It was a lovely night in Lanling. The city slept like a well-fed tiger, fearing none of the smaller beasts in the empire because there was nothing to fear. There were watchtowers here and there, and the city itself had sprawled far beyond the defensive walls built centuries beforehand (and long since scavenged for stone), but it was as though the shadow of war hardly obscured the gilded glint of the Jin clan's seat. Ordinary people complained about trade routes being strained here or there, or about the weather, or the rising price of one thing or another. Lanling Jin felt no strain, at least as far as anyone could see.

There was enough gold in one corner of Koi Tower's outbuilding roofs to feed a modestly-sized village for a full year. Furthermore, everyone knew it. For that reason, Wataru smiled and bowed and carefully avoided offending the rich young masters of the sect.

Or any other sect. Or really just anybody who even vaguely looked like authority. He'd toed very close to the line of "being noticed" multiple times in his career, and now was not the time for taking risks.

It was easier to remain gently ignored as an apothecary than as a doctor, Wataru thought. While he managed a stockroom and the storefront, with occasional help, very little of the direct attention of the cultivators fell on deferential, almost-sycophantic Chen Hao. His collaborator two streets over dealt with the complaints more often, particularly about symptoms and prices. It did exactly no favors for Yamaguchi-sensei—or Liu-daifu, here—and his already-prickly personality.

Most things didn't. He'd been in Lanling so long that his mannerisms mimicked the locals, and that similarity extended to a certain affected (or genuine) callousness.

"Be less useless than your predecessor and we'll get along," the man had said, upon meeting Wataru again for the first time in five years. He didn't look up from his rows upon rows of acupuncture needles while speaking. "Don't disappoint me."

"That shouldn't be so hard," Wataru had replied, letting the worst of the man's bitterness wash right over him with no effect. "Wasn't Ota-san embezzling?"

"I said what I said."

Living in Lanling wasn't too bad, really.

Even after having spent a long day percolating in the smell of every dried thing in the shelves, he had a little time for leisure at the end. With his sleeves pulled back in preparation for writing, Wataru tapped the non-business end of his brush against his mouth as he considered the letter on his desk, and the constraints on what he could say. The mail service could do with a few improvements, but there was a war to consider. Even if the Nie sect didn't censor messages that left their domain, Wataru kept most of the identifiable information out of his replies. The resulting letters were as bland as plain mantou and far less capable of sustaining a person through a lonely existence.

Perhaps as a result of this inability to get a single long-distance message across intact, Wataru generally tried to make friends among his agents. Sort of. When they appeared.

"What do you think, Xiaomei?" Wataru asked the dog by his leg. "Should I try writing some poetry back?"

Xiaomei—Asagi—snuffled sleepily into a cushion and rolled over, exposing her white underbelly. Her upside-down face made her black lips droop toward the floor until another turn smushed her face into the fabric, making her entire head seem like it was melting. On a dog whose color Wataru usually compared to roasted chicken, the result leaned toward "accident with rock sugar."

"Yeah, I suppose I wouldn't want to be too forward." Wataru set down his brush. "You win."

On this particular night, the deep bone ache of having sat at a desk for too long finally won out over Wataru's desire to make actual progress with his work. Setting everything aside and hiding his various (suspicious) tools away, Wataru checked in on the house's other resident—a very nice older woman who pinched his nose when he teased her—and started the process of boiling water for a late pot of tea for himself. It wouldn't do much for his candle-mauled night vision or anything like that, but Aki-obasan was going to sleep early and Wataru still needed something to do with his hands.

Half an hour and one set of snores later, Wataru opened a window to enjoy his evening and was squashed into the floor by a different dog.

It was a little different from the other times people used his upper rooms as a thoroughfare, if only because the things that knocked on the shutters generally had thumbs. Having expected to spend a serene night watching the stars and artfully mooning over his distant love, it was something of a letdown. Moreso when he realized the primary cause of his squashing was Fuse's decision to throw her dog at the shutter.

His agents needed their sense of "fun" recalibrated for normal humans.

"Probably should've asked Hatake-senpai for more details before accepting this post," Wataru said to himself, scratching the side of his face. The welt there still itched, despite the salve generously applied by an apologetic face-stomper. And the lick from the dog. "But would that have even helped?"

His tone was entirely mild, as though his new Lanling house was not currently occupied by two large dogs and two of Sakumo's more rambunctious shinobi. He'd almost gotten used to having only one giant fluffball and one would-be grandmother around during the day,

At least it wasn't the shop. None of them were allowed near the shelves, but Wataru did have a few jars of salve stored for occasions like this one.

The two troublemakers were currently snarling—quietly—at each other like angry alley cats. Wouldn't do to wake the neighbors of the "respectable" Chen Hao. He'd put rather a lot of work into maintaining a reputation of forthright business and would probably have to drown them both in the well if they ruined it. Not that he really expected to succeed if he tried, but it was the principle of the thing.

"—not even the worst thing—"

"—wouldn't know a good idea if it bit you in the face—"

Wataru idly ducked as a beaded pillow sailed across the room, wishing he had a few more peers to commiserate with at the moment. While he sat on the chair and watched the ongoing argument, the pillow landed squarely atop the curly-tailed dog asleep against the nearby wall. The second dog, asleep next to her—a huge, scarred hound—startled awake with a riot of dull claws on wooden floors as he shot to his feet in the slightly wrong order.

The loud thud as the dog struck a table leg at least made both Fuse and Yatsu shut up for a few seconds. Not for the first time, Wataru thanked his own foresight for not getting the tea ready before the pair of them got the argument out of their systems.

"Your mother's still sleeping, Yatsu-kun," Wataru said into the silence, "so please keep it down. Both of you."

At that point, Teikō shook himself to recover from the impact, got to his feet, and sprawled heavily over Yatsu's lap like an affectionate rug. Across the table, Asagi—or Xiaomei—oozed onto Fuse and kept her from even attempting to lunge across the table. There was something to be said about spiritual dogs and their ability to read a room, even if they did quite a lot to coat most innocent living spaces in hair and mud. Usually in that order, during the spring shedding session.

Wataru didn't quite know what he'd done to deserve managing these two—no, wait, he did. He'd stopped taking Hatake's orders for a year. And running off to Yunmeng in the middle of that. Reporting back to Ningbo had been only a little hideously awkward.

Such was life.

"If Xiaomei and Xiaodi are the only level-headed people in the room besides me, I'm going to wait until you can talk over tea without losing those sad excuses for tempers," Wataru said, referring to each dog and getting polite "whuffs" along the way. "And I actually have a decent blend today."

It took long enough that Wataru had tea and snacks waiting for them when they finally escaped the disciplinary dogs. Once they were all seated at the table like people (and dogs), Wataru doled out the meal. Which was mostly cold buns and the like, granted, but he'd cook for people at midnight as soon as they actually paid him specifically for that service.

The pair working for Wataru were decent enough at their assignments, if quirky. And were currently sitting at his table like a pair of scolded children.

Inuzuka Fuse (alias: "Liu Yaling") night-hunted alongside her spiritual dog Teikō (alias: "Xiaodi," because Wataru had a theme going) as a rogue cultivator who refused to be chased out of Lanling by Jin sect cultivators. Mainly because of her nightmare dog. By the standards of cultivators, said dog was probably a yaoguai for being as smart as he was, but the Lanling Jin had more important concerns than a single hound.

Besides, quashing stories was easier during wartime, when people occasionally just went off and died.

Wataru was pretty far along in bribing the huge hound with chicken, so there was little fear in this particular household, but he could see why the Jins would prefer to keep their fingers long-term. Healing through cultivation wasn't quite that generous, and Fuse was too tough, fast, and vicious for any ten cultivators to confront. Her nails alone could cut through most protections, like those of a fierce corpse.

Still human—just a little to the left. Probably had a bit of shapeshifter in the bloodline somewhere, likely wolf.

The former Hyūga Yatsu (alias: "Shang Yun") was a blind servant retained by Wataru's household, and he did have an eyeball shortage. A quirk of his discarded clan involved powerful spiritual perception abilities, coupled with the vicious inventiveness to pinch off people's qi pathways and directly attack their internal organs with a touch. They also tended to get rid of clan members they didn't like by blinding them, because they were absolute tyrants to those within their reach. Not uncommon, among nobles, but no less disappointing for it.

From Wataru's perspective, Yatsu was a vicious apprentice shinobi who'd killed two of his clan's elders and had to flee Nihon to continue protecting his mother. Shinobi from a different guild (read: Fuse) interfered with his execution and begged a favor to get everyone involved out of Nihon. The far-reaching consequences of the decision had yet to be resolved, but would undoubtedly follow. Probably stabby consequences.

That didn't mean Wataru didn't like him, despite all that. In fact, the ongoing thread of sass in their conversations was hilarious coming from someone six years younger than him.

"It's not bad," was said brat's response to Wataru's impeccable tea service. "Better than the powdered crap."

"Snob." Fuse rolled her eyes like a competitive champion, scratching her dog's ear with one hand tipped by sharp nails. "I was raised on that stuff."

"Inuzuka" was less a name for a real clan than an affectation by particularly talented houndmasters, so Fuse could dress like and otherwise style herself as a typical cultivator. Having a sweet, round face and less-exaggerated teeth than most of her kin was a big help in that matter. And while Wataru didn't have the sharpest eye for fashions, Fuse did. She could really pretend to be a fashionable young lady—if she would ever travel without her huge hound.

"Rogue cultivator" was good enough.

Yatsu eyed Fuse over the top of his cup. "Just because you were raised on it doesn't mean it's any good."

"I'm sure you'd know."

"Shut up."

Wataru pinched the bridge of his nose, then transitioned to rubbing his eyes. It really was late.

Hatake didn't exactly have the pick of the litter when it came to whoever he could throw at Wataru's regional sub-organization, but his wife's cousin and her half-trained assassin "friend" were fairly reliable. It wasn't really any different from Tomoe and Shinta's situation, except that Yatsu's mother lived in Wataru's Lanling house and was effectively collateral to ensure his good behavior. He was one of the relatively few shinobi who'd managed to travel so far with a dependent, so Wataru figured they'd need to reward that determination even if it roused a lot of interest.

It wouldn't have worked like that with Tomoe and Shinta, even if one of them had wanted to stay in Ningbo and out of trouble.

Mostly because Wataru and Hatake both knew Tomoe pursued her agenda independent of the will of any emperor under the sun. For samurai, matters of honor were like that. Which was why Yatsu's mother got cared for and the two of them were in the wind.

Strange how the situation suited everyone involved.

"Unless you plan to work for the Jin sect, you're going to have to live with subpar tea," Wataru said after a while. "I'm not budgeting for luxuries."

"If I wanted to spend my time in a viper pit, I'd have stayed home," Yatsu replied, failing to make a joke of it and just landing in a purely bitter tone. He drank the tea anyway.

"Does it help any if we know they're corrupt?" Fuse asked no one in particular.

Wataru said, "Maybe?" at the same time that Yatsu said, "No."

Typical. If Lanling Jin was a bit more corrupt, Hatake would've had a much easier time getting agents into the ranks of their servants. As it was, Wataru expected that Jin Guangshan's first encounter with a kunoichi would probably end badly for any number of reasons, but the mission itself would be only a small factor.

"Sounds about right," said Fuse, and went back to scratching her dog's ears. "I have a few ideas, but none that will work quickly."

Mathematically, Fuse was probably the most likely to gut someone like a fish. Perhaps with her bare hands. Wataru tried not to think about that much.

Wataru sighed. "So, what else did you learn on your adventures?"

And as though to the chime of some unheard gong, the pair of agents snapped to attention.

What came pouring out of both of them was a saga of woe and drama that was almost certainly embellished. Not that Wataru didn't appreciate embellishment and their considerable quirks, but it was late.

Wataru listened at least a little, since he had just made the request. But only a little. Mostly, his head was full of numbers.

Running an apothecary in the middle of Lanling was not the most expensive choice for a front—that might have been something to do with the silk or salt trade—but it was a job Wataru could do by maintaining stocks, balancing the books, and reading labels. There was a different agent entirely—Yamaguchi Whose-Personal-Name-He-Forgot—who'd actually been here for ages and was trained in medicine.

Or poison. There was only a difference in dosage, according to him.

Wataru didn't know what had happened to the overseer before him, aside from the vague thought that stealing from shinobi was a poor choice for long-term survival. Hatake couldn't have held this position open for a year. But if he had, perhaps, put a placeholder in this spot and not made especially sure of the man's skills (or loyalty), it'd explain why Wataru spent almost a solid month scrubbing the place from top to bottom and reorganizing everyone to report to him. None of the agents in Lanling were fools, but some of them were apparently left leaderless for a fairly long time.

Yamaguchi would forgive him for unknowingly letting them all run amok sometime before next Tanabata. Probably.

"—and on top of everything—"

"—which was your fault—"

Maybe Wataru should have taken the entire brick of expensive compressed tea to Lanling with him and bribed his way into his agents' good graces that much faster, but those poor Jiang cultivators were so downtrodden at the time. He'd left it in Shinta's qiankun bag out of pity, to be miraculously discovered later. Along with even more money that neither Tomoe nor Shinta knew about at the time. They'd probably discovered the silver and long since spent it by now.

They never really asked where he got his funds, and he wasn't about to admit anything specific to anyone except maybe Xiaomei. She was trustworthy enough. And didn't judge him for putting his wages away wherever he chose.

To be fair to Hatake, his budget probably looked hilarious by now. Hatake had to report what he was doing to someone further up the chain, as long as he asked for any money from them. Wataru could compensate for weird agents better than many of his peers in the shinobi-wrangling business and take some of the weight off his senpai's shoulders, mostly because he was better at finances than the average agent. And much more gregarious.

And really good at bribes. It was a survival skill in Lanling.

Anyway.

"Get it in writing and post it to Ningbo," Wataru said at last, once Yatsu and Fuse had completed their usual round of shouting over each other. Wataru mostly needed to know what expenses to these two—and their less-enthusiastic comrades—had accrued while digging into the cultivation world's secrets. And avoid waking the dogs again.

Maybe if Wataru's agents managed to steal a cultivation manual, Wataru could avoid being dubbed useless in Lanling and getting sent somewhere worse. Telling the fakes from the real ones was at least interesting enough by moonlight. Trying to sell encoded fans in Qinghe sounded like an even more arduous task than picking apart pamphlets.

"Did you get the new messenger birds?" asked Fuse. When Wataru sighed at her word choice, she said, "What? It's been more than two weeks."

"You could send the dog. She'd be happy to run across three provinces to see her real master again," said Yatsu. He took a long sip of his tea and pretended not to notice Fuse's attempt to glare a hole into the side of his head. Blind or not, he could detect hostility just fine. "Or am I wrong?"

Fuse growled, "Being right doesn't mean you get to be a smug—"

Wataru cleared his throat, which drew Fuse up short when she remembered he was there. Strictly speaking, Wataru knew plenty Yatsu and Fuse didn't. Living outside of Nihon for more than half his life had something to do with it. The pair of them had been stationed in Lanling as soon as Hatake finished their training, but both were only recently promoted to more interesting roles. Sometime within the last year.

He wasn't interested in giving relative newcomers that talk, though. Hatake should have.

"Call it a bias," Wataru told him, shutting down further arguing. "Speaking of biases, I hear your mother rousing, Yatsu-kun. Go look after her, since I'm sure she's sick of my face by now. While actually sick. So, y'know."

Yatsu's face—what Wataru could see of it below the blindfold, anyway—went ashen even before the coughing started in the first-floor bedroom. He was halfway down the hall before Wataru managed to say anything else, even forgetting his bamboo cane in the rush.

The first couple of times he'd done that, he'd tripped over leftover furniture from Ota's time in residence and landed on his face.

During the repeated reorganization of the house and shop, most of the potted plants and display tables got shifted from halls and the like to the shop front, and the wooden floors were subtly adjusted to make noise in the night like those of proper castles. Both decisions were precautions. Even if Yatsu and his mother never actually said as much, the pair of them got around easier once the trip hazards and excess steps in the house were removed. Wataru hadn't managed to find a way to modify the threshold step into something that could both be traversed by Yatsu (without his cane) and avoid inviting hungry corpses into the house, but he'd get there eventually. For now, the back entrance would have to do most of the work.

"Is Aki-obasan all right?" Fuse asked, all concern now that the night's blustering session was over.

"She's going to drink her weight in ginger tea by the time it's over, but it's really just a cough," Wataru said, like he hadn't been tending to her all day between customers and two restless, abbreviated catnaps. "Not a huge concern."

"That's something," mumbled Fuse.

Hyūga Aki was one of several people who couldn't necessarily support a solo life in another empire. She didn't have the language skills her son and Fuse had carefully built up to qualify for employment. She was just a nice older lady whose hair had gone half-gray from stress in her forties, whose white eyes only bothered Wataru for a few minutes after they first met.

And who could probably kill someone with a poke if she was anything like her thornbush of a son.

Though really, neither her or her son qualified as Hyūga anymore. Even if they had been born into the smallest branch house of the clan, the act of removing main branch elders through violence was probably enough to knock them both down to being Wataru's peers in peasantry. Disgrace and exile worked like that most of the time.

Fuse still stared after Yatsu, leaning sideways so far that her hair almost touched the floor, even with the bulk of it still restrained in twin buns atop her head. "Are you sure it's just a wind cold?"

"Yes. And not just because I'm pretty sure if I lied, he'd find a way to kill me and hide my body."

Fuse snorted, settling back into a prim and proper sitting position. "Oh, I'd help."

"I'd last exactly two seconds in a fight with either of you. Probably long with him, though, because he'd want me to see death approaching," Wataru said, and shrugged at the thought of potential doom. He'd gotten good at it over the years. "Really, I'm harmless."

"You're the last person who gets to say that," Fuse said, disbelief written all over her face.

"I'm a humble money-changer." Wataru winked at her over the brim of his teacup as he took a sip. Without missing a beat, he continued a moment later with, "An accountant at best. An apothecary most of the time. A rascal for all of it!"

"Uh-huh. I'll finish the reports before going to bed." Fuse picked up the bamboo walking cane Yatsu had left behind in his haste, then followed her partner. Or maybe her only equal.

Pff. Children. The only mature ones in this house were the dogs and Aki-obasan, really.

Wataru stayed in the kitchen for a while, waiting for the rest of the household to decide whether they were going to emerge from the bedrooms or not. When the incense burner finally gave up the ghost and needed a refill, he shrugged to himself and packed up the tea accoutrements. Cleaning up after Yatsu and Fuse was more or less a daily task, whether it was because the ever-present dog hair on everything had become oppressive, or because someone had tipped over a whole jar of dried seahorses. One more night of careful cleaning was almost meditative. Not as meditative as, say, drinking sake and looking at the stars, but that was a lost cause.

While Wataru poured dirty water out the back door, Fuse's voice piped up behind him with, "Are you going to be up much longer?"

"Maybe an hour." Wataru tapped the bucket a few times on the stone to get the last drops out, then said, "Unless Obasan needs a bath? More tea? Please say it's about tea."

"No, she's fine," Fuse said, and was sitting at the table when Wataru returned. She rubbed at her nose and scowled a bit as Wataru uncapped the incense burner. "She fell asleep pretty quickly once Yatsu-kun started that lullaby. Were you two busy all day or something?"

Wataru nodded, setting the incense aside even though the harsh medicinal smell of the storeroom was starting to seep back into the house. "You'd think everyone in Lanling caught something this week. I've been trying to keep the customer count down, but I think Yamaguchi is out to get me for leaving the post untended or something. Honestly, all that backroom work had to be Ota-san's fault." Wataru canted his head to the side. "Well, no use worrying about it now."

"It was his fault," Fuse said, though Wataru didn't need the confirmation, "but he made a trip between cities a few months ago and all we found was his arm. There's a predator in the mountains. Maybe a bat? Something that flies, anyway, and it smells awful." She wrinkled her nose. "Maybe it spreads some kind of plague."

"Huh. I guess that explains why Satomi-chan sent Asagi with me." Wataru leaned his chin on his hand.

"I thought that was because you almost got killed by bandits."

"That too!" As though by the intervention of the heavens themselves, Tomoe and Shinta had appeared in the exact right moment to keep Wataru from getting quite thoroughly robbed and probably left to die. This was followed immediately by Tomoe shoving a glowing hairpin through a man's throat, and Wataru swooned.

In hindsight, that might've been partly due to blood loss. Or because of the head injury. Or both.

"You can't be trusted with your own safety," Fuse muttered, half into her hand. Next to her, her dog's tail thumped happily.

"Probably not."

"Well, hopefully you can be responsible for your own sleep schedule," Fuse said, and rolled to her feet. "Good night, Wataru-san."

"Night, Fuse-chan!"

Fuse rolled her eyes, but she waved as she headed for the stairs.

Wataru gave Fuse a while to sort out her sleeping arrangements, then started dousing candles. He'd have to get his pining done on some other night.

Tomoe's days in Qinghe were mostly monotonous after her…disagreement with Wei Wuxian. He was almost certainly avoiding her with the same persistence as he dodged questions and confrontations from just about everyone. Though he was the first disciple of the Jiang sect, he didn't show up to meetings. Jiang Wanyin occasionally stormed through the guest quarters looking for him, or sent Jiang Yanli on a search of the entire Unclean Realm while everyone of sufficient rank was in strategic meetings. If there was anyone Wei Wuxian avoided more strenuously than Tomoe, it was likely the Gusu Lan sect's young master in white, which had the result of making both of them nigh-impossible to locate while that cat-and-mouse game continued.

Several people expressed worries about this, though mostly when they weren't aware of or were ignoring her presence. In many conversations, Tomoe contributed approximately the same as a small potted plant would. Any concern expressed in her presence was not her own, and she wasn't truly the wronged party in any of this.

"Ow."

On the other hand, Tomoe abandoned the archery field after two days of no-shows besides herself, and had instead decided to put her other neglected skills to work.

"Wu Xue," Wen Qing said, her voice very dry, "the patient is not your enemy. Today."

Tomoe mimicked the monosyllabic, closed-mouthed noise she'd overheard several times from the Lan contingent. Then she set the thick healing paste aside, closing the lid over the lacquered jar.

The patient grimaced, but relaxed a little when Tomoe retreated.

It said something about her, Tomoe supposed, when she had less bedside manner than a woman as ferocious as Wen Qing. Perhaps the only worse option than Wen Qing was no attempt to speak to a patient at all. Or an actual torturer.

In truth, Tomoe was only here because a Jiang sect cultivator needed to escort Wen Qing everywhere in the Unclean Realm. While Tomoe's initial offer to take Wen Qing as a prisoner was not entirely serious, Jiang Wanyin doubled down on the claim made during Wei Wuxian and Tomoe's Yiling campaign. As a result, Wen Qing kept busy among the healers while shadowed by a cultivator in purple.

Tomoe only counted by technicality.

"Excuse me, Wen-guniang," said the man lying on the cot, "but could you please take care of me instead?"

Wen Qing shooed Tomoe away from the poor Nie cultivator, allowing her to take up a position near the tent's main entrance. It didn't mean too much—Wen Qing was still a prisoner and Tomoe still wasn't an adept conversationalist—but any indication of people softening their stances toward a Wen was to be encouraged. Wen Qing had said as much, repeatedly, while speaking in hushed tones with both Jiang Wanyin and Jiang Yanli. Tomoe was a worthy counterweight in most day-to-day interactions just by behaving as she normally would.

"Ow! I think I might be bleeding…more?"

"Flinch a little to the left next time," said Wen Qing, merciless as ever.

Changing primary healers didn't have much of an impact on this particular man's suffering. On the positive side of things, he'd keep the use of his sword hand as long as he obeyed Wen Qing's instructions.

Changing minds was the work of a lifetime, but the best time to start was always as soon as the option became available.

Tomoe spent the next few hours bustling Wen Qing from place to place, as she had the day before. Those most hostile to her assistance were, of course, the clans who had been most brutally mauled by the main branch of the Wen sect. Aside from the Lanling Jin heir's token force, this wronged group comprised…most of them. Tomoe didn't have to stay in any of the common areas for more than a few minutes before the litany of complaints reached her ears.

The exception was the Jiang sect; while they were clearly all devastated by the loss of their home and so many of their loved ones, their new clan leader's word was law.

And thus, Wen Qing would be protected.

If Jiang Wanyin decided that Tomoe was the best-suited for this task, she'd keep her disagreements to herself for now. If he brought Shinta to their next battle and left Tomoe behind, however, this compliance would not last long. Tomoe knew perfectly well which of the two of them was best suited for causing death.

"That was the last patient," Wen Qing said as the sunlight tipped toward a hazy yellow. While untying her sleeves, she said in a cool tone, "Did you find anything suspicious enough to report to Chifeng-zun in my conduct?"

Tomoe tilted her head to one side, meeting Wen Qing's challenging stare without changing her expression. She reported to no one but her own conscience, and both of them knew it. Even wearing the Jiang sect uniform didn't change that.

"Thought not. Our next task is to find food."

Tomoe nodded along and helped the taller woman pack her medical supplies.

Wen Qing tucked her acupuncture needles away, holding herself forcibly calm due mostly to the bustle of the camp around them. Wen Qing already knew Tomoe's various criteria for violence and that she fit none of them, so all the tension was due to the volatile nature of a crowd—an army—of people with many reasons to hate any Wen they found.

The pair of them passed quickly through the common areas toward the Jiang sect's quarters, with Wen Qing's head held high and Tomoe's sword ready to intercept those who accosted her. Even with both of them in borrowed Jiang uniforms, the outcry when Wen Qing arrived was almost entirely focused on her. The return of Wei Wuxian was greeted with correspondingly overpowering relief.

Tomoe, the most nondescript by far, slipped into the ranks with no ongoing interest.

And if Tomoe used the creeping dread of her killing intent like one of Wen Qing's acupuncture needles against the minds of Lanling Jin disciples, no one had to know but her. They were the ones most likely to spit at or harangue Wen Qing despite her work—and despite their lack thereof. As such, their time was better spent elsewhere. Anywhere Tomoe did not have to deal with them.

Wen Qing's quarters were only secluded in the loosest sense. She shared a courtyard and covered pavilion in the common area with most of the Jiang who'd returned to Qinghe, but the various cultivators had reshuffled around her as they moved from shift to shift. During the last great scramble for rooms, Tomoe moved her possessions into the room next to Wen Qing's and found Shinta following the next day.

If Tomoe was going to take someone prisoner, it would be done correctly. With no hysterics.

"You never did ask me again," Wen Qing said, once they were in her rooms again and well away from the judgment of strangers.

"What?" Tomoe asked, because the word almost fit the whole of the question she felt was needed. She was efficient with her words even now.

"About what men from Dongying made it into my uncle's court." Wen Qing sorted objects in the room as she spoke. Mostly, this involved putting various medical supplies in the same drawers, holsters, or boxes in which they'd started the day. "I expected an interrogation."

Tomoe, already moving to help Wen Qing stow her elixirs in a box with cushioned spacers, took a long time to answer. She kept thinking as Wen Qing directed the general reorganization of the room, no matter what she had to lift or shift around. After as much time as they'd spent together, at least Wen Qing was outwardly patient with the pace of Tomoe's replies and even seemed to enjoy thoughtful silences if there was payoff at the end. She didn't just keep talking and expect to be interrupted later.

"Questions are difficult," Tomoe said at last, as Wen Qing started to settle. "And you are not expendable."

That clearly brought Wen Qing's thought processes to a halt, though she continued her work. The only true giveaway was the hitch from her golden core and the marginally increased intensity of her stare. Most other people would never see through her iron self-control.

It took until Wen Qing sat at her low table, with Tomoe gathering the tea set Qinghe Nie left and placing it in front of her, before there was any reply.

The pace of their conversation would have driven more speed-focused cultivators to distraction.

Finally: "I am still of Qishan Wen. There are plenty of people here who would use that as their justification for whatever treatment I might receive."

Tomoe sat at the table across from her, pouring tea slowly for each of them. "Trash."

Wen Qing blinked. "Excuse me?"

"We are in war. Men become monsters here." Tomoe untied Yukishiro from her belt and set it on the floor, in plain view of Wen Qing. The words still came out with the rhythm of blows from an axe, but they arrived nonetheless. "Such people are still trash."

Wen Qing watched her for a long moment, relaxing only marginally when she took hold of her teacup. "...You don't see the point in torture?" she hazarded.

"Single-stroke death," Tomoe replied, all too aware that she was butchering the language by daring to speak faster. Torture gives me nothing that raiding a regional office doesn't already offer.

More importantly, cultivators with powerful cores tended to have loud deaths, especially if she was clumsy enough not to kill on the first blow. It made for an inefficient ambush. She had neither the time nor the inclination to sit around and question people for hours on end. Her targets died quickly, if not as cleanly as they'd like. If she went around cutting up anyone who could potentially give her a lead, she'd never get anything done.

Wen Qing took a long sip of her tea. "You should know that Wen-zongzhu has no such qualms. Nothing even approaching restraint."

Tomoe expected as much, and said so with a flat look.

"He used to. Once upon a time, he was only ambitious and cruel, not indiscriminately so. Now that he's attacked so many clans and caused so many deaths, he'll happily do it again and again and again." Wen Qing's gaze remained fixed on the tabletop. "Especially without me there stabilizing his qi."

"Already wasted," was Tomoe's reply, thinking of the cell in Yiling. "While imprisoned."

Wen Qing's fist clenched, sending a line of tension all the way up her arm. "And if we're lucky, he thinks I'm too dead for A-Ning to still be—" She swallowed hard, then pretended that she hadn't. "I hope he's been forgotten. A-Ning is better off in a cell than with Wen-zongzhu's attention."

"If needed," Tomoe said carefully, "I will ask."

"Ask what? About A-Ning? He won't tell you anything." Wen Qing's hopelessness leached into her qi as clearly as blood in water.

"No. Permission from Jiang-zongzhu." Tomoe hesitated for a few heartbeats, trying to find the correct words. Someday, it would be easier to speak from the heart. For now, it was easiest to focus on the ongoing task of dealing death. "To kill Wen-zongzhu. Myself."

Wen Qing froze down to her golden core.

Tomoe took the opportunity to drain her cup of tea in a few quick swallows, despite the near-painful heat. She needed to prepare for the afternoon's tasks regardless of Wen Qing's reaction. With that thought in mind, she also refilled Wen Qing's cup at the same time as her own.

"Wu Xue." Wen Qing said it carefully, as though stepping out onto ice with no idea if it would crack under her feet. "There is an army of cultivators whose goal is exactly that."

"Yes."

"Including Chifeng-zun, who has claimed since his ascension that Wen-zongzhu killed his father."

Tomoe hadn't known that, but declined the opportunity to tell Wen Qing about her ignorance. Completing vows of revenge was an important task, though Tomoe thought she'd be practical enough not to whine if someone else got to her targets first. It was just that no one ever did. Perhaps if the ghosts in Yukishiro's clutches killed more indiscriminately, like Wen Ruohan's reputation showed for all to see, the competition might occasionally succeed. Or exist. As it was now, there was no competing interest to view with thwarted rage. Thus, she set the thought aside.

Wen Qing went on, exasperated, "And you mean to tell me you can offer to kill the strongest cultivator in the world, behind his armies and possibly while within his stronghold at Nightless City? All this because I was worrying over A-Ning where you could hear me."

"Yes. And no." Tomoe tilted her head to one side as a relatively weak golden core approached the mostly-empty Jiang quarters. It was the only sign of her split attention. "My revenge is…already there. Practical."

Wen Qing put her head in her hands, letting out a deep sigh, and refused to lift her gaze until the visitor finally arrived with a gentle knock on the door. It was quite clear that Tomoe would get no further information from her today, so she rose gracefully to answer the summons.

"Ah, Wu-shimei," said Jiang Yanli, as Tomoe held out her hands to receive the lunch tray. Once her arms were free, Jiang Yanli bowed more than was strictly necessary to a woman who couldn't dream of outranking her, then said, "Thank you for looking after Wen-guniang today."

Tomoe bowed back, then wordlessly carried the tray to the table.

Wen Qing rose enough to greet Jiang Yanli, who once again defeated them both in the art of making a person remember every failed courtesy lesson over a lifetime. It was a contest she dominated effortlessly, from what Tomoe could understand, while never once behaving in a condescending manner. Jiang Yanli also bore one of the weaker cores of the fully-fledged cultivators, which had the likely-unintentional side effect of giving her the second-hardest qi to read in the entire camp, except for Wei Wuxian. Perhaps her courtesy was as much a shield as other trappings of rank.

This time, Tomoe sat well back from the two noblewomen, tucking her legs neatly underneath her and keeping her head modestly bowed. With her hands tucked in her lap and eyes shut, she could even meditate for the first time since her archery practice stopped being soothing and simply shifted to frustration.

Not for the first time, Tomoe shoved down homesickness and pushed it from her mind. It was easier while letting the rhythm of Wen Qing and Jiang Yanli's quiet conversation—and unsettled qi—wash over her.

Being the once-fourth child of a samurai clan meant nothing this far from home, in a way that was both freeing and concerning for the future, if Tomoe survived to see the end of the war. While she'd made the assassination offer to Wen Qing, a truly solid plan relied on information not currently available until certain people chose to share. The future remained in flux and the past was a bloodstained banner, broken on the field. At any rate, Sumomo struck her from the clan records within a week of her departure. Disavowing the impending violence helped protect her husband's clan from any blowback.

Tomoe never wrote to her sister after leaving, not even to tell her about leaving Nihon's shores. Never asked about Yuki, who was undoubtedly already training to take up the sword like his family before him. Couldn't.

It didn't matter. Everything between them had already been said and screamed and buried.

Though…maybe Tomoe should have spoken about funeral arrangements the last time she'd seen Wataru. To clarify. In what little time they had.

"Wu-shimei, please join us. This concerns you, too."

Tomoe lifted her head and obeyed, choosing the seat that put her back toward the rear window of the room instead of the door. It was not the most secure position—Wen Qing had her back to the bed—but sufficed.

"Thank you." Jiang Yanli spooned soup into bowls for all three of them. At a glance, it looked like Hubei cooking down to the literal bones. Pork rib, in fact. As she settled back into her seat, she said, "Now, I'd like to ask a few questions of both of you. I understand if you need some time to answer, Wu-shimei, but I'd like you to be honest with me."

Tomoe hid a grimace through sheer force of will. Whether she knew or not, Jiang Yanli's tone reminded Tomoe of her mother at her most patient. And even in one of Tomoe's mother's more playful moods, she'd still offered to have Shinta killed during their disastrous—and futile—courtship. For the potential crime of being an unworthy husband. Tomoe truly was her mother's daughter.

The tension was thick enough to cut, and not all of it was entirely earned by those in the room.

And Jiang Yanli asked, "How are you settling in?"

Entirely unplanned, Wen Qing and Tomoe exchanged a cautious glance. While neither could see a trap, exactly, Tomoe noticed the way the faint alarm in Wen Qing's expression mirrored what she felt. They almost immediately looked back toward Jiang Yanli.

"We've all been busy," said Jiang Yanli, "but details are where it all falls apart. Please tell me if you have any concerns."

Tomoe said, "The war."

At the same time, Wen Qing said, "I can't complain."

They eyed each other again.

"Do you want to start, or should I?" Wen Qing asked, a little tartly.

"You." Tomoe bowed her head slightly, then got up to search for paper.

While Wen Qing and Jiang Yanli moved past pleasantries and into a day-to-day recounting of their respective duties, Tomoe eventually located a writing set that could achieve enough of what she wanted. She'd have to remember to replace what she used so Wen Qing could continue keeping patient records, but sometimes it was helpful to put her calligraphy lessons to use where her other language skills failed.

She could at least manage a doodle.

"Progress is simply slow, Jiang-guniang. Even after leaving Wen Chao to your clan's justice, and following all of you here, there is no way to force people to trust me. All we can do is work, every day, to bring the war closer to its end." Wen Qing's chopsticks clicked together and Tomoe continued preparing to write. "Most of the soldiers I treat will live, and they'll go on to kill more Wen, or come back injured or dead, and the process repeats again and again. At least it keeps me busy."

"I suspect your experiences with Wen-zongzhu were rather different." That was a very diplomatic way of putting it.

"I was a member of his court. Very little is the same," Wen Qing hedged.

Tomoe drew several characters in neat, swift strokes, then frowned. She was almost entirely certain she had failed to make a sentence by local standards. Better to stick to forming a small lexicon she could use independent of their combined meaning. So, she wrote a dozen more relevant nouns.

Jiang Yanli waited until Tomoe finished writing before saying in her soft voice, "What about you, Wu-shimei?"

"Quiet," Tomoe said after skimming her list of characters. "Irrelevant."

"Do you prefer being very far from the center of attention?"

Tomoe bobbed her head once, but only said, "Futile."

"Unfortunately, I agree." Wen Qing sighed into her bowl, barely noticeable.

Tomoe concentrated on appreciating Jiang Yanli's cooking with some caution. While Hubei cuisine was almost never as overpoweringly spicy as the other possibilities—mostly from Sichuan—Tomoe only needed to learn that lesson once. Her palate wasn't built for surviving that trial.

"Now, wait. I don't believe the situation is entirely out of our hands." Jiang Yanli drew herself up slightly, mouth set in determination. "Wen-guniang, would you object to joining my retinue? A-Cheng won't argue—"

"I stood by and wouldn't have helped you three, if not for A-Ning making the decision for us both," Wen Qing interrupted quietly. "I don't deserve—"

"You still helped us, Wen-guniang. You hid us from Wen Chao's forces long enough to restore A-Cheng's golden core," Jiang Yanli insisted, her spine as straight as a jian. "There would be no Jiang clan today without you, even if you say your intentions were less than perfect. I like to think—" Jiang Yanli paused so she could draw a steadying breath, then continued, "—I'd like to think we can still help each other. Even if I can't go out and help rescue Wen Ning, or to even find him, he was very kind to us. You were kind, when you didn't truly have to be. You deserve better."

Tomoe felt the knife's edge of guilt draw a sharp line through Wen Qing's qi and pretended not to notice. Right around the moment Jiang Yanli mentioned that golden core. Well, now.

"Please, Wen-guniang. Let me help."

Wen Qing turned her face away. Still, when Jiang Yanli reached across the table and took her hand, she squeezed back just slightly.

"Wen-guniang. Jiang-guniang," Tomoe said, into the long silence. "Question."

Jiang Yanli drew back into herself, just a little. Her presence was no smaller than before, but she let go of Wen Qing's hand and settled back into a polite listening posture as Wen Qing recovered.

"I will fight. Wen-guniang will not. Jiang-guniang will not," Tomoe tried.

It was less a condemnation than an observation. Healers like Wen Qing often took vows to cause no harm—which had a few loopholes—and Jiang Yanli was not strong enough to wield a jian in battle even if she wanted to. The sentences came out as rigid as a marching song, but Tomoe hoped the impact was a little softened by her clear lack of experience speaking aloud.

Ugh. She should have made more of an effort with the Shanghai tutor.

"Is the jian the only…?" Tomoe waved a hand, trying to find the correct word. "Other ways. Other paths." It took Tomoe an embarrassingly long time to remember the term for "weapon," though she said it as soon as she dragged it out of the depths of her brain.

Wen Qing's "What do you mean?" was just as blunt as Tomoe tried not to be.

As often.

"Many weapons. All channel qi." Tomoe flipped her notes around and drew their attention to the series of untidy ink drawings at the bottom. "Dao. Bow. Spear. Dagger."

"I see where your language lessons stopped," said Wen Qing.

Tomoe pointed toward herself with one hand, even as she made her way through the rest of the list. "I wield these." Switching to Nihongo, she recited the name of each piece. "Katana. Naginata. Tantō. Yumi. Tessen."

"This just looks like a hand fan," Jiang Yanli said. "Is there something special about it?"

"Steel." Tomoe lost all of her personal weapon collection years ago, but she couldn't be too sentimental about it while she still kept Yukishiro. Had any of the other pieces survived the fire, she likely would have sold them off for cash, like her wedding robes. "Steel struts and panels."

"You can't solve every problem with violence." Wen Qing wasn't precisely disapproving. More skeptical.

"War," Tomoe reminded them. "Can so."

Jiang Yanli looked between them before putting her head in her hands. "Oh no."

Wen Qing reacted first. "Jiang-guniang?"

"I was—I was just about to say, 'not now, you two,' like with A-Cheng and A-Xian." Her smile failed at the corners. Her kind face was faintly lined with exhaustion. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt."

"You can't interrupt a conversation like this one. It's impossible." Wen Qing looked down at her bowl again. "Jiang-guniang, I'll think about your offer. It's more than I deserve."

"No offense meant to you, Wen-guniang, but the lives of my brothers are very important to me. I'm just sorry I can't do more right now." Jiang Yanli then turned her attention back to Tomoe. "And Wu-shimei? I'll do my best to think about…alternative cultivation methods."

Tomoe supposed it wasn't especially time-critical for Jiang Yanli to learn how to bounce a dao back into the owner's face with a fan. That was, theoretically, the job of the actual army bloating the Unclean Realm's population. She clearly hadn't gone through the same martial training as many of the cultivators here, though Tomoe didn't entirely rule out talisman or flight potential. In many ways, anything Tomoe might each her was not going to be a priority.

But Tomoe had offered targeted violence on behalf of Wen Qing, and taught Shinta almost every kenjutsu technique she'd ever learned. She handed Yukishiro to Wei Wuxian and still scared him away in less than ten minutes, despite his new language proficiency. Jiang Wanyin needed her killing power, and that was the cleanest summary of what she could contribute to the war.

In the end, Tomoe was the sum of her skills. The Heavens knew she had little else to give besides misery.

"Let's finish lunch. We can talk about this after giving ourselves some time to think." With that, Jiang Yanli leaned over the table and uncovered the soup pot again. "Seconds, anyone?"

Tomoe and Wen Qing silently agreed and moved their bowls into her reach.

Trivia Section:

1. Satomi, Yatsu, and Fuse (and Teikō) derive their names from the 19th-century Japanese novel Nansō Satomi Hakkenden, also known to me as "where the video game Ōkami got it." They're also peers of Wataru and Tomoe in the Catch Your Breath side-story arc entitled "The Canine Warriors."

2. Inuzuka dogs live as long as their humans because I say so. And because they probably have yōkai ancestry. On that note, the word "yōkai" only entered widespread use relatively recently and is in fact a loanword derived from the Chinese term "yāoguài." An older Japanese term is "mononoke." The folklore's a lot of fun, by any name.

3. If you've ever been in a traditional Chinese medicine shop, you'll always know the smell. Personally, I never forgot the dried seahorses. Or how expensive ginseng was.

4. A "wind-cold" is an upper respiratory tract infection…which can be anything from the common cold to a flu to whatever else might make one cough and sneeze. Traditional treatment of the symptoms involves a lot of spices.

5. For most of Chinese history, social classes were more malleable than Japanese ones thanks to the existence of the civil service examinations. Interestingly, both cultures generally viewed rich merchants as a destabilizing factor in society.

6. Folding fans are unisex accessories in Japan by this time, but were only for men in China for a majority of their history. Nie Huaisang gets a lot of mileage out of his painted fans over the course of The Untamed. The tessen, the Japanese (iron-spoked) war fan, was a samurai accessory used both for indoor combat and directing soldiers in battle.

7. Sichuan cooking is world-famous for spicy dishes, like a lot of inland cuisines. Hubei, as another inland province, isn't too far behind on spice levels.