2. Drowning

The official and very public drowning of Madam Yu was all anyone could talk about.

As soon as word of it made to Yiling (less than two hours after the fact, Yanli eventually found out), Yanli put A’Cheng under lock and key. The lock was Lao Wang and the key was Wei Ying. It had been fairly effective, because even though Lao Wang wandered out occasionally, Wei Ying was very committed to protecting Jiang Cheng, even from himself.

Which meant that for the following week, Yanli was the one out on the streets, trying to buy the worst looking cabbage and the roughest rice she had ever seen. She inspected the day-old, yellowed tofu that had been sitting in the sun too long and did not feel anything about it. In her former life she would have politely asked if the vendor was okay, was his family healthy, were there problems that the Yunmeng Jiang sect could help him with? But not in Yiling. She was nobody—no, she was worse than nobody: a poor nameless girl buying the cheapest food for sale. A bastard.

She was hollowed out, as broken and dirty as the bag of cheap rice at the bottom of her basket.

Her mother…

Her mother was dead.

The thought haunted her every moment of every day. She nearly went crazy imagining what had happened, how it had been done, what her mother’s final thoughts were as she was tied up with stones and thrown into deep waters.

Her mother was executed by the man Yanli had thought was her father, the man she loved and who had carried her around, plying her with sweets behind her mother’s back. The man who had looked at Yanli with disgust as he ordered her beloved and terrified servants to throw her in the street while A’Cheng collapsed next to her, blue in the face from lack of breath. Wei Ying had been held back by a senior disciple, screaming and fighting to get free. She had thought the last she would ever see of him would be as her father—as Jiang Zongzhu dragged him back inside Lotus Pier, closing the gate in her face.

Wei Ying once again surpassed her expectations and caught up to them on the road north out of Lotus Cove that night. Somehow he wrangled them onto a boat and upriver to Yunping, then overland to Yiling. She wondered how he got out, whether he had asked to be released from the sect, or if he had just escaped the first moment he could. She suspected the latter, but could not bring herself to ask.

He had likely saved their lives, since she and A’Cheng had run from Lotus Pier carrying almost nothing, certainly not money or food or weapons. Wei Ying, former street urchin, had known to bring all of that in several qiankun pouches. He had money taken from a drawer in her room she thought was her own private secret stash, plus more coins he refused to answer for with shifty eyes. He was armed with a mundane, old short sword and several knives, undoubtedly stolen from the Jiang Sect armory. He had brought a whole pouch filled with nothing but plain, utilitarian blankets and towels, obviously stolen from the servants’ quarters.

He knew from the start what they were in for.

Now her mother was dead and none of them had a home or a family anymore.

Her mother was dead.

“I can believe it. That bitch was always putting on airs. Mean as a snake!”

“She had the world handed to her and decided to whore around, anyway!”

“Those poor children, though!”

“They aren’t even the sect leader’s kids! He doesn’t owe them shit!”

“They are just children! How cruel can you be?”

“Hey, life sucks. That’s not Sect Leader Jiang’s fault. Madam Yu should have thought of that before spreading her legs.”

“I hear the ward ran away too.”

“Stupid kid. He had it made! Everyone knows he’s Jiang Fengman’s bastard. Probably would’ve been named heir.”

Yanli made it back to the bolt hole that was Lao Wang’s home without a thought in her head, exhausted beyond words and carrying the bare minimum four people needed to eat.

A’Cheng was in the very top bunk of the three-tiered bunk bed made for children long gone, wrapped up in a thin blanket, where he had spent most of the week in an ongoing state of shock. She knew he was awake, but let him be. What could she say to him? He was eleven years old and his world had just been destroyed: his mother revealed as a liar and adulteress, then executed; his so-called father, a stranger who threw him out like trash.

She got to work cooking. The fireplace was too open and Lao Wang had almost no cooking utensils, but she was making do. He was a very old man who had lived most of his life eating street vendor dishes and whatever he could snack on, so he was incredibly impressed with the food she managed to scrape together. They ate a lot of congee with eggs and cabbage, and each meal was the worst one she had ever made in her life. She quickly came to understand Wei Ying’s obsession with spices because she missed them desperately.

“ShiJie,” Wei Ying said, quietly cutting up the cabbage. “I don’t think we can stay here.”

“It is a great imposition on Lao Wang,” she agreed.

He laughed. “Not really. He’s eating better than he ever has in his life. I’m just worried about staying in Yunmeng territory.”

“What do you mean? I don’t think anyone is looking for us.”

“No, but they know we’re out here somewhere. There are a lot of people who would enjoy humiliating former gentry kids.”

“I find that hard to believe, Ying’er!”

“I know. That’s why I’m telling you.” He looked up with a hard, mean expression that was becoming more familiar to her every day that passed. Yanli had learned quickly that the jovial, quick-witted, and smiling boy she had known was much more mature than she ever imagined. She had always considered his days living as a street orphan as a tragedy, but one that was simply background noise in his life. Instead, he was showing her a side to him that had been buried for years: street smart, canny, cunning, and surprisingly ruthless.

“We have to be careful, ShiJie. Out here?” He waved the knife around. “We’re just orphans. There are kind people in the world, but not enough of ‘em. You need to be smart and careful. Don’t go out past the market alone. Don’t talk to people you don’t recognize. Be quiet and stay unseen. You’re smart, ShiJie, I know you are! But people here will try to take advantage of your kindness and ignorance, and you can’t let ‘em.” He chopped the cabbage ruthlessly.

She remembered Wei Ying negotiating with Lao Wang for them to live with him for a while, and it was like watching two ancient aunties argue over the price of a chicken with butcher knives in hand and smiles on their faces. He later told her that the deal had not been about her cooking, as she had assumed, or even herself as a girl (they both blushed when he said that), but over A’Cheng. Lao Wang wanted him as a “runner,” to teach him how to be a pickpocket, and Wei Ying had refused.

She was so, so grateful that Wei Ying was there with them, even if it broke her heart.

“Where could we even go?” She asked. She had briefly considered her mother’s natal sect, but they had lost so much face by her actions and execution that they would likely them whip them to death if they dared present themselves. No sect would take them in. Yiling was not a great choice, but it seemed to her that any place was the same as the next, as a commoner.

“Yiling is out of the way of most sects. It’s not the worst place, but it’s still in Yunmeng.” Ying’er shrugged.

She took a deep breath. “You could go back, Ying’er. Fath—Jiang Zongzhu would take you in.” She dropped her voice to a whisper. “He might even make you his heir.”

“No.” He slammed the knife down.

“But—”

“I could never swear loyalty to a man like that. He threw you out, ShiJie! He made Jiang Cheng cry!” His eyes welled up with tears. “Never!”

“I’d go back.”

They both turned and looked over at the bunk bed. A’Cheng was rolled over on his stomach, looking at them.

“If he asked, I’d go back.” He looked at them, lost and afraid, before burying his face in his arms with a quiet sob.

Wei Ying made to go to him, but Yanli put out her hand. She went over herself, hiking up the ladder in a very unlady-like fashion until she could lean against his bunk and use one hand to rub circles on his back.

“Of course you would, A’Cheng. He is your father.”

“He’s not, though,” came the muffled reply.

“He raised us as his children. He is the only father we’ll ever know. It is okay for you to be sad about that, and to miss him.” She tried to keep her own sadness from her voice. She thought A’Cheng would start crying again—he had been crying more often than not, over the past few days—but instead he propped his chin on his forearms and looked directly at her.

“Is mother really dead?”

She took a deep breath, then let it out slowly. “Yes.” She had even seen the notice of execution posted publicly around town after it happened, but she wasn’t going to say that. He would see it himself, eventually.

“I’d still go back,” he whispered, his voice quivering, his eyes filled with tears and shame.

“I wouldn’t let you!” Wei Ying shouted up at them. “He doesn’t deserve you, Jiang Cheng! He’s a bad person and a terrible father!”

“Ying’er!” Yanli scolded.

He crossed his arms over his chest defiantly. “It can’t be unfilial if he isn’t actually anyone’s father!”

Jiang Cheng looked down at him in confusion for a moment, then barked out a laugh. He caught himself, slapping a hand over his mouth in horror, and he looked so ridiculous that Yanli started laughing, which set him off again. Wei Ying joined in and, for a moment, Yanli had a slim hope that they all might be okay.