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When Lan Jue was younger, freshly Vice-Minister of Rites and still learning to expect the flash of crimson from his sleeves when he turned too quickly, the sheen of scarlet silk from his shoulder, his skirt when the sun shone, he was invited to visit the home of the Chief Astrologer. The things he saw there were ones he had only ever read about in dusty texts: blackest silk with gold and silver painted stars shining in their constellations. Ivory oracle bones, a bronze fire bowl, divination rods and exotic boxes of cedar and rosewood to hold them. Pots of medicines, elixirs, potions. And, all along one wall, ticking clockwork pieces. Circles within circles, whirring gears, clicking wooden pins. One of them had held two round coins of beaten gold on different circular tracks that spun round and round, their paths crossing but the two coins themselves never meeting.
This is what Lan Jue thinks of, in the three years that Zhang Ping is away. Yiping is not at the ends of the earth; occasionally Zhang Ping returns to the capital to report to the Emperor and his court, to consult with Mowen on cases, to stock up on supplies of foodstuffs and books that can only be found in a large centre. But each time he returns, Lan Jue is on a mission – south, north, east, west, he roves towards all points in turn, working to keep the provinces well-governed and accountable. Like the two mechanical circles their orbits dance around each other, but they catch only word of each other’s visits.
It is only after three years that the political situation has sufficiently cooled and Zhang Ping can be returned to the capital, installed in a moderate villa and given a small staff of servants and retainers. After twenty-three years the Department of Incantation is reopened, and Zhang Ping is made its head.
The first time Lan Jue sees him, though, is before his official investiture at court, before he dons his black robes and futou. He comes to the Lan mansion on foot, as if he were still nothing but a humbler peddler and exam candidate; in a concession to his new title he does at least wear silk, a delicate powder blue the colour of an autumn sky.
He looks… good. Lan Jue first sees him from afar, already seated in the Lan garden pavilion waiting for Lan Jue himself. It’s raining, a soft patter on stone and bamboo; as Lan Jue walks along the raised wooden verandas he sees Zhang Ping standing at the edge of the pavilion just under the roof. He’s looking up at the sky, the line of his jaw clean-cut, his form leaner than it had appeared those years ago swaddled in bulky layers of worn linen to keep him warm. His hair is done up in a careful knot held closed with a metal guan that gleams the blue/grey tone of a blade rather than the shivery white of precious metal. He looks, if anything, sharper. More focused. No longer a boy.
Zhang Ping turns to look at him as Lan Jue rounds the corner and steps into the garden pavilion. There is already a fire burning in the small tea stove, the metal pot rattling as the steam billows up.
“Lan-daren.” Zhang Ping greets him with the same perfunctory salute that he uses for everyone – arms swinging up, shoulders barely bent, a slight smile on his lips. It’s achingly familiar, the memories it brings both good and bad.
“No need to be so formal,” Lan Jue tells him, motioning him to take a seat. “You’ve been made a palace official, now.”
“Not quite yet,” says Zhang Ping, but he takes a seat. Three years in Yiping haven’t taught him grace, Lan Jue sees. He sprawls long-legged on the cushion without care for the way his silhouette looks in his new silks, his back curved like a cat as he leans forward to lift the lid on the tea pot and slip the tea leaves in carefully with the bamboo scoop. “Lan-daren still has the advantage of me, for a few more days.”
Lan Jue settles himself on his own cushion, limbs carefully folded, sleeves draped over his thighs. He had been eager to embrace finery, when it was affordable to him. Had spent weeks learning how to sit, to stand, to turn his wrist or his elbow just so to allow the drape of his sheer silk to fall without a single wrinkle. Clearly Zhang Ping does not feel likewise. In another young official, Lan Jue would be judgemental. Here, he is merely… pleased. Yes. Pleased, that Zhang Ping hasn’t changed so much in three years that he can no longer recognize the boy he was, driven by righteousness and kindness rather than aesthetics or self-protection.
“And what will you call me, I wonder, when you’re installed?” Lan Jue doesn’t quite smile, but he lets his features soften. Zhang Ping, still bent forward to tend to the tea, looks up from beneath the heavy line of his brows.
“What would you have me call you? Lan-daren will always be my senior, and still above me in rank. And…”
Lan Jue raises an eyebrow. “And?”
“And it has caused trouble in the past. My familiarity with you.”
“You make it sound as though the first thing you intend to do once invested is run off and get involved in some hopelessly complex, politically-driven murder and sully my good name.”
Zhang Ping snorts.
“Ridiculous, I know,” says Lan Jue. “It’s hardly a matter of if, but when.”
“Daren,” protests Zhang Ping. He’s trying to raise the lid on the steaming teapot; he burns his fingers and drops it with a quiet curse. Lan Jue sighs.
“Let me,” he says, and removes it properly, in one quick movement. He takes up the bamboo ladle and, holding his sleeve carefully aside, pours out two cups. Outside the rain is still pattering in the garden, the smell fresh, of wet soil and green things growing. Lan Jue picks up Zhang Ping’s cup and offers it to him; Zhang Ping receives it with both hands.
“Thank you.”
They drink. The water trickles in the culvert that runs down the centre of the garden pavilion, chuckling as it streams over rocks and scraps of wood. Lan Jue banks the fire, and the water in the tea pot eases off its frantic bubbling. He pours out a second round of tea; they drink.
“I hope you’ve learned a measure of caution in your years away,” says Lan Jue, when the cups are drained again. “Or at least self-preservation.”
“Perhaps I have,” says Zhang Ping, his eyes bright.
“Or perhaps not?” replies Lan Jue. Zhang Ping drops his head just a little in that easy way of his, amused and wanting to hold his amusement for himself. Lan Jue doesn’t begrudge him; Zhang Ping has had very little of his own so far in this life. Maybe that will change, now.
“I make no promises,” he says. “But I thank Lan-daren for the tea, and the welcome. I wondered if… if you might prefer me not to come. If that’s what you want –”
Lan Jue sets down his cup, silk whispering over his knee. “Zhang Ping. Our time together was fraught. Full of fear, and uncertainty. The results still taste bitter in my mouth.” Shulin driven mad by his ambition, dead in the streets. So many of their countrymen poisoned to death. The Emperor’s pedigree faked, or at least carefully ignored by the court.
Zhang Ping nods. “Then –”
“However,” says Lan Jue. “So much that we hoped for also came to pass. Justice for my father. For your mother. For both you, and I. Victory in the south, and a steady head on the throne. Much of that was your doing. I don’t begrudge you your methods. I am… pleased, to welcome you back.”
Zhang Ping glances at him for a moment, then smiles and nods. He accepts things – some things – so easily, like water off a duck’s back. And when he does not, he is not behind in letting you know. That honesty is, after years of service in the palace, endlessly refreshing.
“Thank you, Lan-daren.”
It reminds him, oddly, of the zongzi. There had been so many young men clamouring for his attention, his patronage – each of them more lavish and overinflated in his expectations than the last. Zhang Ping had arrived with a basket of zongzi simply as a thank you, nothing more. The sincerity had been almost aching. Lan Jue feels that now, as Zhang Ping thanks him. It makes something flutter in his stomach, a sensation like flower petals buffeted by the wind.
“Perhaps some snacks,” suggests Lan Jue, to distract himself, and raises his voice to call for them.
***
In the end, of course, it’s not long before Zhang Ping becomes embroiled in a difficult, political case. What’s unexpected is that it’s Mowen who lands him there.
Lan Jue, as a palace official, is among the first to hear that Jin Yuanfei, Minister of Provisions, has died. That’s all the official report records. The gossip that takes the palace by storm almost before the formal announcement has been made says that he was burned alive, dying a cruel and gruesome death.
Mowen is, in his position as head of Judicial Review, put in charge. He and Lan Jue talk through the case when they meet in the evenings for wine or tea; consequently, Lan Jue is among the first to hear that Jin Yuanfei’s teenage daughter Linlin has been arrested for odd behaviour.
“She won’t talk,” Mowen tells him on a humid night, the frogs making a raucous chorus in the garden pond. In the distance a cicada sings, not quite ready to settle for the evening. “She just shakes and stares. We’ve had Jin Yuanfei’s wife in to talk to her, and some of the household women. She won’t speak to any of them.”
“Not her mother?”
“Her mother is dead; the wife is Jin Yuanfei’s second, formerly his concubine.”
“And so?” asks Lan Jue, pouring out a measure of rice wine into a cup where it captures the moon’s rising glow against the darkness of the vessel. He passes it to Mowen one handed, Mowen who is sitting lazily on the edge of the platform with his feet anchored on the large boulder around which the garden is build. Lan Jue himself sits more neatly on his cushion and traces the fall of moonlight on the still pond.
“So I was going to ask Zhang Ping to help understand her, with the water mirror.”
Lan Jue nods slowly. It’s a recognized, although unstated, fact that Zhang Ping was made head of the Department of Incantation due to his people’s unusual skills with herbs and hypnosis. So far to Lan Jue’s knowledge, he hasn’t used the water mirror since he came back to the capital. But a case like this, with a murdered minister, is certainly of the profile that would require such an action. “I see,” he says. Mowen glances at him.
“You disagree?”
“No. No, but… Zhang Ping has a habit of making the simple complicated.”
“Of getting himself in trouble, you mean. I know it. But I’ll be there. Hell – you can be too, if you care to. Keep an eye on him.”
Lan Jue says nothing. Now would be the time to make a clean break with the past. To let Zhang Ping build his new life, his new career without echoes of their former successes – and failures. Mowen knows Zhang Ping almost as well as Lan Jue does; he can certainly cope with his unorthodox tendencies.
And yet. And yet Lan Jue feels an almost physical reaction to the idea of distancing himself from Zhang Ping’s investigation out of – what? Fear? Discomfort? Self-protection?
“I’ll come,” he says slowly, tasting the words and finding them wholesome, good. “Just this once. To see how he’s settling in.”
Mowen glances at him out of the corner of his eye, and grins. “As you like.” He raises his cup, and drinks.
***
It feels strange to see Zhang Ping in black.
Although they meet regularly at court, Lan Jue still isn’t used to his figure in dark silks, wrapped in cloth the colour of a raven’s wing and glinting like wet ink. It washes some of the colour from his face, darkens the pools of his eyes. It ages him, or at least it does until he tilts his head and gives that easy smile, a tiny spark of brightness in the sedate and serious throne hall.
Today Zhang Ping is in his court attire as he sits in the room provided by Mowen for the ceremony. Lan Jue is there and Xu Dong too at his side as usual; he smiles to see Zhang Ping arrive and Zhang Ping smiles back at him, one of the few officials to even acknowledge a retainer.
There is a small wooden table, already holding the water mirror and a small jug. There are two stools. There is a blank folded screen, and a window looking out on the Court’s inner courtyard. And that’s all.
The woman, Jin Linlin, is escorted in between guards. She’s small, not yet fully grown, perhaps fifteen or sixteen. Her clothes are simple dark linen; Lan Jue doesn’t know enough of the Court’s business to know whether they dressed her or if this is her usual custom. Certainly it’s severely plain for a Minister’s daughter. Her face is shaded by lank, unwashed hair; her skin is pale as plain congee. She wears no make-up.
The guards bring her to sit on the stool; she folds at the knees easily and sits staring at the table.
“Jin Linlin?” asks Zhang Ping, his voice low. Kind. She doesn’t look up. “Jin-guniang, I’m here to help you talk to us. We’re trying to find out what happened to your father. It’s important that we know.”
She doesn’t blink, doesn’t respond.
“Jin-guniang, I want to help you. Will you let me?”
Slowly, she looks up. Her hair falls away from her face. In another place, at another time, she might have been beautiful. Now she looks only diminished, ill. Her eyes stare at Zhang Ping for a minute. Then she looks down again.
Zhang Ping picks up the jug of water and pours it carefully, filling the bowl. He sets the jug down and lifts the wooden dowel he uses to make the bowl sing. “Look at the water,” he murmurs. “Watch it. Just watch it.” His hand strikes the bowl once, deftly.
Lan Jue doesn’t look at the water; he keeps his eyes high on the wall. He has already seen within himself, and although his mind is clearer these days he doesn’t relish a second exploration of his inner soul. Zhang Ping said, after the horrors of the Empress’s funeral, that he didn’t believe in souls, in an afterlife. Lan Jue, having seen the darkness and the light inside himself can’t believe that such a depth of being will simply vanish when his heart finally stops beating.
Zhang Ping strikes the mirror again. The tone changes, becomes warmer. He beats it again and it rings clearly this time. Zhang Ping puts down the dowel, and grows still.
“This is your inner self,” he says, his voice quiet, easy. “Look around. It will help us find out what happened to your father.”
They’re in the Water Illusion, now. Whatever it is they see, Lan Jue won’t know until Zhang Ping comes out of it and can tell them.
“I don’t want to see it,” says Jin Linlin, speaking for the first time. Her fingers are pulling at the cloth of her dress, wrinkling it. Her voice is thin, breathless. “I don’t want to.”
“It’s important we find out what happened. Your father is dead; that must be made right.”
“I don’t want to.”
Outside a cart trundles by; a magpie sings out. Within the court someone is raking leaves, the sound of the brush regular, even. Lan Jue watches the two figures sat by the table, each with their eyes closed. Zhang Ping’s back is slightly bent, his shoulders loose and low. Jin Linlin is huddled together, fingers bunching her linen dress, eyes moving rapidly behind her thin lids.
Zhang Ping takes in a breath, but doesn’t move. “Jin-guniang – this –”
“Make it stop,” she mutters, starting to rock back and forth. “Make it stop make it stop makeitstop!”
“I can’t – this is your darkness, your beast. You have to push past it.” Zhang Ping sounds strange. His voice is tight, curt. He’s beginning to breathe faster, shoulders rising and falling visibly beneath black silk.
“I can’t. I can’t. Please – don’t. Don’t. You can’t. You can’t let him. Oh god – please –” She’s hugging herself now, fingers digging into the material of her sleeves, and deeper.
“Jin-guniang, only you can stop it. You have to concentrate. Clear your mind.”
“No. Nononono – no –”
Zhang Ping is panting now, beginning to curve inwards. Lan Jue steps forward; sweat is beading on his forehead, his eyes screwed tightly closed. “He can’t hurt you here. This is a memory, a feeling. Please. You can make it stop.”
“Make it stop? I could never make it stop. I can never make it stop.”
“But you did. Didn’t you? You did make it stop.” Zhang Ping sounds pained, strangled. Breathless.
“You’re looking for my beast? He was my beast. You can see everything. Everything. What he did. Over and over. No one would help. They all looked away. He made me take medicine, when I got – when I was – preg –” her voice cuts off and she curls in on herself, shaking. “Please stop. Stop. STOP!”
Zhang Ping jerks up so hard he tumbles backwards off the stool. He’s panting as if he had just run a great distance, face soaked with sweat, body shaking. He puts his face in his hands, drawing one leg up close.
Opposite him Jin Linlin is crying. Her eyes are open now but she doesn’t move otherwise, still holding herself tightly.
Lan Jue steps forward and kneels beside Zhang Ping. He puts a hand on his shoulder; he can feel him trembling, all the way to the bone. He wipes his face and looks up; his eyes are red. “They will be kind to you,” he says, softly. His gaze flits to Mowen, who looks sickened. “You will be kind to her.” It’s not a question. Mowen nods and goes to speak in a low voice to the guards near the door. A few moments later two women come in and lift her, lead her out huddled between them. Lan Jue tightens his grip on Zhang Ping’s shoulder; Zhang Ping leans back into the touch, just slightly. He wipes at his face with his sleeve and makes a low noise of disgust when the silk does little to dry the sweat and tears. Lan Jue produces a clean cotton cloth and hands it to him; he grasps it like a lifeline, crushing it in his palm.
Everyone but Mowen, Xu Dong, Zhang Ping and Lan Jue clear the room. Mowen comes back in and straightens Zhang Ping’s stool; he and Lan Jue help lift him to sit on it. He’s bent forward over his knees, jaw tight, his breathing harsh in his chest. Mowen leans back against the table; Lan Jue kneels beside Zhang Ping. One hand is on his knee, light, solicitous. He looks up into Zhang Ping’s face and sees only pain there.
“She did it,” says Mowen, eventually, when none of them can stand the silence, the sound of Zhang Ping’s anguish.
Zhang Ping raises his face. “She lit the flame,” he says, voice gritty now. “He felled the trees, chopped the wood, built the pyre, spread the oil. With his actions. Year after year. She’s right – he was a beast. The things he did to her…” his voice breaks and he bends his head, hands fisting.
Lan Jue feels heartsick, broken. His fingers twitch against Zhang Ping’s knee, the sheen of his skirt shifting as silk rustles. He doesn’t know how to help, what to do.
“I shouldn’t have asked you,” says Mowen. He sounds wretched. He looks it, lip caught between his teeth, brows heavy.
Zhang Ping’s head is bowed again. His back is a smooth arch, a silken slice in the candlelight. Lan Jue wants to pick him up and carry him out of here, wants to bring him home and feed him warm food and wrap him in soft clothes and see him comforted, eased. “I would rather you asked me than you punish her.”
“A solution will be found. The circumstances are… extreme.” Mowen straightens. “I will see to it. For now, you should rest.”
Already Zhang Ping’s gaze is going hazy, his head starting just slightly to nod. Lan Jue catches his arm, afraid he’ll topple right off the stool again. He looks at Lan Jue like he’s never seen him before, like he’s a stranger, unknown.
It hurts.
“Come. Come with me,” says Lan Jue, rising and coaxing him up alongside. He glances at Xu Dong and his retainer hurries over to take Zhang Ping’s other arm. Together they guide him across the room and out into the dusty brightness of the Court of Judicial Review. The sun is lying in honey-coloured strips where it streams in through the windows; the walls are fresh with new paint. Mowen has made many changes for the better.
Zhang Ping walks heavily between them, like a man in a dream. He bumps up against Lan Jue, steps stumbling. Lan Jue tightens his grip, holds his elbow cupped in the palm of his hand like something precious, smooth and rounded as a marble.
Outside Lan Jue’s carriage is already waiting; they get Zhang Ping up into it and Lan Jue follows, sitting beside him.
“I’m sorry,” whispers Zhang Ping. Lan Jue isn’t sure who he’s speaking to. His voice is soft as Lan Jue has never heard it, for once stripped of his usual certainty.
“Zhang Ping…”
But Zhang Ping is already asleep.
***
It’s both difficult and potentially hazardous to try to sleep stretched out on a carriage’s thin benches. Lan Jue, who has no wish to see Zhang Ping roll off and onto the floor should they lurch to a stop, shuffles down and tilts Zhang Ping to lie pillowed against him.
Before, when he first knew him, Zhang Ping’s scent was mostly the saltiness of soup stock, sometimes flavoured with scallion or ginger depending on what he had been cooking that day. Now he smells of a proper hair oil – lemongrass and spruce, pleasantly masculine. His head bumps against Lan Jue’s shoulder; Lan Jue has one arm stretched lightly around his back, his hand tucked in against his side to steady him. He’s still painfully thin, almost hollow-chested beneath his expensive court robe. Always feeding others before himself. Lan Jue reaches up his hand and cups Zhang Ping’s cheek, the side of his face. Holds him gently, steadies him as the cart bumps.
When they arrive at the Lan mansion, Xu Dong has several men ready to greet them. Zhang Ping doesn’t wake as he’s lifted down and carried carefully inside, Lan Jue carrying his toppled futou and smoothing down the black mesh wings as he trails the procession.
They settle Zhang Ping in a guest room. Servants unbuckle his heavy belt from around his narrow waist and unbutton the collar and sleeves of his robe. Lan Jue himself oversees as they carefully slip it off him, hanging it so that the expensive silk won’t wrinkle. Beneath it his middle clothes are white cotton, wrapped around him like a silkworm’s cocoon. Lan Jue reaches out without thought and catches a fold beneath his finger and thumb, rubs to feel the quality. Cheap, roughly woven. Clearly, unlike himself, Zhang Ping has been in no rush to deck himself in splendours.
Zhang Ping lies limp and unmoving in the bed, dead to the world around him. But already his breath is starting to catch, his eyelids flickering. Lan Jue remembers this. The dreams.
The nightmares.
He sends the servants out as Zhang Ping starts to sweat, and then to shiver. He fetches water in a basin himself; he fetches the yellow mountain orchid. As he closes the door behind himself he hears the servants whispering to Xu Dong: “Who is the young master? Why is our daren so solicitous of him?”
“Because he is kind, and just, and bright. Be thankful Lan-daren is as good to him as he deserves.”
Lan Jue is probably imagining the implication, the thoughts behind those words: Because he hasn’t always been.
He closes his eyes for a moment, cloth pressed in his hand. Then he sighs and wets the cloth, and proceeds to wipe the sweat from Zhang Ping’s brow.
***
Lan Jue would like to be there for him throughout the two days of his recovery, but the reality of a court official is otherwise. Still, he has Xu Dong there whenever he can’t be.
“I haven’t seen him so unwell before,” Xu Dong tells him when he arrives back at the guest room that evening, having been out attending to ministry matters. Zhang Ping is breathing heavily on his pallet, tossing and turning, muttering in his sleep. “The orchid helped calm him for a time, but his nightmares are worse now.”
“What is he dreaming of?” asks Lan Jue, heart a twisted scrap of flesh in his chest.
“The girl,” says Xu Dong, quietly.
Lan Jue steps closer. From here he can see that the edges of Zhang Ping’s robe are damp with sweat, that his hair is flattened with it. Xu Dong, or someone, has removed his tie and let his hair down; it’s longer than it was before, coming nearly to his elbows. Lan Jue reaches out and lifts a strand, lets it slip past his finger. Zhang Ping shows no reaction.
“Bring a fan,” says Lan Jue, seating himself beside the bed. Xu Dong slips away; he’s back moments later with a round fan, its surface white with a simple grey ink sketch of a dragonfly resting on a bowed strand of grass. Lan Jue takes it from him and nods his dismissal; Xu Dong drifts out and shuts the door behind himself.
Lan Jue sits with the orchid between himself and Zhang Ping and fans softly, letting the fragrance wash over Zhang Ping’s fevered skin. His mutterings slow, then stop, his face turning towards the flower. Lan Jue smiles and continues, the stroke of the fan measured, even as a stork stepping long-legged through a pond.
A joss stick burns down, then another. Zhang Ping’s breathing begins to struggle again, the nightmares pressing back in against him. He rolls his head as if he were looking, searching for something. His chest starts to catch, a sob coming into his breathing. Wetness gathers beneath the dark fan of his lashes, slips out and trickles down his cheeks.
“Zhang Ping. Zhang Ping.” Zhang Ping shivers, pausing for a moment before shaking his head again.
“Zhang Ping, listen. Listen to me. I’m here. I’m here, and you will be well. The dreams will pass; they are a memory, an echo.”
He doesn’t know that his words have any power to soothe, but it’s clear that his voice does. Zhang Ping stills when he speaks, breathing slowing. “You want to know that I’m here? Is that it? You may know it – I am. I will stay; Zhang Ping, you aren’t alone. You don’t have to dream alone.”
If talking will help, well, Lan Jue can talk.
He settles himself on his cushion and casts his mind about for topics of conversation. He walks Zhang Ping first through his daily routine, then through the matters at hand within the ministry. Household items, neighbourhood gossip. Mowen’s cases, those he can remember. Novels he’s read. Poetry.
At some point, he falls asleep. He’s not conscious of it; he’s reciting a poem by Wang Anshi, and then he’s waking with his head pillowed on something softly warm.
Lan Jue blinks and sees a hill of white snow. He blinks. No, white cloth, heavy-weave cotton. He’s lying half atop Zhang Ping, head resting against his arm. He jerks up, one hand rising reflexively to smooth his hair back.
The candles have burned down; it’s light outside now, daylight filtering in through the rice paper window covers. Zhang Ping is still sleeping, stilly now, unbothered. He’s neither shivering nor sweating. Lan Jue reaches out a tentative hand and lays the backs of his fingers against Zhang Ping’s cheek; his skin is warm with sleep, but not too warm. He sighs and leans back, rolling his shoulders.
When Xu Dong comes to relieve him at mid-morning he’ll tell him to use the fan, to cool Zhang Ping’s skin if it becomes fevered, to read to him if he won’t be calmed. But for now he sits a little longer, and smooths out the wrinkles on Zhang Ping’s sleeve.
***
“It’s never been so intense before,” Zhang Ping tells him and Mowen, later. Later, when he’s woken, and washed, and taken a proper hot meal and had a pot of tea and also some flame-warmed wine. He sits now wrapped again in blue, a deeper navy this time, sent for from his home by Lan servants. “I wasn’t – I hadn’t thought it could be like that. She couldn’t break out of the memories, and they were – terrible. Consuming. Cruel.” He closes his fingers, presses his thumb overtop them as if inking a print onto a document. He looks up at Mowen. “Will she be punished?”
“No. To punish her would be a crime in its own right; besides which, it would ruin not only Minister Jin’s name but hers. The case will be closed. Quietly.”
“He deserves to be ruined,” says Zhang Ping.
“But she does not,” says Lan Jue. Zhang Ping glances at him, then nods. There’s no trace of humour, of ease in that nod – only seriousness.
Mowen puts down his cup and brings his hands together, a gesture of acknowledgement, respect. “Zhang Ping – I should have investigated more closely, before asking you to use Water Illusion. The fault is mine.”
Zhang Ping shakes his head. “I don’t think she would have spoken. At least this way, she won’t be prosecuted further.”
“You should think of yourself more often,” Lan Jue tells him, leaning forward earnestly. “Zhang Ping, you can’t always be the last to matter.”
“I don’t think of it that way.”
Lan Jue frowns. “What way?”
Zhang Ping waves a stiff hand. “First, last. What’s important is the truth. That cases are solved, and adjudicated, fairly. Everything else is semantics.”
“That’s –”
“Peizhi,” says Mowen, quietly. Lan Jue glances at him, sees him shake his head. Looking back at Zhang Ping he can see that he’s still wan, his lips pursed tightly, his body curled together a little too tightly.
“Alright,” he says. “Alright. Enough. The case is closed. Let me pour the wine. Mowen?”
Mowen tilts forward his cup, lets Lan Jue fill it.
“Zhang Ping? Zhang Ping?”
Zhang Ping blinks, looks up. Seeing Lan Jue holding the wine jug, he gives the narrowest of smiles and lifts his cup.
They drink.
***
Now that he’s back in the capital, Zhang Ping displays his unparalleled talent for becoming involved in the odd and inexplicable cases that seem to crop up on an almost monthly basis. There’s the mystery of the murdered music instructors, in which three famous tutors are garrotted by a pipa string. There’s the missing carriage incident, in which multiple expensive, luxury carriages suddenly vanish. There’s the strange sickness that sweeps through the women of three noble houses, leaving them faint and bedridden.
One after another, Zhang Ping is called in by Mowen to provide advice: on the nature of the exotic pipa that generated the murderous strings; on whether magic could have been used to spirit away the carriages; on what herbs or tonics might have been used to sicken the noble women.
That makes sense, his connection, his involvement in these cases. What doesn’t make sense is that somehow Lan Jue keeps becoming swept up in them as well. He spends late nights consulting with Zhang Ping, and sometimes Mowen, going over the clues and the witness statements. He comes with Zhang Ping to investigate the scenes sometimes, or speak to family members. Despite his title Zhang Ping is still a junior official and very newly returned to the capital; he doesn’t have the political clout of Lan Jue.
Lan Jue is perfectly aware that his involvement isn’t necessary. Helpful, yes. But necessary, no. Zhang Ping could easily solve these mysteries on his own. But for some reason, he doesn’t seem to want to. He seems to enjoy dragging Lan Jue into his chaotic life, into the organized jumble of his mind as he leapfrogs from clue to theory to conclusion with almost no loss of momentum.
And Lan Jue… Lan Jue enjoys it too. Now that his reputation – his life – aren’t constantly on the line, there’s something engaging about seeing Zhang Ping stitch together cases as neatly as a seamstress stitches a new robe. Early in their relationship, Lan Jue had praised him as a talent to make the gods jealous. It had been deathbed exaggeration, praise to comfort the dying.
Now, if he were to speak the words aloud again, he isn’t so sure they would be exaggeration.
***
Zhang Ping and Lan Jue are chasing a suspected arsonist.
The Court of Judicial Review has sent men out with them to comb the city. Lan Jue, who happened to be talking to Zhang Ping when he had a revelation about the criminal, tags along too. What started as a trip to interview a suspect turns into a chase, the two of them haring through markets and down long dusty streets after the man who very nearly burned down a quarter of the capital.
It’s undignified, in a minister. Also unsafe, despite Xu Dong’s accompanying presence with his hand firmly wrapped around the leathered grip of his short sword. But personal safety has never been a priority for Zhang Ping, who is content to burst into dangerous situations like a firework, failing to note any nearby flammable materials that might burn him.
The chase leads them down alongside the city’s main canal, its edges stone-lined, reeds and rushes growing in the murky water. Small craft are being rowed or punted up and down-stream carrying crafts, foods, flowers. The boatmen sing as they row; their narrow vessels whisper as they slide through falling veils of willow boughs.
The path beside the canal is dirt that’s been churned into mud by the damp conditions. Zhang Ping is the fastest among them, right on the heels of their possible arsonist. Xu Dong is next; Lan Jue, unaccustomed to running any distance, brings up the rear.
He is still close enough to see the arsonist scoop up a pieces of wood as he runs past a woodpile, still close enough to see him swivel abruptly and slam it into the side of Zhang Ping’s head. Zhang Ping tips sideways, scrambles, and collapses right at the edge of the canal. The momentum of his fall sends him tumbling down into the water.
The arsonist drops the wooden spar and runs; Xu Dong stops, looking from the water to the fleeing suspect.
“Help Zhang Ping,” orders Lan Jue, coming up heavy-footed now, hot and breathless. He bends double, his chest burning, hands on his knees as he pants in an entirely ignoble manner. Xu Dong scrambles down the side of the canal bank and into the water; it comes up to his knees, deepening rapidly as he strides in after Zhang Ping who is half-floating unmoving among the reeds. Their blades slip green over his pale skin, leaving tendrils of muck on his cheek, in his hair. Xu Dong grabs him around the shoulders and lifts him to keep his head out of the water. Lan Jue’s heart is in his throat as he stands at the edge of the canal, the toes of his boots hanging over the stone side. He can see that Zhang Ping is stirring now, lashes fluttering, head rolling. Lan Jue takes a shivery breath, muscles shaky as gelatin, and considers.
Zhang Ping is clearly less than half awake; his legs are kicking helplessly in the water, his robes like a fluttering flag. His head is heavy where it rests on Xu Dong’s chest, cheek smearing a wet mark there. Xu Dong will never get him out of the canal on his own. Lan Jue bends low and scuttles down over steeply-inclined stone to step into the water on Zhang Ping’s other side. It bursts cold against his skin, sucking him in with immediate thirst, damp stains creeping up his thighs. The water is frigid, colder than rain, raising gooseflesh along his limbs so fast it prickles painfully. Zhang Ping is soaked all the way through, a stream of water dripping from his hair, his robes heavy and dark, sleeves billowing in the current.
Lan Jue presses his palm to Zhang Ping’s cheek, tilting his head tenderly up. Zhang Ping is pliant, accepting his touch with ease. His eyes slide open revealing a crescent of dark iris beneath; shaded by his short lashes his eyes are the colour of roasted chestnuts and just as dull. “…-daren?” he mumbles, chin bumping against Lan Jue’s thumb.
“He must come out of the water, before he catches cold,” instructs Lan Jue. He ducks to pull Zhang Ping’s arm over his shoulder, shuddering as dark water sluices down over his back. Xu Dong does the same on Zhang Ping’s other side. Together they get him upright and begin the precipitous scramble up the side of the canal. Lan Jue’s fingers are torn, his robes muddied and ripped as they emerge onto their hands and knees. Zhang Ping is breathing hard; he rolls over onto his side with his eyes closed and curls into a ball, his head and shoulders supported by Lan Jue’s arm.
“Find a carriage,” orders Lan Jue, folding his robes beneath him and taking a more comfortable seat in the mud. He begins to wring water from Zhang Ping’s sleeves and the skirt of his robe, droplets pattering into the dirt. Xu Dong bows and hurries away trailing wet footsteps.
***
Zhang Ping is mostly conscious by the time Xu Dong returns with a carriage borrowed from the home of a nearby court official. He’s leaning heavily on Lan Jue’s arm, face grey, and shivering whenever the wind blows down the open street. He’s taken his hair down to wring it out; it lies limp as seaweed over his shoulders, long thin black silken strands. He looks younger now than he did even when Lan Jue first knew him; he looks cold.
Zhang Ping glances up as the carriage trundles over, horse newly glossy and lifting his feet neatly. Xu Dong stops with the door beside them, grabbing the wooden step stool and bringing it down. Lan Jue coaxes Zhang Ping to his feet; he sways once, winces, and Lan Jue grabs his elbow to steady him. Eventually he’s able to climb up into the carriage and take a seat, head immediately falling back against the latticework walls. Lan Jue sits beside him, ready to catch him if he tips again.
Back at the Lan mansion Xu Dong hurries away to get the bath house prepared while Lan Jue guides Zhang Ping more slowly through the shapely maze of his home. Zhang Ping has found his balance but walks slowly, steps dragging; he chafes at his wet arms and shivers constantly.
In the bath house the fire is lit, the air humid and steam rising from the milky bath water. There are shelves with hair oil, with soaps and cleansers, with soft towels and scrubbers and sponges.
“Will you let me help you?” Lan Jue asks, as Zhang Ping comes to a stop before the large wooden tub. Zhang Ping looks up at him with dark eyes and nods; Lan Jue can’t tell whether he genuinely doesn’t understand that he might feel his modesty impinged upon, or whether he doesn’t see Lan Jue specifically as a stranger.
He reaches out with long fingers scratched red and smeared with dirt by the scramble up the side of the canal; frowning, he quickly washes his hands until they’re at least clean. He undoes the small pebble-like buttons at Zhang Ping’s collar and sleeves. Helps to pull the sucking wet outer robe over his head. Beneath it his middle clothes are stuck to his body, wrinkled and wrapped tight as damp rice paper. Lan Jue carefully undoes the tie of his sash and pulls open the middle robe, peeling it off. He works loose the white shirt beneath it and the fastening of his trousers, pulling them down so that Zhang Ping can step out of them. His socks next, undoing the ties that hold them up at his calves and stripping them off.
Now all Zhang Ping is wearing is his kun, the fabric of the thin white undergarment almost transparent where it sticks to the skin of his thighs and hips. Lan Jue’s fingers ache to undo the ties here too, to tug the cloth strings loose and unwrap Zhang Ping like one of his zongzi, revealing him to the warmth and soft flickering light of the bath house. But he can draw the line at inappropriateness even if he is not altogether sure that Zhang Ping can, and he steps back and turns around to let Zhang Ping strip this final layer off himself. He hears the wet smack as it hits the tiled floor, and then the soft lick of the water as he steps in. And then, an instant later, there’s a splash and a thud. Lan Jue turns quickly, heart pounding, to see Zhang Ping sitting in the water, one arm leaning supportively against the side. Either he slipped or his legs simply gave out under him. At least now he’s seated, the broad stretch of his back to Lan Jue covered in the loose fall of his hair.
Lan Jue quickly removes his own clothes, the damp silks stuck to him. He steps over to the shelves and pulls down a clean linen robe which he wraps around himself, savouring its smooth drape over his moist skin. When he looks back Zhang Ping has drawn his hair around to the front and is pouring clean water over it, stripping out the canal muck and silt. Like this, his honeyed skin is bared.
For a moment Lan Jue is caught with a soft hunger that the smooth line of Zhang Ping’s shoulders raises in him, hollowing his stomach like an unfed animal. He feels a spark of arousal at the delicate line of his spine, the strong muscles rippling as he rinses his hair. Then his eyes land on a raised line of skin that shouldn’t be there, pink and puckered.
He steps closer and sees the scar that runs from Zhang Ping’s spine to nearly his side, slicing over his ribs and the edge of his shoulder blade. His skin has knit together in a raised ridge, the edges softly dimpled.
Daren, he’s badly hurt. The memory that coils around Lan Jue is more sensation than anything. The wetness of the rain, the cold touch of the wind against his skin, the heat of his blood coursing through his veins. The solidity of the sword’s grip in his hand. Zhang Ping had barely been able to stand, when he had staggered out. Run for your life. He closes his eyes, now, swallows against the lump in his throat.
When he opens his eyes again Zhang Ping is pouring water over the crown of his head using the scalloped scoop, clean wet rivulets coursing over his inky-dark hair and his back. Lower than the raised, rumpled scar Lan Jue sees another – white, this one, not raised. It lies flat across his spine like the character for one, its colour the pale silver of a new moon.
I still have to save him. He remembers knotted cord around his throat, strangling him, hairy and coarse as it crushed the life from him. And then the bony bump of Zhang Ping’s shoulders shoved into his stomach, lifting him, granting him a moment of reprieve, a necessary breath of air.
Zhang Ping reaches out and sets down the hollow scoop; the soft candlelight glow paints the cut of his forearm in colours of yellow and orange, loquat and persimmon. There’s a scar here, too, a broad white scab of pale flesh just before the curve of his elbow. Better clean that; it’s dirty down here.
Slowly, as if in a dream, he steps around the circle of the tub so that he’s standing in front of Zhang Ping. The water is low, a concession to help it heat more quickly, barely lapping at Zhang Ping’s navel. It’s milky with smooth rice water and shadowed by the curve of the tub, showing nothing of what lies beneath the surface. Zhang Ping’s visible skin glows by firelight. He sees Lan Jue staring at him, and blinks up. “Lan-daren?”
Lan Jue reaches out and catches him beneath the elbow. Lifts him, just lightly with two fingers, but Zhang Ping allows himself to be raised until his torso is exposed, glinting as water beads down his flat stomach. There’s a scar here, too. Bigger than any of the others. It’s painful-looking, the skin wrinkled and reddened, the burn brutal. Almost despite himself he reaches out, runs the tip of his finger across Zhang Ping’s stomach to touch the old wound. Zhang Ping swallows, staring at him.
“…Lan-daren?”
He pulls the fingers holding Zhang Ping upraised back; he slips back down into the water like a curtain of silk released.
He can still feel the raised, calloused sensation of the burn beneath his fingertip. He had known Zhang Ping had been injured in escaping Shulin’s trap beneath the Immortal Device. Had been injured trying to prevent the chaos resulting from Lan Jue’s own softness for a friend. He hadn’t realised how severely.
No.
He hadn’t even asked.
“Zhang Ping…”
“You needn’t look so grave,” says Zhang Ping, leaning back against the wall of the bath. “I survived. The wound wasn’t as bad as it might have been.”
Lan Jue tastes bitterness on his tongue, a taste of blood and ashes. “I have been willfully blind,” he says, his voice low, gravelled.
Zhang Ping looks up at him: curious, confused.
“It has felt so… simple. To blame you, for your injuries. The mishaps that befall you. The accidents and the attacks. Every time I see it, I say ‘he should have been more careful.’ ‘He should have thought of himself first.’ But time and again it hasn’t been you who has been responsible. It’s been me. I’ve brought you into danger, I’ve set you up for a fall and I’ve looked the other way when it happened. I haven’t even bothered to do you the courtesy of ensuring you were well-recovered, after.”
Zhang Ping draws his knees up, sliding upwards to sit straighter. “Lan-daren…” His mouth is drawn in a wide, uncertain line. His eyes are matte, dark as black sesame. “You haven’t brought me anywhere. I’m not some puppet to be carried around. And besides, you couldn’t have stopped me if you tried.”
“We certainly will never know, because I made absolutely no effort to protect you. You had no official position, no orders to put yourself into harm’s way. But I put you there, over and over under my responsibility, or Mowen’s.”
“Lan-daren –”
“Don’t,” he says, voice taut. “Here, now, I’m no daren. Not to you. Peizhi, if you will. Lan Jue, if you won’t. But there’s no longer a need to erect barriers between us, formality to separate you and I. I leave it to you to decide where to place your association, and I wouldn’t blame you if you chose someone better suited to looking after you.”
“Lan – Jue,” he says, stuttering over the name. He comes up partially onto his knees, the water barely high enough to preserve his modesty, and Lan Jue feels heat gathering in his throat, his cheeks, the back of his neck. “I told you, I’m not a thing to be minded, or sent here and there. I don’t blame you for this,” his thumb flickers in an arc over the scar near his stomach, “or any of the others. They were made for worthy causes. Some of them were made for you. I don’t mind. I don’t mind at all.” He looks up into Lan Jue’s face, his eyes bright and earnest, his face open and without a shred of doubt.
“It’s not – good. To be so sincere. To cast yourself into the flames with such little regard.”
Zhang Ping blinks, inclining his head slightly to look up at Lan Jue from a sharper angle. “I didn’t say I did it without regard. I said I don’t mind – if it’s for a just cause. If it’s for you.”
If killing me will quiet your rage, then do it. Rain patters in his memory, wind howls. He sees the straight line of his blade, the tip digging into Zhang Ping’s throat. He shifts, trying to forcibly break himself out of that remembrance – that nightmare.
“I’m not worth it. Your life,” he says, voice low.
“Isn’t that my decision to make? Are you telling me I’ve chosen wrongly.”
“Yes,” says Lan Jue, angry, desperate. Worn raw by this man, by the ease with which he makes his sacrifices, when Lan Jue has spent his life plotting and planning every single decision until he is splitting individual hairs.
Zhang Ping takes a breath, his chest gleaming like polished bronze, flat and sculpted. His nipples are dark coins, the furrows of his hips long, clean-cut. Like this he is lovelier than any painting; lovelier than Lan Jue has ever imagined him to be. “That isn’t what you thought before.”
“I was miserable, before. Miserable, and more than a little mad. You blundered into my life when I was at the point I had worked for for ten years – of finally finding the answer behind my father’s charges. And you just… kept pushing, ruining one clue and finding another, tearing me apart piece by piece until I was cut and bleeding. That was how it seemed, at least. That your earnestness was nothing but foolishness destroying my life’s mission. I was so blinded by what I thought I would lose that I didn’t see what I was in the process of losing, day after day. What I almost lost, so many times.”
“Meaning me?” asks Zhang Ping, softly.
“Meaning you. You, and your ideals, and your bluntness. And your kindness, and your goodness, and your wit. And now you’re back, here, in front of me. And I fear I’m making the same mistakes all over again. I made no suggestion to Mowen that he push for further investigation into the Jin Linlin’s background before you used Water Illusion when he consulted with me; I support you to run like a boy of twenty through the city pursuing criminals, rather than behaving as an official working in the Emperor’s court.”
Zhang Ping looks up at him for a moment. Outside in the courtyard a magpie caws. Beneath the bath house the banked fire crackles quietly, a low whisper. The air smells of scented oil – mulberry and juniper. Zhang Ping’s hair tumbles down over his shoulder in a river of ink; his generous mouth slowly broadens into a soft smile.
“Lan Jue. Peizhi. The day my choices aren’t my own is the day I leave the capital. His majesty is guiding me to serve the country. You are guiding me to serve the court – as you have since I met you. I haven’t always agreed with you. I haven’t always respected you – although mostly that was mistaken assumptions. But I enjoy working with you, very much. And I… I have never wanted to see you harmed. That has been important to me. You have been important to me.”
Lan Jue reaches out, his fingers curled soft as petals, his skin pale. Zhang Ping raises his chin and meets his touch, holding Lan Jue’s gaze as he cups his face with his palm, as he runs his thumb over the seam of Zhang Ping’s mouth. His heart is beating fast, strong, the pace dizzying in the hot humid air. Zhang Ping’s skin is warm, is moist, is soft as rice flour spread on a moon cake. Zhang Ping’s eyes slowly, deliberately drop closed; like a cat, he leans into Lan Jue’s touch. Lan Jue’s heart catches, the throb of it a firework lodged beneath his ribs.
The spell of the moment is broken when Zhang Ping tips forward too fast, too heavy, and blinks his eyes open as he catches himself against the side of the tub. “Sorry – sorry. I’m getting dizzy – I need to get out.”
Lan Jue nods, rising sharply. He steps over to the shelf and lifts down a towel as behind him water splashes.
He turns to see Zhang Ping wet and naked in the tub, the long length of him dripping. He isn’t flawless but he’s no less beautiful for his scars, lovely in the low light. Lan Jue swallows down his desire and steps back to wrap him in the cloth and help him to dry himself. He fetches a slate-grey robe and wraps it around his shoulders, letting Zhang Ping lean on his arm as he steps out.
“Come with me,” he says, voice soft, as the empty tub ripples. Zhang Ping rests against his arm, and lets him lead.
***
Lan Jue leads him not to the guest room but to his own chambers. They’re wide, with a view of a quiet garden elegantly maintained, green with moss and a bamboo thicket and a lime-flesh-leafed maple tree. Incense has been lit in the bronze burner, its shape that of a coiled dragon; in one corner stands a four-panel screen painted with a scene of misty mountains. His bed is wide, generous, and it’s there that he takes Zhang Ping now, sitting him down as his legs start to tremble, bare ankles protruding from beneath the hem of his grey robe.
“You will tell me if I am being too forward,” he says knowingly – it is not a question. Zhang Ping leans against his arm and smiles that familiar smile, charmingly at ease despite this new development. He seems to have no qualms in relaxing against Lan Jue, in crowding into his personal space with the expectation of being welcomed.
So Lan Jue welcomes him, wrapping a hand around his fine-boned wrist, rubbing a circle into the tender skin at the base of his palm. “How is your head?” he intones, bending his mouth closer to Zhang Ping’s ear.
“Painful. But that will pass. I hope it will pass before Peizhi has cause to leave,” he adds. Lan Jue genuinely cannot tell if he intends to flirt, or is simply being his usual honest self. It scarcely matters, and he is not sure which would affect him more – Zhang Ping being sweet with an undertone of coyness, or sincerity.
“Do you? And why is that?”
“Ah, so you haven’t forgotten how to be cruel,” murmurs Zhang Ping – truly teasing, this time. “Playing the fool doesn’t suit you.”
Lan Jue snorts. “I suppose not.” He bends, his mouth close to the curve of Zhang Ping’s cheek. “And were I to be honest, in my regard?”
Zhang Ping blinks, his dark lashes flashing, then turns to face Jue Lang so that their mouths are only a finger’s length apart. “More honest than you were in the bath house?”
“Even more,” breathes Lan Jue, dipping his head in closer.
Zhang Ping smiles. “Then I suppose I would have no choice but to accept your offer.”
“Have I made an offer?”
Zhang Ping lifts his hand, slipping it free of Lan Jue’s grip, and places his palm flat against Lan Jue’s chest just over his beating heart. “Haven’t you?”
Lan Jue closes his eyes; smiles. “You cannot resist revealing even the smallest of secrets,” he says.
“Not when it comes to you,” agrees Zhang Ping. “Are you going to prove your honesty?”
Lan Jue ducks his head and presses his mouth to Zhang Ping’s. His lips are soft, warm, pliant; they part slowly beneath his touch as he angles his face to better fit himself to Lan Jue. It is heat, but a banked fire; a promise of plenty rather than the delivery of it.
For today – for tonight – that’s enough.
He guides Zhang Ping to lie back, head pillowed on Lan Jue’s own silk-sheathed pillow, and kisses him again and again, until their bodies are mellow and softly aching. Zhang Ping’s eyes are beginning to grow heavy, his lips slack, but he tangles his fingers in the sleeves of Lan Jue’s robe and holds him close. “Will you stay?” he murmurs, when Lan Jue finally lifts his head to look down at him stretched out in his bed, the long tumble of his hair spread across his pillow and mattress.
“I will. I will be here when you wake.”
Zhang Ping tucks his chin down; smiles. He falls asleep like that.
Lan Jue lays himself down, Zhang Ping’s fingers still resting in the folds of his sleeve, and settles in to watch him until sleep takes him.
END