he was obligated to acknowledge his former superior.

Contempt rose in Nie Mingjue’s breast, and maybe showed on his face, because Jin Zixuan strode off down the corridor. But his half-brother did not follow him; the door shut again, and Nie Mingjue kept waiting. Finally, the door opened and Jin Guangyao came out. He took a moment to catch his breath and tug at his clothes, then his wrist flicked to summon Nie Mingjue and he resumed his usual activity. First he went to the kitchens to rely some directions from Madam Jin.

Nie Mingjue had a sudden urge to correct him. It was more appropriate for Jin Guangyao to work from his offices and summon the head of the kitchen to speak to him, rather than go himself. The superior should move the inferior. That had been true when he was only Meng-fushi, and it was doubly true now that he was Jin-er-gongzi. But back then, when Nie Mingjue told him so, Meng Yao had only smiled and said it was more convenient this way, and at the moment Nie Mingjue found himself disinclined to make Jin Guangyao’s life any easier. So he said nothing.

After that, they went to the administrative offices, where Jin Guangyao worked for a time, reviewing ledgers and taking reports from various officers. Nie Mingjue was quite sure Jin Guangyao had mentioned his intention to visit the markets of Lanling earlier that day, but evidently he had changed his mind. When he was finished, he went back to his residence to change into better clothes for a formal dinner. He began to reach back and untie his sash, and then he stopped and pressed his lips together. His hands gripped the sides of his robes tightly.

“Mingjue,” he said. “Help me.”

Nie Mingjue scoffed.

“A month as a spoiled second son, and you lose the ability to dress yourself,” he muttered.

Over the days, he had picked up many little ways of rebelling against his new lowered position. He untied Jin Guangyao’s sash and removed his outer robes, then dressed him in finer ones and notched the belt too tight.  Jin Guangyao made no acknowledgement. When he came back from the banquet at night, again he gestured for Nie Mingjue to help him undress down to his trousers.

This time, when he turned to fetch a clean inner robe to sleep in, Nie Mingjue saw the bare skin of his back. There was a large, maroon-colored bruise beneath the join of us his shoulder. It made him wince just to see it—such an injury would certainly make it difficult to reach back and undress. He wondered how Jin Guangyao had sustained it, not being a warrior.

The next morning, Nie Mingjue helped Jin Guangyao dress without comment. It seemed to him that many of the Jin seemed to be snickering more than they had the day before. Late morning, they were descending one of Jinlintai’s endless staircases, when suddenly a passing cousin stuck out a foot to trip Jin Guangyao.

Instinctively, Nie Mingjue reached out and steadied him. A soft, fearful sound burst from Jin Guangyao’s lips, but after a single frozen heartbeat, he collected himself. He smoothed down the silk of his skirts, made eye contact with his cousin, and nodded coolly.

Nie Mingjue looked between them. His thoughts raced. He could not remember if he had seen this cousin before, if there was any particular reason he bore a grudge against Jin Guangyao. Would there be a fight? What would he do? In another life, he would have stepped in to defend Jin Guangyao as a matter of friendship and of principle. Now, he had been betrayed by Jin Guangyao, enslaved by him… but wouldn’t stepping back be seen as a favor to this other Jin? He didn’t care much for that, either.

The Jin looked at him and visibly blanched; Nie Mingjue scowled deeper, and the man coughed and murmured, “Guangyao,” in a bland but technically polite greeting. They parted.

Later that night, Nie Mingjue helped Jin Guangyao remove his outer robes and his inner shirt. He rested his hand on the bruise. Jin Guangyao went stiff and still; Nie Mingjue pressed and he hissed sharply, turning his head.

“One of your cousins did that?” he said.

“No.”

Nie Mingjue scowled. He took away the outer robes and put them back in a drawer without folding them, so there would be deep, irregular creases when they were next brought out.

“What is the point of lying to me now?” he asked.

“I’m not lying,” Jin Guangyao said. His voice was curt, but he kept talking as he slipped into a fresh shirt. “None of my cousins have worked up the nerve—not since I’ve had you at my back.”

“Today—?”

“It was Madam Jin. She threw a statuette at me. Jin Ziming is always trying to get on her good side, so I shouldn’t be surprised he has spies among her staff.” He turned, and a smile that didn’t touch his eyes cut across his face. “And then you snarled and scared him away again.”

“I told you—I’m not your dog.”

“Then you don’t want a treat?” They were quiet, staring at each other. Jin Guangyao’s eyes went to his desk and back. “I had a letter from Qishan.”

Nie Mingjue resisted, but not for long.

“What did it say?” he asked.

“Huaisang has been moping, but lately he has recovered some of his spirits. He wrote a hanging scroll for His Excellency. His Excellency was very pleased with it—he has hung it in his personal study.”

“What did he write?” Nie Mingjue asked, like a man dying of thirst asking which way to the nearest well. Jin Guangyao stood and went to the desk to consult the letter.

“Sun and Rain,” he said. “A foreign guest should have a happy heart—His Excellency was pleased with such an attitude.”

Nie Mingjue’s heart gave a hopeful flutter. Should, rather than does. A poem that contained both sun and rain, the absence of sun—and hardly even a poem, but a little folk song, all that Huaisang saw fitting for the Chief Cultivator, a choice dripping with disdain. His brother had not given up hope.

⚭⚭⚭⚭⚭⚭⚭⚭⚭

Life in Jinlintai was… uneasy. Nie Mingjue could perform his tasks sloppily. He could walk too quickly, forcing Jin Guangyao to hasten to match his long strides if he wanted to remain in front. He could bring up the wrong food, or get lost in the enormous maze of the complex. He could carry scrolls too tightly and crush the fine parchment, pretend not to hear orders in the presence of others, distract Jin Guangyao while he worked by lurking right at the corner of his eye and fidgeting.

But increasingly it felt as though there was no point to it. It had become extremely clear to him that Jin Guangyao’s status as the legitimized second son and a hero of the war had earned him no respect among most of the denizens of Lanling. His fairness and efficiency came to earn him the esteem and even affection of the servants—but nobody who had the Jin name, no one intimate with the family, no one of any distinction.

He hated Jin Guangyao, and his hatred was pure and justified. It felt cheap to sneer at him when everyone else was sneering for such a trivial reason as parentage.

His rebellions changed. Now, Nie Mingjue focused not on spiting his master, but finding his people, chained and cowed among the free servants of Jinlintai. As a matter of fact, he became more eager to obey Jin Guangyao’s instructions, even to find work for himself, because if he volunteered to tell the stables to ready a cart for Madam Jin, he might linger a few minutes with Nie Suwen as he took barrels of feed down by the loft.

He tried to get on friendly terms with the free servants, too. They did not know what to make of this sect leader who was now the lowest of them all, but several of the Nie women had been assigned to the heavy labor of the kitchen, and quickly became familiar faces. When the Jin girls saw Nie Mingjue pause to offer a kind word and a reassuring hand on the shoulder, they softened to him, and pointed him where to look on his visits. Jin Guangyao occasionally complained about his slowness, but his dawdling was not bad enough to earn another beating.

Then the hunt came. The remaining great sects were invited to Jinlintai for a ceremonial night-hunt and a banquet, and Nie Mingjue’s humiliation reached new depths.

This would be the first time his former peers would see him in his lowly position as a loyal slave of the Jin. At the opening ceremony, he stood among the other servants offstage rather than at Jin Guangyao’s back; theoretically, he could have relished in the invisibility this opportunity afforded him, but that was not to be. Jin Guangyao flicked his hand, and six Nie cultivators with their wrists bound in spiritual chains were brought in and made to stand between the targets.

The fire roared in his breast. None of these cultivators had been comfortably serving the nobility of the Jin or the Wen sects; they were ragged and filthy, straight from a dungeon or a mine somewhere. He trembled with rage, even as he crossed the open field, ignoring the shout of the head servant meant to keep the event running smoothly. He stood between the rest of the Nie, just askew from the center target.

“Zongzhu,” they whispered, like wind blowing around tombstones. Get back—thank you, zongzhu—get back—are you well?—we are well, you don’t need to do this—

Nie Mingjue clenched his jaw and did not respond. He looked up at the dais for the first time. Wen Ruohan was smirking down at him. Jin Guangshan looked annoyed. Jiang Wanyin looked disturbed. Lan Xichen had his eyes closed. Jin Guangyao’s face was as blank as virgin jade.

He looked out at the crowd of young cultivators participating in the archery competition. Jin Zixuan stepped forward first. He tried to avoid Nie Mingjue’s gaze again, but Nie Mingjue would not look away. Finally, their eyes met.

You did this, Nie Mingjue thought. Your sect, your people, your father did this. Don’t ever think you can look away again.

Jin Zixuan lifted the bow and notched an arrow. He took a deep breath to steady himself, and let it fly. It came so close that the wind stirred against Nie Mingjue’s cheek—and planted itself in the bullseye of the target directly behind him.

No one else was so bold. Not a single other competitor aimed for the center target—Wen Ning was so nervous that he sent his arrow careening over the targets entirely—and the contest progressed in a grimmer mood than anyone had expected. The last participant to shoot was Lan Wangji, who merely inclined his head and said, “I yield.”

The competition was concluded, the Jin having won favorable position. Guards recalled the Nie cultivators, and Nie Mingjue went with them; the guards looked at him askance, but said nothing.

“Mingjue.” Jin Guangyao had stepped down from the dais. He beckoned. “Come.”

He considered standing his ground. But the Nie cultivators bowed their heads, the most they dared to do here in the open. If he mutinied, his people would feel compelled to do the same, and they would suffer more for it.

Jin Guangyao turned and walked away, his head raised as though he had no doubts. Nie Mingjue followed.

⚭⚭⚭⚭⚭⚭⚭⚭⚭

The banquet was, somehow, worse. It was the first time Nie Mingjue served at a formal dinner. He could see Jin Guangshan’s smug face in the corner of his eye wherever he went, and in close quarters it was more difficult to pretend that he did not recognize all of these other cultivators who had been his peers, even his juniors, a scant six months earlier.

Jin Guangyao did not sit for the beginning of the meal; he bustled here and there, greeting guests and directing servants. There was some minor unpleasantness when Jin Zixun pressured Lan Xichen to take a drink, and failed to do the same with Lan Wangji. The air was tense as Jin Guangyao cajoled his cousin. Nie Mingjue watched from the edge of the room, wondering what would happen if he stormed right up to Jin Zixun and knocked the cup back in his face. It would be satisfying, that was for sure.

But it was not necessary.

“Oh, what does that matter, foolish boy?” Wen Ruohan said dismissively. Jin Zixun flushed, but even he was not foolhardy enough to push back against the Chief Cultivator. He drained the cup himself and wandered off. “A-Yao,” Wen Ruohan said warmly. “Come, sit near me.”

“Your Excellency is kind,” Jin Guangyao said with a demure smile.

Jin Zixun and Jin Guangshan looked particularly annoyed by this sign of favor, but they could not object. Jin Guangyao walked over to Wen Ruohan’s table and met Nie Mingjue’s gaze. He inclined his head.

Nie Mingjue knew what he wanted. He expected Nie Mingjue to go bring him a seat for Wen Ruohan’s table, take the tray of food from the kitchen servants, bring it over, and then kneel submissively behind them to attend to their plates and wine cups for the rest of the meal.

He wouldn’t do it. If Wen Ruohan wanted to chain him up against the wall and tear strips off his flesh—again—then let him. There were some things Nie Mingjue would not do.

So he pretended not to see. He turned and walked deeper into the hidden warren of Jinlintai. He spotted a friendly face and stopped.

“Da Jing,” he said. “Will you wait on er-gongzi? He is sitting with Wen Ruohan, and…”

Da Jing was a free servant who had been with the Jin Sect for years and was eager for advancement. She nodded, eyes shining.

“Your manners aren’t so rough that you need be worried,” she said kindly, which might have made Nie Mingjue laugh under other circumstances. “But I will take over if you are so concerned.”

“Yes. Thank you.”

He went down to the kitchens and remained there for the rest of the banquet, hauling crates of wine and sacks of fruits. No one cared what his face looked like down there.

⚭⚭⚭⚭⚭⚭⚭⚭⚭

Nie Mingjue had not seen Jin Guangyao angry often in their association, but he was angry after the banquet.

“Do you have any idea what you owe me?” he snapped as soon as the door shut behind him. “Do you know how badly this could have gone for the Sunshot forces had I not intervened?”

“Fuck you, Jin Guangyao.”

“Wen Ruohan wanted your head, Nie Mingjue! He wanted you to be publicly executed, cut into a dozen pieces and scattered across the jianghu, with Huaisang living just long enough to watch, and if it wasn’t for my intervention—”

“You think this will convince me I should kneel for him?”

“I am doing the best that I can! Anyone else would have had you whipped tonight! You could be whipped in the courtyard every other day, sent to labor in the mines, sent to labor in my bed—all I have asked for is a little bit of decorum—”

Nie Mingjue laughed. He couldn’t help himself, and Jin Guangyao’s face flushed bright red.

“Do you expect me to thank you for this, Meng Yao?” he mocked. “I won’t. Damn you a thousand times for what you’ve done—I won’t cringe and fawn over you because it could have been worse! Go ahead, make it worse.”

“You—”

“If you feel your treatment of me is not equal to the hatred I bear for you,” Nie Mingjue snarled. “Then make it worse, because I will not relent!”

Jin Guangyao did not kiss him—he grabbed Nie Mingjue by the collar and hauled him close to bite his lip. Nie Mingjue felt himself gasp, felt Jin Guangyao’s tongue in his mouth, felt a traitorous spike of desire in his gut.

He stumbled to his knees and began to wrestle with Jin Guangyao’s clothing, trying to make his movements brisk and businesslike. This was not the romantic tryst he might have dreamed about in Qinghe—it was a whore’s business. Nothing more.

There was no correlation between Jin Guangyao’s frame and the size of his sex—his body may have been delicate and frail, but his cock was thick and surprisingly long, warm and soft in Nie Mingjue’s hand, stiffening at his touch. He wrapped his hand around the base and stroked it. Despite his defiant attitude, he felt slightly timid; he was a man who liked to be skilled in all that he attempted, but he had never tried this before, and had only the faint memory of some spring books to guide him. He opened his mouth and pressed a clumsy kiss to the tip of Jin Guangyao’s cock.

“Of course,” Jin Guangyao muttered to himself. “Ah, Nie Mingjue. You so rarely surprise me. I am afraid this is not one of those days.”

He took his own cock in hand and jerked it rapidly, bringing himself to full hardness while his other hand fisted in Nie Mingjue’s hair, holding him close.

“Open your mouth,” he said. His cock jutted out from his body proudly, foreskin retreated, and when Nie Mingjue obeyed he could feel the heat of the other man’s body quivering on his tongue. “Suck.”

He closed his lips. Jin Guangyao began to guide his head down, but without warning Nie Mingjue choked and gagged, and had to pull back. Twice more he made an attempt, and twice more he failed, coughing before he had taken even half of Jin Guangyao’s length into his mouth.

“Pathetic,” Jin Guangyao sneered.

“I’m not ashamed to be an incompetent whore,” Nie Mingjue snapped back.

Jin Guangyao’s expression soured. He grabbed Nie Mingjue by the collar and and hauled him to his feet, then shoved him down over the bed. He pushed his clothes aside until his legs were bare, and for the first time Nie Mingjue felt the faintest stirrings of nervousness. He had been told to expect pain.

But Jin Guangyao had not lost all of his composure. Something cool and wet dripped into the crease of Nie Mingjue’s ass. Jin Guangyao spread it around liberally with his finger and pressed into his hole. Nie Mingjue choked out a gasp at the strange intrusion. It was on the border between pleasure and pain. Jin Guangyao added a second finger and he shuddered, craving more, like the irresistible need to press on a wound.

Jin Guangyao leaned over him, a warm weight on his back. His teeth scraped against Nie Mingjue’s neck.

“You’re dripping for me, gege,” he mocked. “Both holes.”

“You—” 

The blunt head of Jin Guangyao’s cock pressed against his hole. Nie Mingjue’s forehead dropped onto the mattress and his thighs shook as it pushed into his body, brutal, leaving him no choice but to yield. When Jin Guangyao’s hips were flush with his, he paused, panting hot and harsh against Nie Mingjue’s back. He pressed an idle kiss to his spine.

“Just do it,” Nie Mingjue snarled.

Jin Guangyao took hold of his hips. He withdrew almost completely and thrust in again, and this time Nie Mingjue couldn’t help the low, reedy moan that tore from his throat. Jin Guangyao laughed breathlessly; Nie Mingjue folded his arms and bit his own forearm to keep himself silent as Jin Guangyao set a steady, demanding rhythm.

“Do you hate me for this, Mingjue?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“Are you so sure about that?”

“Yes,” he insisted, but his voice was strained and it sounded like the answer to a different question. He bit down again, the pain in his arm nothing like the pleasure-pain that lit him aflame.

He did not know how long it lasted. It seemed like it couldn’t be very long at all, but his perception of his surroundings had gone hazy. He only knew that his body had not fully adjusted, and he was in no danger of coming himself when Jin Guangyao shuddered and dug his fingers in tight enough to scrape skin.

They lay there together for a long moment. It was precisely the sort of intimacy Nie Mingjue had wanted to avoid; if he was going to be fucked, let him be fucked. Kissed and cuddled and coddled was a separate thing entirely. But he didn’t say anything. He was wrestling with the sudden desire for Jin Guangyao to stay just like that—pressing him into the mattress, cock softening in his ass—while Nie Mingjue reached down to rub his clit until he finished, too.

He closed his eyes and forced himself to remember the banquet. The archery competition, the arrow flying past his cheek. His desire flagged.

Jin Guangyao kissed the curve of Nie Mingjue’s neck before he stood. He cleared his throat and began to strip off what remained of his clothes.

“I will call for a bath,” he said. “You should wash.”

They did not speak of it. But from that night on, sex became a regular part of their relationship. On days when Jin Guangyao was particularly frustrated by his family, he would simply instruct Nie Mingjue to bend over—and Nie Mingjue did his best to disguise his eagerness, to muffle his moans and to growl whenever Jin Guangyao dared any more affectionate gestures.

One morning, Jin Guangyao woke up hard and called him over, and Nie Mingjue spent the better part of an hour learning how to suck his cock, to take it all the way in his throat and swallow its release. He told himself that, if he was pleased, it was only because of the sense of power it gave him. Jin Guangyao’s decorous mask fell away when his cock was sucked; his lips trembled, his eyes went heavy-lidded, and he made a high, quivering sound in the back of his throat. His balls were delicate in Nie Mingjue’s hands.

But increasingly Nie Mingjue found it more difficult to hide his own desire when they fucked. One evening, he gave in. His cunt was hot and pulsing, slick with want, and he had only enough control to wait until Jin Guangyao had gone to bed. Nie Mingjue lay on his pallet and listened. The room was quiet—no creaking or shuffling that suggested Jin Guangyao was kept awake by any discomfort.

Nie Mingjue removed his trousers. Without preamble, he slipped two fingers through the puffy lips of his sex, gathering up the wetness there and bringing it to his clit. It was large and stiff in his hand, and an involuntary noise fell from his lips. He clapped his other hand over his mouth and rubbed in tight, quick circles. Slick sounds and heavy breathing filled the air, but he told himself it was nothing. It was nothing. Just another moment—

A light talisman fluttered to life. Jin Guangyao rolled onto his side and pushed himself up on one elbow. His eyes wandered from Nie Mingjue’s cunt to his face and back again, and a satisfied smirk curved his mouth.

“I don’t know why you look so smug,” Nie Mingjue said. “If you had done anything worthwhile, this wouldn’t be necessary.”

Jin Guangyao did not respond. He merely watched, smiling, as Nie Mingjue came arching into his own touch.

⚭⚭⚭⚭⚭⚭⚭⚭⚭

One of Jin Guangyao’s duties in Lanling was to welcome guests, just as he had in Qinghe. There were many more layers of bureaucracy among the Jin, however; unexpected guests were rare, and Nie Mingjue was sure he saw a flash of alarm in Jin Guangyao’s face when he received notice that Wen Qing had been sighted flying towards Jinlintai. But he stifled it, and was waiting on the steps with a smile and a bow as she alighted.

“Welcome, Wen-guniang!” he declared. She bowed in return.

“Jin-gongzi. Forgive me for intruding.”

“Not at all. The guards informed me of your arrival just now—my only concern is that we may not be prepared to welcome you as graciously as you deserve. I hope it is not urgent business that brought you?”

“You would know better than I,” Wen Qing said in a crisp voice. “His Excellency received a letter from Jin-zongzhu that mentioned he has been ill lately. My uncle is concerned that he may have been poisoned—he sent me right away to determine the state of Jin-zongzhu’s health.”

“Ah.”

Nie Mingjue bit the inside of his cheek to try and hide a smirk. Jin Guangshan had gotten shamefully drunk twice in the last two weeks—once because he was outraged and sulky that no one had yet managed to re-establish the engagement between Jin Zixuan and Jiang Yanli, and once because he had decided to recover his spirits by hosting a party at a whorehouse that was so raucous, echoes were heard throughout Lanling. Some of the servants had snickered that the sect leader had chosen a whorehouse in such a cheap neighborhood that it might have been the food that caused his difficulties, rather than the wine.

“I believe, and hope, that you have made the journey for nothing, Wen-guniang. But of course His Excellency’s attentiveness is much appreciated. Please, follow me.”

He swept an arm and began to escort her to Jin Guangshan’s residence. Nie Mingjue followed behind obediently, and took the opportunity to observe Wen Qing. He had heard of her before—Huaisang had told him about the Wen at Cloud Recesses in minute detail—but this was the first time their paths had actually crossed.

Well— He winced. In all likelihood she had been at the victory banquet, but he had not been in his right mind that evening. He could not remember.

His first impression was that she was sharp. Sharp eyes, sharp cheekbones, a brutal efficiency in the way she moved. The world was fortunate she had become a doctor, he thought, because she probably would have made an excellent assassin.

“Is your brother well?” Jin Guangyao asked as they walked.

“He is, thank you.”

“I was pleased to see him at the Phoenix Mountain Hunt, and disappointed that you could not join us.”

“My uncle likes for one of us to remain at Nightless City at all times.”

“I see. Do you intend to return to Dafan soon, now that the jianghu is at peace again?”

Nie Mingjue huffed at that, and Jin Guangyao cast a warning look over his shoulder.

“I do not think my uncle would be pleased. We serve at His Excellency’s pleasure.”

“Of course.”

They reached Jin Guangshan’s residence. It was more splendid that Jin Guangyao’s by several orders of magnitude—they went through two layers of anterooms before Jin Guangyao stopped. He spoke in a low voice to a waiting servant, who disappeared into the inner chamber. The servant returned promptly and ushered him in.

“Wait here,” Jin Guangyao said to Nie Mingjue as he escorted Wen Qing inside. “You aren’t needed for this,” he said to someone inside. “Wait in the outer room. Zongzhu will call if he needs you.”

Nie Mingjue did not hear the quiet response, and so he had no warning. He was left to gape at the woman who emerged and closed the door behind her.

“A-Zhen—”

He glanced around. There was always an army of servants surrounding Jin Guangshan, but none of them seemed particularly outraged at this reunion. Still, he took his cousin’s arm and led her aside, to a corner where they could kneel and bow their heads and appear appropriately meek to any audience. Weizhen was the only member of his sect he still had not met in all this time, though it wasn’t for lack of trying. As far as he could tell, she never left Jin Guangshan’s residence, and Jin Guangyao tried to put distance between Nie Mingjue and the sect leader, if possible.

“Zongzhu,” she whispered.

“Don’t be an idiot,” he replied. “How are you?”

“Fine.”

“Has he—”

“It’s fine,” she repeated in a firmer voice.

“I’m sorry, A-Zhen,” he said bitterly. He sighed. “Sorry about all of this. I led the sect into disaster.”

“Your sect followed you down the only righteous path,” Weizhen said. She turned her head to look him directly in the face. She was a lovely-looking woman, with high cheekbones and delicate, expressive brows, but she also had the strong chin and jawline common among the Nie—and now it was set in stubbornness. “And good luck finding anyone to regret it. Especially not me.”

“You shouldn’t have to do this.”

“I volunteered for this.”

“What?” he demanded, sure that he had misheard, and she gave him a funny look.

“Jin Guangyao didn’t tell you?”

“Tell me what?”

“Jin Guangshan thinks it’s funny to have his bastard choose his whores.”

“But what does that—you are not—”

“What else would I be, Mingjue-ge?” she asked, rolling her eyes. “His lover? Some simpering, cowering victim who flings herself in the river at the end of the story? I’d rather be a whore. After the surrender, the guards rounded up those they thought were prettiest, and then Jin Guangyao was sent to choose. He dismissed the girls who were crying right away—he said a runny nose and a whining voice weren’t attractive. There were only a few of us left, and… I volunteered.” Her lips twitched. “He asked if I was planning to stab his father.”

“Not a bad idea,” Nie Mingjue muttered.

“I told him I didn’t see the point in that.” She sighed, and for the first time weariness cast a shadow over her face. The Weizhen he had known had skin that was always bright and bronzed from the sun, but her complexion had dulled, and she rubbed at her forehead like she had a headache. “It’s not so bad. These days he mostly wants a Nie around for show. He’s more egotistical than outright cruel, and the real professionals are better actresses. How is Jin Guangyao?”

For a moment, he was speechless. Weizhen looked at him with concern.

“I heard he had you beaten in the first week,” she said in a low voice. “Has it happened again?”

“Oh—no,” he sighed. “He’s an infuriating little snake. But as a master, he could be worse. The best thing is that Jin Guangshan has him running all over this place like a low-level courtier, rather than a son. I’ve been able to visit all the Nie except you.”

He rubbed his thumb against the metal cuff snug against his wrist.

“Much good it does,” he muttered.

“It does us good.” Weizhen nudged him with her elbow. “You are who you are, Mingjue-ge. You can’t hide it. These… people… may tell themselves you are tamed because it is too alarming to believe otherwise, but we know better. You won’t let us forget that we are Qinghe Nie.”

Nie Mingjue looked at his cousin. She wore her hair in two long braids down her back. All of the Nie slaves did, just like they wore cursed manacles at their wrists and cheap straw sandals rather than proper shoes. The exception was Nie Mingjue; some of his braids had been hacked off in Nightless City, and ever since then, Jin Guangyao brushed his hair out like a doll’s and bound it back in a simple knot to keep it neat.

Back in Qinghe, it was only he and Huaisang who had worn their hair in braids, because Second Mother had liked the way they looked, and fussed over them. It was a tradition they had kept up after her death out of affection for her, and Huaisang had passed them on to Meng Yao out of affection for him. Nie Mingjue often wondered if it had been Jin Guangyao’s decision that all of the other Nies should keep their hair plaited, in deliberate mockery of that fact. Or perhaps it was simple ignorance, an arrow let loose in the sky that happened to find its target.

“A-Zhen,” he said. “Don’t let anyone forget that Huaisang is my heir.”

For a moment, Weizhen looked genuinely baffled.

“No one could ever forget er-gongzi—”

“I don’t know how long we must endure this, and I don’t know if it is my leadership that will save us,” he continued, his voice as low as he could manage. “Proficiency with a saber did not win the war. Huaisang is cleverer than I am. If this lasts for too long… if it lasts longer than me… he is Qinghe Nie, too.”

“Understood, zongzhu,” she replied in kind.

They sat in a companionable silence until the door to the inner room opened, and Wen Qing and Jin Guangyao came back out. Nie Mingjue stood and resumed his position as Jin Guangyao’s shadow.

“Your skills are surely in accordance with your reputation, Wen-daifu,” Jin Guangyao was saying. “Please, allow me to convey our gratitude for your attention once more.”

“It seems there was little for me to do,” Wen Qing demured. “But my uncle will be pleased to know Jin-zongzhu is well.”

Jin Guangyao persuaded her to rest for a little while before departing. It was autumn, and the winds would be cold once she took to the air, but in the meantime they settled in one of the gardens, and Nie Mingjue was sent for food. When he came back, they were speaking of Lanling and of Qishan on surprisingly cordial terms. Nie Mingjue listened attentively, hoping to hear his brother’s name, but he was disappointed.

⚭⚭⚭⚭⚭⚭⚭⚭⚭

Jin Guangyao had been awake since dawn and running around Jinlintai since hardly later than that—which meant Nie Mingjue had been doing the same. The day was stretching on endlessly, and he was in a very poor mood to be listening to Madam Jin berate her stepson. Her criticisms were endless, and very few of them seemed to be Jin Guangyao’s fault. Yet he only smiled apologetically, frowned empathetically, and murmured his agreement. He poured her a cup of tea and urged her to refresh herself. She shoved it back, and Jin Guangyao bit back a hiss as the scalding water sloshed over his hand.

Nie Mingjue watched the skin go white and then flush red. It wouldn’t be long now.

He could have set a clock by it—Madam Jin demanded an answer from Jin Guangyao, and when he provided it, she scoffed and drew back her hand. She wore her heaviest rings on the days she met with Jin Guangyao. A teardrop-shaped chunk of amber in a pointed gold setting had drawn blood more than once.

Without thinking, Nie Mingjue was on his feet, and his fingers wrapped around Madam Jin’s wrist. She gaped at him; Jin Guangyao’s eyes were wide, shock and horror not quite strong enough to cover his glee.

“Enough,” Nie Mingjue said.

“You—how dare you—?” she choked, apoplectic with rage.

He released her and knelt by Jin Guangyao’s side, his gaze properly lowered and his stomach bubbling like an over-boiled kettle.

“You useless bastard,” Madam Jin hissed, directing her ire at her preferred target. “You can’t even control your beast—”

She lunged across the table. Nie Mingjue grabbed both wrists this time, and saw genuine fear flash in her eyes. In the back of his mind, a better part of him felt guilty; he had spent so much of his life hyper-aware of his size and his strength, trying not to make women feel afraid of him. But he did not let that stop him. He was a beast, after all—how could he be blamed for lashing out?

“I said enough,” he snarled. “Your husband can’t keep his pathetic old cock in his trousers—you can’t keep your poisonous tongue behind your teeth. So you deserve each other. Jin Guangyao is not to blame.”

He shoved her back on her seat, which conveniently obscured the soft, delighted laugh that burst from Jin Guangyao’s mouth. This time, two of the Jin guards marched up, and Jin Guangyao was standing and bowing, his face a mask of regret, before they could even grab Nie Mingjue’s arms.

“Mother, I beg a thousand pardons for this slave’s behavior. It will be dealt with immediately.”

“Get out!” she screamed at him, flinging a tea cup, but her aim was off and it smashed harmlessly on the floor.

The guards marched Nie Mingjue out to the discipline courtyard, Jin Guangyao following close behind. Nie Mingjue knelt and endured a dozen blows from the paddle before a servant girl came out and murmured to Jin Guangyao, who sighed.

“The whip,” he told the discipline officer.

A whip hadn’t touched Nie Mingjue’s back since Nightless City. He grit his teeth until he thought they might crack, and then he gave in and grunted with each strike, for fear that he would scream if he didn’t allow this small release. Each lash was like a knife, striking the skin and then pushing deeper, sending pain radiating down through his muscles. Blood began to drip down his back, and the smell of iron and raw flesh filled the air.

“Stop,” Madam Jin said. He hadn’t notice her enter the courtyard. She came to stand before him, holding the whip in her own hand. The weathered leather was incongruous against her soft white skin. “Hold out your hands,” she told Nie Mingjue.

He obeyed, and she cracked the whip over one palm and then the other. He bit down hard on his own cheek and tasted blood.

“There,” she said. “Remember that.”

Two guards picked him up by the arms and dragged him back to Jin Guangyao’s room. He whimpered; he couldn’t help it. The muscles in his back and shoulders were screaming with pain, and he blacked out when they finally dropped him.

He came to and was surprised to find himself on Jin Guangyao’s bed, rather than the floor. Jin Guangyao was sitting on the mattress beside him, humming softly to himself as he ran a cloth soaked in water over Nie Mingjue’s back. Nie Mingjue closed his eyes and listened. The cloth was wrung out over a bowl, soaked again in cool water, and returned to one of the deepest cuts. He hissed.

“You’re awake.” Jin Guangyao dropped the cloth and put both hands on Nie Mingjue’s shoulders, holding him down. “Shh, shh. Lie still.”

He picked up the cloth again. Nie Mingjue waited for an admonishment, or an apology, or… something. But there was nothing. Jin Guangyao tended to his wounds dutifully. He resumed humming.

It reminded Nie Mingjue of how they used to be in Qinghe, when Meng Yao had become a familiar presence and they could spend half a day barely speaking, working separately in the same space with the ordinary sounds of the Unclean Realm filtering in through the windows. It reminded him of something he wasn’t sure he truly remembered. Being a child. Being tended to. Being loved. He cried silent tears into the mattress. Jin Guangyao hushed him again.

“Mingjue,” he said, in a voice that was gentle not because of affection but because he was aware of the danger. “If I gave you some qi, do you think you could direct it appropriately?”

A fierce wave of longing hit him.

“I don’t know,” he admitted in a hoarse voice.

“Would you try?”

“Yes.”

“Good boy.” Jin Guangyao kissed his cheek.

The caress of his qi was warm, and Nie Mingjue sighed. It was not enough to fully heal his back—Madam Jin would be suspicious if it was. But it eased the pain, and some of the shallower cuts began to heal over. Jin Guangyao applied ointment to the ones that remained, and then began to rub sheep’s fat scented with honeysuckle into his back, his shoulders, down his legs and his arms, into his hands. Slowly, Nie Mingjue’s tears dried.

“A-Yao.”

He heard Jin Guangyao inhale and exhale, a deliberate sigh.

Nie Mingjue rolled over onto his back—wincing at the jolt of pain—and met Jin Guangyao’s gaze. He spread his legs.

Jin Guangyao’s eyes swept down his body. He followed the trail with his hand, still soft and smelling of honeysuckle, massaging soothingly over his stomach and the trail of dark, coarse hair. Then, without preamble, between his legs. He did just as Nie Mingjue had, that night he was caught—two fingers circling the engorged clitoris and the lips of his sex, firm and deliberate.

A smile curved his lips. Without warning, three fingers shoved into Nie Mingjue’s cunt. He grunted and turned his face on the pillow. The press of fingers was good—not as good as the burning stretch when Jin Guangyao fingered his ass, but enough that he ached for more. Then Jin Guangyao knelt and licked around his fingers, wrapped lips around his clit and sucked. Sucked it like a cock.

“Suck me,” he mumbled dazedly. “Suck my—”

Nie Mingjue had never thought of his body this way. Nobody else had ever treated his body this way. He learned the technical terms as a child and picked up cruder terms from his father’s soldiers. But by the time his peers were looking at each other like potential lovers, his body had become a weapon of war, not a tool of pleasure.

He wondered if brothel-born Jin Guangyao had felt the same. Had there been others for him? Was that why he seemed so adept at coaxing such ecstasy from Nie Mingjue’s body—or were they discovering this together?

His hips bucked unconsciously. He whined as the movement aggravated the whip marks on his back, and Jin Guangyao rested his left hand comfortingly on his hip, his long fingers spread wide. He was attentive, licking and sucking and lazily thrusting with his fingers, coaxing more and more wetness from between Nie Mingjue’s legs. His thighs shook. He was sure he was about to topple over his peak when Jin Guangyao finally withdrew.

He cupped Nie Mingjue’s chin tenderly.

“Nie Mingjue,” he said with a sweet smile. “Da-ge.”

Nie Mingjue could smell himself on Jin Guangyao’s fingers. He could taste himself in his mouth. They kissed, hungrily, desperately, and Jin Guangyao brushed the head of his cock between Nie Mingjue’s folds, rubbing it over and over his the nub of his own cock. Nie Mingjue whimpered into his mouth; tears sprung to his eyes, from pleasure and the pain that came of too much pleasure.

“Do you want it?” Jin Guangyao asked.

He reached for Jin Guangyao with both hands, trying to pull him closer without speaking.

“Do you want it?” Jin Guangyao asked again.

“Yes,” he spat, and it was followed by a hoarse cry as Jin Guangyao worked his cock inside.

His eyes rolled back in his head and his mouth fell open. It was an entirely different sensation compared to any time they had fucked before—the blunt head of Jin Guangyao’s cock hit him at a new angle, and within seconds Nie Mingjue was gasping and whining, lost to any sense of shame. He clutched Jin Guangyao’s back and clawed matching wounds across his shoulder blades.

“Good boy,” Jin Guangyao panted. Nie Mingjue felt his muscles contract, liquid dripping down his thighs and soaking the sheets. “Greedy little pet—”

He reached between them to rub at Nie Mingjue’s cock and he was gone, his head falling back as his orgasm crashed into him. His cunt tightened and flexed around Jin Guangyao’s cock, and it didn’t stop—the pleasure followed in endless waves as Jin Guangyao thrust inside of him relentlessly and whispered filth in his ear.

Finally, Jin Guangyao ran out of things to say. His hips jerked and stuttered, and he pressed his open mouth against Nie Mingjue’s shoulder as he came. Nie Mingjue felt his sex twitching weakly, and he was suddenly aware of the filth that lay between their bodies. Slick and cum and sweat, sheep’s fat and ointment, blood trickling from their wounded backs onto the mattress beneath them.

He folded his legs around Jin Guangyao’s waist and held onto his ass with both hands, keeping them locked together like a cork stoppering a bottle. Jin Guangyao was lying on his chest; he tried to sit up, but Nie Mingjue held him fast and closed his eyes, turning his head away.

“Da-ge.”

“No,” he mumbled, knowing what would follow. Jin Guangyao laughed softly.

“Let me up, da-ge.”

“No.”

“Nie Mingjue.”

He said it sternly, using his ‘master’ voice that Nie Mingjue hated. With reluctance, he eased his hold. Jin Guangyao sat up and sat back on his heels at the end of the bed, staring down at Nie Mingjue’s body, now so horribly cold and exposed.

“A pair of paintings,” Jin Guangyao muttered. “Devotion, one and two. One of you lying on your back, just like this, and the other lying on your stomach.” He reached down and let his fingertips graze against the white collar-scar from his soft sword around Nie Mingjue’s neck. He sighed. “A pity I don’t have the skills to do them justice.”

“I’m not—” His voice came out a croak. “I’m not devoted to you.”

Jin Guangyao smiled tenderly.

“Are you not?”

⚭⚭⚭⚭⚭⚭⚭⚭⚭

It was a long, slow winter, despite the milder climate of Lanling compared to Qinghe. Nie Mingjue felt the days pass in a blur of monotony; he had given up most of his little rebellions against Jin Guangyao, and most of the other Jins had been frightened out of direct conflict with their sect leader’s bastard. There were fewer amusements to be had, so he rarely even had the chance to seek out the other enslaved Nie.

Jin Guangyao became freer with information.  He passed on little tidbits of how Huaisang spent his days, or how the rebuilding of Cloud Recesses and Lotus Pier progressed under the Wens’ dutiful leadership.

“What of Qinghe?” Nie Mingjue asked once, and Jin Guangyao paused.

“You don’t want to hear about Qinghe, Mingjue,” he said.

He tortured himself for a full day after that. He could not eat; he could not sleep. He imagined the Unclean Realm torn down to ruins, famine and disease ripping through his people, Wen soldiers grinding the survivors beneath their heels.

That evening, he went to his knees and sucked Jin Guangyao’s cock. Then he rested his head on his thigh and said, “Jin Guangyao. Tell me about Qinghe.”

Jin Guangyao looked down at him. His eyes were dark and clouded.

“Qinghe will make it through the winter,” he said. He rested his hand on Nie Mingjue’s head and began to stroke his hair. Nie Mingjue closed his eyes. “I warned Wen Ruohan that farmers needed to be moved to the southeast before the harvest, to make up for the population loss during the war. The wheat crop was lower than expected, but the millet farms produced enough to fill the stores. The Unclean Realm suffered some damages during the final attack, but the repairs were completed in luyue… I am told the new supervisor complains of the cold. He does all of his work from his kang, and keeps it burning all hours of the day and night.”

He continued to talk. The new supervisor was conducting an inventory of the Nie library. The silversmiths in town had crafted an elaborate tribute for Wen Ruohan. Wen Ruohan had wanted a saber, too, but the cultivators who were sent to find the Saber Sacrifice Hall had never come back…

Nie Mingjue listened, like a child to a bedtime story. He kept his eyes closed so he could picture every detail—the endless fields of wheat in the southern valleys, the tall lonely trees that stood sentinel over the Saber Sacrifice Hall, the silver shops with their wares glittering and tinkling in the breeze. Jin Guangyao tugged lightly on his hair, and he opened his eyes to find that he had made a small plait of the lock. It was not tied at the end; it would soon unbraid itself.

“You don’t need to do favors for me,” Jin Guangyao said. He had been getting ready for bed. His inner robe was still open, his trousers pooled on the floor. They fucked often enough that nudity had ceased to be strange between them. “If you had asked, I would have told you.”

“I did ask. You said nothing.”

“If you had pressed.”

“If I had pressed,” Nie Mingjue repeated. “If I had made a logical argument, you would have taken it under consideration.”

“Yes.”

“I am not your peer, Jin Guangyao. I am not your sect leader or your general or your lover. What do you want from me?”

Jin Guangyao looked at him thoughtfully. He wasn’t smiling. Nie Mingjue realized that Jin Guangyao had not smiled at him since his first week in Jinlintai, and that he actually prefered it that way. Meng Yao rarely thought to show him that delicate, dimple-cheeked subservient smile, either—but Jin Guangyao was rarely without it here, in this nest of vipers.

“When you first raised me to position, I was nothing,” he said finally. “An unrecognized bastard, worse off than an orphan. No status. No friends. The reasons you gave for my promotion, though noble, seemed insufficient. I thought perhaps you would bring me out of the cave and take me right there in the middle of the trees.” He paused. “I was frightened of it. I was frightened of wanting it.”

Perhaps he should have been insulted by that.

Nie Mingjue rose to his full height. Jin Guangyao had already taken off his gauze hat, and Nie Mingjue wiped the cinnabar dot from his brow. Then he put his hand in Jin Guangyao’s braided hair and yanked. Jin Guangyao’s knees hit the floor and Nie Mingjue dragged him back by his hair. With his other hand, he pushed down his trousers and loosened his belt, and then he shoved his cunt in Jin Guangyao’s face.

Jin Guangyao was clumsy—he had no power over his own movements—but not without skill. He sucked Nie Mingjue’s cock dutifully, and when the rocking of his hips proved too difficult to follow, he stuck out his tongue, made it wide and flat and responsive to whatever was demanded of him.

Nie Mingjue considered going on like that until he came—he was owed one—but he decided against it. He pulled Jin Guangyao’s face away and cupped his wet chin, brushing his thumb back and forth across his red, red lips.

“Sect leader,” Jin Guangyao whispered. Nie Mingjue pulled his hair up with such force that Jin Guangyao whimpered.

“On your hands and knees, Meng Yao.”

He pushed him over to the bed. Kinder than the hard wooden floor of Jinlintai, kinder that the rocky forest floor of Qinghe. He told himself it wasn’t kindness—only convenience.

Nie Mingjue pushed Jin Guangyao’s delicate silk inner robe up so that it pooled in the small of his back, bared his ass and his cock, hard again and dangling between his thighs. He ran a hand over Jin Guangyao’s ass, squeezed firmly and exposed his hole to the air.

Jin Guangyao was already breathing heavily against the bedspread. He whimpered at the first push of fingers. Nie Mingjue went slow and was liberal with the red seaweed gel, but his actions were neither hesitant nor gentle. He marveled at the thrill of control, of the hot clutch of Jin Guangyao’s body around his fingers. He curved them slightly and Jin Guangyao yelped, his hips rocketing forward. Roughly, Nie Mingjue grabbed him by the hips and yanked him back where he wanted him.

He pushed in again with a third finger. In and out, a steady rhythm that made Jin Guangyao moan. There were stutters in it as he gasped for breath, but he couldn’t keep quiet. His cock was leaking clear fluid, and his hands were twisted in the bedspread so tightly that they shook.

Nie Mingjue looked down at the place where their bodies were joined and felt a curious feeling of satisfaction. This should not have been nearly as pleasurable for him as it was for Jin Guangyao—his own sex was quite neglected—and yet. And yet. He withdrew his hand and considered his own fingers for a moment. Thick and strong, shining with lubrication. He twined them together and carefully, deliberately, pressed four into Jin Guangyao’s ass. It yielded, but the press was tighter than before, and Jin Guangyao’s thighs spasmed as he fought the instinct to jerk away.

“Ah! Ah—please— M-Mingjue, I—”

“That’s not what you call me, Meng Yao.”

“Sect leader, please, I can’t— it’s too much, I can’t take it—”

“You are. I’m watching you take it.”

He curled his fingers on each slow drag in and out. He met resistance at the widest part of his hand and realized, with fascination, that he could push past it—so he did. His knuckles slipped inside, and Jin Guangyao wailed.

“I can’t, I can’t, I can’t—”

“You’re frightened?”

“Yes.”

“Of how much it hurts? Or how good it feels?”

“Yes.”

He brushed the tip of his thumb against Jin Guangyao’s stretched rim and Jin Guangyao almost collapsed, shaking his head and whispering something too quietly for Nie Mingjue to hear. His cock was flushed and weeping continuously now, his balls drawn up tight.

“After everything I’ve done for you,” Nie Mingjue said. “You won’t even do this?”

Jin Guangyao was quaking.

“Please,” he whispered in a hoarse voice.

“Please?”

“Please fuck me, sect leader. This— this worthless servant wants to be fucked however Sect Leader Nie wishes.”

He needed more seaweed gel. He needed almost all of the seaweed gel, and Jin Guangyao had plenty of time to sniffle and tremble and pretend to be as frail as he had appeared that day in the woods. But Nie Mingjue was able to fit all five fingers inside of him. It was a feeling of power like he had rarely known before—Jin Guangyao clamping down on his wrist was as heady as Baxia singing in his hand. He fucked him slow and hard with single-minded intensity, and it was as though Jinlintai and everything within it had floated away. His own desire had abandoned him, leaving only this.

Finally he twisted his hand and Jin Guangyao came, his untouched cock jerking and spurting against the bedspread. There was a wet patch on the silk from where he had been sobbing and mouthing against it, and he wailed some more and spilled salt tears into the mattress.

Nie Mingjue extracted his hand with care, and Jin Guangyao collapsed on the bed. There was a basin by the privacy screen; Nie Mingjue went and washed his hands. When he was finished, he stared down into the basin. It was brass, carved along the flat rim with peonies. He stared at his own reflection, murky and broken up by soap bubbles, and tried to see Sect Leader Nie within it.

Once, he had been a powerful man. Once, people had feared him. He had scorned both the fear and the love of others—he had no need for them. He had not wanted to reach immortality, either through cultivation or in the poems of history. All he had wanted was to avenge his father and preserve the sect that his ancestors had placed in his hands. To keep it safe, and whole, and beautiful in its wild way, to pass the treasure on to his brother, who loved such fine things.

Tears broke the surface of the water.

“Mingjue,” Jin Guangyao called. He was still a little breathless; his slim chest rose and fell. “What do you want from me?”

I want to be reunited with my brother.

I want you to ask Wen Ruohan if he will make you the administrator of the Unclean Realm—you know he will—and take me with you. No matter what state it is in, I want to see my home again.

I want to be allowed to cultivate again.

I want my saber and Wen Ruohan’s head.

I want my freedom. I will leave the jianghu forever and wander as a pilgrim if I must.

I want to kill you. Your betrayal can never be forgiven.

I want you to kill me. I can’t live like this.

I want you to love me. I want you to fuck me. I want you to kiss me like a lover and not a whore. I want you to rub my back again and play with my hair.

“I don’t know what I want,” Nie Mingjue admitted. His voice cracked. Jin Guangyao’s expression became somber.

“I know, gege.” He opened his arms. “Come here. I know.”

⚭⚭⚭⚭⚭⚭⚭⚭⚭

Periodically, Madam Jin grew tired of pretending that she did not know her husband had been unfaithful to her for the duration of their marriage. After Nie Mingjue’s rebuke, she no longer beat Jin Guangyao for failing to prevent her husband’s dalliances, but she still berated him, and occasionally sent him to put an end to them.

On one such occasion, Jin Guangyao stopped in the middle of the Lanling streets. He rubbed his forehead beneath the brim of his hat.

“Mingjue,” he said. “You do it.”

“Zhuzi?”

“I’m tired,” he said shortly. He gestured at the building in front of them, which catered to a rich enough clientele that it could pass for a high-end teahouse rather than a brothel. “Go inside and tell Father you’ve been sent for him.”

Nie Mingjue rolled his eyes, but he obeyed. The madam took one look at his Jin servant’s uniform and ushered him upstairs.

“Good luck,” she told him.

He went up to find himself in a hallway leading to a grand suite of rooms. He lingered for a moment outside the door, reluctant to barge in on Jin Guangshan in the middle of frollicking with prostitutes—but there were no concerning noises coming from the room. There were several women, he could tell, all trying to coax Jin Guangshan to look at some accomplishment or another, but he scorned them all.

“What use is a woman who reads and gets ideas above her station?” he slurred, heavily drunk.

“Ah, but I heard zongzhu was quite enamored with such a woman, once upon a time!” one of the girls teased. “Back in Yunping—isn’t it true that zongzhu even considered buying out her contract?”

“Eh? Why would I do that? I never would have gotten rid of her—it would have been no end of trouble.”

“Wasn’t it she who gave zongzhu a son?”

“A son? Oh, forget it.” There was a brief pause, and more clinking of cups. “Little bastard will learn the perils of an educated whore soon enough,” he muttered to himself. “Better him than me.”

He growled playfully, and one of the women squealed. Nie Mingjue turned around and went back out. The madam shot him a rueful look and he shrugged. When he went out onto the street, he found Jin Guangyao standing at a food stall, eating—of all things—dragon’s beard candy. He stood up straighter when he caught sight of Mingjue and held the bag behind his back. But then he saw that he was alone, and a frown tugged at his face.

“Is he coming down?” he asked.

“No.”

“I told you to—”

“What do you want me to do, zhuzi?” Nie Mingjue demanded, spreading his arms. “I’m a slave. He’s a sect leader. If he doesn’t want to come down, what can I do?”

“You’re bigger than he is,” Jin Guangyao said blandly. “You could get him down, if you really wanted.”

“If I really wanted to get whipped again.”

Jin Guangyao sighed.

“Very well.” He brought out his bag again, and took out another piece of dragon’s beard. “But you won’t get any candy for failing to do your duties,” he admonished, and Nie Mingjue had to bite his cheek not to laugh.

“I accept my punishment.”

Jin Guangyao began to walk back towards Jinlintai, but it was not his usual purposeful stride. He was almost meandering. Not eager to return and report his failure to Madam Jin, Nie Mingjue surmised. He dared to draw even with his better.

“A-Yao,” he said, and Jin Guangyao looked up at him sharply. “Did you come to Lanling when you left Qinghe?”

“Obviously,” he sniffed, gesturing at their surroundings. The dragon’s beard crunched between his teeth and Nie Mingjue winced. The sound was unexpectedly grating.

“That’s not what I mean, and you know it. I always thought it strange that you went to the Wen first, but you didn’t, did you? You tried to join the Jin.”

Jin Guangyao chewed slowly. He rubbed the tips of his fingers together, sprinkling sugar and specks of peanuts into the street. He folded the bag and tucked it neatly in his sleeve.

“What did Father say to you just now?” he asked.

“Nothing,” Nie Mingjue said honestly.

“What did you overhear?”

“Nothing,” he lied. Jin Guangyao’s eyes were dark and liquid as ink.

“Hm.”

“I should have kept you in Qinghe,” he said. He trained his gaze on the distant roofs of Jinlintai, looming over the rest of the city.

“I was a murderer and a liar who cared too much for vain honor,” Jin Guangyao recited bitterly. Of course he had memorized the words—he remembered almost every conversation he had ever been a part of. But he spoke these with a particular weight.

“Yes. But at least if you had been in Qinghe, we might have won the war.”

Jin Guangyao stopped and grabbed his arm, pulling Nie Mingjue around.

“You think I would have betrayed my father for you?” he demanded in a soft, dangerous voice.

“He wasn’t your father then.”

“You dare—”

“He was only the man who tossed you aside like trash. You were not his son, so he was not your father. Would you have betrayed the sect that adopted you for him?”

“You go too far, Nie Mingjue.”

“Will you beat me, master?” Nie Mingjue asked.

Jin Guangyao glared at him, and they returned to Jinlintai in silence.

⚭⚭⚭⚭⚭⚭⚭⚭⚭

Nie Mingjue was both weary and restless. More and more often, he spent the night in Jin Guangyao’s bed, rather than his own pallet. It was softer and warmer, and he found himself drifting off to sleep more quickly than usual. But his sleep was often disturbed—he kept getting up to piss—which then made it even more difficult to rise in the morning.

“Are you ill?” Jin Guangyao asked one day.

“No. Tired.”

“Hm.”

But then, the very next day, Nie Mingjue woke before dawn with the sudden, irrepressible feeling that he was going to be sick. He stumbled out of Jin Guangyao’s bed and out of the residence entirely, and just managed to vomit in a decorative bush.

There were footsteps behind him. Jin Guangyao sighed and rested a hand on his back. Nie Mingjue peered up at him.

“Did you poison me?” he asked.

“No.”

“Did one of your enemies poison me?”

“I certainly hope not.”

“Then why do you look like you know something?”

“Are you finished?”

He wiped the bile from his mouth and considered. His stomach was still roiling, but it lacked any urgency. He nodded, and Jin Guangyao led him back inside. There was a small apothecary case in Jin Guangyao’s quarters, which was kept well-stocked; he looked through it and found a knob of ginger root. He made a cup of ginger tea and pushed it towards Nie Mingjue.

“Tell me.”

“I’m not sure,” Jin Guangyao hedged.

“What will make you sure?”

“I… pardon me.”

He tugged at the edges of Nie Mingjue’s robes and exposed his chest. His body had softened in enslavement, with his cultivation locked away and with fewer opportunities to get any real exercise. When Jin Guangyao pressed against his breast, he was not entirely surprised that it yielded more readily, more like fat than muscle. He was surprised at how much it ached, and how large and dark his nipples appeared against his pale skin. He grunted.

Jin Guangyao sighed and settled the robe back in place.

“You’re pregnant,” he said in a brisk voice. “I apologize—I have been careless. I read several manuscripts about cultivation of the body and was under the impression there would have been more warning signs before that became a possibility.”

The words were like the roar of a distant river. Nie Mingjue stared at him, unblinking.

“You—I’m not— you cannot know that.”

Jin Guangyao smiled thinly.

“You don’t think I know what pregnancy looks like in its earliest stages? Perhaps Nie Mingjue has forgotten I was raised in a brothel?”

His stomach was churning again. He sipped the ginger tea, and when he set the cup down Jin Guangyao filled it again.

“Maybe I am ill,” he mumbled. He rubbed at his eyes. “I haven’t been sleeping well. Maybe—”

“Mingjue, we sleep in the same bed. You are asleep as soon as your eyes close. You wake, I wake, and you are asleep again within moments. You are tired because yin energy increases during pregnancy. Trust me when I say I have seen these symptoms many times before. Would you like me to call in a physician to confirm?”

His mouth went dry.

“No.”

They were quiet for a moment. The morning had dawned; it had become spring when Nie Mingjue wasn’t looking, and the sunlight was strong and golden and the birds were singing.

Jin Guangyao stood silently and dressed for the day. He braided his hair, set his hat carefully on his head, and pressed the cinnabar dot between his brows. On his way to the door, he paused and pushed the cup of ginger tea closer.

“Remain here for the day,” he commanded. “Rest. I will return for the noon meal.” His hand rested briefly on Nie Mingjue’s shoulder. “Don’t do anything foolish,” he said in a soft voice.

I will cast myself down the stairs until it’s dead. I don’t care if I die, too.

Jin Guangyao left the residence. Nie Mingjue sat still for a long time, and then finally he stood on unsteady legs and picked a book off of Jin Guangyao’s shelf at random. It was poetry. His knowledge of poetry was shamefully lacking; he lay down across the bed and tried to read, forcing his eyes to move from one character to the next no matter how it swam in his vision.

There was a knock on the door. He stood hastily, bowing his head, and an old woman came in with a tray. He knew her, although he did not know her name or her position in the sect—he knew only that everyone called her Popo, she was mostly mute, and nevertheless she commanded great respect among the army of Jin servants. He bowed to her, and she set the tray down.

There was a bowl of congee, sprinkled with green onions and—by the smell—heavily spiced with ginger. Beside it were smaller bowls of shredded duck and honeyed almonds. For the first time that morning, Nie Mingjue’s stomach growled with hunger rather than disgust.

Beside the food, there was a tea bowl, along with a cup and a pitcher of water. The brew, whatever it was, looked medicinal. There was also a thick, folded piece of cotton beside it, wrapped in orange ribbons. Nie Mingjue stared at it uncomprehendingly, before Popo tapped her finger in the tray to get his attention and placed her hand low on her abdomen. He blushed and nodded.

Popo’s creased face bore no expression. She pointed a gnarled finger at the medicinal tea and then paused. As if it had been waiting for her, the bell that signaled the waking hour rang. She held up four fingers.

“The tea begins to take effect four hours after it’s drunk,” Nie Mingjue translated. Popo nodded.

“Ahn,” she said, a round, nasally sound, gesturing at the bowl. He blinked, and she repeated it.

“Oh—hot? It must be brewed very hot?” She nodded. “Yes, I understand. Thank you, Popo.”

She smiled at him and patted his cheek, and unexpectedly he felt tears spring to his eyes. It had been a long time since he had received such motherly affection from anyone. He wondered if this was all that Popo did in Jinlintai—if she was so beloved because she spent all of her time caring for the destruction the Jin men left in their wake.

“Popo,” he asked, his voice a low rasp. “My cousin—Nie Weizhen. Do you know her?”

Slowly, Popo nodded.

“Have you—brought her tea? Or other medicines? Has Jin Guangshan harmed her? Is she—”

Popo stopped up his words by putting a finger to his lips, and then brought it to her own. She repeated her commands, hot and four hours, and then she bowed and left the room.

Nie Mingjue ate the congee, with the duck and the almonds too once his stomach proved strong enough. Then he stood and began to pace, his mind buzzing with thoughts. He felt guilty for the very fact that he had not been worried about Nie Weizhen constantly, since the first moment he learned she was Jin Guangshan’s personal gift. But she had told him not to concern himself, and in the end, did he really want to know what she had endured? Perhaps not.

But every time his mind drifted towards the more immediate problem, he found himself flinching away. Eventually he lay back down in Jin Guangyao’s bed. He tried to read the book of poetry, and when he had turned enough pages to reach the end, he tossed the book aside and took a nap.

He woke when the door opened. It was Jin Guangyao, returning for the noon meal as promised. He was carrying a large, stacked lacquer box, the kind that was brought out when the family picnicked away from home. He paused for just a moment when he saw the remnants of Nie Mingjue’s breakfast—the tea still unbrewed and undrunk—but then he set the box down without comment.

Nie Mingjue knew his duties. He began to clear the dirty dishes. Something flickered in Jin Guangyao’s eyes, but all he said was, “Leave them at the door. Someone else will come.”

He placed the dishes on the porch outside the residence, and when he came back, Jin Guangyao immediately waved at him to sit. The food was not as simple as breakfast, but similar in style—hearty, yang-inducing foods, not too heavily spiced. They ate in silence, like Lans.

“I can tell Popo to take that away,” Jin Guangyao said finally.

He had brought tea. He was refilling Nie Mingjue’s cup, but his head was tilted towards the medicinal brew. His eyes remained on the table, and he spoke in the tone of voice one used to comment on the weather. Nie Mingjue sipped the tea without tasting it; his throat had gone dry.

“There is a new sect that has emerged since the war,” Jin Guangyao continued. “It is called the Moling Su. They practice musical cultivation and make their own instruments. There is much work to be done in the iron mines and the forests to produce the materials needed, in addition to building their complex. It would be very unremarkable for me to send an unruly slave to Moling for a year, to drive home the lesson that service in Jinlintai is preferable to such labor. The sect leader is loyal to me—his reports would say nothing I did not wish to read.

“Furthermore, it may be necessary quite soon for me to go to Lotus Pier on Father’s orders. Along the way, I would like to stop in Yunping, the city where I was born. Naturally I would to visit the neighborhoods I knew best, where the brothels are. If I returned some months later to retrieve a child—”

He halted. The knot in his throat moved as he swallowed, and he sighed.

“There would be mockery. But no one would question my decision to bring it back, or to legitimize the child as my heir. And if an unruly slave returned a short time later, appropriately chastened and eager to prove his loyalty to myself and my line… what could be more natural than to fixate on the child? To become its caretaker and protector? In time, a higher rank may be bestowed on such a person in return for that kind of devotion. Things are difficult now—the war is fresh in everyone’s minds—but it may not always be so.”

Nie Mingjue’s food had turned to ashes in his mouth. He remembered when the prospect of a child had come up between them. Back then, he had felt an immediate, visceral reaction—he waited for something like that to emerge, like bile rising in his throat, and felt nothing.

That had not been the first time he had thought about pregnancy. Naturally. The first time he could remember was when he was but a child himself, when the old physician had instructed him in cultivation of the body. Lao Yong had given him extensive lessons on all aspects of bodily cultivation, including sexual congress and pregnancy. Nie Huaisang had been a sickly child, and Lao Yong wanted Nie Mingjue to understand that he might be obligated to have a baby in order to carry on the family line.

The idea had horrified him at the time. He had been so eager to cast off the few restrictions of girlhood that the Nie Sect had placed upon him—and the many that he had been warned would be his if he was married out to one of the other great clans—and adamant that he would not pick them up again. He would nurse his little brother day and night for years on end, if that was what it took to ensure that the jianghu only knew him as a man for the rest of his life, if he could escape the fate of becoming a broodmare.

But then he had begun to grow up, and the prospect of a baby no longer seemed quite so terrible. He went through puberty, and had the reassurance of knowing that his height and his strength could never be taken from him, his tits would never truly grow in—anyone who tried to force him into the role of a woman permanently would be met with uproarious laughter. He became comfortable with the idea that he was more attracted to men than to women, comfortable with his power as the presumed heir to the Nie Sect and all the respect that conveyed. If he could have a baby as his father’s heir, as the acknowledged husband of a man who loved him enough to marry into his sect…

That dream had died along with his father. Avenging his father’s death had become his sole purpose in life—if it meant death at the hands of Wen Ruohan, or if devotion to his saber led to a qi deviation decades earlier than expected, it no longer mattered. Vengeance was his filial obligation; the continuation of the family would be Huaisang’s.

And now here was Jin Guangyao spinning out a different tale. A baby, born free, legitimized and loved, raised far away from the graveyard that was the Unclean Realm. His hand crept to his lower abdomen. My father’s grandchild, he thought, and a wave of longing overtook him.

His father had loved children. He had let Mingjue play at the foot of his throne when he was a child, heedless of whatever important business was being discussed. He had cradled Huaisang in his arms during meetings, too, as soon as Second Mother’s confinement was over, and sat so close to the brazier that he sweated through his silks—better his own discomfort than the baby’s.

Jin Guangyao’s delicate hand placed the lid on top of the bowl, hiding the strange medicinal herbs behind white porcelain. The lid was painted with a golden peony, as so many things were in this place.

Jin Guangshan’s grandchild, Nie Mingjue thought, with an even stronger wave of revulsion. He almost felt as though he were going to be sick again. A Jin. Never a Nie. Recognized and legitimized as someone else’s child, but not mine. The child of Wen Ruohan’s favorite—destined to be doted on by his grandfather’s murderer—

“No,” he blurted out, and he reached for the bowl. His hand was clumsy; the bowl rattled on the table, and the manacle on his wrist clanked against the cup beside it. He cleared his throat. “No. I am going to drink it.”

Jin Guangyao smiled a serene, brittle smile.

“Very well.”

⚭⚭⚭⚭⚭⚭⚭⚭⚭

Nie Mingjue waited until late in the afternoon to don the cotton belt underneath his inner clothes and to brew the tea—as scalding hot and strong as he could make it. The effects were supposed to begin in four hours; he did not know how long they would last, but he wanted to sleep through them, if it were possible.

Jin Guangyao made no mention of the empty bowl when he returned that evening. Nor did he bat an eye when Nie Mingjue laid down to sleep on his pallet for the first time in weeks. They went to bed without a word to each other.

His fatigue had not abated, but Nie Mingjue found it much more difficult to fall asleep that night. So did Jin Guangyao—he could hear the bedframe creaking as his slight body turned back and forth.

After a while, Nie Mingjue began to feel a sharp, cramping sensation in his lower dantian. He forced a shaky breath into his lungs and held it, then exhaled slowly. He curled up tighter on the pallet and screwed his eyes shut.

“Gege.”

A hot tear slipped down his nose. He did not know if it came from sadness or anger.

“Wouldn’t you be more comfortable up here, gege?”

He remained stubbornly silent.

After a moment, he heard Jin Guangyao get up from the bed. He walked quietly on bare feet across the room, and laid down on the pallet behind Nie Mingjue. It was not very large—if Jin Guangyao had been any bigger, or if Nie Mingjue had not made himself so small, they would not have fit together. But there was just enough room for them to lay together on their sides, like two swords mounted on a weapons rack.

Jin Guangyao rested a hand on Nie Mingjue’s hip. When he was not rebuffed, he moved closer. He tucked his knees behind Nie Mingjue’s, wrapped an arm around his chest, rested the other on the pallet above his head, and dipped his face against the back of his neck. His touch was warm, and he smelled like the osmanthus oil he used in his hair.

“Gege, I…”

He trailed off into silence, or Nie Mingjue fell asleep.

⚭⚭⚭⚭⚭⚭⚭⚭⚭

Jin Guangyao is the favorite of your enemy. Jin Guangyao is the son of your enemy. Jin Guangyao is your enemy.

Nie Mingjue reminded himself of this fact in the morning when he rose and at night when he went to sleep. On his pallet, not his master’s bed. He did not speak unless he was spoken to, and he did not respond to any of his master’s sly comments or jokes. He was uneasy about what might happen if Jin Guangyao wanted to fuck him again, but it turned out there was no problem; Jin Guangyao kissed him once, but when Nie Mingjue did not kiss him back, he merely sighed and sent him to bed.

He tried to pay more attention whenever Jin Guangyao had meetings that touched on actual politics, rather than household trivialities. When he had a moment alone, he looked through Jin Guangyao’s letters. He was becoming desperate. There had to be something—anything—he could use to weaken the Jin.

But the one time he felt a spark of hope, it was quickly smothered.

“Zewu-jun, welcome,” Jin Guangyao said warmly.

“Jin-er-gongzi,” Lan Xichen said. His bow was correct, but his voice was uncharacteristically cold.

Jin Guangyao led Xichen to the small library, making polite inquiries after his uncle and his brother. Then, just as they sat down, he looked at Nie Mingjue and asked him to go to the kitchens and bring back tea.

Nie Mingjue rushed the errand, but whatever Jin Guangyao and Lan Xichen were speaking of, they fell silent as he returned, and did not resume their conversation again until he had been sent to inform the steward that er-gongzi would be late for their meeting that afternoon. And then he was simply told to wait outside the door, with no explanation whatsoever. He tried to listen, but the wood was thick, and the men inside were both soft-spoken.

Lan Xichen left the room first. He paused at the threshold and looked at Nie Mingjue, his eyes sad.

“Mingjue-xiong…” he said in a low voice. “I am sorry.”

“For what?” Nie Mingjue asked, surprised by his own bitterness. “What you didn’t do then, or what you won’t do now?”

Lan Xichen only sighed.

⚭⚭⚭⚭⚭⚭⚭⚭⚭

Lanling was to host the first discussion conference after the war. It seemed strange to Nie Mingjue that the Wen would not claim the privilege, but he had no time to wonder about it. Jin Guangyao was busier than ever, and it seemed like their paths barely had a chance to cross, so frequently was Nie Mingjue sent out to run errands.

Finally, the day of the conference dawned. Jin Guangshan was meant to be in Fragrance Hall to approve some details about an entertainment he had demanded, but he was running late.

“Mingjue, go to the residence and see if he is still there,” Jin Guangyao ordered with a sigh. “Or else we will have to make a more thorough search.”

Nie Mingjue heard shouting as he approached Jin Guangshan’s residence. Before he could enter, the doors opened and several of Jin Guangshan’s servants hastened out. He looked at them questioningly. One of them—Zhong’er—rolled his eyes.

“There’s a girl from the Pink Aster House that he’s been fond of recently,” he said to Nie Mingjue in an undertone. “He wanted to see her before the conference started… you know, to take the edge off. But Madam found out, and bribed the owner to send the girl out of town for the whole conference. Naturally it’s our fault.”

“Naturally,” Nie Mingjue agreed.

“You’re not going in there?” one of the others said to him, alarmed.

“Er-gongzi sent me to get him to the conference.”

“On your head,” Zhong’er shrugged. “We’re going to comb the streets searching for the girl, as ordered… and maybe we’ll find a jug of wine while we’re looking.”

They chuckled as they left—quietly, so their sect leader wouldn’t hear. Nie Mingjue knocked on the door.

“What?” Jin Guangshan demanded. Nie Mingjue entered and bowed.

“You were expected in Fragrance Hall, Sect Leader,” he said, doing his best to sound subservient. “The guests will be arriving shortly, and there is a question about—”

“Nie Mingjue, Nie Mingjue,” Jin Guangshan drawled. Evidently he had decided to comfort himself with a jar of wine; he poured another cup and dropped onto a padded bench. “Why are you still such a thorn in my side?”

Another man might have tried to say something placating, but Nie Mingjue said nothing. He barely tried to disguise the contempt in his face.

“I am so sick of looking at you,” Jin Guangshan laughed.

“The feeling is mutual, Sect Leader.”

“That smug, self-righteous pig face of yours. Of course Wen Ruohan let my idiot son convince him to spare you—he didn’t have to look at it day in and day out. For a while I hoped at least you could help the little bastard make a fool of himself, but you couldn’t even do me that favor.”

“What does that mean?” Nie Mingjue asked, eyes narrowing.

“You think I don’t know what goes on in my own sect?” He made a derisive sound and waved Nie Mingjue away, draining his cup. “Probably for the best,” he muttered to himself. “There are enough bastards running around this place.”

“You—” His cheeks became hot. “Don’t talk about that.”

“You don’t give the orders around here, Nie Mingjue!”

“Don’t—”

Unthinkingly, Nie Mingjue grasped Jin Guangshan’s collar. He realized immediately what a mistake it had been. Jin Guangshan’s eyes flashed and he grabbed Nie Mingjue’s wrist. With a cultivator’s strength, he wrenched it away hard enough to make Nie Mingjue grunt. He stood and pushed, bearing Nie Mingjue down to his knees.

“I am the master of Jinlintai,” he growled. “You are a beast of burden and a cut-rate whore for my pathetic bastard. Do you understand?”

“Yes,” Nie Mingjue spat sullenly, but Jin Guangshan wasn’t finished.

“And I think it’s about time I got some use out of you.”

One hand was still twisting Nie Mingjue’s arm painfully behind his shoulders; with the other, Jin Guangshan reached down and yanked at the knots holding his sash closed. Nie Mingjue felt the blood rush from his face. He tried to shrink back instinctively, but Jin Guangshan’s grip was like iron.

Endure, a voice whispered in his ear. You are Qinghe Nie, as old as the valley and strong as the mountain. You will endure. He closed his eyes and took a deep, shuddering breath.

When he opened them again, it was just in time to see the glinting point of a knife pierce the base of Jin Guangshan’s throat.  There was a sickening gurgle as he spat blood, and then the knife was wrenched to the side so hard it severed the thick cord of muscle at his shoulder. He was dead before he hit the ground.

Nie Mingjue stared at the corpse, stunned. The only thing he could think of was his threat to Jin Guangyao, the first day that he had arrived in Jinlintai—it takes longer to die from a slit throat. Not always, it seemed.

“Zongzhu, are you all right?”

He tore his eyes away from the corpse and found his cousin, Nie Weizhen, dressed in gauzy yellow silks with a bloody knife in her hand, carefully held away from her body so that it did not drip on her robe and stain.

“A-Zhen— A-Zhen, what the fuck were you thinking?” he hissed.

“I was thinking I’d been wanting to do that for a long time,” she grimaced. “And this seemed the perfect opportunity.”

“A-Zhen! Give me that—is that—?” He took the knife from her hand and examined the hilt. Jin-made. “Where did you get this? Will they be able to trace it back to you? They will definitely suspect you, especially when they see the state of his clothes—you need to get out of Jinlintai now. I’ll hide the body as best I can and try to buy you some time—”

“Mingjue-ge,” she sighed. “The best and worst trait you have as a sect leader is your determination to kill yourself, without considering that anyone else is capable of such sacrifice. Do you really think I am going to abandon you here without a plan?”

“Do you really think this was necessary?” he hissed. “That I couldn’t put up with a few minutes of—”

“He’s an old man—it takes more than a few minutes,” Weizhen said, pulling a face. “Quite annoying, really. And besides, it’s like I told you. I was going to kill him no matter what happened. If the difference between one minute and the next is sparing my sect leader a little bit of annoyance, that is good enough a reason for me.”

“You—”

Suddenly, there were footsteps. Nie Mingjue lunged forward. With his free hand, he grabbed Weizhen’s wrist and shoved her behind him, stumbling a little over the corpse. He pushed her back. The intruder would see him first, holding the knife over Jin Guangshan’s body. That had to be damning enough to give her time to run—there must be other exits elsewhere in the residence. If he caused enough chaos and confusion, the Jin might not even notice she had fled until she was out of Lanling.

Jin Guangyao halted in the doorway. He blinked in surprise at the sight of Nie Mingjue brandishing a knife. His eyes fell to his father’s corpse, and darkened. Then he sighed.

“Nie Weizhen, we discussed this.”

“You yielded to me,” she reminded him, stepping out from behind Nie Mingjue’s back.

“That is not my concern. My concern is that this will make it much more difficult to— never mind. Give me that, Mingjue.”

He plucked the knife from Nie Mingjue’s unresisting fingers. Weizhen handed him the sheath, and he wiped the blade clean with a handkerchief and sheathed it. Then he reached up and carefully dabbed at Nie Mingjue face; in the shock of what had happened, he had not even noticed the blood, but now the iron smell was overpouring.

“There is no time to explain, gege,” Jin Guangyao said in a patient voice. “And I wouldn’t, even if there were—you are too honest. Come with me.”

Mutely, Nie Mingjue and Nie Weizhen followed him out of the residence. Jin Guangyao locked the door with a talisman. He conferred with Weizhen in hushed whispers, and then she went away and Jin Guangyao led Nie Mingjue on a careful, convoluted route back to his chambers. They passed no one on the way. Once they arrived, he stripped Nie Mingjue of his bloody clothes and dressed him in new ones.

Nie Mingjue sat heavily on the bed. They were alone, and the room was fortified by silencing talismans.

“A-Yao,” he said. “What is going on?”

Jin Guangyao rested his hands on Nie Mingjue’s shoulders.

“I know what you overheard. In the brothel in Lanling.”

“I never—”

“Weizhen was in the room.”

“She told you… and, what? You decided to let her kill your father?”

“There was some debate. We don’t have time to discuss this, Mingjue. The opening ceremony will begin shortly. Something else may happen today. Be ready—but don’t try to guess, because your face is too thin. Remember how much you hate Wen Ruohan. Remember all that he has done, all the treachery you have endured here in Jinlintai. If you are watchful and resentful, it is only because of that.”

“You have been planning something,” he said. “Was it you and—?”

Jin Guangyao put a finger to his lips.

“Remember who your friends are, Mingjue. Look to them.” His lips twisted in a bitter smile, and he kissed Mingjue lightly on the mouth. “Not to me.”

⚭⚭⚭⚭⚭⚭⚭⚭⚭

Jin Guangyao told everyone that Jin Guangshan had been taken ill and was resting in his rooms. He did not want to be disturbed.

This was nonsense, of course. Jin Guangshan was (had been) a selfish, indolent man, but his cultivation was strong enough to protect him from anything as trivial as illness. Such excuses were ordinarily a cover for the time he spent with women who were not his wife; it strained credulity that even Jin Guangshan would neglect to greet the Chief Cultivator for such a reason, but no one challenged Jin Guangyao.

The clans began to arrive at Fragrance Hall. Nie Mingjue hovered by the wall behind Jin Guangyao’s seat, his heart pounding and his nerves sharpened as he waited for… whatever would happen.

The Lans were the first to arrive. He felt Lan Xichen’s eyes pass over him, and there was a slight stiffening in Xichen’s posture. He did not stop walking, did not even make eye contact—but nevertheless there was something, like a sighthound marking the location of its prey.

There was a larger party from Yunmeng than Nie Mingjue would have expected—certainly more than they had brought to the hunt the previous year. He was thinking idly to himself that the recruiting had gone well when he spotted a familiar face, and it took all his willpower not to react.

Like the rest of the jianghu, Nie Mingjue had been quite certain that Wei Wuxian was dead.

The young man in front of him was not the same man he had last seen in Qinghe. His face was sharper, his complexion paler, his crooked smile subdued. He was dressed differently, too, in the nondescript purple robes of an inner Jiang disciple. Most surprisingly, he was not at Jiang Wanyin’s side, but sat mixed in among the other disciples from his sect.

Nie Mingjue remembered Jin Guangyao’s scolding about the thinness of his face, and forced himself to look away, at the mingled crowd of cultivators from the minor sects who had arrived. They had begun to take their seats when the Wen arrived.

As soon as Wen Ruohan mounted the steps of Jinlintai, a chill silence swept through the hall. The Chief Cultivator looked haggard. His hair was loose, his skin sallow, his eyes sunken in his face. One might say that he resembled a corpse, if there were not so many others nearby to compare it to. Wen Ruohan had brought no living cultivators to Jinlintai; he was surrounded by an honor guard of fierce corpses.

Some of the cultivators in attendance seemed to have expected this; their faces were grim but unsurprised. Others were openly gaping. Jin Zixuan, who had admirably stepped up to fulfill his father’s duty as a host, was hovering anxiously near the dais with an uncertain expression. Only Jin Guangyao seemed unperturbed. He sallied forth and greeted Wen Ruohan with a smile and a bow.

“Your Excellency, your humble servant welcomes you most earnestly to Jinlintai. I trust your journey was comfortable.”

“A-Yao,” Wen Ruohan said, in a voice like a cloak rustling over dead leaves. “You look well. When will your father let you come back to Qishan to assist your old teacher, ah?”

“Regrettably, I fear I am needed in Lanling for the foreseeable future,” Jin Guangyao demured. “Father is feeling unwell—he will be most distressed to have missed Your Excellency. Please, make yourself comfortable in his seat, and this servant will make sure you have a cup of good wine. Nie-gongzi, too, is most welcome.”

Three different hands grabbed Nie Mingjue—one his elbow, two clutching the back of his robes. The jolt of surprise was enough to clear his mind, and he was able to muster his self-control before he dragged himself out of the other servants’ grasp, tearing through cultivators and corpses alike with the sudden wild desperation to reach his brother.

Wen Ruohan strode forth into Peony Hall, and the fierce corpses remained still. They no longer surrounded the Chief Cultivator, but followed after him with their shuffling gait. And before them was Nie Huaisang.

For a moment, Nie Mingjue thought his brother was small enough to be half-starved, and he considered strangling Wen Ruohan with his bare hands. But no, he realized. Nie Huaisang only looked small because Wen Ruohan and his chosen corpse guards were so tall, and because he was wearing a voluminous, simply-cut black single-seam robe that did not suit him, and his hair was bound in a plain ribbon. His expression was solemn, but his skin was unblemished and he moved without any stiffness to suggest injury.

Nie Mingjue’s eyes were clouded by tears. He turned his head to watch as Nie Huaisang followed Wen Ruohan up onto the dais.

“Come here, A-Sang,” Wen Ruohan said, and Nie Mingjue’s hands clenched into fists. “There is room to sit by me. A-Yao will have wine brought.”

The odd turn of phrase did not catch his attention, at first. But then Jin Guangyao flicked his hand, and all of the servants and slaves around Nie Mingjue leapt to action, taking ewers from the trays held by the page-boys and flooding out into the hall, towards the guests to whom they had been assigned.

Nie Mingjue turned, wooden, on instinct, and picked up an ewer. He looked to Jin Guangyao, but Jin Guangyao had not sat nor reached for his cup. He made eye contact with Nie Mingjue, and his hand twitched minutely in the direction of the dais.

No, he thought, his body grown cold. No.

Yes, Jin Guangyao said with his eyes. An executioner’s smile spread across his face. I am not your friend, Nie Mingjue. Go.

Blood roared in his ears. Nie Mingjue mounted the steps of the dais and forced his arms to move. He poured the clear alcohol into Wen Ruohan’s cup, and Wen Ruohan ignored him as though he were nothing more than a wisp of dust in the air.

“What a pretty fan, A-Sang,” he said. “Is it new?”

“This servant thanks Your Excellency,” Nie Huaisang mumbled. His voice was dead, and a spike of pain pierced Nie Mingjue’s heart. “It is.”

“Ah, that was the gift A-Yao sent you, is it not?”

“It is.”

Nie Mingjue began to fill his brother’s cup.

“A-Yao has been very kind to you. You must remember to thank him.”

Huaisang’s eyes rose from the table, and Nie Mingjue almost dropped the ewer. His brother’s eyes were shining in the strong afternoon light, and there was a lifetime’s worth of grief in them. Huaisang clenched his jaw.

“Jin-er-gongzi has been very kind,” he parroted.

Walking away from the table was the hardest thing Nie Mingjue had ever done, but he managed it. He returned to the wall. The rest of the guests took their seats, Jin Guangyao made a toast, and the banquet began. Nie Mingjue attended to him as always, but another servant took on the duties of keeping Huaisang and Wen Ruohan’s cups filled. Jin Guangyao did not drink much.

Towards the end of the meal, Lan Xichen came over to sit at Jin Guangyao’s side. The table was just barely big enough to accommodate the both of them, and Nie Mingjue felt a dull twinge of surprise at Xichen’s rudeness.

“Your pardon, Jin-er-gongzi,” Lan Xichen said. “I wonder if you and I may have time during the conference to discuss the progress at Cloud Recesses.”

“Yes, perhaps we may find the time later,” Jin Guangyao said with a smile. “At the moment, you must excuse me, Lan-zongzhu. There is something I must do before our guests retire for the night.”

He stood and stepped into the center of the room. First he thanked everyone again for their attendance, one of those pretty, flowery speeches that Nie Mingjue had heard a dozen times or more. Then he paused and looked towards the back of the room, where two men stood carrying a large box. A satisfied smile curled his lips, and he turned to Wen Ruohan.

“And now, on behalf of my honored father, Sect Leader Jin, may I present a gift to Your Excellency?”

He waved the men forward.

“Mingjue-xiong,” Lan Xichen muttered. “My cup is empty. Come fill it.”

The command made no sense—Lan Xichen didn’t drink—but Nie Mingjue stood and bent down to pour the wine. Very casually, hidden by his wide sleeves, Lan Xichen reached out and touched a finger to each of Mingjue’s ankles. His wrists.

“A magnificent specimen of martial power,” Jin Guangyao was saying. “Newly tamed.”

Nie Mingjue knew what was in the box before it was opened, as his spiritual power returned to him like sunlight cresting over the mountain. It was blinding, blazing, and he recoiled from it as if he had been confined to darkness all this time. Then he reached out his hand and Baxia flew to his grasp, and the world broke open.

It seemed that every cultivator in the room was on their feet and shouting within the blink of an eye, their weapons drawn. Nie Mingjue took a defensive posture, his eyes darting around to distinguish friend from foe while Baxia howled triumphantly in his ear.

Wen Ruohan was on his feet, rage etched in his face and resentment pouring from him as the fierce corpses came to life, snarling and lifting weapons. But then there was a strange noise—the eerie strains of a flute, and Nie Mingjue realized it was coming from Wei Wuxian, who had a dizi at his lips. Some of the fierce corpses halted where they stood, trembling as if torn between two masters.

Nie Mingjue had no more time to observe; Jin Zixun charged at him, shouting for the guards, and he had to swing Baxia up to deflect his sword. It took more effort than it would have a year ago, but his golden core was back and he felt drunk on its power. Jin Zixuan shouted at his cousin to stand down, but Jin Zixun refused. The Jin forces and the minor clans were chaotic, leaping into battle wherever one could be found. Nie Mingjue kept his back to the other servants and could only hope that none of them felt loyal enough to stab him in the back.

“You!” Wen Ruohan roared, and Nie Mingjue’s heart dropped out of his chest. Huaisang was still within his reach—

But when he shoved Jin Zixun away and looked around, it was not Nie Huaisang caught in Wen Ruohan’s furious gaze; it was Jin Guangyao, his face pale.

“Traitor!”

Three shards of the Yin Iron roiled like stormclouds in his hand. Wei Wuxian played a piercing note on his dizi, sweat pouring down his forehead. Some of the fierce corpses contorted themselves into strange poses as they struggled to obey the siren call of one demonic cultivator or the other, but a few escaped Wei Wuxian’s snare. They marched on Jin Guangyao.

Wen Ruohan was left alone and exposed on the top of the dais. His control over the Yin Iron had reached its limit, and he didn’t even carry a sword. For a moment, Nie Mingjue hesitated.

Only a moment.

He tore through Jin Zixun on his way into the center aisle; the young Jin fell to the ground, clutching the gaping gash on his chest, and almost immediately Nie Mingjue found himself dealing the same blow to a fierce corpse. The corpses were not hindered by such human things as pain. The muscles that supported its sword arm were severed, but it merely switched hands and kept going.

But Nie Mingjue had gotten plenty of experience with these loathsome creatures during the war. They became sluggish and confused when their heads were chopped off. After that, it was easy to cut off or disable their arms, and their legs if need be. He shoved the first corpse to the ground and leapt in front of Jin Guangyao. There was a knife in Jin Guangyao’s hand, just long enough to keep the corpses at bay, to divert them off their course and into Baxia’s reach.

“Where the fuck is Hensheng?” Nie Mingjue roared. Jin Guangyao was not skilled with blades, but his soft sword had the useful skill of wrapping around limbs and throats, and would therefore be significantly more useful than the knife he wielded now.

There was a sudden stillness. Around them, the battle between living cultivators still raged, but the fierce corpses abruptly stopped their assault and marched off to join those already under Wei Wuxian’s control. Nie Mingjue stared for a moment, before he whirled around to face the dais. The point of a sword stuck through Wen Ruohan’s chest. It withdrew, and as the body fell it revealed Nie Huaisang, his face pale and his eyes as dark and cold as the night sky.

He had been so young when the war began. Younger than any of his agemates, it seemed; Nie Mingjue had not hesitated to order Jin Zixuan or Jiang Wanyin into battle, but Huaisang was his little brother, and he had stayed behind. Every day since the end of the war, when Nie Mingjue had thought about his decision to surrender, when he had bitterly regretted it and wondered what else he could have done, he came back to this: once the Unclean Realm fell, he had had no choice. He would sacrifice himself and his entire sect and everything he had, except for his brother.

“Huaisang,” he choked out. His brother looked up and cast Hensheng aside.

“Da-ge,” he said in a watery voice as he stumbled off the dais. “Da-ge!”

He flung himself into Nie Mingjue’s arms, and Nie Mingjue clutched him tightly. Tears spilled from his eyes, and his pulse was roaring in his ears. From very far away, he heard Jin Guangyao order the Jin to surrender, and there was a mighty crash as swords were thrown to the floor.

⚭⚭⚭⚭⚭⚭⚭⚭⚭

“My brother was always telling me it wasn’t my fault—” Jiang Yanli began.

“It wasn’t,” Nie Mingjue interrupted.

They were sitting in a sunlit courtyard in Jinlintai. Huaisang was asleep, curled up in his lap like a small child, and the soothing music of Lan Xichen’s guqin drifted down from the platform on which he sat. Nie Mingjue almost wanted to sleep himself, but he resisted. Wen Ruohan’s death had ended one small chaos and set off many. Jiang Wanyin had assumed command of Jinlintai, while Wei Wuxian and Lan Wangji went off to secure Qishan. Cultivators who might be a threat needed to be restrained, while the enslaved Nie needed to be freed.

In amongst all of this, there had been time for only the most cursory of explanations—and as the night stretched on, Nie Huaisang and his conspirators had fallen into an exhausted slumber. Huaisang had promised a more thorough explanation in the morning, but he had still appeared haggard even after breakfast, and Nie Mingjue had long been denied the opportunity to care for his brother.

And so, they had retreated to the courtyard, to steal a few hours of peace while they awaited news from the outside world. While Huaisang slept, Jiang Yanli had offered to fill in the gaps of Nie Mingjue’s understanding.

“Your mother’s sworn sister asked for you,” he continued. “You had no reason to suspect treachery.”

“Even so,” she sighed. “If I had stayed in Qinghe, where I was needed, then my brother would not have surrendered so soon. Huaisang understood.” She reached out and tucked a lock of hair behind his ear. “He and Wen Ning and I spoke often of how difficult it was to be the useless siblings—little better than hostages. But Huaisang was more… martial about it. Furious, really. He insisted that we had to do something.”

“How did you come to be in Qishan, anyway?” Nie Mingjue interrupted. “I thought the Jin sent you back to Yunmeng after the Jiang surrendered.”

“They did. But they invited me to return not long after, and Jin Guangshan had already begun to make noise about reinstating the engagement between me and Jin-gongzi. My brother was not pleased with the idea. We decided to borrow the might of the Wen.” She smiled thinly. “There was a slight concern about Wen Ruohan, especially since he had lost both sons. But A-Qing had already aided us in the war, and we trusted her to keep him at bay if he began to take too much interest. He never did, anyway.”

“I see. So you were in the belly of the beast, and Huaisang decided the best thing to do was carve your way out.”

“In a manner of speaking. At first, he was convinced that we needed to move against Jin Guangyao before anyone else. He was the lynchpin between the Wen and the Jin… and, between you and I, Chifeng-zun, I think your brother holds a bit of a grudge.”

“Yes,” Nie Mingjue said grimly. “He does that.”

“But then Zewu-jun smuggled a message to A-Cheng, saying that Hanguang-jun had finally found A-Xian, and that he was the one who had killed Wen Chao and Wen Zhuliu—everyone thought it was you.”

“I… might have confessed to it, in the Fire Palace.”

The memory was hazy. Jiang Yanli nodded, but did not push.

“A-Xian had learned of our surrender, so he didn’t come back to the Jiang right away. He had begun quietly attacking the Wen forces, here and there—the Jin were more careful, and more difficult to get to. Hanguang-jun joined him, and we decided to focus our efforts on the discussion conference. We knew that it would be held at Jinlintai; we knew that Wen Ruohan would attend, and in all likelihood he would leave Wen Qing behind. If she was in charge of the weakened Wen forces, we would not have to worry about being exposed on our flank. Huaisang thought he could probably convince Wen Ruohan to bring him along, given enough time, and that if you saw he was safe, you would surely join us without any hesitation. With your help, we could eliminate Wen Ruohan, Jin Guangshan, and Jin Guangyao all at once, and probably even suppress the Jin forces.”

She hesitated.

“Something changed.”

“I was called to Jinlintai,” Lan Xichen said, his fingers still dancing over the strings of his instrument. “Jiang-guniang had been writing to Jin Zixuan for some time—trying to get information about the Jin, and trying to assess how loyal he truly was to his sect. Remember, Mingjue-xiong, he was under your command.”

“For barely a moment.”

“For long enough that he was uneasy about his father’s decision to split from you. But Jin Guangyao told me that he had been reading the letters, and that Jin Zixuan would never go against their father based on such subtle hints. Jin Guangyao could persuade him to join our cause, however, if Jin Zixuan was led to think there was a chance their father would be allowed to live in exile or seclusion. He also gave me the talismans to unlock your chains, which would be much easier and safer than trying to break them, and told us he could produce Baxia. He did not tell me he was planning to smuggle a sword to Huaisang, too.”

Nie Mingjue looked down at his brother. There were dark circles under his eyes, and even in sleep he looked distressed. He took Huaisang’s soft hand in his and vowed he would never force it around a weapon again.

“You must have found his sudden cooperation suspicious.”

“I was terrified,” Lan Xichen admitted. “I was sure he would reveal the entire plan to Jin Guangshan—we made several changes to the way things were arranged, just in case. But then I remembered…”

“What?”

“Meng Yao hid me, back when the war began. After Cloud Recesses was sacked. Even if he was not working for Wen Ruohan at that time, he gained some information that could have been used against me, but he never revealed it. So I decided to have faith.”

“Faith,” Nie Mingjue mused.

His gaze wandered over to the west wall of the courtyard, where a vine was crawling up the cracked plaster in the shade of a new-budding cherry tree. Jin Guangyao’s residence was just beyond that wall. Jin Guangyao was locked inside—pacing, probably, slow and deliberate and crumpling his sleeve in his hand, as he waited to learn his fate.

⚭⚭⚭⚭⚭⚭⚭⚭⚭

The dissolution of the Wen and Jin Clans was unpleasant, of course. The victorious sects could at least swear that they had been kinder than the winners of the last war—there was less of a bloodbath. A small number of inner sect members who had fought for the ruling regime until the end were executed. Most of the outer disciples were willing to renounce their allegiance, and were either assigned to a fixed term of servitude or given as disciples to help replenish the weakened sects.

It was more difficult to decide what would be done with the inner disciples who had collaborated with the resistance, or at least abstained from the fighting—recent acts of bravery aside, most of them had betrayed the Sunshot forces, after all. Many days of intense negotiation dealt with this point.

In the end, Jin Zixuan and Madam Jin were given to the Yunmeng Jiang. The engagement between Jin Zixuan and Jiang Yanli was reinstated; there was nothing for diplomacy like marriage, and communication between the two had been a substantial part of the eventual rebellion. All of this was spoken of in only the blandest terms, but a few soft looks from Jiang Yanli—and dozens of startled, anxious, hopeful glances from Jin Zixuan—suggested that a genuine affection had finally blossomed between the two.

Wen Qing, Wen Ning, and the rest of the Dafan Wen were given to the Gusu Lan… under the particular care of Wei Wuxian, the new Lan-er-furen. Nie Mingjue still had yet to hear the full details of that story; even Huaisang had not managed to wrangle them from his friend, though not for lack of trying.

Then there was the Qinghe Nie. They had already been one of the smaller clans; in the Sunshot Campaign and beyond, all of the elders and half of the bloodline had been slaughtered, the Unclean Realm overrun, the ancestral hall violated, who knew how many disciples killed, run off, or enslaved. All who wished to return were sent back, and it was agreed that Qinghe Nie would hold sixty percent of the servitude contracts, and up to sixty percent of the new disciples, provided that any met their standards.

Qinghe Nie accepted these capitulations with grace. They had only one further request: they wanted Jin Guangyao.

⚭⚭⚭⚭⚭⚭⚭⚭⚭

The Nie caravan was slow; there were many people attached to it, and they were tired. On the second to last day of the journey, they halted outside of a large town, near the last major crossroad. It led to Qinghe. It also led to Yunmeng, Gusu, Lanling, to Beijing, to Nanjing, and far beyond. That night, when the rest of the caravan was asleep, Nie Mingjue woke Jin Guangyao and escorted him to the crossroad.

Jin Guangyo was silent the entire walk. It was a full moon, and the crossroad was bathed in silver light. Jin Guangyao went to his knees.

“For what it’s worth,” he said. “I first joined the Wen in order to act as a spy for the Sunshot forces.”

Nie Mingjue was caught off guard.

“You have never said that before.”

“No,” Jin Guangyao smiled. “Who would believe me? I wrote a letter to Lan Xichen back then, but before I could send it, I realized my father was colluding with Wen Ruohan, so it never amounted to anything. But I wanted you to know, Chifeng-zun.”

His eyes were shining in the cool light. He was afraid, and not afraid.

“I meant what I said when I left Qinghe. I am grateful to have known you. I never set out to hurt you.”

“Do you regret it?” Nie Mingjue asked, a perverse curiosity.

A tear slipped down Jin Guangyao’s cheek, and he took a deep, shuddering breath.

“I regret many things,” he said. “But this… you and I… it was inevitable. There is nothing to be gained regretting the inevitable.”

He lifted his face and closed his eyes. A night breeze stirred the air around them; it carried away his sigh, and the tension eased from his body. He even smiled a little. Nie Mingjue looked down at him and remembered when Meng Yao knelt before him. A lifetime ago. The man before him now was a different person with a different name.

Nie Mingjue was different, too. He was still adjusting to the lightness of his unchained wrists and ankles; a scar still collared his neck, and the whisper of Baxia at his back was almost a stranger to him. He drew a weapon.

“Jin Guangyao.”

Jin Guangyao’s eyes opened and were drawn immediately to the sword—there was a flicker of surprise. It was Hensheng. Nie Mingjue cast it down at his feet.

“You served me, I served you. You killed my captain, I killed your child. As far as I am concerned, we are even from this moment onward. There is nothing between us.”

Jin Guangyao flinched. Nie Mingjue drew out a bag next, and handed it to him; Jin Guangyao ran his hand over the waxed fabric. He was not so rude as to open it immediately, but he could surely feel and guess at the contents: a jug of water, two heavy strings of coins, and his mother’s memorial tablet.

“You are free of any obligations to me, Lan Xichen, Wen Ruohan, your father, or anyone else.” He gestured at the roads around them. “So, go somewhere. Or… come to Qinghe.”

Jin Guangyao’s eyes rested on the head of each road for a moment, slow and deliberate. Then he looked at Nie Mingjue.

“What will I find in Qinghe?” he asked. His lips twitched. “Aside from your brother, who loathes me. And you…”

His voice trailed off deliberately. Who loves me—or who hates me even more? It was hard to know. Nie Mingjue’s heart began to pound.

“A ruin,” he said. “In need of rebuilding. I do not know… if it can ever be what it was before. I hope it will at least be worthy of the effort.”

Jin Guangyao nodded slowly.

“Very well.”

“The may be a fool’s endeavor,” Nie Mingjue warned.

“Then we may both be fools.” Jin Guangyao bowed. “Sect leader.”

He turned and walked back towards the caravan. Nie Mingjue lingered for a moment in the moonlight. He touched the scar on his neck, and looked up at the familiar constellations pointing him home. He followed Jin Guangyao into the darkness.