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“I don’t know anything about children,” Lan Qiren protests, looking down at the blanket-wrapped bundle in his arms. Little A-Huan is quiet, peering around with bright, curious eyes.
“Neither does anyone else, when they start out,” the doctor, a man with five children of his own, says with a shrug. “You’ll learn. He’ll teach you.”
The doctor doesn’t need to say there is no one else. It’s not entirely true, anyway — the Lan Sect would not let one of its children be neglected. Someone else could be found to care for his brother’s son, but there is no one else in the inner clan who could do so. And Lan Huan will be Sect Leader, one day. Since Qingheng-jun refuses to emerge from seclusion even to teach his son about his duties to their sect, there is no one else. No one but Lan Qiren.
“I will do my best,” he says, mostly to himself, a little bit to the baby.
~
They want Wangji’s head.
The sect rules do not require that sect traitors be executed, thankfully, but they do provide for it as one possible punishment. Wangji had taken up his sword against his own sect, his own family, an action that went beyond the grossly unfilial into outright treason. It does not matter that Wangji is the Sect Leader’s brother, nor that he is barely twenty years old, a child many of the people in this room had held and taught and dandled on their knees. He is a traitor, and they want his head.
A smaller-but-vocal contingent of Sect Elders (and Lan Qiren will remember which ones they are until the day he dies, just as he will remember the names and faces of every person who called for his broken-hearted nephew to be put to death) are advocating for leniency: they suggest that Wangji be expelled from the sect, instead.
Lan Qiren is not convinced that this would prolong Wangji’s life by much. At the moment he is recovering from wounds sustained in battle and half out of his mind with fever, but Xichen says that in his lucid moments Wangji is gripped with a worrying despondency. Without his family to care for him when he will not care for himself, to tether him to a world he seems to have little interest in inhabiting, Lan Qiren is afraid Wangji will follow Wei Wuxian into his grave.
(Then, too, there is the matter of the child, who Wangji would almost certainly want to take with him if he left — but the Sect Elders do not know about the child. If Lan Qiren has his way, no one will ever know where Lan Yuan really came from.)
As Sect Leader, the final decision is officially Xichen’s, but he is bound by duty and filial piety to listen to the Elders’ arguments and give them fair consideration before issuing a sentence. To overrule them would be an act of extreme disrespect, one that would permanently damage Xichen’s position within the sect. Fractured as they are by the war and the battle at Nightless City, the sect might not survive the rift. Xichen presides over the group with a sober expression, the occasional tightening of his jaw or pursing of his lips the only sign of what this is doing to him. Watching him, Lan Qiren seethes with impotent outrage. How could Wangji do this — to his sect, his family, his brother? Did he not even consider where the punishment for his rash actions would have to come from?
They have some time, at least; no action can be taken while Wangji lies ill and wounded in the infirmary.
At the end of the first day of discussion, the Elders are no closer to coming to a consensus as to Wangji’s fate. Lan Qiren dines in silence with Xichen in the Hanshi; away from the crowd, Xichen allows some of the day’s stress and horror to show in his face, the tired lines of his shoulders.
Lan Qiren does not speak until the servants have cleared their dishes away and they are alone once more. “If it comes to it,” he finally says quietly, “no one would expect you to carry out the sentence yourself.”
Xichen raises his head, his eyes flashing. “What kind of Sect Leader would I be, to sentence a man to death when I cannot look him in the eye and take his life?”
“I would spare you this, A-Huan,” Lan Qiren says. He has not called Zewu-jun A-Huan in more than fifteen years. “If I have to, I will do it myself.”
“Wangji is my brother,” Xichen says firmly. “I would not leave his execution in anyone else’s hands. I owe him that much,” he adds, more quietly. “But I still have hope that it will not come to that.”
“Wangji must pay for what he did.”
“Not with his life,” Xichen says, the smallest pleading note creeping into his voice. “Not when we have already lost so much.”
~
Lan Qiren is discomfited to learn that there is only so much that one can do, when a child does not want to obey.
He comes to this realization comparatively late in his child-raising journey — Wangji is six and Xichen is close to twelve when their mother dies. Up until that point they’ve been obedient, well-behaved children; Wangji in particular is a scrupulous follower of every rule.
(Years later he learns that Wangji had been terrified that any infraction would mean he wouldn’t be permitted to see his mother for their monthly visit. Xichen mentions this lightheartedly, in passing, but Lan Qiren finds himself thinking about it at odd moments for the next several days.)
Wangji waits outside his mother’s house for hours each night, his small body shivering in the cold. Lan Qiren shouts, entreats, lectures; he even attempts to bribe the boy back inside with sweets, which he’s not proud of, but Wangji is resolute. Lan Qiren has no choice but to pick Wangji up and carry him back inside. Many mornings find Wangji curled up on Gentian House’s scant front porch, having slipped out again after Lan Qiren brought him back.
He is spanked and lectured at and given lines to write; he is kept in during the other children’s playtime and sent to bed without supper. Wangji accepts his punishments with equanimity, not attempting to shirk or pout or argue his way out of them as some children might do. Afterward, he sets his small pointed chin and continues his nightly vigils.
Lan Qiren’s anger and grief and growing frustration meld into a seething rage that lives in his gut, in his hands. He has to spend extra time in meditation each day to keep his cool. I understood what I was doing when I did it, his brother had said to him once, with that same stubborn set to his chin. I will accept the consequences for my actions, but I do not regret them. Never acknowledging how many of those consequences would fall on Lan Qiren’s shoulders instead of his own.
Eventually, he is able to convince Wangji of the truth: his mother isn’t there anymore, and there is no coming back from where she’s gone. Lan Qiren is startled by his relief when the child finally cries, his plump baby cheek pressed stickily against Lan Qiren’s neck, his small bony shoulders heaving beneath Lan Qiren’s palm.
After that, Wangji ceases his nighttime wanderings and returns to being the studious, obedient child that Lan Qiren had known before. Perhaps this recalcitrant phase was merely a reaction to his mother’s death, not an indication of the boy’s overall character or temperament. An anomaly, nothing to worry about, no reason to fear that Wangji will repeat his father’s mistakes. A decade passes, and Lan Qiren does not see that look on Wangji’s face again.
Until Wei Ying.
Wei Ying, Wei Wuxian, striding into Cloud Recesses with Cangse Sanren’s beauty and charm and blazing intelligence, with Wei Changze’s long legs and rabbit teeth and casually brilliant swordsmanship. People say he’s Jiang Fengmian’s bastard — like Jiang Fengmian ever had a chance in that regard, like Wei Changze’s joyous, shouting laugh doesn’t ring out of the boy’s throat at all hours of the day. Wei Ying: beautiful, infuriating, doomed. Just like his mother.
That stubborn set is back in Wangji’s jaw, but he is almost a grown man now — Lan Qiren cannot pick him up and haul him bodily away from Wei Ying. Wangji breaks into the Forbidden Section of the library; he is openly insolent to Jin Guangshan in the man’s own home; he flies to Yiling and walks into the Burial Mounds to pay a call on the necromancer who dwells there. He does not deny that he has done these things, nor does he question the increasingly harsh punishments that Lan Qiren hands down in response. But even as he kneels in the snow, his jaw is set. I understood what I was doing when I did it. Lan Qiren wraps himself in anger because the alternative is a constant helpless terror, terror that Wangji will go too far and be lost to him forever.
But now Wei Ying is dead. Privately, Lan Qiren suspects that Cangse Sanren’s son died years ago, in the war — but the demon wearing his skin, the evil thing that so easily beguiled Lan Qiren’s nephew, is finally dead as well, torn asunder by the very dark forces that gave it its power.
Wei Ying is dead, which means Wangji might actually be saved. It’s not too late. It can’t be.
~
“His association with the Yiling Laozu causes us all to lose face in front of the other sects. If we are not seen to punish him severely, they will assume we are weak.”
“We cannot risk him corrupting the other disciples. Nor can we allow him to roam freely! Who knows what evil thing the Yiling Laozu might have planted in him?”
“If nothing else, he would need to apologize.”
“Apologize! As if that will make up for the Lan who were killed by the Yiling Laozu’s hand?”
Lan Qiren meets Xichen’s eyes across the room. Xichen gives his head a minute shake. Wangji will not apologize for defending Wei Ying. Lan Qiren has not spoken to Wangji himself — cannot bear to lay eyes on him after what he’s done, even knowing that these might be the final days of Wangji’s life. He’s quite sure that if he were to visit, he would see that same intractable set to Wangji’s jaw.
Another day in which nothing is decided. As the discussion winds down for the night, Xichen speaks up for the first time.
“I will not pretend I have no stake in this decision,” he says. “Hanguang-jun is my brother. Still, I try to ask myself what I would do if some other Lan disciple had behaved in this way. The crime was egregious, but try as I might, I cannot imagine putting any of them to death.
“I do not mean to suggest that Hanguang-jun face no punishment for what he’s done. On the contrary, it behooves us to ensure the severity of his punishment fits that of his crime; only through facing the consequences can he truly move past this and become a full-fledged member of the sect once more.
“The rules are unclear as to what punishment he should face, but they are clear elsewhere: if a man can be saved from evil, he should be. Wangji was sadly misled by a man he trusted — this does not mean he is evil. We have a responsibility to cleanse him of the Yiling Laozu’s influence. We would have the same responsibility to any man, but all the more so one of our sect. To execute him or to expel him would be to shirk this responsibility.”
He adjourns the council before anyone can speak up to refute him, but Lan Qiren sees a thoughtful look on the faces of several of the Elders, particularly those who had already advocated against execution.
That night, Lan Qiren walks alone through his darkened house. Wangji had sat at this table, tip of his tongue sticking out as he carefully practiced his calligraphy. Wangji and Xichen had played in that garden, with Lan Qiren supervising them out of this window. Wangji had practiced his guqin in this corner, had knelt here and accepted Bichen from Lan Qiren’s hands with solemn dignity despite his ungainly teenage limbs. Wangji had stood right here and vowed to find the Yin Iron at any cost, and that — that boy — had grinned Cangse Sanren’s grin at him like they shared a secret, and instead of viciously snubbing him, as he would anyone else, Wangji had stared back at him with a sort of unsettled wonder.
Lan Qiren reaches for anger and finds only sorrow. He slowly sinks down to sit on his bed, his hand pressed over his mouth.
~
In the end it is Lan Qiren who proposes Wangji’s punishment: thirty-three lashes, one for each of the Elders he’d defied. It will be the most brutal beating received by a Lan disciple in living memory, more than enough to kill an ordinary man. If it were not enough to nearly kill him, there are those among the Elders who would not accept. But Wangji is young and strong, one of the most powerful cultivators in the sect. He will survive. He should survive.
After the beating, he will spend three years in seclusion. With any luck, this will be enough time for the cultivation world to have moved on, to have forgotten Wangji’s part in the Yiling Laozu’s last desperate stand. With any luck, the sect will have started to move past it as well. Lan Qiren does not know if it will be enough time for him to forgive Wangji himself. He doesn’t know if it will be enough time for Wangji to forgive him, either, but it doesn’t matter. Wangji will be free to never forgive Lan Qiren for the rest of a very long life, if he chooses.
(He will be free to help raise the child, as well, once he emerges from his seclusion. It doesn’t matter if the child is Wei Wuxian’s son or not, so Lan Qiren does not bother asking himself about it. A-Yuan is a Lan now, and that is what matters.)
Lan Qiren does not visit Wangji in the infirmary. He does not visit him while he is confined to the Jingshi, awaiting his punishment. Lan Qiren does not lay eyes on the son of his heart again until Wangji kneels before him in the snow.
If he had been hoping to see a glimmer of remorse, of repentance, in Wangji’s eyes he would have been sorely disappointed — but he knows Wangji too well for that. I will accept the consequences for my actions, but I do not regret them.
“Who is right? Who is wrong?” Wangji grinds out as the whip comes down on his back, and something inside Lan Qiren snaps and he screams at him. The blood running down from Wangji's lip, where he has bitten through it in his pain, only serves to whip Lan Qiren’s fury into a frenzy.
He screams, he rages, but he stays. He stays with Wangji as his grunts turn to groans and then to bitten-off cries. He does not look away, even when Wangji’s arrow-straight posture buckles and he falls to his hands and knees, spitting blood into the snow. He cannot put a hand on Xichen’s shoulder as they bear silent witness together; he will not cause Xichen to lose face in front of his clan in that way. But he stays with him, with them, until the last terrible crack of whip against flesh has died away.
Lan Qiren gets to him first. Before the healers, before Xichen even, he is there, lifting Wangji’s head into his lap, wiping the blood and snow from his face. Wangji is breathing shallowly, barely conscious, but he is alive. He will live.
“Wei Ying,” Wangji mumbles through swollen lips, and it is then, only then, that Lan Qiren begins to weep.