Chapter Text
Something clear and merciless, something sharp as spun glass, as a scream. Shang Qinghua’s eyes are cold.
They tear into the room alike an eagle’s claws and they never wither, never warm up. When they cross another’s gaze, they look down, demurring, shying away from all that is to fear, trained to that half smile, those hastened gestures and this mirrored fright.
He does not make enemies, Shang Qinghua; but in this instead he makes strangers of them all. It’s easier to stab strangers in the back.
Anger. Rage, maybe even. Does he feel them, gripped in his hands, stuck in the back of his throat, suppressed by this half moon of a smile on a face not unlike a doll’s ? But all the same he was part of their family, worn down and tearing and pulling itself apart to pieces, and family knew best how to make it hurt.
Shang Qinghua will kill them one day, muses Shen Qingqiu.
They are like perfect mirrors of each other, one across the other, sitting in this immense room. Pale green spreading over to soft yellow. Yellow is such a dim color, subdued and mellow against all the bright streaks of red and blue and white. Shang Qinghua’s shoulders round around his ears like little mountains, the shivering of his hands a telltale as sure as rain on a cloudy day. But maybe, or at least for Shen Qingqiu, not the one he would like him to believe.
Discussions waft and drift in the room, sometimes echoing loudly enough to make him startle. There is not much these days that can startle Shen Qingqiu, not much apart but this closed room, those powerful men and women looking at him with distaste and mistrust.
When their voices reach high, he is shaking fists and trembling teeth.
The collar of his robes reach up and up and coils around his throat like a hand, and the tea on the table has gone cold.
On his right, someone asks for a refill. On his left, a gaze bears into his head.
Shang Qinghua is still smiling that little slip of a smile.
An Ding Peak governs imports, exports, tariffs, and port operations across twelves regional offices scattered throughout the mountain's range. About maybe five hundred scribes, inspectors, and agents report through the system, and all revenues– tolls, import taxes, exchanges of goods, port docking fees and territories’ maintenance’s fee– are collected locally before cut down portions are sent to the Peak’s treasury for redistribution.
The treasurer– a disciple elevated to elder when the old peak lord ascended– oversees the accounting and redistribution of revenues. His office holds the Seal of Disbursement, authorizing coin dispersal and documentation. He is the only one apart from the Peak Lord that is authorized to do this work.
Shen Qingqiu has done his homework well enough.
There is, of course, a public ledger. Qiong Ding Peak supervises its proper use monthly when the shipments are sent and the taxes are collected. Shen Qingqiu himself has read it. Twice, in fact.
Which is why he knows there must be another internal one.
The collected tariffs, for example. A thirty or so skimmable margin, claimed never collected, and thus never taxed or redistributed. Shipments declared missing or attacked, when instead caravans never left, or left half-filled.
Someone would have forged vouchers and waybills stamped by accomplices– maybe younger bureaucrats owed favors, or given small cuts. There are plenty of men and women who would have said nothing against a small bribe.
Of course, all those could be simple mistakes, or small corruption easily dealt with once investigated. Such a huge peak could not be deemed guilty if some small miscreant tried their hand at duplicitous affairs.
But those eyes, cold, cold, cold. Radiantly empty.
Shang Qinghua will still smile a little smile when they are cold corpses in the ground.
The eyes on Shen Qingqiu have not abated. They are akin to velvet, the way only kind eyes can be, deep water, the days to come. They look upon him like a God upon a lamb, except he is a faulty one, except he is found wanting.
The meeting will end and Shen Qingqiu will have made no reports. But how could he ? Six months have passed like autumn’s winds and he has not left his peak.
Six months suffocating, colder.
He is punished for the decay and waste he and Liu Qingge laid to a small village on their last mission together, like children brawling at every opportunity– but he is, he is, a small and scrawny child, too afraid to fight but too determined to live. So they fight and he loses and he is reminded again and again and again that even scrubbing his skin raw will not erase the stain of blood.
The eyes grate him, another layer he would see himself rid of. But the meeting is ending and he has had nothing to report on anything. Six months suffocating, free to investigate as much as he wished.
“If there is nothing more, then–” The eyes have turned toward the room, finally, straying away to better assess its children. Yue Qingyuan’s voice is just as gentle as his eyes.
“Zhangmeng-shixiong, may we ?”
It echoes in the empty room like a stone into blue water. The others have scattered happily, chirping between each other, a dash of muted yellow among them.
Except for Shen Qingqiu, willowy and swift, blocking the path.
Oh brother, brother, what have we become ? The eyes that never leave, and the mouth made to utters forgiveness with a slow lull in its words, like it would make him forget, forgive.
“Is something the matter, Shen-shidi ?” Yue Qingyuan is bright, bright, like a sun melting slowly onto everything it touches. But Shen Qingqiu is so very cold.
“There is, in fact.” He murmurs, soft-spoken as if it would curb down the bitter resentment slowly building in his rotten, empty chest. “A matter regarding the… dealings of An Ding Peak.”
They move around each other like stars refusing to burn, all-encompassing. The weather is lovely outside the room, and bushes of various flowers spring with a fading life. It is a sunny day just as all other, autumn barely peaking his nose out from under the blanket of flowers summer left them with.
“Shen-shidi certainly has kept himself busy.” Yue Qingyuan remarks; It’s just a little thing, probably said as a polite conversation marker. And yet;
The fan is almost a reflex, instinct jumping to take hold of him when his mind swirls to a stop and the ever-present acrimony swallows him whole. He is an ant to be dissected, a pet kept pretty and a doll to play with, he is a monster to hide and half a decent swordsman, he is all that he wishes he wasn’t.
He remains silent, he gives away nothing, fan brushing against the soft skin of his lips.
Others would not allow it.
“I have some documents to share. Discrepancies I have found to be inexplicable and unaccounted. Begging Zhangmeng-shixiong to take a look at them.” He bows his head an inch, drawing out from his sleeves a rolled up and sealed parchment.
Their hands brush when Yue Qingyuan takes the scroll from him; it’s barely more than a feather-light thing, skin to skin, but still Shen Qingqiu yearns and hates in turn, like a starved dog that has yet to learn its lesson. The enormity of his longing is only equal to the loathing he feels at the thought of coming closer to try and do it again.
“Has Shen-shidi talked about this with Shang-shidi ? Should it not be his jurisdiction ?”
A silence and the fan flutters against his cheek. Shen Qingqiu stops along the stone way overseeing gardens by the dozen, little children in neat white robes running alongside carved paths. They look perfect, little chess stones scattering happily.
“This one… This one suspects it would be unwelcome. In fact, this one daresays Shang-shidi may be… implicated.”
A stretch of time, unfolding along to steps coming to a halt. A sigh, loud and clear. They are not looking at each other; Shen Qingqiu’s back almost turned and a step ahead. He does not turn back at this sound.
“Shen-shidi… This one thinks your… seclusion would have been well-used to meditate. Our shidis and shimeis have been nothing but supportive of this idea… If Shen-shidi could put aside those–”
“Those ?” Shen Qingqiu cuts him off, quick as a sparrow and heart beating just as fast. “Those what ? Have I not done my work, trying to put our sect’s interest first ?”
A blink and Yue Qingyuan has caught up to him, so very tall, so very strong and prideful in those rigid and opulent robes of his. Nothing like the man he had once known. Shen Jiu’s big brother had been dead for two decades.
“Shen-shidi is of course diligent and hardworking, but relationships with our brothers and sisters could be… better handled. Mistrust cannot linger like this, hoping shidi will understand.” Ever the pacific, ever the kind one.
“This is not mistrust, Zhangmeng-shixiong.” A tightness around the eyes, and the grip on his fan makes the fragile wood creaks. “I have documents dated precisely, I have accounts and numbers for your purview. If you cared enough to look at it.”
“Of course I care, but what I meant to say–”
“So because it is coming from me, you refuse to investigate ? If it had been any of them, accusing me as they do every new day the sun rises, would you hesitate as you do, shixiong ?”
The wind has risen with a new strength, leaves falling down and scattering on the pale glittering stones of the path. The children have gone and the clouds gather around the mountain’s range. Shen Qingqiu’s overrobe is heavy, unmoved by the wind, but his silken hair whip around his back, face marred by a disdain too familiar. It’s a step away from rage, a step away from pain. Like caked make-up.
Yue Qingyuan takes a step closer, gray robes brushing against green ones.
“No! I would not, of course I would not !” He exclaims, abandoning every sense of propriety, hands rising as if to grasp at long sleeves, as if to– “But if only Xiao Jiu could be a little less stubborn, then maybe– !”
“Ah ! I told you before, never call me that ! Maybe if you were not so blind, then there would be no distrust in the first place ! You are weak !”
It is the smallest mistake; the kind everyone sometimes does, the kind to look back on and awkwardly laugh about. Why make such a fuss about it ? Moments of white anger and frustrated outbursts are such small matters, part of life, really. And they are arguing, words thrown around like stones down a well.
Really, though it could have been avoided, it’s nothing but a hitch in a perfectly splendid day.
It goes this way; Shen Qingqiu in his anger does not take care of his words and though he would have never said such thing on any other occasion, he is so, so very tired of having to walk around in circle, eyes dark, exiled to his peak for the last six months and slowly turning himself mad.
Yue Qingyuan, on his part, would have maybe stormed off to wallow in his self-pity as gracefully as he could, or beat himself up. But the meeting he is out of has been long and tiring, and his limbs are slow, heavy. Although he is slow to anger, the frustration and bitterness in his chest are familiar.
It’s the smallest mistake; the kind everyone sometimes does.
As he turns away, “No ! You will not run away from me, not this time !” Shen Qingqiu’s voice rises with barely bitten back fury and his hand flies to catch his shoulder, and–
Carried away by exasperation and a strength he has forgotten he yields, Yue Qingyuan hits him.
Maybe hit is a strong word; his hand rises and he pushes, hard, a fist against a shoulder and the thin skin of collarbones. Maybe, for cultivators of Yue Qingyuan and Liu Qingge’s caliber, it is nothing but a push made to distract.
Living on such a high, high mountain, they so often forgot themselves. It’s so heavy to look down and act mighty, better. Devotion, turning violent.
To Yue Qingyuan, it is a push.
To Shen Qingqiu, it is alike to an uniquely jarring kind of pain.
A sharp, electric crack of bone-deep shock that blooms into a spreading, heavy ache, strangely expanding, as if his whole upper chest and arm have been abruptly compressed and left throbbing, as if his whole body is caving inward for the shortest of moment.
He gasps; a breath cut short, a pinch in his face, and the time stretches to a stop.
But when his face rises again, a hand rising shivering to his shoulder, fan unfurling a blooming bamboo garden on the stone path, it is not pain or shock spreading on white jade skin. The ache starts in his shoulder, rooting like vines on old trees. It pulses, as if it had a heart of its own.
He looks up, head spinning, and he is back in the childhood home he never truly left. He looks up and he gazes at Qiu Jianluo. Ah, he thinks, so this is it. Finally, finally, this is it.
And all of a sudden, he feels really tired. But he doesn’t say anything. He smiles and he bows and he retrieves the fan, brushing trembling fingers he wills to stop against the silk edge like it would bring everything back to a moment ago, when everything was… okay. When nothing bad had happened to him.
“I… Xiao Jiu, I…” Yue Qingyuan is stuttering, hand still half raised, on the verge of stepping closer–
Shen Qingqiu flinches.
He does not come closer.
“This one understands. “Shen Qingqiu murmurs slowly, “He will not bother Zhangmeng-shixiong any longer.”
He doesn’t wait for an answer, ignores the eyes like velvet, the eyes like home– not anymore, not anymore, brother, what have you become ? Brother, have you not noticed ? You forgot something, you forgot something, you forgot him– and the walk back is excruciatingly long and yet so short, like walking underwater, like a dull, dull day and yet the sky is speckled with purple, the sun is dying a soft pink and the world is still so frustratingly beautiful.
On a quiet autumn day, Yue Qingyuan hits Shen Qingqiu.
On a quiet autumn day, the Fear catches back to Shen Qingqiu in the middle of luxury and abundance.