Chapter Text
Xue Yang was crouched behind a broken barrel in his usual alleyway, gnawing on a raw turnip and hiding from the enraged turnip-seller, when he heard a little voice crying out plaintively.
Tough luck for you, kid, he thought to himself, tonguing a particularly fibrous bit out from between his teeth. The riverside market in Kuizhou was a rough-and-tumble place, busy and loud; accidents were bound to happen with small children always running about underfoot. But this was definitely not the usual wailing for a lost parent or elder sibling, and Xue Yang’s ears pricked up incredulously when he heard who, or what, the child was calling.
“Here Princess, here Princess… Jasmine? Love? Here, Jasmine, here Love, good girls…”
What the hell, thought Xue Yang, and peeked around the barrel, curious.
He saw a small boy, maybe three or four years younger than him, who appeared to be searching for something. The child was making his way slowly along the alley, pushing aside splintered crates and peering behind rows of cracked, greasy old jars, heedless of the smears dirtying his fancy robes and soft hands.
Xue Yang said, “What are you doing here,” and felt a mean little splurt of satisfaction when the purple-clad child nearly jumped right out of his nice leather boots. He whirled around, looking apprehensive, but then he spotted Xue Yang and produced a formidable scowl, despite the quiver in his plump pink cheeks.
“I’m Jiang Cheng,” he said, trying to sound haughty. “I’m looking for my dogs. What are you doing here?”
“I live here,” Xue Yang shot back, putting a challenging note in his voice.
The boy’s storm-gray eyes widened, and despite his bravado, Xue Yang reddened and shifted slightly, trying to get the tattered hem of his robes to cover his feet. It was difficult to hide the fact that the rotten leather of his boots had split ages ago, exposing all of his cold, purple toes, and he hated seeing himself in the mirror of other people’s pitying expressions, reflecting his sorry condition back at him.
But instead, the child’s eyes lit up, and he smiled brilliantly.
“Oh!” he enthused. “That’s great! You must know everything, gege!”
Xue Yang blinked at him for a moment, nonplussed, and then realized the little boy – Jiang Cheng – had most likely misinterpreted his words as I live here, in Kuizhou, rather than I live here, in this particularly shitty alleyway. He fired his most corrosive sneer towards the spoiled, pampered little princeling in front of him, who had probably never encountered poverty before and apparently couldn’t recognize a street kid even if he literally almost fell over one.
But the child just put his hands together, bowed – what the actual fuck – then said, very politely and respectfully, “Please, gege, can you tell me where I should look for my dogs?”
Xue Yang blinked at him again.
The child straightened up and looked at him, expectant.
“How the fuck should I know,” said Xue Yang, feeling strangely flustered. “There’s dogs everywhere, and they all look about the same to me.”
“No, no, gege, my dogs are special,” Jiang Cheng insisted. “You’d know them if you saw them! They’re all from the same litter, but they’re different colors – Princess is light brown, Love is dark brown with black ears, and Jasmine is white, like a cloud! They all have curly tails, super thick fluffy fur, great big square heads, and,” he paused for dramatic effect, “they even have purple tongues!”
Xue Yang scoffed.
“They do!”
“Whatever,” said Xue Yang, rolling his eyes. “Fine, if they’re such special dogs, how’d you lose them in the first place?”
The child’s scowl returned with a vengeance.
“It wasn’t my fault,” he said truculently. “My new shixiong is afraid of dogs, so my father sent my dogs away!”
The boy’s eyelashes batted at the memory, and his lower lip wobbled, but he crossed his arms over his chest and blinked his tears away before adding, “One of the kitchen aunties told me that a merchant bought them, and then I heard one of the Sect Elders say that every merchant passes through Kuizhou eventually, so I ran away and came here to look for them. It’s not fair! They were my friends!”
Xue Yang quirked one eyebrow, unimpressed. He’d spent enough time hanging around the Yueyang Chang disciples to be aware of the existence of shixiongs, Elders, and other features of the cultivation sects. At first, their tales of battling monsters and flying on swords had impressed him to no end, but he’d soon seen quite enough to realize that all the talk of their righteousness and exalted conduct was often little more than just that – empty words. In Xue Yang’s opinion, it was neither righteous nor exalted to spend a pile of gold coins on a bunch of magical nets just to try and win bragging rights in a ghost-catching contest, for fuck’s sake, while ignoring the poverty and misery rooted right outside the iron-bound gates of their Sect Manor.
The world wasn’t fair, and this petty bit of dog-related favoritism was absolutely none of Xue Yang’s concern.
Still…
He ran a calculating eye over the small boy, who was still glaring at him. His clothes really were very fine. He was wearing several layers of rich purple silk picked out here and there with some kind of flower, embroidered in silver threads. A silver bell the size of a walnut dangled from his belt on an intricately knotted tassel, and, in stark contrast to Xue Yang’s own filthy tangle, his hair was carefully combed, braided, and tied into a little top-knot with an extravagantly long violet ribbon.
Clearly, his family had very, very deep pockets.
“All right, then” said Xue Yang, slowly. “Say I do help you find your dogs. What’s in it for me?”
Jiang Cheng’s little face lit up again.
“I saved up all of my pocket-money,” he said, and offered up a fistful of coins that made Xue Yang want to physically recoil.
“Silver is no good to me,” he replied flatly. “Someone will either kill me for it, or the magistrates will assume I stole it and beat me bloody.”
“Oh, um…”
The boy hunted through his sleeves, and produced a hefty parcel wrapped in greaseproof paper.
“My A-Jie packed me some pork buns for a snack – do you want them?”
The smell wafting from the parcel – spicy, fatty, savory – was so astonishingly good that it even cut through the damp, manky smell of the trash-filled alleyway. Xue Yang’s mouth immediately began to water. He couldn’t even remember the last time he’d had a taste of meat.
“It’s a start,” he said coolly, while trying not to visibly drool. “What else have you got?”
“An osmanthus cake… um… and I bought this bag of candy?”
SWEETS?!?!?
“Hand it all over,” said Xue Yang, trying not to betray his eagerness – but when Jiang Cheng held out the packages, he couldn’t help snatching them roughly and stuffing them down the front of his robes, all except for the pork buns.
He wolfed the first one down in three enormous bites and nearly swooned with delight. The bun was pillowy and soft; the meat inside was perfectly cooked, juicy, peppery, with just a hint of sweetness… Xue Yang felt like he could happily die and promptly ascend to the heavens, as long as he had the taste of that bun in his mouth. Jiang Cheng watched him gobble for a moment, wide-eyed, then said diplomatically, “My jiejie is a really good cook.”
“Mmph,” agreed Xue Yang, tearing into the second bun.
“Don’t eat too fast, gege, or you’ll get sick!”
Xue Yang, busily chewing, rolled his eyes at this remark. Jiang Cheng fidgeted with the ends of his sleeves.
“Do you really think you can find my dogs?”
“Why wouldn’t I?” Xue Yang mumbled around his mouthful of pork. “I know all the merchants around here, and they all know me.”
More like they all knew to watch out for him, lest they have their pockets picked or their goods absconded with, but he didn’t see any need to tell Jiang Cheng that, especially since the child was smiling at him again – eager, hopeful, trusting – and absolutely nobody had ever looked at Xue Yang like that before, not once in his whole life.
Xue Yang preferred not to think about the way it made him feel.
So weird.
“All right then, young master,” he said, swallowing and retreating behind his usual veneer of swingeing sarcasm. “What should this lowly one do if your special dogs do turn up, hm? I can’t just take them away from whoever bought them, you know, I’d have my feet chopped off for stealing.”
“I thought of that,” said Jiang Cheng, puffing up his cheeks importantly. Then he produced a little slip of yellow paper from his other sleeve, and waved it at Xue Yang.
“The fuck is that,” said Xue Yang.
The boy rolled his eyes in a way that was actually quite withering, given his tender years, but all he said was, “What’s your name, gege?”
Xue Yang told him, and found himself reluctantly impressed by what followed: the boy nodded very earnestly, put the tip of his index finger between his sharp little white teeth, and bit it wide open without so much as wincing. He dabbed the bright blood on the yellow paper, scowling ferociously with concentration, and although Xue Yang had never been taught to read, he could recognize the characters of his own name taking shape, alongside plenty of others that he didn’t know at all. When the child finished, the whole thing blazed briefly with silvery light, which then subsided and vanished.
“There,” said the child, and showed him the paper very proudly. “Look, Yang-gege, it’s a talisman! My sister gave it to me, in case I ever get kidnapped or lost. When I activate it, it turns into a butterfly and flies away to alert the nearest disciples. But I changed it a little bit – here’s your name, and here’s my name, see? – so now, once you’ve found my dogs, all you have to do is put one drop of your blood right here, between our names, and then the talisman will fly back to Lotus Pier and find me. And then I’ll come find you and Jasmine and Princess and Love.”
Xue Yang took the paper and peered closely at it. He knew about talismans – the Chang Sect sold them, offering vague promises of protection and good fortune and whatnot – but this was the first time anyone had ever given him one, and he felt a little thrill at having such a wondrous, magical thing for his very own.
Then the rest of Jiang Cheng’s words registered his mind. He squinted dubiously at the child.
“Did you say Lotus Pier?”
“That’s where I live,” replied the boy matter-of-factly. “My father’s the Sect Leader.”
“Hold on,” said Xue Yang, abruptly horrified “You’re Yunmeng Jiang? The Sect Heir?”
“Yes?” said the child, puzzled, and Xue Yang gaped at him, appalled.
Like everyone else in the riverlands, Xue Yang had heard plenty of stories about Yunmeng Jiang – mostly rumors and gossip, but even that was enough to send a jolt of panic zinging up the back of his neck. While not as politically powerful as Qishan Wen, martially inclined as Qinghe Nie, or rich as Lanling Jin, Yunmeng Jiang was still one of the five Great Sects, the kind of Sect that made Yueyang Chang look like chicken-shit in comparison. The Yunmeng Jiang disciples were famous for their boldness, their daring, and their matchless skill at eliminating shui gui and water-dwelling yao. The Lady of Lotus Pier, Madame Yu, was particularly notorious – she was said to wield a whip made of purple lightning, capable of vaporizing any number of ghosts and demons with a single strike.
Xue Yang’s stomach, full of pork buns, churned queasily as the realization slowly dawned: he was standing here, in this rubbish-strewn alleyway, having a casual chat with the son of the Violet Spider.
“What the fuck.”
“You say a lot of bad words, Yang-gege,” Jiang Cheng pointed out.
“That is not the fucking point! You – you ran away from home? Why? People are going to come looking for you! They’re probably looking for you right now! They probably think you’ve been kidnapped! They’re going to think I kidnapped you! Fuck!”
He paced back and forth for a moment, tugging his own hair distractedly.
“And how the fuck did you get here from Lotus Pier, anyway? That’s a journey of two or three days, at least!”
“Only if you go by boat,” said Jiang Cheng scornfully. “I like boats and all, but it only takes two shichen to get to Kuizhou if you fly on a sword.”
“You flew here on a sword? You’re, like, five years old!”
“I’m seven!” said Jiang Cheng, sounding mortally offended.
“How the fuck,” said Xue Yang again, through gritted teeth, “did you get here.” And, more importantly, how do I get you to go back before I get lightning-whipped to death?
Jiang Cheng shrugged, nonchalant. “My father has a monthly meeting with the Chang Sect Leader. I asked if I could come along, one of the disciples brought me on her sword, and then I snuck out once the meeting started, to look for my dogs.”
“Fuck me,” said Xue Yang, vividly picturing an army of purple-clad cultivators rampaging through the clamorous streets of Kuizhou, searching under every stone for their lost Jiang-gongzi. “I’m going to get stabbed in the fucking face.”
“No, no,” said Jiang Cheng soothingly, and patted him on the arm. “Don’t worry, Yang-gege, nobody will notice I’m gone, at least not until the meeting is over. And it’s not like I’m going to tell anybody. After all, you’re on a secret mission now! To find my dogs!”
And with that, he smiled brightly and scampered away towards the mouth of the alley, pausing only to wave over his shoulder and call back, “I’ll be back next month, Yang-ge! See you later! And remember – it’s a secret mission!”
Utterly at a loss for words, Xue Yang found himself waving limply back.
*
Later that night, Xue Yang lay curled up in a corner of the abandoned stable that he usually slept in. It was only a few steps from the end of the alleyway he’d claimed as his own, and though it was slowly losing its battle against the elements, and gravity, it still had parts of its roof and he’d managed to collect a good-sized lump of straw in the dry corner, which he used for a bed. He finished the third pork bun and half the osmanthus cake, and lay down with his belly nice and full, for once. In the normal course of things, this would make him sleepy, but he found himself oddly wakeful instead, mind aswarm with whirling thoughts.
He lay there pensively, sucking on a sweet from the bag Jiang Cheng had given him.
The children of the Chang Sect – hell, even the well-off merchants’ children – never went to the marketplace by themselves. They were always with a parent, or had servants to accompany them, and some especially prominent families even hired bodyguards to follow their little brats around. Yet Jiang Cheng, heir to a Great Sect, had been suffered to run off alone. And not only that, he had wandered long enough to stray into one of Kuizhou’s roughest corners, a place which was very far from anywhere the Chang Sect was likely to be entertaining important guests (as Xue Yang knew perfectly well). And sure, Jiang Cheng seemed a bit naïve and unguarded, perhaps a touch innocent of the world’s wicked ways. He certainly seemed unfazed by the possibility of being kidnapped! But that being so, shouldn’t his parents be a bit more… diligent about ensuring his safety?
No, that’s stupid, Xue Yang thought to himself. They probably just assumed Yunmeng Jiang’s reputation would be enough to shield Jiang Cheng from harm no matter where he ended up – and of course, he had that fancy message talisman for backup.
He pulled the talisman out of his sleeve and had another look at it by the light of a fat golden moon, turning the paper this way and that between his fingers. No doubt he could trade the thing, or sell it for a handsome sum; he would bet his next day’s dinner that it was loads more powerful than any of the rubbishy cultivation goods that the Chang Sect peddled. But instead, he got up and hunted around until he found a stick. Then he stayed up nearly until dawn, copying out the characters in a patch of dried mud. He scratched them out over and over until the last taste of sugar had dissolved on his tongue:
Jiang Cheng, Xue Yang, Jiang Cheng, Xue Yang.
Over the next several weeks, Xue Yang carefully committed all the rest of the talisman characters to memory. He reviewed them in his head as he went here and there throughout the city, scrounging for food and begging for scraps.
When he caught himself keeping an eye out for three dogs with fluffy coats, curly tails, and purple tongues, he told himself firmly that it was only because he had rationed out the rest of the candies from the bag, one per day, and it was only the lingering sweetness that kept reminding him of Jiang Cheng and his “secret mission.”
Pfft. So stupid.