To Embers We Return — Chapter 36
***
It was one thing for Bian Jin to remind Shen Ni that she ought to see to her back injury, quite another for Bian Jin to see to it herself.
Before Bian Jin could even respond, Shen Ni had already gone over to the sofa and laid herself facedown across it. Perching on the sofa was a smaller version of the yellow plush oriole she kept in their bedchamber. Shen Ni scooped it up and cuddled it tightly, tucking it beneath her chest. This had the effect of elevating the upper half of her body.
Shen Ni waited for a few moments, but Bian Jin did not approach. She turned to look over her shoulder, her lovely eyes filled with puzzlement. Why isn’t shijie coming?
‘You could put on another pair of gloves,’ she suggested. ‘That way, you’d hardly feel anything.’
Shen Ni’s seemingly reassuring comment had the effect of cutting off Bian Jin’s planned escape route completely. She stared wordlessly at her shimei. She felt distinctly as if her kindness were being taken advantage of.
Resigned to her fate, Bian Jin drew on a second pair of gloves over the ones she was already wearing and sat down next to Shen Ni. She pressed both hands lightly against Shen Ni’s back. ‘Tell me where it hurts.’
Bian Jin was no machinist, much less a surgeon. But after so many years on the front lines, she was an old hand at dealing with most conventional battlefield injuries, up to and including setting dislocated joints. She’d never been particularly gentle when doing this, either with herself or with the soldiers under her command; treating the injury was always her main priority. They were all Talented warriors, after all; they could bear some pain. She had no time to coddle anyone.
Faced with Shen Ni, however — that brilliant yet fragile machinist — Bian Jin could not bring herself to be quite as forceful in her methods as she usually was. Her hands explored Shen Ni’s back with the utmost care and delicacy, searching for the site of the injury. Very lightly, she pressed down on Shen Ni’s skin. She could tell that the body beneath her hands was mostly unaugmented; almost all of Shen Ni’s bones and joints were wholly organic, completely unmodified.
Bian Jin recalled what Shen Ni had told her as a child, that she didn’t like the idea of having too many augmentations. She might be a machinist, but she did not want her own body to be subjected to too much cybernetic interference. What she trusted most of all was her unmodified, organic brain.
Although the two of them had been living under the same roof since their reunion, most of their interactions had consisted either of ripostes and counter-ripostes in their ongoing battle of wills, or of presenting a united front to their external opponents. Lately, the Black Box’s sudden intrusion had taken up much of their energy and attention as well. As a result, they rarely spoke much to each other about themselves. All Bian Jin knew was that Shen Ni had gone to the front lines after all. In those last three years of which Bian Jin had no memory, Shen Ni had forged an army of powerful mechanical soldiers who had cut through the enemy forces as easily as a sharp knife splitting a length of bamboo.[1] She’d brought the Xuanzhou Empire to its knees, retaking all the territory which TangPro had lost to it.
Every now and then, Bian Jin found herself wondering whether she’d been too adamant when she’d denied Shen Ni’s pleas to go north. Shen Ni’s Talent was so powerful. If Bian Jin not stopped her six years ago, might relations between them be less strained now? They might still have had their differences, but at least they would not have been estranged from each other for so long.
But did Bian Jin regret what she’d done? No. Even if she were to make the same choice all over again — even if she were to do so a hundred times more — she would still have chosen, every time, to leave Shen Ni at Shuangji Hall, because that had been the safest place possible.
Bian Jin’s thoughts were interrupted by a soft cry from Shen Ni — a moan that sounded as if it had been forced out of her throat. It was brief, but with a note of languor to it that spoke clearly of the pain she was enduring.
Bian Jin had already been careful to keep her motions as gentle as possible, but it seemed even that was too much for Shen Ni. She drew her hands back and asked softly, ‘Is that where it hurts?’
To tell the truth, Shen Ni wasn’t in that much pain. Bian Jin’s movements were practised, and Shen Ni found her ministrations rather pleasant on the whole. The aches and twinges she felt were just the unavoidable result of her muscles slowly unknotting themselves under Bian Jin’s hands. Some types of pain simply made themselves felt more keenly when they were being relieved. Shen Ni was more than capable of bearing with it. At the tenderness in Bian Jin’s tone, however, she wriggled her shoulders blades as if the pain were getting too much for her, clutched the little plush oriole even more tightly to her chest, and squeezed a pair of perfect tears from her eyes.
‘Yes,’ Shen Ni murmured, as she turned to look over her shoulder. Her long lashes were bedewed with tears, and she looked the very picture of lovely, wounded fragility. ‘Please be gentle, shijie.’
Bian Jin looked down at Shen Ni’s tear-bedimmed eyes, at her delicate, flower-fair face. Her expression was so prettily forlorn that Bian Jin could almost believe that she’d been at the receiving end of some mistreatment from Bian Jin herself. Her heart softened even more at the sight.
‘Does it really hurt so badly?’ asked Bian Jin, ruffling Shen Ni’s hair comfortingly. ‘I’m barely using any strength as it is.’
Shen Ni had not been expecting that gentle caress. She took instant advantage of it. Subtly she adjusted her pose so that she was leaning further into Bian Jin’s hand, and rubbed the top of her head softly against Bian Jin’s palm.
Bian Jin knew very well how frail machinists were compared to warriors, so she’d made sure to keep her touch as light as possible. She was finding it difficult, however, to pinpoint precisely where Shen Ni’s injuries were through the coveralls she was wearing, much less how serious they were. Bian Jin knew her strength was greater than most people’s, so there was a real risk that she might inadvertently press down on the site of the injury, making it worse.
She hesitated for a few moments, then patted Shen Ni lightly on the back of her neck. ‘You’d better undress.’
Shen Ni’s mind went momentarily blank. ‘Mm?’
‘So that I can see how badly you’re injured.’
The prospect of seeing Shen Ni in her undergarments brought on a rush of embarrassment, but Bian Jin also knew that Shen Ni’s injury was likely to worsen if not tended to in time. Faced with that, any bashfulness was simply affectation.
Shen Ni had not expected Bian Jin to be quite so direct. Before she could say anything further, however, Bian Jin laid a hand on her shoulder. Reflexively she squeezed the plush oriole hard enough to turn its plump body into an hourglass figure.[2]
If she really were to undress, wouldn’t her shijie realise instantly that her ‘injury’ was only a minor sprain?
She might not have a warrior’s Talent, but she was hardly made of papier-mâché either. Her sprained back did hurt a little, but not enough to bring real tears to her eyes.
I should never have suggested that second pair of gloves, thought Shen Ni. Now that her shijie’s tactility score had fallen back to normal, she was proving herself to be very dangerous indeed.
‘I think someone’s calling me,’ said Shen Ni, doing her best to sound convincing. She stood up, staring intently at her digital watch, and made her escape. Sitting down at her desk, she touched the tip of one ear to ‘receive’ the call. Several moments later, she gave a low, ‘Mm.’
Bian Jin’s gaze followed her closely. After the ‘call’ had been going on for some time, and Shen Ni had yet to say anything substantial, she finally understood what was happening. Shen Ni’s cry of pain, those delicate tears, that prettily forlorn expression — all that had been an act! Their previous ‘performances’ had been staged for the benefit of outsiders, and now Shen Ni was trying to pull the wool over her eyes as well.
Shen Ni was sitting with her back to Bian Jin. Shijie isn’t the type to eavesdrop on private conversations, she thought. She must have left the room by now.
She stole a glance out of the corner of her eye. Not only was Bian Jin still in the workshop, but she was sitting on the sofa quite calmly with her arms crossed in front of her chest, looking every inch the Governor-General of the North surveying her troops. Her gaze was fixed steadily on Shen Ni, taking in every detail of her shimei’s ‘performance’.
Silently Shen Ni averted her eyes. Bian Jin’s gaze stabbed into her back like a hundred spears. She felt as if her shijie were about to draw out her whip and give her ten more lashes at any moment.
Luckily, Bian Jin only subjected her to that flagellating stare for a few moments longer. Then she rose and made her way out of the workshop.
Shen Ni turned around very slowly as the door closed. Once she was absolutely sure that Bian Jin had left, she finally let out the breath she had been holding.
The two of them might be a married couple, and they might have faced many trials side by side, but the moment Bian Jin drew the mantle of Shuangji Hall’s leader about her shoulders, Shen Ni had found herself knocked firmly back into her old place of Bian Jin’s most junior sect-sister.
She reached for a can of nutrient beverage and gulped down a few mouthfuls to steady her nerves. After all that to-do, her eyes no longer felt as sore. She decided she would stay in the workshop for a while longer, and return to the bedchamber only once Bian Jin had gone to sleep.
Shen Ni leaned back in her chair, swivelling it round and round in slow circles. That full-body examination had been eventful[3] indeed.
Her thoughts turned back to Ni’s Heart once again. The neural core was embedded in Bian Jin’s body, affecting her sensations and behaviour. It was impossible for Shen Ni not to worry about it.
To Bian Jin, Shen Ni had claimed that Ni’s Heart was only half-finished. In truth, however, all its core functions were already fully operational. There should have been no impact on Bian Jin’s day to day life. While Shen Ni considered Ni’s Heart to be incomplete, that was only because she wanted to elevate its level of performance a height that far exceeded any conventional jade core’s. Again, this should have had no impact whatsoever on Bian Jin’s sense of touch.
Just now, she’d recalibrated Bian Jin’s misaligned connectors and disconnected all the cybernetic modules that might have had an effect on her sense of touch. Yet Bian Jin’s tactility score had stubbornly refused to go down. Was it really because of the resonances of Shen Ni’s blood, that mystical connection that bound them together? Or was it simply the case that Ni’s Heart had altered the proportions of pain and pleasure her shijie experienced, diminishing the former and magnifying the latter? Allowing her to overlook the pain from minor injuries, while sharpening the sensations she felt each time she came into contact with the woman she loved?
Shen Ni hissed at the turn her thoughts had taken. ‘The woman she loved’? Could you be any more of a narcissist?
If her shijie really did care for her that way, she wouldn’t have used their impending divorce as an excuse for turning down that kiss. Though on that particular score, Shen Ni had no one else but herself to blame. She was the one who’d brought up divorce in the first place, after all. And now the rock she’d tossed so casually into the air on their wedding night had come crashing down on her own head, leaving a prominent bump behind.
Shen Ni looked at herself in the mirror that hung opposite the workbench, and flung a crumpled ball of paper at her reflection. ‘Next time, why don’t you try saying something useful with that mouth of yours.’
Beep— beep—
The sound came from a miniature digital monitor in one corner, which was flashing rapidly with a blue-white light. Shen Ni glanced over at it. The device scanned her retina, confirming her identity, then unlocked its display screen. On it were a series of dark mountain peaks. Then, bit by bit, the field of view began to move forward, passing through the mountains. A blaze of bright lights soon came within sight.
This was a live feed being transmitted by the spybird which Shen Ni had released a few days ago. She’d almost forgotten about it.
The spybird had successfully circumvented the Xuanzhou Empire’s surveillance systems, and was now safely within its borders. From the location tags, Shen Ni was fairly certain that the bright lights ahead of the spybird belonged to a sizable city — likely the Xuanzhou capital itself.
So the spybird she’d put together with only the most cursory effort had managed to fly all the way there. The Xuanzhou Empire’s defences might as well not exist.
It was still the middle of the night over in that distant realm. The stretch of imperial highway the spybird was flying over went past a jumbled outcrop of rocks. Shen Ni could just about make out some shadowy figures among them.
Shen Ni switched the display into night vision mode and zoomed in closer. She took in the scene before her and smiled.
Never before, she was quite sure, had there been such a massive gathering of the dark web’s top-ranked bounty hunters as were assembled among these rocks. For the sake of the galactic chromium she had offered as a reward, they’d infiltrated the Xuanzhou Empire in search of Bian Jin’s bone whip — and no doubt, the chance to cut Qin Wushang’s head from her shoulders as well.
What an entertaining late-night show this was turning out to be.
Shen Ni locked the spybird’s proximity to one of the bounty hunters, allowing it to hover where it was. Then she called down to the kitchens through the mansion’s internal communications system and asked if there was anything to eat. After all, what was a show without some snacks to go with it?
One of the maids soon came in, bearing a tray. On it was a plate of osmanthus milk cakes and a dish of deep-fried peanuts. Shen Ni’s gaze lingered on them for a brief moment, and the corners of her lips and eyes tilted up in a smile. ‘These are my favourites, thank you.’
As the maid stepped out of the workshop and closed the door behind her, she couldn’t help feeling that there was something different about the marquess tonight. Her lordship didn’t usually waste her time on these trivial pleasantries.
Of course, unlike Bian Jin, the maid had not raised Shen Ni from babyhood; she had no way of knowing that Marquess Shen was always at her most pleasant just before she set one of her schemes into motion.
Shen Ni went back to the spybird’s surveillance feed with the tray in her hands. There was some sort of commotion going on. The bounty hunters seemed to be backing away from the rocks, as if they’d encountered something terrifying.
Shen Ni paused with a crisp, deep-fried peanut against her lips, quite forgetting to pop it into her mouth. These bounty hunters had roamed all over the continent; they must have seen more than their share of strange and bizarre sights. What could have sent these hardened adventurers fleeing in this way?
The jumble of rocks began to move.
No — those weren’t rocks.
Shen Ni took a closer look at the screen. When she realised what she was seeing, her scalp began to crawl.
What she’d taken for rocks were, in fact, headstones. The Xuanzhou capital was surrounded by ring after ring of graves. They stretched out for thousands of miles in every direction. As Shen Ni watched, corpse after rotting corpse dug their way out of the graves. They fell upon the crowd of bounty hunters, ripping and tearing at them in a frenzy.
The peanut slipped from Shen Ni’s fingers and fell onto the table. She reached out, intending to adjust the focus on the display.
Suddenly, something long and thin smashed right across the screen. The image shook violently, then the spybird began plummeting downwards, turning in a haphazard spiral. It landed heavily on the ground. When the image finally stilled, all Shen Ni could see was a dirty patch of gravel.
A black-clad figure approached, backlit against the moon. It was a woman, dressed in close-fitting garments of a strange design that clung to her exquisite figure. The moonlight illuminated her proud curves. She was tall, and in one hand she was holding something long, thin and pliable. It was she who had knocked the spybird out of the air just now.
Shen Ni was just about to take a closer look when the newcomer suddenly brought her face right up to the screen. She had picked up the spybird, and was pointing it directly at herself.
Shen Ni had seen all manner of outlandish sights over the years, but a shock still ran through her.
The face that now filled the screen was completely devoid of any features.
It wasn’t some titanium mask or prosthetic either. The texture was clearly that of organic human skin, yet at the same time, it looked utterly inhuman. The face had an almost sickly pallor to it, with only faint grey bumps where the eyes, nose and mouth should have been. Ripples moved restlessly beneath its skin, as if something were about to break free at any moment.
Then the faceless woman crushed the spybird into pieces.
Bzz—
The transmission cut off completely. All Shen Ni could see was a black screen. She grabbed a large handful of peanuts and began munching rapidly through them to steady her nerves.
What was the creature that had discovered the spybird? It did not seem either human nor mechanical. Could it be another one of the Black Box’s mutant beasts? But no. Shen Ni was very familiar with those, and the faceless figure had felt like something quite different altogether.
She turned to look at yet another screen. On this one, a digital model of ‘Qin Wushang’ was being reconstructed over and over. As Shen Ni watched, the system wiped the screen clean and started the process all over again, building up the outlines of the model bit by bit. Resting her chin in her hands, she sank into deep thought.
Using 3D imaging technology, Shen Ni had been able to recreate Qin Wushang’s appearance from her ruined corpse. She’d also been able to determine what the material composition of that corpse was. As she’d expected, it had consisted largely of organic human tissue, but nanomaterials had also been present. This was not unusual in itself; after all, nanotechnology was widely used when installing cybernetic augmentations. That had not been of particular interest to Shen Ni. What had piqued her curiosity were the bioactive compounds she’d found in the corpse. This in itself was hardly unheard of either: bioactive compounds were often used in cybernetic repairs, as well as in the construction of defensive fortifications. What was startling had been the sheer quantity of the substance she’d found in Qin Wushang’s body. There was absolutely no point to this, unless Qin Wushang, for whatever reason, needed to be able to regenerate her bodily tissues immediately after taking damage, in much the same way as a well-designed city wall needed the ability to patch itself up. Otherwise, having too much of these bioactive compounds in one’s body was likely to destabilise one’s jade core and cybernetic implants. In the best case, this would lead to madness; in the worst, to death. It was simply not worth the risk, and no reasonable person would have done it lightly.
Shen Ni wondered if Qin Wushang’s apparent madness was due to the overuse of bioactive compounds. She was now quite certain that the corpse she’d recovered was not Qin Wushang herself. Indeed, it might not even be fully human. Bian Jin was right, she thought with a little pang of jealousy.
She was also certain that the jellyfish-stuffed corpse of ‘Qin Wushang’ and the faceless figure that had just destroyed the spybird were inextricably connected. She might not have any solid proof of that yet, but her machinist’s intuition told her it must be the case.
The capital city of Xuanzhou was surrounded by miles and miles of graves. What strange and disquieting sights lay behind its walls?
Bian Jin must have travelled to the Xuanzhou Empire at some point. What had befallen her there? And were her secrets truly buried somewhere in the haunted realm? Shen Ni wondered with another pang.
***
When Bian Jin stepped into the bedchamber, she saw that the bed had been made up with fresh sheets and blankets, replacing the ones that Shen Ni had splattered with water earlier. Feeling rather hot and bothered, she had a soak in the hot spring in the adjoining courtyard. Then, all cool and fresh once more, she changed into her nightclothes.
Once again, she’d used the pear-blossom soap. She’d found the scent too strong the first time she’d used it, but by now, she’d grown accustomed to it.
Bian Jin sat down on the bed and leaned against the headboard, feeling rather weary. It wasn’t so much because of the battle against the Black Box; she could despatch a low-level mutant beast like that with nary a blink. It was the full-body examination that followed which had left her quite drained.
She closed her eyes. She could still feel Shen Ni’s hot breath, sense the faint sweetness from her soft lips.
Bian Jin’s breathing quickened. Suddenly she realised that she was on the verge of calling up that scene from her memory module and replaying it in her mind. Instantly she forced her eyes open before she could partake in so shameless an indulgence. She snatched up the cup of water that stood on the table beside the bed and gulped it down in a single mouthful.
She was going to leave Chang’an. She wouldn’t be waiting until she and Shen Ni divorced, either. Once the day came, she would go.
That indistinct future had her body and soul in thrall. She knew all too well that her sojourn in Chang’an, the empire’s most dazzling metropolis, was only temporary. This extravagant pleasure-ground was not her final destination.
She would accomplish the mission she’d come here to carry out. Then she would leave Chang’an with her body intact and whole. Once it was all behind her, it would be nothing but a dream.
***
Bian Jin’s thoughts weighed a little heavily on her. Since there was still no sign of Shen Ni, she decided to have a look around the dark web. The whip she was currently using was solid enough, but its ability to hold an electrical charge was much too limited. She still wanted to track down her bone whip.
The moment she logged onto the dark web, she could sense that something was afoot. A bounty posted by six-starred account had been pinned to the very top of the list of notices by the site administrators. The object it sought was none other than Bian Jin’s own bone whip, and the reward offered was a whole pound of galactic chromium from Lili Three — a very generous quantity.
Bian Jin stared wordlessly at it.
Although the bounty had been posted anonymously, the person who had placed it might as well have signed her name to the notice as far as Bian Jin was concerned. Given that the bounty came from a six-starred account, which was offering that particular reward for the retrieval of that particular item — who else could it be but Shen Ni?
Bian Jin glanced at the time stamp. The bounty had been posted on the day Diwu Que, Zeng Qingluo and their other sect-sisters had come to visit, just before luncheon. So a whole houseful of guests had been assembled in the dining room — and Shen Ni, the head of the household, had run off to post a bounty on the dark web!
What had stunned Bian Jin into further speechlessness was the addendum to the bounty notice, in which Shen Ni had offered a further reward for Qin Wushang’s head — any double S-tier implant of the receiver’s choice, forged by her own hands.
Qin Wushang had replied quite openly to this through her own public account:
My old friend, it seems the fireworks display I put on for you wasn’t quite big enough. But don’t worry, you’ll continue receiving bountiful gifts from me.
That had been posted just an hour ago, making it blatantly clear that she was still alive.
Now the whole of the dark web was following these developments with keen interest. Quite a few people had started running a pool on who the owner of the anonymous account might be. Some had placed their wagers on Bian Jin herself; even more had bet on it being Shen Ni. After all, Shen Ni was the only machinist on the whole continent capable of crafting double S-tier implants and prosthetics — unless, of course, that other legendary double S-tier machinist who had disappeared so many years ago had suddenly decided to make a reappearance.
Some of the denizens of the dark web sighed over Shen Ni’s astonishing Talent; even more focused on the extraordinarily handsome reward on offer. A single pound of galactic chromium was a fortune large enough to set one up as master of the southern reaches of the continent. Yet Shen Ni was ready to hand it over for the sake of recovering her shijie’s bone whip. That was clear proof of how deeply she cared for her shijie.
Bian Jin scrolled through thousands upon thousands of comments, most of them filled with gossip and speculation about the intimate details of hers and Shen Ni’s relationship. Some of them had clearly been made by their erstwhile sect-siblings from Shuangji Hall. Finding the posts distasteful, Bian Jin soon logged off.
Her head was throbbing slightly. A-Yao might be all grown up now, but she still seemed as prone to getting into fights as she had been when she was little.
There was still no sign of Shen Ni. Bian Jin wondered if she was planning on sleeping in her workshop tonight. After the strain of the last few days and the wound she’d just taken from the mutant beast, that cold, comfortless room was no place for her to be spending the night.
Bian Jin wanted to send her a Messenger Pigeon text, urging her to come to the bedchamber. Bian Jin had seen through her little act tonight, that was all. It was something that had happened often enough in the past.
Shen Ni’s voice came from outside the door. ‘Shijie, I’m coming in.’
Bian Jin turned off her digital watch. ‘Mm.’
Shen Ni opened the door and stepped through, bringing with her a cloud of pear-blossom scent. She’d had a bath too. Blankets and pillows had been laid out neatly on her side of the bed. The electric heating had been switched on, so it would be warm and toasty between the sheets.
Shen Ni shivered a little as she wriggled under the covers. She stole a glance at her shijie, who sat leaning against the headboard.
Bian Jin was undoing her hair, and her dark eyes were perfectly calm. All she said was, ‘Is the metallic orb from that mutant beast still inside the basin of mercury?’
‘Mm,’ said Shen Ni. ‘A pouch lined with shielding capacitors and a container full of mercury — it’s been sealed away, all safe and secure. The same technique you used in the north. I cribbed it straight from you.’
Bian Jin gave her a faint smile. It did not seem as if she were planning to get even with Shen Ni for the latter’s deception. That isn’t quite shijie’s usual style, thought Shen Ni. Perhaps I was worrying too much. Is it possible shijie didn’t notice what I was up to earlier?
Shen Ni closed her eyes, finally at ease. She really was tired, and her body was limp and aching all over. Having her shijie so close by gave her a sense of security. Sleep overtook her quite quickly.
Then she was dragged back to wakefulness when Bian Jin said, ‘There’s no need to go on looking for my bone whip.’
Bian Jin was about to add that she could search for the whip on her own, but stopped, feeling it might seem as if she were belittling all the efforts Shen Ni had been making to retrieve it. Instead, she said, ‘I can always forge myself a suitable weapon if need be. Galactic chromium is rare and costly. You shouldn’t waste it on this.’
Shen Ni was silent for a few moments. So her shijie had seen the bounty she’d posted on the dark web.
‘But didn’t shizun leave it to you when she died?’ she asked Bian Jin. ‘Even if you did make a new one, it still wouldn’t be the same. You loved and respected shizun so much. Could you really bear not to try and recover her last gift to you?’
The question seemed to take Bian Jin quite aback. Shen Ni could not tell what she was thinking. After a few moments, Bian Jin said quite mildly, ‘It has been more than ten years since our shizun passed.’
Shen Ni did not have many memories of their shizun, who had died not long after she’d turned four. To Shen Ni, Bian Jin was the undisputed leader of Shuangji Hall, and it was her word alone that Shen Ni respected.
Bian Jin asked about her old jade core, the one their shizun had forged. ‘And where did you keep it after you’d taken it out?’
‘It’s been… put away.’
Bian Jin was all too familiar with the nuances of Shen Ni’s speech. For her to use a turn of phrase as ambiguous as this meant something was afoot.
‘You haven’t thrown it away, have you?’
Shen Ni stared at her in pretended shock. ‘Would I?’
Bian Jin’s gaze darkened. ‘I see. So you really did throw it away.’
Shen Ni could tell this mattered a great deal to Bian Jin. Inwardly she pouted. ‘Of course not,’ she said. ‘I really did put it away.’ She’d just have to remember to fish their shizun’s creation out of the waste bin where she’d tossed it, that was all. She’d been too busy to clear it out anyway, and the maids were forbidden from entering the workshop without her express permission.
Shen Ni’s tone only confirmed Bian Jin’s suspicions. She’d dared to defile their shizun’s last great masterpiece — that was the very height of disrespect. But then again, that was how Shen Ni had always been: she’d always gone against the accepted order of things.
Bian Jin felt a little troubled. She had given Shen Ni the wrong name entirely. She should never have called her ‘Ni’ to begin with. Something like ‘Shen Guaiguai’ — ‘Shen Good Girl’ — would have been so much better.
Shen Guaiguai, Bian Jin repeated to herself, and the corners of her mouth began lifting in a smile.
‘What are you thinking about, shijie?’
At some point, Shen Ni had rolled over, and was now lying on her side, facing Bian Jin. Lamplight shone softly down on her through the bed curtains. The wedding decorations had all been taken down, but touches of celebratory red still remained in their bedchamber.
Bian Jin, who had been sitting with her back to Shen Ni, turned as well. They gazed at each other, face to face.
Moonlight illuminated Bian Jin’s features. This was the face that had haunted Shen Ni’s dreams for so many years.
She was so, so close.
She was finally allowed within a hand’s breadth of Bian Jin again. She wanted to get even closer.
‘Shijie, my back still hurts. Can I lean against you?’
Even as she finished speaking, Shen Ni was already pressing her forehead lightly to Bian Jin’s hip.
She’s up to the same tricks again, thought Bian Jin. Does this never end?
Shen Ni felt a stirring in the air by her forehead, and thought that Bian Jin must have pulled away. Her heart sank; it felt strangely hollow. But even before she could start feeling sorry for herself, she realised that Bian Jin had lain down next to her. She hadn’t turned her back either; she was looking straight at Shen Ni.
This was the first time they’d truly shared a bed.
Shen Ni’s breath caught momentarily. Bian Jin reached out, cupped one hand around the back of her head, and drew her closer.
‘Like this?’ asked Bian Jin.
How can such a cool voice sound so tender? Shen Ni wondered. Her head was pressed against Bian Jin’s collarbone, but there was still a little gap between the rest of their bodies. It only made her yearn to be even closer. She slid forward, cuddling close to Bian Jin, and wrapped an arm around her shijie’s waist.
Bian Jin stiffened. ‘You—’
Give Shen Ni an inch, and she takes a mile, she reflected.
Shen Ni closed her eyes contentedly. ‘Yes, like this. My back won’t hurt now.’
Bian Jin knew perfectly well that Shen Ni was being wilful, but after everything that had happened, she simply could not bring herself to push away the girl who had nestled herself in her arms. She would indulge Shen Ni for now; she would allow Shen Ni to hold her for now.
Bian Jin closed her eyes as well.
To sleep, perchance to dream.
***
Footnotes:
- In the original text, the chengyu 势如破竹 (pinyin: shi ru po zhu), literally ‘as if splitting bamboo’. It describes an action (often military or martial in nature) which is performed smoothly and easily without much resistance. Equivalent to the English idiom ‘like a hot knife through butter’. Bamboo is said to be easy to split as its stem is hollow. [return to text]
- In the original text, 水蛇腰 (pinyin: shuishe yao), literally ‘water snake waist’. It denotes a slim waist, usually in the context of a woman’s figure. [return to text]
- In the original text, 一波三折 (pinyin: yi bo san zhe), literally ‘one stroke, three changes in the direction of the brush’. Originally a term used to describe movements in calligraphic brushwork, this chengyu is now commonly used to describe a process or incident which is full of twists and turns. [return to text]
douqi 随笔 