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When it came to doing accounts, Lan Xichen preferred to work alone. No dragging out the task with idle chatter; no marring his sociable hours with thoughts of business. He focussed on the task until it was done, and then put it out of his mind. He was less than delighted to hear Jiang Cheng knocking at the door, but still called out politely,
‘Come in.’
Jiang Cheng came hurrying into the room, and barked both shins on Lan Xichen’s guqin where it lay between the desk and the doorway.
‘Mind out!’ Lan Xichen exclaimed. The guqin’s strings throbbed a discordant protest.
‘Ouch!’ Jiang Cheng yelped. ‘What’s that doing there?’
Not answering, Lan Xichen turned from his desk to the instrument, examining it for damage.
‘What – ?’ Jiang Cheng began to repeat.
‘Wait a minute!’ Lan Xichen said. He muted the echoing strings, ran his hands over the sounding box, plucked an experimental note. Jiang Cheng turned away to wince over his legs. Lan Xichen slowly let out his breath. The timbre of the guqin sounded unchanged.
‘There,’ he said, forcing himself to soften his voice. ‘No harm done.’
Jiang Cheng straightened up, expression thunderous. ‘What’s that doing there?’ he asked yet again.
‘I was practising,’ Lan Xichen answered briefly. He rotated on his knees, turning back to his desk. ‘Do you have something to ask me?’
‘I do.’ Jiang Cheng took a belligerent step closer to the desk, so that his shadow fell across Lan Xichen’s papers. ‘Why does practising involve leaving it in the middle of the room for me to fall over?’
Lan Xichen said nothing. He twitched the page of figures out of the shadow, into the lamplight.
‘Isn’t there a music room or something?’ Jiang Cheng said.
‘If you don’t like how I keep my room – ’ Lan Xichen began.
‘ – then I needn’t come in?’ Jiang Cheng cut him off. ‘And what about your servants and disciples?’ He sounded so incensed that Lan Xichen twisted to look at his face. He was wide-eyed, wide-mouthed, eyebrows two challenging arches. ‘Do you think they enjoy tripping over things whenever they come in to dust? There’s a proper way to keep a room, and this isn’t it. My siblings wouldn’t have tolerated it if I’d left my possessions scattered under their feet.’
‘How severe of them,’ Lan Xichen said. Jiang Cheng’s face twisted into an ironical smile.
‘You’ve never shared living quarters before in your life, have you?’ he asked.
If Lan Xichen had to continue this conversation, at least he didn’t have to do it while craning his neck to look up at Jiang Cheng. He stood.
‘There is a music room,’ he said, ‘but it’s on the other side of the compound, and as you will have noticed, I have a great many matters to attend to.’
‘You’re too busy to walk two minutes?’ Jiang Cheng asked. He didn’t look sympathetic at the thought of Lan Xichen’s workload, and nor did he show any signs of leaving Lan Xichen to work.
‘I prefer to have my instrument to hand for the lulls between tasks,’ Lan Xichen said. Or for when he needed a moment to think, or for when he couldn’t stand to spend any longer thinking without a few minutes’ break. The difference between his guqin at his elbow and his guqin two minutes’ walk away was all the difference in the world. But there was no reason why he should explain the minutiae of his habits to another person.
Jiang Cheng’s mouth twisted sceptically. ‘You must have managed in the past, to have become so accomplished,’ he said. ‘Or are broken necks just one of the hazards of life in Cloud Recesses?’
Must you always belabour the point? Lan Xichen thought. His mouth felt full of unwise retorts. He pursed his lips to keep them back, breathed them out through his nose and answered calmly.
‘I used to keep my instruments in the adjoining chamber, but that room is being put to a different use now.’
He nodded towards the door that gave onto Jiang Cheng’s bedroom.
Jiang Cheng went very still. He gave the barest glance over his shoulder, as though suddenly afraid of what he would see behind him.
‘There has recently been some disruption in my household,’ Lan Xichen said. ‘I crave your patience.’
He turned back to his desk and knelt, carefully flicking out his sleeves so that they would fall smoothly around him. He had no idea why Jiang Cheng was looking for a quarrel, but he wouldn’t find one here. Lan Xichen was impossible to quarrel with.
‘What are you working on?’ Jiang Cheng demanded.
His back still safely turned, Lan Xichen let his eyes fall shut.
‘What are you working on?’ Jiang Cheng repeated.
Nothing, until you leave me in peace, Lan Xichen thought.
‘Business,’ he said shortly.
‘Show me,’ Jiang Cheng said. He stepped forward into Lan Xichen’s line of sight and reached for the papers.
Lan Xichen put down a hand, pressing the papers to the desk. Jiang Cheng threw him a dirty look, grabbed the corner of the packet and tugged. Lan Xichen hesitated. He could easily prevent Jiang Cheng from doing anything that he didn’t want him to do – but this conversation was already ridiculous. He wasn’t going to tussle with his husband like a schoolboy over a forbidden book. He raised his hand, and Jiang Cheng snatched the papers up and riffled through them.
‘These are accounts,’ he said, raking his eyes up and down a page. ‘No wonder you don’t have two minutes to spare. Shouldn’t you delegate this sort of thing?’
‘To whom?’ Lan Xichen asked. ‘My venerable uncle?’
‘What about to your husband?’ Jiang Cheng snapped. ‘Doesn’t a sect leader’s spouse typically manage his household?’
‘There’s no need for you to take on such work,’ Lan Xichen said. Don’t be a martyr, he nearly added.
‘What,’ Jiang Cheng said, ‘was the point of marrying me if you’re not going to let me lighten your workload?’
‘You could lighten my workload by letting me work,’ Lan Xichen said. He extended his hand, reaching for the papers. Jiang Cheng made no move to hand them back.
‘Leave these with me,’ he said.
‘There’s no need.’
‘Don’t you trust me with a page of sums?’
‘Don’t put words in my mouth!’ Lan Xichen leapt to his feet again. ‘Very well. If you really want – ’
‘What I want,’ Jiang Cheng said, ‘is for you to take that instrument to your music room, where it belongs – ’ Lan Xichen opened his mouth, unsure, for the first time in years, what would come out, but Jiang Cheng overrode him. ' – and I want you to play it there. And the next time you find yourself too busy to walk from one room to another, hand me some of your work. If it makes you so fractious to be without time to play music, then make time. For goodness’ sake.’
A pause. They stared at one another.
There’s a stranger in my house, Lan Xichen thought giddily. Jiang Cheng’s face looked as unfamiliar and as unreadable as the dark side of the moon. His alien presence seemed to wash out ahead of him and turn the room cold. There’s a stranger in my house. Who is this man? What has he to do with me? How can we ever understand one another?
Jiang Cheng snapped his fingers impatiently and pointed at the door.
‘Go.’
With Jiang Cheng’s eyes sparkling with vitriol and his own control so suddenly fraying, it seemed unwise to stay, so Lan Xichen swept his guqin into his sleeve and went.
The guqin had been knocked out of tune after all. Lan Xichen laid the instrument in its place in the music room and began to set it to rights.
This room had been little used before his marriage, and he had rarely had cause to venture in. The second room of the hanshi had functioned as de facto music room, though it had never borne the name. When Jiang Cheng had arrived at Cloud Recesses, the disciples had done their very best to arrange this room to Lan Xichen’s liking instead. All his instruments and books of music were there, all stacked in the wrong order and oriented in unfamiliar directions. But perhaps it was still preferable to practising in the hanshi, where it seemed his concentration and possessions were both liable to be broken at any moment.
He carefully twisted each tuning peg in turn, listening closely for any sound of something amiss. Traipse back and forth across the compound every time he wanted to enjoy a few moments of music between tasks? All to keep his guqin out of the way of a man who couldn’t look where he was going?
Guqin tuned, Lan Xichen positioned his hands over the strings, then stopped, surprised to find a wall of resistance inside himself. Go and play your instrument, Jiang Cheng had said. Was Lan Xichen really going to do as he was told?
Don’t cut off your nose to spite your face, he told himself. He had been longing all day for the chance to play. That the circumstances were less than ideal – well. If he played, it would help him think.
As he warmed up his hands, Lan Xichen chewed over the whole exchange. Should he have allowed Jiang Cheng to send him somewhere? To order him out of his own room? A spouse was different to an ordinary disciple, or even a family member, but even so…
The harsh sound of his guqin strings revealed his mood to his own ears as clearly as if he’d flown into a rage. Sent to his studies like a little child! Even as a child he hadn’t needed to be sent! Maybe Jiang Cheng had needed his elders to tell him what to do; maybe that was why he thought such speech was normal –
No, Lan Xichen thought. He would not think harsh thoughts about the life Jiang Cheng had lost so suddenly and so cruelly. But even as he tried to redirect himself, his mind formed another picture: of Jiang Cheng and Wei Wuxian marking a line down the middle of a shared room and demanding the removal of any toys that fell onto the wrong side, squabbling as their sister tried to quiet them. Lan Xichen closed his eyes against the image. Dear heavens above, he had married a mere green boy.
He was not playing music with cultivating power, but to Lan Xichen the distinction between ordinary and sacred music was an artificial one. All music could speak to the spirit, if one let it. He began a piece composed to train the fingers rather than delight the ear, and let its patterns soothe him until he could think clearly.
What sort of a man had he married?
The commonly held opinion was that Jiang Fengmian had been a gallant man; his wife an honourable woman, but cold and sharp; and that Wei Wuxian took after his foster father, and Jiang Wanyin after his mother. Lan Xichen’s opinion was that people did not follow so conveniently in their elders’ footsteps, and that they had their reasons for being gallant, cold, or sharp, if one troubled to look for them.
In other words, he had heard warnings about his spouse’s temperament, but hadn’t heeded them.
What was Jiang Cheng like, really? He had been quiet, at first, but that didn’t mean he was quiet. He had been quiet like a guest on his best behaviour – or like a prisoner, waiting for the axe to fall. But his guard had to come down sooner or later, and then what would be behind it? The Jiang Cheng who had shyly offered himself to Lan Xichen in the spring rain felt very far away right now – and even that Jiang Cheng had had barbs aplenty in his speech, though Lan Xichen hadn’t taken them amiss at the time. Lan Xichen had ignored the warnings; he had been so certain that there was no ill temper that his own even one couldn’t counterbalance. But if Jiang Cheng was going to fly off the handle whenever he was crossed…
The music unfolded itself from the guqin’s strings, calm and orderly. Lan Xichen made his thoughts follow suit. When people were cold or sharp, they had their reasons. What was Jiang Cheng’s reason?
Well, he had just hurt himself, Lan Xichen’s mind supplied wryly. That can’t have helped.
He had come into the room with a question, and Lan Xichen had never asked him what it was. Supposing it had been important?
Stars in heaven, it hadn’t been his idea to turn Lan Xichen out of his old music room. He hadn’t even known it had been done until Lan Xichen laid the fact at his feet like a damning accusation.
Lan Xichen sighed. Yes, Jiang Cheng had spoken harshly, but what had he done? Sent Lan Xichen off to amuse himself, while Jiang Cheng handled his work for him. Lan Xichen’s fingers were plucking out a more fluid melody, now, and his ears had been following it with delight even as his mind was elsewhere. The little room was calm and full of music. Lan Xichen felt a twist of shame.
If I’m going to be so ungrateful, he thought, then perhaps my husband was right. I deserve to be sent away until I’ve calmed myself.
Jiang Cheng might have been behaving like a guest, but he wasn’t one. He had a right to his space in the hanshi. He would have to be lived with, not around. Lan Xichen altered the pattern of his hands, filling the room with the most tranquilly delightful music he could make. He would sit here for an hour or two, and enjoy this chance to rest. He would put out of his mind the nagging concern that Jiang Cheng was filling his accounting with errors, or failing to do it exactly as Lan Xichen would have done it himself. And then he would return to the hanshi, and speak calmly to his husband, and see what would happen next.
The evening was drawing in when Lan Xichen re-entered his room. He had half-expected to find Jiang Cheng still there, perhaps bent over the accounts with a martyred expression, but the room was empty. A single lamp was burning low over the desk. Every brush had been washed and put away. In the centre of the desk were the neatly stacked accounts, pinned beneath a paperweight like an admonition.
Lan Xichen picked the papers up and gave them a glance, but resisted the urge to read them from end to end. The purpose of Jiang Cheng’s offer had been to save time; there was no point in doing the work twice over.
Maybe the purpose of Jiang Cheng’s offer had been to score some sort of point. If it had, he had succeeded admirably. The work looked perfect.
‘Jiang Cheng?’ Lan Xichen called softly, tapping on the door between their apartments. No answer. He slid the door open and stepped inside. It was the first time he had set foot in this room since the wedding. It was jarring to see it rearranged, with clothes chests and wardrobes where before there had been bookshelves; with a new bed against the wall where Lan Xichen had always stacked the books that he used too frequently to put away. There were ornaments and bedding that had been carefully chosen to help a disciple of Yunmeng Jiang feel at home, but precious little that revealed anything about Jiang Cheng himself. Sandu lay in a rack along one wall, scabbard gleaming brightly. A tasselled bell hung over the bedpost, carved in the shape of a lotus.
Lan Xichen looked away abruptly, feeling like a voyeur. He quickly crossed the room and left via the other door, stepping back out into the fresh air.
If his husband was not in his room, then where was he? He hadn’t had time, yet, to wear habitual paths around Cloud Recesses, so that Lan Xichen could turn him up in a moment, I thought I might find you here. He hardly seemed to have any habits, any preferences at all. Lan Xichen’s heart contracted with guilt. Besides his room, where else could he go?
It was in the white gravel courtyard that he found them, with the Wall of Discipline on one side and the ornamental pool on the other. Jiang Cheng in deep blue and Lan Wangji in white, kneeling in meditation side by side.
Lan Xichen knelt too, in their line of sight. His posture made it clear that he would not interrupt until they were ready, but was not going to meditate himself. The silence stretched for several moments. Lan Xichen let himself be calmed by the sighing of the wind, the bubbling of the pond. A fish flipped in the water with a hollow, liquid sound.
At last Lan Wangji stirred.
‘Xiong-zhang,’ he said.
Jiang Cheng stared at the ground, his mouth set into a hard line.
‘I was looking for you,’ Lan Xichen said, ‘Jiang Cheng.’
Jiang Cheng’s eyes flickered sideways to Lan Wangji, almost as though he were looking for intercession.
‘You never told me what you came to speak to me about, earlier today,’ Lan Xichen said gently.
‘I wondered if you wanted help,’ Jiang Cheng muttered. ‘That’s all.’
Lan Xichen paused at that.
‘It was well thought of,’ Lan Wangji said quietly. ‘Xiong-zhang has a great deal of work to do.’
His eyes rested briefly on Lan Xichen. Lan Xichen returned the look. Was he being admonished?
‘Come back to the hanshi,’ Lan Xichen said to Jiang Cheng. ‘I’ll send for tea.’
Lan Wangji closed his eyes again, settling back into meditation. Jiang Cheng rose slowly to his feet, shoulders as stiff as if he were about to be hauled off by the ear. A mere boy, Lan Xichen’s mind said again. He dismissed the thought. He would be calm, and then Jiang Cheng would learn to be calm too.
They walked back to the hanshi in silence. Lan Xichen tried to keep his silence peaceful. Jiang Cheng’s was like the calm before the storm.
Lan Xichen gestured to him to sit, and placed the kettle on the brazier to warm. Then he turned to the desk. The instant he reached for the papers, Jiang Cheng spoke.
‘Are they alright, then?’ His voice sounded as tense as a plucked string.
‘Faultless,’ Lan Xichen answered. ‘Thank you very much for taking this task off my shoulders.’
Jiang Cheng nodded once, held perfectly still for a moment, then snatched in a breath. Suddenly, it occurred to Lan Xichen that he might not have been stiff and silent because he feared that Lan Xichen would continue their quarrel. He might have been getting ready to continue it himself. Lan Xichen’s stomach turned over, but then Jiang Cheng swept his arms forward into a flawless bow.
‘Lan Xichen,’ he said, ‘the way I spoke was inexcusable. I beg you to overlook it this once; I promise I’ll never behave this way again – ’
‘Jiang Cheng – !’ Lan Xichen moved forward without thinking, catching Jiang Cheng under the arm. Jiang Cheng’s eyes had been fixed on the floor, but now he looked up at Lan Xichen. There was no artful performance in his expression. It was truly desolate.
‘I’m the one who ought to apologise,’ Lan Xichen found himself saying, reservations overwhelmed by the need to reassure. ‘You were only offering to help me. You were quite right to criticise me for my foolish behaviour.’
Jiang Cheng’s mouth worked. ‘I was afraid I’d broken it!’ he burst out. ‘I couldn’t bear it if I damaged something precious of yours!’
‘I was afraid you’d broken it too,’ Lan Xichen confessed, heart melting.
‘Then why did you leave it lying on the floor?’ Jiang Cheng cried. The words burst from him like a cloud of steam, pouring out hot and then dissipating to nothing. Lan Xichen gave a huff of exasperated laughter. Jiang Cheng’s mouth twitched too, the smile sitting oddly against the anxiety still filling his eyes. The air between them seemed to sag, all tension exhausted.
‘It was an accident waiting to happen,’ Lan Xichen said in a conciliatory tone. ‘I must beg your pardon. I’m still not quite used to my new arrangements, that’s all.’
Jiang Cheng nodded. He collected himself, dropping his smile, blinking that awful panic out of his eyes. Lan Xichen poured him a cup of tea, and he accepted it quietly and took a sip. Then he spoke again.
‘I’ve been thinking,’ he said, ‘that I ought to move to a new room.’
Lan Xichen felt his temper flare suddenly back to life. He had thought his unconditional apology might make Jiang Cheng drop this quarrel, but no. He was setting up a fresh guilt-trap.
‘Don’t be absurd,’ he snapped.
‘I’m not!’ Jiang Cheng shouted. ‘We’ve been married long enough, now. We needn’t keep up this – ’ He paused, searching for a noun, then gave up and made a sweeping gesture instead, encompassing their rooms and themselves. ‘Please,’ he went on. ‘I’m a newcomer here; I don’t know how you arrange your lives. I’ll do whatever is most convenient, but I can’t know what that is unless you tell me! Please just tell me!’
His voice had turned from angry to pleading. Lan Xichen realised that he wasn’t playing any game. He had taken Lan Xichen’s complaint about the rooms seriously. He was utterly sincere.
And his suggestion wasn’t absurd, not really. Lan Xichen thought of Jin Guangshan, of Jiang Fengmian, keeping their wives at a respectable distance. Of his own father. Of Wen Chao. Nobody would be surprised if he himself wanted to put his new husband where his guqin was now, and keep the guqin closer. It was almost expected. It was what he had expected, when Jiang Cheng had asked for his hand. He could arrange his life exactly as it had been before Jiang Cheng had ever arrived.
Lan Xichen’s stomach felt empty and cold at the thought.
‘This is convenient,’ he said, in his gentlest voice. ‘I like having you near.’
The desperation seemed to vanish from Jiang Cheng as quickly as it had come, leaving him as limp as a banner on a still day. ‘I’m a nuisance to you,’ he muttered, voice low in his throat. ‘I should – ’
‘No, I insist,’ Lan Xichen said. ‘You’ll stay just where you are.’
Jiang Cheng regarded him, and Lan Xichen watched something light in his face, struggling under the weight of anger and fear like a snowdrop unfurling beneath loam. Hope. Hope at not finding himself cast out of his husband’s favour over a few ill-chosen words. It was agonising to watch.
‘Oh, Jiang Cheng,’ Lan Xichen said, and reached out, slowly. Jiang Cheng made no move to come closer, or to shy away. He made no move at all as Lan Xichen drew him into his arms. It felt strange, for a moment, to hold Jiang Cheng close to his heart in its jagged, bristling mood. And then the mood quieted. Lan Xichen folded them together and held on tight.
‘If you wish to stay,’ he said. ‘If you can forgive this old bachelor his bad habits.’
‘I just want – ’ Jiang Cheng said thickly. ‘It’s simple thing, putting your instrument where you want it; I’ll just be more careful – ’
‘No,’ Lan Xichen said, ‘I’ll keep my things where they belong.’
Jiang Cheng turned his face into Lan Xichen’s shoulder, burrowing in with all his strength.
‘I just want things to be pleasant for you,’ he said, voice muffled almost inaudibly. ‘I should be able to do that.’
‘If you would do one thing for me,’ Lan Xichen hesitated.
Jiang Cheng sat up and looked at him. ‘What do you need?’ he asked.
Lan Xichen remembered Jiang Cheng’s offer; Lan Wangji’s words by the pool. He swallowed.
‘If I could set aside just a little time each day to practise,’ he said, ‘instead of doing it piecemeal…it doesn’t matter, but I’d – enjoy it. If you would be willing to continue doing a little administrative work – ’
‘Of course,’ Jiang Cheng said at once. ‘Of course.’
Lan Xichen put a hand to his cheek. That wide-eyed hopefulness made it easy for him to guide his mind out of its defensive snarls and onto a more generous path. There was a stranger in his house; a stranger so handsome that it would be a delight to meet him anywhere in the world. A stranger whom he could come to know.
‘Come, Jiang Cheng,’ he said. ‘We have a little time before the evening meal. Let’s spend it together.’
‘If you wish,’ Jiang Cheng said. ‘What should we do? Would you like to…play for me?’
Lan Xichen smiled. Jiang Cheng had never shown an interest in music before – but he was showing it now, for his sake. Balanced between two feelings, Lan Xichen chose the generous path.
‘I would be glad to,’ he said, releasing Jiang Cheng. He turned around, and then realised. ‘ – but my guqin is in the music room.’
‘Oh, well, that might as well be the other side of the moon, then,’ Jiang Cheng said, in a brittle version of his normal tones. He was pulling himself back to equilibrium with as much determination as Lan Xichen. ‘Come on, it’s just across the compound. We’ll walk together.’