It is, Wang Zhi thinks, entirely too early for him to begin hallucinating. Sure, he already spent more than three days in this miserable cell, and the bruises and welts left by his captors ache; the food has been scarce and the water even scarcer. But all of it combined should not result in him being so far gone he would hear Tang Fan's voice. Tang Fan is in the capital, safe, solving cases and striking confused horror in the hearts of any wrongdoers, cherished and protected by his family. Tang Fan is -
- dragged into the stinking, narrow space of Wang Zhi's prison, arguing with the guards on the way. Something about the proper treatment of His Majesty's subjects.
Wang Zhi stares. He blinks, trying to dispel the improbable image. Unmistakably Tang Fan: clad in his white robes, disheveled, with his headpiece missing and an ugly dark bruise spreading over his left eye, pouting as he argues. The guards silently push him into the cell sitting kitty-corner to Wang Zhi's, and one of them clouts him heavily on the back before locking the bars. Tang Fan goes sprawling, barely catching himself.
The guards leave. Tang Fan bounces up, rushes to the bars, and beams when he sees Wang Zhi. "You're here! Oh, I'm glad. Hello, Wang Zhi."
"Tang Fan," Wang Zhi says, packing as much disapproval as he can into his voice. "What are you doing here?"
"Looking for you, obviously," Tang Fan says. "We left the capital as soon as we got your last letter, but I can only travel so fast, and Lao Pei is even slower than me. I had a really bad moment when we arrived, and you were 'indisposed' and 'not having visitors,' thought we were too late! But here you are."
Wang Zhi is beginning to feel the familiar, and right now extremely unwelcome feeling of baffled bewilderment that rises every time he's dealing with Tang Fan. Usually, it's tempered by amusement and excitement. Right now he'd like to cross the bars separating them and shake Tang Fan until his brain rattles around in his skull.
He grinds his teeth. "Why, in the name of all that's holy, are you here? I absolutely did not ask you to come."
Tang Fan kneels and primly spreads the fold of his robes. It's as if he came to visit Wang Zhi in Huanyi Brothel, and they're looking at each other over a cup of wine. "You didn't," he says, smiling. "It was all gossip and complaints about the weather and completely unreasonable critique of my latest novel, and by the way, you're so wrong about the character of Zhang Jing - but anyway. In the first letters you mentioned that the previous governor was not too happy to be replaced. And in the last one you let it slip that there was a slew of crimes in the troops, and military pay missing, so it was obvious to me that he was trying to frame you..."
He grins at Wang Zhi, a quick and unceremonious flash of teeth that's going to get him killed one day. "We both know that you're amazing at politics, but I'm a much better investigator than you! And you wouldn't make a move until you've got absolute proof he's instigating those crimes. And you can't rely fully on Ding Rong now. So when I got this letter, Guangchuan and I packed up, convinced Lao Pei to come with us just in case, applied for leave, and went to Hetao. Even Wuyun came with us, he wanted to see what horses they sell here. Dong'er and my sister send their regards, by the way."
Wang Zhi stares at him. "You're all insane," he says, finally, feeling that this phrase is rather inadequate to what he's trying to express. "Why?"
"Aren't we friends, Wang Zhi?"
Are they? Wang Zhi's mind churns. Friends enough to work for the country together, yes. Friends enough so Wang Zhi can send lighthearted, frothy letters freely. Friends enough to exchange favors. If he had known in full what the ex-governor - Hu Guangdao, a thin, angry man with a mouth permanently puckered as if he's sucking on something sour, and a man unhappy to be supplanted with a mere eunuch - had been embroiled in, Wang Zhi would've had zero compunctions in dragging Tang Fan to Hetao, either by appeal to his better nature or by rank bribery involving expensive food. But when he had been writing this last letter, he still had thought of it as a domestic affair, a challenge to his new position he had to solve alone. It hadn't even occurred to him to ask for help. He wouldn't have done that even if he thought of it.
And yet.
"Is this," he says, pointing at Tang Fan's bruises and general behind-the-bars state, "your grand rescue?"
Tang Fan squirms uncomfortably. "Ah," he mumbles, "no. That's me tipping my hand and asking too many questions. When we arrived and saw that you were missing and that guards in your mansion weren't your people, I panicked a bit. Got ahead of myself."
Wang Zhi drops his face in his palms. "Unbelievable," he grits out. "What's your plan then?"
"Guangchuan will find us," Tang Fan says with a simple gravitas of an inarguable fact. "And until then, I'll keep you company."
"I don't know what I expected," Wang Zhi says. "You always had the most damnable - you don't understand what you've got mixed in. The governor has debts that he can't afford to meet, and he's been accepting tremendous bribes from the nomads for years. I might not be as good at investigating as esteemed Tang-daren, but I've know the security of this entire part of the border is badly compromised. He can't afford to be replaced, and he can't afford to let me go."
Tang Fan nods at him as if all of this is of purely academic interest. "Why are you alive? If he went so far as to kidnap you, he might as well fake your death and get rid of you."
"He can't find the official seals," Wang Zhi says, smugly. "And he's afraid to make a move without them."
"Ahh," Tang Fan says. "Like a man who saddled a tiger and now can't let go of his ears."
"Exactly. Except that now you came and gave him exactly the leverage he needs, you benighted idiot! Now he can force my hand!"
He expects to horrify Tang Fan, to wake him up to the reality of the situation he's rushed into, to make him pale and stammer.
Tang Fan looks straight at him; his hands are still on his knees, and his mobile face is serious, earnest, open. "Can he, Governor Wang? Can he really? When it's about the safety of the borders?"
The answer is obvious. The answer is obvious, and yet some traitorous and starved part of Wang Zhi's soul stays his tongue. He stares at Tang Fan, aghast, for three, five, ten, twelve, fifteen heartbeats, horribly revealed, pinned, caught; and Tang Fan holds his gaze.
Then, of course, he says, "No."
"Good," Tang Fan says. He's smiling as if Wang Zhi had done something wonderful. "I'm glad, Wang Zhi. I was worried ever since you let me go when I was with General Gao."
It stings. It's exactly proper, exactly as it should be; it's nothing but what Wang Zhi told himself a thousand times since that night, on the trip to Hetao and afterward. Tang Fan made him soft. Tang Fan made him feel careless, unmoored. Tang Fan was - dangerous.
Tang Fan, it now seems, agreed with his assessment.
Wang Zhi makes the muscles of his face unfreeze, makes his mouth stretch in a smile that never let him down. "But if I shot you then," he says, lightly, "how could I make use of you later? You know it would've been completely against my guiding principles."
This should put the conversation out of its misery. Their time is much better spent discussing their strategy, anyway. But Tang Fan cocks his head to the side and looks at Wang Zhi thoughtfully, looks as if he's marshaling some argument. Wang Zhi knows he should forestall him, seize control of the conversation, but his tongue cleaves to the roof of his mouth. He's waiting for Tang Fan once again, as if his body, a long-familiar servant, wages a rebellion against him, influencing his mind.
It's almost a relief when there are murmuring voices and the light of torches in the hallway. Short-lived one, since it's Hu Guangdao himself striding in with a retinue of guards. Wang Zhi really dislikes the way the previous governor looks at Tang Fan.
One of the guards sets out a camp chair for his master, and Hu Guangdao sits down. Wang Zhi searches the faces of his soldiers, looking for a weak link, for somebody he can use to stop whatever is coming, but there's nothing. He tried bribery several times before, and earned only bruises; the guards are too deeply embroiled in Hu Guangdao's crimes to risk switching sides, no matter what Wang Zhi promises.
Tang Fan climbs back on his feet. Wang Zhi tries to send him a silent order to keep his mouth shut, but it's Tang Fan, so of course, he doesn't. "Hu Guangdao, what are you doing? Don't you know what the punishment is for interfering with His Majesty's officials? Don't you worry about your fate?"
At Hu Guangdao's curt gesture, the guards unlock the doors of Tang Fan's cell. One of them steps behind him and grabs Tang Fan into a neck lock, paying no attention to Tang Fan scrabbling frantically at his restraining arm. The other steps forward and backhands him. Tang Fan's head jerks back. For a moment his entire body seems to sway and sag, and the guard behind him has to hoist him back up. Tang Fan licks the blood off his lips and looks directly at Wang Zhi. His eyes are all iris, eerily black in the torchlight.
Wang Zhi keeps his smile on his face. He has smiled through worse and scarier things; the muscles of his face know their job. There's likely no chance to pull it off, but he owes it to Tang Fan to try. "Getting bored of me so soon, Hu-daren?"
"You will both be silent," Hu Guangdao says, nasal and uninflected. "Wang Zhi, you will tell me where the seals are, or the magistrate is going to suffer."
Sweat slides down the back of Wang Zhi's neck. His face hurts. He keeps his voice light. "What makes you think I'm going to care? Now, Tang Fan here is not my friend, but he is His Majesty's favorite: aren't you playing with fire?"
Hu Guangdao nods at the guard, and he hits Tang Fan again, this time a curt, powerful jab into his solar plexus. Tang Fan makes a sound at that, a surprised and pained whoosh of breath, and his head droops as if the tendons of his neck had been cut. Wang Zhi forces himself not to look away.
"You will be silent," Hu Guangdao says again, in the same tone. "There's no time for games. The seals?"
Tang Fan, face hidden by the curtain of his dark hair, shakes his head stiffly at Wang Zhi. No, of course. Of course. The same unwelcome force that made Wang Zhi keep silent before begs him to talk now; he can feel it as a mounting pressure in his throat, at the base of his tongue. To talk, to give up everything, and never mind the inevitable death for both of them it will bring, never mind the safety of His Majesty's borders. Never mind anything, as long as he can avert what's coming.
"No," Wang Zhi says. He lets his smile dissolve. He knows there exists an awful, bitter and sweet freedom when all the other options are spent. He doesn't relish the flavor.
Hu Guangdao nods. "Unwise," he says, without rancor. "Predictable, but unwise. But as I said, I'm short on time and patience." He nods at the guards in Tang Fan's cell. "Break both his hands," he says, with the same casual disregard Wang Zhi had long ago cultivated in his own voice.
The guard who hit Tang Fan unclips a short wooden baton from his belt. Tang Fan starts fighting in earnest, twisting and bucking, even trying to bite the guard. Wang Zhi's fingers ache his gun; he refuses to give Hu Guangdao the satisfaction of straining forward, of letting his face show his fear.
By accident or design the guard blocks his line of sight. There's a short, brutal motion, once and twice - a dry, snapping sound - and Tang Fan makes a thin, reedy sound of pain that etches itself indelibly in Wang Zhi's brain No, Wang Zhi thinks, no, and no, and no. He's no stranger to violence, both survived and inflicted. Right here, right now, when it's Tang Fan - Tang Fan's clever hands, Tang Fan's narrow wrists - it's obscene. It will not be forgiven.
The guards dump Tang Fan on the floor in an ungainly heap of pale limbs and white clothes. Hu Guangdao says, again with nary an inflection, "I'll leave you some time to consider, Wang Zhi. Not a lot of it. When I come back, the guards will bring butcher knives, not sticks."
Wang Zhi does not bother looking at him. Even if he was insane enough to give in, both of them are doomed: after this, Hu Guangdao wouldn't dare to leave either of them alive. Their only chance, slim as it is, is Tang Fan's blithe surety that Sui Zhou is going to come for him. But Sui Zhou will be a stranger in a strange land, with no resources and no leads. Neither Jia Kui nor Ding Rong, assuming that his slippery assistant did not betray him again, managed to find him. What can Sui Zhou do?
Hu Guangdao sweeps away without waiting for an answer. The guards file out behind him, taking all the torches but one, and slam the heavy doors closed.
"Tang Fan," Wang Zhi hisses. "Tang Fan! Tang Fan, look at me at once. Tang Fan!"
Tang Fan doesn't look at him. Tang Fan's crumpled on the floor of his cell like a discarded paper doll. If not for compulsive, fast-paced shivers coursing through him, Wang Zhi would think him unconscious. This is absolutely untenable.
"Tang Fan," he tries again. "You're going into shock, you can't pass out now. You can't - oh, damn it. Tang Fan, if you uncurl and look at me, I'll treat you to everything you want, in all the best restaurants in Hetao. As many dishes as you want. You and your friends, all on my account. Tang Fan!"
It's ridiculous: in their situation he can easily promise Tang Fan a taste of the Emperor's dinner, and it'd be just as plausible. But - Tang Fan being Tang Fan - it does the trick. Tang Fang uncurls slightly. When he looks at Wang Zhi, his long eyelashes glisten with tears. The terrified paleness of his skin is replaced by a bluish-gray color of a body in too much pain; a red mark is standing out on his high cheekbone. He rolls to his knees, torturously slow, and pauses as if he can't figure out what to do next. He's holding his fast-swelling hands in front of him, sneaking glances at them as if they're something alien, attached to his body by accident, and making small, keening sounds every time he moves them.
"Yes," Wang Zhi says, as encouragingly as he can. He doesn't really know how to encourage. He doesn't know how to be kind. He doesn't - he has work to do. "Yes, good. Can you move just a bit, to this corner? So I can reach you if you fall asleep? Just a bit, Tang Fan."
Tang Fan shuffles on his knees to the corner their cells share, a short distance that takes him painfully long to cross, and slides down with an exhausted sigh. His eyes flutter closed, and Wang Zhi scuttles after him, dignity be damned, and stretches his arm through the bars. He can just graze Tang Fan's shoulder if he leans out fully.
"No falling asleep, remember? Tang Fan, Tang Fan, what am I to do with you? You should've stayed in the capital, safe."
Of all things, this seems to wake Tang Fan up a little. He makes a little huffing sound of not quite laughter. "Not very... safe."
Anything to keep him talking. Wang Zhi retreats to his cell. "How so?"
Tang Fan pulls himself a bit straighter. The color is slowly returning to his cheeks. He presses his arms into his chest and huddles over them like an ungainly bird. He has to take frequent pauses for breath, but his words and his eyes are becoming clearer. "You're not... in the palace. Sooner or later I'll overstep, and His Majesty... will have my head."
Wang Zhi stares at him. This might not be untrue... but he always thought that Tang Fan lived in blissful ignorance of the dangers he regularly incurred.
Tang Fan catches his stare and laughs a bit, curling tighter on himself when the movement aggravates his wrists and his laughter turns into a bitten-off moan. "Wang Zhi, Wang Zhi, I never... took you for a romantic. Do you like the idea of an innocent scholar, too pure to care about worldly affairs?"
Nothing short of Consort Wan's direct disapproval is going to force Wang Zhi into an admission that he sort of does. He presses his lips together and does his best to repossess the control of his face. "Of course not. And yet you insisted on trampling over the boundaries all the time..."
"I know," Tang Fan says. He's smiling at Wang Zhi now, even though his eyes are still wide and wet with tears; dirty, disheveled, with his bare hair spread over his shoulders, he reminds Wang Zhi stronger than ever of a jiuweihu, a curious fox spirit. "Of course I know. Did you ever wonder why I haven't adopted Dong'er?"
"I did," Wang Zhi says, frowning. "Both you and Sui Zhou dote on her, and you're not the one to disdain her origins."
"When I'm searching," Tang Fan says, meditatively, "when I can see the truth in front of me... I can't stop. It's like a hunger, or a pull. I go where it takes me."
If not for the small shudders of pain in his voice, he sounds as if they're talking over the late-night noodles, when they're both exhausted and mellowed out and there's no hurry. "When I was just a low-rank magistrate, and my cases were small, it was okay. Now when His Majesty knows about me, and the truth I seek hides in the Forbidden City more often than not, and you're not there to interfere... When I manage to offend His Majesty beyond forgiveness, I don't want Dong'er to be involved in any way. Guangchuan will take care of her."
"You're a fool if you think Sui Zhou will outlive you," Wang Zhi says. He's proud of how even his voice sounds.
He expects Tang Fan to demur or accuse him of being a romantic again. But instead, Tang Fan looks him straight in the eye and says, deadly serious and apropos of nothing, "I'm sorry you've been exiled, Wang Zhi."
It's not exactly a surprise; at the time of their parting, Tang Fan did say that it would be safer if His Majesty forgot about his existence, and Wang Zhi laughed and agreed and allowed himself to jest about things that didn't bear thinking about. What if I would miss you? But here and now, it sounds different.
"What loss are you talking about?" he says. "His Majesty granted me a great privilege."
"You forget that I actually know you. You would be a great governor once this is straightened out," Tang Fan points out, blithely. "But I know it must've hurt you badly, being sent away from serving Consort Wan."
"Shut up," Wang Zhi snaps, vehemently. "Sometimes you go too far, Tang Fan!"
Tang Fan smiles at him again, and then leans his head back and closes his eyes. "I told you. Sometimes I do."
Wang Zhi manages to keep resentfully silent for about a quarter of joss stick. But he keeps watching the careful rise and fall of Tang Fan's chest, for the lack of better options, and his mind keeps churning, churning, churning. And he's tired. And they're about to die.
"He's never going to forgive me for this sleeping draught," he says. He leans his forehead against the cold bars and closes his eyes. "I'm never going home again."
Home is the shadowy hallways of the Forbidden Palace. Home is exhaustion, home is never knowing a friend from foe, home is work and danger, home is honeyed words and mocking smiles. Home is the mulberry tree growing in his courtyard. Home is Consort Wan's tender, proud smile.
"I know," Tang Fan says, gently. "It took me a while to understand. I'm sorry for your loss, Wang Zhi."
It's horrifying, being seen. Wang Zhi nods, mutely, and doesn't open his eyes.
Sometime later, still hidden behind the thin wall of his eyelids, he says "I still can't give him the seals, Tang Fan. Not even when he comes back with butcher knives." He doesn't have it in himself to apologize.
Tang Fan's laughter is unexpected. It's chiming and clear, almost mischievous. "Of course. You're still you, aren't you? And besides, I managed to tuck my chopsticks into one of the guards' sash, and I hope he won't notice them for a while. If Guangchuan with Wuyun can't follow that clue, I'm going to be very cross."
Wang Zhi's eyes fly open. "You sly fox," he breathes. "There's some hope then."
"Yes," Tang Fan says, smugly. He stretches, forgetting himself, and yelps in pain. "Guangchuan is going to make me so many apology dinners for losing track of me."
Wang Zhi sternly tells the hunger inside him - both literal and the one for something much more dangerous - to subside. "You're blessed, having somebody who loves you so much."
"Guangchuan is a dear friend," Tang Fan agrees, immediately. "But Wang Zhi," he adds, raising his eyebrow, "have you not noticed that I traveled half the country and brought my family with me to come to your aid?"
Wang Zhi's heart begins beating heavy and hollow in his chest. His mouth floods with bitter, panicky saliva. "You help me, I help you," he says, defensive and weak even to his own ear.
Tang Fan is merciless. "But you can't help me anymore," he says. "What possible use could I have for you, all the way here on the border?"
"You're delirious with pain," Wang Zhi says, and his own voice sounds shrill to him. "You're talking nonsense. I think you can go to sleep now, conserve your strength."
Tang Fan pouts at him. "My hands indeed hurt," he says. "But you know what I mean, Wang Zhi."
"No! No I don't, you impertinent - stupid - I'm going to sleep myself, I'm exhausted."
He turns away, retreats into the far corner of himself, wraps himself in his cloak, his back to Tang Fan. Fully aware that he's being ridiculous, and utterly unable to help himself.
Tang Fan laughs in the darkness and doesn't say another word. There's rustling, pained little noises that Wang Zhi definitely isn't listening to, muttering. A long, exhausted sigh. Then silence, then thin, whistling snoring.
Wang Zhi keeps his eyes resolutely closed, but the sleep evades him. He turns to one side, then to the other, rearranges the folds of his cloak, and tells himself that he can't sleep because of the harsh stone under him. Anything else is untenable. He must've heard Tang Fan wrong. He must be hearing Tang Fan wrong. The idiot's overgrown sense of fair play dragged him all the way there, him and this Sui Zhou who dotes on him like a father and a brother at once, or even like a protective husband - no. Not going down this way. Damn Tang Fan for infecting his mind with this ridiculousness. He should be thinking up new ways of escaping their situation. He must be... He must... He's so exhausted...
Tang Fan makes a high, wounded noise that jerks Wang Zhi from the depths of his uneasy half-sleep like a shot bullet. He scrambles to the corner of the cell adjacent to Tang Fan's, his heart in his mouth, and finds Tang Fan shuddering in his sleep, panting like a horse ridden too hard. He's having a nightmare, Wang Zhi realizes. From when Li Zilong had him? About what happened to him just now? Whatever it is, it keeps him firmly caught.
Again, Wang Zhi reaches through the bars. Under his fingers, Tang Fan's shoulder is feverishly hot, blazing even through the layers of his robes. Wang Zhi swears.
"Tang Fan," he says. "Wake up, Tang Fan, you are," - he chokes on the word safe, unable, for once, to utter a lie of such magnitude, and settles on "not there. You're not there."
Tang Fan opens his eyes. He rolls his head to look at Wang Zhi, and rubs his cheek against Wang Zhi's startled fingers. He smiles as if relieved - rescued - "Wang Zhi," he says, sleepily. "You're here? Good."
His eyelashes veil his eyes again, his breathing evens out. Wang Zhi jerks his hand back as if burned. He rocks back and forth a little, awash in fury at how fast their time is running out. What sense in knowing his feelings now? He's been afraid to reach for what he wanted for so long. And now, when it's so freely and unmistakable offered, he's impotent to take it.
When Hu Guangdao and his thugs march in, a handful of joss sticks worth later, Tang Fan is so groggy with sleep and fever he barely understands what's happening to him. He cries out when the guards drag him up, but his feeble fighting attempts are ignored.
"You'll find it harder to cover up two murders than one," Wang Zhi says, keeping his voice cool and light, knowing in his bones that it's useless. "And I'm not going to tell you anything. You know you've lost. If you give himself up, Tang Fan, with his bleeding heart, will argue for mercy."
It's the first time Hu Guangdao shows the slightest sign of real emotion. He looks at Wang Zhi with something like loathing and pity mixed together, licks his lips. "There's no mercy, Wang Zhi. You, who ruled Western Depot, must understand this above all people."
His people throw Tang Fan down. Another moan of agony. A wide butcher knife gleams in the torchlight. "My man is going to keep cutting parts of him off until you give me what I want. If you're fast, he might yet live for a little while."
There's nothing left in Wang Zhi to give; nothing but huge, exhausted sadness. He always planned on having a long life, on thwarting all his enemies, on standing on the necks of all who ever wronged him or his lady. Of showing the world what he can do. Right now he's almost relieved to know he won't outlive the night.
"Forgive me," he says to Tang Fan's prone form, and kowtows to him, long and deep. Forgive me for turning away.
The guard raises his knife.
With a singing sound, sweeter than anything Wang Zhi ever heard in his life, Wuyun's black-fletched arrow buries himself in the guard's eye.
Two more guards fall, arrows sprouting from their eye sockets. Hu Guangdao, not a fool, dashes toward Tang Fan's prone body, likely hoping to take a hostage, and Wang Zhi bellows in rage - but there's a blur of black cloth and swirling steel as Sui Zhou barrels into the fight. He slams Hu Guangdao away, and Wang Zhi, despite his earnest wish to see Sui Zhou split Hu Guangdao open from neck to navel, shouts at him to keep the ex-governor alive. He doesn't know if he's heard; the guards put up a fight, and more people pour into the space between the cells; he sees the Jia Kui, fighting with his usual precise economy of motion, and knows that he and Tang Fan both are going to live.
He's pushing his palms against the bars without quite realizing it, searching frantically for Tang Fan. He finds him just as Tang Fan throws himself into the feet of a guard trying to attack Sui Zhou from behind. Tang Fan disappears under the press of fighting bodies, and Wang Zhi slams his hands on the bar in frustration and fury.
Wuyun, looking as unruffled and placid as ever, clears a way to Wang Zhi's cell, Tang Fan's prone body slung over his shoulder. He unlocks the door, dumps Tang Fan into Wang Zhi's arms, and locks the door again. "Safer here," he says, not without irony, and wades back into the fray.
Wang Zhi backs away from the bars, hauling Tang Fan with him. He feels as if his mind decided to abandon him; the fight in front of him dissolves into a meaningless kaleidoscope of colors. He's mostly occupied by a weary curiosity about just where Tang Fan puts all this food he's obsessed with: the man weighs almost nothing. A bird, a fox; Wang Zhi slides down the wall, nestles Tang Fan between his spread legs, his back to Wang Zhi's chest, and allows himself exactly three terrified, relieved exhales and inhales into Tang Fan's tangled hair. Tang Fan curls up slightly against him, and murmurs something plaintive and blurry; Wang Zhi shushes him without thinking.
Sometime later, Jia Kui is bowing to him. Sui Zhou is next to him. He's reaching for Tang Fan, his normally impassive face creased in worry, and Wang Zhi has to waste a heartbeat before he allows his arms to unlock around Tang Fan's thin shoulders. He does it, of course. They're not going to die. This means there's work to do, and work he can and will do.
He allows himself to lean on Jia Kui's arm as he walks out of the cell. The guards are all dead; he treads on the face of the one who held the knife and makes a mental note to make sure the man's hands are cut off before the burial, so he will carry the injury into the afterlife. But the man who interests him is alive - bless Sui Zhou's self-control - and Wang Zhi leans to Hu Guangdao, and smiles.
"You were right, my Hu-daren," he says. "There's no mercy."
Wang Zhi staggers from his prison, which turns out to be a dungeon hiding under a non-descript little villa on the outskirts of Hetao capital, the one that Hu Guangdao kept for his dealing with disloyal or dangerous opponents. Ding Rong is waiting for him with his retinue of loyal soldiers that came from the capital. Wang Zhi allots several soldiers to help Sui Zhou and Wuyun in carrying Tang Fan, and forbids himself to look at Tang Fan's slack face.
Then he goes to work. The cleanup has to be carried out all at once, the rot conclusively wiped out, and so he tells his exhausted body to stop bothering him, and pours himself into the task ahead. He can't afford to lose the entire garrison stationed in Hetao, not when there's no replacement and his own position is still not fully stable. But with Hu Guangdao in his custody, and most of his closest accomplices among soldiers killed in the prison skirmish, there's a chance of salvaging most of the rest. And so he separates the chaff from the wheat, dealing harshly with some and leniently with others, cajoling, threatening, punishing. A sort of wavering, exhausted rage is driving him forward until, thirty hours or so later, he gets up too fast and the world smears into a grey swirl.
In their previous life, Ding Rong would stop him before it got this far. In this one, the man hovers next to him when Wang Zhi claws his way back to clarity, but keeps his mouth shut and his eyes down. He's living on Wang Zhi's sufferance, and he knows it. Wang Zhi studies his downcast face and feels a little stab of anger at himself for breaking such a good ally so badly.
Then he thinks, I need to sleep, and can't think of anything else. But he imagines going back to the governor's mansion and trying to sleep alone in his lavish room, listening for Tang Fan's whistling snore and waking up in horror at its absence, and his throat spasms and his hands curl into involuntary fists.
He dismisses Ding Rong, and bids Jia Kui take him to wherever Sui Zhou and his company are staying. He's not thinking at all anymore; the machinery of his mind is gummed with dirt and sand and blood. He follows Jia Kui without taking in his surroundings, a simple, mechanical motion of his arms and legs and feet, and at some moment blinks and finds himself briskly manhandled by Tang Fan's doctor friend.
"Unhand me," he hisses, wishing he had his gun on him, and the doctor tsks cheerfully at him and does not let go of his wrist.
"When have you last slept? Or eaten? Your bruises will heal, especially when I give you my ginseng ointment, but I can't do anything when my patients try to work themselves to death."
"I'm not your..."
Over the insufferable doctor's shoulder Wang Zhi sees Sui Zhou, standing in the doorway in an apron, with a steaming ladle still in his hand, and he stops hearing Pei Huai's prattle altogether. Sui Zhou, whoever he is for Tang Fan, would be fully within his rights to throw him out right now. It would, perhaps, be better for everybody involved if he does just that.
"Hm," Sui Zhou says. He disappears into the kitchen; before Wang Zhi can decide whether it's a good or a bad sign, he comes back with a plate of fried meatballs, and pushes them into Wang Zhi's hands.
"Good," he says, "you can eat together now. Go on."
Wang Zhi shakes his head, dumbly, wondering if he did pass out and start dreaming on the way there. But Sui Zhou, shockingly, puts his hands on Wang Zhi's shoulders; he drags him off the seat and steers him through the low doorway into a shadowed room where Tang Fan is reclining on a bed, both hands heavily splinted and lashed against his chest by silk bands.
"Sui Zhou," he says, petulantly, "where are you? It's been ages - oh! Wang Zhi! You came!"
The way his face lights up is nigh unbearable. Wang Zhi would turn to flee, but Sui Zhou's hands are still on his shoulders. "He's going to be fine," Sui Zhou says into his ear, quietly. "He'll suffer and whine and make everybody wait on him hand and foot for months, but he's going to be fine. And now he can stop worrying about you, too."
He pushes Wang Zhi forward and leaves the room. Wang Zhi, feeling as if he's floating somewhere behind his body, walks towards Tang Fan's bed on wooden legs and perches on its edge. He manages, by some unseen grace, not to drop the plate or the chopsticks.
"Wang Zhi," Tang Fan says again, cheerfully: his pupils are so blown his irises are almost invisible. He must be drugged out of his mind. "What took you so long? And is it meatballs? Guangchuan promised me..."
Too slowly, Wang Zhi realizes what exactly Sui Zhou sent him to do. He thought himself incapable of blushing, but he can feel the heat gathering in the tips of his ears.
"Yes," he murmurs and has to clear his throat. "Yes, Tang Fan, there are meatballs."
He sighs, giving in to the inevitable. He picks up the chopsticks and takes one of the meatballs, dips it into the sauce. The smell rising from the plate is making his stomach wake up and howl with longing. He raises the food to Tang Fan's face with a shaking hand, and Tang Fan opens his mouth for him easily, sweetly, earnestly; he's watching Wang Zhi with uncomplicated joy like Wang Zhi is something worth being joyful about.
"Now you," he says pettishly after he's finished chewing. "Where have you been?"
The meatballs taste like heaven; it makes Wang Zhi want to eat them off the plate with his fingers, to cram several in his mouth at once, to chew like a hungry animal. "Hu Guangdao is dead," he says instead, unsure if he wants to reassure Tang Fan or dismay him. "He made a full confession, and I let him take poison."
He doesn't tell Tang Fan - not yet - that he let the ex-governor take poison instead of the slow death he deserved for leaving Tang Fan's involvement out of his confession whatsoever. He doesn't want his name and Tang Fan's name to appear too close to each other before His Majesty's eyes right now. Wang Zhi doesn't tell him that the sour-faced man took the deal, and then laughed, mirthlessly, as he put his signature down before accepting the cup; that he looked at Wang Zhi with mockery and hatred before he died. To know that such a worm of a man knew what was in Wang Zhi's heart is unbearable, even now; but he is dead, and Wang Zhi is alive, and it is, as ever, the most final kind of victory.
Tang Fan just nods. His lips are finally pink and full again, with none of this grey tinge, and his tongue darts out to wet the corner of his mouth before he opens it again. Wang Zhi obliges him by guiding another morsel of food in, reaches out to wipe a smudge of sauce off Tang Fan's chin. Then he stops thinking altogether; he sits, feeding Tang Fan and eating himself, watching Tang Fan's face, drowsing a little.
"Wang Zhi," Tang Fan says when the last meatball - split in half by his insistence - is gone. "Wang Zhi," he says again, sleepily, "Stay?"
If only he'd be just a bit more awake! More ridiculous, persuasive, talking too fast and too loud; more like himself. Then Wang Zhi would laugh at him and leave this house and this night like an improbable, dangerous dream it is. But Tang Fan's mouth is lax and his hair is undone; he watches Wang Zhi from under heavy eyelids, completely defenseless - alive - alive, even though Wang Zhi said no and doomed him to die.
And so Wang Zhi says, "Yes."