Everything but cold fire

Posted originally on the Archive of Our Own at http://archiveofourown.org/works/43277332.

Rating: Explicit
Archive Warning: Choose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Category: M/M
Fandom: 山河令 | Word of Honor (TV 2021)
Relationship: Xie Wang/Ye Baiyi
Character: Zhang Chengling, Gao Xiaolian, Wen Kexing, Zhou Zishu, Du Pu Sa
(Word of Honor)
Additional Tags: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Ursula K Le Guin Verse, Major Original
Character(s), Xie adopts a child, And lives that simple farm life, Second
Chances, Major Character Injury, A child is injured off screen, but she's
ok, Trauma, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, not that dark
really
Language: English
Collections: Ye Baiyi Week 2022
Stats: Published: 2022-11-26 Updated: 2023-01-16 Chapters: 3/4 Words:
19124

Everything but cold fire

by Grizmelder

Summary

"You must hurry, Da Wang," Gao Xiaolian insists.

Her hair is sticking to her face at the temples and her cloak has been turned back over her
shoulders where she's run from the big house.

She's run to fetch Xie Wang for an injured child.

They have pulled her out of the last snow clinging to the mountainside. Just like Ye Baiyi
pulled Xie from the snow, all those years ago.

--

In which Ye Baiyi and Xie Wang both take a solid swing at a new life that's much narrower
in scope than they're used to, and challenging in ways they weren't prepared for.
 Chapter 1
Chapter Notes

I read Ursula K Le Guin's "Tehanu" recently and it's been stuck in my back tooth,
existentially speaking, ever since.

Here is a story very much inspired by it, but with Xie Wang and Ye Baiyi in the roles
of Tenar and Ged.

See the end of the chapter for more notes

"You must hurry, Da Wang," Gao Xiaolian insists. Her hair is sticking to her face at the temples
and her cloak has been turned back over her shoulders where she's run from the big house. It's two
li over, past the copse of trees, across the square and all the way down the narrow dead-end street
where Xie Wang keeps house. His little home is flakey and hanging on like a loose thread where
the village becomes a scrubby field that's not even suitable for growing things.

She's run to fetch him for an injured child, it turns out.

Whether someone breaks a leg or breaks out in a fever, Xie Wang goes to them sedately. He will
not be chivvied for anything less than mortal peril. He's found that patients absorb his confidence
and more calmly accept healing that way, and it suits his temperament.

Xiaolian is not liable to chivvy him unnecessarily, though. She has children of her own these days
and she's the sort of practical mother that quickly learned when to fuss over a cough or cold and
when not to. And here she is, clinging to Xie Wang's stout whitewashed doorframe, hurrying him.

So, without even picking up his cloak before heading out into the thin grey morning, Xie Wang
runs. The dregs of winter have held enough that he doesn't mind the burn in his lungs and kindling
warmth in his legs. He hates the cold.

Even holding up the skirts of his robe in one hand and dragging the heavy leather case full of vials
and bits of clean cloth and cutting implements in the other he's still faster than Xiaolian. She huffs
along behind him, fighting her flapping, fur-lined cloak.

His spiritual energy is a little depleted from helping one of the farm hands the previous day with an
infected cut on his hand, and he hopes he has enough.

Chengling is outside the house when they arrive, standing across the door with his sword in his
arms, folded across his chest. Trying to look big, Xie Wang thinks, but he's not sure as to the why.

Xiaolian has ducked around her husband with a swift squeeze of his arm. Five sharp pricks of
worry left behind in his sleeve and matched by the shape of his mouth. Xie Wang wonders.

Two of the elder village women - Chunhua with the bad arthritis in her hands and her younger
sister Liqui, spryer and with less steel in her hair - are fretting around a cot in the main receiving
room. The whole place smells of herbs and woodsmoke and hot clean water already. They've
blocked up all the windows and draped every surface in thick upholstery and furs, so much that it's
trapping the humidity, the ceramics and lacquer all beaded with moisture on the shelves, the beams
getting dark and damp above them.

Xie Wang begins to think that perhaps the sweat on Xiaolian's temple wasn't from running.

"Laoshi, she's still so cold," Chunhua says. She's cradling a smaller hand in her own, swollen
knuckles, rubbing the red raw ends of fingers and circling a delicate, purple-bruised wrist. The
nails on the little hand are dark with blood, filthy, under the beds where it's hard to clean. Her voice
is edged with panic, and Xie prickles with it. People who cannot be calm and methodical have no
place in a healing room.

"How long was she in the snow?" Xie Wang asks, getting to his knees by the cot and scattering the
ladies and their blankets like a plush pile of pillows.

"All night, we think," Xiaolian says. She's brought more hot water and clean linens, the steam
curling her hair as it rises. "Chengling brought her down from half way up the mountain a shichen
ago, perhaps."

Instead of taking their word for it, Xie Wang turns his attention to the child. He gets a hand into the
tight wrapped blankets, worming under the furs, and to her pulse, where it glugs slow in her throat.
She's white and waxy looking under her thick black unbound hair. Her skin is pale from the cold
but most of it his obscured by bruises so black they're like overripe plums, and her hair is matted
and dirty with what Xie Wang knows is dried blood.

He knows already that she's been beaten badly and left in the snow to die. Only seven or eight,
maybe older and just small for her age. She's got smudgy eyebrows and a delicate chin, under the
mess of split skin and bruises.

The snow up the mountain is still four or five feet deep in places and deeper in the drifts. It sticks
in his throat like a thorn, thinking of the blue-cold lonely places up high, until he's there, stuck
under the snow with her, frozen in place with stiff knees and red knuckles wrapped tight around
himself.

"We took off her wet clothes, Laoshi, but she's not warming up," Liqui is saying in a steady,
measured pace.

Xie Wang shakes himself. He goes for his belt and starts toeing off his shoes. The women freeze,
leaning back on their heels uncertainly. "Get her out of the blankets," he instructs, opening the
second layer of his robes. "If you have enough salt to spare, in an hour we'll make up some salt
water to bathe her hands and feet. Boil it then let it cool to just warm enough to hold your elbow
in."

They stutter back into action. They peel back the blankets like pulling layers off a leek until the
child is bare in the middle of the nest, shivering in just a snow-white cotton slip that's so clean it
must be borrowed.

Xie gets his hands under her armpits and hefts her, lolling and flopping, against his bare chest.
Then he climbs back into the blankets, wrapping first his robes around them both and then clumsily
pulling the leaves of fabric back in around them. He wriggles until her arms are comfortably up at
his neck, accessible. She's snuffling like an overgrown baby in the hollow of his shoulder but she
doesn't smell like a newborn. She smells of dead grass, iron and minerals.

He lets the old women wrap them up in a dumpling parcel and lies there. He tries to ignore the
discomfort of her knees in his groin and her elbow in his sternum, and her chill against his stomach
where it should be warm. His body flinches with each inhale at how wrong it is.
The steam in the room is cloying in his throat. It gets so hot underneath him that his robes stick to
his back with sweat and his hair clings to his neck. He's warmer than the others in the room, he
knows. Men run hotter. He hopes it's helping.

It helped, for him, after he was dug out. Not just the warmth but the safety of it. The smell of clean
pine amongst Ye Baiyi's grey threaded hair, up against his nose. Pine still helps, sometimes, when
he feels alone and blue-cold.

After half an hour, her pulse is stronger and more regular under Xie's fingers. He turns his attention
to her scalp, instead, running careful fingers through her hair until he finds the sticky heart of the
injury. The clotting was helped by the cold but now it's bleeding again as she warms up.

She shouldn't be sleeping for longer than necessary with a head injury, and that becomes the next
worry, laying like a dead weight against Xie Wang's breast. The old woman is kneeling next to the
bed, dozing with her chin on her chest. Instead of disturbing her, Xie wriggles and kicks his way
gradually free of the swaddling and sits up with the girl in his lap.

Xiaolian appears at his side, holding the child's head up to Xie's shoulder.

"She looks better already, Laoshi," she whispers.

"Will you hold her whilst I look at her head?" Xie Wang asks.

They maneuver her with only a little gracelessness. She is too big to be carried, really, especially by
two people as sleight as they are. Her limbs seem long and crane like, made for the water or for the
air. Xie wonders again how old she is.

"Tell me what happened, in more detail this time," he asks. Xiaolian consciously stops herself from
rocking the child so Xie can work, sifting through her matted hair to the injury.

"I think she belonged to the group of travelers we spotted on the ridge two weeks ago?" she begins.
Xie hums in recognition. They are far enough out of the way from any substantial town here that
bandits sometimes give them trouble. Every outsider is carefully monitored. They always watch
that ridge because it's the best way into the village. The only way in winter, really, with the
mountains at their back.

"They've been staying in the forest, in the little dell by the river where it's warmer. Chengling has
seen smoke early in the morning some days since they were first seen, and one of the ladies saw a
child at the edge of the forest four days ago."

"But she was found in the mountains?"

"At that end of the village," Xiaolian continues, softly so as not to wake the other two in the room.
"It's not too far a walk, but treacherous to make at night and nobody saw them cross in daytime."

"They've done an evil enough thing to risk making the journey, to hide the evidence," Xie spits.
"How did Chengling even find her?"

"One of the mountain streams had run dry, he was following it up to check whether something had
dammed it, or blocked it," she explains. "Without it, Uncle Feng's mill wasn't turning."

"She was in the water?" Xie swallows, thinking of that thin icy mountain stream.

"No, no Laoshi," Xiaolian glances down at the sprawled girl in her lap with her long red fingers
and bony feet. "I think that would have been the end of it, if she had been."
Xie Wang finishes with the head wound. It would have been bad enough to give the village ladies
trouble if he hadn't been here but it's not the worst he's seen since he left Ye Baiyi and started his
wandering. Which is long ago now. He's been settled here in the village for three years, almost,
and travelled ten years before that without really stopping. He’d walked until he got tired of it, only
pausing for a month, here and there, to help and then leave again before anyone got too used to
him. Before he outstayed his welcome.

"Have we checked she is theirs, these travelers?" he asks, instead of thinking about Ye Baiyi.

"Whose else could she be? They have been skulking around since this morning, as if they know she
is here," Xiaolian shudders and then shakes it off. What a thought, that these people would wait
around for another opportunity to finish the girl off.

Together they put her back on the cot. She looks more peaceful now that she's less red and angry at
her extremities and less dirty all over. Still grubby at the edges. Xiaolian seems to think the same,
because she sets to soaking the girl's hands in water.

"Will you stay with us here, until she wakes?" she asks. Her eyes shine with disdain for what's
happened in their quiet little corner of the world. Xie Wang grimaces. This sort of thing happens
everywhere. Gao Xiaolian obviously thought she was past all of it when she relocated here with
Chengling. They chose somewhere close enough to Siji Manor for comfort and far enough for it to
be their own. Small compared to what they knew before. But they were both disinterested in
responsibility these days.

Xie nods. "We shouldn't let her sleep much longer, with her head. I will try and wake her in a
moment."

He drinks two cups of tea. Chunhua wakes up and trudges home without waiting for more news -
it's clear the little girl is probably past the worst of it now. He finally puts aside his cup and shakes
the girl's shoulders.

When she opens her eyes they are a clear jade green.

"Xiao-meimei," Xie Wang breathes gently, tapping her hand through the blankets. Her eyes swim
and don't quite follow him as he drops to kneel next to the cot and look at her face. He takes her
head in his hands and turns her to look at him.

Her pupils sharpen up immediately and she yanks her head back out of his grip. She makes the
quietest little bleat of pain and struggles in her wrappings. He takes his hands back, and rests them
on the edge of the cot where she can see them.

"I'm a doctor, do you know what that means?" he asks.

She nods.

"Do you have a name?"

She frowns.

"I'm Xie Wang," he repeats. "What should I call you, Xiao-meimei?"

She watches him warily, soundless and grim. Her glare is piercing and alert now. He has no
worries, looking at her, that she'll sicken more. She'll recover, he hopes.

"How do you feel?" he tries again.

She feebly flops around under the blanket again, pulling her mouth into a cartoonish scowl.

"Shall I help you up?"

The girl makes an obvious sound of frustration and squirms again. Xie Wang sighs and gets an arm
around under her, lifting her up so she's sitting with her back against the high sides of the cot.

"Better?"

She's hunched over with her hands in her lap and her knees at crooked angles. She's looking down
at her hands like she forgot she had them.

Xie Wang reaches forward, takes one of them to check how warm it is, and is pleased that it seems
a much better temperature now. The girl, however, hates it. She tries to pull away, but ends up in a
crumpled heap against the cot, hands still a useless twiggy pile in the blankets.

The bottom falls out of Xie's stomach.

"Can you not feel them, little one?" he asks, using both hands now to massage her palm a little. He
sits forward urgently, pinching the thin skin on the back of her hand quite hard. She watches him
do it with mild interest.

Biting down on his own panic, he takes her hands one each in his own and pulls her upright against
her will. "Come on, let me see you properly," he chivvies. He doesn't like the sound of the false
cheer in his voice.

When he had been that cold and reheated again he remembers pins and needles, but he could still
feel. He didn't have any problem using his hands or moving around. Perhaps because she's so
small? She wasn't up there as long as he'd been buried in the snow, but he's a cultivator. That was
what saved him, he decided that long ago.

She scotches clumsily to the end of the cot, hands loose in his grip. Her feet hit the floor and her
toes don't move. She flexes them interestedly, struggles to get her knees under her. Xie pulls her
standing and catches her when she falls forward.

He can feel her shaking against him, all the way up through her shoulders. When she makes a little
angry whimper he doesn't know if it's pain or distress, he just holds her to him and she lets him.

"Don't worry Meimei," he says. "You'll be right as rain before you know it."

He doesn't know how he's going to do it, but he will, somehow.

Of course, the bigger question is who on earth will take her in. Who on earth would, with the threat
of her family coming back for her. Even if anyone in the village had the space and the extra food at
the sparse end of winter, nobody is brave enough.

Xie Wang has watched Chengling prowling about for the past four days, obviously tangling
himself up over the village's safety. They haven't let the little girl outside for fear that someone
comes for her.

Xie has spent the time with her indoors instead, using too much firewood to keep her warm.
Xiaolian feeds her as much as they can force down and Xie Wang subjects her to acupuncture and
massages until between them they finally get her shuffling around under own steam. She doesn't
talk beyond sounds. She still can't use her hands for much more than gripping a mug, and even then
they can only fill it half-full or the weight is too much for her to hold. Her walk is knock-kneed and
awkward. Her ankles often roll out from under her, so she trails around the furniture instead with
Xiaolian encouraging her brightly.

She has taken to Xiaolian, because who wouldn't, but after the initial mistrust of his needles and
prodding, it seems she likes Xie Wang best. He's mystified as to why - he's all sharp angles and
placid polite faces. But she pats at his braids until he lets her hold them in her limp fists. She
cuddles up to him in the evenings when she gets cold, like she remembers them being skin to skin
when she was at her coldest. The coldest she'll ever be, Xie hopes.

She watches him play his pipa with open wonder. After he's done she plays with his fingers, like
they're a mystery to her, and he supposes that his dexterity must seem quite magical to a traveling
girl with little experience of civilisation.

This afternoon they've been under a blanket in Xiaolian's parlour for two hours trying to pick her a
name, which she finds much less interesting than his music. Since she won't tell Xie if she had a
name before, he's decided to give her a new one and she seems to understand what he's doing. At
least she has been giving vaguely dismissive noises to all his suggestions so far and Xie thinks that
means she's just waiting to hear one she likes. He's too hot and getting frustrated at how fussy she's
being, but seeing her engage in conversation of some kind is too pleasing for him to stop.

"Fei Ling?" he suggests. She grunts again, nose crinkling up in distaste.

"No? I thought that was a good one." He sighs. "At this rate I will call you Stork forever and you
will have to like it."

She flinches against his side. When Xie looks down to see what the matter is, if she’s asking to get
up, he finds milky green eyes fixed on him. Confused? Definitely surprised.

Ah. He'd said forever and she knew what that meant, smart girl.

He'd not meant forever.

Then again, maybe he had. This little creature reborn in snow is his, if she's anyone’s.

“Měiqi?” He asks.

And for the first time she smiles, with her tiny sharp teeth in her round moon face. "Do you want to
come see my house, Meiqi?" he asks, slightly off kilter seeing it.

The next day she shuffles to Xie Wang's house, hiding in his skirts the whole way because it's the
longest walk outside she's had since her accident. She pats his stout doorframe and waits for him to
go in first. But she doesn't hesitate to follow him in.

It takes only a little time for her find her way around his much more sparse living arrangements.
She looks at his books with wide eyes and only touches them after she's told she can - such a good
girl. Too good and too nervous. She purloins all his furs and thickest throws and refuses to leave
him that evening, even when she gets so sleepy she's only propped up by the pyramid of blankets
she's wrapped around herself. Xie bundles her up into his own bed and they sleep cocooned
together until Xie wakes in the thin dawn, like he always does. It's probably for the best that she
doesn't get used to sleeping in with him. She's too old for it and he'll be grateful of the privacy if he
does take her in.

They say very little until Xie has made breakfast. She isn't a morning person it seems. Alongside
being mute she's all around quiet in the way she moves and attention she seeks, which suits him
fine. "Do you want to stay with me?" he asks her, as she drowsily spoons congee into her mouth
from a wooden bowl. She nods very assuredly, for someone so sleepy.

He brings her back to Xiaolian's that morning to get her things. Meiqi looks determined and
rumpled in yesterday's slept-in robes. "That's settled, then," Xiaolian laughs.

He's got plenty of space for her, even with all of the new little girl fare that the ladies of the village
have gifted her - trinkets and spare clothes in olive green and burnt ochre that look odd next to his
own black on black on grey.

They take a week or so to settle into a new normal. He gets used to cooking for one and a half and
quickly learns to wear less around the house. Meiqi's penchant for keeping the place tropically
warm will have to be gradually phased out next autumn, he thinks. Spring is coming thank
goodness, so his stores won't have to hold out too long against her assault.

In the daytime, she shadows Xie Wang around the village on his calls and refuses to let go of his
hand until they're inside again. She prefers when people come to them. In the evenings she sits
waiting for everyone to call on her, like a princess or a cloistered sage in her furs in front of the fire.
One at a time the aunties traipse through to braid her hair and play cards and stones with her.

He knows they have to go, because Meiqi is still so nervous just being outside and will remain so
whilst the awful people that caused her harm are still there, skulking nearby. The threat of them
hangs around like the smell of their campfire on the breeze, where it rises up from somewhere in
the thick of the forest every morning and every night. Chengling and the other village men
constantly talk about what they might do about it. They always decide they can do nothing. Xie
Wang tries not to let Meiqi think that he's bothered by them but a cold dread infests his dreams. He
is not used to living like this any more.

“You should take her to Siji manor,” Chengling suggests for the third time. The miscreants in the
forest have gone suspiciously quiet, but Xie Wang can see Chengling is nervous about it still. He
thinks it's a matter of time before they try something and Xie Wang suspects he's correct.

Since getting her name, Meiqi has cast off the grim look and open suspicion. Xie is loathe to
disrupt this progress. The emotional healing is going to take as long as the physical, he knows. She
still doesn't get on with the children, who sense that Meiqi is the subject of some bad thing that has
the adults flustered. Children can pick up on the undercurrents. Even if she could join in their
games, with her clumsy gate and limp hands, Meiqi isn't interested in boisterous play or big groups
of people.

“We aren’t needed at Siji manor,” Xie replies.

“But you are! Lao Wen sent me a letter just last week. He says that Zhou Zishu has been ill for the
last few months. They're worried about his meridians if it carries on,” Chengling says eagerly. "It
would be good for her to get a fresh start."

Meiqi is at the other end of the table attempting to shell the season's first, piddling little peas. It's
not going well, but Xiaolian is rescuing most of the casualties. Xie knows Meiqi is listening and
doesn't like all this talking about her, really. Just because she doesn't talk doesn't mean she's not
capable of conversation of her own kind.

"Lao Wen and Lord Zhou have plenty of healers they can call on," Xie says, meaning he doesn't
want their charity. He doesn't do well when he can't pull his weight, and he doubts that Zhou Zishu
is actually that sick. Wen Kexing fusses dreadfully over his husband's every stubbed toe and snotty
nose.
"None as close by," Chengling retorts.

Finally, in the face of Xiaolian's pleading look, Xie agrees to think about it.

In the end he delays two weeks.

At first he just pretends he has too much to finish off. There had been a storm bad enough to take
the roof off one of the houses two months back that left one of the teenagers with a broken
collarbone. The lightening storm - a skyful of purple wrath that they all watched with awe - set one
of the fields on fire. Xie hasn't yet restocked his burn ointment. Half of the villagers over fifty are
just shaking off the sort of cold that hangs around well past its welcome, coughing and rattling.
And all that was without the excitement Meiqi had brought with her.

No he is very busy.

But Lao Pei's broken collarbone is mostly mended now. Xiaolian sees him vault a fence to get into
the field and tells Xie all about it with relish.

He grimly digs his old oiled cloak and travel packs out of the back of the wardrobe. The staff he
used to walk with - half for defense and half for appearance of infirmity - has been propped in his
hall the whole time he's lived here. An illusion of capriciousness. As if he intended at some point
to leave, early in the morning without telling a soul. As if. He'd fallen in love with these people,
and with having a home, too fast and too hard to leave like that.

But then again he had done that to someone he loved, once.

The day he'd left Ye Baiyi he'd gone when the sun was still mellow and nectar-pink. Just a whisper
across the tall golden grasses, whipped in the breeze of that high-up place. He'd been buffeted so
hard by the wind coming off the sea that he almost lost grip of his meagre belongings. He'd stood,
mouth-open and breathed the salt-encrusted air deep into his lungs a last time and then left.

He'd missed the warmth of the azure waters and baked soil the moment he'd turned his back on it.

Now that he's made his mind up to leave, he knows that Ye Baiyi's house is where he'll end up. He
can't stay with Zhou Zishu and Wen Kexing. They'd drive him to commit some sort of grievous act
with their cooing and fussing over each other.

Ye Baiyi's little house is on the cliff just half a day's travel from Siji manor. There's no better place
for Meiqi to heal. Away from threats, Xie reasons with himself. Away from judgement. In wide
open spaces. In the spring, when Ye Baiyi will harvest radishes with his rough hands and make
light, thin broth over the fire outside. His hands, tanned now that he's come down from his
mountain and made a life for himself on his own terms - close enough and far enough away from
people to keep up his reputation for being an insufferable, mysterious, gluttonous, wise old fool.

Xie Wang looks at his empty bags every night and thinks of slipping out whilst Ye Baiyi was
asleep in that house. Only a thin sleep robe between Xie Wang's hands and his skin.
He doesn't pack. Meiqi won't ask questions, after all. When they leave, she won't have to choose
what to take, but Xie will. He's got a modest medical library and a stocked kitchen and a plethora
of small items he's accepted as thank-yous for his help. Who knows what will become of it if he's
not here.

He wakes one morning before dawn with a familiar feeling of unease and the urge to flee.

The gate to the nearby field creaks open. Clinks closed. Xie Wang peers at the shutters, but it's
dark enough outside that it can't be the boys that wake up early to take the sheep around the
mountain to graze.

The fear beating through Xie Wang's veins solidifies into a cold lump in his belly.

He fights out of bed and shakes himself awake.

Habit takes him across the living space to the dirt floor of the entryway with silent steps. He eases
the bolt down into place on the front door just as the shutters next to it rattle. The door judders in
its frame but holds. He makes himself breathe slow and quiet through his mouth. His dusty bare
feet make no noise as he backs away, cursing this trusting town where nobody locks their doors.

He's been here too long, for their ways to rub off on him like this. He was born and raised to be
untrusting. How did he lose that habit but remember how to hold a knife?

A knife would do him well, right now, but the back door is still unlocked. He flies through the
small kitchen to the pantry door which leads straight out through the cold storage to the back
garden where he grows his herbs. He slams the lock closed too loudly. At least the shutters on this
side of the house are still shut tight against winter, stretched with linen and pressed permanently
closed.

He presses his forehead against the solid wood door. He can't hear well over the blood pounding in
his ears but he thinks it's not just one person. It's a group of people he can hear stealing through his
garden. He's certain it's the group that abandoned Meiqi. And why would they come back, if not to
finish the job?

Someone pushes the kitchen door back hard in its frame, it knocks hard against the hinges and
startles him. He leaps back. One person, two, maybe even three he can take with just his bare
hands and the element of surprise.

Any more, and he doesn't trust his rusty instincts. He sneaks back into the heart of the house.

Meiqi is asleep in the office next to Xie's room, bundled up and pleased with the small comforts of
a sagging rope bed that Xiaolian has lent them. It's a dead end room with no windows. Xie creeps
in to check she's asleep, not even pausing to press a hand to her head or tickle a foot or put a hand
out to feel her warm breath against his palms.

Instead he takes one his surgical knives from the top shelf where he's hidden them. He wraps the
other hand up in thick linen bandages and plants his feet in front of Meiqi's door. For a minute he
concentrates on slowing his breathing so that he can hear the other background noises of the house.

Gradually he starts to hear them; the sound of Meiqi breathing, the knocking of a fence post loose
in its hole, a scuffling noise like there are mice under the floorboards. The scratching of metal. It
sounds, to Xie's practiced ears, like someone sticking pins into the lock on the kitchen door.

A twist of nausea and panic hits him as the scratching increases. Meiqi trusts him with the small
hurts of brushing her hair and the enormous responsibility, one that she understood too well for
someone her age, to not to let her go hungry.

He grips the knife until his knuckles twinge painfully. They won't hurt her again.

The twang of the lock giving up focuses his mind. The first black shape that comes into the room
gets a knee to his solar plexus and an elbow to the back of his head. The crack that zings up Xie
Wang's arm is loosely familiar, but the pain isn't something he's used to any more. He shakes his
arm out and almost takes a hit from the next man that comes around the corner.
Blocking with his knife hand coincidentally ends well - the sharp edge meets the bone of his
attacker's wrist and he cries out, twists back.

Xie follows instinctively, kicking a knee, collapsing him to the floor like a heavy sack.

They're all big men. Xie is still sleight and delicate in appearances, despite the grey coming at his
temples and the fine lines at his eyes.

The next is the biggest of all. His grip around Xie's wrist is hard to shake. Before the panic can set
in, Xie twists in the right way to make the man let go rather than risk his own elbow.

At a sound from the man on the floor Xie stamps down in vaguely the right direction and hears
another groan in response. But that gives the big one a chance to advance again, and there's more
behind him. Two? Maybe two more.

Xie backs up to give himself space.

His skill is only useful if he can control the engagement. The moment a bigger person gets their
hands on him it gets dangerous.

Perhaps, he wonders, seeing three men advance and the man he cut getting back up, it's time to
make some noise. He hopes Meiqi has the sense to stay in her room.

He slams the table out of the way to give them room to work and it crashes against the back wall.
The tea set on it crashes to pieces. He's starting to regret locking the front door out onto the street.
Just a few shouts out there would rouse half the village.

The men don't talk, they advance as one.

Xie's wrapped hand hides his shaking. He doesn't put himself in front of Meiqi's door this time, but
he does shout "Stay where you are!". It's for her as well as for them. They, of course, ignore it.

One of the brutes spits on his floor.

He hits that one first. Not quite hard enough to send him down, but enough to send him clattering
into a screen that falls over with a thud into the dresser next to it.

Good.

The next one gets a hand around Xie's upper arm and his friend rushes in.

Xie struggles. He shouts at them not to touch him. They're speaking in their own dialect, pulling
him about and slapping him across the face like he's a maiden they're shaking some sense into. He
lets them do it a little bit.

The bigger one twists the knife out of his hand and Xie steadies himself suddenly, catches the
naked blade on his bare foot with a prayer and flicks it up at the pair of them. They flinch back at
the glint of metal and he takes the chance.

The bigger man takes a lot of strength to throw, but Xie just about manages it, huffing the hair out
of his face as he slams the man down onto the floor. The brute grunts in surprise and half rolls
away, but not fast enough to get away from Xie's foot meeting his diaphragm so hard he wheezes
and coughs.

Two of them are still up and Xie is running on adrenalin. It's making his arms shake, his limbs
 numb. His elbow is still ringing with pain and his mouth feels swollen from where he was slapped.

The sharp punch to his cheek lands in the same place and staggers him.

There's a muffled squeal from Meiqi's room.

He knows they've heard it. They pause. One of them drags him upright by his loose collars and
leers at him - rough beard and haggard face and brown teeth. He's growling something in that
jagged tongue of his, looking down the length of Xie thoughtfully. The other one laughs.

Xie's blood runs cold and he fights again, struggling and pushing. The knife is across the other side
of the room, and the man he'd thrown is back up on his knees and he's getting his breath back.

Someone shouts outside and everyone freezes. Doors are opening over the street, people
conferring. "Laoshi?" comes the soft voice of his neighbour. Yuanfei is a young woman, bold. He's
not surprised it's her.

"Get Chengling!" Xie yells quickly, before the man holding him spits again and heaves, throwing
him hard. He falls ok, just a slight hit to his knee, but he's not up again fast enough. The three of
them are off, dragging their woozy conspirators with them out the pantry door and away across the
fields.

"Laoshi!"

Chengling is at the front door, now, banging hard against it. He gives up before Xie can get there
and he's coming in the back door by the time Xie gets it open. The street pours in, staffs raised and
lanterns illuminating the wreckage of his home.

He's very tired, now. The hit to his face made the inside of his mouth bleed and his ears are still
ringing. He can't answer their questions, but points them all over the fields. They're back in a few
moments. They tell him that the group of menaces are gone, already back in the safety of the forest.

He stumbles to Meiqi's door. She's quivering under the blankets, blank eyes looking at the ceiling,
but she's there and they didn't get to her. She didn't have to see their faces or watch anyone get hurt.
He drags her into his lap and presses her face to his throat.

Chengling stands in the doorway and turns everyone away gently.

The whole village puts his living room to rights whilst Chengling stands guard, waiting there
quietly until the sun rises.

Chapter End Notes

I hope you enjoyed this first chapter!

I am currently about 40k words into my challenge for National Novel Writing Month
so I'm posting this fic before I finished writing it! Which is rather out of character for
me, but I couldn't resist uploading something for my fave crusty immortal's Special
Week.

Will update ASAP with the next installment, which is finished. And may even include
Ye Baiyi? Shocker.
 Chapter 2
Chapter Summary

At the house on the hill.

Chapter Notes

See the end of the chapter for notes

There is great debate about how they should leave and when.

Xie Wang thinks there are bigger problems. Chiefly, that he cannot carry Meiqi on his back the
whole way to Siji Manor and currently she refuses to even leave the four walls of their house. Not
for bribery, not for affection. Not even for the bright sunshine that's burst out from behind winter
clouds, bringing fresh green breezes and blossom smells with it to bathe the village in spring.

Meiqi is using her muteness as a weapon. She's selectively deaf to the concept of going outside, let
alone a trip, and totally dumb when it comes to any conversation topic other than her breakfast,
lunch and dinner. It's sending Xie Wang frantic.

They have waited two days already, and he's afraid that the villains in the forest will try again. He's
not really slept since it happened, though, which doesn't help. If Meiqi had been less intractable,
they'd have been staying with Chengling and Xiaolian. Instead he pretends to go to bed for Meiqi's
benefit, and then slips back into the living area once she's asleep. He sits in front of the fire on the
daybed and dozes, one eye on the front door and one eye on Meiqi's bedroom.

In the end he resorts to trickery. It makes him queasy to do it, but he can only hope that Meiqi will
forgive him.

There is a hot spring half a day's walk away from the village that they sometimes visit in spring
and autumn. It's an easy enough walk for the elderly members of the village once winter is passed.
They go in groups to soak their stiff joints, and take the children to splash around and let off some
of the energy they've stored up over the winter. It gives all the working parents time to get their
spring jobs done in the fields and around the house. Beating rugs, airing rooms, planting and
turning soil.

Xiaolian and Xie Wang had tempted Meiqi with the prospect of visiting the hot springs before,
thinking to get her used to running water and open spaces again, and that she would like the
warmth.

It just happens that the hot springs are in the same direction as Siji Manor. So a group of co-
conspirators is formed.

They bustle into the house very early the next morning without permission, as if they're here to
cajole him rather than his obstinate ward. They speak over Xie Wang's head as they ransack his
cupboards for towels and blankets and spare clothes like he's not already got everything packed.
They speak around Meiqi as they raid his larder for bits of pickled vegetables and dumplings to add
to the lunch. Meiqi makes twisted sour faces at the aunties but as she still refuses to speak up, they
turn her silence back on her. How excited she must be, they say. Don't get away from us on your
young legs, Meiqi, you must let your elders have the best spots in the spring.

Big Xianli takes Meiqi's hand in her meaty fist and breezily marches her out of the door. Meiqi
goes. She looks vaguely confused about it, because Xianli is usually a very accommodating card
player and hair-brusher. Perhaps, Xie Wang thinks, he has something still to learn about parenting.
If he'd been less shaken himself, he might have felt easier about bullying her.

He picks up his walking staff, ties his straw hat under his chin. He digs out a secreted supply of
rations to tuck in his leather pack and follows them out. He can't look back to say goodbye to the
place properly but he thinks a farewell. Xiaolian waves her long blue sleeves vigorously at them as
they pass out of the village, and she doesn't say goodbye either.

He hopes they will come back soon. Maybe for autumn, before the roads turn wet and sludgy with
trampled fallen leaves.

Meiqi travels better than he thought she would, but then again the aunties have hustled her into the
middle of the flock where she's hidden like a chick in their ruffling feathers. They pass her from
hand to hand around the group as each woman runs out of conversation. He is not left out of their
idle chatter. "When will you find a wife, Laoshi?" they tease. "The little mistress needs a mother!"

"One parent will have to do," he replies lamely.

"You've been soft, like a father is," Big Xianli clucks. "Always letting her get her way."

"He plaits her hair like a mother would," Liqui puts in on his behalf.

"Laoshi does love pretty braids," they all laugh.

Meiqi is walking half twisted around to stare at him, mouth open and vaguely horrified. Whether
she understands what a mother is, he's not sure, but she could just be baffled by the rowdy back-
and-forth, normal as it seems to them.

It has rained overnight and the morning starts cool when they set out, but within a few hours the
dew is evaporating off the grasses and the clouds are melting away. Meiqi struggles out of her
cloak and holds it out imperiously for Xie Wang to carry instead. He lets her. They'll barely be able
to spare time for a quick dip when they get to the hot spring before they go on to Siji Manor, and
he's feeling guilty already.

The true betrayal, when it's unmasked at the hot springs, ends in tears. Xie dresses her warmly and
rubs her hair dry, and they turn their back on the friends and neighbours that came this far with
them. Meiqi whimpers and sulks and her cheeks turn from pale jade to pink as she angers. She
fights against Xie holding her hand, but she goes. One step in front of the next, she goes.

**

They don't use the road for the first day. They tramp through the brushy ferns and rotten tree litter
that's been tossed about by winter storms. Xie is making loosely for the road where it splits off
East towards the sea and North West to meet the other end of the mountain range that hugs their
little village's Southern edge {check}. Meiqi finds the uneven ground a little challenging to begin
with, and Xie hopes she'll fare better when they reach the road. No doubt it'll be pitted by carriage
wheels at this time of year. Worse than that, it may be watched. Nobody outside of the village
knows where they're going, but when there's only one way in and out, it's easy to be followed.

He does a passable job of directing them, and they come out within a mile of the first fork. He
looks back along the treeline in the direction they came from, to gauge how far they've come. The
sight of movement on the road behind him makes him step back under tree cover, quickly. It's a
group of six or so, lightly burdened, moving fast.

To Meiqi's disgust, he turns back the way they came and continues cross-country. It cuts off a
corner of the road, he explains. It keeps them ahead of the game and under cover until past the
parting ways. Then he'll have to risk a small stint across open ground before they reach the next
brushstroke of woodland, painted in a wide stroke between the road and the far-off hills.

By the end of their first march, Meiqi is stroppy and whining in her nose every time Xie tries to
cajole her. With an effort, he gets her to the edge of the forest he wanted to reach before nightfall,
for cover of darkness and to help break the cooler night breezes. They hunker down in a pine-
scented haze for the night and put cold rice and meat in cold bellies.

They make it out of the forest under grey skies and emerge into an unsheltered brown plain. Behind
them, there's a thin trail of smoke reaching up into the sky. Far off and still closer than Xie wants.
The hills creep onto the horizon and the pale impression of mountains loom behind them. The lake
is between them and their destination up in the foothills, still hidden behind the undulating path.
Xie is not sure whether they are being followed, but their progress gets slower each day until he's
concerned for their supplies as much as their pursuers.

The power in Meiqi's legs has been greatly reduced after her spell in the snow, but more than that
she seems convinced she can't make it. When the rain starts on the third morning, Xie gives up
dragging her by the hand and crouches down so she can climb on his back. He drapes a cloak over
the top of her to keep the water off them both. They struggle along like a furry humpbacked cow,
Xie sweating with the strain and the heat of her, little furnace, on his back and the pack across his
front. His hair sticks to his neck and his boots start leaking. By lunchtime he is thoroughly
miserable.

At midday they huddle under a lone tree in the vast grassland. Xie risks building a little fire out of
damp, smoky wood just to heat water for some tea. It won't do for them to get sick in the
endeavour of escaping, starting fresh. Their afternoon march is more cheerful for it. Meiqi
clambers up onto his back again, but spends the time gleefully feeding him ripped up bits of dried
fruit from her lint-filled pockets. Xie nibbles them without complaint and catches her fingers gently
in his teeth sometimes just to hear her squeal in horror.

The next morning they move on with the dawn, waking early after a poor night's sleep. The lake is
steaming when they reach it, mist rolling up the banks from unnatural blue-green water. It's clear
enough at the banks and rich blue at the middle, like someone has slowly dropped ink in the centre
of the pool with a great brush. Meiqi retreats behind Xie, a vice grip in the skirts of his robe and
won't walk next to the banks. She spends the whole day at his left, a weight hanging from his belt
as they loop round one end of the lake.

Xie thinks it is beautiful. He always thought so. He used to swim in the lake some mornings, when
the air was summer-sticky and the water was the only source of crisp cool relief.

More beautiful than that is the sight of the little stone walls of Ye Baiyi's cottage in the dusk,
appearing over the rise of the hill, where it is perched up the next steep slope.

This last effort of Meiqi's is the hardest yet. She puts one foot in front of the next until she can't,
sitting heavily down on the path with fat tears in her eyes. Her hands rest, upturned and clawlike in
her lap. Xie gathers her up and carries her again, despite the burn in his legs. The aunties would
judge him, he knows, for giving in to her. She's done so well, though. And the end of the journey is
in sight.
**

There never was a proper gate through the plastered walls surrounding the house, just a wooden
swing gate tall enough to keep the animals mostly inside the walls, incongruous in the formal full-
height archway. From outside they can see the courtyard is overgrown with thick grasses that are
almost as high as the railing of the front veranda.

To one side the storerooms and stables are empty, doors thrown open and shelves bare. Muddy
puddles where swept floors would have been. Straight ahead the main, two-storey farmhouse is
shut up and soulless. The shutters nailed across each window have turned brown and brittle over
the course of several winters. One of the little trees Xie Wang remembers growing next to the
house is not so little anymore, and it's branches have scratched loose the mossy tiles at one winged
corner. The front door stands open by a hands' width and the entryway is very dark. There's no
smoke from the big kitchen chimney. The wind blows cold around the rocks to greet them in the
gathering dark of evening, with no warm lantern light to guide them and no sign of welcome from
any living thing. Not a single chicken or goat. Not even a wild thing stirs.

Ye Baiyi hasn't been here for years, it's clear. The stab of disappointment is sharp and fear comes
slithering in afterwards. He'd hoped for company. Ye Baiyi is an accomplished fighter,
unflappable. And big. Xie Wang swallows. The men that had attacked him had been taller. Solid.
He doesn't like thinking about it, but when he does it makes him feel small. Some brute strength
would have been welcome.

The sight of Ye Baiyi - his smile and his shoulders and his big hands - would have been very
welcome. Wherever he is, Xie Wang misses him.

But he can't puzzle that out, right now. It will have to wait.

Summoning a smile, he herds Meiqi with him across the courtyard and up the steps under the
porch. He slips into the entryway confidently, with her still hanging off his arm. There are no shoes
on the step, just a haphazard nest of grass in one corner where a fox must have made its home for
the winter. The inner door is shut tight as if Ye Baiyi expected to come back and cared at least a
little for whatever he left inside.

Xie Wang looks back to encourage Meiqi inside. She's frowning at the fox smell and looking very
dubious about his strategy of traveling to this derelict cottage on a hill in the middle of nowhere.

"My friend used to live here, come on," Xie explains. "He won't mind us coming inside whilst he's
away."

She frowns deeper, like she doesn't believe him. Like she's in any position to judge him for
squatting in someone else's house. The cheek. Another tug and she gives way, tiptoeing across the
threshold and into the packed dirt hallway.

Xie reaches up behind one of the beams and brings down a key to open the front door along with a
snowfall of thick dust.

The door is stiff in its runners as he shoves it open with both his hands and then one foot at the
bottom when it sticks. Now he really struggles to see. By rote he reaches to the left and finds a
lantern on a nail by the door. He takes it back out with him and lights it in the murky entryway with
his own flint and tinder.

He toes out of his muddy boots and turns to help Meiqi out of her shoes, lifts her up the step to save
her twisting carefully up on her own. She squirms, pleased with flying, and to Xie Wang's surprise,
goes on ahead unprompted into the house.

She loiters in the farthest reaches of the lantern light, apparently seeing better than him in the dark,
but he doesn't need the light to know what he'll see.

The ground floor is stone at the ends and wooden frame in the middle, mostly open to the rafters to
accommodate the living and eating space. At the back, the doors lead out onto another veranda,
propped on stilts where the ground drops sharply down towards the lake. He remembers views of
melting sunsets, the lake glinting behind the tops of trees that shivered in the wind. A view so far
reaching and so wide that you had lean out over the drop and turn your head through its full range
of motion to take it all in. They'd always left the doors open in summer to blow the cool water
breezes through the humid house, and battened them down in winter just to stay warm. Which is
how he's sure to find them tomorrow when it's light enough to take proper stock of things.

He wanders further in, past the empty weapon rack, noticing the door through the stone wall and
out to the kitchen is barred from the inside. There's a double-sided chimney breast that bellies into
the room to heat the main house on one side and feed the kitchen fire on the other. He ducks down
to look through but the kitchen is too dark to see.

Meiqi is looking the other way, to where the house is partitioned completely into a bedroom
downstairs and storeroom above, reached by a steep set of stairs only as wide as a ladder. It was, at
one point, a sort of office or study, but it has been neglected for as long as Xie can remember - to
begin with, full of forgotten papers and trinkets, and then finally a dumping ground for winter
blankets in summer and spare hanks of rope and fishing poles and Xie's herbs drying on hooks.

She puts one hand on the ladder up to the storeroom, but rather than go up, she turns back to look
for him. She knows its too steep for her to manage, especially with her legs all wobbly after the
day's march. He can't carry her up there, no matter how big and forlorn she looks about it.

"There's nothing up there, little one," he says, to reassure her she's not missing out anything.

He treads back to shut up the entry hall and lock them in for the night. "Let's just huddle up down
here for now." It will still be warmer than it was on their walk here, sleeping under bushes with a
thick cloak thrown over them. He dumps his pack by the door and stretches out his back.

Meiqi gives up on the ladder and bobs over to the fireplace. She looks around for firewood but
doesn't find any. Xie watches her turn to the day-bed instead and tentatively press a hand into its
thick linen cushions. When she feels how soft it is, her face relaxes and goes all smug and pleased.
She holds her hands up around her neck protectively and takes a confident little step hop with her
better leg, propels herself hip-first onto the cushions.

She lands in a plume of dust. Xie Wang hears her dainty little cough and can't help but laugh.

Together they wipe down a little corner of the floor instead and sleep.

**

The smoke from their fire and the dust kicked up by sweeping must have attracted the attention of
the village somehow, because they are not surprised to see him. The sky up on the ridge is very
clear, when he looks back it from the valley. The little winding dark grey ribbon of smoke from
their chimney stretches quite high before the wind whisks it out of shape.

Without any livestock left, he had no choice but to walk down the hill and barter for some supplies
before they had done much more up at the house than a bit of cleaning.
The villagers do not remember his name from all those years ago, but they remember his sharp, no-
nonsense attitude towards trade. He is not cruel with them, as they are all in the same position
now. These days Xie is not apprenticed to the Sword Immortal of Changming, who the villagers
somehow guess is still missing from the little house on the hill. So they give Xie no more attention
than a normal stranger in their town.

And he is not prideful about hunching his back under the weight of his purchases. A big basket
with three live chickens, as much rice as he can bear, rope bags of vegetables. The kitchen was still
fully equipped with pans and pots and utensils but there wasn't even a pinch of salt or a pickled
stalk in the whole place.

Meiqi opens her delicate long fingers to take a bag of spices and a glass jar of oil packaged nicely
in cloth. Xie Wang thinks it's not too heavy for her, as it's not as long a walk as she's proven she can
do the last few days.

"Xie Jie Luibo."

He starts badly enough to almost loose the chickens along the market street.

Behind him, wearing a suitably sleek hairstyle despite the more practical cut of her robes, is Du
Pusa. Her nails are still sharply barbed and her mouth is a poisonous shade of pink.

He smiles weakly and in the midst of a showy bow, sidesteps to put Meiqi behind his back.

"Give me the chickens, Da Wang, and we'll walk up together," she says, slinking over and taking
them without waiting for him. "Aren't you going to introduce me?"

"Say hello to your gege's friend, Meiqi."

Meiqi is trying to examine Du Pusa's spangly hair ornaments without meeting her eyes or leaving
the safety of Xie's skirts. She bows without dropping her eyes. Du Pusa hides her smile behind a
sleeve. "As quiet and polite as you were," she smirks.

They are now done with shopping, apparently, because Du Pusa is leading then back out of the
village towards the rocky path leading back up the ridge. She picks her way delicately around the
stumps of grass and puddles, like she has made the trip many times. Meiqi trails behind them a
little way, huffing and dragging her feet up the hill but frowning determinedly.

"Is she yours?" Du Pusa asks, quietly.

"Yes," Xie asks, looking away and back over his shoulder at Meiqi.
"Pretty thing, under the rough clothes. Shapely hands and a small face. Da Wang must have found
himself a comely wife," she grins with her teeth. She knows full well that's not true. The number of
times he pretended, in their youth, to be her brother, and then her lover or her husband, in order to
lubricate the conversation and hide the incoming knife or redirect it. She knows he is not interested
in women in any such way.

"Am I not pretty enough on my own?" he sniffs.

"Ah, a handsome husband, then."

He looks down at his feet and doesn't answer. Du Pusa is frowning and harrumphing under her
breath. He knows who she is thinking of, but it never happened.

"Did Ye Qianbei send you home ahead of him?" she asks.

"No. I don't know where he is," Xie replies. He wonders what sort of gossip the village has been
indulging in since Xie left, but when he looks across as Du Pusa, she really does look quite
perturbed that they've not been wandering together all this time.

When they get back to the house, Du Pusa pretends to help them unload their purchases and then
teaches Meiqi how to catch the chickens whilst Xie makes tea. They sit on the veranda overlooking
the courtyard to drink whilst Meiqi stumbles around trying to catch the biggest, fluffiest hen
without any help. It ruffles its feathers in annoyance but obliges being chased a little.

"How long has he been gone?" Xie asks, quite unashamedly.

"He left two weeks after you," Du Pusa frowns. "I thought..."

"I haven't seen him since I went," he explains. Xie looks at the floor and tries not to think about
where Baiyi could be. Had he looked for Xie? Had he been hurt enough to leave? Maybe he went
back to the mountain to eat ice and die in peace. Xie swallows and Du Pusa takes pity on him.

"The villagers weren't doing well without his patronage, until the two idiots from Siji manor
stepped in. At least, until earlier this year," Du Pusa sighs. "Since Zhou Zhishu got sick the villages
are being left to their own devices again."

"I know," Xie says. "I was staying with Zhang Chengling, the last few years."

"Of course you know some of the gossip," Du Pusa tuts at him for stealing her thunder. "But they
wouldn't have worried their little duckling with the worst of it." She pauses her story to pour
another cup of tea for each of them. Like Xie Wang is one of her marks, hanging in anticipation on
her every word. "Wen Kexing has been looking for Ye Qianbei for months. It's said he's done all
he can and Zhou Zhishu is still getting worse. Practically bedridden."

She says it with glee for the gossip and no actual joy in the details. There is still no love lost but no
ill will between them all for past deeds. She puts down her cup and taps her nails on the ceramic
thoughtfully.

"Did little Chengling send you to help heal the valley master's Zhiji?"

"That was his intent, but if Wen Kexing can't do anything and Ye Qianbei is still missing, I don't
see what I can do."

"Can you not?" she smiles.

**

Having Du Pusa back with him is a mixed blessing. He doesn't like to be reminded of the past, but
she is surprisingly unfussy and willing to help out with Meiqi.

Of course, all she can teach is parlour games and a proclivity to be waited on hand and foot. The
latter is something Xie is only just breaking Meiqi out of, and he ends up having to take Du Pusa
aside about it.

"I just ask that you pour tea now and then, chop a scallion," he hisses. "You are making an
impression. A poor one."

Her mouth is twisted in displeasure, even as she doesn't meet his eye. She's watching Meiqi
rearrange the blankets over her lap and sniff dubiously at her soup.
"You can slash a man's throat but you can't help around the house?" he widens his eyes pleadingly.
"What do you even do in the village?"

"I own the inn," she snips, rearranging her collars, patting her hair.

"And an army of young girls do the actual work," he sighs.

"Fine!" she shakes herself and goes back to the table, where she tells Meiqi very pointedly to drink
her broth. Meiqi is so used to being bossed around by her mean Jiejie that she immediately does as
she's told.
After that he finds them frequently huddled together learning stitching or plaiting grasses. Useful if
pretty pursuits that give Xie time to cook up tonics and start making a reputation for himself as a
healer down in the village. They only have a gnarled old midwife and a very sensible, if narrow-
minded, herbalist, who are both inordinately pleased to have him there to help.

Du Pusa always slopes off mid-afternoon and leaves them to their own devices. This is when Xie
puts aside his work and settles in to his new parenting duties. All of Du Pusa's ladylike arts have
helped immensely with Meiqi's hands, even if her legs and feet are still clumsy. He teaches her to
write and to read, in the sense that she still doesn't talk but does seem to understand enough to
make her own sentences on the paper. Meiqi brings the eggs in every morning, and Xie teaches her
how to cook pancakes, whisk eggs, soak rice.

He devises things to strengthen her legs and feet. They kneel in the courtyard planting herbs of
their own, and radishes and potatoes and carrots which are Meiqi's favourite. Then they're forced to
make a fence to keep the chickens out of the vegetable patch which Xie should have predicted,
really.

They get immensely grubby in the process of trying to fell a few small trees for the fence posts.
The straightest, most suitable trees are right next to a small brook in the opposite direction from
civilization and Xie doesn't want Meiqi going close to the fast-flowing water that's rushing through
from the snowmelt. He falls in, quite spectacularly, trying to keep her back from the overhanging
edge of the bank, and she is so brave slithering into the muddy shallows to try and fish him out by
the sopping ends of his robe. They spend ages pumping water for their baths later that evening and
Xie lets Meiqi go first even though he's left with the grotty child water.

Still there are things she can't do. Her hair is too long and thick for her to manage on her own, so
he washes it for her and Du Pusa puts it up.

As much as she loves to stand on the bottom rung of the steps, wistfully looking up at the office in
the attic, she doesn't trust her legs enough to try and climb. Xie wonders whether he discouraged
her too much, for her own safety, the night that they arrived. But the change of scenery has done so
much for her overall confidence that Xie can't disparage himself for long.

She starts to spend the daylight hours outside, as it gets warmer. When she sleeps she still needs
extra blankets to fend off the night chill but when the sun is on her she's alive. More alive than Xie
can quite wrap his head around, looking at her now compared to when she was bundled up and
cold and dying from it. She doesn't tan at all, but she gets a little pink in her cheeks and her hair
goes shiny and blue-black, fluffy and thick from being tossed about by the wind. She smiles at him
and it turns Xie's guts inside out every time.

It's a promising few weeks of spring sunshine, perhaps some of the happiest of his life, until the
rains roll in and even Du Pusa doesn't visit for fear of getting washed back down the hill. It's
unseasonable, this early in Spring. The rain slides in across the lake and comes horizontally at the
screens like a rock fall up hill. The doors of the house on the cliffside flap around like bats in their
runners.

Meiqi startles at the thunder. Xie wants her to love it, like he had as a child, fascinated by how dark
the sky got and the acid tang of the rain coming in. The relief of rain breaking the heat of summer
in the monsoon season was enough that he'd take off his clothes and splash around in it. That
stopped, of course, when he'd gotten to Sanbai manor.

"Bring your blanket, little one," he says, dousing the lights and propping the screen door open with
an old wooden box. It's humid outside, but the wind has a bite of cold at the edges. Meiqi hunkers
down at his feet quietly, a little way back from the gap where the rain can't quite spit on her. He
interrupts her blanket wrapping ritual to sit her in his lap, gangly though she is, and pulls the
blankets tight around them both, two of them together in one dumpling parcel.

They peer out together through the little gap in the doors and watch the lining zip back and forth
across the sky. In a hurry, like it's got somewhere to be.

The thunder rolls closer and closer, until the flashing follows right after. Meiqi stops twitching at
every crash and gong. The rain lashes a beat against the deck.

Xie wakes with cold rain pooling in his open palm.

He's slumped sideways with the blanket covering his shoulders and his legs stretched out into the
room, feet bare and legs exposed to almost his knee. He wonders why he didn't get cold earlier.

Sitting up, he notices wet footprints leading back into the room from the deck and a cold puddle
sinks into his stomach. He throws the screen door back and looks out. Meiqi isn't on the deck, the
wet footprints glisten in the light of the rain near the door but he loses them further into the house.
He turns to follow and finds the front door open.

Maybe she's seeing the chickens. She might have worried about them in the storm.

He spares just a second to put sandals on his bare feet and pick up a stout cane.

The gate out of the courtyard yawns wide open, listing back and forth in the wind.

She's very protective of their baby goats, he thinks frantically. She hadn't wanted them to live in the
field outside of the garden walls, because they are so small.

He splashes, slipping in the mud outside the gate and turns to look both ways frantically. The road
is empty and the gate to the goat paddock is closed. The goats aren't anywhere to be seen, off
sheltering in the little hut they found miraculously standing and no worse for wear under the trees
to the East.

He looks and looks again before he notices little footsteps sunk into the mud going down the hill.
He follows them for a hundred meters or so, until they break off to the right, down towards the
lake.

Xie swears, flying down the winding dirt path, his feet mucky and hems wet, sticking to his legs
and plucking at him with every step.

"Meiqi!" he calls as he gets to the treeline. He can't see far ahead into the gloom, here, and the
footsteps in the mud get harder to make out. "Meiqi!"

The forest is actually more of a thin copse sheltering the fields along the flat land next to the lake
from some of the blustery weather that regularly rolls down the valley. The trees are tall and
willowy, the top of the canopies don't stand up to the storm gales, they whip and bend around them
so the whole place is a flurry of constant movement. Creaks and tree noises drown out any little girl
screams or running feet.

He bursts out of the tree line and squints against the wind slapping him hard in the face. Thirty
paces away the edge of the lake is frothing and rocking against the shore, suddenly tidal in the face
of the storm.

"Meiqi!" he bellows into the gale, looking up the lake and then down, then up again, close to
where their house sits over the cliff.

In the shadows of the rock face, the lake water is lapping around something in the shallows. Meiqi
is there at the water's edge, flinching away from the water's groping hands each time it splashes in,
and then reaching back after it to grab at the object. A sodden grey lump that's billowing like kelp
on the water's surface.

Xie runs, full-lungs and burning legs. When he gets closer he realises it's a man in the water, half
spit up by the lake onto the pebble peach. His white robes are stained all manner of colours,
bleeding and translucent in the dark water. He gets Meiqi's shoulders under his hands and pulls her
back from whoever it is. Their hair is flecked with white and they are face-down, corpse-like.
Something hooks in his belly at the sight of the body, with the water lapping at their grey skin.

"Stay back," he shouts and wades in.

He turns the body over, and can't help the agonised yelp that comes out of him.

Ye Baiyi's face is sagging, thin and pale. Xie goes to his knees and drags him desperately up the
beach, until his feet are out of the water too, and then lowers him as steadily as he can. Xie is
breathing hard with the effort. For all he looks thinner, Ye Baiyi is still heavy, wide-shouldered and
weighed down by water. His new white hairs are stuck to his neck, his strong hands lie limp on the
ground. Xie shakes him, calls his name. He bends down and listens for breath, a pulse, and feels
nothing but his own thundering in his ears.

He's seen a man brought back from drowning before but never had to do it himself. He reminds
himself that he's trained for this. He is a healer. He put aside his knife a long while ago and now he
brings people back from the dead.

He folds his hands together and puts firm pressure on Baiyi's chest, pumping five times, then
presses his mouth to Bayi's. It's damp and sticking and too cold. He pushes a single hot breath into
cold, wet lungs and feels Baiyi's body convulse. Xie backs off, turning him at the last second. He
doesn't even flinch when Ye Baiyi spits up a lungful of water into Xie's lap, and keeps hacking
wetly.

When he slumps onto his back, his eyes are glassy, but Xie thinks he sees a moment of confusion
before Ye Baiyi falls unconscious again. His chest fills and empties fitfully. His hands twitch, and
Xie takes one, grips it tightly.

He looks up at Meiqi, who is standing there twisting her robes in her hands and shivering.

"Run and get me one of my cloaks, sweet girl?" he asks, gently as he can over the layers of panic.

She nods and runs off, stork-like and nervous.

The rain eases but the wind still howls. The lake still thrashes up the beach like it's chasing them
and trying to pull Ye Baiyi back to the depths.
 The cloak Meiqi brings back is a little muddy and wet from being dropped and dragged on its
journey, but considering how wet Ye Baiyi is already and how dirty it will soon be, Xie doesn't
pay it any mind.

He lays it on the ground and rolls Ye Baiyi on top of it. There is no hope of him carrying Ye Baiyi
all the way up the hill on his own, so this will have to suffice. He wraps two corners of the cloak
around his hands and starts to lift and drag.

It is slow going, him pulling and Meiqi following along like the solemn mourner at a funeral. She
touches Ye Baiyi's feet, pushes ineffectually sometimes when Xie gets tired. The gesture is so
sweet it keeps him going.

His arms shake the last hundred paces with the strain of hauling such a muscly unconscious lump
on his own. He stumbles at the step and falls with Ye Baiyi's head in his lap and laughs and
laughs.

They are filthy. Sodden. Xie doubts he will feel dry for days and Ye Baiyi's robes will never be
white again.

But his chest is rising and falling, his breath is warm against Xie's hand. He's alive. He's home.

Chapter End Notes

He's here! At last. My boy. The best old monster there ever could be, and only a little
bit drownded.
 Chapter 3
Chapter Summary

Domestic nonsense and a story or two

Chapter Notes

See the end of the chapter for notes

In the dewy morning, Du Pusa arrives at the little house on the hill to find smoke pouring from the
chimney and Meiqi ejected into the courtyard with the chickens and a warm cloak to bundle herself
in. Xie hears his friend arrive and commiserate with the little girl, who must still be sitting on her
haunches drawing things in the mud dejectedly, like Xie had left her an hour ago.

It has taken him all that time, but he's carefully dripped hot herbal infusions down Yei Baiyi's
throat, wrestled his prone form out of his wet clothes and dried him off down to the roots of his
hair all whilst he slept. Xie is just trying to get him back into a set of old robes from the wardrobe
when Du Pusa pushes open the door and comes in. She clacks the door shut and stands in shock at
the sight of them.

"Well, stop gawping and help me," Xie snaps, sitting back on his heels and wiping the sweat of
exertion from his brow. Du Pusa bites her bottom lip in amusement and glides over. "It's not my
speciality," she sniffs, meaning getting boys into their clothes. She picks up a thin sleep robe from
the floor and holds it out gingerly. "And he's such a big boy," she breathes. Xie's head snaps up to
see her looking unabashedly down at Baiyi, lying only half clothed on fur blankets in front of the
fire. Xie flips a corner of the robes up over Baiyi's unmentionables. "I said don't gawp," he chides.
Du Pusa obviously doesn't think much of the possessiveness, by the curve of her mouth and
eyebrow.

Together they get his arms into the robes and get him settled. Du Pusa doesn't stay to watch Xie
brush Baiyi's hair. She slips back outside again, offering to take Meiqi into the village for a few
hours, and for that he is never-endingly grateful.

Not that he gets anything done.

He starts by checking the pulse at Baiyi's wrist and feeding energy along his meridians but they
feel brittle and tangled. It's like brushing the fur of a cat backwards except Xie feels it and Ye
Baiyi sleeps on, undisturbed. Xie pushes his qi harder into Baiyi's body but it might as well be the
body and the flow of a man with no training at all. The deep wells of power Xie remembers are
gone, and instead the energy is eked out in thin trickles, barely enough to go around.

Xie feels his chin wobble.

What has Baiyi done to himself? His hands still feel strong, where Xie grasps them, worrying the
muscle and meat of Baiyi's thumb, but underneath the wrappings he is no longer an immortal.

"Baiyi," Xie croaks.

Baiyi's eyelids flicker but he doesn't wake. Xie curls over him and squeezes his eyes shut against
the writhing pain in his chest. Probably just a leftover from almost losing him. Probably nothing to
do with the fact that he is still in love.

He has pulled himself together by the time Du Pusa deposits Meiqi back inside and makes her way
down the hill for the night.

Xie lets Meiqi keep vigil at Baiyi's bedside whilst he cooks. He glances regularly through the
fireplace towards her, but she seems content to sit, preternaturally still and quiet in a very neat
kneeling posture until he brings her food to the table. She eats with one eye on their patient the
whole time.

"Do you remember being poorly?" Xie asks, curious as to her curiosity.

She shakes her head, the rice bowl and spoon in her hands held alarmingly loose for such vigorous
responses.

"You needn't worry, he's going to be well again," Xie assures her, smoothing down her hair. She
frowns and ducks his attentions. She doesn't like being touched as she eats, he's found.

After they've finished, she makes a show of tucking Baiyi up in her favourite blanket. Her clumsy
hands reach out for the thick grey streaks of hair at his forehead, but Xie catches them.

"Let him be," he says, softly.

She leans over him, careful not to touch. When she's over his face, she scrunches up her mouth and
squints at him, like she's seen Xie do over an open wound or a stubborn rash.

"Ye Baiyi?" she says, in a tentative, clear-ringing voice.

Xie can't help but catch his breath. Meiqi looks at him, a question in the pull of her eyebrows.
Amusingly grown-up, now. She's not said actual distinguishable words like this before, but he's
cautious of spooking her if he makes a song and dance out of it. She is looking at him still, waiting
for him to confirm.

"That's right, little one," he reassures her, keeping his voice smooth. "Ye Baiyi."

"Ye Baiyi," she says again, and Ye Baiyi's head tosses to the side, his face twitching. Then he
relaxes again and falls back into a stupor.

There's sweat on his brow that wasn't there before. Xie loosens the blankets a little to give him
some air and turns to fetch water to drip down his throat.
"A-die," Meiqi calls after him.

He starts, spilling water on the floorboards. He watches it run in rivulets into the cracks, struck a
little dumb by his own clumsiness and that tiny voice, then he looks up at Meiqi. Whoever taught
her to say that?

She's wide-eyed and hopeful, holding out her hands to help.

He wets a flannel and rings it out, placing it gently on Baiyi's forehead. "Hold it here, nice and
softly," he instructs. Meiqi scoots forward to do just that. It leaves her with just about enough
attention span to watch Xie tip open Baiyi's mouth and drop water in, one tear at a time on his
tongue.

"Thank you for helping," he says to the little girl, and she beams.
After that she goes to bed quite meekly and obviously satisfied with her role as healer.

Xie stays up.

Baiyi sweats and fidgets as the night goes on, grasping the blankets and breathing heavily. Xie
barely leaves him but to gather infusions of white willow bark to feed him and cool water to wipe
down his face, his neck, under his arms and in the crease of his thighs.

He rubs an oil of mint, sage and ginger into Baiyi's stomach to make him sweat more. He pulls the
long hanks of his hair out from under his head and runs salt water across the skin of his chest.

By morning the fever has broken, and Xie is woken by something tapping his forehead. He comes
around to find it is Baiyi's finger twitching against his head where'd he'd lain down at last to sleep,
right there half on the cot with his patient. The light through the blinds is still weak enough that he
must have only slept an hour.

"Baiyi?" Xie tries, dragging himself upright.

Eyelids flicker again and blink a little.

"Baiyi?" Xie repeats, leaning forward and putting a hand to his forehead.

His eyes are dark and swimming when they open, but his hand grips fast in the skirts of Xie's
robes.

"Little monster?" he slurs.

"Old man," Xie smiles.

"Where's the dragon?" he asks.

Xie frowns, stroking Baiyi's forehead and reaching to untangle his grip.

"There's no dragon, you fool," he breathes. "Unless I really look that different?"

Baiyi blinks twice and then slips back into sleep again for a long time.

**

Three days and two restless nights later, throughout which Ye Baiyi tosses and turns and comes
only fitfully to consciousness and Meiqi plays the part of the dutiful nurse, they find themselves
suddenly out of the worst of it.

Xie is sitting with the doors to the veranda open to air out the room. They'd heated it up to balmy
island temperatures whilst Baiyi slept, but now that his breathing is even and his sleep is peaceful,
Xie feels it's time to let the sick air out and the spring back in. Meiqi is on the other side of the
room, supposedly drawing Xie's portrait. From experience he knows that this will be a very
unflattering likeness, but she's getting better with perspective and still life studies of the furniture
and bits of plants they bring in from the fields. He's halfway to lifting his tea to his mouth, slowly,
to avoid disturbing the artist's composition, when Ye Baiyi rustles in his cocoon.

"What's happening?" Baiyi asks, with a big sharp breath in through his nose and a dragon like
breath out.

Xie flutters out of his pose to Ye Baiyi on the ground behind him, "Baiyi? Are you awake this
time?" he asks.
"Xie?" Baiyi frowns up at him with a curdled expression.

"Good to see you too, old goat," Xie huffs.

"Did I go back in time?" Baiyi asks, trying to get his elbows under him.

"Stay," Xie says, pushing Baiyi back down with a single hand on his chest. There was a time when
this wouldn't have had any effect, when Xie would have shoved him to no avail. Back when Xie
often wondered what it would be like to have strong hands around his wrists, immovable and hot
and insistent. Now, Baiyi is easy to subdue. He looks surprised about it too as his back hits the
mattress, and then his face pales and he puts a hand across his eyes slowly.

"What happened?" he asks.

"We dragged you out of the lake in the middle of a storm," Xie explains. "Almost four days ago
now."

Ye Baiyi drops his hand to look up at Xie. "We?" he asks. He's frowning, and not in an inquisitive
way. It's a shocked, concerned sort of scowl.

Xie nods and flicks his glance over the room towards Meiqi, who has not looked up from her work.
She tends not to study her subject very much before putting brush to paper, so she's not noticed Xie
moving, especially as he's spent the last 72 hours fussing over Baiyi every half an hour anyway.
She's got ink up to the first knuckle of every finger on her right hand and her hair is snarled up,
falling out of the dainty style Du Pusa did for her that morning. Mostly because she keeps
scratching her head with the blunt end of the brush between fits of artistic abandon.

Looking back down, he sees Ye Baiyi twisted over and looking at the child with utter bafflement.
Like a bear has crawled into his home for the winter and not left come spring. He's organised his
face into placid disinterestedness by the time he rolls back over again.

"Yours?" he asks.

"Mine," Xie agrees, holding Baiyi's stare until he pinks and looks away. Which is a new expression
on him, and quite at odds with the new grey streaks in his hair. Apparently he has earned no
maturity to go with them.

"How do you feel?" Xie asks, rather than pinching Baiyi's warm ears. It's a much more important
question in the grand schemes of things.

Baiyi wriggles his mouth uncomfortably and either shrugs or settles himself more firmly to the
bed, it's hard to tell. Xie intuits that Baiyi has noticed is own, brand new and inexplicable mortality.

"You should rest as long as you can, I will make some food."

Baiyi catches him by the wrist before he even pops one knee up to stand. "There's no need to fuss
over me," he grouses. "You've done enough of that already."

"I'm a doctor now, it's what I do," Xie replies, and carefully extricates himself. That revelation is
enough to shut Baiyi up. He lies there with one hand hanging empty in the air for a second, and Xie
leaves him to think.

When he returns with a tray of tea and rich meat broth poured over rice, Meiqi is sat next to Ye
Baiyi. She's fidgeting with all her power whilst Baiyi keeps her hands still in his own, using one of
the wet flannels from next to his sickbed to wipe down her fingers. The black ink bleeds into the
cloth and only serves to turn her fingers a slightly more muted shade of purple. "I'll do that," Xie
says quickly, putting down the tray within everyone's reach and leaning over Meiqi from behind to
take her mucky hands at the sleeves.

"She brought me a pillow," Baiyi says sheepishly. There is indeed a pillow next to them both, now
adorned with ten pin prick prints, five at each end.

Xie tuts despairingly and leans around to look Meiqi in the eye. "I've told you about dirty fingers,
miss. Now we'll have to learn how to get ink stains out on laundry day." Meiqi's mouth is
predictably pouty at this news. She doesn't like laundry day (too much water and boring, strenuous
scrubbing and squeezing). He strips the dirty cover off the pillow and pushes the skinned innards
towards Ye Baiyi, who is gaping at them blankly. "I can help," Baiyi says, dumbly, and takes the
pillow.

"You're a guest," Xie snips. He goes back to scrubbing the ink from Meiqi's hands with limited
success. The ink is getting sticky as it dries and it is Meiqi's bath day tomorrow anyway. He is
inclined to get the worst of it off with whatever hot water is left in the kettle and leave her be for
the day.

"It's my house, little thief," Baiyi barks a laugh and Xie feels his throat blush red and warm. He'd
forgotten that they were squatting. Probably the effect of being a new parent and moving house all
at once.

"You left," Xie replies and glances at the old master, sprawled imperiously with one eyebrow
lifted. It's a pose that used to make Xie's insides all squirmy. He's alarmed to find it still does, and
perhaps its the nature of first love or first lust to never dull, only sharpen against the passing of
time until the knife is hollowed out in the middle from use, but the handle fits perfectly in your
palm. "We've been looking after it," Xie says, looking down at his hands on Meiqi's rather than at
his Baiyi in bed.

"Ha," Baiyi says, flatly. "Tomorrow you best show me what you've learned about keeping house
since we last met, little beast."

Xie's heart throbs.

**

Since the night Meiqi crept out in the storm on her own, Xie has bunked with her in the only
bedroom. It's plainer than Xie liked back in the day, and surprisingly lovelier than his little
farmhouse bedroom. It's finished with dark wood and asymmetric shelves which Meiqi has
adorned with bits of calligraphy and smooth lake-side stones, like a play-act of Du Pusa's dressing
table.

He lies in bed and steeps, thinking about Baiyi being here, just on the other side of the door all
asleep and comfortable, and he worries he won't be able to sleep at all under such circumstances.
But then he wakes at dawn feeling more refreshed than he has in months despite the fact it's still
early and he can't have slept too long.

The bed by the fire is empty and the doors to the veranda are open when he emerges from the
bedroom. He peeks his head out into the morning air to find Baiyi in lotus pose without even a
cushion to sit on, the masochist.

"You'll only catch a cold," Xie says, because he doesn't have to be polite with Baiyi about
whatever this new situation is.
A huff is the only response he gets.

"Come in and I'll make breakfast."

Baiyi unfolds himself almost one muscle at a time, from his left toes and the little finger of his
right hand through him in a wave until he tilts his chin down and starts to get up stiffly. He holds
his open robes together primly in one hand and lets Xie lead him to the kitchen.

When Xie starts stacking logs for a fire, Baiyi swats him away and kindles it himself, letting his
robe gape open now. Not that Xie is looking. Except for the fact that he most definitely is because
Baiyi has not grown any older or any less beautiful for being mortal. He is just as solid and thick
with muscle, just as pale and soft and beautiful down to his brown nipples and the fine hair in the
middle of his chest.

Xie is glad he is just reheating things or he would be failing his duties as host.

They don't speak until Xie has put the tea set down between them, with yesterday's soup and rice
and pickles. "So? Do I pass muster as a housewife?" Xie sniffs, punctuating his words with the
slow tip of the teapot into the smallest, finest cups he could find in Baiyi's kitchen. He does it like
he would in a fine mansion to impress his guests, holding his sleeve back delicately out of the way
of the pour. Baiyi is looking at his wrists, confused by the ceremony of it. Then he drops his eyes
to the fine china with derision.

"I never doubted your brewing abilities," he replies, quite rudely swallowing half the cup in one
go.

He starts on the food with relish.

"I never doubted your ability to eat," Xie says.

Baiyi's eyes flick up to him and his lip curls in amusement. He's just opening his mouth to speak
when Xie hears the outer gate clink and yawn open and the burble of distant conversation. He
rockets to his feet, one hand under is belt where he keeps his smallest knife. It's too early for Du
Pusa. It's too early for any civilised visitor. Baiyi leans back to look at him in surprise but before he
can ask what has Xie so on edge, there's the noise of someone coming up the steps to the porch.

"YE LAOSHI," someone yells, and bashes on the screen door. Were it not yelling, the voice could
be quite pleasant to listen to. But whoever it is seems intent on waking the dead.

"It's those idiots," Baiyi sighs, getting to his feet. "No need to jump around. You get more tea and
I'll let them in."

When Xie comes back from refilling the kettle, Zhou Zishu is seated at the table, looking harried
and pale and very wrapped up considering it's spring. Wen Kexing is loitering around nearby,
obviously snooping.

"I thought we told you not to adopt scorpions," he says, seeing Xie.

"It went pretty well last time," Baiyi snaps.

"Did it," Wen Kexing responds, with a sour expression. Xie wonders what that is all about.

"What do you know about it, fool," Baiyi snaps. He looks ready to draw breath and blow out a
whole rant on the subject of Wen Kexing's failings but Zishu is looking wobbly at the prospect and
Xie doesn't fancy the argument either
"We sort of adopted him, this time," Xie interrupts with a nod at Baiyi.

Zishu frowns.

Xie swans over to the bedroom where he can see the outline of Meiqi's shoulders, peeking at the
doorway.

"Come out, stork," he says, herding her out. She comes out suitably gangly and nervous like a bird.
"Bow to your elders."

At his prompting she makes a circle out of her arms and bows from the waist. Quite nicely, thanks
to Du Pusa's attentions. He strokes her hair in acknowledgement, and when he looks up all three of
their guests are gawking at him amusingly.

"This is Meiqi, my daughter," he says.

Wen Kexing is the first to recover, and draw Meiqi to him with poetry about her pretty eyes. She is
quite bowled over by the attention, as are many people under Wen Kexing's assault. He pours her
tea and asks her how old she is, and doesn't even flinch when she draws a response onto his palm.

"Ah, but Lao-Xie is so young to have such a grown-up daughter," Zishu says.

"Don't flatter me," Xie cuts off that conversation. "I heard you were ill, Zhou Zishu?"

"I was."

"That's why we're here," Wen Kexing says, with a cautious look down at Meiqi between them at
the table, even as she's very daintily sipping tea (which Xie knows she hates and only endures to
look like a grown-up).

"Baobei," Xie says, squeezing Meiqi's hand. "Why don't you get your painting things out, and show
our guests how well you are doing?"

She lights up from the inside and scrambles off quite animatedly, only remembering her
deportment by the time she reaches the bedroom door, which she slides open very smoothly rather
than slamming it about.

"We are glad to see you here," Zishu says to Baiyi.

"I only just got back," Baiyi says smoothly. It quite undermines the drama of his return, which
really would make for a good story given the right narrator, and Xie only knows the end of the tale.
It's about time someone told him the beginning.

"How did you fix it?" Wen Kexing asks nobody in particular.

"Fix what?" Xie frowns, is he talking about Zishu's illness? Baiyi isn't a healer and nobody can
heal from a distance like that. He looks sideways to find Baiyi shrinking and very sheepish. Well
then.

"Fix what, he asks," Wen Kexing scoffs. "Did you not feel it?"

"I was very far from all of this," Xie replies.

"The whole world was off kilter," Zishu explains. "Some sort of sickness in the very energy of the
earth. I found myself very susceptible to it, whatever it was."
"Since when?"

"This past eight months," Zishu shrugs.

And they have been a hard eight months, Xie recalls. Storms and heavy snow and more illness than
he can ever remember. He's been tired. Unsettled. Sleeping badly more often than not. It took him
a good spell to recover when he used his skills and at the time he thought he was just getting older,
but perhaps it was something else more fundamental. If anyone should know, it's these two.

"And what does he have to do with it?" Xie asks, looking back at Baiyi, who is very interested in
his teacup.

"That's exactly what I want to know," Wen Kexing replies, with a snap of his fan. He puts it down
on the table and picks up his tea instead, like a man expecting a story.

"The monks on the mountain asked me to investigate it, and I put it right. Nothing more to tell,"
Baiyi says, and takes a long sip of his tea. His face is very placid but the hand he's kept under the
table is clenched into a tight fist.

"Baiyi," Xie hisses.

"There was some slightly necromantic nonsense going on, which I dealt with," Baiyi insists.

At what cost, Xie thinks. Very loudly. Loudly enough that Baiyi is wincing a little.

"And then you came back here?" Zishu asks. He's looking at Xie next, like he knows this is where
he'll get the truth. It's a new feeling for Xie, to be the trusted source of information.

"He washed up on the shore of the lake," Xie corrects.

Baiyi deserves to be in trouble if he's going to go off on his own to face some world-ending, mortal
or immortal peril, when he has very powerful friends who could have helped him. What do monks
know of such things, anyway? What right do they have to send his Baiyi off risking life and limb
and grey hairs?

"I see," Zishu hums. "Lao-Ye should let this one help his healing. He still looks peaky."

"You're one to talk, idiot," Baiyi snaps, wrapping his hands up in his sleeves sullenly.

"There's nothing more to do be done, unfortunately," Xie explains.

Wen Kexing purses his lips and frowns at Baiyi. "He's gone that far, then," he huffs.

"I'll not be coddled," Baiyi barks, standing up and swirling away from the table, only to find Meiqi
standing there with all her bits of drawing bundled up in her long arms. She's staring at them, wide-
eyed and unsure. She's not seen adults fighting since she's been with Xie.

"Sorry, little one," Baiyi says, walking over to her and kneeling down to her height. "Let's go and
draw over here where the light is better."

He takes her hand and starts drawing her off to one of the tables by the veranda. She spares her
father a glance, and Xie nods his approval and off she goes. Easy as anything.

Xie makes polite conversation for an hour before they all start to run out of things to talk about.
The topic of one's own offspring isn't sustainable for longer than that, Xie finds, listening to Wen
Kexing talk sappily of Chengling's children. Zishu finally makes a polite exit.
"Ye Laoshi," he bows, coming up to the table where Baiyi is sitting with Meiqi. Xie comes up
behind and sees that they've been drawing the fat little sparrows that flit between the veranda rail
and the nearby trees. Meiqi's look like accidental ink drops on the paper but the bleeding and
fuzzing of the ink is quite an effective representation of their feathers.

"You're welcome to come with us to the manor, or visit whenever you like," Zishu says.

"I should hope so," Baiyi huffs.

"It'll be more comfortable to stay with us for the winter," Wen Kexing adds. "If you'd like that."

"We'll consider it," Xie says, because Baiyi looks like he's not feeling very polite. Is he ever?
Prickly burr of a man.

They have spent winters here in the cliff-top house, and it is inhospitable, even if Xie remembers it
fondly. Mostly by virtue of it being time spent just the two of them, in agonising mutual intimacy.
The last one they had together was prickling hot and unfulfilling, in that Xie waited the whole
winter to be kissed and Ye Baiyi refused to do it. And then he'd left. Maybe because he was fed up
of not being kissed. Especially when there was no discernible reason why.

"Will we?" Baiyi huffs. “I’m a guest in my own house as it is, but maybe we-”

"No. Stay," Meiqi interrupts quite forcefully and the room descends into shocked silence. Relief
sifts through Xie, like the smell of a hot spring, mineral warm and comforting. He is tired after
chattering politely all morning and can’t summon any foibles about his daughter's abruptness.

Zishu rocks back where he stands and then huffs a laugh, not at all offended.

"Of course, little mistress, we won't take your teacher from you."

So they go. Xie wonders if they'll talk about it again later.

**

"I should fetch water before it gets dark," Xie says, stacking away the dinner things. Baiyi had
started taking them from his hands but now there's the prospect of a bath he stops and rubs his
palms on his robes instead.

"Let me get the water," he says.

"You're still..." Xie frowns. Still recovering? Newly mortal? He's still got the muscle and strength
of a martial artist, and Xie's not sure what he's really objecting to, other than not being able to look
after him anymore.

"I can manage it."

It takes a good half an hour to pump up enough water from the little well in the courtyard to fill a
bathtub. Xie can hear the handle rattling and scraping from the kitchen where he's wiping
everything down.

True to his word, Baiyi manages fine. He lumbers in with a full kettle hoisted in both hands, then
puts it over the fire and dumps four buckets of cold water in the bath whilst the kettle heats. He
repeats the process again until the water is elbow deep and steaming merrily. Meiqi sprinkles salts
in the water and drags the screen over without prompting.
"Baiyi first," Meiqi says, surprising them all.

"Age before beauty, is it?" Baiyi huffs.

Meiqi's set up the screen to separate the bath from the living room, but it doesn't do much to shield
the view through the big shared hearth from the kitchen. Xie watches Baiyi duck behind the
screen, and his hands go for his belt and Xie freezes at the kitchen table. Baiyi shrugs the robe off
his shoulders, muscles rippling across his chest and arms as it drops and he turns to drape them
over the screen. The divot of his spine looks beautiful in the low light of evening, and Xie's seen
his stomach before but he's not bored of it yet. It's toned but not chiseled, solid, a handful. Two
handfuls, around his waist, his pecs. Now he's turned back and his big hands go for the drawstring
of his trousers and Xie still hasn't moved and his mouth is watering even though he's seen it. But
he's not seen Baiyi in motion.

At the last second Baiyi changes course and takes off his boots, setting them neatly on the floor
around the corner of the screen, and as he leans down, his long hair swishing in front of his face,
Xie finally catches himself. He rushes back into the living room to keep his daughter occupied for
half an hour so Baiyi can wash without her getting bored and curious.

Xie himself almost gets curious, the longer the gurgling, sloshing sounds go on, but Baiyi bathes
quite fast considering. He emerges around the screen with his hair completely down, dripping.
There are translucent pools in the fabric across his chest and shoulders, glowing with the warm
brown of his skin underneath.

"Little mistress's turn next?" he asks.

Xie sighs and starts rolling up his sleeves ready to get very wet in the effort of washing her hair.

"I'm already damp, let me," Baiyi says. "If that's alright with madam?" He looks down at Meiqi
who's nodding and grinning quite toothily. She doesn't care who does her hair as long as somebody
is making a fuss of her, and she's still got a childlike innocence about being nude in front of
strangers. That will change in a year or two, Xie guesses.

He draws back the screen so he can keep an eye on the splashing tolerances and catches Meiqi's
clothes as she sheds them, not caring if they fall in the bath or in the drying ink on the table or in
the ashes of the fire. With a book in hand, he settles on letting them get on with it, but doesn't
actually manage to read much for watching them together.

Baiyi's hair needs brushing. It's drying in clumps as he tries to work soap into Meiqi's scalp. She's
not making it easy for him, squirming and playing with the water. "Head back," he prompts, and
she obeys so he can wash out the soap. He cups his hand over her forehead to protect her eyes and
supports her neck. Natural as anything. Maybe he did this for someone else's baby, once upon a
time.

Meiqi clambers out of the bath when she thinks she's done and runs naked as a babe, water sluicing
off her hair, all the way across the living room to the bedroom. Xie ducks and holds his book out of
harm's way. Baiyi looks at him, quite shocked and Xie raises an eyebrow that says you offered to
help.

"Get back here, rogue!" Baiyi barks, standing. "You need to brush your hair."

A laugh is the only response he gets. It probably means come get me.

Baiyi interprets it that way too and stalks after her. Xie waits for the squeals of delight and can't
help smirking too as Baiyi comes back with her under one arm, kicking and laughing. He does an
admirable job of fighting her into some clothes, which she still struggles with on her own, given
her lack of dexterity, and then pushes her firmly down onto a cushion.

He's armed with a brush and a grim expression, but he needn't be. This is her favourite bit. Her hair
is quite spectacularly long, straight and shiny. Blue-black. Oily, even before he puts anything in it.
Baiyi starts separating it into parts and then looks over his shoulder for Xie. "Have you got any
oil?" he asks.

Xie brings him the little glass bottle of camellia oil, and then settles behind Baiyi with his own
comb in hand. Baiyi flinches at the touch of Xie's knees at his back. "What are you..."

"You brush hers, I'll brush yours," Xie explains, smoothing oil onto his hands and rubbing them
over the ends of Baiyi's thick hair. "The water will go cold," Baiyi complains, trying to pulls his
hair over his shoulder out of Xie's reach.

"Heat some more for me whilst I put madam to bed."

Baiyi thinks about that for a moment, and then turns back around to start brushing.

They grey streaks of Baiyi's hair are rougher than the rest, and Xie pays particular attention to them
whilst Baiyi is combing and plaiting. The rich smell of camellia blossoms in the room around
them, and two points of warmth grow where his knees meet Baiyi's back.

"Bed time," Xie says, when it's become obvious that Baiyi is just brushing the last loose ends
because it's comforting. He's doing the same, though, watching the long fall of Baiyi's hair across
his back, slipping it through his fingers. He pats Baiyi on the shoulder and stands.

**

He comes back from pouring Meiqi into bed to find Baiyi dipping his elbow into the bathwater to
check the temperature. He jerks upright guiltily when Xie enters the room.

"Thank you," Xie says, with a smile, putting a hand on Baiyi's arm briefly.

Baiyi's face is a picture. He's put his hair half-up, exposing his red ears and his blushing throat.
He's hurriedly rolling down his sleeves and casting his eyes about for the privacy screen. Xie
pauses a moment, then starts peeling off his robes.

They swam in the lake together, once, only in their trousers. It was the the height of summer, and
the lake was the only way to cool down. Baiyi was gruff and dismissive then, and wouldn't meet
Xie's eyes, even when he was being splashed and goaded.

Now, he's standing very still and very straight, his mouth a little open. His eyes drop to somewhere
around Xie's collarbone and back up to his eyes via a lingering look at his mouth and then he
collects himself. He rubs his palms on his thighs again and shuffles past Xie.

He sits down on a cushion with his back to the tub and his hands clenched on his knees. Xie stamps
down on the disappointment. He wants Baiyi to watch him always, but he can wait. Seduction can
take a while, especially with grumpy old goats.

"You're very good with her," Xie says conversationally. He dumps all his layers of robes in one,
rustling heap onto the floor, so that the ends of them are just at the corner of Baiyi's view.

"I've been around children before."

"She needs extra patience," Xie says quietly. You can't quite hear a conversation from the
bedroom, he remembers, with the deadening effect of all the wood and soft furnishing and the low
crackle of the fire to mask the voices.

"It must have been a challenge to learn what she was thinking and feeling."

Xie puts his trousers aside and steps in the water with a contented sigh. Once he's settled, he
answers. "It's been quite a journey."

"She's always been like this?"

Baiyi knows she's too old to be biologically his - Xie wasn't away that long - but he's not usually
this subtle about asking questions.

"Silent? I'm not sure," Xie admits. He's willing to indulge Baiyi's curiosity, even if he won't ask
directly. "She was brought to me only a month ago perhaps, after her accident. It made her hands
and legs very weak."

"Recently, then."

"Very."

Xie can see he's trying not to turn his head and look. "Are you going to ask what happened?"

"You'll tell me if it's important."

Xie hums in agreement. It is important that Baiyi understands. If he leaves again now, he will be
hurting Meiqi. The display with Zishu proved that.

"Someone hurt her. Someone she trusted, I think, I'm not sure on the details," Xie explains. "And
then they put her in the snow to die." Just like me.

"You dug her out."

"And kept her warm, as you did for me."

Baiyi's shoulders are around his ears, and he's looking down at his lap.

"Wash my hair?" Xie asks, and watches the knuckles of Baiyi's hands go white.

Slowly, he rises to his knees. Keeping his gaze lowered, he creeps over to the bath and Xie rolls
over, hooking his elbows on the edge to look at him. "Did I thank you for that?" he asks.

"You don't need to," Baiyi grumbles, reaching for the soap. Xie stops him with a hand on his chin,
forcing their eyes to meet.

It has always been clear that they were attracted to each other. That's what always confused Xie,
because as much as he was taught to deny himself when propriety and situation called for it, that
isn't his natural state. He is greedy for the highs of pleasure and the sting of small hurts. It makes
life interesting.

And it doesn't compute that Baiyi will gorge himself on the best food and the best wine to treat his
sense of taste and smell, only to abstain from all of the other things in life. He can be tender and he
can feel keenly, Xie knows, and his skin is as warm as any man's. It was warm even back when he
had only just stopped eating ice.
 Now his skin and the emotion behind his eyes burn even hotter, and the most obvious seduction is
still getting Xie nowhere.

Bayi looks down at Xie in the water, along the naked line of his back. He swallows, his adam's
apple bobbing against the knuckles of Xie's hand before his eyes flit back up, but he does nothing
about it. Content to look and not to have.

If there is no ravishing to be had tonight, Xie can at least be honest.

"I missed you," Xie says, letting him go.

"Me too," Baiyi replies.

Chapter End Notes

My fave bit of the novel Tehanu is when Ged just reverts back to farmer and him and
Tenar putter about in a farmhouse all casual like. And Ged, wizard extraordinaire, has
to learn how to keep house. Just two absolute badasses going back to that simple
country life. The romance! The acts of service! The coparenting! Breathtaking.

Thank you, as ever, for reading.

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