-

Their rooms in the Nightless City were large, but cold.

They were wards of the great Sect Leader Wen, they were told when they arrived. That meant that they would be treated with respect, as if they were truly young masters of the Wen sect. They would get the best tutors, the best clothing, the best food and drink…they would be masters of the world, if only they bowed their heads and were obedient.

(If they were not obedient, they would be punished. The exact nature of that punishment remained – unspecified.)

“Are they going to hurt us?” Nie Huaisang whispered late at night, curled up in Nie Mingjue’s bed. He’d been hiding in his own, shaking and terrified, until Nie Mingjue had crept out to check on him, daring the unspecified punishment if it meant confirming his brother was all right. Obviously Nie Mingjue couldn’t leave him like that, so he’d brought him back. “Are they going to do to us what they did to a-Die?”

“No,” Nie Mingjue said, with moderate confidence. “They’re not. They’ve put in too much effort, made this all too public, to kill us now. Though I’m not ruling out the possibility that they might freeze us to death by accident. How is it so cold here? It’s south of Qinghe! The climate should be more temperate, not less! And have they never heard of tapestries?”

“Da-ge…”

“Don’t think I don’t feel those ice-blocks you call feet at my waist!”

Nie Huaisang giggled, as Nie Mingjue had intended. “You’re being silly, da-ge.”

Nie Mingjue pretended to huff angrily, tossing his head like a bull, and it made Nie Huaisang giggle again, the way it always had. “Fine, fine,” he grumbled. “I’ll keep you warm, I guess. It’s my duty as your da-ge, isn’t it?”

“What’s my duty?” Nie Huaisang wanted to know.

“To be my spoiled brat of a didi, of course,” Nie Mingjue said, the way he always did, but this time Nie Huaisang shook his head in denial.

“Now that we’re here,” he clarified, looking at Nie Mingjue with wide, trusting eyes. “What do you need me to do?”

Nie Mingjue knew, as Nie Huaisang did not, why their lives had been spared: it all lay in that word, reeducated. They would be indoctrinated into Wen sect beliefs, Wen sect customs, and by the time they were sent back to rule Qinghe as Wen Ruohan’s puppets, they would be more Wen than Nie. Even for him, it would be difficult to resist; for someone as young as Nie Huaisang, with his childish memories already slipping through his fingers like sand, it would be virtually impossible.

Asking him to resist would serve no purpose but to torment him when he inevitably failed.

“Be happy, didi,” he finally said, and pressed his lips to Nie Huaisang’s forehead. “Be happy as you can, as you always have. Don’t let them take away your smile.”

-

The next day, they were introduced to Wen Xu and Wen Chao, the actual young masters of Qishan, sons of Wen Ruohan. Wen Xu was a handful of years older than Nie Mingjue, eighteen to his nearly-fifteen, while Wen Chao was less than two years older than Nie Huaisang. Neither of them seemed happy to see them, scowls fixed firmly on their faces, sneers of disdain twisting their lips.

“Do you train the saber?” Wen Xu asked Nie Mingjue, who raised an eyebrow of ‘what do you think I train’ in return. “A boorish weapon, but then I suppose your ancestors were butchers.”

“I look forward to taking classes with you,” Nie Mingjue said, thinking to himself that one didn’t have to be especially clever to know the history the Nie sect proudly proclaimed at every turn. “They’re clearly very enriching.”

Wen Xu blinked at him and then turned his face away, his lips pressed together – whether in annoyance or, possibly, a sense of humor very deeply buried, it was difficult to tell.

“Father has expectations of you,” he finally said instead of responding to Nie Mingjue’s jibe, and there was no humor in his face now. “You’ll meet them, of course.”

Unspoken was that they couldn’t afford not to. Either of them.

Nie Mingjue lowered his head. His entire sect – all his cousins, aunts, uncles, whether surnamed Nie or not – were back in Qinghe, closely watched by Wen sect commanders. There was a sword to their throat, and therefore also to his.

He, too, could not afford to disappoint Wen Ruohan.

Wen Xu’s shoulders relaxed a little when he saw Nie Mingjue’s submission – he had clearly been charged with their care, and had just as clearly worried about his ability to fulfill his mission should they choose to rebel – and he nodded, more to himself than to them. “There’s classrooms, and training grounds,” he said. “I’ll show you where they are, as well as the dining room – there are set times for meals, and attendance is mandatory – and of course the necessaries. You don’t need more than that, at least to start.”

“Are there rules we should keep in mind?” Nie Mingjue asked, thinking about his brief visit to Gusu.

“Many,” Wen Xu said. His expression was stormy. “Some of them are even spoken aloud.”

-

“Da-ge! Da-ge!” Nie Huaisang ran up to him, lip quivering and eyes glistening wet with tears. It was a very sad, even heart-rending sight; it used to send Nie Mingjue into a frenzy to see him like that. But by now he’d learned better and he didn’t even blink, even though Wen Xu faltered, his sword twisting off in the middle of their spar as if he expected Nie Mingjue to lose focus at a key moment and injure himself. He wouldn’t, of course, and he instead used the moment to tap Wen Xu’s sword pointedly with Baxia, claiming the point. “Da-ge, I fell down again!”

“Excuse me,” Nie Mingjue said to Wen Xu, and turned to kneel before Nie Huaisang. “Did you, now?”

“Uh-huh!”

“And did you hurt yourself?”

“I did!” Nie Huaisang stuck his hand out. There was, maybe, a bruise on his wrist. If one squinted. It was probably just mud, actually. “It hurts awful, da-ge. Kiss it better?”

“That doesn’t really work,” Wen Chao scoffed, only a few steps behind Nie Huaisang.

“Shut up, it does,” Nie Huaisang shot back, temporarily forgetting that he was supposed to be pitiful, and turned back to Nie Mingjue. “Well, da-ge?”

Nie Mingjue nodded solemnly. “It’s my job,” he agreed, gathering Nie Huaisang up into his arms and pressing his lips to the ‘wound’, using the motion to infuse a little bit of spiritual energy as well. Not enough to actually make a difference, and certainly not enough to justify Nie Huaisang promptly declaring himself all better, but he liked to do it anyway – a little connection between them.

Wen Chao looked at them both in suspicion, his brow wrinkling. “That doesn’t really work,” he said again, but his voice was weaker this time, more questioning.

“It does too work,” Nie Huaisang announced. “Maybe if you’re really nice, I’ll let da-ge fix you up too next time you fall down.”

“I’m not going to fall down! I’m not a baby like you!”

“Everyone falls down sometimes. There’s nothing shameful about it,” Nie Mingjue said, and pointed to a bruise on his own face. “I myself fell down just a little while ago. Your brother helped. Several times.”

Wen Chao gaped at him, even as Nie Huaisang giggled.

“And Huaisang? You’re already very good at being a big baby and we all know it. You can stop practicing your skills at any time.”

Nie Huaisang rolled his eyes at him, still laughing.

Nie Mingjue ruffled his hair and sent them both away, Nie Huaisang in the lead and Wen Chao following after, the latter shooting strange looks back at Nie Mingjue over his shoulder.

“You’re too soft on him,” Wen Xu said from behind him, even as Nie Mingjue rose to his feet. “He won’t thank you for it, later.”

Nie Mingjue shrugged. “Later is later,” he said philosophically. “Now is now. Can you show me that move you did earlier, kicking out my feet? It was very well done.”

Wen Xu stared at him. “The one – where I knocked you to the ground?”

“That’s the one. Do it again, just slower; it’ll be hard for me to pick it up, otherwise.”

“You’re just asking – no, never mind. Don’t you care that I beat you with it?”

“…no?” Nie Mingjue hazarded. Was this some sort of weird Qishan Wen hang-up? “How am I supposed to learn if I don’t lose?”

“In training, like everyone else.”

“That’d only teach me how to win when everything goes right,” Nie Mingjue pointed out. “I want to learn how to win even when I’m losing. Here, you show me that and I’ll show you the trick I did this morning, with the disarming.”

Wen Xu tensed up. “I don’t need your tricks.”

I don’t need your pity, he meant, and Nie Mingjue didn’t understand him at all. Wen Xu was at home, his little brother safe, his sect secure – why would Nie Mingjue pity him?

“Consider it a favor to me, then,” Nie Mingjue said, thinking back to how his uncle used to handle the especially prickly tempers in their sect, which was never short on them. “My grasp on the move isn’t that good – teaching it to someone else is the best way for me to improve my own understanding.”

Wen Xu hesitated for a while, thinking it over as if he thought there was some sort trap in the offer – what trap it might be, Nie Mingjue wasn’t sure – but then he nodded.

“All right then,” he said arrogantly. “I won’t even count it as a favor. Consider it a gift, since you’re so new here.”

-

They were there for about a month by the time they met some other people their age.

It was enough time to start to get used to the monotony of it all. They woke up in the morning and were free until breakfast – Nie Mingjue often got in some extra saber training, Nie Huaisang usually slept in – at which point they would meet in the cold, miserable dining hall with enough space to fit two dozen people but which only ever had the four of them, being served by voiceless servants.

They would remain there for enough time to burn a stick of incense at minimum, half a shichen at the maximum, and then they would proceed to their classes. There would be alternating classes and training, all based on some mystifying schedule that seemed to change every day but which clearly had some sort of order based on the boredom with which the Wen heirs regarded it, but always lunch and dinner in the same cold dining room, all alone, same as ever.

It was therefore a surprise when they came down for breakfast and found two other children there: a pale-faced girl about Wen Chao’s age or a little older and a skinny, shy-looking boy closer to Nie Huaisang’s. They were wearing Wen colors, but that didn’t mean anything – so were the rest of them. Neither Nie Mingjue nor Nie Huaisang had been allowed to bring any of their Nie robes to the Nightless City other than the ones they’d been wearing, and those had been splattered with blood. Nie Mingjue had carefully preserved them and still intended on finding a time to go try to see if he could salvage them in the wash, just as soon as he figured out where the laundry was.

His own new robes, in garish Wen colors that made him feel sick every time he looked down, itched and pulled on his body when he moved – they were badly sized. It seemed the seamstresses of the Nightless City hadn’t been expecting someone of his size and shape, although the array of robes he’d found in the closet made him realize, with gut-churning nausea, that he had been expected, that Wen Ruohan had prepared in advance to receive his new wards long before he had committed the act of murder to obtain them.

He hadn’t complained about the discomfort of the badly sized clothing – he hadn’t dared – but Wen Xu had been irritable about it for days now. Based on his rants, it seemed like he suspected that someone had made the robes ill-fitting on purpose to restrict Nie Mingjue’s full range of motion, a scheme designed to make Nie Mingjue humiliate Wen Xu in front of his father when the right size clothing finally did come in.

Nie Mingjue didn’t understand the calculations Wen Xu made, the paranoia involved – who would do something like that? why? what would even be the point? – and he didn’t especially want to, either.

He looked at the other two children. The girl stared down at her food, not making eye contact, but the boy stole glances at him – perhaps he and Nie Huaisang were as much as of a surprise to them as they were to him.

“Good morning,” he said to them. “My brother and I are surnamed Nie. What about you?”

Wen Xu snorted loudly, rolling his eyes. “They’re Wen,” he said scathingly. “Our cousins, from one of collateral branches of the family; the ones in the mountains. Father has taken the two of them on as his wards on account of their unfortunate circumstances and promising talent.”

“Unfortunate circumstances?” Nie Huaisang wondered aloud, and Nie Mingjue sighed to himself at the sheer rudeness of the direct question. “What’s so unfortunate?”

“Our p-parents are dead,” the boy told him quietly, stuttering a little.

“Oh,” Nie Huaisang said. “Ours too.”

There was a moment of silence, the entire room disbelieving, and then Nie Mingjue started laughing.

The sound of his laughter verged on the hysterical, hurting his throat, but he couldn’t seem to stop. Not because it was funny, of course, it wasn’t funny, would never be funny, it was still raw and burning and painful. It probably would be for the rest of his undoubtedly short life. But news travelled fast in the cultivation world, and while he couldn’t say for sure, Nie Mingjue suspected he’d be hard pressed to find someone who hadn’t heard about Wen Ruohan murdering the old Nie sect leader and taking his children by now.

Judging by the horrified expressions on the Wen cousins’ faces, they definitely had, and the sheer awkwardness that paralyzed the entire room just made the entire thing pathetically – well, laughable.

“Da-ge!” Nie Huaisang hissed, cheeks turning red, but he was smiling a little, too, mostly out of the infectiousness of Nie Mingjue’s laughter. “Don’t embarrass me!”

Nie Mingjue leaned over and ruffled his hair. “Extra etiquette lessons for a week.”

“No!”

“Someone has to teach you to think before you speak,” Nie Mingjue said, still chuckling involuntarily with the aftereffects of his bout of inappropriate humor. “Not every thought that passes through your brain has to reach your tongue, you know. Consider holding some back. Cultivate an aura of mystery.”

Nie Huaisang grumbled and went back to picking at his food.

“Aren’t you going to punish him?” the girl asked suddenly. She was staring straight at Nie Mingjue. “You didn’t embarrass him. He embarrassed you.”

“I’m his older brother,” Nie Mingjue said with a shrug. “If he’s not embarrassed by me and I’m not mortified by him, something’s clearly wrong –”

“Da-ge!” Nie Huaisang wailed.

Nie Mingjue put some extra meat into his bowl to apologize for teasing, and Nie Huaisang subsided, making faces at him as he did.

“You’re weird,” Wen Chao announced.

Nie Mingjue didn’t think so, but all the Wens averted their eyes away from him as if they were silently agreeing, so maybe he was.

-

It turned out that the girl’s name was Wen Qing and the boy, her brother, was called Wen Ning.

“Don’t any of you have courtesy names?” Nie Mingjue asked, a little desperately, and it turned out that the Wen sect had the strange tradition of referring to people by their given names until they were properly acknowledged. Acknowledged as what wasn’t specified, but they all seemed to have a sense of definitiveness about it, as if expecting it to happen at some distant date.

Qinghe had the exact opposite tradition – given names were for immediate family only, sometimes a secret kept just to the parents, and everyone else went straight to using the courtesy name almost immediately after the first month ceremony.

“But you haven’t done anything by then,” Wen Ning said, worrying his lip with his teeth. Nie Huaisang had been devastated to discover that despite being small and thin as a stick, Wen Ning was exactly three weeks older than him – he’d been looking forward to calling someone didi for once, and now he was off sulking about finding himself the youngest yet again. Nie Mingjue was sure he’d get over it quickly. “Nothing impressive, nothing worthy of acclaim…what can a baby possibly do to deserve getting a name so early?”

“They were born, they are alive,” Nie Mingjue said. “What more do they need to do? Isn’t that worthy of recognition all on its own?”

He got strange looks again.

It turned out that Wen Qing was the talented one of the pair – she was training to be a doctor, and all her teachers spoke very highly of her.

“That’s wonderful,” Nie Mingjue said, and meant it. “Medical skills are a rare pearl that ought to be treasured; with the world always in need, there can never be too many doctors. I look forward to being treated by you in the future.”

Wen Qing blinked owlishly at him. It appeared that she was unaccustomed to praise.

“If you ever need someone to practice on, let me know,” he tried – he knew pretty words were far from his forte, and actions were better anyway – but that didn’t seem to help.

“I’m not good at anything,” Wen Ning volunteered, wringing his hands. “Jiejie refused to leave me at home by myself, but I’m not - good. At things.”

“Everyone is good at something,” Nie Mingjue assured him, the words coming much easier this time – he knew this particular routine well, given Nie Huaisang’s routinely poor physical performance in a sect that placed such a premium on it. “Some have strengths that are lauded by society, others merely ones that give color to it, but both are valuable and worthy of praise. You will find your talent, given time.”

Wen Ning appeared rather dazed by the concept. “But – what if I look for my talent and it turns out I really am no good at anything?”

“Then you’ll be good at being cared for,” Nie Mingjue said firmly. “Someone has to keep us older siblings in business with something to do.”

“Oh,” Wen Ning said, hugging himself until his face turned red, and then he ran away.

☀️

Wen RuoHan wasn't sure which number this one was, but she was the first one Wen Chao presented to him and asked for his permission to marry. That meant the others that came before her didn't matter anymore. Pleasant, soft-spoken, demure, she would make his son a fine, quiet wife.

Since when did Wen Chao ever want a soft-spoken, obedient wife? Wen RuoHan’s council suggested maturity, growth, experience, and looking to the future. All good things that didn’t make Wen RuoHan inclined to say no.

The surprise, however, wasn’t just that Wen Chao sought to marry but that he had ended up making a fine match on his own. Her clan was well-known to Wen RuoHan already and always offered their support to him when needed. Not only was their loyalty never forgotten by the Qishan Wen, they could want for nothing when rewards were dispersed.

Nothing except a marriage into the Qishan Wen main branch, but nobody spoke of such ambitious things within Wen RuoHan's hearing. There were rumors that the girl was already pregnant, but such rumors never made it to Wen RuoHan's ears, either.

It wouldn't have mattered much if it had. His son was in love with her. Good. Let him be in love then if this was the happiness Wen Chao sought.

At the top of the steps to the Sun Palace, the couple arrived dressed in red. Golden phoenix feathers were sewn and painted onto lengths of fabric trailing in their wake as they approached the altar hand-in-hand. Wen Chao walked with his back straight, his chin tilted up, and his expression as serious as when he was a young child who wanted to be taken seriously.

“This is sudden,” Wen RuoHan had mused when his permission was first sought. Wen Xu, who was much older than his younger brother, was not yet married, but Wen RuoHan wasn't particularly concerned by the delay. “There is no need to rush into these things.”

Wen Chao pressed his forehead to the floor. “Please, father! I love her! I want to live the rest of my life with her!”

Despite Wen RuoHan’s doubts, he could not dispute Wen Chao’s attachment to the girl if that was what Wen Chao claimed.

The wedding was held on an auspicious day in spring.

Wen Chao’s bride wore an opaque, crimson veil which let none of her features show. Next to her prideful and serious husband, would a blush cover her cheeks? Was she smiling shyly as she held Wen Chao's hand in front of such a large crowd?

Wen Chao's mother had worn a light veil that had rippled in the breeze. Against her pearlescent skin, the quirk of her painted lips smiling shone through.

But that was a long time ago. Wen RuoHan could faintly recall the soft fabric of her veil on his fingertips when he’d finally been allowed to lift it.

Wen Chao and his bride kneeled on flat, round cushions and made their first bow to the heavens.

They rose and turned, still on their knees, to face Wen RuoHan. They made their second bow to him and him alone.

Wen Xu had told Wen Chao to bring a cup of wine to their mother later, and Wen Chao swore to do it before he would go unveil his wife.

It pleased Wen RuoHan to see how much his children had grown.

The couple turned to face one another and, finally, made their third bow to each other. And when Wen Chao raised his head, he was smiling ear to ear, his cheeks flushed with pleasure.

“She is a lucky woman,” the guests all told Wen RuoHan later. “He is a lucky man. It is a lucky match.”

“We have many grandchildren in our future,” the girl's father said, coming to stand at Wen RuoHan's side.

Wen RuoHan smiled. “Is that so?”

“Can't you tell by looking at them, Sect Leader Wen? They can hardly keep their hands off one another!”

Considering all the girls that came before, and the servant Wen Chao was looking at now, there might be many grandchildren, but maybe not all with this new wife. Although hardly more than a boy, Wen Chao had been taught to take responsibility for such things.

“A fine wedding for a fine couple,” the girl's father continued. A bold statement when his daughter was covered in cloth from head to toe, disguised to look like any other bride.

“Indeed it is,” Wen RuoHan added, wondering how long it would be until the next wedding.

But he had no desire to rush through this one. The first one.