To Embers We Return — Chapter 17
***
Shen Ni shoved the workshop’s heavy door open with one foot.
As the sudden light skimmed across her eyelids, Bian Jin opened them briefly. Stray strands of hair were stuck haphazardly to her face with sweat, and her eyes were misted over.
Shen Ni sat her down on top of the workbench, then reached up to adjust the harsh overhead light to a warmer shade that was easier on the eyes.
Bian Jin was completely unaccustomed to being held by anyone. It had been a long, long time since anyone had put their arms around her. The only person who’d ever hugged her so tightly was Shen Ni herself, and that had been many years ago. Back then, Shen Ni had been of the age when children are wont to seek their elders’ attention with charming pouts and smiles and little tantrums, and Bian Jin had always indulged her.
Now, so many years later, it was still Shen Ni’s arms around her, but the way in which her shimei was holding her and the sensations it roused had changed completely.
Bian Jin was so weak that she had difficulty sitting up. She began to sway, her body tilting backwards. Shen Ni placed a steadying arm around her, drawing her close. ‘Lean on me,’ she said.
Bian Jin’s spine was no longer capable of supporting her even in a sitting position, but she couldn’t quite manage to lie down either. All she could do was rest her full weight against Shen Ni. She looked down at her legs. She could still feel them, but they were no longer under her control; she couldn’t lift so much as a toe.
Shen Ni’s arm lay crosswise down Bian Jin’s chest, her hand against the side of Bian Jin’s waist, just like the safety belt in a vehicle — one for Bian Jin’s exclusive use, supporting all of her weight without a single tremor. With her other hand, she was spreading a warm, soft cloak across the workbench’s cold metal surface.
Even though she had Shen Ni’s arm around her, Bian Jin did not look at her shimei. Her gaze was fixed on a patch of floor a short distance away, to avoid any risk of their eyes meeting at such close quarters.
Once the cloak had been laid out to her satisfaction, Shen Ni tilted Bian Jin backwards, applying just the right amount of force and no more, her hand still placed supportively against Bian Jin’s fragile lower back. She angled Bian Jin’s upper body so that it was level with the top of the workbench, then slid her other arm under the crook of Bian Jin’s knees and lifted her legs up, laying her neatly across the cloak-lined surface.
Shen Ni’s shadow, cast by the light of the overhead lamp, enveloped Bian Jin completely.
Bian Jin lay on her back, her face turned to one side. Her breathing was heavy, ragged.
Shen Ni needed to operate on her spine; that meant she had to roll over. But the movement was sure to trigger the now-shattered superconductors linking her spine to her jade core, and that in turn would bring on a wave of pain so excruciating that she would find it impossible to ignore.
Shen Ni went to prepare a sedative. Before she’d finished mixing it, she saw that Bian Jin was already — and in complete silence — trying to roll herself over.
A frown rippled lightly across Shen Ni’s forehead. She put down the sedative, then reached out and placed an arm across Bian Jin’s back — a strong, steadying arm. Bian Jin, bracing herself against it, finally managed to flip herself over so that she was lying face down.
That single movement had exhausted the remaining dregs of Bian Jin’s strength. She lay sprawled across the top of the workbench, her head pillowed on her right arm. Her breathing becoming more laboured with every exhalation; her chest and upper back rose and fell heavily. A shining layer of cold sweat clung to the nape of her neck, exposed by her upswept hair. Her fists were so tightly clenched that her knuckles had turned white. They were trembling slightly.
Bian Jin had been almost completely silent throughout. Only the sounds of her breathing could be heard; she had not let out so much as a single whimper of pain.
Shen Ni knew better than anyone else how much agony Bian Jin must be in at that moment. It had to be even more excruciating than having her bones broken one by one. But Bian Jin was every bit the shijie Shen Ni remembered, the one who had borne the weight of their whole sect on her slender shoulders. No matter how much pain she was in, she would not breathe a single word of complaint.
Even so, Shen Ni knew that her shijie must be approaching the absolute limits of what she could bear.
Shen Ni’s hand slid downwards, towards Bian Jin’s pelvic bone. White light shone from the scanner in her palm. It told her that the superconductors that connected Bian Jin’s spine and her jade core had been completely destroyed and needed to be replaced. The damage index for Bian Jin’s jade core had shot up precipitously to ninety-six percent from the original seventy-eight percent, rendering it well-nigh unusable. The only bright spot was that the socket she’d installed near Bian Jin’s hip the last time she’d operated on her shijie was still intact and undamaged. She could begin the repairs right away.
The results from the scan flashed across Shen Ni’s retinas. She needed to make an immediate decision as to how to go about these emergency repairs. If Bian Jin’s jade core were to lose its tiny remaining amount of functionality while it was still inside her body, her chances of survival were exceedingly slim.
The new cybernetic spine Shen Ni had been constructing for Bian Jin was already complete, but she’d only been able to test it once so far. She’d originally intended to run multiple tests on it under a range of different conditions prior to installation. But now, well, a swift change of plan was called for.
Even riskier was the fact that the new jade core she’d been in the middle of crafting would now have to be pressed into service, even though it was still incomplete. To keep Bian Jin alive, she had to swap out the old, barely usable jade core for the new one immediately. After all, there was no telling when some random movement would destroy the remaining four percent of its functionality, killing Bian Jin on the spot.
The only thing that could be done right now was for Shen Ni to install both the new cybernetic spine and the new jade core, then complete her tests while Bian Jin was using them. Even though the new jade core was still unfinished, and might result in Bian Jin experiencing some temporary loss or dislocation of one or more senses, that was relatively minor matter. Shen Ni could make adjustments as they went along. It was much, much better than the certain death that awaited otherwise.
Shen Ni’s mind whirled away at top speed, listing the key steps of the procedure she was about to perform and setting out things that she needed to take note of. Her gaze was suddenly drawn downwards, and she realised the her hand was still pressed against Bian Jin’s waist.
It was very slender; Bian Jin had become so thin. If Shen Ni spread out her palm, she would be able to span more than half of Bian Jin’s waist with just one hand.
Bian Jin, drifting along on the edge of unconsciousness, sensed all too keenly that she was now completely under Shen Ni’s control. It was true that Shen Ni had operated on her once before, but then she’d been fully sedated throughout, and had no memory of the process. It felt completely different now that she was conscious.
Shen Ni’s steadying hand, which Bian Jin had leaned on when she’d rolled over, was still lying on Bian Jin’s shoulder. Her other hand was resting against Bian Jin’s waist. It was almost as if Shen Ni was restraining her on the workbench, and effortlessly at that. The fact that she had her back to Shen Ni made her feel doubly vulnerable. It was humiliating, being manhandled like this by Shen Ni, as if she were so much weaker.
Bian Jin looked back over her shoulder. ‘Shimei, can you give me access to the mechanical arm?’ Her voice was faint and weak, trembling with the effort of repressing her pain.
The mechanical arm, which Shen Ni used for myriad tasks from precision work to handling hazardous materials, was tucked away in its recess above the workbench.
Shen Ni had let go of Bian Jin as unobtrusively as possible. Now she was sorting through the equipment she would need. As she picked up her toolkit, she said, ‘Do you mean to do the repairs yourself, shijie?’
Bian Jin pressed her chin down on her tightly-clenched fist. She was drenched in cold sweat.
‘I did … fix my own broken leg once before,’ she said. ‘I might not have anything near your … level of skill, but I can still … manage.’
She forced the words out in fits and starts, fearing that she might accidentally let slip some noise of pain.
The words had barely left her lips when she heard a low laugh from Shen Ni. It was a very soft one, but it echoed clearly through the silent, sound-proofed workshop.
Silently, Bian Jin looked back at Shen Ni over her shoulder, irked by the note of mockery in Shen Ni’s voice.
‘Don’t misunderstand me, shijie,’ said Shen Ni. ‘I have no intention of laughing at you. It’s just that our Talents overlap so little with each other’s that I fear this would be impossible.[1] You’re undoubtedly brilliant, of course. The fact that you were able to repair your own broken leg despite having no Talent as a machinist testifies to that. I even suspect you might be able to perform a jade core transplant on any ordinary person. But not on yourself.’
‘Why not?’
‘You’re a double S-tier warrior, shijie — a rarity among rarities. Forgive me for being overly blunt, but your mediocre skill at cybernetic repairs is unworthy of the marvel of perfect strength that is your body.’
Shen Ni set the toolkit down with a heavy thud. Bending very close to Bian JIn’s ear, she said, ‘I am the only one who can fix you.’
There was praise in her words, but they were also laced full of sarcasm. In that moment, Bian Jin had no idea how to respond. The woman in front of her had finally ripped off the mask of false mildness she’d worn for so many weeks, and now that merciless tongue was beginning to claim its full toll from her.
Bian Jin glanced at Shen Ni again out of the corner of her eye. For a moment, Shen Ni almost fancied that there was something of seduction in the look.
But Shen Ni also knew perfectly well that Bian Jin would never attempt anything even remotely close to seduction. What she was seeing was humiliation, burning red-hot in Bian Jin’s eyes.
Shen Ni looked away from Bian Jin and placed her hands in the sanitiser. The ultrasonic waves stripped microscopic particles of dirt from her skin, then administered a thorough spraying of nano-disinfectant, leaving her hands clean of all contaminants and pathogens. It also covered them in a sterile layer of film, like a pair of transparent gloves.
Now that everything was ready, Shen Ni turned towards Bian Jin again. Her shijie, she saw, was pressing a clenched fist down on the surface of the workbench next to her face. Her other arm was braced against the part of the workbench by her waist. She seemed to be trying to prop herself up.
There was large, floor-length mirror directly opposite the workbench, and Bian Jin was reflected in it. Her forehead was shining with cold sweat, and her lips were unnaturally red. The usual coolness of her countenance was now overlaid with a frailness Shen Ni had never seen on her before. Bian Jin was a woman on the brink of death, so fragile that anyone could stretch out a hand and shatter her with a touch.
A bone-deep ache spread uncontrollably within Shen Ni’s chest. How could Bian Jin, who had once been the pride of the empire, allow herself to be brought so low?
Perhaps if the machinist tending to her had been someone other than Shen Ni, Bian Jin could have lain back, closed her eyes, and borne it all. As it was, Shen Ni’s presence only amplified the shame she felt at her helplessness several thousandfold. But who other than Shen Ni would be willing to pour everything they had — everything they were — into putting Bian Jin back together again? And who other than Shen Ni could put Bian Jin back together again?
Shen Ni gripped hold of Bian Jin’s wrist. ‘Your concerns are very much misplaced, shijie,’ she said, deliberately infusing a note of derision into her voice. ‘I’m a doctor; you’re my patient. To me, you’re nothing more than a broken-down piece of equipment. Who could possibly have any lecherous designs on something like that? If you insist on climbing off this workbench, you won’t even live to reach the doorway.’
Shen Ni had stopped just short of calling Bian Jin deluded, for imagining that Shen Ni could still be attracted to her in her current state. Bian Jin paused in her struggle to get up, struck by the implication in Shen Ni’s cutting words.
Then Shen Ni uncoiled one of the leather straps attached to the top of the workbench. She fastened it around Bian Jin’s left wrist, securing it to the metal surface.
‘Shen Ni!’ Bian Jin protested, blood rushing to her face.
It was rare for her to call Shen Ni by her full name.
Unceremoniously, Shen Ni secured Bian Jin’s left ankle to the top of the workbench with another leather strap, then moved around to the other side. As she lifted Bian Jin’s right wrist, her gaze wandered to the nearest strap, and she said, as if addressing it, ‘These will help contain the pulmonary trauma from the procedure, preventing further damage to your body. Bear with it for now.’
Bian Jin flushed to the tips of her ears.
Once again, Shen Ni looked away from Bian Jin’s too-thin figure. ‘Time for you to take a little nap, shijie,’ she said coolly. Then she injected the sedative into the socket beside Bian Jin’s hip.
As Bian Jin watched Shen Ni strapping down her right wrist, she thought suddenly of the broken snow globe. When she’d bought it, the shopkeeper had told her it was the last one she had, and Bian Jin might not be able to find another one like it after that.
‘Is this how you treat every woman?’ Bian Jin asked suddenly.
Then blackness overtook her.
She was a double S-tier warrior, so although the sedative Shen Ni had used was a strong one, it had taken effect much more slowly than it would have in another person. Even at the very end of her consciousness, she’d managed to utter a perfectly clear and coherent sentence.
Once she was satisfied that Bian Jin was indeed fully unconsciousness, Shen Ni gazed down at her shijie’s slumbering profile and ran the words Bian Jin had just said over and over again in her mind.
Is this how you treat every woman?
That had been a startlingly frank question — so frank that it made Shen Ni realise that Bian Jin … might actually care.
‘Woman’, she’d said. Not ‘sect-sister’, not ‘childhood friend’. ‘Woman’.
That was not a word that had ever been used between them before. It was heavy with suggestion, and hinted at a very different sort of relationship.
It was very unlike Bian Jin to have said such a thing. Shen Ni wondered if she’d got the wrong idea about something, somehow. Then she recalled the footsteps she’d heard as she stood at the entrance of the Directorate with Diwu Que. Was it possible that…?
Shen Ni also realised that, for her usually self-controlled shijie to have said something like that, she must have been disorientated by the sedative Shen Ni had given her. For a single moment, it had loosened Bian Jin’s usual grip over her tongue, just as wine was supposed to draw the truth out of lips which might not dare to speak it otherwise.[2]
Shen Ni wanted to ruffle Bian Jin’s hair, but also felt she had no right to do so.
The timer counting down the hours until the sedative would wear off was ticking away, reminding her that she needed to get to work quickly. Shen Ni forced her attention back to the task at hand. It was then that she realised that there was another problem.
The fastenings of her shijie’s ruqun could only be undone from the front. But it was highly inadvisable to roll her over again.
Shen Ni fetched a pair of scissors and disinfected them thoroughly. Then she cut through the layers of Bian Jin’s clothing right down the back. She strapped on an optical-mechanical scanner, which would enhance her vision, and reached for the controls of the mechanical arm, lowering it from its recess in the ceiling.
As Shen Ni’s eyes fell on the clothes she’d cut away from Bian Jin’s body, she realised that Bian Jin had been wearing one of the ruqun sets that Shen Ni had commissioned for her before the wedding. This was made of brocaded satin, with a cross-collar blouse.
Some weeks ago, Shen Ni had overheard Bian Jin telling Auntie Wan that she didn’t think the outfits Shen Ni had commissioned suited her. The colours were too bright, she’d said. Yet she’d still put one of them on tonight.
In order to go and see the Great Wheel of Fire with Shen Ni.
And what had happened next? Bian Jin had turned up at the Directorate full of excitement, ready to enjoy the Shangyuan festivities with Shen Ni — only to see Shen Ni with another woman’s arms around her.
Shen Ni couldn’t help wondering how Bian Jin had felt in that moment. And where had her injuries come from?
Something flashed in the depths of Shen Ni’s eyes, and the indignation she’d felt at being called ‘an old acquaintance one doesn’t know all that well’ was all but dispelled.
Every detail of Bian Jin’s ruqun set had been personally designed by Shen Ni herself, tailored specially to fit her wife-to-be — even though the title of ‘wife’ still lay unclaimed in fact if not in name. It was a shame that she’d had to cut it up, but there was no help for it now. She’d just have to get a new set made at some later date.
Shen Ni sat down on her work stool and lowered it, bringing her face close to Bian Jin’s spine. She ran her fingertips carefully along the twin dimples on Bian Jin’s lower back, and found the two other sockets she’d placed there when she’d first operated on Bian Jin. These had been embedded seamlessly into Bian Jin’s skin, and were nearly impossible to discern by touch alone. Shen Ni was fairly sure Bian Jin had no idea they were even there.
Most of Bian Jin’s body was still organic. Before her spine had been broken, the only implants she’d had were her jade core, the usual array of neural modules, and a few bones and joints here and there.
Doing her best to preserve as much of Bian Jin’s skin as possible, Shen Ni made a delicate incision from Bian Jin’s hip to the dimples on her lower back.
For the second time in her life, she opened up Bian Jin’s body.
Bian Jin was now fully unconscious. If someone were to allow their eyes — even their hands — to roam wantonly over her body, she would be completely unaware of it.
But not only did Shen Ni place a surgical blanket over Bian Jin, she also kept her field of vision closely focused on the small part of Bian Jin’s body that she was operating on. That was what she’d done last time as well. The sheer intensity of her concentration tired her eyes out even more quickly than usual.
Four hours later, Shen Ni paused long enough to apply some eye-drops and swallow a pastry that had long gone cold. Then, after sanitising everything thoroughly once more, she plunged back into her work.
Outside, the wind was howling. Inside the workshop, Bian Jin had fallen into a deep sleep on the workbench, her pain momentarily left behind.
By now, Shen Ni’s eyes were completely bloodshot, but she couldn’t afford to pause; every second counted.
Finally, she peeled the last connector away from Bian Jin’s jade core with perfect precision, and held the disc in the palm of her hand.
The first — and until now, the only — time she’d seen this jade core had been more than ten years ago. It was their shizun’s last great creation, the final gift that master machinist had left to Shuangji Hall and the empire. The night before it was due to be installed, Bian Jin had been so excited that she couldn’t sleep. Shen Ni could still remember the look on her face.
Now, Shen Ni tossed this culmination of their shizun’s life’s work unceremoniously into a nearby waste bin. Then she removed her own creation from the stabilising solution in which it was suspended.
This was no ordinary jade core. Indeed, it bore so little resemblance to the standard jade core in so many key respects — its performance, the material from which it was made, even the fact that it was square instead of round — that it could fairly be regarded as a completely different invention.
This was ‘Ni’s Heart’, which Shen Ni had crafted for one person and one person alone.
The idea of it had come to Shen Ni when she was a mere six years old, but at the time, she’d had none of the skills or resources needed to realise her vision. It was a shame that she’d been born too late, she’d always thought. Otherwise, Bian Jin wouldn’t have had to go about for so many years with a jade core made by another person’s hand.
Repairing a jade core that was less than ten percent functional was about as useful as trying to stitching together two streams of water that had split off into different directions. Shen Ni had no interest in patching up someone else’s creation. She did, however, have considerable interest in overturning the established order of things.
Shen Ni inserted Ni’s Heart into Bian Jin’s body, connected it to her brand-new spine, and activated it. As Ni’s Heart sprang into life, the freshly-replaced reservoir of hydraulic oil in Bian Jin’s body grew roiling hot and began flowing towards her ice-cold limbs and joints. Under its momentum, Bian Jin’s slumbering form began to tremble uncontrollably, but the leather straps kept her safely secured to the workbench.
Shen Ni rested her forearms on either side of Bian Jin’s prone body. Her eyes were locked on the monitor keeping track of the neural core’s progress. It was counting upwards.
Twenty percent… Thirty percent… Fifty percent… Eighty percent…
…One hundred percent. Ni’s Heart fully activated.
Bian Jin’s vital signs were beginning to stabilise. Shen Ni finally let out the breath she’d been holding. Slowly she lifted her weary head. The first light of dawn fell across her bloodshot eyes.
She glanced at the date. Three days had passed since the Shangyuan Festival.
They’d probably taken down the Great Wheel of Fire by now, hadn’t they?
***
Author’s Note:
Shen Ni: I’m putting my heart into my wife’s body.
***
Footnotes:
- In the original text, the saying 隔行如隔山 (pinyin: ge hang ru ge shan), literally ‘different trades are separated from each other as if by mountains’. It means that an outsider to a profession will find it very challenging to grasp its intricacies. [return to text]
- In the original text, a variant on the saying 酒后吐真言 (pinyin: jiu hou tu zhen yan), literally ‘one blurts out truthful speech after wine’. Like the Latin phrase in vino veritas, this saying suggests that a person is likely to reveal their hidden thoughts and desires under the influence of alcohol. [return to text]
douqi 随笔 