To Embers We Return — Chapter 10
***
Bian Jin’s soft, scorching lips brushed against Shen Ni’s fingertips for a single fleeting moment, then drew away instantly.
Bian Jin didn’t let the tension she was feeling show on her face. With every appearance of calm, she closed her mouth over the spoon and quietly swallowed the little piece of cheesecake it held, as if that accidental collision had never happened.
Shen Ni glanced down at her hands, and saw the faint mark Bian Jin’s lips had left on one fingertip. It was a very pale pink, the colour of Bian Jin’s lip rouge — so light that it was barely perceptible.
Shen Ni’s delicate eyelashes fluttered ever so slightly, but she said nothing more. Instead, she turned her attention wholly to feeding the rest of the cheesecake to Bian Jin bite by bite. To the gathered onlookers, the two of them looked exactly like a pair of devoted newlyweds — who could, indeed, have been fairly charged with being rather too cloying in their public display of affection.
Once Bian Jin had eaten the rest of the cheesecake, Shen Ni reminded her that there was soup and fish in the lunchbox, and to eat it while it was still warm. Then she turned to leave.
After a moment’s thought, Bian Jin said, ‘I’ll walk you to the gates.’
‘Yes, please,’ said Shen Ni.
I never imagined our iceberg jiejie would be so attached to her wife, thought Meng Chu, who was busy collecting the empty sweet soup containers.
Shen Ni followed Bian Jin out to Lantai’s main gates. No one else was there at this time of the day.
‘Thank you for going out of your way to bring me lunch today,’ said Bian Jin.
Shen Ni pushed down the memory of Bian Jin’s ears flushing as her lips grazed Shen Ni’s fingers. ‘You’re welcome,’ she said, keeping her voice steady. ‘In the eyes of the world, we’re a married couple now, so any insult to your honour is an insult to mine.’
Bian Jin nodded. ‘There’s something else I wanted to tell you as well. Earlier, when I sent you that message saying I’d like to buy a whip, I didn’t mean to suggest that you should pay for it. I just thought I should let you know what I was planning to do.’
‘Let me know?’
‘Just as you said — in the eyes of the world, we’re a married couple now, so by law all my property is yours as well. Of course I should let you know that I was planning on spending a large sum of money.’
That surprised Shen Ni a little. She’d thought that her shijie had wanted a little gift, but it seemed Bian Jin had only meant to tell her that she meant to make a substantial purchase. Though it made perfect sense, now that she thought about it. Her shijie was hardly the type to beg anyone for a present, after all.
Although… how thoughtful her undemonstrative and decidedly unromantic shijie was being, despite the fact that they were wives in name only. If she really did fall in love someday, what lengths wouldn’t she go to for the person who had her heart?
‘It’s all right,’ said Shen Ni. ‘You should keep the money. After all, my property is yours now as well.’
‘I’m going back inside now,’ said Bian Jin.
The two of them did not exchange any words of farewell. Shen Ni climbed onto her horse and rode away from Lantai, trotting along at a leisurely pace.
***
At the end of Bian Jin’s shift, Cheng Zhe made a point of coming up to speak to her. ‘There’s no need for you to report for duty tomorrow,’ he said. ‘You can take the day off.’
Bian Jin, a veteran of the power games of officialdom, knew without needing Cheng Zhe to say it in so many words that he was wary of Shen Ni. In particular, he was clearly concerned that Shen Ni might bear a grudge against him for the mess he’d deliberately made of Bian Jin’s shifts at Lantai, and that was why he was trying to curry Bian Jin’s favour now.
‘I won’t require a day off,’ said Bian Jin. ‘I still have a lot of archiving to do.’
Cheng Zhe didn’t try to press her. Everything would be done however Bian Jin thought best, he told her. Then he praised her fulsomely to the other officials in the room, exhorting them to take her as a role model and to apply themselves as diligently as she did.
Bian Jin didn’t spare him another glance. After she’d tidied away the documents on her desk, she set off back towards Shen Ni’s residence. The sun was setting as she left Lantai, and lights were coming on one by one in homes across the city.
When Bian Jin arrived at the mansion, she saw Auntie Wan in the front courtyard, directing a few of the servants as they laid a row of anti-slip mats from the front gates all the way to the main hall.
‘Auntie Wan,’ Bian Jin greeted her. ‘My lunch today was delicious, thank you.’
For a moment Auntie Wan looked puzzled, then her brow cleared. ‘Ah, that wasn’t me, my lady. It was the marquess — she cooked everything herself.’
That took Bian Jin a little by surprise. ‘The food tasted exactly the way you make it.’
Auntie Wan smiled. ‘Her lordship probably knows that you find my cooking most to your liking, my lady.’
As she made her way back to her bedchamber, Bian Jin found herself musing on the fact that Shen Ni now knew how to cook — a skill she’d never acquired during the old days at Shuangji Hall. Back then, even when Shen Ni tried to do something as simple as roasting a sweet potato, she would inevitably end up reducing it to charcoal. During festivals, she could most often be found lurking close to the pots where food was being prepared, waiting for Bian Jin to feed her some choice morsels.
The memory brought a faint smile to Bian Jin’s lips — one that she herself did not notice.
Before going into the bedchamber, Bian Jin made a little detour to the hot spring in the adjoining courtyard. There, she slipped off her rather constricting official robes, had a good soak in the steaming water, then stepped out and dried herself off. After that, she picked up the ruqun[1] set that had been laid out neatly beside the hot spring. The fabric was very soft, and clung gently to her skin, yet not in a way that caused her any discomfort. It was so light that wearing it was like being draped in the finest, filmiest layer of silk, but for all that, it was also comfortably warm.
These clothes were part of a set that Shen Ni had arranged to be made for them before the wedding. As well as casual garments meant to be worn around the home — like the ones Bian Jin was holding — there were also more formal outfits for paying calls and simply strolling through the streets of Chang’an. They were all attractively designed, and very comfortable to wear. Bian Jin, however, felt that the colours were rather too bright, making them a little ill-suited for someone of her age.
After a moment’s hesitation, she put the ruqun on anyway. As she was about to knot the belt of the skirt around her waist, she noticed that there was a very small socket embedded in her skin, just next to her hipbone. Given its unobtrusive location and how seamlessly it had been integrated with her body, there was no sense of a foreign object being there at all. The socket was difficult to discern even by touch, and this was the first time Bian Jin had noticed it.
The socket hadn’t been there before. Shen Ni must have installed it when she made that first round of repairs to Bian Jin’s body. Bian Jin understood enough of the rudiments of machinery to know that this was the best place to put in a socket if one wanted to mend someone’s spine.
Bian Jin’s hipbone was not a part of her body that she touched very frequently. It was difficult for her not to dwell on the fact that every inch of her body had been exposed to Shen Ni’s gaze when Shen Ni had been putting her back together. Even those parts of herself that she rarely looked closely at would have been studied in detail by Shen Ni, over and over again.
Bian Jin’s knuckles flushed where they clutched at the lapels of her jacket. She finished fastening her skirt, then draped a warm cloak over her shoulders.
It was only after she’d put the cloak on that she realised it was in the exact same style as the one Shen Ni had worn to Lantai earlier that day. Only the colours were different: hers was the green of distant hills, while Shen Ni’s was the purple of hyacinths. Each cloak even had the same pattern of interlocking branches[2] running through the fabric, picked out subtly in gold. If she and Shen Ni were to step out together in these matching cloaks, everyone would be able to tell that they were a married couple just by looking at them.
Bian Jin made her way into the dining room after that, intending to thank Shen Ni in person for preparing that delicious lunch. Shen Ni wasn’t there, however. Was she planning to miss dinner again tonight?
As she sat down at the table, Bian Jin wondered why her shimei hadn’t just told her that she was the one who’d done the cooking. Why not? Bian Jin wondered. It wasn’t as if Bian Jin was likely to get the wrong idea — she’d hardly take it as a sign that her shimei was still in love with her, after all.
As Auntie Wan placed a tureen of hot soup on the table, Bian Jin asked, ‘Where is her lordship?’
So it’s ‘her lordship’ tonight, not ‘shimei’, Auntie Wan noted silently. Out loud, she said, ‘Her lordship went straight into her workshop after she returned from the Ministry of Works, and she hasn’t come out since.’
‘Is she not having dinner? Should we send in a tray?’
‘Oh, we wouldn’t dare,’ said Auntie Wan. ‘Her lordship is usually so good-tempered, but every time she sets foot in that workshop, she seems to transform into a completely different person. When she first brought you home, my lady, she shut herself up in there for five whole days and nights doing all that repair work, and only ate three meals in all that time. She even glared at the maid who brought her the meals every time the poor girl said so much as a single word!’
Bian Jin knew that she’d been very badly injured when Shen Ni whisked her away from the Court of Judicature and Revision, but the news that Shen Ni had needed five days to work on her was still unexpected. Five full days of difficult, intricate repairs, with only three meals to sustain her. It must have been physically and mentally draining for Shen Ni, despite her youth.
‘From then on, whenever her lordship shuts herself up in her workshop, none of us even dare knock on the door,’ finished Auntie Wan. Then she smiled broadly. ‘But perhaps you could try, my lady? I’m sure her lordship wouldn’t have the heart to chide you.’
Bian Jin didn’t try to contradict her. Since she and Shen Ni were newly married, this was the kind of light teasing she could expect. Instead, she said, ‘Cybernetic repairs require patience and a great deal of concentration. The circuits are so small and complex that working on one is as difficult as carving words onto a grain of rice.[3] It’s only natural that one would wish to take special care over it, and to avoid any interruptions.’
‘Of course, of course,’ said Auntie Wan. Inwardly she thought: Why, she’s just as protective of her shimei as she was back in the old days at Shuangji Hall.
Auntie Wan started to leave the room, then seemed suddenly to think of something and turned back. She lowered her voice and said in somewhat secretive tones, ‘My lady, is there anything in the box of delights that needs to be changed or replaced? Is there anything you’d like to add?’
‘The box of delights?’ said Bian Jin, momentarily puzzled. When she saw Auntie Wan’s knowing smile, however, she quickly understood. The ‘box of delights’ must be the wooden box she’d accidentally opened on the night of the wedding — the one containing all those… marital aids the mere sight of which had nearly struck her blind.
At Bian Jin’s hesitation, a look of concern crossed Auntie Wan’s face. She knelt down beside Bian Jin’s chair and said in hushed tones, ‘My lady, do you mean to say you and her lordship haven’t yet consummated your marriage?’
No ordinary housekeeper, of course, would have dared ask her mistress a question about such a private matter. But Auntie Wan was an old retainer from Shuangji Hall. She’d watched Bian Jin and Shen Ni grow up, and was much more familiar with them than another housekeeper would have been.
Bian Jin found it very difficult to give any sort of answer to Auntie Wan’s question, especially when she and Shen Ni hadn’t even shared a bed yet. She had even, more than once, had to repress the urge to hurl the so-called ‘box of delights’ right out of the door of their bedchamber.
She recalled what Shen Ni had said to her earlier that day: any insult to your honour is an insult to mine. That, together with the fact that their marriage had been decreed by the emperor herself, and the little show they’d put on their wedding night in order to hoodwink the Lijing officials who’d come to observe the proceedings, meant Bian Jin couldn’t risk letting an outsider know that their marriage remained unconsummated.
Fearing that Auntie Wan would simply repeat the question if she failed to provide a satisfactory answer, Bian Jin forced herself to say, ‘Of course we have.’
Auntie Wan let out a great sigh of relief. ‘Then I’ll have the supplies in the box replenished, and add a few more things. It wouldn’t do for you to run out.’
Bian Jin closed her eyes briefly, took a deep breath, and tried to stop her from carrying on. ‘There’s no need for now. We haven’t… used them all up yet.’
By this point, Bian Jin was no longer sure what she was saying.
‘I fear that would be unwise, my lady,’ said Auntie Wan patiently. ‘When you’re in the throes of passion, swept away by the heat of the moment, that’s no time to be caught short! I see that Qiqiao Atelier has just brought out a new line of wares, designed especially to be used together by two women. They’re selling like hot cakes at the moment — you need to order in advance to be sure of getting your hands on one! Should I put in a reservation for you and her lordship, my lady?’
Bian Jin, who’d already gone completely crimson from the tips of her ears to the hollow of her throat, managed to force out the words, ‘As you please.’ Then, unable to sit still for a moment longer, she made her excuses and fled the room.
She went outside into the heavy snowfall, and stood in the front courtyard for quite a long time swinging her whip through the empty air again and again, until she finally managed to banish the titillating images that had sprung up unbidden in her mind.
***
Inside her workshop in the north wing of the mansion, Shen Ni was sitting at her desk, flanked by two extra-large digital screens. A third, semi-transparent screen hung in the air before her, projected from her digital watch. She was typing rapidly on a keyboard. The blue-white light from the screens was reflected in her eyes; her gaze was absorbed, intent.
Once the other person she was speaking to on the dark web had replied to her last question, Shen Ni was certain they didn’t know where Bian Jin’s bone whip was either.
The resourceful denizens of the dark web were more than capable of unearthing something as small as a pair of chopsticks that had once been used by an emperor of the previous dynasty and subsequently buried some five hundred feet underground. Yet there was not even the faintest scrap of a rumour about the whereabouts of Bian Jin’s favoured weapon.
The bone whip was a venerated relic of Shuangji Hall. It had been handed down to Bian Jin by their shizun. Bian Jin had used it for a full decade, and a good portion of whatever wealth she acquired had gone into the maintenance and upgrading of the legendary weapon.
From her many years of dealings on the dark web, Shen Ni was fairly sure that, given the whip’s status as an S-tier weapon, any auction for it was likely to start in the tens of millions of taels at least. And even if the starting price were to be doubled, there would still be countless bidders scrambling after it.
How could a weapon as rare and sought-after as this disappear into thin air? That was scarcely believable in these rapacious times.
Shen Ni logged on to one of her most private accounts and sent a message to her eyes-and-ears in the north, asking them to look into the whereabouts of the bone whip. After she’d sent the message, she thought the matter over for a moment and added a further instruction: Pay special attention to whether it has ever turned up within the Xuanzhou Empire’s borders.
By the time Shen Ni left her workshop, a cold wind was rising, leeching all the heat from her body. She strode quickly along the covered walkway, thinking only of reaching her warm, cosy bedchamber as soon as possible. When she pushed the door open, she saw Bian Jin inside, undressing for bed.
She heard a low, sharp intake of breath, then there was a brief flash of snow-white shoulder in the lamplight as Bian Jin drew her nightshirt swiftly around herself.
Shen Ni turned her back on Bian Jin at that very same moment. ‘Apologies,’ she said, pinching the bridge of her nose. ‘I was thinking of something else, and forgot that you’d be here.’
After all these years, she’d become accustomed to living by herself, and was in the habit of entering rooms without knocking. On the way here, her mind had been so full of the bone whip and the Xuanzhou Empire that she’d momentarily forgotten that she was now a married woman, that the bedchamber was no longer hers alone.
Bian Jin smoothed down her nightshirt. ‘It’s all right.’
They dimmed the lights, and as Bian Jin got into bed, she put her hands over ears. She comforted herself with the thought that Shen Ni probably hadn’t noticed that they had turned as red as the bridal bed-curtains that still hung from the bed.
The two of them were as silent as always in the moments before they fell asleep. Neither of them was fond of idle chitchat in any case. The quiet, however, was conducive to slumber, and Bian Jin soon found herself teetering at the edge of a shallow sleep, about to sink fully into the abyss of dreaming. Suddenly, an arm shot up from the depths of her consciousness and seized hold of her tightly. A woman’s voice, sick and maddened, rose from the abyss, echoing over and over again in her mind. ‘My darling, my precious, how could you leave me just like that? The demonseed and I miss you so very much.’
Bian Jin tried to break free, but the arm only transformed itself into countless more arms. They clamped themselves over her mouth, wrapped themselves around her throat, and began dragging her towards the abyss inch by inch.
‘Every single version of you loves me so much,’ said the voice. ‘You were so devoted to me that you’d let me drink your blood, eat your flesh. How could all that be nothing but a dream? Promise me, even if you’re cut down by a thousand blades, you’ll still leave your right hand to me — only me. Won’t you, please?’
Shen Ni’s eyes flew open at the sound of Bian Jin’s unusually laboured breathing. ‘Shijie?’ she asked, walking round to Bian Jin’s bedside.
Bian Jin’s eyes were screwed tightly shut. She seemed to be trapped in the throes of some nightmare. Her fists were so tightly clenched that her knuckles had turned white, and her skin felt very hot — a sign that she was in danger of overloading her cybernetic circuits.
‘Shijie, wake up,’ urged Shen Ni, but to no avail. ‘Bian Jin?’ she hazarded.
Shen Ni reached out to shake her awake, and Bian Jin caught hold of her wrist in an iron grip. Then her eyes snapped open, and she said in a voice that was hoarse and trembling with rage, ‘Don’t touch me.’
Bian Jin’s forehead was bathed in cold sweat, and despite the fury in her eyes, Shen Ni could see that her pupils were unfocused. She knew then that her shijie was not truly awake. She must be dreaming of something, thought Shen Ni. About the tortures she’d endured at the hands of the Court of Judicature and Revision’s interrogators? Or the petty vengeances her jailors had inflicted upon her?
Shen Ni did not try to break free of Bian Jin’s grasp. She only said softly, ‘Shijie, it’s me. I won’t hurt you.’
At first, Bian Jin’s whole body was taut with unyielding tension, but as Shen Ni soothed her again and again, she finally began to relax a little. Seeming to sense that something had changed, she asked slowly, in a low voice, ‘A-Yao?’
Once again, Shen Ni heard that now-unfamiliar milk name from her shijie’s lips. ‘Yes, shijie, it’s me.’
As Bian Jin’s grip slackened slightly, Shen Ni went on, ‘I’m right here.’
Bian Jin’s rapid breathing was beginning to slow, and her body temperature was gradually returning to normal. But she was still shaking all over, though visibly trying to repress it, and she was still clutching Shen Ni’s wrist. It was clear that she didn’t want Shen Ni to go.
Shen Ni stood unmoving for a long moment. Finally, she climbed into bed next to Bian Jin and wrapped her arms around her shijie from behind.
Bian Jin had bitten down so hard on her own lips that she was already drawing blood. Shen Ni didn’t want to see her hurting herself. Calling softly to Bian Jin, she reached out and tried to coax her shijie into relaxing her jaw.
And then Bian Jin sank her teeth into the back of Shen Ni’s hand. She gnawed and worried at it, like some wild beast who’d been backed into a corner but still refused to roll over and surrender; even if all she had left to defend herself with was her teeth, she would rip her hunter into shreds or die trying. As she did so, however, Bian Jin’s teeth caught against her own lips, drawing even more blood.
Shen Ni hesitated. Given Bian Jin’s aversion to dirt, she was reluctant to put something into her shijie’s mouth while she wasn’t fully conscious. But since Bian Jin was already biting her hand, she might as well do something that would stop her shijie from punishing that poor mouth any further.
Shen Ni placed a knuckle against Bian Jin’s lips and slipped it between them, parting her cold, chattering teeth, and stopping Bian Jin from continuing to ravage her own lips. The movement made Bian Jin’s chin tilt upwards slightly. She let out a tiny moan, as if she were feeling some trace of puzzlement in the midst of her torment.
Lost in her malignant dream, Bian Jin felt someone putting their arms around her, shielding her. The embrace was strange, but the person’s scent was one she knew well. This was something she’d never experienced before — to have someone holding her so closely, so protectively from behind. It gave her a sense of security, and under its influence, the tension and bone-deep chill that had her in their grip began melting away.
Bian Jin did not know why she felt that the person holding her must be Shen Ni.
The eldritch voice from the abyss was fading into the distance; somehow, she’d found safe harbour. At first, she continued to gnaw ferociously away at the thing in her mouth. Eventually, however, she realised how sweet it smelled, how delicate and pliable yet firm it felt, how steadfastly still it held despite her ravages. Gradually, she could no longer find it in herself to tear at it any further. Instead, she began licking it tenderly, rather like a kitten lapping up its food, soothing it with her lips and tongue.
Shen Ni found the sensation rather ticklish. She gazed at Bian Jin as if in something of a trance; she had not expected her shijie to turn suddenly so affectionate. Gently she stroked Bian Jin’s chin, and Bian Jin responded by nuzzling placidly at the palm of her hand.
Something rippled in the depths of Shen Ni’s eyes, and she held Bian Jin even tighter.
Bian Jin, completely exhausted, and now soothed back to peacefulness, soon fell asleep, wrapped in that warm, comforting embrace.
***
Footnotes:
- Ruqun (襦裙) is a type of hanfu consisting of a short jacket (‘ru’) worn over a long skirt (‘qun’). The original text refers only to Bian Jin picking up a ‘long skirt’, but since the ruqun is a style strongly associated with the Tang Dynasty, I decided that it would not be unfair to interpret it as being part of a ruqun set. [return to text]
- In the original text, 连理枝 (pinyin: lianli zhi). The motif of interlocking branches is often used in Chinese literature and art to symbolise romantic (sometimes specifically conjugal) love. [return to text]
- In the original text, 米上刻字 (pinyin: mi shang ke zi). Rice writing is the skill of being to write small enough to fit the words onto a grain of rice. It is said to have originated in ancient Anatolia, and was reportedly popular in Qing Dynasty China. [return to text]
douqi 随笔 