Wei Lingsheng set down his brush. A few drops of ink fell onto the paper below, spreading in silence. His mind was elsewhere. Song Huiya's words from that morning still turned in his ears, cold and deliberate.
He sifted through his memories the way a man searches a ransacked room, looking for proof of what was real and what was performance. Which moments had she manufactured? Which kindnesses had been calculated?
Life before Bu Liu Mountain felt like someone else's story. It surfaced only in fragments, most of it worn down by time. His family had broken apart early. He had finally found shelter, and then his teacher died, and the world pushed him back onto the road.
His past was not something he could look at directly. But when he forced himself to sort through what remained, most of it had Song Huiya in it.
For the first six weeks after arriving at Bu Liu Mountain, he was waking from nightmares regularly. He slept only when exhaustion overtook him in the afternoons. At night he carried a lamp to the library and read until dawn.
One night it rained hard. Mountain rain there came with a kind of violence, the kind that bends trees and makes the air feel pressurized. The Book Pavilion shuddered in it. Wind forced itself under every door and through every window joint.
Wei Lingsheng had forgotten his umbrella. He sat at the desk in his damp clothes, turning pages without reading them.
When the rain finally let up, he blew out the candle and walked outside.
Song Huiya was standing at the bottom of the steps.
She had on worn straw sandals, nearly gone at the soles. Her clothes were mostly soaked through. She held a new cluster of oilpaper umbrellas in her hand. Water dripped from the edges, and the shallow puddle at her feet told him she had been waiting there a long time.
She was watching the last of the clouds break apart and the sky begin to lighten. She rose on her toes, preparing to leave. Then she heard him and turned her head.
"Junior Brother," she said simply. "You're here."
Wei Lingsheng glanced at her once. He didn't know how long she had stood outside in that rain. He frowned, unable to accept it, and walked past her without a word.
When he reached his courtyard, the water tank that had been half-empty was full. There was a thick sleeping mat laid out in his room. His breakfast had already been set on the table.
The storm that night had come fast, and the candle would have been barely visible from the mountain paths. She must have come before the rain let up.
Wei Lingsheng kept that to himself. But something in him had settled.
He came to believe, stubbornly, that his Senior Sister treated him well.
Whatever he mentioned offhandedly, she remembered. Even when their teacher forbade it, she slipped down the mountain on her own to find books for him. The paths were rough and steep, so she always carried the water from the courtyard tank herself.
When the seasons changed, clothes and warm soup arrived at his room before he thought to ask.
She rarely said much about it. She mostly just did things. At the time, Wei Lingsheng found it excessive, even irritating, the way it echoed the servants in his old household, all lowered eyes and swallowed words and bowed compliance. He thought less of it than he should have.
Then the picture shifted.
Two years after entering the mountain, his teacher returned from the capital with several boxes of belongings from his old home. Not long after, his father's former soldiers arrived, bringing property with them.
It all piled up in his room, left where it landed.
Song Huiya came by and was wide-eyed. She moved carefully through it all, touching things, turning them over. She picked up a hollow carved pen holder and looked at it from different angles.
"Junior Brother," she said, "what is this?"
She clearly couldn't put it down. Wei Lingsheng told her to keep it.
She startled, then hesitated. "Isn't this too much?"
He hated that about her, the way she'd bend toward wanting something and then talk herself out of it before she even reached for it, as if she had no spine in her for desire. When he saw her moving to set it back down, something in him went sharp with impatience, and he said louder than he meant to: "It's yours. Take it."
She froze. Then she smiled, stiffly, and accepted it with both hands and a quiet thank you.
"I'll give you something too," she said. "In the future."
She gave him a folding fan later, then a bamboo flute, then a few small things he half-noticed and set aside. When the library burned, all of it turned to ash.
He had given her something once. He couldn't remember what now. But she had kept it carefully, never took it out, stored it somewhere safe. After Bu Liu Mountain fell, some of her things were lost and some of what remained were only the items practical enough to carry on the road.
If all of it had been false, what had she been after?
Wealth? Was that it?
He turned every memory over and examined it. He could not find the seam where the performance began.
Wei Lingsheng said her name under his breath.
--
That year on Guanghan Mountain. Hu bandits in front, pursuers behind. Song Huiya told him to wait in the temple and went out alone. She came back dying.
She was wearing dark clothing. The blood didn't show.
Wei Lingsheng moved toward her to check her wounds. She pushed him away.
She found a corner and sat down. She looked at his face, then smiled, low and easy.
"Talk to me, Junior Brother," she said. "I'm afraid I'll fall asleep if you stop."
He wanted to tell her to sleep. He was afraid she wouldn't wake up. He sat pressed close against her side and talked. He scraped for anything to say, small things, inconsequential things, and when those ran out he dredged up ridiculous rumors he'd heard on the streets of the capital.
She kept her eyes shut and answered him now and then.
He didn't look at her. He just kept talking until his throat was raw and the sky had gone fully dark. Then she went quiet. She had finally fallen asleep, and her weight shifted against him.
He sat very still and listened. Two breathing sounds, one heavier, one thin. His heart barely steadied.
He took her hand. Her skin was cold all the way through, cold and clammy, like iron left out in winter. He didn't let go.
Wind moved outside the window. The moon climbed. A faint glow appeared in the mountains at a distance.
He called her name twice. No response.
He stood, shifted her weight onto his back, and carried her down the mountain.
The path was unstable and dark. He felt his way with each step. He was careful, and he still fell. On the way down, he only thought of protecting her. A branch tore open his arm. He got up, found his direction, and kept walking.
"Senior Sister."
He called without sound. He just needed something back.
She stirred. Barely. Then, in a dazed voice: "Wei Lingsheng."
The first time she had ever used his name.
He stopped. His whole body shook.
"Senior Sister?"
He called louder: "Senior Sister!"
She seemed to surface. She opened her eyes. Her breath was slow and warm against his ear.
"Junior Brother," she said.
She lifted her hand and touched his face. She felt the blood at the corner of his mouth. She felt him trembling.
"Don't be afraid," she said gently.
How could any of that be false?
How.
Wei Lingsheng felt the pressure behind his sternum turn sharp. He had believed she loved him. And now she stood in front of him and said: forget it. Don't take it seriously.
She was the one who forgot.
She was the one who had decided to lie to herself.
--
The half-open window swung wide. Song Huiya appeared in the frame with a smile, leaning her arms on the sill.
"My good Junior Brother," she said, warm and soft.
Wei Lingsheng's eyes went hot before he could stop it. He spoke before he could stop that either.
"Senior Sister. I didn't want you to go to Wumingya. That was your decision. You went for Amian."
She blinked. Then, tentatively: "Junior Brother?"
He caught himself. His wrists ached. He had been gripping the brush without knowing it. He set it down and looked away.
Song Huiya paused, then shifted her tone.
"Panping City," she said. "Do you know the situation there?"
"Yes."
Before she could continue, he said: "I do care. But the corruption in Panping runs deep. The ones who destroyed homes and tore families apart were not the gentry. This will not be simple to uproot."
"How long will it take?" She watched him with something that was not quite calculation but not quite warmth either. "The people need to survive the winter. Can you have them fed and clothed by spring?"
He looked at her. He took a moment.
"Half a month."
She lit up. "That fast? You continue to impress me, Junior Brother."
It hit him in the chest in several directions at once. He had a thousand things ready to say. He swallowed all of them and smiled.
"Wait for me, Senior Sister."
Her expression softened entirely. She leaned closer.
"Of course. I'll stay a few more days in Panping and catch up with you." She straightened. "My apprentice is still at the inn. I'll go collect her first."
--
Song Huiya came out through the corridor gate and found Liang Xi standing beside the covered carriage with a blade on her back and the look of someone enduring a long insult.
Yan Heyi stood nearby, hands tucked in her sleeves, spine rigid. She was still in her light fur coat, but whatever ease she'd carried when they first met had drained out of her. Every muscle looked braced.
Song Huiya could tell there had just been an argument. She walked over.
"What happened?"
Liang Xi stared into the middle distance. "I've decided to go ahead."
"Go ahead where?"
"To find Xie Zhongchu. Scout the situation. You two come later." A pause. "Don't take too long."
Song Huiya looked at Yan Heyi.
Yan Heyi stroked the horse's neck with the expression of someone who had long given up. "She got bored during her nap and decided Panping wasn't interesting enough on its own. Now she needs to manufacture something to do."
Song Huiya mouthed silently: Is she always like this?
Yan Heyi closed her eyes, exhaled, and nodded twice, firmly.
Nearby, Liang Xi was working something out in her own head. "If there comes a day when justice in this world carries my name, and someone chooses to die for it, for my reputation alone... then I..."
She paused. She was clearly not built for grand declarations.
After a moment, she said practically: "I'll buy them a very fine coffin. Give them a proper burial."
Song Huiya stared at her.
A noble ambition. Though the man in question wasn't dead yet.
"My money," Yan Heyi said immediately, in a high flat voice.
"Because I have none," Liang Xi agreed, without embarrassment.
Yan Heyi breathed in slowly through her nose, let it out, and spoke to herself with great deliberateness: "Fine. Let it go. She's young. The road ahead is long."
She turned her horse around, not waiting to see if Liang Xi followed, and cracked the whip.
"Let's move."