To Embers We Return — Chapter 19
***
That very night, Shen Ni received an official notification from the Supreme Bureau of Research and Innovation telling her that she’d been granted unrestricted access to its premises and records, as well as the power to deploy any of its staff and resources as she saw fit. This, however, was subject to an important stipulation: all such decisions had to be approved by Li Shan as director.
Shen Ni had already anticipated this. There was simply no way Li Shan would ever allow Shen Ni to run loose in the heart of her own territory. But as long as Shen Ni was allowed past the front doors of the Bureau itself, what she did afterwards would no longer be fully within Li Shan’s control.
When Shen Ni replayed the whole sequence of events in her mind, she was struck by how much easier the process of gaining access to the Supreme Bureau of Research and Innovation had been than she’d expected. And there was an element of luck to it that seemed almost uncanny.
Liu Ji’s jade core had been infected by the Black Box virus, there was no doubt about it. But he’d already been dead at the point the mutation took effect, so the changes it had wrought had been neither particularly extreme nor made him powerful enough to wreak much destruction. Shen Ni had even chanced upon him just in time.
‘The Black Box virus unleashes a surprise attack on the capital’ — those were words calculated to strike terror into the hearts of any who heard them, conjuring up images of a Chang’an reduced to blood and ashes. But the fact of the matter was, other than a roomful of frightened mourners, the only real damage that had been done by that particular offensive had been to Liu Ji’s expensive camphorwood coffin and Shen Ni’s beautiful cloak.
Shen Ni did not believe in coincidences.
Her watch buzzed. It was a message from Zeng Qingluo, sent through an encrypted channel. Zeng Qingluo had made some enquiries, and learned that the Lijing Bureau had tracked down every single witness to the Liu Ji incident and forced all of them to install a non-disclosure neural module. If any one of them were to reveal anything of what they’d seen that night, the module would shut off all their senses, rendering them effectively blind, deaf, incapable of smelling or tasting, and insensible to touch. The only person who could undo the effects of the module was the Director of the Lijing Bureau herself.
What a novel punishment, thought Shen Ni. The Director of the Lijing Bureau was certainly living up to her reputation. It was likely wise for a monarch as benevolent and mild-mannered as Li Ruoyuan to keep such a vicious guard dog by her side. At least, so it seemed on the surface.
I’m sending you all of Liu Ji’s digital identity markers, she replied to Zeng Qingluo, so you can reconstruct his online footprint. That should help us work out when and where he was infected by the Black Box.
Liu Ji’s digital identity markers were a cumulative record of all his online activity — every time his implants received a firmware update, every purchase he made, every time he fell ill and was given medical treatment, every trip he took. Using advanced data analysis techniques, one would be able to construct a map of all his online movements from these data points. Even where information had been deliberately concealed through the manipulation of the digital identity markers, a clever analyst would still be able to uncover it by examining correlations between the map and its constituent data points. That was what the saying ‘every contact leaves a trace’[1] meant in this technologically-advanced era. Any movement one made in the digital environment — any connection one had with another person, place or thing — was fully visible to those who had the tools to discern it.
Of course, if Liu Ji had had the wherewithal to craft a sophisticated personal firewall for himself — as Shen Ni had — then his online movements would be equally difficult to track.
Reconstructing someone’s digital footprint was not a particularly complex task. What it required was patience and careful attention to detail. The hardest part of it lay in obtaining the subject’s digital identity markers in the first place. These were protected at the highest level of confidentiality, and could be accessed only by the most senior ministers at court — or a master hacker like Shen Ni.
Give me three days, came Zeng Qingluo’s reply.
This was a task that usually took around five days. For Zeng Qingluo to have asked only for three days meant that she intended to make it her utmost priority.
Of course, it was impossible for Zeng Qingluo to do otherwise. Whenever she thought of the Black Box, the place where her leg had been cut off began throbbing with remembered pain, and so too did her heart, for the mother she’d lost.
Shen Ni knew that the Black Box was the thing Zeng Qingluo hated most passionately, given everything it had taken from her. There’s no hurry, she responded soothingly. The Black Box won’t be spreading across Chang’an anytime soon.
Yes, commander, Zeng Qingluo replied almost instantly. Shen Ni must already have a strategy in place for countering the Black Box, she thought.
Shen Ni logged out of her conversation with Zeng Qingluo. Then she forwarded Liu Ji’s data to her agent in the north, with instructions for them to go through it and work out whether Liu Ji had ever paid a visit to any of the twelve northern provinces.
Her agent did not respond immediately.
Shen Ni did not need to go through the records of their past correspondence or search through her memory module to know when she’d last heard from them. Her organic brain remembered it perfectly well. This particular agent’s replies were becoming more and more sporadic.
The north was relatively safe for the time being, now that the Black Box had been temporarily vanquished. But every now and then, Xuanzhou’s mad emperor Qin Wushang or the rulers of some of the smaller neighbouring countries would send troops to harry TangPro’s northern border. Shen Ni wondered if the slowness of her agent’s responses had anything to do with that. She picked up her stylus and drew a red circle around a date on her digital calendar.
Later that night, Shen Ni made her way to the bedchamber. She was just about to open the door when she remembered how she’d surprised Bian Jin in the middle of undressing for bed the last time she’d barged in without warning. This time, she knocked lightly three times. ‘I’m coming in,’ she said.
Bian Jin’s voice sounded on the other side of the door. ‘Come in,’ she said.
Shen Ni pushed the door open and stepped into the bedchamber. Bian Jin was already sitting on the bed. She did not look at Shen Ni even once.
It seemed as if Shen Ni was destined to sleep on the floor again tonight. Without waiting for her shijie to say anything, she went over to the bed and scooped up the blankets on her side of it.
At that precise moment, Bian Jin had just tugged her own blankets closer to her side of the bed to make room for Shen Ni — only to look up and see her shimei standing there with her arms full of bedclothes.
They stared at each other in confusion. Then Bian Jin began spreading out her blankets again. ‘You’d better sleep on the floor, then.’
Shen Ni stood stock-still for a few moments. Then, silently, she put her own blankets back onto the bed and got under them, lying down next to Bian Jin as if the little interlude had never happened.
Bian Jin lay down as well, her back to Shen Ni. ‘Let’s treat this as practice,’ she said, as the lights dimmed.
Shen Ni turned to look at her, her hair rustling against her pillow.
‘Practice at being your wife,’ Bian Jin added.
She’d intended to make it clear that that had been her only reason for allowing Shen Ni into bed with her — it was nothing more than practice, the way she would put her troops through a programme of training before leading them onto the battlefield. Once those words were out of her mouth, however, she realised that they only made her seem more eager for Shen Ni’s company.
Bian Jin closed her eyes and quietly swallowed the regret that was rising up in her throat. When she opened her eyes again, she went on, ‘You stitched up the cut on my hand, didn’t you? You have my thanks for that as well. I walked around the grounds a few times just now, and I could already begin to sense the strength of the new spine and the power of the neural core. You must have poured so much hard work into them, shimei. You know I barely have a single copper to my name at the moment, so there’s no way I can repay you now, but I can still do a few small things to make life a little more pleasant for you.’
Bian Jin could not see Shen Ni’s face — only hear her voice, very close at hand, as her shimei said, ‘Shijie, you were very good to me when I was little, and you never asked for anything in return either.’
Bian Jin said nothing more. In the face of Shen Ni’s generosity, she found her own sudden bout of irritability even more difficult to account for.
Shen Ni, who had not slept for the last three days, was soon overtaken by slumber.
Before this, whenever Bian Jin and Shen Ni had to share a room, both of them would find themselves lying awake for at least half an hour,[2] sometimes longer, before their breathing gradually slowed and they drifted off. Tonight, however, after Shen Ni had uttered that last sentence, she let out a soft ‘mm’, and Bian Jin knew then that she had fallen asleep. It was a habit Shen Ni had had since she was a child. Just before she drifted off, she would always murmur, ‘Mm.’
Shen Ni seemed to be sleeping a little uneasily. At one point, she rolled over, knocking over the oriole plush toy that she always placed between herself and Bian Jin.
Bian Jin heard the faint thump of something soft landing on the floor. She propped herself up slightly and looked around — and met the gaze of the plush oriole lying forlornly in the cold light of the moon.
The biggest barrier between herself and Shen Ni was gone. Bian Jin felt suddenly as if she was in danger of brushing up against Shen Ni at any point.
Sleep was difficult to come by; her mind seemed extraordinarily active tonight.
First, she found herself thinking of the day she’d found Shen Ni on that mountain peak close to Shuangji Hall. At the time, she’d only been seven years old herself. The baby’s pallid little hands had clutched tightly at her sleeve. Shen Ni had not yet learned to speak then, but it was clear that she wanted to go with Bian Jin.
Next, her thoughts went to the day when Shen Ni, at ten years old, had begged to be taught how to ride on horseback. Bian Jin had saddled a horse, lifted the little girl onto it, climbed on herself, and cantered off. At one point, they’d reached a vast open plain, and they’d felt as if they were the only two people in the whole wide world. The sun was setting behind them in a magnificent blaze of flame.
Bian Jin had urged the horse into a gallop until they came within sight of a downward slope. Fearing that Shen Ni might be jolted out of the saddle, Bian Jin had slowed the horse down and put an arm around her shimei, gripping both reins with the other.
The little girl had turned around and smiled excitedly at her. ‘Shijie, this is so much fun! Once I’m tall enough to reach the stirrups, I’ll hold the reins, and you can sit in front of me!’
Bian Jin had looked down at Shen Ni. There were fine beads of sweat on the tip of her shimei’s delicate little nose. ‘That sounds good,’ she said. The light of the setting sun reflected itself in her smiling eyes. ‘You’ll have to grow up a little quicker then, won’t you?’
The memory brought a hint of a smile to her face now. Before it could fully round the curve of her lips, however, a pair of arms wrapped themselves around her.
In her dreams, Shen Ni had sensed that she was no longer cuddling her plush oriole, and begun fumbling drowsily for it. She rolled over, reached out, and gathered what she thought was her toy in her arms. In the depths of her slumber, she wondered vaguely why the plump bird seemed to have become much thinner. How is that possible?
She ran a doubtful palm over the oriole’s plush body. It was definitely thinner, but it was very cuddly, and smelled very nice.
As Shen Ni’s touch become more and more probing, the flush in Bian Jin’s ears began to spread all the way to her cheeks. Shen Ni’s fumblings were completely innocent, but Bian Jin found herself crossing her legs involuntarily. If not for the fact that she was absolutely sure Shen Ni had fallen asleep — and in the exact same way she’d always done as a child — she would have believed that Shen Ni was playing some prank on her.
Bian Jin bit her lip. Children, she reflected, often became less endearing once they grew up and acquired all sorts of strange, wicked notions.
She’d just been recalling how Shen Ni used to sit on the front of her saddle as a little girl, when they went riding together. Now, in this bed, their positions were reversed. It was as if Shen Ni had made good on her childhood promise: she really was embracing Bian Jin from behind.
More than once, she thought of moving Shen Ni’s arm away, but Shen Ni seemed to be sleeping soundly. And besides, Bian Jin was the reason why she was so exhausted.
Finally, Bian Jin closed her eyes, resigning herself to her fate. She recalled something she’d said about Shen Ni before: It’s best for us not to see too much of each other.
Bian Jin lay awake in the silence of the bedchamber, enduring Shen Ni’s caresses. At one point, finding them almost too much to bear, she tilted her head up, then tucked her chin down into her chest again.
Her aversion to dirt meant that she’d never allowed anyone other than Shen Ni to come so close to her before. Shen Ni’s touch was making her skin tingle, the sensation spreading downwards. Her eyes were misted over as she let out a hot, trembling breath.
Just as she thought she was nearing the limit of what she could bear, Shen Ni’s questing hand went completely still.
Everything stopped, except for the surging waves in Bian Jin’s heart.
Shen Ni’s breathing was calm and even in the silence of the night. She had fallen into a deep sleep, her arm wrapped around Bian Jin’s waist.
Bian Jin thought of going into the courtyard and running through some sword drills, to banish the highly improper thoughts that were now crowding her mind. But she was reluctant to risk waking Shen Ni. All she could do was lie there, waiting for the heat to dissipate bit by bit as the long night drew on.
***
Shen Ni woke up the next morning with her plush toy in her arms. She set it down on the bed beside her. Something odd about the oriole’s appearance struck her, however, and she picked it up again and squinted at it through bleary eyes. Why did it look as if there was some dust on it? It sat on the bed all day, every day — how had dust managed to get on it?
Bian Jin was already out of bed. She was getting dressed, her back to Shen Ni.
Shen Ni’s friends were arriving today, and she meant to put on a show of wifely affection with Bian Jin’s co-operation. Concerned that Bian Jin might still hold a grudge against her for having behaved too aggressively on the night of the Shangyuan festival, Shen Ni decided to seize the initiative.
‘Good morning, shijie,’ she said, making her voice soft and demure.
Bian Jin went on smoothing down her jacket. It was only when she began fastening her belt that she turned in Shen Ni’s direction. She eyed Shen Ni silently for a few moments, then left the room without saying a word.
Shen Ni stared after her, perplexed. How could a perfectly innocent ‘good morning’ have drawn such an icy response from her shijie?
She patted the dust from the plush oriole. ‘Do you know why shijie is upset with me?’ she asked it.
If Shen Ni was completely at a loss, then not even Bian Jin herself could explain why she was feeling the way she did, much less why a few unwitting caresses from Shen Ni should have kept her lying awake all night. Even now, flames still seemed to be smouldering within her, causing her no small torment. And there was another question she had: was it usual for such simple caresses to be capable of provoking a reaction as strong as this? Was this what it was like for other couples?
There had been a stifling sensation in her chest since she got up that morning. She poured herself a cup of cold water and drank all of it down, and finally felt a little better.
Bian Jin wandered out into the courtyard. She decided to make a small experimental leap, to see what her new spine and new jade core felt like.
No, this was no mere jade core. It was Ni’s Heart — the neural core named after Shen Ni.
Bian Jin lifted herself up slightly on the tips of her toes and propelled herself easily into the air. Her body felt as light as a feather, weightless enough to be borne aloft by the currents of the wind alone.
She did not carry on with any further experiments in that direction. Progress on this front had to be made gradually and without undue haste. If she were to ruin her spine again, she would owe Shen Ni an even bigger favour, and she already owed Shen Ni too much as it was.
Bian Jin decided to test out the strength of her arm next. That probably wouldn’t put as much stress on her spine, she thought. From around her waist, she unwrapped the whip she’d bought online, tossed a small stone into the air, then flicked the whip at it. She did not do so particularly forcefully, but an arc of bright white light seemed to trail after the whip as it swung through the air. The whip struck the stone, smashing it completely into powder; the resulting crack seemed to echo all the way to the mountains beyond Chang’an’s walls.
The whip that had cost Bian Jin a full five hundred taels of silver disintegrated in a cloud of white smoke. Bian Jin looked down at it, nonplussed.
Then, with a faraway rumble, one of the distant mountains collapsed partway. The sound echoed through the streets of Chang’an, drawing shouts of both alarm and speculation. The more panic-stricken lookers-on even wondered if some mutant beast or other had finally breached the capital’s walls.
Even Bian Jin, who’d seen more than her share of bizarre sights, was taken aback by this turn of events.
And both of these new implants were still unfinished, Shen Ni had said. Once they were perfected…
Bian Jin’s eyes blazed with long-unwonted excitement.
***
By the time Shen Ni finished washing and dressing, Bian Jin was already done with breakfast. When she stepped into the dining room, it was completely empty.
There was no help for it, thought Shen Ni. She had no choice but to revert to her old habit of dining alone.
She’d just finished eating when a maidservant came in to tell her that their honoured guests were approaching the mansion. Etiquette dictated that Marquess Jing’an and her wife should be waiting at the front gates to receive them. Shen Ni had no idea where her shijie had gone, but it made no matter. Her guests were old friends in any case, and she could welcome them on their own.
When Shen Ni left the dining room, she found Bian Jin standing just outside, wearing the green cloak Shen Ni had commissioned for her just before their wedding. In her hands she held Shen Ni’s matching purple cloak.
‘Your cloak, my lord,’ said Bian Jin. Her expression was perfectly calm as she addressed Shen Ni by the title that practically anyone could use. From her lips, however, the two simple words had an unusual savour to them.
Shen Ni stepped lightly in front of her.
‘Lift your arms please,’ said Bian Jin.
Shen Ni spread her arms wide, slipping off the padded cotton jacket she was wearing, and a waiting maidservant whisked it away. Bian Jin draped the purple cloak around her shoulders, just like a real wife would. Then she began fastening the ribbons of Shen Ni’s cloak. Since she was intent on her task, and didn’t seem about to look up until she was done with it, Shen Ni was able to gaze quite boldly at her.
There were very obvious dark circles under Bian Jin’s eyes. She almost never wore makeup — her beauty was such that she hardly needed it — and so she’d had nothing to conceal them with.
‘Didn’t you sleep well last night, shijie?’ asked Shen Ni.
Bian Jin did not take her eyes from the fastenings of the cloak. ‘It’s fine,’ she said coolly. ‘I just need to get used to it, that’s all.’
Shen Ni stared at her, bewildered. She still didn’t know why her shijie was so upset, nor what her shijie meant by ‘getting used to it’. But she was now completely sure that Bian Jin’s sudden bout of ill-temper had to do with Shen Ni herself.
Bian Jin’s demeanour towards Shen Ni might be even more icy than usual, but she still held to her end of the bargain. She went with Shen Ni to the mansion’s front gates to wait for their visitors just as any wife would, helping Shen Ni keep up appearances.
They could see Diwu Que and Zeng Qingluo in the distance, mounted on a horse apiece. The panniers on either side of Diwu Que’s saddle each held a large, snow-white box, tied with flamboyant ribbons of festive red silk. It was obvious that these contained wedding gifts.
When Bian Jin caught sight of Diwu Que’s face, she recognised her at once as the young woman who had embraced Shen Ni just outside the Directorate for the Construction of the City Fortifications on the night of the Shangyuan Festival. She had not expected that one of their guests today would turn out to be Shen Ni’s sweetheart.
Unable to work out what this state of affairs meant, Bian Jin whispered in Shen Ni’s ear, ‘Should I go back inside?’
She was fully aware that she, who was Shen Ni’s wife only by imperial decree, might well be standing in the way of her shimei’s true love. If the sight of her was likely to displease Shen Ni’s sweetheart, she did not mind beating a temporary retreat.
Bian Jin’s words only confirmed Shen Ni’s suspicions. She was now absolutely sure that her shijie had gone to the Directorate on the night of the Shangyuan Festival. The signs of petulance Bian Jin had shown over the last day or so must be due to her having misunderstood the nature of the relationship between Shen Ni and Diwu Que.
‘No,’ said Shen Ni. Instead of having Bian Jin make herself scarce, she took things even further in the opposite direction. ‘Can you lend me your waist to put my arm around?’ she added.
Bian Jin eyed her wordlessly. Perhaps Shen Ni and her sweetheart had had some sort of tiff, and now she was trying to use Bian Jin to get back at the other woman? That had better not be what Shen Ni was playing at.
Bian Jin swallowed, remembering the surge of heat that had made her cross her legs involuntarily last night.
Ridiculous, she thought to herself. But what she said was, ‘Yes.’
***
Author’s Note:
When you’re fixing something, accidents can be hard to avoid.
***
Footnotes:
- In the original text, 凡走过必留下痕迹 (pinyin: fan zou guo bi liuxia henji), literally ‘wherever you go, you will leave traces behind’. This is an expression of Locard’s exchange principle, which underpins the field of forensic science. Locard’s principle states that the perpetrator of a crime will bring something into the crime scene and leave with something from it. Variously formulated, the principle is expressed most succinctly in English as ‘every contact leaves a trace’. [return to text]
- In the original text, 一炷香 (pinyin: yi zhu xiang), literally ‘a stick of incense’. This is the time it takes for a stick of incense to burn completely, which was historically used as a measure of time. The actual duration is highly variable, and depends on the characteristics of the incense itself as well as the environment in which it is burned. A very rough estimate is between fifteen minutes to an hour. [return to text]
douqi 随笔 