To Embers We Return — Chapter 1
***
Snow was falling over Shuangji Hall, which nestled among the mountains on the outskirts of Chang’an. The twin peaks that bounded its territory to the east and west rose steeply into the sky, casting ghostly shadows across the night-time landscape.
The girl who had decided to stake everything on tonight’s gamble tore through the wind and snow. Her heart was pounding loud enough to drown out the steady downward patter of the crystalline flakes. Her breath left her lungs in puffs of white vapour, each swiftly overtaken by her as she hurried on her way.
Bian Jin’s dim figure soon came into view. She was standing just outside one of the many buildings that made up Shuangji Hall, illuminated by several hanging lanterns.
By now, Shen Ni’s clothes were completely soaked through. Repressing a shiver, she placed herself squarely in front of Bian Jin. ‘This campaign is far too dangerous, shijie,’[1] she said, ‘and your old wounds still haven’t healed fully. I don’t want you to go.’
Bian Jin, who was carefully wiping down her whip under the snow-laden eaves, looked up. Beads of moisture from the mist and snow fringed her eyelids, and her gaze was cool. When she spoke, it was in a low, quiet voice that nevertheless brooked no objection. ‘If I do not go, Yanluo will fall, and the capital will follow soon after. When calamity besets the empire, none of us can escape unscathed.’[2]
Shen Ni knew Bian Jin was doing this for the very survival of the empire that had birthed them, for the preservation of the sect that had raised them. But Bian Jin had already spent three long years fighting for her country on the front lines. At that time, too, a desperate plea for aid had come from the northern border, and Bian Jin had been commanded to lead an army there to defend it. She had forced the enemy troops into a retreat, and come home covered in wounds.
Everyone thought of her as the empire’s all-conquering weapon, capable of battling back any threat it faced. Only Shen Ni saw the horrific scars that lay hidden beneath her clothes. Bian Jin was only human, after all; she had only one life to lose. She could be wounded — could feel pain — could die.
After Bian Jin had returned victorious from that first campaign, the emperor had promised that she could retire from the front lines for good.[3] Only sixteen months later, however, enemy troops breached the empire’s northern border once more. Again, the emperor sent an urgent plea to Shuangji Hall, expressing the hope that Bian Jin would lead a second campaign north and rout the empire’s foes as she had done before.
Shen Ni had thought her shijie would say no. After all, her shijie had promised her that she would never let herself be injured again, that she would never leave Shuangji Hall again, that she would never leave Shen Ni behind again. But in the end, Bian Jin had chosen to answer the emperor’s summons.
Shen Ni’s throat choked with countless words she could not give voice to. She knew her shijie’s mind was made up, and when that happened, no one could sway her from her goal. She clenched her fists so hard the knuckles whitened. The thoughts and worries that flooded her mind coalesced into a single sentence. ‘I’ll come with you.’
‘No,’ said Bian Jin in a tone that left no room for compromise. ‘Yanluo is filled with danger. You must stay here.’
Shen Ni had not anticipated the finality of her shijie’s refusal. At the thought of parting from Bian Jin so soon, panic welled up in her, driving all notions of propriety out of her mind. She clutched Bian Jin’s gloved hand tightly. Her declaration, when it came, was short and to the point.
‘You’re the most important person I’ll ever have in my life. Wherever you go, I’ll follow.’
All was silent around them; the whole world seemed to be shrouded in a layer of enervating, freezing cold. Shen Ni’s eyes were the only flame in the wintry landscape, ablaze with the light of her burning boats.[4]
Bian Jin read the deep-buried emotion that lay behind her shimei’s[5] words. The barest hint of surprise flitted across her face and vanished just as quickly as it had come. Her expression turned cool again. Pitilessly, she flung Shen Ni’s hand aside and turned her back on the girl. ‘Stay here,’ she repeated dispassionately.
In the end, the stubborn girl did not heed her shijie’s words. Concealing herself among the ranks of the army bound for the border, Shen Ni followed Bian Jin to the battlefields of the north.
That was a completely unfamiliar world, filled with bloodshed and slaughter and terrifying mutant beasts. The ground was littered with blood and brains and severed limbs. Shen Ni’s toughest battle came when she managed to sneak into a squad of crack troops who were all sworn to defend the empire with their lives. They attacked an enemy camp on Liaoli Ridge by night. Shen Ni killed more than sixty soldiers herself, and nearly lost an eye into the bargain. At one point, she found herself surrounded by hostile troops on all sides. Just as she was sure that she would die there, Bian Jin descended from the heavens, cut a path through the enemy lines, and dragged Shen Ni to safety.
And then, without giving Shen Ni a single word of comfort, Bian Jin trussed her up and brought her back to Shuangji Hall. There, before all the assembled disciples, Shen Ni was made to kneel for three days and three nights before the main gates with her hands bound behind her back, and to receive ten lashes of Bian Jin’s whip.
Bian Jin stood ramrod straight in the snow. As she uncoiled her silver-white bone whip from around her waist, it scraped against itself with a baleful rattle. ‘You’re being punished today,’ she proclaimed, ‘for your wilful disobedience of my orders, for transgressing the rules of our sect, and for your rank arrogance in believing you can do as you please.’
Shen Ni looked up into Bian Jin’s darkened eyes and understood that Bian Jin was giving her the chance to repent publicly. If she showed proper contrition in front of so many fellow disciples, Bian Jin might well dispense with the whipping.
Shen Ni lifted her head, as defiant as a young poplar standing firm in the teeth of a howling gale. ‘If you wanted me to be obedient, shijie, why did you name me “Ni”?’
‘Ni’ meant to disobey, to rebel, to go against the order of things. For a heartbeat, a complicated mix of emotions flashed through Bian Jin’s eyes. Then she raised her arm, and the whip fell mercilessly across Shen Ni’s back.
Shen Ni’s whole body tensed as she forced herself to swallow the pain. Not a single sound escaped her.
Several of their sect-siblings stepped forward to intercede, and Bian Jin glanced at them sharply. ‘Whoever tries to dissuade me will share her punishment.’
No one dared voice any objection after that. They knew even a single lash of Bian Jin’s whip was forceful enough to flay open skin and shatter bone — much less ten.
Bian Jin had always doted on Shen Ni; this was the first time she had ever punished her shimei so harshly. No one noticed that the hand in which she held the whip was trembling ever so slightly.
Ten lashes later, Shen Ni’s back was a bloody mess. She had fallen forwards with her face in the snow, drained of all her strength. Just as she was about to lose consciousness completely, she heard Bian Jin’s voice above her head, completely devoid of emotion. ‘This was a minor punishment, intended as a warning,’ said her shijie. ‘If you ever show such rank subordination again, and violate our sect’s rules in this way, I will not let it go lightly. Remember that.’
Their shizun[6] was dead, so all of Shuangji Hall’s affairs were handled by Bian Jin as the most senior disciple. As far as the sect was concerned, her word was iron law.[7]
Shen Ni straightened very slowly. Snow slipped from her forehead, revealing a youthful pair of eyes as sharp and bright as any eagle’s. Once again, she tilted her head back and fixed her gaze on Bian Jin. Blood and sweat mingled on her face; her eyes shone with tears she was barely able to hold back. But still those bloodstained lips began to curve upward, tracing the trembling contours of a smile.
‘I will, for as long as I live.’
Back then, through the veil of falling snow, Shen Ni had not been able to tell whether those words brought so much as a ripple to Bian Jin’s eyes. As the dream faded, it left behind a freezing, bone-deep pain, which in turn became an ache that throbbed on, unfading.
***
Shen Ni woke up with a start, jostled by the air currents that tossed her hither and thither. She opened her eyes — they were the shape called ‘phoenix eyes’, their ends sweeping upward towards her temples — to the rays of the newly-risen sun. The city of Chang’an, which she had not seen in years, was now in view.
As she sped towards the gates of the city, the remnants of the dream she’d just woken up from clung to her mind like a half-dissolved cobweb. It had been a while since she’d last dreamt of her shijie, that pitiless woman. She had thought it would never happen again. These memories must have resurfaced, Shen Ni surmised, because Bian Jin was the reason she was making post-haste for the capital.
Shen Ni blinked her sleep-heavy eyes and deactivated the autopilot on her hovercraft. Ahead of her, she could see a full squad of soldiers arranging themselves in neat ranks across the city gates.
The gate commander, standing at the head of the troops, craned her[8] neck expectantly as she squinted into the distance. The black dot advancing steadily through the wind and falling snow, she thought, must be Marquess[9] Jing’an, Shen Ni herself.
On hearing that Marquess Jing’an was making a speedy return to the capital, the gate commander had assembled a welcome guard at the city gates first thing that very morning. She was keen to ensure that Shen Ni was received with every honour. After all, Shen Ni had risen from the ranks of commoners to become the empire’s foremost machinist. The fifty thousand crack troops she’d personally constructed in Yanluo had slaughtered their way through the Xuanzhou Empire’s two hundred thousand-strong army, smashing them completely. Shen Ni had even managed to root out the malign ‘Black Box’[10] which had run rampant across the continent, and whose very name struck fear into the most stalwart hearts. She had finally brought an end to the war that had been raging in the northern territories for the last six years, at least for now. Even before Shen Ni left Yanluo, the emperor’s decree granting her the title of marquess was already winging its way towards her, together with her crimson robes of office, the golden pouch containing her ministerial seal, and promises of sundry other rewards.
When news that Shen Ni had retaken Yanluo reached Chang’an, the whole country rejoiced. Shen Ni was not simply a commander who had brought them a crucial victory — she was the empire’s saviour. Both nobility and commoners reflected with a heartfelt sigh that the old era associated with Bian Jin’s ascendancy was now well and truly over.
With her victory, Shen Ni had cut through the lethargic pall that hung over the empire. In that same stroke, she’d shattered the festering memory of ‘Bian Jin’ — the woman whose very name now seemed like a curse to the empire — and written herself into the annals of history. The young Marquess Jing’an was undoubtedly one of the most sought-after ministers in the empire today.
Shen Ni came swooping in from the heavens, her hovercraft aimed straight at the gates of Chang’an like an arrow loosed from a bow. The gate commander had never met Shen Ni in person, but she’d heard tales of Shen Ni’s ruthless tactics. Marquess Jing’an, she thought, must be some burly, strapping fighter.
The gate commander lifted her arms, and was just about to perform a military salute when the hovercraft swept past at close quarters. The young woman on it looked to be about twenty years old. On her head was a futou,[11] and over her robes of office she wore a black cloak with a white fur collar, its folds rustling in the icy wind.
A particularly strong gust smacked the gate commander and her assembled troops full in the face, making them grit their teeth and screw their eyes shut. Shen Ni’s features, however, did not even twitch, as if this chill was nothing to her after the bitter cold of the north. She glanced at the gate commander, cocking a long, slender brow. Her flower-fair face was as enchanting as any demonic seductress out of legend.
The gate commander’s mouth opened and shut; she was completely mesmerised by that scintillating glance. Before she could utter any of the words of welcome she’d prepared for the occasion, however, Shen Ni had already flown past her and disappeared through the city gates.
Shen Ni sped towards the Court of Judicature and Revision,[12] her hovercraft skimming just above Zhuque Avenue, the broad boulevard that ran through the city. There was a beep, and the hovercraft’s control screen lit up, indicating that there was a new ‘Messenger Pigeon’ missive for her. It was from Zeng Qingluo — a shimei of Shen Ni’s, one of Shuangji Hall’s outer disciples,[13] and Shen Ni’s eyes-and-ears in the capital. It was Zeng Qingluo who had first sent her word that Bian Jin had resurfaced after a disappearance of three years, as well as the fact that she was now an imperial prisoner.
Shen Ni opened the message. They interrogated dashijie[14] at the Court of Judicature and Revision, said Zeng Qingluo, but they couldn’t pry a single word out of her no matter how hard they tried. You know what their tactics are like — dashijie must have suffered terribly at their hands. You should be prepared.
Shen Ni had a good idea of what she should expect. The dungeons at the Court of Judicature and Revision housed the empire’s most notorious, most dangerous criminals. Whatever the charge, the first thing the interrogators did to each prisoner was to exact their pound of flesh. Being handed into their custody was tantamount to placing one foot over the threshold of the gates of hell. In the last ten years, no prisoner had ever been exonerated by the Court of Judicature and Revision. Bian Jin would be the first.
A complex mix of emotions washed over Shen Ni. She had not seen Bian Jin for many years. It was six years ago — when Shen Ni was sixteen — that she’d been made to kneel before the gates of Shuangji Hall and to endure ten lashes of Bian Jin’s whip. After that, Bian Jin had returned to the battlefields of the north, and not a single word had passed between them since then. News of the rupture between them spread rapidly from Shuangji Hall to the whole of the capital.
Three years passed, and still her shijie did not return. The last news of Bian Jin from the north was that she had betrayed the empire, then disappeared.
Shen Ni had been training diligently for battle every day, and now there was no one to stop her from putting herself forward. She accosted the emperor while the latter was travelling across the realm and offered her services. She was ready and willing to lead a new campaign on Yanluo, she said.
When Shen Ni arrived in that war-torn territory, she found no trace of Bian Jin, but she did discover one nightmarish fact: every single soldier in Bian Jin’s one million-strong army had perished. Bian Jin, it seemed, had killed them all, then defected to their enemy, the Xuanzhou Empire. It was said that she spent every night cavorting with the female emperor of Xuanzhou, and that the two of them indulged in the most extreme forms of debauchery.
Three years later, Shen Ni had managed to eradicate all Xuanzhou forces south of the border, but she had still not found a single trace of Bian Jin. Then, the day before she was due to set off for the capital with her troops, she’d received that fateful message from Zeng Qingluo. Bian Jin had been found by officials of the Lijing Bureau, said Zeng Qingluo. She had been escorted back to the capital and imprisoned in the Court of Judicature and Revision’s dungeons, where interrogators were trying to extract a confession from her.
Shen Ni sensed that something deeper must be going on. And so, after petitioning the emperor, she made straight for the capital through the night.
The hovercraft landed just in front of the entrance to the Court of Judicature and Revision’s dungeons. On hearing that Marquess Jing’an had travelled non-stop to the capital to demand their prisoner, the Director of the Court of Judicature and Revision hurried out to greet her. Owing to her elevated status, he wore a smile on his usually stern face. ”My lord marquess,’ he said, ‘the prisoner is still alive, albeit… not in the best condition.’
That was an understatement, Shen Ni realised when she saw the woman being dragged forward by two guards, each gripping her by one arm. The woman was wearing a tattered prisoner’s uniform and covered in bloodstains. Her hair hung loose in matted clumps, and a black blindfold had been tied around her eyes. The bottom half of her face was concealed by a titanium muzzle. Around her neck was a collar of black metal, and the edges of it had rubbed her snow-white throat raw.
Prisoners’ collars of this kind, Shen Ni knew, were fitted with explosives. If a prisoner were to escape the bounds of the Court of Judicature and Revision, their collar would detonate instantly, blowing even the toughest cybernetic neck into smithereens.
Through the rips in her uniform, Shen Ni could see that the woman’s skin was covered in electrical burns. Her spine had been so badly crushed that she was unable to stand upright. Even being held up by the guards like this must be causing her unimaginable pain. This battered, broken prisoner was a far cry from the woman of Shen Ni’s youthful memories — that immaculate, unsullied figure, standing tall and proud amidst the mountains and snow.
Shen Ni took off her deerskin gloves and tilted up the woman’s bloodstained chin with one spotlessly clean hand. It was Bian Jin. Even though she looked as shattered as so much scrap metal, even though half of her face was hidden by that titanium muzzle, Shen Ni could tell from a single glance that this was, indeed, Bian Jin. The senior disciple of Shuangji Hall whose every word was law; the renowned ‘Empire’s Blade’ who cut down enemies as if they were no more than stalks of grass. Those eyes had once looked down loftily on the maddened faces of her foes; those feet had once trampled upon the decapitated heads of the boldest generals. Opposing armies had been known to surrender before a single blow was even exchanged, once they heard it was Bian Jin herself they faced across the battlefield. The woman who had been revered by a generation was now as helpless as a discarded piece of paper, open to the tender mercies of anyone who might choose to toy with her.
The Director of the Court of Judicature and Revision saw Shen Ni’s expression darken. He’d heard that the two women were sect-sisters, and even though there had been a rift between them, it was likely that the old bond still held. ‘My lord marquess, her spine was already completely broken when the Lijing officials brought her in,’ he hastened to explain. ‘This was not our doing.’
Shen Ni said nothing. The director coughed lightly, then turned to remonstrate the guards who stood on either side of Bian Jin. ‘Why have you left her in restraints, when you’ve already brought her all the way out here?’
Because it was Bian Jin, the guards had not dared undo her muzzle and collar. Not that this was something they could admit to their director.
Shen Ni reached out to remove Bian Jin’s muzzle. ‘Be careful, my lord,’ said the director hastily. ‘She’s aggressive.’
Shen Ni did not stop. The muzzle came free with a click, and she said in a low voice whose tone was difficult to read, ‘She abhors dirt. It would be beneath her to bite.’
Fresh, cold air rushed into Bian Jin’s lungs; she’d been half-suffocated until this very moment. Reflexively she took a deep breath, then burst into a violent fit of coughing.
Shen Ni went on propping up Bian Jin’s chin, allowing the other woman to cough into the palm of her hand. When Bian Jin finally stopped, she clamped her pale, cracked lips shut, as if in doubt. As Shen Ni had predicted, she did not bite.
Shen Ni plucked at the collar around Bian Jin’s neck. One of the guards, seeing that she meant to undo it, gave a slight chuckle. ‘My lord marquess,’ he said, cupping his hands respectfully before his chest, ‘this is the most secure restraining device the Court of Judicature and Revision owns. To open it, one requires the authorisation of our director, the Censorate[15] and the Bureau of Research and Innovation—’
Before he could finish speaking, Shen Ni’s palm flashed with white light. The collar fell to the ground with a clink as if it were no more than a plaything.
The onlookers were stunned into silence. How could they have forgotten that the woman standing before them was the empire’s foremost machinist?
Finally, Shen Ni untied the black blindfold from around Bian Jin’s eyes. Bian Jin’s heavy lids opened effortfully.
Shen Ni ran a warm knuckle under Bian Jin’s chin, turning the other woman to face her. ‘You’ll be coming with me,’ she said.
At that familiar voice, Bian Jin’s unfocused gaze began, very slowly, to take on a faint light. With great difficulty, she looked up from some inner abyss of death, and saw the woman who stood amidst the wind and snow. The woman’s face reminded her of her shimei.
Was this some near-death hallucination? Bian Jin wondered. Was she dreaming that her shimei was picking her up — wrapping a soft robe around her — carrying her away?
Bian Jin closed her eyes.
She’d been so cruel to her shimei, yet she was being granted a final vision of Shen Ni before she died. Heaven had taken pity on her after all.
***
Author’s Note:
It begins!
This is a historical, cyberpunk, love-after-marriage type of novel. I’m making myself the food I like to eat. Two new chapters today — there’s another one after this. Starting tomorrow, a new chapter will be posted every day at 11.30am.
***
Footnotes:
- In Chinese, 师姐, literally ‘teacher-older sister’. In the wuxia genre, this refers to an older (or otherwise more senior) female disciple with whom one shares a martial arts teacher. [return to text]
- In Chinese, 覆巢之下焉有完卵 (pinyin: fu chao zhi xia yan you wan luan), literally ‘when a bird’s nest is overturned, no egg can remain whole’. The saying originates from A New Account of Tales of the World (世说新语, pinyin: shi shuo xin yu), a collection of historical anecdotes and character sketches about members of the literati who lived during the Han and Wei-Jin Dynasties. [return to text]
- In the original text, 卸甲归田 (pinyin: xie jia guitian), literally ‘to remove one’s armour and return to the farm’. The chengyu describes a soldier retiring from military service and taking up civilian life. [return to text]
- In the original text, the chengyu 破釜沉舟 (pinyin: po fu chen zhou), literally ‘to break the cauldrons and sink the boats’. This reference to an event in Qin dynasty military history describes someone committing themselves to a particular course of action by rendering any alternative impossible. [return to text]
- In Chinese, 师妹, literally ‘teacher-younger sister’. In the wuxia genre, this refers to a younger (or otherwise more junior) female disciple with whom one shares a martial arts teacher. [return to text]
- In Chinese, 师尊, literally ‘teacher respected (or honoured)’. In the xianxia genre, this refers to one’s teacher in the art of cultivation, i.e. training in the mystical and/or martial arts in order to increase one’s longevity, improve one’s health, and gain quasi-supernatural powers. [return to text]
- In the original text, the chengyu 金科玉律 (pinyin: jin ke yu lü), literally ‘golden rules and jade precepts’. The expression originates from ‘Denouncing the Qin Dynasty and Commending the New Reign’ (剧秦美新, pinyin: ju qin mei xin), an essay by Yang Xiong (扬雄), a philosopher, poet and politician of the Western Han Dynasty. It denotes an immutable law which must be complied with. [return to text]
- The gender of the gate commander is not obvious from the text. This being the case, I have elected to make her a woman. [return to text]
- In the original text, 侯 (pinyin: hou), the second rank of the five orders of ancient Chinese nobility. While ‘marquess’ is gendered male in English, I have chosen to use it and similar titles in a gender-neutral fashion in this translation, both because noble titles are gender-neutral in Chinese and because female princes, marquesses, dukes, etc are sexy. [return to text]
- In the original text, 黑魔方 (pinyin: hei mofang), literally ‘Black Rubik’s Cube’. As Ernő Rubik, the inventor of the Rubik’s Cube, does not exist in the world of the novel, and as the second syllable carries connotations of something mysterious and sinister, I’ve elected to render this as ‘Black Box’. [return to text]
- In Chinese, 幞头 (also pronounced and written 襆头, pinyin: putou), a form of headgear commonly worn by government officials in imperial China. [return to text]
- In the original text, 大理寺 (pinyin: da li si), a central government agency which existed in several imperial Chinese dynasties, and was responsible for the conduct of criminal proceedings. [return to text]
- In the original text, 外门 (pinyin: wai men). In the xianxia genre, outer disciples are those members of a sect who do not receive personal training or instruction from the senior leaders of the sect, and are often ineligible to be trained in the sect’s most powerful techniques. This places them below ‘inner’ (内门, pinyin: nei men) disciples within the sect’s hierarchy, as the latter do receive such training. [return to text]
- In Chinese, 大师姐. In this context, it means ‘eldest shijie’. [return to text]
- In the original text, 御史台 (pinyin: yu shi tai), a high-level supervisory agency in imperial China. Its members (known as ‘censors’) were responsible for monitoring the behaviour of government officials at every level. [return to text]
douqi 随笔 