To Embers We Return — Chapter 9
***
After transferring the five hundred taels of silver to Bian Jin, Shen Ni left the bedchamber to wash and dress. When she returned, she saw that she had another Messenger Pigeon text. Thinking that Bian Jin must have replied, she opened it, only to find that it was a message from the Civil Affairs Bureau, inviting all residents of Chang’an to the upcoming Shangyuan[1] lantern festival.
This Shangyuan, the mysterious Great Wheel of Fire will be unveiled for the very first time! What’s more, Wangxian Winehouse in the western quarter of the city will be holding a grand lantern riddle competition,[2] with attractive prizes for the winners. All are welcome to enter! Bring your friends and family, and let’s have a wonderful Shangyuan celebration together!
Accompanying the invitation was a drawing of the aforementioned Great Wheel of Fire. It depicted the wheel thrusting high into the clouds, taking up a good half of the city’s market quarter. The wheel was lit up brilliantly — a majestic sight indeed.
Shen Ni closed the invitation and logged on to her ministerial account. Li Ruoyuan still hadn’t granted her access to the Supreme Bureau of Research of Innovation.
Well. She could wait.
Another message arrived, but it still wasn’t from Bian Jin. Instead, it was from an old comrade of Shen Ni’s, who’d gone through all the hardships and dangers of Yanluo’s battlefields with her. This comrade had heard about Shen Ni’s recent marriage, and expressed her regret at not having been able to attend to offer her congratulations in person. As she would soon be coming to Chang’an on official business, she said, she wanted to pay a call on Shen Ni and bring her a belated wedding gift.
Shen Ni sent a brief reply.
All morning long, her digital watch kept buzzing with message after new message, but none of them were from Bian Jin. Is she busy? Shen Ni wondered, propping her chin up on the backs of her fingers. Her eyelids drooped languidly. It seemed things could get hectic at Lantai after all.
Bian Jin was indeed busy.
When she received Shen Ni’s reply, she’d known instantly that Shen Ni had misunderstood her. All she’d intended to do was notify Shen Ni that she was about to make an expensive purchase out of their joint funds. She hadn’t expected Shen Ni to respond with such a generous gesture. It was as if Shen Ni thought Bian Jin had been asking her for a gift.
The mix-up hung over Bian Jin, making her feel rather awkward. Just as she was about to send Shen Ni another message explaining herself, Cheng Zhe, the Director of Lantai, told her to go to the storehouse where the cybernetic limbs and implants were kept. She was to assist the clerk on duty to index and file away a collection of cyberware that had recently been decommissioned, he said. This was difficult, arduous work, so the clerks had been doing it in shifts. It wasn’t Bian Jin’s turn today, but since Cheng Zhe had instructed her to help the colleague on duty, off to the storehouse she went.
As he watched Bian Jin leave the room, Cheng Zhe settled back with a flick of his sleeve and allowed himself a cold little smirk. The position of director was the most senior one within Lantai’s hierarchy, but Cheng Zhe took no pleasure in his status. No matter how much one talked it up, the post was still fundamentally that of a glorified clerk, and he considered it beneath him. He’d passed the imperial examination with flying colours even before he’d turned thirty. Among his cohort of successful candidates, he’d been widely recognised as the one with the brightest prospects. In the end, however, he’d found himself languishing at Lantai, with no hope of being elevated any further.
And through sheer coincidence, the person responsible for the ruin of his political career was the very same person who’d just been made a lowly clerk at Lantai — Bian Jin herself.
When Bian Jin was still the Governor-General of the North, Cheng Zhe himself had been serving as a junior official at Yingzhou, one of the empire’s twelve northern provinces. He’d become close to the Jiang clan, one of the most distinguished families in the region, and had taken one of the daughters from the main branch of the family to wife. Through this he had gained the support of the Jiang clan and several other powerful families in Yingzhou, and his political career had progressed with extraordinary smoothness. Soon, the post of Military Commissioner of Yingzhou seemed to be within his grasp.
As Governor-General of the North, Bian Jin oversaw the promotions and demotions of all officials who were stationed in the twelve northern provinces. When the request for Cheng Zhe’s promotion was presented to her, she rejected it categorically. In setting out the reasons for her decision, she left him no quarter.
Cheng Zhe was already a married man before he left his home village to sit for the imperial examination in the capital, she wrote. His greed and ambition led him to abandon his first wife and their daughter in order to make a more advantageous match. If he is capable of breaking his marital vows for the sake of his political career, he would have no qualms about turning his back on the people of a whole province should that serve his own selfish desires. A man of such low character ought to be barred from any position of responsibility.
And so, the post of Military Commander had been whisked away from under Cheng Zhe’s nose. This dealt him a bitter blow, and put him into a slump for a quite long while. Finally, and with no small effort, he managed through his connections to get himself reappointed to a post back in the capital. His subsequent attempts at ingratiating himself with more powerful officials had borne no fruit. In the end, he’d fetched up at Lantai, his political career well and truly over.
Cheng Zhe had always blamed Bian Jin for cutting off all his hopes of further progression. If not for the blow she’d struck him by denying him that promotion, he was sure his many years of service in the northern provinces would have netted him a prestigious appointment back at the capital before long — as the Vice-Minister of Personnel at the very least, if not higher. In a few more years, he’d fully expected to be made one of the Nine Chamberlains.[3]
Now, however, he was stuck at this worthless archive. To many, the task of an archivist was nothing more than the sorting of piles of superannuated rubbish into different categories — and he, the Director of Lantai, was nothing more than the overseer of this particular rubbish tip.
Cheng Zhe had always borne a grudge against Bian Jin. Now that circumstances had conspired to make her one of his subordinates, he could have taken full advantage of the opportunity to avenge himself against her, if not for the fact that she was married to Shen Ni.
Cheng Zhe had heard it said that Shen Ni was the one who had asked the emperor for Bian Jin’s hand in marriage, the better to continue her investigations into Bian Jin’s supposed treason and to settle her own grudges against Bian Jin. Still, he could not be sure what Shen Ni’s true intentions were, so he had not dared to wreak his vengeance against Bian Jin as unreservedly as he would have liked. He was, however, able to make her life difficult in myriad subtle ways, and that gave him some measure of satisfaction.
Inside the storehouse, a petite young official named Meng Chu was pushing a cart weighed down with cybernetic limbs across the floor, pausing to rest every few steps. She pounded her lower back lightly to relieve the ache that had built up there, then forced herself to straighten her shoulders. She was so tired that she was practically seeing double.
She was the clerk on duty at the storehouse today — just as she’d been yesterday, and would be again tomorrow. Her colleagues at Lantai were completely blatant in their mistreatment of new appointees. But what could she do? Her family was poor, and she was lucky that she’d been able to secure an imperial appointment in the capital, no matter how minor. It was a stark reminder that ‘endurance is a knife hanging over your heart’,[4] as the saying went. If she had to suffer, she would bear it. She still needed to send money home to her parents, after all.
Meng Chu set her jaw. She was just about to carry on pushing the cart when a hand appeared in her field of vision and settled on the handlebar. The cart began moving forward, its wheels rolling across the floor as smoothly as silk despite its heavy load.
Meng Chu looked over her shoulder, and saw that the hand belonged to the pretty jiejie[5] who’d started at Lantai just the day before. She’d spent the last two days in a whirl of busyness, so she hadn’t had time to learn the pretty jiejie’s name. In fact, she’d only caught a single glimpse of her new colleague the day before. The other woman had seemed cold and forbidding, but her face was so lovely that the young, unmarried Meng Chu hadn’t been able to tear her eyes away from it.
Now that she was looking at her new colleague at close quarters, she could see exactly how exquisite the other woman’s features were. She was as beautiful as a goddess who’d descended to the mortal realm from the Heavenly Palace itself, Meng Chu thought.
Meng Chu hadn’t been expecting anyone to turn up and help her, much less the pretty new jiejie, so she thanked her immediately.
Bian Jin — for, it was of course she — said nothing in response. She simply continued wheeling the cart steadily through the storehouse.
Meng Chu shivered as she gazed as Bian Jin’s back. She really is as cold as ice.
Even though there were now two of them in the vast storehouse, a thick hush still lay over it. Bian Jin worked swiftly through the pile of cybernetic limbs and implants in the cart. She only had to glance at each one to know exactly where it should be placed on the shelves that lined the storehouse. Meng Chu, meanwhile, had to scan each object and read laboriously through the documentation in order to be certain where it should go. She was inexpert, too, when it came to operating the mechanical arm used for lifting larger pieces of cyberware. Several times, the object she was trying to pick up nearly slipped free of the grippers.
Once Bian Jin had finished filing away the cyberware that belonged on the two easternmost shelves in the storehouse, she turned to see Meng Chu struggling with the mechanical arm. The younger woman was so nervous that sweat was practically dripping from her forehead.
Bian Jin stepped up behind Meng Chu and said, ‘Relax. Don’t look at your own hands. Look up at the mechanical arm.’
Bian Jin’s tone was absolutely steady, and her very words compelled obedience. Without even thinking about it, Meng Chu did as she was told.
‘Imagine it as your own arm,’ Bian Jin went on, ‘and keep your pace steady as you raise it. Good. You can put that down on the shelf now.’
Thunk.
The cybernetic torso landed squarely on the high shelf, and Meng Chu let out an excited yelp. ‘Thank you so much, jiejie! I’ve never been able to do this so easily before!’
Bian Jin looked eloquently down at the floor, which was covered in scratches from Meng Chu’s clumsier attempts. ‘I can tell.’
Meng Chu stared at her in nonplussed silence. Not only was her new colleague’s manner so cold that she was liable to freeze anyone who came close, her tongue was sharp enough to cut as well.
Within two short hours, they had managed, with what Meng Chu considered breathtaking efficiency, to file away every piece of cyberware in the cart.
Bian Jin had been working away in near-complete silence. Now that they were done, she began making her way towards the entrance of the storehouse, once again without saying anything to Meng Chu.
Meng Chu trailed after her. ‘It doesn’t feel right to keep calling you just jiejie,’ she said. ‘Could you please tell me your name?’
Bian Jin didn’t even glance back at her. She paused at the built-in pupil scanner by the door, allowing it to do its work. As the door opened, she told Meng Chu her name and left the room.
Meng Chu was left rooted to the spot. Wasn’t that the name of the disgraced general who’d been all the talk of the capital lately?
She suddenly recalled the remarks she’d heard from her colleagues in the last few days. ‘Why is she coming to Lantai’, and ‘we should stay away from her’, and so on.
So the pretty new jiejie was none other than the infamous Bian Jin?
***
Back at the mansion, Shen Ni was gazing down at her digital watch. Bian Jin still hadn’t replied.
She recalled then that Bian Jin had found the food at Lantai’s refectory ill-suited to her digestion. Today’s menu was likely to be more of the same. Since she had nothing better to do, Shen Ni decided, she would bring her shijie a meal that would be much easier on her stomach.
When Auntie Wan and one of the maids came into the kitchens, laden down with food they’d bought at the market, they found Shen Ni bustling about. A pot of soup was simmering away in front of her.
‘What are you doing here, my lord?’ asked Auntie Wan, puzzled.
Shen Ni began filleting a fish, keeping a close eye on the flame beneath the soup pot as she did. ‘I fancied some yam and oxtail soup, and I want to steam a fish to go with it.’
‘You know how to cook, my lord?’ asked Auntie Wan.
‘Of course,’ said Shen Ni, as she picked the pin bones from the fish. ‘If I hadn’t learned to feed myself after so many years on the battlefield, I wouldn’t even have the strength to lift a weapon against the enemy.’
Auntie Wan took note of Shen Ni’s practised movements as she moved around the kitchen, and decided that she could leave Shen Ni to it.
Once the fish and soup were ready, Shen Ni packed them into an insulated lunchbox to keep warm. After a moment’s thought, she added a small strawberry cheesecake to it. Then she set off for Lantai on horseback.
She dismounted just outside Lantai’s main gates, and was just tying up her horse when she heard two Lantai officials gossiping in the front courtyard. Through the open gates she could see that they were both smoking electronic cigarettes. Probably skiving off work, she thought.
One of the officials, a middle-aged man, blew out a cloud of smoke and said in a low voice, ‘You can tell the higher-ups are still on their guard against her. She might be under suspicion of treason, but the northern armies are still packed full of her followers — she was Governor-General of the North for years, after all! I hear half of the Three Dukes[6] and Nine Chamberlains presented a joint petition requesting a pardon for her, and to pacify those old fossils, the one at the very top came up with this scheme of marrying her off. Her Majesty has certainly taken her ministers’ concerns to heart!’
Li Ruoyuan was known as a benevolent ruler, and had never yet punished an official for speaking their mind. Her famously mild temperament meant that even officials as lowly as these two felt bold enough to gossip about her behind her back.
‘I heard she and that crafty Marquess Jing’an were sect-sisters, and there’s bad blood between them,’ said the other official, a younger man. ‘Now that she’s fallen into Marquess Jing’an’s clutches, who knows what tortures she has to go through behind closed doors?’
At that, the two men broke into a fit of quiet laughter.
‘She’s not doing so well at Lantai either,’ the older man added. ‘The director got a hefty dose of her “care and consideration” years ago, so he’s told the refectory to be heavy-handed with the grease and salt when they’re dishing up her meals. On top of that, he’s just bought a round of sweet soup[7] for everyone at the archive and is handing it out — to everyone, that is, except her.’
‘Really?’ said the younger man. ‘Isn’t that just a little too petty of him? He is an official of the upper sixth rank,[8] after all.’
Footsteps sounded in the near distance, and the two of them clapped each other warningly on the shoulder. ‘Time we went back inside,’ said the older man.
After the two of them had put away their electronic cigarettes and left, Shen Ni — who had paused at the threshold — stepped through the gates. It seemed Bian Jin had made even more enemies than Shen Ni imagined, during those years when she’d been the most upright of the empire’s high officials.
Shen Ni walked into Lantai’s main hall, her graceful figure drawing covert, appraising looks from the staff there. She stopped and looked about her, but Bian Jin was nowhere to be seen. So she went towards a young female official who’d been stealing glances at her for a while and said with a smile, ‘Would you happen to know where my wife is, please?’
The young official had been wondering whether the impressive woman who’d just walked into the room might be the legendary Shen Ni. As Shen Ni approached, she caught sight of the crimson robes inside the folds of her cloak, as well as the golden pouch hanging from her waist. This confirmed her suspicions — the woman in front of her really was the famous Marquess Jing’an!
As Shen Ni gazed at her with those captivating eyes, the young official felt as if her brain were malfunctioning. She even began to stutter. ‘And wh-who might your wife be?’
‘Her name is Bian Jin,’ Shen Ni replied.
The young official wanted to give herself a smack upside the head. Of course! How could she have forgotten the wedding that had rocked the empire such a short time ago?
As Shen Ni was being led hospitably through the corridors of Lantai, the officials in the inner office were gathered round their desks, drinking the sweet soup Cheng Zhe had bought them. All of them, that is, except Bian Jin.
Helping Meng Chu had taken up quite a lot of her time, and Bian Jin still had many duties of her own to attend to. After returning from the storehouse, she’d put her head down and gone right back to work. If Cheng Zhe hadn’t kept looking pointedly over at her, waiting for her to discover that she was the only person in the office who hadn’t been given any sweet soup, Bian Jin wouldn’t even have noticed that she’d been singled out in this way.
How very tedious. The thought flitted briefly through Bian Jin’s mind, then she put it aside and went back again to her work. She was so absorbed in it that she didn’t even notice the sound of elegant footsteps approaching.
‘My lady wife.’
The call was so sweet and tender that Bian Jin thought at first it must be directed at someone else. After all, no one would ever speak to her in that way.
And then Shen Ni set a lunchbox down in front of Bian Jin. Hips swaying gracefully, she leaned downwards, propping herself up with one hand on Bian Jin’s desk. ‘What are you so engrossed in, my lady wife?’
Bian Jin looked up and met Shen Ni’s gaze. The fondness in Shen Ni’s eyes left her momentarily speechless.
‘Shimei—’ she began.
‘It was getting past midday,’ Shen Ni interrupted, ‘and I was worried you mightn’t have recovered your appetite yet, so I thought I would come and see how you were.’
Of course, Bian Jin realised. Since Shen Ni had addressed her as ‘my lady wife’, it would be exceedingly odd if she were then heard to call Shen Ni ‘shimei’. Shen Ni had glossed over that deftly for her.
It was snowing heavily outside, yet Shen Ni had come all the way in the bitter cold just to see her wife? The onlookers in the room chewed over that fact. Why, it was clear then that the two of them were inseparable! All that talk of bad blood between them must be just a rumour.
‘Eh?’ said Shen Ni, looking around the room with a show of puzzlement. ‘Why are you the only one here who doesn’t have any sweet soup?’
Bian Jin looked at her silently. Shen Ni had been like this ever since she was a child. The more mischief she was up to, the more innocent she would seem.
Cheng Zhe, that wily old fox, understood the meaning behind Shen Ni’s words. Instantly he held out his own as-yet untouched container of sweet soup, his face all smiles.
‘It was our mistake, my lord. Clerk Bian is new to Lantai, so the colleague I sent out to buy the sweet soup inadvertently overlooked her. Clerk Bian, why don’t you take this instead? There are slices of fresh fruit in it — very refreshing.’
Before Bian Jin could say anything, Shen Ni had already held out a hand to bar Cheng Zhe from bringing the sweet soup any closer to her. ‘Many thanks, Director Cheng, but my wife happens to find anything other than home-cooked fare difficult to stomach.’
Shen Ni’s tone was perfectly polite, but her outstretched hand was like an immovable barrier. Cheng Zhe had no choice but to draw the container back, the smile on his face looking even more forced than before.
Shen Ni took out the little box that held the cheesecake, ran an antiseptic wet wipe over her hands a few times, then scooped up a small piece of it with a spoon. She brought it towards Bian Jin’s mouth, making as if to feed her.
Bian Jin was about to quietly remind her that there was no need to take the show of wifely affection quite so far when Shen Ni suddenly said, ‘This is your favourite dessert — I made it especially for you.’
Shen Ni had made it herself?
Bian Jin’s gaze softened.
Shen Ni leaned even closer to her still, holding out the little spoon, and said in a voice low enough that only to two of them could hear, ‘Play along with me.’
For much of her life, Bian Jin had always been the one to give the orders; it was very rare for her to find herself having to follow someone else’s commands. At Shen Ni’s words, her eyes took on a strange glow.
Meng Chu, who was staring avidly at them from a corner, was so startled by the sight of this that she could barely blink. Who could have imagined that Bian Jin, that ice-cold living weapon, would become such a docile creature in front of her wife?
Bian Jin avoided Shen Ni’s eyes, but she still took off her mask — which she’d set to full transparency — obediently enough. Then she tilted up her head, bringing her lips gradually closer to the spoon Shen Ni was holding out. Her warm breath tickled Shen Ni’s fingertips.
Shen Ni had always thought of Bian Jin as someone who existed completely beyond her control. But now she was looking down at Bian Jin’s upturned face, and Bian Jin was doing exactly what Shen Ni had told her to. This was a sensation she’d never experienced before, and it sent a wicked thrill of electricity surging through her heart.
A very faint smell of antiseptic still clung to Shen Ni’s fingertips. Bian Jin found the suggestion of cleanliness reassuring. Perhaps because she’d never done something so intimate with anyone before — never, since she was old enough to feed herself, taken food from someone else’s hand into her mouth — Bian Jin misjudged the distance between them. Instead of closing over the spoonful of cheesecake, her soft, burning lips grazed against Shen Ni’s fingertips.
***
Footnotes:
- In Chinese, 上元节. Also known as the Yuanxiao Festival (元宵节), sometimes referred to in English as the Lantern Festival. This is a festival celebrated on the fifteenth day of the first month of the traditional Chinese calendar, and marks the final day of the traditional new year celebrations. During the festival, streets and houses are decorated with lanterns. [return to text]
- In Chinese, 灯迷 (deng mi). These are riddles written on lanterns that are displayed during the Shangyuan Festival, which onlookers are invited to guess. Many riddles call for a high degree of ingenuity and cultural literacy. [return to text]
- In the original text, 九卿 (pinyin: jiu qing), the collective name for a group of nine high officials in imperial China. [return to text]
- In the original text, 忍字头上一把刀 (pinyin: ren zi toushang yi ba dao). In Chinese, the character for ‘endurance’ (忍, pinyin: ren) is a compound ideograph with the radical ‘heart’ (心, pinyin: xin) written under the character for ‘knife’s edge’ (刃, pinyin: ren). It visually illustrates the pain of undergoing hardship. [return to text]
- In Chinese, 姐姐, literally ‘older sister’. In addition to being a familial term, it is also used as a respectful and/or affectionate term of address for a non-blood-related older woman of the same generation. [return to text]
- In the original text, 三公 (pinyin: san gong).The collective name for the three highest officials in imperial China. [return to text]
- In the original text, 糖水 (pinyin: tangshui), literally ‘sugar water’. The general name for a sweet broth (usually containing solid ingredients such as fruit, seeds, grains) served either as a thirst quencher or as a dessert at the end of a meal. [return to text]
- The nine-rank system (九品中正制, pinyin: jiu pin zhongzheng zhi) was a system used to classify government officials in imperial China, with the first rank being the highest and the ninth rank being the lowest. Each rank was further divided into upper and lower ranks. [return to text]
douqi 随笔 