-

Somehow they weather the heat and aridity and Ling Yao’s boredom, and make it to a scruffy Xingese village at the edge of the desert, where Ling Yao and Lan Fan exchange the camel for a donkey and a cart. They trundle south to the Yao clan’s territory, and exchange only a flicker of eyes when Mei says she’s going to go with them.

At a Yao city with food stalls and knickknack vendors lining the streets, throngs of people crowding the thoroughfares, and coarse Yao slang shouted at every corner, there’s a quick burial for the old man who fought Wrath, and then they’re off again, cutting toward the capital with the Philosopher’s Stone buried in Ling Yao’s tunic.

“If you’re thinking of stealing it, don’t bother,” Ling Yao says abruptly and wearily one evening, as they’re settling into their rooms at a guesthouse.

Both Mei and Xiao-Mei flush fiercely. “I—”

“Hush!” Lan Fan commands, flinging her arm out for silence.

Without warning she leaps upward in a a graceful, deadly blur, and the thuds of combat sound from the rafters. It isn’t long before a body swathed in gray lands on the floorboards with a thump, a pool of dark blood spreading rapidly beneath it.

Ling Yao hasn’t moved, sitting on his bed with his ankle crossed over a knee. Lan Fan leaps back down, barely breathing hard. Mei shivers. She was planning to steal the Philosopher’s Stone, but now it seems…quite dangerous. But she has to try, right? For the Chang family, no matter what Twelfth Brother has promised.

But the next day, Lan Fan lifts her bodily before she can activate her alkahestry array. She’s there when Mei sends Xiao-Mei sneaking toward Ling Yao in the dark. Her fingers wrap around Mei’s wrist before she can pickpocket Ling Yao in the middle of a crowd.

“If you keep on doing this, the young master will get angry.”

“I don’t care,” Mei says. “I have to try!”

Her chances get fewer and fewer, until she weasels her way into the emperor’s audience along with Ling Yao, determined to turn the story in her favor, but Ling Yao is always one step ahead. The emperor declares Twelfth Brother the heir of Xing, and when she’s finally out of everyone’s sight, Mei weeps.

“Please don’t cry,” says Lan Fan’s voice.

Mei looks up through teary eyes. “I was so close!” she wails. “Is he going to keep his promise?”

“The young master always keeps his promises. He’s going to unify Xing.”

“Unify Xing! He’ll never…”

“He can!” Lan Fan says fiercely. “You don’t know him. Ling Yao can do anything!”

Mei has never heard Lan Fan raise her voice like that. She blinks at the older girl’s flushed cheeks and bright eyes, and realizes: the new crown prince’s bodyguard is in love with him.

-

Ling Yao wants the clans to set aside their differences, but it’s not that easy. Competition is built into their bones, their rituals, their bedtime stories. They have been at subtle, backstabbing war for a thousand years, and Ling Yao knows this. He has to.

But that’s the crown prince’s problem, Mei decides. In the fragrant, aristocratic wood and rice-paper buildings of her ancestral compound, Mei writes to Alphonse Elric — brave, clever, tall Alphonse — inviting him to stay. He writes back, accepting! Oh, and he has two chimeras with him, he adds. Whatever. May’s head is filled with dreams of handsome young men and love confessions.

He comes in the spring, dusty and travel-weary when the attendants open the front gates for him and announce his arrival. Mei bolts out the doors, shrieks, “Alphonse-sama!” and launches herself at him right there in the ornamental garden before the bulky men on either side of him can react.

He stumbles back, valises swaying, a big, broad smile on his face. “Mei! It’s good to see you!”

It turns out that chimeras eat a lot, and Mei starts spending a lot of time gazing at the sweep of Alphonse’s eyelashes and the angle of his cheekbones and the furrow of his brow as he pores over alkahestry scrolls. He’s a quick study, although he says the feeling of alkahestry is like learning to walk on ground that pitches beneath you.

The chimeras prove surprisingly useful around the compound, Alphonse continues to grasp ever more of their ancient arts, and Mei waits impatiently for the thunder of her heart and the heat in her blood and the urge to sing. She’s sure they’ll come. That’s what happens when adults are in love, right? That’s what Mama and the poets say. And Mei sees Alphonse every day.

Alone in the library one sunny day — Alphonse is with his chimera friends — Mei is deep in thought over the puzzle of her feelings for Alphonse when the very air hisses, “Mei Chang! Up here!”

Mei almost flings a dagger directly into the face looking down at her from the rafters, but it’s not an assassin or thief (well, not one who means her harm), it’s Lan Fan.

The other girl drops soundlessly to the ground, and Mei squeals, dropping the knife to throw both arms around the bodyguard, and Lan Fan huffs a satisfying oof.

Lan Fan hugs her back. “The crown prince sends his regards.”

That Ling Yao. “Did he send you to break into my house?”

To Mei’s surprise, Lan Fan turns tomato-red. “N-no. I was passing by, and…I just wanted to see how you were doing.” She adds, “I’m on my way to my grandfather’s grave for the Festival of Ancestors.”

And so she broke in like a thief, instead of using the front gates like a normal person. But—

“Your grandfather? The one who fought Wrath?”

And Lan Fan, who wasn’t afraid to cleave her own bones apart in a foreign land, tightens her face like a lost young child. She nods.

“Wait here,” exclaims Mei, and scrambles into the storage room. When she comes out, she’s bearing a basket of the year’s best oranges, sticks of expensive incense, and a bottle of particularly fine wine. She shoves the items into Lan Fan’s arms.

“What are these for?” Lan Fan asks

“Offerings for your grandfather. From me. From the Chang clan. If — if he’ll take them.”

Lan Fan drops to her knee. “Mei Chang,” she says, bowing her head, “On behalf of my family, I will not forget this kindness.”

“Get up, what are you doing?” Mei asks in horror. “No, wait. Sit down!” And Mei pushes the unresisting bodyguard into Alphonse’s seat, the only Amestrian-style chair in a compound filled with floor cushions and low tables. Mei plops down at her feet and commands Lan Fan to tell her all about the musty capital with its obsequious courtiers and her new duties now that Ling Yao is crown prince.

Lan Fan stays through three pots of tea, but her eyes flicker toward the horizon when the shadows begin to lengthen and the air starts to cool. She slides to her feet and says she has a long way yet to go.

-

Alphonse has almost caught up to Mei in alkahestry by the next Festival of Ancestors. Mei is thrilled with her Amestrian pupil’s success, and declares that she herself will study alchemy.

She is scowling at one of the books Alphonse has lent her, feeling a headache start to come on, when an attendant enters her room and says softly, “Miss, the crown prince’s bodyguard is here. Shall I tell her to go?”

Mei jumps up. Lan Fan is indeed standing in the garden on the stone footpath, and when Mei barrels straight into her, she doesn’t budge an inch.

“Hello, Mei Chang,” she says, eyes glinting.

Mei peers at her, unperturbed. “Did you get shorter?”

“You got taller. If you keep growing like that you’ll soon be the tallest person in Xing.”

“Well, Alphonse Elric is here.”

Lan Fan’s eyes flicker, but Mei is already tugging at her hand. “Come in, I’ll introduce you to everyone!”

“They don’t like me,” Lan Fan says doubtfully. “Because of Ling Yao.”

Mei frowns, even more fiercely than at the alchemy book. “I’m the one who’s angriest about Twelfth Brother becoming crown prince, and besides, I outrank everyone, and if I say it’s fine, then it’ll be fine.”

Lan Fan twists her face and hesitates.

Mei relents. “Okay, let’s spar. Outside. If you win, you can leave like last time, but if I win, you have to say hello. And I’m not going to lose!”

“Be careful what you ask for, Seventeenth Princess!” And then she’s rushing at Mei with her fists up.

It’s what Mei wants. With a great leaping kick she sends her foot toward the other girl’s head, but Lan Fan is still too fast for her. She jerks Mei by the ankle, and Mei has to twist in the air to avoid smashing her skull on the flagstones. Her whole body hits the ground with a breath-stealing thump and she frantically rolls away, scrambling upright into the peonies.

Mei is barely ready to parry Lan Fan’s punches. Then Mei gets a lucky kick in, and Lan Fan stumbles back, spinning gracefully to avoid crushing the flowers under her feet. Mei takes the opportunity to whip up an alkahestry array and flings her knives onto it, but Lan Fan’s arm moves in a blur, and her knives come clattering down.

Lan Fan’s leg comes sweeping out of nowhere. Mei flips on her hands, but she’s too late to avoid the kick that throws her into the thorny rose bushes.

Lan Fan is grinning as Mei extricates herself from the roses, their thorns biting painfully over her skin. “You’re good,” Lan Fan says, and a warm thrill runs through Mei. “Let’s go again? I’ve never fought an alkahestry user hand-to-hand before.”

“You bet!”

This time Mei gets to activate her array, and it’s Lan Fan who goes flying, straight into the lily pond.

Mei runs over as Lan Fan heaves herself out on her hands and knees. “Good block,” she grunts, shedding pond water, and Mei beams. Lan Fan looks over her shoulder at the broken lilies, then at the crushed roses nearby. “Maybe we should call it a draw.”

“You’re just scared of me,” Mei declares cheerfully, and before she knows it, she’s getting dunked in the lily pond, too.

They lie down on the pavilion to dry under the blue sky and fluffy clouds, and Mei hasn’t felt so content in a long time. Later, she loads Lan Fan with offerings before the other girl leaves at sundown, and waves and waves until Lan Fan has become a black speck on the horizon.

-

Alphonse’s chimera friends, traipsing around in the north of Xing, discover some ancient passages about suppressing fusional transformations. It’s all very vague, but Alphonse takes a look and gets very excited. It’s time to leave, he says. He’s ready to bring what he’s learned back to Amestris, and he wants to consult other alchemists about the chimeras. And, he adds, he has a new niece he’d like to meet.

Alphonse gives her a hug before he goes. “Thank you so much for these two years, Mei. I’ll miss you.”

Mei's hands grip each other. Is she just going to let him go like this? “Alphonse-sama, actually — actually, I…”

He waits patiently. Mei takes a deep breath and screws her eyes shut.

“I’ll miss you too!” she bursts out, and hugs him again. “Sheesh, leaving like this. You’d better write!”

Alphonse laughs, patting her on the top of her head, which isn’t as easy for him as when she only came up to his waist. “You’re a good friend, Mei! Of course I’ll write.”

He picks up his luggage and she walks him out of the garden, fervently wishing him well.

-

When Ling Yao becomes emperor, he quickly scrapes together allegiance from many clans, but the largest — Wu, Xiao, and Song — remain. They resent Ling Yao and don’t accept that his grand vision is not a ploy to keep power in the Yao family for generations to come. No matter how much Ling Yao insists that Song will become Yao once they accept him.

Ling Yao calls Mei to the capitol after he hears that the opposing faction has applied to neighboring countries for help and legitimacy, and appoints her liaison to Amestris, making it her problem.

“Only because you protected the Chang family,” Mei says, grudgingly accepting her new position.

“I’m still protecting you,” Ling Yao retorts. “And you’re Yao now.”

So Mei says goodbye to the Chang village and moves to the capitol. The capitol is as dusty and musty as Lan Fan had said.