13. Promises

Yanli turned sixteen as Meng Jiayi in a reformed siheyuan that had its back to the Burial Mounds. She was known in Yiling as the talented embroiderer Miss Meng, along with the three industrious Meng brothers and their slightly weird but venerable grandfather.

Several weeks before her birthday, news came from Lotus Pier that Sect Leader Jiang had married at last, after being without a wife for nearly two decades. Yanli’s mother had been utterly erased from history, in a way that hurt so much worse than she had ever expected. Legally and spiritually, Jiang Fengmian never had a wife and never had children, and it made Yanli both furious and, strangely, homesick. Lotus Pier had not been peaceful for its children, but it had been her home until she turned fifteen. She had been weeks away from her hair pinning ceremony, when her mother would pin her hair into a single bun and acknowledge her as a full grown woman of their clan. She had been so excited, and had worked diligently on the embroidery for the robes she was to wear that day.

She wondered what had happened to those robes, so expensive to make and so carefully decorated by her and her maids. She wondered what the hairpin her mother had chosen for her had looked like.

Jiang Fengmian’s “first” wife was a young, well-regarded daughter of Sect Leader Yao who was only a few years older than Yanli herself. She had visited with the girl plenty of times when they were children, and found her vapid and a weak cultivator—not because of health or other limitations, but because she didn’t care. All she had ever talked about was having babies and the latest fashions. Yanli tried not to judge her for that, given that was exactly what a well-bred gentry maiden was supposed to care about, but she found her to be utterly boring. She doubted that the girl would be able to manage Lotus Pier half as efficiently as Yanli’s mother had. Yanli had no space in her heart to hate her mother’s replacement, though. It served no purpose.

No, the person she had learned to hate was the man she had once called ‘father’. The more time passed from the disastrous morning they had been thrown out of Lotus Pier with nothing but the clothes on their backs, the more hate grew in her heart for him. She worked hard not to become embittered because she knew the toll such resentment could take on her qi if she let it, but it was there like a small seed of a vine, ready to grow and spread throughout her body.

But she did not let on to her brothers how she felt. She educated them, lectured them, dressed them, and helped them grieve their multiple losses in their own ways.

They celebrated her birthday with gusto, and even Lao Wang, who had not handled the winter well, managed to get out of bed to slurp some soup in her honor. They all felt the absence of Xiao Xingchen and Song Zichen keenly, but the cultivators had left a while ago, so it was not a fresh ache for the boys.

A’Cheng and Wei Ying performed feats of archery for her, shooting down kites they had spent weeks making, then gifted her with boxes of pretty ribbons for her to use on her dresses and robes. If they were a little vague about where the money came from to buy the gifts, she pretended not to notice.

Meng Yao, ever more genteel, gave her a beautifully carved jade inkstone. It was not as high quality as the ink stones she used in her youth, but it represented a good chunk of income from his work as an at-hire accountant. In a way, it represented hope, she thought. A life of writing and beauty and art, something she had never thought much about when she had it. She smiled at him and got one of his rare, dimpled smiles in return, although she thought she saw a hint of sadness in his eyes.

Later that evening, after Lao Wang had retired back to bed with a hot water bottle and some medicinal tea, and the boys were pretending to kill fierce corpses in the courtyard as the sun set, Meng Yao came over and sat down across from her. Something about his manner made her put her embroidery down and wait for him to speak.

He had a small bag in his hands and was uncharacteristically fiddling with it. Finally, he took a deep breath and opened it, letting a pearl button spill out.

“I got your inkstone from Lao Deng.”

“I thought I recognized his work! It’s very fine. He did a beautiful job.”

“He did.” Meng Yao rolled the pearl around. “I asked him to look at this.” He held it up so it caught the light. It was very pretty, and a fair size. Deng Haipeng was a talented artist who not only carved jade but did some jewelry work. He was not a great jeweler, but he could repair pieces and make simple designs. More importantly, he was the only person in Yiling who worked with valuable jewels, as rare as they were in such a place.

“He said it was nearly worthless. Not fake, but not much better than what you would find on an imperial dancer’s costume. Real enough to look right.”

He stopped there, looking at it.

“A’Yao?”

“My father gave it to my mother as a promise to come back and care for her. For me.”

“Oh,” Yanli said, her heart breaking. Of course, Jin Guangshan never meant to follow through and was cruel enough to say so with a cheap trinket, but not words.

Meng Yao looked at her shrewdly. “You think he never meant to come back.”

“No, I don’t think he did.”

“Our brothers had a lot more to say about my half-brother, when I asked them about your betrothal to him.”

Yanli tried not to cringe. “I hope they were not…too improper.”

He gave her a small smile. “Only a little bit.” He sighed. “At the brothel, I heard some things about my father, over the years. Bits and pieces of gossip the common people of Yunping would share. I could not take much of it seriously, one way or the other, because one week he would be a brave warrior selflessly protecting the people, and the next week he was a lecherous hedonist stealing daughters for his harem.”

“He doesn’t have a harem,” Yanli said, frowning.

“No, he doesn’t!” Meng Yao laughed. “I always wondered about that. Was Mama supposed to be his first concubine? But no. Your brothers said a lot about Madam Jin; I don’t think she would have let my mother cross the threshold of Koi Tower alive.”

Yanli grimaced, but nodded. “No. She would not have allowed that. She would never have willingly allowed any challenge to her own son.” She paused. “Who said that about Madam Jin?”

“A’Cheng. He claimed that she was too much like his mother.”

“Ah. Yes, he saw her more often than Wei Ying did,” Yanli confirmed.

He held the pearl up again. “This is your birthday, and meant to be a joyous occasion, so I hesitate to bring this up now. But I believe it is a fitting day to swear an oath to you.”

A chill went down her spine, but she did not reply.

“In five months, I will be fifteen. My plan was to go to Lanling and present myself, and this pearl, to my father.”

She frowned. “In five months?”

“Yes.”

“A’Yao, when is your birthday?”

He told her, and she reared back in shock.

“What?” He looked worried.

“That is A’Xuan’s…that is Jin Zixuan’s birthday. Exactly.”

They stared at each other for a long moment, the implications sinking in, before she reached out and grabbed his wrist.

“Don’t go. A’Yao, please, don’t go!”

He put a soft hand over hers, a scholar’s hand, and smiled sadly. “Before I left, Mama made me promise to go. She handed me this pouch and told me to go on my fifteenth birthday.”

“She could not have known the significance of the date!” She squeezed his wrist harder. “Please, A’Yao, you must believe me: Jin Guangshan is a not a good man. I was never allowed to be in his presence for long, and never without my mother’s guardians nearby.” She hoped they were still alive, but she suspected they had chosen to die with their mistress.

He shook his head and forced her to release him. Then he slipped the pearl back into the pouch, and handed it to her. She held it with shaking hands.

“I must go. I promised my…our mother. I will go.”

“No,” she whispered.

“A’Cheng will be able to handle the accounts I manage while I’m gone.”

“He’s just a boy!”

“He’s old enough to handle the book-keeping. Not the taxes, or anything complicated with the trader caravans, but he can keep everything neat and clean until I return. You have a head for accounts; you can help him if he runs into a snarl with the math.”

Yanli fisted her hands in her lap, clutching at the mostly-empty pouch, unsure of why she was so opposed. It was his birthright, after all, and maybe, just maybe, Jin Guangshan would do the right thing for a change. But then she thought of her mother, weighted down in the deep waters, an inconvenience forgotten by everyone except those who loved her.

“He will try to make you disappear,” she whispered, trying to keep from shaking all over.

“He might,” he replied. He pulled her hands between his so that they were both holding the pouch and looked her in the eyes. “But that is why I am leaving this with you. I doubt having it will make any difference to him, anyway. But today, on your birthday, I make this promise to you: no matter what happens, I will return to you and our brothers.” He pulled her hands to his forehead, as if praying over them, then got up and walked to the room he shared with the boys.

Four months later, he left on a “business trip” to Lanling. A’Cheng, still innocent in so many ways, suspected nothing and was mostly upset that he could not go along with him. But Wei Ying watched his older brother leave with a dark, heavy look in his eyes, and ran off into the woods for the rest of the day, only returning very late with two pheasants and meek apologies.

Yanli channeled her fear and sadness into her work, creating pieces with designs that broke tradition and stood out in the market like a phoenix among chickens. They were probably too unique, too wildly experimental, but they sold anyway. Yanli was long past caring about what was “right and proper” in a world that only punished good people for trying to do the right thing.