The slums overrun the elegant gardens of his childhood home. At some point, they must have given up on building even the most primitive walls and set up canvas tents instead. How his mother managed to keep those she offered shelter alive through the winter, he could not fathom. To keep them warm, she had most of the trees cut, the trees under whose boughs he played as a child. Petty resentment welled up in him, looking at the stacks of the firewood, and the cooking fires burning.
Fires...
It was not the first time the mansion in Zushulin had fires. He hugged himself against the terror he should not have remembered, but he did.
"Xi!"
Drawn out of the spell of dread, Xi lifted his head to see his mother with her companions, all carrying giant baskets of laundry from the river. Once Imperial wives and concubines of Wo Jia's failed dynasty, the women looked unashamed of their labours and humble surroundings, making Xi envious. If he loved his place in the world, then why the contentment eluded him, why was his hisn thrown out of balance so easily?
Tien Lyn put her load onto the ground. "Take care of it for me, please, Xiangning."
It was not as simple as giving a command. Most of the ladies knew Xi as a child, and in the joyless times, all hearts crave respite. He had to endure clapping, being twisted around, and a few pinches of his cheeks. Tien Lyn beamed at the prevailing opinion that he turned into a handsome young man. She finally spirited him away to a stone bench under a survivor of the carnage - the shadowy plum tree.
Xi put his hand on its smooth bark. Last time he had seen it, it was a sapling. Now the giant umbrella of its crown opened up above his head. But he had seen it fully grown on a scroll. "This is the father's tree," Xi said.
Tien Lyn's hand joined his on the trunk. "How do you know? I planted it where the one that burned that night stood. Where your father died."
"It looks exactly like the one father drew. I have the scroll you gave me."
Tien Lyn took a closer look at the tree, but Xi could see that she did not understand, did not comprehend the exact match of the structure.
"It is, Mother. Father's magic lingered here and cleaved to you when you planted the tree. I did not understand it as a boy, I do now."
She cried wordlessly under her whispering tree.
Xi had returned to Zushulin to tell his mother that he had accepted her willful execution of Weynala, but the words he mulled over for days fled. "Tell me?"
"Yellow leaves carpeted the courtyard," she started. "I did not want to clean them up until all had fallen."
Xi looked into her eyes to see the reflections of the raiders bursting out of the night. There she was, his mother dashing to save him - a babe of a few weeks old - stopped by a rough hand. His father, Chong Ho, the merchant, casting the one and only spell in his life to protect them.
The fire - that fire devouring their shared past.
"Weynala sent them because she wanted Yu..." Tien Lyn swept away a tear still clinging to the end of her eyelashes.
"Yu? Why Yu?" He wondered aloud, wrapping his mother in a hug.
She stroked his cheek. "This is not something you need to know, baby."
Mourning under the tree brought them closer than they had ever been. At length, Xi told her about his journey with Sayewa to the Celestial Realm. Her thoughtful fingers through his hair, straightening out tangles only she could find.
"Be wary of faeries, Xi. The Celestials created them to love the human race, but they also made them appealing to us. I saw Sayewa talk a desperate robber into falling onto his own sword, smiling all the while. That serene smile of hers - it is poison."
His lips stretched into a serene smile of his own. "Oh, mama..."
He gently pushed her hand out of his hair. Good thing he did not tell her about kissing the faery, and how the attraction he felt had faded once she was out of his sight. This was not something his mother needed to know.
If only the time could stop, but it did not even slow down for them. "I must return to Sutao to work on the Celestials's scrolls," he murmured without moving a muscle. Her embrace brought more peace than meditation.
Tien Lyn straightened out another stubborn hair strand for him, making him miss Fenghuang. "Stop by the school before you leave. Shan Jiang will be happy to see you."
"I did not realize the old rogue was here, but I should have guessed. The man did not do a day of honest work in his life." Xi chuckled, before sobering up. "I was told Canary is here too."
"You will find him with Jiang," Tien Lyn said, "being in the middle of school life calms him down, but Xi, do not hope for miracles."
He shook his head. "If we stop hoping for miracles, what will be left to us?"
***
Jiang reclined on the cushions reciting from a book of great antiquity to a circle of bobbing heads. The children busily scratched with sticks in the dirt. A pang of guilt stung Xi's conscience in a bee-like manner. He had never thought of paper he covered with inept poetry as precious.
"Master Jiang!"
The fat poet lifted his head from the book and rolled up to his feet. "Xi, I feared I would not see you again in this life! Come here, come here, young hero."
He made a sign for his pupils to scoot; the gaggle took off to hide behind the nearest tent, giggling and peeking.
The only figure that did not move was too large for a kid. Xi kneeled in front of his former fellow and cradled his hands in his. "Canary?"
The man did not stop jerking about wildly, his hands trembling in Xi's grasp. He did not feel fear, and he did not feel emptiness. He felt an echo of emotion just outside his comprehension.
The rigid neck relaxed, head dropped and for a moment Xi's eyes met those clouded over with visions of something beyond Tiandi.
"Do you know me?" Xi asked, trying to anchor his gaze, commanding Canary to swim up from the depth.
Canary did not respond.
Stubbornly, Xi kept genuflecting, waiting for a sign, or for any emotion he could read, until Jiang placed a heavy hand onto his shoulder. Xi had no trouble sensing concern in this touch, and tried to console his old teacher. "I did not think I could fix it just like that, Jiang. My head is not as swollen as Zijun used to say. But I want to—"
Canary opened his mouth and keened, a single endless sound, up and down in timbre. He used to be such a quiet person... Or was it that Rustam Bei carried the load along with the apprentice's name? Xi drew in a wheezing breath remembering how long Rustam hesitated before letting him take back his name. How close had he been to being crushed without the Master's helping hand? Was he still struggling because he pushed it away too soon?
Jiang crooked his finger at one of his students, and the child hopped over with a strange lack of fear. "They had seen worse," Jiang said quietly, then, to the child, he added, "take the poor man to Lady Tien Lyn, it will quell his fit."
Xi sat down and leafed through Jiang's book with shaking fingers, his hisn searching for a distraction. "This...this dates from the Dynasty of Purifying Glory. It is priceless."
"Oh, it had a price. A terrible price..."
"Oh?" The hair prickled at the base of Xi's neck, but he faked a smile. "I thought you retired to a life of a simple farmer?"
Jiang wrapped his arms around himself (no small feat) and harrumphed. "Tilling meagre soil involves a great deal of bending at the waist, something that I am ill-equipped to do."
Knowing the singer's ways, Xi waited him out. There was a story there, and Jiang hated nothing more than pregnant silence.
"Your grandmother, the Ageless Empress, she would not accept my resignation, unless I performed small favour for her. Nothing much, she said. That demon of a woman..."
It took some trying, but Xi kept his mouth shut. He did the same when he was a child, and wanted Jiang to tell him the tales normally reserved for adults.
"All I need you to do is to sing about Tien Lyn's adventures in the foreign lands to the Emperor, she said. The Son of Heavens is bored with the court singers, you alone can spin a tale magnificent enough to bestir a jaded heart of an adolescent."
That sounded like his grandmother, alright, a command wrapped in the fine silks of flattery. A terrible suspicion firmed up into certainty. His chest empty and cold like a field in the winter, Xi still asked for the final confirmation. "You told the Son of Heaven of the hidden temple on the Hill of Five Seasons?"
Jiang said nothing, only hugged himself tighter, hunched his shoulders. Now he elected to keep secrets! But it was too late for that. Xi knew.
Tears burned his eyes, then dried out, all in the space of a blink. "Wasn't my father's death enough proof of your talent?! It's your cursed songs that killed them both!" He'd never shouted before, let alone at a man three times his senior. It felt good, shameful and good.
Red spots bloomed in the poet's plump cheeks. He diminished despite his bulk, saying nothing.
Anger still broiled inside Xi, demanding more outlets, less barriers. He thrust a shaking finger at the pigtails quivering among the shorn bowlcuts in the shelter of the tent's corner. "How could you teach? You never learn your own lessons! Zijun's life is ruined, and you still poison girls's minds with reading?!"
"That chicken wasn't killed by my cat, Xi. Do not lay it on my doorstep." Jiang murmured defensively. His lips turned bloodless, their rosy colour seeping into his cheeks and forehead instead, even his ears. "Zijun has elegant men of Sutao by her feet, instead of milking cattle with a peasant husband. It is not all—"
"Is that what you reckon? That she is happier singing the courtesan's poems? Have you talked to her?" Xi gulped a breath of air sour with the smells of too many people living too close together and turned his back on Jiang. If he did not reign it in, he will be keening next to Canary. The anger subsided - also a pleasant sensation. He was in control, maybe he had never even lost control.
One foot in front of another, Xi started walking away until words hit him between the hunched shoulder blades. "Have you talked to her, my boy?"
Xi froze in his tracks, straightened his shoulders against the old poet's insight, but it was no use. Zijun's unread letters swam up before his soul-eyes. I will see her first thing once I am back in Sutao, he promised himself. First thing. I can fix it.