Chapter 87: Crimson Heart, Part Nineteen 9

As he spoke he caught hold of two branches and began to climb the trunk, scrambling up with the ease of long habit, swift and sure, until near the very crown of the tree Wei Wuxian at last came to a halt and said, ‘Mm, this is about the spot.’

He buried his face in a dense cluster of leaves, and only after a long moment did he glance down, his voice pitched high and seemingly touched with laughter: ‘Back then it felt frighteningly high. Looking at it now, it isn’t really so high at all.’

The instant his arms closed around the tree, Wei Wuxian’s eyes stung hot; by the time he looked down again his sight had already blurred.

Lan Wangji stood directly beneath the tree, his face lifted toward him. He too was robed all in white, and though he carried no lantern, the moonlight ran molten across him, leaving the whole of him so luminous and clear that he seemed wrapped in a faint, soft halo; head slightly tilted, his expression intent, he gazed up at the crown of the tree and took a few steps nearer to the trunk, as if he meant to raise both hands.

And all at once a strange and powerful impulse came surging up in Wei Wuxian’s mind.

He wanted to fall once more, just as he had fallen that night long ago.

A voice inside him said: ‘If he catches me, then I’ll…’

At the words ‘I’ll,’ Wei Wuxian let go. Seeing him drop from the tree without the slightest warning, Lan Wangji’s eyes flew wide, and he lunged forward in a single stride; Wei Wuxian was caught squarely against him, or rather, flung himself full into his arms.

Lan Wangji was tall and slender, a gentle scholar to all appearances, yet his strength was not to be underestimated, for not only were his arms astonishingly powerful, his footing was steadier still. But this was, after all, a grown man dropping out of a tree, and so, though he caught Wei Wuxian cleanly, he staggered the slightest bit and gave a single step back, before steadying himself at once, perfectly firm. He was just about to release Wei Wuxian when he found that Wei Wuxian’s arms were wound tightly about his neck, holding him fast so that he could not move.

He could not see Wei Wuxian’s face, nor Wei Wuxian his, yet there was no need to look; with his eyes closed, every breath was full of the cool, clear sandalwood scent that clung to Lan Wangji.

In a hoarse voice he said, ‘Thank you.’

He was not afraid of falling. Over the years he had fallen many times. But to strike the ground still hurt, in the end.

And if there were someone who could catch him, nothing could be better than that.

At the thanks, Lan Wangji’s body seemed to go rigid. The hand he had been about to lay against Wei Wuxian’s back paused, then drew back after all.

After a silence, Lan Wangji said, ‘There is no need.’

When they had held each other a good while, Wei Wuxian let go, drew himself upright, and stood there every inch the hale fellow again, easy as if nothing had happened: ‘Let’s head back!’

Lan Wangji said, ‘You’re done looking?’

Wei Wuxian said, ‘Looking! But there’s nothing more worth seeing out here. Go any farther and it’s only wilderness, and we’ve had our fill of that these past days. Let’s go back to Lotus Pier. There’s one last place I want to show you.’

The two doubled back to the docks and passed in through the great gate of Lotus Pier once more. Crossing the Training Ground, as they came alongside a small, ornate building, Wei Wuxian halted and lingered, casting it several extra glances, his expression altered. Lan Wangji said, ‘What is it.’

Wei Wuxian shook his head and said, ‘Nothing. The rooms I used to live in were here. They’re gone now, torn down just as I thought. All of this is newly built.’

They wound their way past tier upon tier of buildings and came to a still and silent corner deep within Lotus Pier, before a black octagonal hall. As though afraid of disturbing someone, Wei Wuxian pushed the door gently open and stepped inside. At the front of the hall, row upon row of spirit tablets were ranged in neat order.

The Yunmeng Jiang Clan Ancestral Hall.

He found a cushion and knelt, took three sticks of incense from the offering table, passed them through the candle flame to kindle them, and set them in the bronze censer before the tablets, then bowed three times toward two of the tablets and said to Lan Wangji, ‘I used to be a regular here, too.’

Understanding settled over Lan Wangji’s face. ‘Made to kneel in penance?’

Wei Wuxian said in surprise, ‘How did you know? It’s true. Madam Yu had me kneeling here every other day.’

Lan Wangji inclined his head. ‘I had heard something of it.’

Wei Wuxian said, ‘It spread all the way from Yunmeng to your Gusu, so it can hardly be only “something.” But to tell the honest truth, in all these years I’ve never met a second woman with a temper as foul as Madam Yu’s. The smallest thing and off I’d be packed to kneel in the ancestral hall. Hahaha…’

And yet, for all that, Madam Yu had never once truly done anything meant to harm him.

It struck him suddenly that this was the ancestral hall, and that Madam Yu’s own tablet stood right before him, and he said hastily, ‘Forgive me, forgive me.’ To make amends for his loose tongue just now, he lit three more sticks of incense and was raising them high above his head, repeating his apologies again and again in his heart, when a shadow fell at his side; he turned his head and saw that Lan Wangji had knelt down beside him.

Having come to the shrine, courtesy required that one pay one’s respects. Lan Wangji likewise took three sticks of incense, drew back his sleeve, and lit them at a red candle nearby, his movements measured, his expression grave. Wei Wuxian tilted his head to watch him, and the corners of his mouth lifted of their own accord. Lan Wangji glanced at him and reminded him, ‘The ash.’

The three sticks in Wei Wuxian’s hand had burned a while and gathered a small length of ash, on the very point of falling. Yet he held off from setting them in the censer, and instead said in earnest, ‘Together, then.’

Lan Wangji raised no objection, and so, each holding his three sticks of incense aloft, they knelt before the ranked tablets and together bowed their heads low toward the names of Jiang Fengmian and Yu Ziyuan.

Once, then twice, their bows perfectly matched. Wei Wuxian said, ‘There.’ Only then did he set the incense, with great solemnity, into the bronze censer.

At the last, Wei Wuxian stole a glance at Lan Wangji kneeling beside him in flawless, upright form, pressed his palms together, and recited silently in his heart: ‘Uncle Jiang, Madam Yu, it’s me again. Come to trouble your peace once more.’

‘But I truly did want to bring this person for you to see. These two bows just now can stand for the bows to heaven and earth and to one’s parents. The two of you, settle this man at my side for me first. The last bow I’ll leave owing, and find a chance to make it good in time to come…’

Just then, from behind the two of them, came a sudden cold laugh.

Wei Wuxian, in the midst of his silent prayer, started at the sound and snapped his eyes open. Turning to look, he saw Jiang Cheng standing with his arms folded on the open ground outside the ancestral hall.

In an icy tone he said, ‘Wei Wuxian, you really don’t treat yourself as an outsider, do you. Come when you please, go when you please, bring whom you please. Have you forgotten whose house this is, and who its master is?’

Wei Wuxian had meant from the start to keep this from him, and now that Jiang Cheng had found him out, he knew a stream of cutting words was unavoidable. Not wanting to provoke a quarrel, he said, ‘I haven’t taken Hanguang-jun to any of the other secret places in Lotus Pier. I only came to offer a few sticks of incense to Uncle Jiang and Madam Yu. It’s done. We’re leaving now.’

Jiang Cheng said, ‘If you’re leaving, leave as far off as you can. And don’t let me hear or see you fooling about in Lotus Pier again.’

Wei Wuxian’s brow twitched, and seeing Lan Wangji’s right hand settle on the hilt of his sword, he hurriedly pressed it down by the back of the hand.

Lan Wangji said to Jiang Cheng, ‘Mind your words.’

Jiang Cheng said without ceremony, ‘I’d say it’s your conduct the two of you should be minding.’

Wei Wuxian’s brow twitched harder and harder, the sense of foreboding in his heart thickening, and he said to Lan Wangji, ‘Hanguang-jun, let’s go.’

He turned and earnestly knocked his forehead to the ground several times more before the tablets of Jiang Fengmian and his wife, then rose to his feet together with Lan Wangji. Jiang Cheng had not, in fact, forbidden the bows, but he made no effort to hide his mockery: ‘You really ought to kneel to them properly, after coming before them for no reason to foul their eyes and defile their peace.’

Wei Wuxian swept him a glance and said evenly, ‘It was only incense. Will that do for you?’

Jiang Cheng said, ‘Incense? Wei Wuxian, haven’t you the least bit of shame? You were swept out of our family’s door long ago, and now you bring every sort of riffraff before my parents to offer incense?’

Wei Wuxian had all but stepped past him and was on his way out, but at these words he suddenly stopped short and said in a low voice, ‘Then make it plain. Who is the riffraff?’

Had he been alone here, he could have let everything Jiang Cheng said go unheard. But Lan Wangji was with him now, and whatever happened, he did not want Lan Wangji to endure alongside him these words of Jiang Cheng’s, growing uglier by the moment, and the malice rolling off him.

Jiang Cheng said scornfully, ‘What a short memory you have. What does “riffraff” mean? Then let me remind you. It was because you played the hero and saved this Young Master Lan the Second beside you that all of Lotus Pier, and my father and mother along with it, were buried for your sake. And that wasn’t enough. Having done it once, you had to do it again, you even had to go and save the Wen dog, dragging my sister and the rest into it. How very noble of you. More noble still, you’re so very magnanimous as to bring these two here to Lotus Pier. You let the Wen dog loiter before our gate, you let Young Master Lan the Second walk in and offer incense, deliberately to put me, and them, ill at ease.’

He said, ‘Wei Wuxian, who do you think you are? Who gave you the face to bring whomever you please into our family’s ancestral hall?’

Wei Wuxian had long known that Jiang Cheng had never stopped meaning to settle this account with him.

To Jiang Cheng’s mind, the ruin of Lotus Pier was a thing for which not only Wei Wuxian bore the blame; Wen Ning and Lan Wangji could not be cleared of it either, and he would spare none of the three a kind look. With all of them clustered before him now, drifting back and forth, and come to Lotus Pier besides, he had surely been blazing with fury long before this.