Work Text:
Though Nie Mingjue’s outpost in Afuhan is over twelve thousand li from the capital, he returns to his clan’s ancestral residence in Youzhou every other summer.
It was foolishness to undertake the journey so often merely because he had received a special dispensation to do so: or so his father’s fellow generals said. On horseback, it was a three months’ ride to Youzhou; but Nie Mingjue never counts the days on his homeward journeys, for the beloved of his life still dwells in the house where they played together as children.
That house is the residence of the Lan family, poetically called the Cloud Recesses by the ancestor who established it. Since the year of his first appointment at the northern border, Nie Mingjue has never yet rested beneath the roof of the Bujingshi without first spending a night or two there: first out of stubbornness, to show Lan Xichen nothing had changed in their friendship since he was raised to the rank of Grand General; and then out of sheer delight, for Xichen’s letters always spoke of some thing or other that they might do together at the Cloud Recesses when they were reunited—so how then could he return to the Bujingshi before visiting the Lan-fu?
Nie Mingjue often felt as if that were his true home, and always had been. He came to the household as one who was part of it, passing through the gates with his black Balikun and a wagon filled with gifts for his hosts; and afterwards, he would retreat to Lan Xichen’s chambers and close himself up inside until Xichen’s father and uncle summoned them out.
“You never do send word ahead,” Lan Qiren sighs wearily, when Nie Mingjue presents himself at the Lan estate in the winter before his twenty-second birthday. “Has it occurred to you that Xichen might want a day of warning before you visit, General Nie?”
“I would have sent word if a single rider under my command were swifter than Chixin,” Nie Mingjue laughs, patting his horse’s neck. “But I am the best rider in the company, wagon and all: so here I am.”
Lan Qiren welcomes him in, grumbling all the while; and if not for the parcel of books from Herat that Nie Mingjue hands him before entering the receiving hall, it is likely that he would have followed Mingjue to Xichen’s room to lament his lack of courtesy in greater comfort.
But he says nothing further, save to inform Nie Mingjue that Xichen has been given a new set of rooms on the east side of the manor to honor his coming-of-age; and after summoning a fleet of servants to unload the wagon, Lan Qiren makes a beeline for his office, taking his armful of books with him.
“What in heaven’s name have you done to Shufu?” a sweet voice laughs, as the serving-boys file through the doors with the heaviest of Nie Mingjue’s packages. “The last time I saw him moving that quickly, he was trying to stop Wangji from choking on a piece of tangyuan.”
Nie Mingjue’s heart swells.
“A-Huan,” he exhales, as he turns to find Lan Xichen standing at the gate that leads to the manor’s rear courtyards. “How have you been?”
“I am two years older than I was when you saw me last, so there is that,” Lan Xichen says merrily. “Have I changed for the better, do you think?”
Nie Mingjue takes a step backward and looks him over from head to toe. “You are a good deal taller, I see,” he notes: for Lan Xichen stood at a little less than five chi and a half when they last met, and now his eyes are nearly level with the tip of Nie Mingjue’s nose. “I think you might even outgrow Zonghui, in time. And you have grown stronger since I went away.”
“I ought to look it, for I rise at maoshi to train with my staff every morning. But let us not speak of me any longer; what of you?” Lan Xichen asks, as they set off down the path that leads to his new quarters. “You haven’t written since before you left Herat.”
“Ah, but I did arrange matters so that you would have a letter every fortnight until I arrived,” Nie Mingjue reminds him, laughing. “The last one must not have preceded me by more than a week, if I am judging correctly.”
“Enough of your judgments!” Lan Xichen cries. “Tell me about your journey, and leave nothing out; and then tell me everything you could not put in your letters.”
At this, an enormous lump rises in Nie Mingjue’s throat. “I missed you a great deal, A-Huan,” he says softly. “I could not put that in my letters, for otherwise there would have been no room for anything else.”
Lan Xichen’s hand trembles within his.
For a while, he does not speak, and then: “It is the same for me,” he murmurs. “Before you left, I never knew that two years could seem so interminably long.”
Nor did I, Nie Mingjue thinks.
“Let us make haste, then,” he says gently. “I will come to you as often as you like while I am in the city; but each hour with you is precious, and I would not have even one minute of it wasted.”
“Oh, all right!” laughs Xichen, blinking the dampness away from his eyes. “Come into my chambers—you have not seen them yet, remember!—and unpack that great trunk you brought, and I’ll call for a meal when we’re finished.
So Nie Mingjue goes, his heart stuttering in his breast; and as Lan Xichen leads him into the Hanshi, he finds himself regretting the distance between his old home and the new more bitterly than ever before.
* * *
Two hours later, Nie Mingjue and Lan Xichen have shut themselves into the Hanshi’s east wing and lit a fire in the kitchen to ward off the late-afternoon chill clinging to the floorboards. The trunk of gifts stands empty in the middle of the room, with parcels and wrapping paper strewn all about it; and Xichen is sitting amid the boxes with a box of dried fruit on his lap, eating sugared melon and sour cherries with a pot of his favorite tea.
“Mingjue-xiong,” he says solemnly, “I fear that you spent a great deal too much on gifts this year.”
But the light in his eyes and the laughter in his voice bely the graveness of his words: and when he catches Nie Mingjue’s gaze, Mingjue only snorts and throws a great shawl down on Lan Xichen’s head. It was only one of the gifts of clothing he brought, and the only one which Lan Xichen had dared to touch for fear that the oil on his hands would mar the fine satin of the gowns; but even so, he shakes the shawl away as soon as it alights on his hair.
“Give me that,” he scolds. “You carried that shawl for more than ten thousand li, and you treat it like this! I’m putting it into storage with the rest.”
“I do hope you will use it, and use it well,” Nie Mingjue teases, as Xichen folds up the shawl with breathless care and locks it back into the brass-inlaid trunk. “I bought you all those robes so that you could wear them, A-Huan, not keep them locked away in chests. When it frays; you will have another; and if I must ever leave Herat for good, I will arrange matters so that you may count yourself rich in its luxuries for all your days.”
“And incur Shufu’s wrath at my decadence? Heaven forbid,” Lan Xichen returns. “I shall not wear them until after my court appointment begins. Then I will be the most richly-dressed official in the Ministry of Works; and if anyone dares to say that I am over-dressed, I will tell them to take their complaints about my spending to you—for you were the one who bought the robes in the first place.”
Nie Mingjue beams from ear to ear. “So you will have a posting in the Ministry of Works, as you hoped! I’ve been waiting for the news for half a year.”
“I only received it a fortnight ago. The Emperor’s people wanted me to join , and I begin next month. I would have told you about it in my letters; but if I’d written, the message would still be on its way to your outpost in Afuhan.”
“Then you have my congratulations. What is your role to be?”
“I am to serve Xie Junyi for a year or two—or perhaps even three, for he has been at the ministry for over thirty years, and I have a great deal to learn from him. He specializes in bridges and the designing of flood embankments; and he has offered to take me as a personal disciple of sorts, since someone showed him the bridge-sketches I drew during the imperial examinations.”
He looks at Nie Mingjue for a moment without speaking, and then:
“Perhaps if the empire holds its seat in the north, I will be able to join you there one day,” he says quietly. “I promised Fuqin I would never seek to join the army, but as an envoy of the Ministry of Works…”
Nie Mingjue’s breath catches in his throat.
“Isn’t it too soon to think of such things?” he replies, with some difficulty. “No matter how prestigious a border posting might seem, remaining in the capital will bring you far more—”
“Prestige! I have other considerations to think of. Prestige is nothing.”
“You have not had to do without it.”
“No,” Lan Xichen confesses, “but I have had to do without you, Mingjue-xiong; and I know which of the two I would prefer.”
Silence.
“I will not ask you to intercede on my behalf yet. Nor any time soon, for I will not be fit to serve at the border before I complete my studies with Official Xie,” Xichen says at length. “But some day, the ministry will deem me ready to go and labor for the sake of the nation elsewhere; and when that day comes, would it not be for the best if we could serve together?”
Mingjue stares at him, dumbstruck.
In all his life, he had never once given serious thought to the notion of declaring his affections for Xichen. It would be cruel to burden him with the knowledge of a love he could not return, and crueler still to make Lan Xichen feel as if their friendship could no longer be a place of refuge to him—and so Nie Mingjue did not once mention the hundred-odd ways in which a scholar of Lan Xichen’s rank could put his talents to use at the border.
After all, a man had no business asking a dear friend to leave all that he knew and suffer far from home: least of all when that friend would swallow any amount of suffering, if he were only asked.
And Lan Xichen would have joined him in the north, if Nie Mingjue had asked. In fact, Xichen had tried to enlist alongside him six years ago, when Nie Mingjue was instated as a nominal general and dispatched to the battlefield so that he might see his wounded father in time to bid him farewell; and he and Xichen would have gone together, if Lan Qiren had not learned of his nephew’s intentions in time to prevent the enlistment.
You will kill your father, he had begged, when Xichen declared that he would go no matter what any of his elders thought. You will kill him if you go, A-Huan. Nie Mingjue is going to his father’s bedside, and so he has every right to go—but you will be responsible for your own father’s death if you follow him!
“I will not be going as a soldier, this time,” Lan Xichen says, with a wry laugh. “But sending letters across twenty li is a good deal better than twelve thousand. Is it not so?”
“Yes,” Nie Mingjue says hesitantly. “But your father—”
“He will not like it, but he is better now—it has been nearly seven years since Mother’s passing, and he has recovered as well as he ever shall. Certainly he will begrudge my going, but he will not forbid it.”
“And Lan-laoshi?”
“He will like it least of all, I think! Even so, Shufu will not object if Father agrees,” Xichen says, looking carefully at Nie Mingjue. “But do you agree, my friend?”
“Not wholeheartedly,” Nie Mingjue admits. “It would be a joy to have you with me; that I own. So too do I own that it would not be a joy to see you home-sick, or ill at ease in a land full of strangers. Still less would I like to see you parted from Wangji; for I think you would miss him far more than you have ever missed me, and rightly so! You always knew that I would go to battle someday, A-Huan; but you—”
“Say no more,” Lan Xichen entreats, laying a hand on Nie Mingjue’s arm. “You are right.”
Nie Mingjue narrows his eyes. “Do you really think so?”
“For now? Without a doubt. But I was not speaking of now—I meant that I would come to you later, after my new seniors are satisfied with my knowledge. Perhaps we can discuss the matter again after Wangji is married: for then he will have a wife and children to look after and in-laws to visit, and less need of the company of his elders.”
“A-Huan,” Nie Mingjue says despairingly. “You will have a wife and children by then. Will you take them from the safety of the capital and build your wedded home in Herat? Or will you leave them behind for my sake, and see your beloved but once in every two years, as—”
He bites his tongue. The words as I do had nearly arisen from his lips in spite of all his efforts; and if he had not remembered himself in time, Lan Xichen might have found out his beloved’s name that very hour.
“Why would I have a wife and children? I have told you that such things are not for me.”
“Well—I do remember that,” stammers Nie Mingjue, recalling that Lan Xichen had said some such thing in one of his letters. “But you were not yet twenty then, and all boys say such things in their youth.”
“Yes; but I meant it. I would be a poor husband to any woman, Mingjue-xiong; so I need not pretend that there will be a wife and children, lest I raise false hopes for Shufu and my father.”
Nie Mingjue blinks. “You cannot mean that you think you would treat a wife poorly.”
“No; but I do not wish to speak on the matter any further, either. I am content as I am, like Shufu is.”
“Now that might not be quite as you think,” Nie Mingjue tells him; and Lan Xichen, laughing aloud, nearly chokes on a piece of dried fruit. “I cannot be certain of the details, for all this was long before my time—but my father once told me that he and Laoshi attended a performance of Ye Xian after they took the imperial examinations, and when the maiden playing Ye Xian first laid eyes on your uncle…”
* * *
From the northwestern district of Kaiping to the Lan estate, Youzhou
Xichen,
I left the capital only two days ago as I write this; but somehow, I could not rest tonight without dispatching a letter to you. It will be shamefully short—as all of my letters are, for there is so little to write of other than how I miss you—but I must tell you this:
It would be an immeasurable delight to me to have you near me in Herat. Forgive me for the way I spoke on my first day home this last winter; for I could only think of what a selfish thing it would be to take you from Wangji and Laoshi and your father, when I know the ache of your absence so well. In truth, my heart leapt with joy when you said you hoped to find a posting close to me; and if the Ministry of Works permits your removal to the north some day, I will count the hours with bated breath until the thing is done.
Yours in deepest fondness,
Mingjue.