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A week before the usual scheduled collection date, Jiang Cheng receives a golden messenger butterfly from Carp Tower. It comes from the hand of the chief cultivator himself, shimmering with the light but careful touch of the man’s own qi. I will bring A-Ling to you, the immaculate characters say. I hope to be able to take in the sights of Yunmeng when I do.
It is rare indeed for Jin Guangyao to accompany his nephew to Lotus Pier. Generally speaking, he doesn’t come at all; Jiang Cheng will instead arrive at Carp Tower to collect Jin Ling himself. More often than not, he does not linger long there either. He and his brother-in-law usually pass brief pleasantries in one of the many courtyards, and then Jiang Cheng will leave again, this time with Jin Ling in tow.
Jiang Cheng also rarely bothers with a retinue. He is somewhat surprised to see that Jin Guangyao has done the same, today; at Jiang Cheng’s raised eyebrow he gives a broad smile, one hand moving absently to his waist. The other is vaguely extended in the direction of their ten-year-old nephew, who has long since outgrown the habit of holding it.
“A-Ling and I came by sword, though only a short way; we took a carriage to Yunping.”
The words send a strange frisson skipping down his spine. Most people are aware that Jin Guangyao had been raised in Yunmeng, specifically in Yunping; they’ve discussed it between themselves, even, early on in their strange joint parentage of their only nephew. But Jiang Cheng doesn’t imagine it to be something that Jin Guangyao would speak about Jin Ling, nevermind that gossips and hawk-eyed courtiers make it all but impossible to mask his origins from even so young a child.
Yet Jin Guangyao seems oddly at peace with his choices today, whatever his reasoning behind them may have been. And in the end, Jiang Cheng had learned long ago not to think too deeply on said processes. Jin Guangyao thinks in more layers than even the dour and demure Lan dress, and unpeeling either of them back to their basest selves isn’t something Jiang Cheng dwells long on doing.
He knows that Jin Guangyao has Jin Ling’s best interests at heart. That is all that matters. And that is why, once Jin Ling is settled with Fairy and several of the other disciples, already deep into practising Jiang-specific sword forms, he relents and takes tea with his brother-in-law.
Tea is not something Jiang Cheng strictly enjoys. He’d much rather sit with a jar or two of a decent fortified wine, bare legs dangling from the edge of a dock while he stares across a lake carpeted in a layer of lotus blooms. Jin Guangyao, of course, typically stands on far more ceremony than that. Every single gathering at Carp Tower since his adoption into the Jin clan has been the only gathering worth attending, and his touch has been all over each and every one. He allows nothing less than perfection in whatever he does.
For not the first time, Jiang Cheng wonders what Jin Guangyao would do, if he could just do whatever he himself wanted.
Yet when he offers a table on the docks, Jin Guangyao gives a shake of the head; it’s followed by a small demure bow, and from his voluminous sleeve he produces two jars, bound together at the neck. Jiang Cheng can only snort. Of course he’d known. Jin Guangyao makes it his business to know everything.
He’s still far more proper about how he chooses to sit. Uncaring of decorum, Jiang Cheng shucks his shoes without thought, rolls up his trousers even as his feet are already in the water. Jin Guangyao kneels instead at his side, almost Lan-like in his upright posture, robes neatly smoothed over his thighs.
Waiting for no toast, Jiang Cheng takes one long swallow – then two, then three. It’s late spring, more than warm enough to linger there. The water ripples like silk as he shifts his calves, the faint shadow of small fish darting around just below the surface. He seems to recall that Jin Guangyao had once said he could swim. He’s never seen him do it. Jiang Cheng had been the one to teach Jin Ling how. He wonders who would have taught Meng Yao.
Perhaps he’d just learned it, the same way he appears to have learned everything else of the mismatched worlds he has inhabited.
“I must say,” Jin Guangyao says, at last, having taken only one small sip from the jar he holds, “that I admire your restraint, Jiang-zongzhu.”
He snorts, takes another long swallow of his own. “I’m not in the habit of demanding why my guests expect to stay at my house.”
“Aren’t you?”
“You’re my nephew’s beloved xiao shushu. You can stay here whenever you want.”
The small smile he wears now is somehow not quite like any of the others he chooses to switch between. He takes a deeper drink, this time. “As you might imagine, it is very much to do with said nephew.”
“Figured.” Already at the bottom of his jar, Jiang Cheng upends it in order to scowl into the black hole left behind. Yet even as he discards it to one side, Jin Guangyao produces another from that golden threaded sleeve. He can’t help but eye it warily, even as he takes the proffered jar. “How much of this is in there?”
“Enough,” he says, airy and offhand. Jiang Cheng doesn’t doubt it. He also doesn’t doubt he’ll soon gain some inkling as to why, even if Jin Guangyao ultimately keeps the bulk of his reasoning to himself.
With fresh alcohol on board, Jiang Cheng turns back to the sunset. The sky unfolds before him like fresh silk, the sheer gauze of orange deepening to purple. A glance sideways finds Jin Guangyao doing much the same thing. The lengthening light renders the tall back of his cap almost transparent, speckling it with gold. Jiang Cheng has always thought it a strange choice, even for someone of his origins. It marks him always in the position of a caretaker, an administrator. Marks him always as the regretted son, only holding the place for the sole surviving remnant of the golden one.
“What’s Jin Ling done now?”
Jin Guangyao actually chokes a little on his sip; it makes Jiang Cheng glad he waited until he’d raised the jar to his lips. There’s a special kind of victory in getting such a reaction out of the other man. “He hasn’t done anything,” he says soon enough, taking a handkerchief from his other sleeve to dab lightly at his tunic. It’s a delicate thing, all lace and pale blue silk. “It was merely to do with a conversation he and I had very recently.”
Jiang Cheng can just imagine – or rather, he’d prefer not to imagine; they had established rather early on that all difficult conversations are to be fielded by Jin Guangyao. Mostly it’s because he is far better with words than Jiang Cheng will ever be, but it’s also largely because he has a lot more patience. More than once Jiang Cheng has watched him go over some novel concept with their nephew, slow and steady and repetitive, until both were satisfied that Jin Ling understood it entirely.
It’s not surprising to see Jin Guangyao as such a patient teacher, but in Jiang Cheng’s experience Jin Ling is rarely so attentive a student. Most of their own training sessions end in yelling and thrown objects. Yet with his xiao shushu, Jin Ling tends more towards quiet determination as he takes the answer to his question and shapes it to match the understanding of the world he carries in his own mind.
Jiang Cheng takes another forceful swallow. “I already told you, I’m not telling him where babies come from.”
“And I wouldn’t even think to ask you to,” he says, all sweet innocence; he even has the nerve to just smile beatifically at the glare this earns him. “But although that wasn’t the question, it’s actually not far from it.”
Squinting at him doesn’t make Jin Guangyao any easier to read. “He didn’t ask you an awkward question about Lan Xichen, did he.”
Some strange and silent emotion flickers across his face at that, but just as quickly is smoothed away into a smile. “No,” he says, and the smile deepens. “It was about Jiang Yanli.”
He’d deserved that, he supposes. It still fucking hurts. Jin Guangyao at least has the grace not to speak again immediately, to allow him to down another half-jar of alcohol as he moodily kicks his calves through the water. It’s getting cool already, and it’s still nowhere near dark.
“I was helping him with his hair.”
“What, did you do that to him?” The incredulous look is far from feigned; Jin Ling had arrived with golden thread and various baubles woven all through his long dark hair. While impressive enough, it is hardly something a Jiang disciple would typically adorn themselves with. “But it’s—”
“It’s what, Jiang-zongzhu?”
That warning tone speaks for itself, even though the smile isn’t quite the one he reserves for wayward cultivators fallen afoul of his esteem. Jiang Cheng still takes himself out from under it, turns away to take another too-large gulp. “How many times do I have to tell you, you don’t need to call me that.”
“I’m sure I’ll make you do it at least once more, Jiang Wanyin.” Jiang Cheng turns a reflexive glare upon him, earns a sunny smile this time. “But let’s leave aside his hair for the moment, and focus on the mirror.”
“The mirror?” It’s hardly the first time he’s been baffled in a conversation with Jin Guangyao. It still never gets less annoying. “What’s a mirror got to do with anything?”
“I was showing him how to do it himself.” That brings back an odd flickering memory of Meng Yao the first they had met, hair smooth and perfect in Nie braids; Jiang Cheng can’t really dwell on it, as Jin Guangyao goes on to add, “and he stopped me.”
“Maybe he didn’t want all that gold in his hair.”
“He wanted more, actually. Though he asked for that later.” The victorious edge of his smile slips into something more contemplative. “No, he made me put my face down beside him. Stared at us together for a while.”
Jiang Cheng frowns into his jar. “Kids are weird.”
“They are, I’ll grant you that, but this had a purpose.” He pauses – likely for effect, Jiang Cheng’s long since noticed he does that – and finishes with, “He observed how similar we look.”
That gets a shrug as he tilts the jar again. “You’re his uncle.”
“But then he said how he looks also very much like you.”
“Yeah, well, I’m his uncle too.”
“He said he looks like he’s our child.”
That does make him splutter – in fact he’s coughing, nearly choking on the undeniably very fine wine that Jin Guangyao has brought him. He has to pull his legs back out of the water, eyes watering as a steadying hand comes to rest on his hunched back. He doesn’t bother to shake it off. While Jiang Cheng has never been fond of the touch of strangers, Jin Guangyao is his brother-in-law. He’s also observed that Jin Guangyao himself dislikes casual touch just as much as does Jiang Cheng. Besides, it drops away the moment he sits back up straight.
A handkerchief, however, has been extended his way. This isn’t the one from before, instead a deep golden square patterned with peonies embroidered in white. Jiang Cheng flaps a hand to indicate he’s fine without it, and wipes streaming eyes on his sleeve. When he lowers his arm, it’s to find Jin Guangyao looking at him in perfect consternation.
“Please don’t do that in front of Jin Ling.”
“Jin Ling can wipe his nose with whatever he wants as long as he learns to do it for himself.” But any irritation over the vast differences in their parenting styles evaporates entirely when he recalls exactly what had brought on the coughing fit in the first place. “He thinks he’s our kid?”
“Oh no. No, no, he’s quite aware of his parents.” It goes entirely unspoken that it would be hard not to be, considering the circumstances. “I just feel he’s…getting the wrong idea.”
The air suddenly feels very cold on bare damp skin. “He didn’t ask you if we were getting married, did he.” Before Jin Guangyao can say a word, he adds in an ungainly squawk, “You already have a wife!”
That just makes him snort, a sound more Jiang than Jin. Clearly they’ve been spending far too much time around one another. “No, he didn’t ask me that – though I will say that he does still quite regularly ask me to find a matchmaker in Lanling for you, seeing as every single one in Yunmeng refuses to deal with you anymore.” Even as he opens his mouth to complain, Jin Guangyao waves him down in a manner entirely too practised. “But that’s not the point.”
“Well, what is your point, then?”
“He’s made a logical extrapolation, if an incorrect one.” The glare Jiang Cheng gives him just makes Jin Guangyao grin wider. “He figures that if he resembles us, then we must resemble them.”
“…what?”
“I’m rather afraid that his mental image of his mother is just you in a dress.”
“I – what?”
“Logical, like I said. Just incorrect.” One small slim hand rises, moves to adjust the perfectly-aligned hat set upon his smooth dark hair. “And I can’t say I much resemble Jin Zixuan, though in many ways that was likely for the best.”
His surprise gives way to faint unease. Jin-furen has been dead for several years, but Jiang Cheng does not doubt Jin Guangyao still carries the scars of his association with her. Scars borne from the fact that he had lived while her son had died. Jiang Cheng’s own mother had come from the same Yu stock: quick with their hands, and quicker still with their tongues.
Quiet comes between them, then. They both allow it, unbroken save for the call of wading birds across the way, save for the faint sound of breaking water as fish flick up to snatch at the bugs come to rest upon its surface.
“I know you miss her.”
I know you don’t miss him, though he keeps that uncharitable thought to himself. There is, after all, no comparison; Jin Zixuan and Jin Guangyao had barely known each other. There had never been time enough for that. Even when they had been brought together in Carp Tower, from the beginning Jin Guangshan had pushed them apart by the deliberate difference in their very names. Though truly, the distance had likely long since been set as the space between the top and bottom stairs of Carp Tower, intimately discovered by Meng Yao himself on the birth date he shared with his legitimate sibling.
“Are you going to tell me I need to talk to him more about her?” His voice is rough, sparks with the same fury as zidian herself. “Because that’s my choice. Not yours.”
“I know that.” He sounds thoughtful; when Jiang Cheng glances to him, it’s to find one finger pressed against his chin. “But I had a thought.”
“You have many thoughts, Jin-zongzhu.”
“I do indeed.” His sour mood doesn’t dim the smile he slips on this time. “And you most likely won’t appreciate these ones.”
“Then why say any of it out loud?”
“Because I know how much you love A-Ling.” Jin Guangyao wears victory well. “And I know how much his happiness means to you.”
Jiang Cheng closes his eyes. “Sometimes, I think you know too much.”
“Sometimes, I think so too.”
His smile is all brilliant gold in the light of a setting sun. Jiang Cheng just reaches for the next offered jar, and resigns himself to the follies of fate and family both.
*****
Jin Guangyao arrives to collect Jin Ling from Lotus Pier almost three months after he had dropped him off; this time it is summer that nears its end. The worst of the humidity has dissipated from the air, though he seems unmoved by it anyway – he is, of course, from Yunping. Jiang Cheng shouldn’t be so annoyed that the man looks perfect and pressed in his Lanling robes, even as he himself feels like he’s been dragged through the steam of a hotpool backwards.
Jin Ling hasn’t come to greet him, though that’s only because he doesn’t know that his xiao shushu is here at all. He’s under the impression Jin Guangyao will arrive tomorrow. At the smile he receives as Jin Guangyao dismounts Hensheng, coiling her about his slim waist a moment later, Jiang Cheng thinks that it’s not too late. They do not have to do this.
“Reconsidering your options, Jiang-zonzhu?”
Jiang Cheng turns away from the easy fluidity of the words. “Just come inside.”
“Not even a hello?” he asks, mild, and Jiang Cheng turns so sharp even the damp air burns against his skin.
“I swear, sometimes you’re worse than—” He stops himself there. At least, he hopes it’s him. Either way, his hands have curled into fists at his side, tight and taut beneath the warning flicker of zidian. He can see its violet light even with his eyes closed. The next breath rattles tight in his chest, and if he opens his mouth to breathe those eyes will only flood with saltwater.
“Jiang Wanyin.” The words come quiet, calm as the eye of a storm. “I don’t mean to tease.”
That’s bullshit and they both know it, but he’s willing to let it go. Perhaps because Jin Guangyao is the only adult left alive who will do it at all.
His voice comes rough, but then, it so often does. It doesn’t matter. “If you want to keep to your precious timetable, we’d better hurry up.”
He blinks those wide dark eyes, just once. “How do you know I have a timetable?”
“You always have a timetable.”
And they both know how tightly he will keep them to it. It doesn’t take Jin Guangyao long to prepare himself for the planned afternoon tea on the dock, which is for the best as it takes him much longer to prepare Jiang Cheng for the same. After seating him before a great bronze mirror of his own, he flitters about Jiang Cheng lightfooted as a breeze. While there are some – many – who would mock him for his easy elegance in this, Jiang Cheng cannot deny Jin Guangyao shows considerable skill in these specific arts. Yet it is best not to linger on where it had been acquired, though nothing of the final product suggests anything so tawdry as a Yunping brothel-girl.
Jiang Cheng walks very carefully to the prepared table in his unfamiliar shoes, takes his place there in even more unfamiliar robes. Far more comfortable, Jin Guangyao takes his own seat resplendent in gold across from him. This is a stupid, stupid idea. But Jiang Cheng cannot do anything about it now, because Jin Guangyao has his timetable, and right on cue Jin Ling arrives to meet them, sent in by one of his nursemaids.
“—and they said I couldn’t bring Fairy, which is stupid, but I—”
There he stops, for once in his life struck utterly dumb. The two of them rise together from the table; Jin Guangyao has lost none of his usual poise, though Jiang Cheng feels as ungainly as a crane with a broken wing.
“I…I…”
“Hello, A-Ling.” Jin Guangyao indicates the third seat with a courtier’s grace, which in Jiang Cheng’s opinion does not match his outfit whatsoever. “Would you like to have tea with us?”
Their nephew moves at the invitation, but remains mute and wide-eyed as he takes his place. Jin Guangyao, in turn, seems only amused. Because of course he is. Because even though Jiang Cheng really ought to be the one doing so, it is Jin Guangyao who pours their tea, sets a steaming bowl of soup before each of them.
It’s a long moment before he speaks, idly running one finger about the rim of his teacup in a gesture Jiang Cheng has never seen from the other man. “Is something wrong, A-Ling?”
“I – yes – why is jiujiu in a dress?”
And he smiles, an expression entirely his own. “Do you remember,” Jin Guangyao says, taking a delicate sip of his tea, “how you once told me that you look like the son of both me and your jiujiu?”
“I…”
“So I thought oh, we should give you the full experience.”
As if drawn by a lodestone, Jin Ling’s wide eyes finally return to his jiujiu. Jiang Cheng’s skin prickles, both beneath the alien silk and the far more alien cosmetics so deftly applied by Jin Ling’s xiao shushu, and sighs. “He told me that you think your mother looks like me. But in a dress.”
The scandalised expression is the most animated he’s looked since turning up to the table. “Well, yes. Maybe. I guess. But—” His hands fist abruptly on the table, lips pressed tightly together before they burst open like a broken dam. “But I’m sure my mother was prettier than you!”
“Why you—”
“Stop, stop!” Leaning across the table, Jin Guangyao places both hands over one each of their own, settles them both back into their seats. Only when he seems assured that neither one is about to rise again to go for the throat does he subside back into his own. As he readjusts himself, Jiang Cheng cannot help but dwell on the oddity of seeing him without his cap, of seeing his long dark hair woven with the golden thread and baubles once so favoured by Jin Zixuan.
And the son of said man now sits across from them both, his own hair glinting in similar fashion. His expression even brings to mind the dead father, as he sits mutinously quiet to eat his soup. Jin Zixuan always had been a brat. At least the two of them are raising his son in that same fine Lanling tradition.
And, again, it’s the born diplomat of the three of them who speaks first, even though he wears the robes of one of the least diplomatic sect heirs Jiang Cheng had ever known. “Of course, the truth is, A-Ling, is that your jiujiu does not really look like your mother, not even dressed as prettily as he is now.” His voice is an even as any actor’s when he adds, “And I absolutely do not look like your father.”
“I…” Putting his spoon down, face creased in confusion, Jin Ling looks between them with suspicious bewilderment. “…then why did you do it?”
“Yes, Jin-zongzhu,” Jiang Cheng asks, perfectly dry as he raises his teacup, “why did we do this?”
“Because I thought it would be funny.” Even as Jiang Cheng chokes on his tea, Jin Guangyao turns those damned wide eyes of his on their nephew. “Isn’t it funny, A-Ling?”
He slumps down in his seat. “You guys are so weird.”
Without thought, he’s half out of his seat again. “Don’t talk to your uncles like that!”
And Jin Ling scoffs, leaning back to give him a proper sweep from feet to forehead. “You’re more my auntie, dressed like that.”
“An auntie can break legs as well as any uncle!”
It’s a small hand on his forearm that holds him back. “Now, now, Jiang Wanyin. There’s to be no breaking of legs today.”
And he drops back into his seat with none of the grace that came so easily to his sister, turns a glare on Jin Guangyao. “You’re right. You’re nothing like your brother.” And he looks back to Jin Ling, eyebrow raised in challenge. “You see, your father couldn’t say two words to a lady without promptly tripping over both of them.”
“And landing flat on his lovely face,” Jin Guangyao adds as he takes a serene sip from his teacup, and Jiang Cheng snorts in perfect agreement.
That keeps Jin Ling quiet, if but only for a moment. He’s looking down into his bowl of lotus rib soup, and for a moment the scent of his own untouched bowl turns Jiang Cheng’s stomach. And then he looks up again. There’s something terrible and tremulous in his young round face, in the small words that emerge uncertain as a butterfly from fresh chrysalis.
“Thank you.” And he chokes, leaning forward, eyes tightly closed. “I…”
“Oh, A-Ling, you don’t need to thank us.” He’s reached across the table again, hand soft over the little fist of Jin Ling’s own. “We’d do anything for you.”
The tremble in his chin is one that Jiang Cheng knows all too well. Even in the tangle of silk Jin Guangyao had so carefully wrapped him in, he moves quick, comes around the table to pull Jin Ling roughly against his side. “Don’t cry,” he says, fingers soft where they press against one temple, pulling him closer still. “Because I’m going to hug you, and if you cry into the good silk of this dress, I’ll make you wash it yourself.”
Jin Ling’s answer is little more than a wail. “I don’t know how to wash silk!”
“I can teach you,” Jin Guangyao offers, diplomatic as ever, and Jiang Cheng rolls his eyes.
“Definitely nothing like Jin Zixuan at all,” he mutters, then pauses, afraid he’s made a dreadful miscalculation. But Jin Guangyao only laughs, and drinks more tea, and for a moment Jiang Cheng just enjoys it. Enjoys this: the three of them in the late summer afternoon, on the docks of Lotus Pier, the air lightly fragranced with jasmine and jiejie’s soup, her son warm and solid and real pressed against his side, Jin Guangyao grinning like a fool into his teacup across the table.
He can’t even be resentful when Jin Guangyao at last puts it aside, and smiles even more broadly at them both. “Oh, but there is one more thing, A-Ling,” he says, and gestures back to the way their nephew had come. “We have a gift for you.”
Still seated, still pressed into his uncle’s side, Jin Ling straightens just a little. His reddened eyes are wary. “…you’re not going to put on a dress, are you?”
“No, but I’ll have you know I would look absolutely delightful in one.” Ignoring Jiang Cheng’s scoff, his smile takes on a dangerous curve. “No, I asked two guests to join us.”
And Jiang Cheng stiffens. “I – what? Join us?”
That innocent blink could have swayed the most unwavering of judges. “We discussed this, Jiang Wanyin.”
“No. No, we absolutely did not discuss this.” He’s moved back around the table without thinking, towering over the smaller man who grins sunnily upwards from his own seat. “You said you would have them send—”
“Oh, no, I’m very sure I told you that they would accompany the pieces themselves.” A hand rises, unspoken signal to an unseen servant just inside one of the rooms. And then he looks back to Jiang Cheng with easy triumph, clearly noting the flush already beginning to climb up from inside the delicate collar of his inner robe.
Jiang Cheng drops back into his seat in furious defeat. “I’ll get you back for this, Jin-zongzhu.”
“I look forward to it, Jiang-zongzhu.” Then he’s standing, gliding across the wooden boards with his face radiant and open. “Ah, there you are! Er-ge! A-Sang!”
Burying his face in his hands at least spares him from having to watch yet again the interminable dance of Lan Xichen and Jin Guangyao, as one attempts to bow to the other and is caught in the act – but he cannot hide for long. A small figure slips into the vacated seat beside him, and Jiang Cheng can hear the awed delight vibrating his entire being.
“Jiang-xiong!” His fan flickers so quick it sounds like the wingbeat of a hummingbird. “You look incredible!”
“I hate all of you.” He then drops his hands, meets yet another amused pair across the table. “Hello, Zewu-jun.”
“Hello, Sandu Shengshou.” He wears a small smile, which by Lan standards is a broad and silly grin, even as he turns to their nephew to bow lightly in his direction. “Jin-gongzi.”
The servants bring in more chairs as proper greetings are exchanged; Jin Guangyao watches his nephew like a hawk as he goes through the motions, though what he sees appears to please him. Jiang Cheng might be irritated by the endless protocol that is drilled into his nephew, though he’s seen enough of Carp Tower to know this is but the beginning of many essential lessons Jin Guangyao must impart to the boy who will one day lead that cursed sect.
It ends with all five of them seated together at the small table. More tea has been brought, though Jiang Cheng has given up all pretence and called for a jar of alcohol, ignoring the raised eyebrow this earned him from Jin Guangyao. Oddly, that of all things, had finally given him the ghost of a resemblance to his dead brother.
As Jiang Cheng takes another swig Jin Guangyao turns instead to their nephew, where he sits fidgeting in place. “Is there something you would like to ask, A-Ling?” he asks sweetly, and even a ten-year-old boy knows exactly what that tone means. Uncurling his fingers he settles with a sigh barely held back, straightening his spine into proper alignment.
“Stop teasing him,” Jiang Cheng says, irritable, and gets a wounded look from not only Jin Guangyao, but Lan Xichen as well. He doesn’t bother looking at Nie Huaisang; even with the fan in front of his face, it’s clear he’s laughing again. “Jin Guangyao. This was your idea.”
“Yes, which is why I ought to be allowed to do this at my own pace,” he reproaches with an entirely too overdone sigh. “But if you insist…”
The baubles in his hair clink light together as he turns to Nie Huaisang, who immediately snaps his fan closed. After setting it down upon the table, he withdraws from the qiankun pouch at his side a scroll in a silver case, before presenting it to Jin Ling with a flourish as practised as that of any a dancer.
He scowls. “What’s this?”
“Jin Rulan!”
“I mean—thank you, Nie-zongzhu.” For a moment his jaw works, his expression so familiar it takes Jiang Cheng a long second to recognise as one of his own. “…may I ask what it is?”
Leaning back in his chair, fan returned to a lazy swish before his unseen grin, Nie Huaisang replies in a voice festooned with glee. “You may open it and see.”
Despite the natural impatience of a child, Jin Ling shows admirable care as he extracts the heavy paper and unrolls it upon the table, sensibly weighting the corners with the jade ornaments provided. And then: there is but silence. All four of them allow him that, let him stare as long as he needs to.
When he looks up, his eyes are very dark, and very bright. “This…?”
“It’s your parents.” Thankfully, Nie Huaisang has let the amusement bleed away from his expression, and his voice. “I like to paint. I always have.” His eyes flick sideways, briefly unreadable. “San-ge decided to be my most generous patron, and asked me to do a portrait for you.”
There’s something odd to his tone, particularly for Nie Huaisang, but Jiang Cheng cannot dwell on it. Not when he’s finally looking at the painting himself. He had seen a few preliminary sketches, but never the finished piece. It’s a delicate and lovely thing, black inks and pale colours in watercolour wash. The two of them are seated together, crowned in lotus and in peony. But it’s not quite the two as he remembers them – Nie Huaisang had taken it a little further. Made them a little older. And between them stands a boy, only ten years old, smiling broadly as both mother and father each rest a hand on either shoulder.
The lump in his throat burns like hot coal, and he can neither bring it up nor swallow it down.
Across the way, the fan has begun soft slow moment once more. “I do hope you like it, Jin-gongzi.”
“It’s…lovely.” Any and all sweet words taught to him by his xiao shushu seem to have quite vanished, though by Jin Guangyao’s own bright-eyed expression, he doesn’t care. “…thank you, Nie-zongzhu.”
“Oh, like I said, it was all san-ge’s idea! I could never think of something so wonderful.”
It’s not a surprise, really, to see Jin Ling then clumsily launch himself upon Jin Guangyao. The hug back is just as natural. Yet before it can hurt Jin Guangyao himself looks up, extends one small hand. Again, that lump forms tight in his throat, far larger than before. He steps forward all the same, goes to one knee, allows himself to be drawn in. To be the last third of the strange triad that they make together.
He breaks away first, standing, voice rough. “You had better look after that, Jing Ling.”
“Of course I will!” he fires back immediately, even as he sniffs back a noseful of snot. “I’m not a baby!”
“And I’ll remind you that you said that next time I catch you acting like one.”
“Jiang Wanyin,” Jian Guangyao intercedes, lightly scolding, always smiling. Yet when he shifts his gaze, the smile turns softer still. “Er-ge?”
A nod, and the First Jade of Lan rises from his place, inevitable as the path of ancient glaciers. He then comes before Jin Ling, folding his long limbs down to the same height. “I also have a gift for you, suggested to me by your uncles both.” He extends his own silver case to him upon his open palms, as if offering up an ancestral blade. “I, too, hope that it brings you joy.”
Another scroll, unwound upon the table – and again, Jin Ling can do little but stare, wide-eyed and open-mouthed. Jiang Cheng looks over his shoulder, and himself goes very very still.
Lan Xichen has used a very different style to that Nie Huaisang had chosen – and a different age, too. This is Jiang Yanli and Jin Zixuan as they had been in the scant short months they had spent together with their son. But there is a depth and a detail to the painting uncommonly seen in the art most popular of their day. Jiang Cheng had not known Zewu-jun could paint like this. Jiang Cheng Had not known Zewu-jun had known them well enough to bring them to life in such perfect clarity.
“It was more A-Yao than me,” comes his soft voice, dull over the roar in his ears. “He sat with me for many hours, correcting every stroke and shadow until he was satisfied I had caught them correctly.” Jiang Cheng glances upward just in time to see the fond look Zewu-jun passes to his side. “Such a memory, he has. It’s as if he never forgets a thing.”
“Oh, Er-ge, don’t embarrass me so,” Jin Guangyao says, though there is but the faintest flush high on his cheeks. “Without your skill, I would have had nothing more than words to express those memories with.” And he turns to their nephew, face going very soft, very sweet. “And I wanted A-Ling to have so much more than that.”
Jin Ling bursts into tears. Without thought Jiang Cheng opens his arms, feels his nephew reflexively burrow into the silks of the ridiculous gown that Jiang Cheng had donned for him. And then – there are golden robes, too, and a hand on a dark head. Another hand, far smaller, blindly grasps out and drags him close.
Jiang Cheng bows his own head, not quite crying himself. A glance up, and he finds Jin Guangyao’s own wide, dark eyes. They’re dry, but – different. He can’t meet them for long. He closes his own instead, breathes deep, and lets Jin Ling cry himself to quiet.
It’s a long time before any of them shift from that stillness. The silk of his gown is definitely ruined. Jin Ling only underlines that fact by dragging his own sleeve across his face, smearing snot all over every inch of it. Even as Jin Guangyao chokes out a wounded breath, Lan Xichen produces a handkerchief as if from the air itself. Jiang Cheng only watches as he dips the delicate blue thing in the water, calling Jin Ling over before he then begins to studiously clean up the face of his sworn brother’s nephew.
“That dress really does suit you, Jiang-xiong.” He hadn’t even noticed Nie Huaisang sidling up beside him. “And that hairstyle really brings out your cheekbones!”
He rolls his eyes sidelong like a warhorse called to the frontlines of battle. “I will end you, Nie-zongzhu.”
“Please, let’s not start a war over Jiang Wanyin’s pretty face,” sings out Jin Guangyao from where he is helping Lan Xichen set Jin Ling to rights, and Jiang Cheng rolls his eyes just one more time.
“I’ll show him starting a war,” he mutters, and Nie Huaisang doesn’t bother hiding a peal of laughter. But then he’s leaning forward, hard against one shoulder, frowning at Lan Xichen’s work. “Aiya, this is so unfair! Look at how talented Er-ge is! How is my sorry little painting meant to stand against such skill?!”
“Your painting is fine, Huaisang,” he snaps back. But the annoyance drains from him, quick and already forgotten. It cannot be any other way – not with his sister laid out before him now, on paper almost as she had been in life.
He does not hear Jin Guangyao come to his other shoulder. “I asked Er-ge to do one for you, too. Just of your sister.” He pauses, and when he resumes, there’s an odd hitch to his words that Jiang Cheng is not sure he’s ever heard before. “If you would like it, I mean.”
And Jiang Cheng stares up at him: his strange and sly brother-in-law, golden and small in the guise of his own dead brother. “Yes.” His voice does not even sound remotely like his own. “Yes, I would like that.”
A smile, and he turns away. He’s always known when to look away. “You know, A-Sang,” he says, light, “I could ask Er-ge to do one of Da-ge for you. If you’d like.”
The words strike sudden as a dagger in the night. “I don’t need you to tell me how to remember my brother.”
Both go very still – and, stuck in the middle between them, Jiang Cheng does not know in which direction to look first. But then comes the inevitable snap of both wrist and fan, ribs unfurling to mask the heart caught within.
“Oh! Oh san-ge, I’m so sorry!” Mortified, Nie Huaisang takes a step back, eyes barely visible over the fan’s highest edge. “I didn’t mean…I don’t…”
“Huaisang.” There’s something odd in Jin Guangyao’s expression: his own mask not so neatly worn, the seams at its edges clearer than is usually allowed. “It’s all right, Huaisang.”
“But is it, really?”
Jiang Cheng knows he’s intruding. Knows that he doesn’t understand the uneven footing between these two sect leaders, who had once been only the useless heir and his most trusted caretaker together in Qinghe. He looks away instead, sees that Lan Xichen and Jin Ling remain just distant enough to have missed the exchange – or perhaps, just for the elder to have shielded the younger from it.
When he speaks again, he’s smiling. Jiang Cheng sometimes wonders if anyone will ever be able to catalogue the seemingly endless array of them that the other man possesses. “Shall we go inside?” Jin Guangyao asks. “I have arranged for dinner in the banquet hall.”
“Because of course you have,” he mutters, and earns that raised eyebrow again.
“Are you questioning my timetable, Jiang-zongzhu?”
“In my own house? I wouldn’t dare.”
The laugh that earns does actually sound genuine enough. It helps, perhaps, that Nie Huaisang has moved away to talk to Jin Ling, apparently pointing out the detailed border of magpies and wutong trees that boxes in his family portrait; Lan Xichen merely watches from a short distance away, faint smile on his lovely face. A glance to Jin Guangyao finds him, too, watching both his living sworn brother and his dead sworn brother’s younger sibling with an expression now completely unreadable.
“I’m sure he didn’t mean it,” Jiang Cheng says, awkward. It’s a long moment before Jin Guangyao stirs, meets his gaze with a very small smile.
“Well,” he says. “We all mourn in our own ways.” Folding his hands into his sleeves, he looks again to Lan Xichen. “But it doesn’t always have to be a misery.”
Jiang Cheng himself glances back to the table, to where the portrait of his sister lies: clear, perfect, sweet as a summer upon Yunmeng waters, and as lovely as the memory of her soft knowing smile.
“No,” he says, very slow. “No, I suppose it doesn’t need to be that way at all.”