To Embers We Return — Chapter 24
***
Zeng Qingluo hurried over to where Shen Ni and Bian Jin lay. A squad from the Jinwu Guards and several officials of the Lijing Bureau followed some distance behind her.
At the sound of approaching footsteps, Bian Jin reached up and gripped hold of the back of Shen Ni’s neck. ‘Stop,’ she said, her voice still husky.
Shen Ni’s lips were shiny with blood — the poisoned blood she’d just sucked out of Bian Jin’s body. Bian Jin took note of Shen Ni’s deeply flushed face, and wondered if she might have accidentally swallowed some of it in the process. The thought made her loosen her grip slightly.
She was still lying beneath Shen Ni, their legs tangled together. It was a highly indecorous position to be found in, to say the least. Bian Jin did not have much strength left in her, and certainly not enough to extricate herself. So all she could do was look away. ‘Someone’s coming,’ she reminded Shen Ni.
Bian Jin’s face was crimson from the tips of ears to the hollow of her throat — a complete contrast with the cool tones in which she’d just spoken. Shen Ni knew then that she was struggling to maintain her composure in the wake of what must be unbearably intense sensations. She noticed, too, that Bian Jin had tucked her right hand into her sleeve.
Hands were the part of one’s body that came most often into contact with the outside world. For Bian Jin’s right hand to be as sensitive as that—
A most unexpected physical trait indeed. And one that particularly tempted her to take advantage of it.
Shen Ni, who was completely unaware that Bian Jin only experienced this heightened sensitivity in response to the touch of one particular person, found herself feeling a little jealous.
Bian Jin kept claiming that she and Qin Wushang were strangers — but if that was true, why did Qin Wushang know something so intimate about her? Something that Shen Ni, the shimei who’d grown up together with Bian Jin, had no idea about?
Now that the jellyfish’s toxin had been removed from her bloodstream, the fog of dizziness that had settled over Bian Jin’s brain began to clear. She started to sit up, and Shen Ni wrapped an arm firmly around her waist. Bian Jin’s head snapped up at that forceful, almost controlling embrace, and the movement brought her cheek into contact with the side of Shen Ni’s neck. The curve of Shen Ni’s neck rubbed almost wantonly against her skin; Bian Jin fancied it was leaving its mark there.
That delicious, tingling sensation began building up inside Bian Jin again, layer after layer. She nearly let out another moan, and had to bite her lip to stop herself. Her knees went completely limp. The next moment, Shen Ni had scooped her up in her arms.
Bian Jin clutched at Shen Ni’s shoulder in alarm. ‘What are you doing?’
Shen Ni was not looking at her. Her attention was focused instead on the Jinwu Guards and the officials of the Lijing Bureau, who were drawing closer. ‘We can’t let Li Ruoyuan know that I’ve fixed your spine,’ she said. ‘Or else we’ll be bringing even more trouble into our unsettled lives. Follow my lead, shijie, unless you want them to drag you back to the Supreme Bureau of Research and Innovation and hack their way into your memory module through sheer brute force. Pretend to be fragile, just for a little while.’
And then, knowing that the art of ‘pretending to be fragile’ was one of Bian Jin’s blind spots, she looked back down at her shijie and added in a low voice, ‘The venom has just been purged from your system, so you should pretend to be asleep for a little while. That should do it.’
‘What about you?’ asked Bian Jin.
‘Me?’
‘Did you swallow any of the poisoned blood?’
Shen Ni paused for a moment. ‘No,’ she replied.
And indeed, she had not. It was simply the intimacy of pressing her lips against Bian Jin’s skin and sucking the venom from her wounds that had brought that uncontrollable flush to her face.
Bian Jin was in no state to work out the implications behind Shen Ni’s reply, and she had no wish for Shen Ni to realise that her body was now growing abnormally hot. Without saying anything more, she buried her head in Shen Ni’s chest.
Shen Ni’s expression froze momentarily as Bian Jin’s face rubbed against the soft curves of her breasts. But she would have to suffer in stoic silence, she realised. Dou Xuanji and her fellow Lijing officials had come up to them, as had some of the Jinwu Guards, and they were all looking on with undisguised curiosity. Repressing the little shivers that were fluttering up inside her, Shen Ni strode towards Zeng Qingluo, who was waiting patiently nearby. She held Bian Jin steadily in her arms.
‘Wait.’
A Jinwu captain stepped forward, barring their way. ‘Young Marquess Shen,’ he said, ‘while the causes of the strange events today have yet to be determined, it seems clear that you were the target of those jellyfish. Accordingly, I must ask you to come with me, young Marquess Shen, to assist us with our enquiries.’
The captain was a man of nearly forty. Strictly speaking, neither his tone nor his manner could be called disrespectful, but the way he kept addressing her as ‘young’ Marquess Shen smacked of resentment. It insinuated that she was much too immature and reckless for the position she now held.
Shen Ni was indeed young, but she had been Governor-General of the North for several years. She’d seen war and bloodshed, and taken plenty of lives herself. And when her expression turned icy, as it did now, she looked every inch the commander who had triumphed over the battlefields of Yanluo.
‘Now?’ she asked.
Her even gaze filled the captain with apprehension. Forcing his face into a smile, he persisted. ‘Time is short, my lord, so if I may trouble you to come with us—’
‘He’s one of Prince Wei’s supporters,’ Zeng Qingluo whispered from a few feet away, projecting her voice directly into Shen Ni’s ear.[1]
Li Chu, titled Prince Wei, had held a long-standing grudge against Bian Jin ever since she put out his eye. When Shen Ni had scuppered his plan to take Bian Jin as his concubine, she’d made an enemy of him as well. Now that Shen Ni and Bian Jin were joined by the bonds of marriage, he was clearly determined to provoke a fight with both of them.
‘That would, indeed, be trouble,’ Shen Ni told the captain coldly.
The captain choked; he was beginning to look slightly sick. He was about to say something more when Shen Ni went on, ‘My lady wife was still recovering from her grievous wounds, and now she has suffered fresh injuries in rescuing me. I’m taking her home immediately to tend to her. If her condition were to worsen due to any delay, who should I hold accountable for that? You? Who are you, in any case? Give me your name now.’
The captain might have Prince Wei’s backing, and he was certainly envious of how far Shen Ni had risen at such a young age, but he was still only an official of the ninth rank — too lowly to provide the assurances Shen Ni was demanding.
He was just muttering inwardly over this when a hand landed heavily on his shoulder, making his knees buckle. When he saw who it was, his features straightened immediately into an expression of respect.
‘General!’ he said smartly.
The person who had clapped him on the shoulder was Li Si, commander-in-chief of the Jinwu Guards, and one of the only two female generals in the whole of the Southern Garrison.[2]
Li Si was very tall, and her skin was tanned golden brown from years of fighting and patrolling in all weathers. She was an extraordinarily handsome woman, with dashingly upswept brows,[3] brilliant eyes and red lips. A smile seemed to hover perennially on those lips, giving her an air of insouciance no matter who she was looking at. A few quick strides brought her directly in front of Shen Ni.
‘Come now, Marquess Jing’an, that’s not quite fair, is it?’ said Li Si. ‘We of the Jinwu Guards are simply trying to our duty, after all. If we should chance to give you some trouble in the course of it, you’ll just have to forgive us, I’m sure.’
Li Si’s tone was flippant, and no wonder. As an official of the upper fourth rank, she stood much higher than the captain, and as commander-in-chief of the Jinwu Guards, the security arrangements for the whole of Chang’an lay within her grasp. And she bore the name Li as well — though there was a degree of separation between that and Li Ruoyuan’s own ‘Li’.
Li Si was not a direct descendant of the Li clan of Chang’an; rather, she was the daughter of the Duke of Luoyang, who belonged to a cadet branch of the family. In her youth, she’d been put in charge of raising horses for her family’s personal and military needs. Finding this much too stifling, she’d run off to the northwestern region of the empire and joined the battle raging with the neighbouring Yue Kingdom, who’d violated TangPro’s borders time and time again. There she’d managed to cut off the head of the King of Yue, which she’d brought back to Chang’an and laid before Li Ruoyuan’s throne. Li Ruoyuan, greatly pleased by this, had appointed Li Si to a military post in the capital. Li Si proved to be a skilled, courageous fighter and an intelligent, capable commander. Within three short years, she’d risen up the ranks from a captain within the palace guard to general of the Jinwu Guards.
Li Si’s words were clearly calculated to put Shen Ni in a difficult spot. The Jinwu Guards patrolled the capital day and night, and Li Si had nearly ten thousand pairs of eyes at her beck and call should she wish to keep a watch on Shen Ni’s movements. If Shen Ni were to put herself at odds with Li Si, the general was capable of causing her even thornier problems than Li Shan. She would be storing up future trouble for herself.
As Shen Ni and Li Si locked stares with each other, another woman’s voice rang out behind them, cool and crisp. ‘Why haven’t you gone to get those injuries seen to yet, Director-General Shen?’
It was Dou Xuanji, holding half of a jellyfish corpse in her hand. She dropped it into a pouch that Fang Pan was holding open, intending to bring it back to the Supreme Bureau of Research and Innovation. Fang Pan tightened the drawstrings of the pouch, and Dou Xuanji’s gaze drifted over to where Shen Ni, Li Si and the other Jinwu Guards were gathered.
‘These sea-creatures turned up suddenly in the middle of the city,’ she said. ‘Anyone with a functioning brain can tell who — or what — might be controlling them, and make a good guess at what a dire situation we might soon find ourselves in, and what that dreaded two-word name might be capable of. This means the completion of the city’s fortifications must be our greatest priority. If the progress of those works were to be hindered in any way, how many of those who live within these walls would be maimed or killed? And how many times would you need to die to make up for that, you worthless dog?’
Dou Xuanji, of course, was not about to berate a general of the Jinwu Guards to her face. Her eyes were fixed firmly on the captain instead.
Like the captain, Dou Xuanji was only an official of the ninth rank. However, as the Lijing Bureau answered exclusively to the emperor, the actual power its officials wielded far exceeded their formal status within TangPro’s hierarchy. They moved unimpeded throughout the capital, and even the most senior ministers at court eyed them warily and feared falling into their clutches. Many excoriated them bitterly in private, but no one dared provoke them. It was well-known that the Lijing Bureau were even more difficult to reckon with than the Jinwu Guards themselves.
Li Si, of course, could tell perfectly well who the real target of Dou Xuanji’s remarks was.[4] She gave Dou Xuanji a long, meaningful stare, as if committing the other woman’s features to memory. Then she lifted her hand, gesturing for the Jinwu Guards to withdraw.
Fang Pan whispered in Dou Xuanji’s ear. ‘Are they leaving? Just like that?’
The next moment, they saw Li Si aim a kick at a luckless dog that happened to be passing by.
‘Out of my way, you mangy cur,’ she snapped. ‘And don’t ever let me lay eyes on you again, or you’re in for a beating.’
With that ‘mangy cur’, Li Si was implicitly mocking the officials of the Lijing Bureau — calling them dogs who were able to throw their weight around only because they had the backing of their powerful master.[5]
Fang Pan started to draw her blade, but Dou Xuanji reached out and pushed it back into its sheath. Dou Xuanji herself did not seem at all irked. When Li Si looked back over her shoulder — her face twisted in a smile that was downright sinister — Dou Xuanji met and held her gaze steadily, until Li Si departed with the rest of the Jinwu Guards.
‘Thank you,’ said Shen Ni, but Dou Xuanji did not respond. She simply turned and left.
Dou Xuanji did not like Shen Ni, but the Shen Ni’s cutting tongue had helped her get her revenge on Li Shan that day at the city gates, when the latter had tried to humiliate her. She remembered that well, and now she was only returning the favour.
As Shen Ni began walking away, she told Zeng Qingluo, ‘There’s a corpse inside that building. Bring it back to the mansion for me.’
‘Yes, commander,’ replied Zeng Qingluo.
***
The main hall was deserted when they arrived back at the mansion. Before Shen Ni could say anything, Bian Jin had leapt down from her arms.
Shen Ni, fearing that there might still be traces of the toxin in Bian Jin’s system, and concerned that Bian Jin might fall over in her haste to get to her feet, held out a hand protectively. ‘Your wounds are still—’
‘I can treat them myself,’ said Bian Jin. She landed sure-footedly on the ground, and marched straight towards the bedchamber.
Shen Ni smiled and lowered her now awkwardly outstretched hand. After sharing a life-and-death ordeal, other wives might well find that the bond between them had grown stronger and truer than ever. In her case, however, it had only given her a reminder of Bian Jin’s heart of stone.
It was fine. The wounds on Bian Jin’s hand were child’s play compared to a broken spine, and they were hardly unreachable. Her shijie’s rudimentary stitching skills would be of use at last.
Although…
Shen Ni wasn’t sure if Bian Jin had seen the bite mark on her knuckle, nor how long it could stay there for.
Recalling what had passed between them in that ruined flower shop, Shen Ni bit her own knuckle, and smoothed down the roiling emotions in her heart. She would let Bian Jin have the bedchamber to herself, she decided; she would go to her workshop instead.
***
The news that a horde of jellyfish had attacked the capital, razing the Information Services Bureau to the ground in the process — and in the middle of a live broadcast, at that — could not possibly be kept secret. From Chang’an to Luoyang, the whole of the extranet was boiling over with speculations about where the jellyfish might have come from.
Shen Ni, meanwhile, was busy studying a corpse.
Zeng Qingluo had retrieved Qin Wushang’s body from the ruins of the pleasure house, placed it in a shipping crate and, under cover of delivering fresh supplies, smuggled it into the Shen Ni’s workshop.
Shen Ni prised open the crate. Inside was a corpse that had been burnt beyond recognition.
‘This was the only body inside the building,’ explained Zeng Qingluo.
‘It looks as if the box jellyfish attacked her of their own accord,’ said Shen Ni. ‘And after she was already dead, too. Did she really think that such an innovative way of destroying the evidence would go unnoticed by anyone? Though then again, she probably didn’t expect me to make a hobby of digging through rubble.’
Shen Ni examined the body closely with an optical 3D scanner. Stuck to the charred skin was a tiny scrap of purple fabric that had survived the jellyfish’s attacks. It had come from the same ministerial robes Qin Wushang had been wearing.
‘It’s her,’ she said.
‘And who is she? asked Zeng Qingluo.
‘Qin Wushang, the Emperor of Xuanzhou.’
Zeng Qingluo had clearly not been expecting this answer. ‘And she’s… dead?’
‘If she is Qin Wushang, then yes, she’s dead. If she’s not Qin Wushang, then no.’
Zeng Qingluo stared at her.
Shen Ni rarely said anything as pointless as this. But when Zeng Qingluo ran those words over in her mind again, they had a rather eerie ring to them.
‘Thank you for bringing this all the way here.’ Shen Ni, noticing the tension in Zeng Qingluo’s face, changed the subject. ‘How is your new leg working out?’ she asked. ‘And were you hurt in the battle?’
‘The new leg is so powerful — thank you so much, xiaoshijie! I wasn’t hurt at all, but I think both Diwu jiejie and Military Commissioner He took some injuries.’
Shen Ni had not noticed what state Diwu Que and He Lanzhuo were in at the time, having been too distracted by the Jinwu Guards. Now she said, ‘They should both still be in Chang’an for some time yet. I’ll call on them to give them my thanks soon.’
‘Are you sure you’ll remember to do that, xiaoshijie?’
Zeng Qingluo knew Shen Ni very well. Once Shen Ni dived headfirst into one of her projects, she would see no one and answer no messages. Only when she’d completed the task at hand would she finally surface, and return to the land of the living.
Shen Ni raised her eyebrows. ‘Then could you do it on my behalf, Qingluo, if you have the time to spare?’
Zeng Qingluo smiled sunnily. ‘I knew it! Yes, commander.’
‘You must be tired too,’ said Shen Ni. ‘You should go home and get some rest.’
‘I’ll look in on dashijie first, then I’ll go home.’
Once Zeng Qingluo had left the workshop, Shen Ni plunged fully into her work. Her shijie had seemed so cold earlier; she probably wanted to be left alone. Well, that was fine. Shen Ni could let Bian Jin have the whole bedchamber. She herself could fall asleep anywhere.
Though she was destined not to sleep tonight. She was far too curious about what ‘Qin Wushang’ was actually made of.
As a machinist, her deep curiosity was her strongest professional virtue — and also, perhaps, her most irreconcilable flaw.
***
Auntie Wan had told Zeng Qingluo that Bian Jin was resting in her bedchamber. Concerned about her dashijie’s injuries, Zeng Qingluo decided she would just go to the door and ask Bian Jin how she was. If Bian Jin seemed all right, Zeng Qingluo would leave her to rest; if she needed any help, Zeng Qingluo was ready to lend a hand.
She’d just called out to Bian Jin when the door opened.
The fragrance of pear-blossom soap clung to Bian Jin, and she seemed to be in relatively good spirits. She had a bandage around her ear and fresh gloves on her hands. She reassured Zeng Qingluo that she was feeling fine.
‘That’s good to hear, dashijie,’ said Zeng Qingluo. ‘I just came by to see how you were doing. You should go back inside. I’ll be leaving now.’
‘There’s no hurry,’ said Bian Jin, with the kindliness she typically showed to her fellow disciples. ‘All the dangers we faced today must have taken their toll on you as well. I have some nutrient beverages here — why don’t you drink one before you go?’
Zeng Qingluo had spent a good half of her life drifting rootlessly from place to place, and it was rare for her to experience any sort of familial affection. Xiaoshijie was kind to her, of course, but there was always an air of remoteness about her. No matter how thoughtful Shen Ni was, Zeng Qingluo was conscious of a certain distance between them.
Dashijie was different. Dashijie often made her feel as if she still had family left — an older sister who cared for her. And even though she knew it was only her imagination, it still warmed her heart.
Had it been anyone else who’d invited her in, Zeng Qingluo would have made her excuses politely and left. But Bian Jin was like a warm, welcoming light which she, lonely traveller that she was, found herself instinctively drawn to.
‘Then I’ll impose on you just a little longer,’ she said.
Bian Jin led Zeng Qingluo into the room and opened one of the cupboards. Inside was a built-in refrigerator designed especially for storing nutrient beverages. Can after can lined the shelves in neat rows, arranged in order of strength from ‘Everyday’ to ‘Enhanced’.
Shen Ni had told Bian Jin that the ‘Everyday’ version was suitable for ordinary consumption, while the ‘Enhanced I’ to ‘Enhanced III’ varieties would help speed up her recovery if she was ever injured. Some particularly high-quality types of nutrient beverage had the same therapeutic properties as standard pharmaceuticals: they could accelerate the body’s own healing processes and help it rebuild its strength.
At the time, Shen Ni had also added, ‘Of course, I hope the ‘Enhanced’ cans will all go past their expiry dates without you needing to use them. That will mean you’ve finally taken my advice about looking after your health to heart.’
Remembering the look of concern on Shen Ni’s face — so preternaturally mature on her youthful features — the corners of Bian Jin’s mouth lifted in a small smile. Then, realising what she was doing, she tamped it down just as quickly.
She handed a can of ‘Enhanced I’ nutrient beverage to Zeng Qingluo, and Zeng Qingluo took a sip. ‘Eh?’ she said. ‘This tastes of osmanthus blossom! It’s nice. I’ve never had an osmanthus-flavoured nutrient beverage before.’
Nutrient beverages were another one of the newfangled innovations that had emerged while Bian Jin was off fighting in the north. ‘Are there other flavours?’ she asked.
‘Yes, and each one is awful in its own way. They taste either like rubber or that polyethylene glycol-electrolyte stuff — pretty disgusting, in any case. I didn’t realise it would taste so nice if you added osmanthus syrup to it. I’ll have to try that myself in future — it makes it so much pleasanter to drink.’
‘So that’s how it is,’ murmured Bian Jin thoughtfully.
It wasn’t just the osmanthus candy Auntie Wan had been told to give her after she’d finished her tonic. Every can of nutrient beverage she drank held the proof of Shen Ni’s thoughtfulness as well.
As Zeng Qingluo sipped at her nutrient beverage, her eyes went to a display stand on the eastern side of the room, and fell on an ice-blue cereus flower that had been preserved in a crystal sphere. She let out an admiring exclamation. ‘It looks so pretty like this!’
Bian Jin came up to stand next to her. ‘Yes, it’s very lovely. Thank you.’
‘”Thank you”?’ Zeng Qingluo wasn’t quite sure what Bian Jin was thanking her for.
‘Weren’t they a gift from you and your colleagues at the Directorate?’
Shen Ni had been feeling somewhat irritable when Bian Jin asked her where the flowers had come from, so instead of admitting that she’d bought them, she’d claimed they were from her colleagues instead. Bian Jin had quite naturally assumed that she meant her colleagues at the Directorate.
‘No,’ said Zeng Qingluo. ‘Xiaoshijie bought them especially for you. Ice-blue cereus flowers are so rare — she had to go to some great lengths to get hold of them!’
Zeng Qingluo wasn’t sure if Shen Ni had told Bian Jin about Liu Ji, so she decided to keep that to herself for the time being.
‘Really?’ Bian Jin had not expected that.
Her shimei had bought her flowers, yet Bian Jin thrown such a dreadful tantrum at her that night. How could Shen Ni have indulged her so long, when she’d been so ungrateful?
***
Author’s Note:
The snow globe will also be coming back into play imminently (fist pump).
***
Footnotes:
- This is reminiscent of the 传音入密 (pinyin: chuan yin ru mi) technique commonly found in the wuxia genre, where a martial arts practitioner uses their qi to compress sound waves so tightly that their words can be heard only by the intended recipient. [return to text]
- In the original text, 南衙十六卫 (pinyin: nan ya shiliu wei). In Tang Dynasty China, this was a military force responsible for guarding the imperial capital. It consisted of sixteen companies (one of which was the Jinwu Guards), and was stationed on the southern side of the imperial palace. It complemented the Northern Garrison (北衙禁军, pinyin: bei ya jinjun), which was stationed on the northern side of the palace. [return to text]
- In the original text, 羽玉眉 (pinyin: yu yu mei), literally ‘feather jade brow’. A style of eyebrow with a more rounded end sweeping up diagonally into a pointed tip, reminiscent of a feather. [return to text]
- In the original text, 指桑骂槐 (pinyin: zhi sang ma huai), literally ‘to point at the mulberry tree while cursing the pagoda tree’. The chengyu describes the act of chastising one person while giving the appearance of criticising another. It originates from Dream of the Red Chamber (红楼梦, pinyin: hong lou meng), a Qing Dynasty novel authored by the Chinese novelist and poet Cao Xueqin (曹雪芹), which is regarded as one of the Four Great Classic Novels of Chinese literature. [return to text]
- In the original text, 狗仗人势 (pinyin: gou zhang ren shi), which translates more or less literally to ‘a dog relying on its human master’s position’. The chengyu describes someone who takes advantage of their proximity to a more powerful person to bully and oppress others. It originates from The Tale of the Sword (宝剑记, pinyin: baojian ji), an opera by the Ming Dynasty writer, playwright and literary critic Li Kaixian (李开先). [return to text]
douqi 随笔 