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“It’s not his fault he was born with a power like that.”
“No,” said the Black-Cloaked Envoy, sounding aloof and weary, “but he chose to put it to use.”
Chen Peixin wiped her eyes. “So much time, just trying to get by in Haixing. And now it’s all for nothing.”
“Your husband,” said the Envoy, with an edge of anger this time, “is very fortunate that he is only to be returned to Dixing. If I had judged his transgression serious enough to be reported to the Haixing Special Investigation Division, it would have gone much harder with him.”
Chen Peixin sniffled. “Can I...?” she said blearily, after a moment.
The Envoy seemed to know what she meant. “You are no less free than you have been so far, Chen Peixin. If you choose to go back to Dixing along with him, no one will stop you.”
Chen Peixin buried her face in her hands. “We have children,” she gulped out. “I can’t...they were born here. I can’t take them back to Dixing now...their futures...”
The Envoy made a small gesture, just a flick of one hand, which Chen Peixin seemed to perceive even with her face hidden. She broke off immediately and stood swaying from side to side, one hand still covering her face and the other worrying at the hem of her sweater.
“Go inside to your family for now,” the Black-Cloaked Envoy said, cold and distant. “You will find your husband at home. He will not wake until morning. I will be there when he does. You have until then to decide whether you and your children accompany him to Dixing.”
Chen Peixin gave a snuffling nod, misery all over her, and fled down into the tenement without saying another word.
Dark energy glittered lapis-blue all around the Envoy’s outline, and then faded again. The dark figure took two steps to the edge of the roof and put one hand on the railing, leaning on it the way anyone might do.
After a moment, the bent shoulders straightened with just-visible effort, and he said “Who is there?”
Busted, Cai Lian reflected. “I didn’t mean any harm,” she said, letting her power go entirely. “I live here. Third floor back, me and my sister. I was just watching.”
“You could have been in danger.”
“From Su-shushu? Or Peixin-ayi? We know them. They’re not the greatest neighbors, but they’re not scary.”
The Envoy leaned back against the railing. The only light was that from the open door to the stairs; Cai Lian couldn’t see his expression at all under the shadow of the hood. “Su Yixiu’s power is oblivion. It may not last long, but it is not easily reversible. Have you nothing you would prefer not to forget?”
Cai Lian thought about Nainai. “I was just watching,” she said again.
“How often do you use your power that way?”
Cai Lian’s tongue stuck to the roof of her mouth. “Are you going to take me back to Dixing too?”
“Not unless you want to go,” the Envoy said, sounding very tired. “Whether he meant it or not, what Su Yixiu did to the people he was...As far as I know, you have so far hurt no one. And you’re a child.”
“Fourteen,” Cai Lian corrected him. “Fifteen in the fall. And of course I haven’t hurt anybody. All I do is, like, fade into the background. How could that hurt people.”
“Any power can be a weapon,” the Black-Cloaked Envoy said.
She thought about it. “I just like making sure I know what’s going on. It’s just my sister and me. We’re safer that way. I keep an eye on things, and nobody notices me doing it. You know?”
The Envoy was silent. Cai Lian flinched a little as he lifted one hand, but all he did was press the flat of his palm against his chest.
Belatedly, she recognized the gesture, and the set of his shoulders. “My sister has some tea that’s good for loushang laolei,” she suggested boldly.
She saw the glint behind his mask shift as the Envoy blinked. “—I would not have expected someone your age to know that expression.”
“My nainai...she used to...” Cai Lian shook her head. “She left all her tea things to my sister when she went back down, that’s what my sister does for a living. Like I said, we live on the third floor back, you can come in on your way.”
“A-Lian, you can’t just invite the Black-Cloaked Envoy in for tea in the middle of the night! Lord Envoy, I am sorry, my sister doesn’t—she grew up here, in Haixing, she doesn’t know how—she didn’t mean any disrespect—” Cai Moli tried to bow to the Envoy and glare at Cai Lian at the same time.
“The disrespect is all on my side. I am sorry to have called at this hour.” The Envoy looked absurdly out of place in the middle of their cluttered living room. At least Moli had still been awake, so the sofa was still a sofa instead of made up with sheets and pillow, but Cai Lian’s school uniform blouse was hanging in the window to dry, their dinner dishes were still in the sink, Xiaoyun had shed the last of her winter fur all over the carpet and was rolling around making it worse—
Cai Lian’s sister pulled herself together. “Well. Won’t you sit down? All right, A-Lian, Nainai’s tea for loushang laolei, I heard you. I’m making it. Come here and help me—” Cai Moli tugged her behind the curtain hung in one corner to give Cai Lian a little triangle of space to herself. “What were you thinking?” she hissed.
“Jiejie, not now,” Cai Lian groaned, wishing her power of inconspicuousness was more effective in these moments. “I just wanted to see what was going to happen to Su-shushu—oh, wait till you hear, I think we’ll be getting new neighbors soon, at least we won’t have to listen to Su Gen playing video games all night long—anyway, he reminded me of Nainai when she used to get tired, why not? Maybe he’ll really like the tea and you’ll have a new regular customer.”
“A-Lian, sometimes I wonder about you,” Cai Moli sighed, giving up. “All right. I’m making the tea. Get something for you and me to drink—there’s some pear juice left—and see if we have anything he can eat.”
In a short time they were settled in a stiffly awkward group, the Envoy straight-backed on the sofa and Cai Moli uncertainly at the other end of it, Cai Lian on the carpet at her sister’s feet with a complaining Xiaoyun in her lap. The medicinal tea was steaming gently, giving off the wet green smell that Nainai’s blends always had; for Cai Lian the scent brought back images of Nainai fussing with her herbs, and of a soft darkness that had remained like moss underfoot in her memories without evoking anything she could put into words.
The Envoy, one hand still at his chest in that small painful gesture, took the cup carefully in his other hand and sipped the tea. Cai Lian eased a little of her power out again so that she could stare at him unobserved, watching the deep severe eyes behind the mask soften at the corners, just a little.
He took another sip. “Were you and your sister born here, Cai-xiaojie?”
“No, neither of us. Nainai brought us up here when my sister was four and I was...twelve, I guess? She doesn’t remember Dixing at all, do you, A-Lian?”
Cai Lian glared at her sister, feeling her power sift away into nothing. “Not really,” she muttered.
“I gather your...neighbors? are also from Dixing,” the Envoy said carefully, setting his teacup down.
Cai Moli nodded. “Almost everyone in this building is Dixingren—except old Mrs. Tan on the ground floor, she’s Haixingren, but her husband wasn’t. Same for a lot of the tenements around here. It’s just easier.” She poured more tea. “We work for each other. Between Dixingren there’s no need to explain why we haven’t gone to school, or...”
“You did not go to school here?”
“Well...I was twelve already, how could I start then. The ones who were younger, or born here—like A-Lian and the Su boys and Xiao Min across the street—they go. Mostly.”
Cai Lian scratched at the soft place under Xiaoyun’s chin and hoped the Black-Cloaked Envoy was not interested in her attendance record.
“No wonder...” said the Envoy, and did not finish the sentence. He drank his tea, using both hands on the cup this time. This was fortunate, as Xiaoyun wriggled suddenly away from Cai Lian’s grasp and made a neat leap into the Envoy’s lap, her gray-and-white fur standing out sharply against his black robes.
“Xiaoyun, no!” Cai Moli made to grab her back and visibly lost her nerve. “Lord Envoy, I’m sorry! You must think no one in this household has any manners.”
The Envoy set his cup down unhurriedly and began to rub between Xiaoyun’s ears, setting her purring immediately. “I am fond of cats,” he said.
“She sheds everywhere,” Cai Lian pointed out, without thinking. She only realized that she had actively drawn attention to herself when Moli looked at her in surprise.
“It isn’t a concern,” the Envoy said, almost gently. Just visible under the mask, the corners of his eyes crinkled.
Conversation lagged for a moment, the room quiet except for Xiaoyun’s reverberating purr. Finally, the Envoy picked up his teacup, drained it, and set it down again without even the tiniest of clinks. “Thank you for your hospitality at this late hour,” he said. “Cai-xiaojie, perhaps you have some of this tea in dry form that I might trouble you for?”
“Oh! Of course.” Cai Moli jumped up and went to Nainai’s cabinet, with its seventeen by seventeen small drawers. Cai Lian remembered her sister crying because she couldn’t remember what drawer held what, after Nainai left; now she laid an unerring hand on the one she wanted. “I’ll wrap it up for you, just a moment.”
“You are kind. What are your normal terms of payment?”
Cai Moli’s hands froze on the tea canister. “Lord Envoy, I wouldn’t dream of asking you to pay for it!”
“Why not?” The Envoy was looking down at Xiaoyun in his lap, his expression shadowed by the hood. “We Dixingren work for each other, as you said. And you are supporting your sister and yourself.”
Cai Moli sighed. After a moment, she began again on the tea. “We do all right. We’re getting by in Haixing, we want to stay,” she said quietly, to her hands.
“As I told your sister earlier this evening, as long as you have harmed no one here, that is your choice.”
“Chen Peixin next door—she tells me about how we should go back down. Because it’s just me and my sister and it’s hard up here.”
The Envoy sighed, a brief weary exhale. “It is hard up here,” he echoed. “Chen Peixin’s judgment, however, has been proven to be less than ideal. If you and your sister can—If you can—” For an instant the room was perfectly silent, Moli’s hands still and Cai Lian wrapped in her power. “If you can take care of each other,” he went on, as if nothing had happened, “you can make a life in Haixing.”
“We can. We do,” Cai Moli said, more firmly. She put the last fold into the paper and pressed her palm flat against it, the power she had inherited from Nainai of keeping the tea fresh. Cai Lian felt it as a flicker of green and dimness, sweet and familiar. Looking at the Envoy, she was in time to see the momentary smile visible under his hood, the hard-set mouth softening into something that looked less like daren, more like gege.
“Thank you, Cai-xiaojie,” he said, accepting the packet. “In lieu of payment, then—call on me, if you or your sister should need me. If Haixing—gives you trouble.”
Cai Moli bowed formally, incongruous with her T-shirt, sleep pants and ponytail. The Envoy bent his head in return, and shifted Xiaoyun delicately off his lap onto the sofa.
“Cai Lian,” he said, turning to face her, once again seeing through her power as if it were not there. “Remember what I told you. Be careful not to abuse your power. That’s...that is how you hurt yourself.”
Cai Lian sat up straighter. “That’s what my sister’s tea is good for,” she pointed out.
Once again she thought she saw the corners of the Envoy’s eyes crinkle, but this time his mouth stayed stern. “No.” He stood up, slowly, a tall dark window into Dixing in the middle of their crowded ordinary living room. “There are...other ways to be hurt...which even the best tea will not solve. I don’t want you to find any of them.”
Cai Lian thought about their neighbors, and Nainai, and how often she used her power at school, and her sister’s hands. She stood up, still hardly shoulder-height to the Envoy. “I’ll remember,” she said.
“Good,” said the Envoy, and to both of them, “Take care.” Dark energy ran tingling through Cai Lian’s senses, and he was gone.