“Meng Yao.”

The bathwater sloshes gently as Meng Yao pulls free the silver hairpiece keeping Nie Mingjue’s braids in place. The hair holds its position for a few seconds before giving way to gravity and tumbling down his shoulders, as if it was waiting in fear of a reprimand before letting itself loose. He enjoys Nie Mingjue’s company when he’s like this, tired and content and waiting on Meng Yao’s service as much as Meng Yao waits on his commands. “Sect Leader Nie?”

“You’ve had your hands full, preparing for the retinue tomorrow.”

Meng Yao finger-combs the tight braids out one by one, taking his time. Nie Mingjue lays back against Meng Yao’s chest and busies his own hand with tracing slow patterns under the water: along Meng Yao’s calf, over his knee, across his thigh.

“I hope I’ve accounted for everything.”

“You always do.”

It’s quiet but for Meng Yao’s rustling fingers and the water lapping against the sides of the bath.

When he speaks again, Nie Mingjue’s voice is low and dreadfully compassionate. “I would understand if you prefer someone else greet the delegation, this once.”

He wants many things out of Nie Mingjue, but not pity, not over this. He twists a tangle of hair around his index finger, pulling it just short of taut. “That will not be necessary, though Sect Leader Nie is very kind.”

“Mm.” Nie Mingjue falls silent once more. This time it’s longer, but neither does it feel like an invitation for Meng Yao to fill the gap. A flicker of irritation passes through Meng Yao that he doesn’t know, at that exact moment, what Nie Mingjue is thinking; it’s so much harder to predict him when his face is turned away.

“During the visit…” Meng Yao begins, and pauses the work of his fingers for a moment, wanting to ensure Nie Mingjue is listening. “This one will stay in his own rooms unless Sect Leader Nie calls.”

“If you think that’s best,” Nie Mingjue replies, after long moments, his tone undecipherable.

If Meng Yao were to tug on the strands of hair twisted between his fingers, he could yank them out of his scalp before Nie Mingjue had the chance to react. Meng Yao pulls on them just enough for Nie Mingjue to tip his head back and then he releases his grip, passing it off as just a stubborn knot that had needed to be teased apart. He runs a comforting thumb over Nie Mingjue’s roots, just to be sure.

-

The next morning, Meng Yao makes his way down the narrow passage from the clan leader’s rooms out into the outer halls. It’s ostensibly a channel for servants to pass through on their way in and out of the sect leader’s quarters, but passages like this are really built to afford the sect leader privacy for his dealings with nocturnal guests. For him, it’s not a long walk. Meng Yao’s chambers are close to the Sect Leader’s, so he can be roused in the middle of the night should his master need advice on anything that cannot wait for sunrise—qi disturbances, inauspicious dreams. His own bed is nearly the size of the room he and his mother shared together in Yunping. Most nights, these days, his sheets go undisturbed. He is the sight Sect Leader Nie wakes up to in the morning: a thicket of loose hair and a peaceful, sweet face. A man like Nie Mingjue needs to be reminded there is softness in the world.

In his chamber, he opens the window to let in fresh air and birdsong. The sky is still barely lit, shot through with the barest traces of pink and gold. There’s a fine layer of dust on the sill; he runs a path through it with his fingertip and then rubs it away into nothing. He’ll have to find out which of the maids has gotten lazy. In his time, he’s been beaten for less.

He changes into a new set of robes, each individual layer worth more than every possession he owned before coming to Qinghe combined. The Lanling Jin would not visit this far north in any other season but summer, so Meng Yao dresses light, wrapping himself in a cream-and-grey robe that Huaisang handed down to him last spring. The recent flourishing of the textile market in Qinghe is at least in part due to the heir to the Unclean Realms’ partiality to delicate weaves of the kind that come from places more gentle than this. Seamstresses and cloth traders are good sources of information; their stock comes from all over, and they chart intimately the changes of the wealthy’s bodies and tastes.

Meng Yao shares in the prosperity every time he reads an intelligence report, but he also collects Huaisang’s castoffs. The young master often gifts his old pieces to Meng Yao once he’s tired of them. The silk may be worn down in places, but it’s nothing Meng Yao cannot obscure with some pins or adjusted hemming. Nie Huaisang and Meng Yao have similar proportions, but he sometimes takes in the seams to fit his body more snugly. Nie Mingjue often frowns, his forehead creasing, when he sees Meng Yao emerge in one of Nie Huaisang’s old robes for the first time, as if his mind is struggling to move the item from one wearer to the next.

In front of a small, burnished mirror, he rubs colour back into his face and paints his eyelids with a slim brush. He had put his hair up in a simple knot before leaving Nie Mingjue’s chambers, but now he pulls the ribbon free and lets it fall loose over his shoulders. This always comes last: Meng Yao combs the thick mass of it back into smooth order, calming the tangles and residual waves, before beginning, as he does every morning, to tie himself into the family, strand by silken strand.

Meng Yao starts on the left side, braiding back a section of hair from the temples and pinning it in place, then mirroring the motion on the right. Next, two braids from either side of his forehead, followed by one coming up from the centre to cover the crown of his head. He wraps the long ends around each other in a coil—Huaisang did this for him the first time, on a spring afternoon the previous year, and has Meng Yao kept it ever since—and tucked through a silver diadem filigreed with flowers. Huaisang had settled on it after arranging Meng Yao’s hair for so long his scalp felt sore: he had turned Meng Yao around by the shoulders and lightly pronounced, You can keep this one, Meng Yao. I never wear it anymore, and it really suits you.

He estimates that he has until late afternoon to finish preparations. The entourage is large enough to be making the journey by horse and carriage; the cultivators in their midst could have flown, but not with the quantity of gifts and luggage and retainers they will bring with them. This is how the Lanling Jin operate. They don’t hasten to places to which they could arrive in their own time, and will always prize lavishness over haste. When the retinue is let through the heavy Qinghe gates, he will smile graciously, greet them with humility, and bow just as deeply as he did the last time he saw his father’s face.

-

A month earlier, Meng Yao had the walls of Blades Hall and all the chief guest residences stripped and thoroughly washed. The rooms were dusted and scrubbed from floor to ceiling. Not a groove or underside of a shelf went untouched. All of it has been for this moment, when Meng Yao welcomes a party of haughty golden strangers into a banquet of his design and keeps his eyes humbly downcast as they pass by, following in the direction of his outstretched arm. It doesn’t prevent him from hearing his name in the snatches of conversation that float to him on the wind. Nothing they say is new, but derision lands differently when he cannot be sure which of these unfamiliar faces are his distant cousins.

“This is going well, wouldn’t you say, Meng Yao?”

Nie Huaisang seeks him out between courses. He ought to be mingling with his equals, like Jin Zixuan on the other side of the hall, but Young Master Nie blithely steps on their esteemed guests’ toes and chooses Jin Guangshan’s wrong son.

Meng Yao inclines his head. “Young Master Nie deserves much of the credit.”

Huaisang unfurls his fan with a flick of the wrist and covers the lower half of his face, but it doesn't hide the blush staining his cheekbones. He's unused to compliments, which means he has no tolerance built up against flattery.

Huaisang had helped Meng Yao with some of the decor improvements made in advance of the Jin entourage’s arrival, grateful for a task important enough that Nie Mingjue couldn’t chastise him too harshly for attending to it instead of his studies. He had invited a group of singers from the city to perform between courses, something that Nie Mingjue protested when it was brought up but does serve to, at least, reassure their guests that they have not left civilization behind them, that refinement can, and does, bloom inside the compound’s high walls.

Meng Yao has done this kind of thing since he was young. There were many kinds of work that needed doing in the place where he grew up, and not all of them were done on your back. He knows how to greet esteemed guests graciously, to pour them tea and liquor, to clean house when they’ve gotten what they came for. He’s well-suited for it; he has a sweet face and good manners. The churlishness of Qinghe is something for which Meng Yao is grateful. In this company, even one such as himself can be passed off as refined. Few in this milieu could call his bluff on the courtesies he learned from his mother or from stories about scholars and courtesans and immortals he used to play-act with some of the other brothel children, dressed up in their mothers’ clothes. It was close enough to life, but more exciting, and he could pretend it was all a game: this is how you kowtow before an emperor. This is how you smile and compliment a wealthy widow. This is how you pay homage to a god.

After finding out the Lanling Jin were visiting Qinghe to revisit the terms of the sect’s alliance agreements, it had taken Meng Yao the better part of a week to make the necessary budget adjustments to allow for the lavish standard their guests would expect. Money was borrowed from their future—long-needed castle improvements were deferred for another year. The Unclean Realms have no choice but to hope for a kind winter, all for the sake of Sect Leader Jin being able to drink the finest tea money could buy.

Across the room, Nie Mingjue nods his way through conversation with his fellow sect leader, but he looks agitated. There are several young and pretty female Jin disciples in the group immediately around them, he notes. Good luck to them; Nie Mingjue is not a man who likes to make idle conversation. He's also not a man who can easily tell the difference between idle conversation and what’s really communicated through the rituals of hospitality.

Meng Yao’s gaze lingers for far too long. He realizes he’s become unused to seeing Nie Mingjue from a distance; he’s spent so long now by his side. The crowd curves towards him, watching him with greedy gazes. Jin Guangshan may be older and wealthier, but watching them side-by-side is damning. Nie Mingjue doesn't need to speak or flash his opulence to hold anyone's attention. He emanates power in the way he moves. Nie Mingjue can stir the blood of a crowd of cultivators if the topic is honour and valour and other things glorious. He has a gift for the sort of forceful statements given by a man who’s never had to make a truly difficult choice. But in a situation like this—how many people here, besides Meng Yao and Huaisang, can see the awkwardness in him? What others might read in his posture as intimidating strength is poorly hidden guardedness.

A clang of bronze and shattered ceramic: he whips around his head. A Nie guardsman with too much to drink has stumbled into the edge of a table and sent trays of food and jars of wine crashing to the ground. He hears a helpless mutter of his own name, darting through the crowd like a snake through grass: Someone get Meng Yao!

Not far from where Meng Yao stands, a Jin disciple chokes out a horrified laugh, followed by the world's loudest whisper: “Meng Yao? Isn't that—on the stairs of Carp Tower?”

The young master at his side shoots him a timidly sympathetic look but doesn't raise his voice in protest, not that Meng Yao thought he would. Nie Huaisang flees from all unwanted situations like a prey animal to its den. Meng Yao straightens his neck, flicks his sleeves, and steps forward to make apologies. He bows and suggests another round for everybody, to lighten the mood.

When he lifts his head and glances in the sect leaders’ direction, he meets Nie Mingjue’s eyes. Seeing Meng Yao retake control of the situation, his eyes go soft and dark. Meng Yao almost curses him. Learn to control your face, sect leader; there are men around you can’t trust.

Jin Guangshan, standing by Nie Mingjue’s side, doesn’t lay his eyes on Meng Yao once all evening.

-

When Meng Yao enters the sect leader’s chambers through the servants’ door, Nie Mingjue doesn’t even open an eye. Nie Mingjue is beyond being afraid of assassins in the night. Maybe his well-cultivated golden core gives him the ability to feel Meng Yao’s presence by the traces of his qi, or perhaps he’s just memorized the sound of Meng Yao’s footfalls.

The sect leader is meditating in lotus position. Nie Mingjue is rigorous about his pursuit of self-control. He has a variety of rituals like this, practiced to ward off qi deviation, or at least settle his own nerves. Meng Yao quietly crosses the room, sits on the edge of Nie Mingjue’s bed, folds his legs under himself, and watches the slow rise and fall of his breath.

Eventually, Nie Mingjue’s eyes drift open. He’s relaxed but alert.

“I wasn’t expecting you,” Nie Mingjue says. He doesn’t look upset to be proven wrong, or particularly surprised.

“I won’t occupy much of Chifeng-zun’s time. I only came to make a report.”

Nie Mingjue looks skeptical, but doesn’t argue the point. He rises to his feet and begins his evening routine, stripping his outer layers unselfconsciously, while Meng Yao gives Nie Mingjue a winding account of everything that’s gone on since the Jins made their arrival which might have escaped his notice, occupied with his fellow sect leader as he’s been. He has to stretch it out; in truth, there isn’t much to tell.

When Nie Mingjue is down to his inner robe, he washes his face in a bowl of water. These are the kinds of tasks Meng Yao has long since given up trying to help him with, as Nie Mingjue always brushes him away out of a charmingly foolish sort of manly pride in self-sufficiency. Meng Yao watches the curve of his back, the ridges of his spine visible through cloth, and asks, “Have the negotiations been proceeding favourably?”

Nie Mingjue won’t ask it of him, but Meng Yao knows it’s expected, in a situation such as this, for Meng Yao to keep his distance. In every other diplomatic situation, Nie Mingjue holds Meng Yao as his right hand, but now he’s something to be swept out of sight. For the past two days, Nie Mingjue has sat across from Jin Guangshan at the bargaining table, alone but for those elders who’ve managed to reach the hard-worn, unforgiving plateau that is old age for a Nie, while Meng Yao keeps himself occupied by double-checking the stores of the larder and breathing down the cooks’ necks. Typically, during negotiations, Meng Yao will stand by Nie Mingjue’s elbow and murmur in his ear whenever Nie Mingjue has failed to consider the cascading reactions that might unfold from any rash decision. Not so now, but Meng Yao will still have to manage the aftermath if things go awry. That’s what he does: he keeps house.

“Well enough,” Nie Mingjue replies, “Though Sect Leader Jin is more persistent than he should be with matters that do not concern him.”

Meng Yao asks, lightly, “Does Sect Leader Jin want Sect Leader Nie to find a wife? Within his sect, perhaps?”

From behind, Meng Yao can see the way Nie Mingjue's shoulders stiffen. He takes longer to dry himself than he ought to, and then admits, “He has mentioned it.”

“Oh,” Meng Yao breathes.

Is it because of him? Has word spread as far as Lanling? Does Jin Guangshan now see the benefit in having a bastard: to test the taste of the cultivation world's most stubborn bachelor? If he thinks he can send some fresh-faced cousin from a Jin subsidiary sect to Qinghe to oust Meng Yao from Nie Mingjue's bed, he's more foolish than Meng Yao ever imagined. Meng Yao would poison her first. He'd throw her from the top of the Unclean Realms' walls with his own hands.

Nie Mingjue sits next to Meng Yao on the edge of the bed and allows him to fold his hair into a simple sleeping braid, as Meng Yao’s done many times before. He hates this topic of conversation, so Meng Yao is expecting it when Nie Mingjue changes the subject. “Will you come along when we leave for the night-hunt?”

“I’ll be more use to you here, I think.”

Meng Yao has mastered any skill he’s had the opportunity to be taught, and he has done a very good job at being anything Sect Leader Nie needs him to be. He is his vice-general, his secretary, his confidant, the kind heart and warm body Nie Mingjue can rest himself inside after he’s been drained dry by the world. He feels restless in his absence, and though Meng Yao is capable of arriving at the obvious conclusion that parading Sect Leader Jin’s bastard in front of his face is less than wise for Qinghe Nie’s interests, a reckless voice in the back of his head hisses, How do you expect him to notice how far I’ve come when he won’t even look at me and you won’t make him?

Meng Yao ties the braid closed, smoothes his hands over it one last time, and then sets it in place down the line of Nie Mingjue’s spine. He hasn’t even left the bed, let alone begun to pointedly make his way across the room to the door, before Nie Mingjue caves in.

“You may stay the night, since you’re here already.” His voice is low, as if afraid of being overheard even in this stone-walled room, but he doesn’t sound angry. It’s easy enough to take liberties with Nie Mingjue, if you look past the sect leader to see the man for what he is.

Meng Yao moves back to sit primly on the bed in front of Nie Mingjue and lets his hand fall to Nie Mingjue's knee. “This one could never forgive himself if he were to deprive Sect Leader Nie of sleep.”

The small smile that plays across Nie Mingjue’s face for a second stokes a ravenous blaze inside Meng Yao’s chest. Yes, that is for me, you smile for me, I delight you. Who else can say the same, that so simply, so uncomplicatedly, they command Sect Leader Nie’s affection?

Sometimes Meng Yao comes to see Nie Mingjue after dark and all they do is talk. They always touch; Nie Mingjue is tactile, and he likes all kinds of things about Meng Yao he’d never admit out loud. He isn’t a particularly talkative man. He doesn’t need to be; his roaming hands tell on him. He likes how soft Meng Yao keeps his skin, and the way he can tuck Meng Yao’s whole body under one of his arms. It’s one of Nie Mingjue’s silly ideas. He’s embarrassed that he’s just like every other man that wants a pretty face to come home to at the end of the day, sympathetic and obedient and not likely to hurt his pride.

Don’t need to doesn’t mean Meng Yao doesn’t want to.

When Meng Yao was still among the lowest Qinghe Nie outer disciples, he once overheard a ribald campfire joke: the reason Sect Leader Nie hadn't gone looking for a wife was because he was afraid of qi deviating in climax. The joke-teller had gotten smacked around the head by his compatriots—Nie Mingjue commands even more respect within his sect than outside it, and much more devotion—but Meng Yao often thinks about it at times like this. Nie Mingjue goes at everything with his whole body. He loves with the single-minded focus that he shows the handful of other things he cares about; his sabre, physical conditioning, military strategy, and the fruitless, stubborn way he cares for the few souls that live inside his heart. Huaisang. Lan Xichen. That Meng Yao, bastard Meng Yao, who spent most of his life with hands callused not from training but scrubbing floors and washing laundry, stands in such eminent company—nothing in this life is given for free, yet Meng Yao still shivers, deep in his core, when Nie Mingjue presses him down.

He couldn’t squirm away if he tried. Even when he’s not using force, the sheer bulk of Nie Mingjue quells resistance. Before long, Meng Yao feels Nie Mingjue’s erection grinding against the crease of his thigh. He kisses the side of Meng Yao’s cheek, his lips traveling down the side of Meng Yao’s neck, open-mouthed and greedy, sucking small kisses into the skin there and scratching him raw with his moustache. He gently presses Nie Mingjue back by his hand already wandering across Nie Mingjue’s chest, and whispers, “Be careful, or you’ll leave marks where people can see.” He softens the rebuke by palming one of Nie Mingjue’s pectorals, feeling its give under the pressure of his hand. The hard muscle below the skin is cushioned by a layer of fat and the surprisingly soft hair covering his chest.

“Under the collar?”

“Yes, there, yes—”

The rest: well, you know how it goes. His heels dig into Nie Mingjue’s ass while Nie Mingue’s hands span the width of Meng Yao’s waist. Nie Mingjue could crush Meng Yao in a heartbeat, or throw him across the room without breaking sweat. Even on nights like tonight, when Nie Mingjue makes love to him like a newlywed husband who hasn’t yet learned other ways to please his wife, it sends Meng Yao’s blood rushing dizzyingly fast to be pinned beneath Nie Mingjue’s broad shoulders and feel no fear at all.

Nie Mingjue moves one of his hands to cup the side of Meng Yao’s face and murmurs against his cheek, “How are you always so tight? You just swallow me up.”

Meng Yao feels lightheaded. He doesn’t think twice before he scrapes his nails down Nie Mingjue’s bare back. He’ll scratch him sometimes, just enough to reassure Nie Mingjue he’s doing the right thing, but this is different. Meng Yao claws at him like a cornered cat. He wants it to mean something, to be made to pay for his provocation, but what he gets is Nie Mingjue full-body shivering within his grasp. He slows until the push-pull sensation inside Meng Yao is like waves breaking on a shore. He does it again, scratching between Nie Mingjue’s shoulder blades like he’s trying to draw blood, and Nie Mingjue’s pace stutters again as he slurs something beyond speech into the side of Meng Yao’s neck.

Interesting. After that, a blur. Meng Yao offers up his mouth sweetly to be kissed. Sucks on Nie Mingjue’s tongue. Bites it, and feels Nie Mingjue push deeper inside, not as a punishment, but like he’s trying to get closer to the feeling.

Later, Meng Yao asks, “Does it still hurt you when an opponent lands a blow?”

Nie Mingjue is lucid but sleep-softened; once he’s gotten off, he always goes down like a bird shot out of the sky. He hasn’t got long left in him, after going at it like that, but Meng Yao wants to take advantage of it. He’s calm and easy like this, pliable. Nie Mingjue blinks and replies, “Of course it does.”

Meng Yao mulls this over with his head on Nie Mingjue’s shoulder, both of them covered in the thin sheets of summer. “You hear such extravagant things about people with strong Golden Cores. If your body can heal itself in a few hours, it’s not so strange to think you could stop feeling much pain.”

“You can’t live without pain,” Nie Mingjue replies. His voice is gravelly with exhaustion. In a moment or two he’ll be dreaming, but he adds, “It’s the only way to learn anything.” The breath of his words ghosts over Meng Yao’s face.

“Yes,” Meng Yao replies, and means it. He shifts closer, until they’re pressed up against each other as one continuous line down the bed. He presses his cheek against Nie Mingjue’s skin, and a broad hand clumsily strokes his hair in return. For what, Meng Yao wonders, does Nie Mingjue think he seeks comfort?

-

As agreed, when Nie Mingjue and Jin Guangshan depart the next day with a small party of inner disciples to night-hunt in a forest not far from the Unclean Realms, Meng Yao stays behind and keeps house.

Qinghe Nie isn’t receiving petitioners until the Lanling Jin entourage leaves for Carp Tower, in the interest of keeping sect business private, but, without fail, as soon as the sect leader is away Meng Yao never runs out of problems with which to occupy his time. If a fortress was a living thing it would be a squalling toddler: large and willful enough to make messes but incapable of tending to itself.

In the morning, Meng Yao drafts letters. Not every problem can be exorcised with swords and talismans. An unscrupulous bridge-keeper nearby has begun charging the common people exorbitant tolls; Meng Yao eviscerates him by the word, keeping just inside the outer limits of politeness. It’s thrilling, writing as the voice of Nie Mingjue; he is able to get away with so much. Righteous anger is to be expected when receiving a reprimand from Sect Leader Nie. No one will question the delicate hand in which the missive is written. Surely a great man like that would have someone to transcribe his dictations.

Meng Yao has reshaped himself completely from the boy who came here, waiting outside the gate when the wagons were being let into the castle with supplies and then bowing as low as he could to beg the steward, This one can read and write and do arithmetic; your humble servant needs only a very small bed.

Later, in the afternoon, Meng Yao tours a few of the remaining Jin envoys around the compound, escorting them through the Unclean Reams’ more passable courtyards for entertaining refined guests. Meng Yao mellifluously narrates the history of the castle under the scrutiny of prurient gazes focused more on himself than the architecture. If this were any other great sect, the place would be called a palace, but the Unclean Realms were built by those with no eye for beauty. It’s a hulking, chilly fortress, easy to defend from the inside and hard to breach from without, with many shadowy tunnels and poorly-lit corridors inside its inner recesses. It was constructed on the foundation of a slaughterhouse, but the Nie haven’t made their fortunes from butchering animals in hundreds of years; even so, it makes a good story, and he relishes the pursed lips that the grisly details earn him.

While he speaks, he thinks. The roofs of the compound’s main buildings need to be cleaned and maintained, but that’s an ordeal, and it’s already too late in the summer to begin. The weather damage on the eastern outer wall has sunk deep in the stone, and a well-placed attack could pierce it through in hours. Higher watchtowers are needed on all sides; it’s hard to get a good vantage through the mountains. They’re hemmed in by the peaks just as much as they’re shielded by them. These things have been neglected by decades of shaky accounting and short-sighted stewardship, but give Meng Yao a few more years here and he’ll be able to massage the books into better order.

The story told by Qinghe Nie’s ledgers is not a happy one. It can’t all be laid at the feet of Nie Mingjue; Meng Yao has pulled out the year-end records stretching back to his father’s father’s time, tracking decades of revenues and expenditures and reading the stories told between the lines. Night-hunts. Weddings. New sect heirs’ one month celebrations. Funerals—the Qinghe Nie sect has held so many funerals. Present through it all, the constantly widening pit into which money vanishes: military spending. Qishan is a few hours away by sword, and the Wen sect doesn’t let the Qinghe Nie forget it. It’s gotten worse over the decades, but Meng Yao doesn’t know whether the threat has increased or the sect has just dug its heels into the dirt, deciding to claim its embattled legacy with pride.

If the Nie ancestors built themselves a castle, it should be a good one. He would like to audit the inventories that gather dust in Nie Mingjue’s study, cataloguing the kind of wealth that sits inside and gathers dust: family heirlooms, rare texts, old spiritual tools, trophies from monsters slain. He’s seen some of it himself, in undercrofts below the fortress, full of hides, tusks, and horns from beasts both mortal and supernatural. Not so far from a slaughterhouse after all. He notes, to himself, to do this the following year, if nothing more pressing takes up their time.

He leads them through passageways and garden paths until they end the tour back in the central courtyard. Most of the group disperses, but one of the disciples lingers—a female cultivator, about his age or a little younger. Meng Yao smiles a little more deeply and lowers his head further over his cupped hands. One of the others had called her Mianmian, but he will not presume.

“Lady Luo.”

“Young Master Meng,” she answers. Her voice is neutral. “I’m only a junior disciple, and you’re Sect Leader Nie’s vice-general, so there’s no need to hold a bow so long.”

He rights himself slowly, his eyes rising last to meet her own. She watches him cooly; he can’t make out any one emotion on her face. Curiosity, maybe, and something appraising. “You are very gracious to this one.”

She’s quite beautiful, he notes with detachment. Did she stay back from the night hunt intentionally, not wanting to be paraded around any longer in front of Sect Leader Nie? A prideful woman, maybe, to think herself above such things. He wonders how long she'll be able to keep that up before someone decides on a marriage for her.

He gestures for them to continue walking, and follows her at a respectful distance. “Thank you for giving us a tour of your home. It’s so different from Lanling. Did you grow up near Qinghe?”

Surely she knows he came here directly from his short and inglorious stay in Lanling, or could guess as much. He sold the last of his mother’s belongings for passage to Qinghe. If it had been a cart bound for Gusu, he would have gone to Gusu; if it had been shipping goods to Qishan, he would have travelled to Qishan, and hoped the great Wens were not so rich in guest disciples they would refuse another. He suspects the combs and cheap jewelry were worth much less than his extra weight on the cart cost the traders in speed, but he was covered in bruises and still wincing when he walked, and Meng Yao has been told he has a sorrowful face.

“No, I came here for the first time a few years ago. I was raised in Yunmeng.”

“How does Qinghe compare?”

He doesn’t want to talk to this woman about himself. It doesn’t get him anything he didn’t have before. He wonders whether she’s staying behind to make idle conversation with him on a dare—it’s easy to imagine a group of Jin juniors drawing straws to talk to their sect leader’s whoreson bastard and report back. It doesn’t really matter either way.

“The winters are hard, but the people are tenacious. I’m very lucky to have been granted a place here.”

She nods and, after a few uncertain moments, glances at his face. “May I ask you a personal question, Young Master Meng?”

“Of course,” he says, turning the sentence over in his mind like a jeweler. He’d discarded the thought at first, but now he wonders in earnest: does she have designs on him?

“What do the braids mean?”

He blinks, curling his fingers tight within his sleeves. “They’re a traditional style of the Nie sect. Chifeng-zun is kind enough to have taken this one on as a guest cultivator.”

“I haven’t seen any on the other disciples, besides Second Young Master Nie.”

Oh, she is very bold! He dares a glance at her apparently honest, open face. He can make conversation all day, and certainly there are worse things he could do than try and give members of the Lanling Jin sect a good impression of him, but even idle curiosity can turn into contempt between one moment and the next, and the things someone lets show on their face often mean very little.

“It is an honour this one takes very seriously.”

They make their way across the grounds. He makes an excuse to depart as soon as they reach the stairs to the main hall. He doesn’t want to linger with a young woman away from observers for too long, lest this, too, be held against him. They make their bows, but before she leaves, Luo Qingyang smiles. “If Qinghe Nie has reason to come to Lanling, we would owe Young Master Meng a tour as well.”

He wonders if he’s being mocked, except that the way she says it, earnest and stalwart, reminds him for a flash of a moment the way Nie Mingjue speaks when he thinks he’s acting in protection of the weak. Even so, before he can restrain it, his imagination surges forward: he wonders what the interior of Carp Tower looks like. He’s only ever seen it from the outside.

She turns and makes her leave, her golden robes cutting a path through the Unclean Realms’ field of grey. Across the yard, a stable-master fights to subdue a temperamental horse that rears away from the bridle. Its hooves clatter on the stone.

Nie Mingjue taught Meng Yao how to ride a horse: he took Meng Yao on a winding trail through the mountains on a crisp day in spring, where the winter snowpacks had melted on the earth where it was exposed to the sun, but remained below the trees and in the shaded hollows under rocks or fallen logs. He’d followed Nie Mingjue deep into the wilderness on rough terrain, the wind’s chill eased by the feeling of sunlight on his face and the horse’s animal warmth. By the time they stopped, the morning had slipped away from them; they ate mantou on a ridge overlooking a shallow stream, and Nie Mingjue told Meng Yao, in more detail than he usually spoke about anything that didn’t involve swords, about the times he came here with his father as a child, before Huaisang was born, where the two of them roasted fowl on a spit and skipped stones at the water’s edge. Meng Yao had smiled serenely, as he did whenever Sect Leader Nie confided in him about his glorious gentry childhood. What must it be like, to come up in the world knowing you will own everything your eye can touch?

-

Three days later the sect leaders return from the night-hunt, and the Unclean Realms are awash with awestruck descriptions of the forest demon eliminated by Chifeng-zun. Meng Yao hasn’t exchanged more than a quick glance and nod with Nie Mingjue since he’s come back to the fortress. From what he could make out from across the room, Nie Mingjue is in high spirits, as he always is after stabbing things, but whether that means anything for the broader relationship between Qinghe and Lanling will have to be seen.

For the rest of the day, Meng Yao has his hands full. This banquet is the centerpiece of months of planning, and he doesn’t get off his feet once between leaving his own quarters in the morning and the moment after sundown when, the guests all having been admitted, Meng Yao takes his own place in the hall. He walks with his chin down but his back straight. The way the spine is held marks the difference between bowing and cowering.

He sits in a place of moderate esteem, watching the back of Nie Huaisang’s head, at a table an arm’s length from the one at which Nie Mingjue shares a meal with his own lord father. He has already surpassed his mother in this, his mother who would have given anything to be a sect leader’s concubine instead of something used and then abandoned by the wayside like a lame horse. To be given this much recognition: at least he will be seen with me, at least he remembers my name and thinks it worthy of being held in noble men’s mouths. Even in name, their positions aren’t so far apart. A chief retainer who has fallen out of favour is not much better off than a mistress whose charms have failed her. Neither would be anything without the affection of a great man. Both have failed when their presence brings their master no comfort. They receive no one’s pity when their day is done; what else did they expect would happen to someone like themselves, with nothing to credit for their success but the fickle kindness of one who stands so far above them? Nothing is more changeable than the temper of a man with the world at his feet.

He itches to move. He feels the weight of eyes from all around the room. Years ago, when Meng Yao, always small for his age, scurried through dimly lit halls with his arms full of dry kindling or fresh sheets, he learned that staying busy is a way to keep yourself safe. He received an education from passing by the conversations of the customers who mingled with the giggling women and painted young men. Once a banquet like this has begun, rising from his place at the table would draw too much attention, so instead of picking up anything useful from the inebriated Jin disciples who are enjoying themselves just out of his earshot, Meng Yao picks at the food on his plate. Imported wine from the south pours freely, but it is still a Qinghe meal; they dine on cuts of flesh from five different creatures. He has little appetite for any of it. He would like to be at work, not sitting stationary and so painfully aware of the way his father’s gaze has not strayed toward him once since he arrived. He wishes he were at least sitting next to Nie Huaisang, so the young master would stop turning around in his seat to loudly gossip to Meng Yao behind the thin shield of his unfolded fan. It draws more attention to the two of them than it would have to just have seated Jin Guangshan’s bastard next to the heir to Unclean Realms in view of the entire hall.

Meng Yao smiles indulgently at Huaisang’s frothy dinner commentary and worries the edge of his sleeve between his finger and thumb. He dressed himself this morning in silver and soft gold. It’s a pale shade, unlike the gilt robes the Jin wear; the colour of their thread is too warm, it would clash with cool Qinghe Nie shades. He imagines what it would be like to sit, resplendent in those yellowed tones, at his father’s left hand, with Nie Mingjue on Jin Guangshan’s right. Would they be able to steal glimpses of each other out of the corner of their eyes, when his lord father’s attention is elsewhere, watching the shape of a passing serving girl like he can see through her clothes? Would they find excuses to share dishes so their fingers could brush? He feels delirious with hatred, hungry though he’s eaten his fill. He imagines himself in his father’s seat and Nie Mingjue, the host, by his side, waiting on his fellow sect leader’s pleasure. Meng Yao’s hand could wander under the table; were he in his father’s place, there is little he would not dare. He would take and take until self-restraint was nothing but a memory.

By the time the musicians have returned to entertain them, he can stand it no longer. He leans forward to murmur, “Excuse me, Young Master Nie,” and Meng Yao makes his way out of the pavilion to the crisp summer night outside, where the sun has not quite faded but remains in soft, candied streaks at the edge of the horizon.

The air is not quite chilled, but it will be soon. The stars are out; Meng Yao tips back his head, feels the kiss of darkness on his skin. The air is dry up here, in the mountains; you couldn’t be out after dark in the Yunmeng summer like this without fending off flies.

When the last of the guests and disciples have been shown out of Blades Hall, Meng Yao finally lets his smile fade. The Unclean Realms is not silent just because the cultivators have dispersed to their rooms. This is the servants’ time. Tables are moved back into their regular places, dishes are cleared, floors are scrubbed clean, and Meng Yao oversees it all, his body humming with the energy that had built and built all night as he sat obediently through speeches and dancers and the many courses of the menu he’d prepared weeks earlier. His father is currently resting in pristine guest rooms Meng Yao also recently redecorated. Jin Guangshan probably has some poor Qinghe kitchen maid over his knee at this moment, making his way towards giving Meng Yao another sibling.

He paces circuits around the hall. The other kitchen girls who pass him, bearing ornate serving platters away to be washed, duck their heads with the kind of deference that only comes from fear.

Meng Yao fills his lungs with a deep, slow breath, and takes his leave without a word. He walks down the corridors that lead to the inner residences with a brisk step, pausing only to bow to the handful of inner disciples he encounters lingering in a courtyard, continuing to drink the night away. Luckily, they’re too distracted to pay him much mind; he can’t be sure what he’d do, were they to stop him now.

He walks right past his own quarters. He continues walking on light feet until he’s reached the heart of the Unclean Realms, where Meng Yao knocks lightly on the main entrance to Sect Leader Nie’s chambers and waits to be let in. When Nie Mingjue slides open the door, his brows are drawn in slight confusion. Meng Yao would not be so brazen even on a quiet evening, let alone one where the fortress is full of dignitaries from another great sect.

He would not normally dare, with so many prying eyes around them. But—his father is here. And so he dares. Dares to take what is already his; he is the one owned, here, body and soul, but does that not extend in the other direction, too? He steps forward. The door slides shut behind him. His fingers are clutched in Nie Mingjue’s sleeve.

Nie Mingjue’s eyebrows twist in confusion, but they don’t stop; a few steps across the room, hands grasping at clothing as they go, and they’re at the edge of Nie Mingjue’s bed.

“Meng Yao,” Nie Mingjue begins, his voice low with exhaustion. Meng Yao tugs him down to sit by the hand still grasping his robe.

“Did anything else of note happen when you were away with Sect Leader Jin?”

Nie Mingjue rubs at his temple; Meng Yao leans toward the bedside compartment where Nie Mingjue keeps a vial of medicine for his headaches, but Nie Mingjue frowns and waves his hand. “Don't trouble yourself. It's nothing.”

Meng Yao nods and returns to his side, leaning in close enough for their thighs to touch. Nie Mingjue continues, “We stopped at an inn for an evening on our way back, and they mentioned some bandits have been lurking on the forest roads to the west. It's scaring away their customers.”

Oh, Nie Mingjue. “I'll write to them in the morning,” Meng Yao replies seriously, and purses his lips for a moment before adding, “Has Sect Leader Jin asked you any further about personal matters?”

“You sound as though it's been on your mind.” How could it not be, he wonders? Nie Mingjue turns to the side, to look Meng Yao in the eye. “If I wanted a wife, I would have one.”

He cannot control his tongue. His caution has been left behind on the floor of Blades Hall. “Have you told Huaisang you plan on leaving him the sect? He doesn't want it.”

A stark white pall passes over Nie Mingjue's face. Try as he might to hold himself in check, a day will come when Nie Mingjue is struck down in his place like a tree hit by lightning. Is it fear of the passage of time that keeps him from acting on behalf of his future, as if acknowledging what lies ahead of him will make it more real?

He has miscalculated, Meng Yao thinks, and folds over in apology. With his head bent, Meng Yao’s hair falls over his shoulders to curtain his face, shielding him from Nie Mingjue’s sight. “I must apologize for my disrespect, Chifeng-zun.”

After a few heavy moments, Nie Mingjue replies, “Don't apologize.” His voice is completely flat, and flatter still when he adds, “You're my advisor. I can hardly be angry with you for advising.”

Meng Yao slowly brings himself back upright, but inclines his head solemnly.

“I didn't expect you would want me to marry.”

Of course Meng Yao doesn't want to have to compete with a woman, but doesn't Nie Mingjue realize that even though there's no man on Earth who could command Chifeng-zun to do anything, the rest of them are not so lucky? No choice is without consequence, and Nie Mingjue doesn’t even see that his freedom from having to make apologies is a freedom. He takes so much for granted. Men like Nie Mingjue act according to their hearts, and men like Meng Yao sweep up the wreckage in their wake.

“I spoke only out of concern for Sect Leader Nie’s reputation,” Meng Yao replies, gentle and conciliatory.

“My reputation will survive,” Nie Mingjue mutters darkly, and then he clears his throat, the way he sometimes does before speaking as Nie Mingjue, the man, rather than Chifeng-zun. His next words come out rough with self-consciousness. “There may come a time where I can’t avoid it any longer. For now, I am satisfied with the way things are.”

Oh, Nie Mingjue, you fool; Meng Yao smiles, and runs his knuckles down the side of Nie Mingjue’s face. You should know better than to think love comes without a price, even for a man as strong as you.

He climbs into Nie Mingjue’s lap and marvels at the speed at which wide hands reach up to steady him by the waist. It’s only been days, but Meng Yao missed the feeling of a man watching his face with full attention and no contempt in his gaze. It’s a searching look: Nie Mingjue still examines him with his mouth set in a firm line, but he runs a callused hand down the side of Meng Yao’s neck. Meng Yao tips his head back into the feeling, savouring the scratch against his delicate skin.

His eyelids drift half-closed. “You don’t always have to be so gentle with me.”

“What if it pleases me to please you?”

“There are many ways to be pleased.” He opens his eyes and smiles invitingly. Straddling him like this, Meng Yao is almost able to meet Nie Mingjue’s gaze without looking up. “Chifeng-zun shows this one every kindness. Surely there are things you haven’t asked for of courtesy, but you don’t need to hold yourself back.”

Nie Mingjue furrows his brow. “You think I’m holding back?”

“I know you’re careful not to hurt me.” He keeps his tone light, but Nie Mingjue’s eyes search the surface of Meng Yao’s face for traces of mockery or reproach. Meng Yao watches him in turn. There’s desire there, but it flickers through confusion and unease.

“Are you asking me to hurt you?”

“I’m asking you to do what you like with me.”

Nie Mingjue’s eyes narrow, and for a moment Meng Yao thinks he’s caught on before he replies, “I do. Often.”

Meng Yao’s eyes flash with impatience. He knows Nie Mingjue can see it; he doesn’t bother to conceal it. Nie Mingjue is not simple, though Meng Yao has wished that he was, so what is it that isn’t getting through Nie Mingjue’s thick fucking head? Doesn’t he get tired of pretending to be irreproachable? Meng Yao returns to his own rooms some evenings and thinks he’d set on fire anyone else who came to his door. Is it fear of being held at fault? Whatever Nie Mingjue is thinking when he spurns the advances of pretty Jin girls, Meng Yao is not his lady wife who needs delicate handling. Who does he think Meng Yao is going to tell, and what could they even say—Chifeng-zun had his way with that epicene little water-carrier? That’s what people like Meng Yao are for, aren’t they?

He shifts back and forth in Nie Mingjue’s lap before pursing his lips and asking, “You liked it when I scratched you, didn’t you?”

Nie Mingjue blinks, thrown off balance by the sudden change in direction, and then slowly replies, “I like it when I can tell you’re enjoying yourself.” He doesn’t quite manage to keep his face free of self-satisfaction.

Meng Yao sees the craving there, gleaming through the cracks in Nie Mingjue’s decency, and pries it out into the light. He slides off Nie Mingjue’s lap and leans in closer to him, parting Nie Mingjue’s clothed thighs—they are both still wrapped in the dull shades of what passes for Qinghe finery— with his own. Nie Mingjue tilts back on his elbows, either making room for Meng Yao or shying away from him. His hands roam over Nie Mingjue’s taut neck, his strong shoulders, the breadth of his upper arms. Meng Yao feels like a windstorm that a moment’s stillness could dissolve. He clears a grasping path down Nie Mingjue’s barrel chest, opening the robes in his wake with none of the usual care he would show a garment worth more than his own life.

Meng Yao didn’t come here to talk. He has learned many things from Nie Mingjue over the years. This is one of them: how to speak through action, rather than words.

When he reaches Nie Mingjue’s underclothes, he lifts his head to meet Nie Mingjue’s gaze. “But you liked the way it felt, too. I could tell. You were inside me, remember?”

Within a handful of moments, he lays between Nie Mingjue’s broad, hairy thighs. He, Meng Yao, is completely clothed, but he reaches up to blindly tear his hair free from its fastenings until it hangs over his shoulders, loose and wavy from being held in tight braids since dawn.

Nie Mingjue likes to have his muscles massaged almost hard enough to bruise; Meng Yao has been brought to sweat many nights by the effort of this alone. He likes to have his scalp scratched lightly with fingernails filed smooth. He likes to have his cock sucked without having to ask for it; he likes it when he can believe it’s Meng Yao’s idea. Which it often is, but Nie Mingjue doesn’t need to see the concerted thought behind it—do I let him muss my hair? He always does. With hands so big, he can hardly help it. But I can’t ask him not to touch it, he likes it too much—, wanting to believe Meng Yao has been waiting all day for the chance to fall to his knees and serve with a joyous heart. Meng Yao has reshaped himself to fit Nie Mingjue within: his worries, his hopes, his guilt, his body, and his love for the man he thinks Meng Yao to be. That man is sometimes inseparable from the one Meng Yao has become, but now—he spits right onto Nie Mingjue’s cock. Nie Mingjue likes that, of course he does. Whenever Meng Yao does anything degrading, it shocks Nie Mingjue more than he’s able to conceal. It’s almost sweet that Nie Mingjue forgets, sometimes, where Meng Yao came from. Meng Yao slicks him up with a lazy stroke of his hand, parts his lips, and slides the head over his wide, waiting tongue.

It stretches the corner of Meng Yao’s mouth—it’s gotten easier, but Nie Mingjue is by far the biggest Meng Yao’s had. When he tells him this, lifting off him for a few seconds but not leaning back much, his lips move with the words, brushing the tip of Nie Mingjue’s cock like distracted kisses. It makes Nie Mingjue oddly bashful; his legs, on either side of Meng Yao’s shoulders, tense and release. Meng Yao’s left hand remains on top of Nie Mingjue’s thigh, stroking his skin in a soothing rhythm, but his right hand drifts down, past his stiff dick, leaking impatiently, to cradle his balls. Delicately, like he’d hold an egg in the palm of his hand. Nie Mingjue’s hips shift, but he can’t go far. Even the bare suggestion of what Meng Yao could do to him, should Nie Mingjue move too quickly, keeps him in place. Meng Yao’s stomach swoops with sick satisfaction.

He inclines his head a little further down and looks up at Nie Mingjue’s face through his lowered eyelashes. “Do you trust me, Chifeng-zun?”

A muscle jumps in the corner of Nie Mingjue’s jaw. His eyes are two wide, dark, astonished pools. Meng Yao can see the ripple that passes over them the moment Nie Mingjue takes hold of his courage. A heartbeat later, Nie Mingjue lifts the hand he’d been bracing against Meng Yao’s shoulder and rubs the pad of his thumb over Meng Yao’s swollen mouth.

Meng Yao tightens his grip on Nie Mingjue’s balls incrementally. His eyes never leave Nie Mingjue’s face.

“Is that too hard?” He keeps his tone pleasant and slightly concerned. Nie Mingjue wouldn’t give in to pain for its own sake, but the way he watches Meng Yao when, after a few seconds, he opens his eyes back up, tells Meng Yao this is more than manly stubbornness. Sweat beats on his forehead.

This is why he’s risen so far: he gives Nie Mingjue the things Nie Mingjue doesn’t know that he wants.

Meng Yao begins to seize his grip and release, repeating the pattern, testing how much pressure can get away with. Nie Mingjue seems bashful, as though all of the things they’ve done before this were chaste in comparison. Perhaps he’s correct. This is something Meng Yao has never done, either, though he knows that in a cathouse acts like this command a higher price than a simple tumble in the sheets. Some women build their reputations by perfecting the cruel touch. Meng Yao pulls his mouth away and strokes his free hand up a wide, pilous thigh to reach the joining of Nie Mingjue’s leg and groin. Meng Yao pinches the skin there between the nails of his finger and thumb with full force. Nie Mingjue shakes and shivers. He wonders if it ever stops feeling so euphoric.

“Does this please you?” It comes out heavier, this time, his own voice pitched low. Nie Mingjue again does not answer, but the ridges of his throat ripple as he swallows, panting winded through a parted mouth. Meng Yao nods politely in recognition, as though his right hand is not squeezing and releasing his sect leader’s stones in a steady rhythm as his left pinches its way closer to the base of Nie Mingjue’s cock.

“Chifeng-zun is so strong, something like this must be nothing to him.”

He continues sucking at him idly. A bit of Meng Yao’s hair gets stuck in his mouth, and when he peels it away with a finger it comes away sticky. After he leaves, Meng Yao will need to bathe away the residue of sex. He is important enough now to call for hot water at any time of night, and the servants keep their thoughts about him out of earshot.

Meng Yao has risen far higher out of the gutter than most cultivators would believe possible, but for all that, he, too, is still a servant. If he sleeps beneath the sect leader’s sheets most nights, it is an act of service. When he smiles in the face of insults and does his duty anyway, it is an act of service. He squeezes Chifeng-zun’s balls within the grasp of one of his small hands—first one, then the other, twisting them experimentally—and watches him wince under the pain of it, curling neither closer to Meng Yao nor further away, just buffeted by the intensity of the feeling like a leaf caught in a thrashing winter wind: even this is service. Though not only to Nie Mingjue. Meng Yao has gotten very skilled at taking what he can get where he can get it, and he is not a man to let an opportunity pass him by.

The Nie, more than perhaps any sect but the Wen, rule by force. The common people of Qinghe adore Nie Mingjue, though few of them have ever met him. Nie Mingjue embodies the land. It’s impossible to imagine a man like this growing up in the stillness of Gusu or sweating through the humid summers of Yunping. His face is as craggy as the peaks that tower over the Unclean Realms. His body has proven indomitable for any challenger he’s met, but it yields for Meng Yao, and if Meng Yao has mastery of that body, if only for an hour, in the quiet of the sect leader’s rooms, then maybe someday he will master this place, too, from the shadows, in the tidy chambers where men like him, too weak for the training ground, hold court.

He pulls down, gently but steadily. Muscular strength and golden cores are irrelevant to this. There are other ways to overpower someone. Nie Mingjue’s hands rest on top of Meng Yao’s hair. They tremble. He keeps expecting to be pushed off at any moment; it must be excruciating. No such pressure comes. Meng Yao meets Nie Mingjue’s ragged gaze and whispers, “You can finish on my face. I’d let you.”

Nie Mingjue’s eyes squeeze shut, overwhelmed, and his response only comes as a choked-off sound from deep in his throat and an uncontrolled buck of his hips. He’s never been less commanding. The room is still hot even after the sun has fallen, and heat rises off Nie Mingjue’s body in waves; Meng Yao can feel it in the air between their skin. It ought to shimmer.

Meng Yao is giddy with lust. He would allow so much, now that he has this. Has Nie Mingjue ever before been held at anyone’s mercy? Does the feeling excite him for its novelty? Every time they look at each other from now on, Nie Mingjue will know what Meng Yao is capable of; he’ll remember he let it happen, that he liked it, that he came undone at the feeling of his chief attendant’s teeth scraping up the side of his cock.

When he tips over the edge, Nie Mingjue lets out a chest-deep groan of pain. His spend is mostly caught in Meng Yao’s mouth, but some of it runs down his neck and jaw. He’s never let Nie Mingjue do this to him before. He is filthy. He looks like every name any leering man has ever called him. The pit of his stomach soars free of his body; he feels as though he’s ridden astride a dragon and set his feet back down to earth, unharmed.

Meng Yao wipes his face with one pass of the back of his hand and then rises to his knees. Nie Mingjue opens his eyes; they’re still blown-out from orgasm, but he observes Meng Yao with something close to wariness. Breath catches in Meng Yao’s throat. Do you see me now, Nie Mingjue? Do you really see me? Watch me, don’t let your gaze stray: Meng Yao lifts his own robes out of the way to straddle Nie Mingjue’s thighs.

He guides Nie Mingjue’s hilt-roughened hand under his own clothes. Nie Mingjue summons enough strength to prop himself upright and do the work. Meng Yao leans forward and buries his face in the familiar tumble of Nie Mingjue’s hair. Inside his chest, Meng Yao’s thudding heart threatens to break loose of his ribs. He screws his eyes up tight and opens his lips against Nie Mingjue’s neck, licking up the salt of his sweat, holding the taste of desire in his mouth.

-

The gates of the Unclean Realms don’t open easily. They must be drawn up by a system of pulleys and cranks. The place does not admit visitors without making them aware of the fact they are being permitted entrance into a place into which they could not easily trespass, and this makes departures just as elaborate an affair.

He stands on a platform next to the main gates, watching the Jin entourage mount their horses and step into their golden caravans. On the ground of the courtyard, Nie Mingjue bids farewell to Jin Guangshan. His back is turned to Meng Yao, so he can’t see the look on Nie Mingjue’s face.

How many of these visitors were there, the day he was thrown from the top of Carp Tower? Do they recognize his face? He’s climbed his way back up to the top of a sect palace, step by step, in exile. Not one of them could’ve picked themselves up out of the Lanling dirt, dusted off their robes, and started over again. They wouldn’t know how. Having once been nothing has its blessings; Meng Yao is shapeless and common, but, like water, he can rearrange himself to fit any vessel.

He wonders how many of these men have made jokes, exchanged with the bright-eyed fervour of lust barely hidden behind scorn, about the things Meng Yao lets Sect Leader Nie do to him. Nothing shocks him. He’s already heard everything there is to be said. If they knew what Sect Leader Nie lets Meng Yao do to him, then they would have something worth talking about.

Last night, after, Meng Yao had gazed at the crumpled sheets, rucked down to the foot of the bed by their thrashing limbs. Neither of them made any move towards pulling them back up. His skin had still felt hotter than the blessedly cool evening air could account for. While Nie Mingjue’s breathing slowed beside him, Meng Yao contemplated the fabric beneath them, estimating what this cloth must have gone for by the bolt in the drapery houses of Qinghe Town. It was thin but sturdy, not embellished with fripperies or delicate silk. As rugged as Nie Mingjue may have been, a sect leader had no reason to deprive himself of finely-made things. He wondered if Nie Mingjue had ever once considered where his sheets came from, where the owners of the hands that had woven it slept at night, or how many of those small, insignificant people could fit in a bed the size of Sect Leader Nie’s. Even with Meng Yao lying by his side, there was more than enough room to toss and turn.

When their skin at last began to cool, Nie Mingjue had murmured, “Where did you learn to do something like that?”

Meng Yao had smiled, coy, and languorously stretched out his back leg into the empty space behind him, claiming as much of the bed as his body could possibly take up.

Now, the underside of Meng Yao’s skin prickles anew. After the sect leaders have exchanged their last salutations and Jin Guangshan has mounted his horse, Nie Mingjue glances over the courtyard and gives Meng Yao a single curt nod.

Meng Yao turns to the gatekeeper next to him, outstretches his hand, and calls out, “Open the gates,” in a tone so clear and crisp even his father cannot ignore it.

He ought to descend from the platform to join Nie Mingjue at his side, or at least hasten to the head steward and oversee the process of getting the fortress back to its regular rhythms. He will do both of these things, in time, but for now Meng Yao turns his back to them and climbs to the top of the Unclean Realms’ great stone wall.

When Meng Yao had ridden a sword for the first time, he was with Nie Mingjue, too. After several years of proper Qinghe Nie cultivation training Meng Yao’s golden core was strong enough to take flight, and despite Nie Mingjue’s brusque instructions to keep his gaze level, he couldn’t resist looking down at the trees and grasses spread out beneath them. Each place they crossed was under the protection of the man standing beside him, ready to catch Meng Yao if he faltered. Meng Yao’s feet didn’t even shake on the blade’s edge.

They’d returned to Unclean Realms before long. Nie Mingjue’s hand landed on Meng Yao’s waist for half a breath before he stepped down to the ground.

Today, he remains tethered to the earth, held up by a wall of solid stone. He watches the Lanling Jin fade into the distance. The harsh winds of the valley buffet his skirts, his sleeves, his hair; on the horizon, dust clouds are whipped into being by the departing wheels and hooves. Nothing keeps him here but duty and a hunger for something that has no taste, and yet. And yet.