To Embers We Return — Chapter 13
***
The coach drew up slowly outside Shen Ni’s residence. As it came to a halt, Bian Jin opened her eyes, and realised that she’d been sleeping soundly on Shen Ni’s shoulder for quite a while. Hastily she sat up.
Shen Ni smiled. ‘You couldn’t have helped it, shijie. If you’d like to repay the favour, just don’t make me sleep on the floor if I ever keel over from exhaustion.’
A faint smile touched Bian Jin’s lips as well. ‘When have I ever done that?’
That was a good question, on its face. Back when they’d still been living at Shuangji Hall, Bian Jin had indulged Shen Ni’s every whim. Whenever Bian Jin had to venture up the steep eastern peak to gather medicinal herbs, Shen Ni — who’d stood no more than waist-high to her at the time — would insist on going with her. The mountain paths were rough and winding, and there would always come a point when Shen Ni would declare herself too tired to walk any further. She would look up at Bian Jin with beseeching eyes, and Bian Jin would have no choice but to put Shen Ni on her back and carry her down the mountain. No matter how bumpy the rest of the journey was, Shen Ni would always end up falling sound asleep on Bian Jin’s back.
Now, however…
They’d been married ten days ago, and Shen Ni had spent every single night since then sleeping on the floor of their bedchamber. As this awkward realisation dawned upon them, their smiles stiffened slightly, and they spoke no further on the subject.
As the two of them stepped down from the coach and through the front gates of the mansion, Shen Ni urged Bian Jin to get some rest. Bian Jin shouldn’t exert herself any more today, she said. She would speak to the Director of Lantai on Bian Jin’s behalf, and tell him that Bian Jin needed to take the day off.
Bian Jin would have preferred to do that herself. It was such a small thing after all, hardly worth her shimei’s time. But before she could even object, Shen Ni was already making a voice call to Cheng Zhe.
During their conversation, Cheng Zhe said something which made Shen Ni’s eyes drop briefly to the ground, a distinct trace of contempt creeping into her eyes, though her smile remained as bright as ever. Then her gaze wandered to the snow-capped mountains in the distance.
Bian Jin watched her. During all this time they’d spent together, Bian Jin had felt that Shen Ni was both a stranger and someone very familiar to her. The sense of familiarity came from the fact that, although they had not seen each other for many years, Shen Ni was still very much Shen Ni. The baby she’d brought home from that mountainside, whom she’d named and then raised practically single-handedly.
Shen Ni was much taller now, more mature. Her face and figure had changed, but deep in her bones she was still the same person. Clever, with more than a trace of artfulness, and a habit of keeping things close to her chest. To all outward appearances, she was as cool and quiet as the moon. She might seem phlegmatic enough, and she considered most people much too beneath her to pay attention to their antics. Yet if anyone sought to do ill to her and those she cared for, she was sure to return their malice with a hundredfold interest.
Bian Jin did not realise she’d been watching Shen Ni for a considerable time. Luckily, Shen Ni’s attention was too taken up by Cheng Zhe’s voluble stream of speech for her to notice Bian Jin’s rather too avid gaze.
Of course Clerk Bian could have some time off, Cheng Zhe assured her. Clerk Bian was overdue some leave in any case, and he’d previously advised her to take it, but her devotion to her duties at Lantai had led her to say no. This was the perfect opportunity for her to get some well-earned rest at home. Once Clerk Bian was feeling a little better, Cheng Zhe went on, he and her other colleagues from Lantai would like to pay her a visit and see how she was doing.
Shen Ni turned down his offer graciously, then ended the call. ‘It’s done.’
‘Li Shan is a proud woman,’ Shen Ni went on. ‘She must have had the utmost confidence in that machine, to have intervened in the Court of Judicature and Revision’s affairs the way she did. Now that she’s suffered such a great humiliation, her pride must have been dealt a crushing blow. I’m fairly certain she won’t be making any trouble for you again, at least in the near future. You can rest easy.’
With that, she stepped out through the gates again and climbed back into the coach, this time to go to her directorate.
They were going their separate ways once again, thought Bian Jin as she watched Shen Ni’s briskly departing back. Well, Shen Ni was doing exactly what she’d said she would, back on their wedding night: they would each lead their own lives, and refrain from overstepping the other’s boundaries. There was absolutely no reason for them to go anywhere together.
By the time Bian Jin made her way back to the bedchamber, her headache had returned with a vengeance, making it impossible for her to do anything else but lie down and try to get some sleep. The moment she closed her eyes, however, her old comrade’s face, twisted with suffering, rose up behind her eyelids again.
Bian Jin screwed her eyes shut even more tightly, trying to repress the painful pounding of her heart, and willed herself into unconsciousness.
***
Night had fallen. A chill wind was rising across the city, and the temperature dropped and dropped again.
When Shen Ni returned home from the directorate, she did not go and see Bian Jin. Instead, after a few hurried bites of dinner, she plunged straight into her workshop. The mechanical arm had begun to exhibit a delayed response to input, and she spent some time correcting that. Then she returned to the project of crafting a brand-new spine for Bian Jin.
Shen Ni was a double-S-tier machinist, so making a cybernetic spine was a simple enough task for her. She’d been able to do it since she was thirteen. Making a cybernetic spine for Bian Jin, however, was a different matter altogether. There were two reasons why it was such a challenging task.
First, Bian Jin’s jade core had been heavily damaged. For her to be able to control her motor functions, her cybernetic spine needed to be linked precisely to her jade core through an intricate system of connectors, otherwise it would simply not respond to her will. The spine Bian Jin was using now was only a temporary one — serviceable enough for mundane tasks, but too fragile to bear anything more. If Bian Jin were to attempt any greater exertion, there was every risk that she would destroy the superconductors connecting the spine to her jade core, ruining the former and inflicting even more damage on the latter.
The second reason was Bian Jin’s own Talent. Double-S-tier warriors were exceedingly rare — much rarer than double-S-tier machinists and psychics. You were lucky to get one every hundred years. Of all the double-S-tier Talents, warriors were the ones who required the closest match between the calibre of their jade core and the level of their own abilities. If a sufficiently powerful jade core was not available, it was better for a double-S-tier warrior to remain unenhanced. It was said that the last double-S-tier warrior before Bian Jin had been able to kill a kunpeng-level[1] mutant beast without the aid of any cybernetic implants.
Bian Jin’s jade core had been specially designed and forged for her by their shizun herself. The year she’d been fitted with it, her powers had reached their peak, and she’d slain a yinglong-level[2] mutant beast single-handedly. Yinglong-level beasts were some of the most horrific creatures to be birthed from the Black Box’s depredations, second only to the much whispered-about taixu-level[3] beasts. The latter had remained within the realm of rumour thus far; nobody in TangPro had seen one yet.
Bian Jin’s sheer strength meant that no ordinary machinist was capable of crafting a jade core that could match it. The more powerful her jade core was, the more of her potential it could unlock. In that sense, it was lucky for Bian Jin that she’d been taken as a disciple by the previous leader of Shuangji Hall. Their shizun had been TangPro’s last double-S-tier machinist before Shen Ni. By the time she’d started working on the jade core for Bian Jin, she was already at the end of her strength, having been made frail by illness. In the end, however, her lifetime of experience had won through, and all her learning had been crystallised into the jade core she’d forged for Bian Jin — the only one in the world suited to Bian Jin’s powers.
Now their shizun had passed, and Shen Ni herself was still young, without anything close to their shizun’s wealth of knowledge and experience. But there were times when knowledge and experience could be defeated by raw Talent and sheer naked ambition.
Shen Ni meant to craft Bian Jin an indestructible cybernetic spine, and then she would forge Bian Jin an all-new jade core.
In the depths of her heart was a conviction she’d held on to for a long time, one she’d never told anyone.
The jade core their shizun had crafted might be powerful, but it still fell short of Bian Jin’s Talent. The only jade core that could ever be a perfect match for Bian Jin was one forged by Shen Ni’s hand alone.
***
It was past midnight when Shen Ni finally paused her labours, allowing her concentration to ease. Her eyes were red and swollen; she dripped a couple of soothing drops into each. Exhaustion swept over her. She was, she realised, very cold. It felt as if the temperature had plummeted over the course of the night. Even the mansion’s central heating system, designed to keep all rooms at a constant temperature, seemed somewhat unequal to the task.
Shen Ni pushed the door open, and the icy gust that slapped her in the face nearly sent her stumbling back into the workshop again. She was wearing a heavy fur cloak, but the wind went straight through it. The sudden cold snap had caught her unawares.
Shen Ni thought of her pile of blankets on the floor of the bedchamber. Although they were thick and warm, they probably weren’t enough to stop the chill from creeping up through the floorboards on such a bitter winter’s day. She decided to warm herself with a bath in the hot spring before going to bed, the better to guarantee herself a good night’s sleep.
Soon, she was soaking in the steaming pool, the hot water wrapping itself around her cold, weary body. She leaned comfortably against the side of the pool, water beading on her eyelashes. Clouds of steam rose before her eyes, and over her head a faint drizzle of rain and snow was beginning to fall.
It seemed to be snowing particularly heavily in Chang’an this year. That reminded her of the winter when she’d been ten. Then, too, the snow had fallen ceaselessly, and one day she’d pestered Bian Jin to build a snow figure with her. Shen Ni had not known it at the time, but Bian Jin had taken an injury to her leg just the day before, rescuing several outer disciples from one of the mortal enemies of their sect. Bian Jin had found it difficult even to walk, but she hadn’t said a single word about it to Shen Ni. Instead, she’d just made her shimei the biggest, most beautiful snow figure of anyone in the whole sect.
Shen Ni thought back to the time she’d concealed herself within the ranks of Bian Jin’s army. Her squad had gone where the fighting was fiercest and most dangerous. If Bian Jin hadn’t risked her life to save Shen Ni’s that night at Liaoli Ridge, the best outcome Shen Ni could probably have hoped for was to live out the rest of her days with a cybernetic eye.
Those ten lashes of Bian Jin’s whip she’d received as punishment had been vicious, that was true, but when she woke up the next day, there had been a jar of ointment by her bedside — the kind they called more precious than gold. It was a potent healing salve that Bian Jin herself only ever used sparingly, and only when she was in great pain. And yet she’d given almost the whole jar to Shen Ni.
Even back in the old days, Bian Jin had poured upon Shen Ni all the love of which she was capable. It was just that Shen Ni was greedy; she wanted more.
Still leaning against the side of the pool, Shen Ni closed her eyes and forced all the emotions troubling her to leave her body. When she opened her eyes again, she turned to the bamboo tray beside the hot spring, on which an array of bathing accoutrements had been laid out. One of the packets of soap had been opened.
It was a bar of pear-blossom-scented soap, the kind she’d used before she’d brought Bian Jin home. After their marriage, Shen Ni had switched to a temple-tea-scented soap whose fragrance was lighter, in deference to Bian Jin’s sensitivity to strange floral smells.
She and Bian Jin were the only two people who ever bathed in this hot spring.
Shen Ni cast an eye over the packets of Bian Jin’s unscented soap. They were all present and accounted for, the same number as there had been the day before. That could only mean one thing: Bian Jin had used her pear-blossom soap.
Shen Ni lifted one fair, shapely arm. As it broke through the surface of the pool, droplets tumbled across her soft skin, leaving a sparkling sheen of moisture in their wake. Beads of water clung hesitantly to her fingertips before finally dripping onto the hot, dry paving stones around the pool, where they evaporated almost instantly. She took the pear-blossom soap from its open packet and dipped it into the water, kneading it lightly; its fragrance soon filled the air. Then she rubbed the bar of pure-white soap slowly across her skin, letting the scent fill her body once more.
The sound of the rippling water echoed hollowly through the night. The courtyard felt quite lonely. Shen Ni remembered the softness of Bian Jin’s body in her arms last night. It reminded her even more forcefully that she was here all by herself. There was an odd sensation of emptiness in her chest.
When Shen Ni finally stepped into the bedchamber, she saw that the blankets which had been on the floor were now neatly laid out on the bed. Even the plump, yellow plush toy in the shape of an oriole,[4] which she always cuddled to sleep, had been placed next to her pillow. Bian Jin was lying on the far side of the bed, her back turned to the tidily-folded pile of blankets and the plush toy. The room was filled with the subtle scent of pear blossoms.
Shen Ni understood the silent permission Bian Jin was giving her. Lifting the blankets, she got into bed beside Bian Jin. Then she picked up her plush oriole, a little uncertain what to do with it. In the end, she placed it between herself and Bian Jin like a barrier of sorts — one that might give Bian Jin some measure of reassurance.
Shen Ni’s gaze fell on Bian Jin’s narrow shoulders. She could still remember the shape of Bian Jin’s body against hers, still feel the sensation of Bian Jin biting and licking at her finger. Sleep was difficult to come by.
Some time later, Shen Ni rolled over.
‘Are you having trouble sleeping?’ Bian Jin asked suddenly.
‘A little,’ said Shen Ni, looking up at the red bed-curtains. ‘I got used to sleeping alone when I was off fighting in Yanluo.’
Bian Jin was silent for a few moments. Then she said, ‘What about your lovers?’
Shen Ni was momentarily flummoxed. If Bian Jin hadn’t brought it up, she could almost have forgotten that she’d lied about having had several lovers before. Lying really was a complicated business. Once you’d told a lie, you found yourself having to back it up with countless other new lies.
Shen Ni might not have many virtues, but one of the things she was good at was improvising on the spot.
‘Those were just brief dalliances,’ she said. ‘How could I become accustomed to sleeping with such fleeting lovers?’
Perhaps she’d sounded rather too heartless, because Bian Jin said nothing in reply.
Outside the window, the night sky was a deep grey. Shadows swayed dreamlike across the room.
Shen Ni finally sank into slumber. It had been a long day, and she’d had a soak in the hot spring before going to bed, so it was a deep sleep which overtook her.
She did not even stir when Bian Jin climbed out of bed.
Bian Jin stood completely still in the middle of the room, illuminated only by the faint glow of the night light — a shadowy figure who looked as if she could disappear into the darkness in the very next moment. Soon, her ears caught a very slight, familiar disturbance in the air.
Soundlessly she opened the door. The courtyard outside was completely frozen over. Suddenly, a mechanical raven, its body pure white, hurtled through the still-falling snow. Its eyes were fixed on Shen Ni’s sleeping form, just visible through the window. It streaked like a meteor towards the bedchamber, and then—
Smack.
Bian Jin lifted a hand and caught the raven easily. Then she squeezed it hard enough to twist it out of shape. The red, digital eyes popped out of their sockets, dangling loosely from the bird’s head. From its throat issued forth a feeble voice, the words coming in broken fits and starts.
It was Qin Wushang’s voice.
‘Bzz… bzz… I dreamt of you again, dreamt you’d come back to me. We spent our nights taking pleasure in each other, and you willingly let our “demonseed” feast upon your flesh… bzz…’
‘Why must you stay in Chang’an for another year?’ the voice went on. ‘Bzz… If your darling little shimei were to know your true face … do you think she would still … love you? You would only repulse her… bzz… bzz… I’m going to Chang’an to look for you… bzz… we will meet again… bzz… bzz…’
Bian Jin finished listening to what Qin Wushang had to say. Then, almost casually, she crushed the raven’s skull. Only the faintest scoff came from the corner of her mouth; her eyes remained as calm and still as the surface of a motionless lake.
She walked over to a flowerbed and buried the raven’s carcass in the dirt beneath the snow. Then she returned to the bedchamber, where she went slowly to Shen Ni’s side and stood gazing quietly at her in the dim light.
A-Yao… You’re all grown up now. But you’re still as naive as before.
She reached out, unable to resist the urge to stroke Shen Ni’s cheek—
If your darling little shimei were to know your true face, do you think she would still love you?
You would only repulse her.
There was an open cut across her palm, from when she’d crushed the raven’s skull. Blood seeped from it, nearly dripping onto Shen Ni’s face. Swiftly she drew her hand back.
Her hands were too unclean. She couldn’t touch Shen Ni with them.
Bian Jin stood in the darkness for a few more moments, watching Shen Ni silently.
Outside, the snow fell heavier and heavier, covering up the footprints she’d left in the courtyard. Silently it buried all her secrets, as if nothing had ever happened.
***
Footnotes:
- In Chinese, 鲲鹏. In Chinese mythology, a gigantic fish (鲲, pinyin: kun) capable of transforming into an equally gigantic bird (鹏, pinyin: peng). [return to text]
- In Chinese, 应龙, literally ‘responsive dragon’. It is a winged dragon and rain deity in Chinese mythology. [return to text]
- In Chinese, 太虚. In Chinese mythology, the primordial void from which all life sprung. [return to text]
- In the original text, 黄雀 (pinyin: huangque). This is reminiscent of the saying ‘the mantis stalks the cicada, unaware that the oriole lurks behind’. The saying originates from The Zhuangzi (庄子), one of the foundational texts of Daoism, and describes someone who is intent on pursuing an immediate gain while neglecting a greater threat in the background. [return to text]
douqi 随笔 