#rkivees

Jiang Cheng was the leader of a Great Sect. He didn’t need anything from Lan Wangji that he couldn’t get elsewhere, and on top of that they didn’t much like each other. And yet here he was, asking Lan Wangji to come to the Lotus Pier, to come quickly, and to tell no one where he was going.

One might suspect some sort of trap, except – Lan Wangji really did know Jiang Cheng, whether his handwriting or the careless way he put his words, and he thought that the letter was sincere.

He was being asked for something, yes, but he had no idea what.

So he went.

He hadn’t gone more than a few dozen li before he realized that he had company.

“You were not invited,” he told Lan Sizhui and Lan Jingyi, both of them blinked at him as if they’d never done anything wrong in their lives and that he was clearly just temporarily mistaken about the nature of their endeavor. The fact that he was perfectly well aware that they weren’t allowed out of the Cloud Recesses without appropriate supervision, which they currently lacked, was omitted out of courtesy. “You should go back.”

“Hanguang-jun is very generous with his time,” Lan Jingyi said, honey-sweet. “Offering to escort us back and all.”

Lan Wangji sighed and turned his face towards the Lotus Pier. Jiang Cheng had spoken of haste and secrecy – he would need to prioritize one over the other, as returning to the Cloud Recesses now would mean that he’d get drawn in with questions of punishment of the two disobedient children behind him and other sect matters, and likely not be able to set out until well into the next day, if that.

And he was, by this point, extremely curious.

“Very well,” he finally said, and ignored the way the two of them hugged each other in glee. “You may accompany me. Your punishment will be doubled upon our return.”

They did not seem particularly concerned by that.

It took some time to reach the Lotus Pier from the Cloud Recesses, even when flying on a sword, and with two juniors along it took even longer than he had expected he would need. Still, he assured himself that Jiang Cheng would not take the time to write to him – to him – without accounting for the possibility of such delays; if the matter was truly urgent, then surely he would not have taken the time to write…

Lan Wangji found, to his surprise, that he was worried.

Not that he liked Jiang Cheng any more than he had the day before, which was very little – whatever camaraderie they had had in their youth or during the war had frozen over by the time he had emerged from his ‘seclusion’, with him having stewed for three years over Jiang Cheng’s actions against Wei Wuxian and Jiang Cheng seemingly unreasonably angry at him in return. His anger had faded a little when he’d realized that Jiang Cheng was angry for the same reason he was – failure to be there in connection to Wei Wuxian – but their relationship, such as it was, had never recovered.

And yet he was worried.

When he was only a half-day’s ride away from the Lotus Pier, he received an urgent message from home: disaster at Lanling Jin, it said, someone has kidnapped Chief Cultivator Jin’s wife. Requesting your presence urgently.

He ignored the message.

If his relationship with Jiang Cheng was cool then his relationship with Lanling Jin was positively icy: he would not set foot in the place where they had conspired to ostracize and murder Wei Wuxian.

He wondered if this was related to what Jiang Cheng had written to him.

When he arrived, landing easily with the juniors performing adequate but not stellar dismounts behind him, he saw a woman standing on the pier that suggested to him that that was in fact the case. That he had not gone to Koi Tower in years did not mean that he had not seen Sect Leader Jin’s wife, Qin Su, before, and this was very evidently her – the face and body were unmistakable, even if she had chosen to dress in the colors of Yunmeng Jiang, and in the clothing of the male disciples to boot.

Why would Jiang Cheng bring her here? Why would Chief Cultivator Jin Guangyao believe that she had been taken by force? 

Why had Jiang Cheng requested Lan Wangji’s presence, of all people? 

Qin Su turned when she heard them arrive. She was not wearing a sheer veil the way she so often did, he noted: her face was just as he remembered it, with a pointy chin and a small nose and wide eyes, unmistakable.

But her expression…

A broad smile broke out on her face the second she saw them – saw him – and she raised her hand in a jaunty, careless wave that was nothing like what he remembered of that reserved and gentle woman. “Lan Zhan!” she called, bellowing happily at the top of her lungs. “Lan Zhan, Lan Zhan, over here!”

Oh, Lan Wangji thought, abruptly off balance. Oh, that’s why he wrote.