15. Chapter 15

Meng Zhi throws Lu Yuan into the lake, ending the impromptu martial arts lesson. Fei Liu and Lin Shen howl with glee and even Lin Chen, sitting up on the rise with Mei Changsu, laughs loudly. It is their seventh day at this campsite, although with the old temple and the older village nearby, it hardly counts as living in the wilderness.

He’s used to traveling with hundreds of soldiers or completely alone, either way a different hardship usually entailing bad food and sleeping on the ground. Here, though, they have four tents, three servants, two body guards, and a cook to tend to their small family of five — six if you count Lin Chen, which Lin Chen absolutely does (Meng Zhi doesn’t argue, because he could ask for a worse brother-in-law, and with Mei Changsu’s health still fragile it is good to have the physician along with them). As far as Meng Zhi is concerned, this is the elegant lap of luxury. It’s still a smaller crowd than they started out with, though.

Nearly their entire household staff had shown up in Wuhai with seven wagons of goods and supplies, apparently under the mistaken expectation that they were, in fact, moving permanently to Langzhou. Mei Changsu ended up sending them on to his manor. That is the planned end point of their travels since, while Lin Chen is confident that there will be a new emperor on the throne before the year is out, that is months away so Langzhou is as good a place to land as any other. Mei Changsu is still the chief of the Jiangzou Alliance and it was his headquarters for years, anyway. The boys will enjoy the relative freedom of not living in the capital for a while, Meng Zhi thinks.

He works his way up to his husband and sits down next to him, gratefully taking the tea he offers. The boys have wholesale abandoned propriety to strip down to their underclothes and play in the lake. It is a beautiful, sunny day with a light breeze, so perfect it should be painting, he thinks.

Meng Zhi leans over and himself abandons propriety by kissing Mei Changsu on the cheek, causing his husband’s ears to pink up adorably. Meng Zhi grins.

“Oi! There are children present,” Lin Chen huffs at them as if he weren’t the most shameless of all of them.

Mei Changsu rolls his eyes. “I’m glad you have offered to babysit them, then, while my husband and I go for a quiet stroll far away from you.”

Lin Chen sputters in indignation but they have heard his complaints before, and know that they are merely for show. He loves their boys and they love their uncle, sometimes to catastrophic results for the surrounding foliage when they all get to sparring. Meng Zhi wonders if he should ask Yin Yin to find a suitable spouse for Lin Chen, who clearly is in need of his own set of children.

He’s brought from those thoughts by Mei Changsu reaching out for balance as he rises to his feet.

“Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do,” Lin Chen mutters at them, waggling his eyebrows suggestively.

Meng Zhi glares at him but Mei Changsu chuckles, leading them away toward a small path that goes to the abandoned temple ruins where they might engage in some conjugal relations in a secretive alcove they discovered the day before.

---

Later that evening, Meng Zhi is sated on love, food, and family as they sit around their open-air dining “hall”, watching the majestic sunset over the rolling hills while the boys bicker about sweets. He has given no thought as to why Mei Changsu might want to stay in this remote, unimportant place for several weeks, and in retrospect, he will think that he really should have considered that. He should know better by now.

A rider approaches their camp with a friendly cry, and is greeted by Li Gang, who then comes over to whisper in Mei Changsu’s ear. The boys strain from their seats to see who the stranger is.

“Mei Changsu, I told you, no politics on this trip!” Lin Chen says, his voice hard.

Mei Changsu shakes his head and sends the visitor back where he came from with some words from Li Gang. “This is not a political matter. Ahhhh, perhaps not directly, in any case. I must go to the village.” He gets up, using Meng Zhi’s shoulder for leverage, which does nothing to convince Meng Zhi to let him go anywhere.

“You’re tired, and—”

“Did your husband wear you out, Sir Mei?” Lin Chen asks faux-bashfully from behind his cup of tea, fluttering his eyelashes. Of course the boys zero in on this with confusion and fascination.

“I will twist your tongue out of your mouth, you damn tart—” Meng Zhi whispers with as much force as he can.

“Enough!” Mei Changsu sighs and rolls his eyes as he steadies himself on his feet. “I am tired, yes, but this cannot wait.”

Meng Zhi knows the taste of defeat, so gets up as well. “I will go with you.”

“Ah-Zhi, it is late, there is no need—”

“I will go with you,” Meng Zhi repeats, firmly and loudly.

Lin Chen sighs. “Fine! I cannot let my patient go wandering around on a chilly night unsupervised, though. We shall make a parade of it! Li Gang! Watch the boys. No, that means you too, Fei Liu.”

Mei Changsu scowls at them. “I can handle this by myself.”

“I’m sure you can, husband, but you won’t.”

Mei Changsu grumbles and fusses the whole time Zhen Ping brings around their small, pony-led carriage, used for trips such as this so that Mei Changsu does not have to walk. He tells their sons to behave, repeats the warning for Fei Liu to stay behind, and then they are on their way with Meng Zhi and Lin Chen walking next to the cart.

“Are you going to tell us what this is about?” Lin Chen asks boldly. Meng Zhi gives him a grateful look.

“I received a message a month ago about someone the Alliance has been watching over. It was disturbing news so I asked them to come see me here this month, if they needed help. I was not certain they would show.”

“Why not?” Meng Zhi asks.

“I hoped that the matter would resolve itself,” Mei Changsu sighs, but offers nothing more than that.

He orders them toward the tiny inn on the outskirts of the village, a place that is not even large enough to house their small company. When they get there, a very tiny, old grandmother with a shock of white hair who is obviously long past the age of caring about appearances stomps out of the building, gives them all a displeased once over, then waves them inside.

They are led to a small heated room which, by scent alone, Meng Zhi knows is a sick room. He’s smelled encroaching death before, it is unforgettable.

“You should not be here,” he says, catching Mei Changsu’s arm.

Lin Chen, ever fearless in his own domain, has already crossed the room and is taking the pulse of the woman lying on the pallet bed. He turns to look over at them. “For once, I agree with your husband. You need to leave immediately.”

Mei Changsu shakes him off and keeps walking to the bed. He stops, then bows — low, and long, as if to someone of very high rank.

Meng Zhi looks carefully at the woman in the bed. When he recognizes her, his whole body is flooded with shock. “Princess Consort Yu!” He whispers her name — the name of traitors. The name of the dead. He looks over at Mei Changsu.

Who is now wandering over to the side of the room. He approaches a small, wide basket and peers into it. “Twins?”

Lin Chen is up off the bed like a shot, sticking his hands into the makeshift bassinet.

“Twin girls,” the princess whispers, her voice scratchy. “I am told they are healthy. They have—” she stops to cough. “They have had a wet nurse.”

Lin Chen holds each up in turn, inspecting them as if weighing chickens, but places them carefully back down. His touch is so gentle that they never even wake. “They are healthy, yes. Perhaps malnourished a little, but twins are always underweight. Four months old, I guess?” He returns to the princess’s side.

She nods. “It was difficult.”

The grandmother steps up and speaks to Mei Changsu. “We did what we could, Chief, but her health never recovered from the delivery. It’s why I wrote you. She asked to see you one last time.”

Mei Changsu nods regally, the divine talent appearing and taking up all the space in the room. He moves over to the princess, but Meng Zhi grabs his shoulders to hold him back. “Not too close. She is very ill.”

“I am, I know it. And that is why I risked traveling to you. Chief Mei, you offered me the chance to save what was left of my family. I promised on my life—” she stops to cough again, waving off Lin Chen’s attempt to help her sit up. “I swore to stay far out of Da Liang. But my life is at an end and I will join my husband soon. Please, I beg of you, keep your promise for my daughters. Who knows what fate they will have without...without me...and...I beg. I beg.”

Mei Changsu is murmuring something at her, not that there is much to say. She is dying, and used up the last of her life to come and prostrate herself to her husband’s enemy in the hope of saving her daughters.

Twin girls.

“Oh, Yin Yin,” Meng Zhi sighs as he goes to the basket. He crouches down and picks up one, tucks her into his arm, but he cannot take the other easily. The old grandmother appears next to him, a knowing look in her eyes, as she picks up the twin — this one with a blue ribbon around her wrist, the oldest, then — and puts her in Meng Zhi’s other arm. They are waking, cooing a little at the strange world around them. They are small for being four months old, and immediately Meng Zhi is thinking about getting a second wet nurse for them.

“It is settled, then,” Mei Changsu says a bit more loudly. “We will put the girls with a family in—” He stops when he takes in the sight of Meng Zhi holding the twins. “No.”

Meng Zhi smiles.

“No. We cannot. We won’t. I forbid it.” Mei Changsu looks panicked, like a man facing down an entire battalion of soldiers with nothing but a walking stick in his hand. “No! ”

“This will cut our trip short,” Lin Chen says with a disappointed sigh.

“No!” Mei Changsu raises his hands as if warding off an avalanche.

Meng Zhi walks over and pushes into Mei Changsu’s space, shoving the youngest twin to his chest. Mei Changsu has no choice but to reach out and take her. Meng Zhi keeps his arm under Mei Changsu’s, knowing he cannot hold the weight for long.

“Ah-Zhi, no. We cannot.” Mei Changsu looks down at the baby, whose dark brown eyes are open and reflecting the candlelight in the room. She quirks a baby’s grin up at him, and Meng Zhi can feel the moment his husband’s resolve crumbles. He cradles the girl like a precious jewel in his embrace, his eyes wide with wonder. “Oh.”

After a moment, Meng Zhi takes the baby back, swaying a little as he rocks them. He gives a silent prayer of thanks to Yin Yin and tells her that she can go now, if she chooses. He releases her from her obligations to him with all the gratitude his heart can give her spirit, holding the daughters she picked out especially for him and his husband. He will make sure they always know who their benefactor is.

Mei Changsu reaches out with a shaking hand and gently strokes the head of the eldest.

“They are so young, Meng Zhi. What if—” Mei Changsu’s words trail off as he stares at the girls between them. Meng Zhi can almost see the images running through his husband’s mind: his mother and father’s lives cut short, his own youth murdered, Prince Jing left rudderless in the wake of Prince Qi’s execution, Tengsheng raised as a slave.

Meng Zhi kisses his husband’s temple, where his head is bowed over their youngest child, then rests their foreheads together. “Xiao Su, you once promised to live for my sake. Now let us both promise to live for theirs. For our sons. For our future together.”

Mei Changsu lets out a long, weighted sigh, but smiles. “Yes, Ah Zhi. Yes.”