Qin Su is the envy of the women of the jianghu. She is married to the Chief Cultivator, an upstanding and moral man who trusts and respects her and is never seen acting with impropriety towards any other women unlike her late father in law. She is the Madam Jin, Lady of the richest and most respected Sect, second to none except the husband who would do anything she asks. She is beautiful and beloved, admired by men and women alike, the most precious treasure of her husband’s collection.
Qin Su’s husband does not love her. She is not sure exactly when she realised this. Possibly when he would rather assist his father than spend time with her as he used to. Perhaps when he would not touch her after their dear Rusong was born. Maybe when he would spend more time with his sworn brother than he had ever spent entertaining her during their courtship. In the beginning she was ashamed to admit that she was jealous. She is his wife, surely he could make time for her?
The first time she is unfaithful it is with a beautiful young girl, only a few years younger than her, freshly betrothed to a brute of a man whom she did not love. She had not meant to seduce her, had only meant to offer support and guidance, a promise to help in any way she could. It was just after her husband had ascended to Chief Cultivator, when he was no longer the illegitimate son of Jin Guangshan who would be passed over for little Jin Ling but the Lord of Koi Tower and the most powerful man in the jianghu. She had little power in Koi Tower really, not for things such as this, but that did not mean she could not try to help those who came to her.
The girl cries so prettily. Qin Su takes her apart on her fingers and gives her money to run away. She is so grateful to Qin Su, so soft and willing. Her body welcomes Qin Su’s like her husband’s never had, not even when he had wanted to be around her. She feels guilty for weeks; then angry when her husband never even notices; then sad when she realises it will not happen again. She had missed it, the feeling of being desired. She almost regrets helping the girl escape.
After that it keeps happening. She could say it is by accident, but if sex is all she truly desires she can doubtless seduce her husband again if she put her mind to it. Not that he would enjoy himself. She realises that now. No, leave her husband to his politics and the tender attentions of his sworn brother. She wants someone who wants her, someone who wants her enough to risk her husband finding out, and until she finds them she will take what she can get.
Of course, she refuses to be a wanton. She does not fling herself at people and will her husband to turn a blind eye. His reputation is her reputation and no one will trust a man who couldn’t stop his wife from sleeping with other people. Nevertheless, every now and then someone will catch her eye and she discretely pulls them away and they fall into her bed to come apart under her delicate ministrations. Her husband has his sworn brother and she has this. It is only fair. It is not like he is withholding himself.
Sometimes they come more than once. Sect Leader Yao’s son comes to her every time his father comes to petition until he finally finds a wife. He is the one who gave her the first of her toys. This one in particular is simple, a phallic rod attached to a harness that is tied around the hips. He had loved to be bent over her desk while she pressed it inside him, had revelled in the juxtaposition of her soft skin and his surrender. The difference in temperament between him and his father amuses her to no end. He is all sweet submission where his father is all entitled bluster. He seems very happy with his wife whenever she sees him now and she is glad. Someone, at least, should be happy in their marriage.
To say she never feels guilty would be a lie. She often feels guilty. Her husband adores her, does everything he can to please her. She might even have called him perfect, if he’d rekindled the passion he had displayed before they had been married. It is not her right to demand that, no matter how much she desires it, but she had thought it was something that a woman could expect within the confines of marriage. She had looked forward to not having to hide what they got up to together. It was not every woman who could say her husband was a valiant war hero who loved and respected her and satisfied her in every way. It rankles that she cannot count herself as one of them as she had once thought she would.
She is selfish, she knows, to expect her husband’s every attention. Of course he has things to take care of that aren’t her. That does not stop her wanting. She had been promised and now she is being denied. Sometimes she fantasises about him catching her still pleasuring her latest indiscretion. What would he say if he found her, knuckle deep in one of their cultivators? Would he finally tell her why he’d stopped touching her if he saw her pinned beneath someone else? Would he fall back into her bed if he found her holding down another and taking her pleasure? Sometimes she looks over at him while they are taking tea and she wants to scream Do you know what I would do for you if you would just touch me again? But she does not.
She sleeps with Nie Huaisang for the first time after her son dies. She is so very angry and that is exactly what he is looking for. She leaves bite marks across his chest and bruises in the shape of her fingerprints on his wrists and hips. She cries as she sucks his cock and he calls someone else’s name as he comes down her throat. He is perfectly dishevelled on his bed and she does not have a hair out of place. A thrill goes through her at the evidence left behind on his skin, marks already darkening to show where she has touched him. He smirks and lies there naked for her to take her fill of looking. He could have told her husband, have played it off as her seducing him, the hapless fool, but he doesn't. Perhaps it is then she realises he isn’t all he pretends to be. Perhaps she doesn’t care.
The next time is a few days before the fifth anniversary of Nie Mingjue’s death. Nie Huaisang had been called to meet with the Chief Cultivator the week previous. Her husband asks her to keep an eye on him and she, ever the dutiful wife, takes him away for tea. He eats her out until it is painful, begs for her to choke him as she slides one of her cold jade toys inside him, cries into her neck and begs for his brother to come back as she spears herself on his cock.
He clings to her afterwards, shivering with aftershocks and what she can only assume is the same potent mixture of rage and grief she felt after Rusong’s death. They say nothing as she gently caresses his back, his neck, his face, until he is himself enough to clean up and attend to his duties. After, her husband smiles and thanks her for taking such good care of his little brother. She laughs and brushes it off as her duty as her husband’s wife. There is a hint of something harsh and unnameable in Nie Huaisang’s eyes as they say goodbye.
It is years after that before he comes to her again. Not for want of trying, she’d indicated her interest in the tilt of a fan or the brush of a wrist, but he is busy running a sect and she can appreciate the work that went into that sort of thing. She does not chase after lovers, he will come or he will not. She will not force him.
When he finally tumbles back into her bed it is on an occasion when she has not even asked. He is trying to get something from her husband by acting useless, as seems to be his way, and she is surprised when he comes to her after, expecting him to say his niceties and leave. He asks so nicely to be put firmly in his place that she does not realise until after how pleased with himself he looks. She finds, however, that she cannot bring herself to worry about what he is trying to get out of her husband when she knows that powder hides the imprint of her fingertips on his neck.
It is never clear exactly why he had decided to fall into her bed. Initially, she thinks it is to get back at her husband but he is more discreet than many of her other lovers and she doubts it’s a good enough revenge if her husband does not know. Later, she considers that maybe it is, somehow, a way to get back at her for some perceived slight or other, though what she cannot say. Maybe it is some unnameable connection between them that keeps him coming back. Perhaps he simply enjoys knowing that the most envied woman in the jianghu likes to have him kneeling at her feet.
As the Sect Leader of the Nie and with no direct descendant to inherit, Nie Huaisang should be looking for an appropriate wife to birth him an heir, not skulking around the Chief Cultivator's wife. If she was sensible she would help him find one. She is not a fool, her husband will never divorce her, nor will he give away any child from her loins no matter if it is not his own. Whatever it is that Nie Huaisang wants, he should be taking care of his sect not wasting time on a doomed affair. She is selfish, she does not say this to him.
It is not love, she does not think. She is not sure Nie Huaisang is capable of love. Flirtation, yes, seduction, lust, all these things he has demonstrated to her, but when they are done and he is wrung out and loose on the bed she sees a glimpse of the truth of him. He is not the vapid, sentimental man the world thinks he is. There is ice in his heart. She likes it that way, safe in the knowledge that this is a transaction carried out between them and nothing more.
More than once she wonders if perhaps he knows why her husband avoids her bed. Though if the fate of Nie Mingjue is what awaits someone whose bed is frequented by her husband then perhaps it is a gift in disguise that he has grown tired of her. Maybe it is punishment for not keeping her husband away from his brother that keeps Nie Huaisang returning to her embrace. Though he must have realised by now that she does not care if her husband catches her.
There is a part of her that is glad Nie Huaisang is useless, or pretending to be useless. It means he visits Koi Tower often. If she plays her cards right she can spirit him away from pestering her husband to tell her tales of the outside. Of course, she could ask anyone these things but Nie Huaisang has a way of telling them that doesn’t make her feel like she is trapped here in Carp Tower. When Nie Huaisang tells her his gossip it almost feels like she chose not to go out and find it herself. Like he is her spymaster and she is capable of toppling entire sects.
So maybe she helps him, just a little bit. He is her friend, he sees her as a person, not just as the Chief Cultivator’s ornamental wife. Is it so wrong to want to help him when she sees trouble heading his way? She may not be privy to all of her husband’s work, but she is often at banquets and she is smarter than she looks. She is no Lan, with their precepts against eavesdropping, she can listen in all she wants. If she sees something that might implicate Nie Huaisang in something unsavoury on her husband's desk, well, it is not her fault that things go missing sometimes. Perhaps that is why Nie Huaisang keeps coming back to her, in the hope that this is exactly what she is doing.
Sometimes she watches him at conferences, half his face hidden behind a fan, whining and wailing and somehow always getting what he wants. It is fascinating. Does he do that to her? Does he manipulate her into giving him what he wants? She doesn't allow herself to watch often, it would not be appropriate to stare. She does not love him. She is married to another. What they have is not like that, could not be like that. In public they are linked only by her husband, nothing more. What use is love, after all, when all it brought her was a husband who had left her bed as soon as he had what he wanted? He didn’t even return to her after their son died. Could there be a clearer sign that he is repulsed by her?
It is on her tenth wedding anniversary that she realises she no longer dreams of her husband loving her again. She had long since stopped feeling guilty for sleeping with other people but this… She does not think her husband notices anything wrong when she retires early. Is this what heartbreak feels like? Had she still loved him, even through all those years of public attentiveness and private distance? Alone in the darkness of her rooms, the lady of Koi Tower cries for the fantasy of a happy life that she can no longer maintain.
Her husband doesn’t notice that anything between them has changed. Doubtless he had set aside their relationship years ago in favour of Lan Xichen. At least if she should be discarded in all but name then it is for the most eligible bachelor in the jianghu. At least her husband isn’t putting bastards in any woman he pleases to like her late father-in-law. At least he does not scorn her publicly. For better or for worse, she knows him, she knows he would not do that. Sometimes she wishes he would, at least then she’d have a reason for being so angry at him. He is good to her. He gives her anything she wants. She is owed nothing more. Between them, she has committed the deeper transgressions.
One time while Nie Huaisang is holding her as they catch their breath, naked and sweaty in the bed of the guest room he had been assigned for his stay, she confesses how she’d always wanted a daughter to dote upon and how her husband had not touched her since they were married. He rubs circles on her back and lets her cry into his shoulder. His kindness makes her cry harder. How long had it been since someone had cared for her like this? Why? Why are you doing this? she wants to cry out, but she can’t. How could this continue if she knew? Asking for too much would simply push him away. It is better not to know. Whatever this is, she does not want to lose it.
Occasionally she wonders if it would have been different if it had been Nie Huaisang who’d caught her eye. Would he have married her? Neither of them were satisfied with one lover, would they both have sought companionship outside of the marriage bed? Would they have talked about it or would she have stewed in resentment in that marriage too? If she had made a different choice, would she be happy now? Would he even want her, if she were not his brother’s sworn brother’s wife? If she were not some kind of prize he was stealing from her gilded tower? Would they have been in love if things were different?
The last time they are together, not that she knows it is the last time, he seems excited, like something he'd been planning for a long time is finally coming to fruition. His giddy satisfaction is contagious and she kisses him and he tells her not to worry if some things came to light, that he will do his best to ensure any blame falls on anyone but her. She laughs, lighter than she'd laughed in a long time, and tells him she is perfectly capable of getting out of any messes by herself. She kisses him and he kisses her and she kisses him goodbye and it is good. After that she is walking on air for a week, maybe two. Koi Tower itself seems to join in her joyous feeling, the peonies seem to bloom even more beautiful than usual.
Then a letter arrives. It sets out claims that cannot be true. Her husband does not love her, but he has never hurt her, he is not cruel. But as she reads something sick settles at the bottom of her belly and twists in her throat. Her husband wouldn't do that to her, would he? If he knew, if he was sure, he never would have married her if he thought it was true, would he? But Bicao, her mother's closest servant, she would never lie to her, would she? It can’t be true, she doesn’t want it to be true. It can't be true, can it?
And her Rusong, their Rusong, he would never be so heartless, would he? No matter their son’s parentage, no matter if he was doomed to be sickly, surely her husband wouldn't stoop so low as to arrange the murder of his own son? She knows he'd done terrible things under Wen Ruohan, she guesses he's done terrible things for his - their - father too (she wants to throw up, how can this be true, how could he have done this to her?) but killing his own son? For politics? Perhaps she does not know him as well as she thinks but she does not want to believe this of him.
It makes a sick sort of sense. She hates that it does. Her mother's husband, the man she had called father, was powerful and respected in Koi Tower. The Qin were not a Great Sect but they were in no danger of fading away. She was not the best political marriage her husband could have made, but she had initiated their relationship. No one could say he was deliberately seducing her when she was clearly pursuing him. But to sleep with her? Knowing? Surely he could have rebuffed her, he was sworn brothers with the leaders of two Great Sects and legitimised into another, no matter how far down the chain of inheritance, he would not have been totally unmarriageable. Did it have to be her?
A sick thought occurs to her. Huaisang had warned her that something was coming. Had he known that this was coming? Had he orchestrated this? Was this what he meant when he told her he would ensure the blame fell on others? How could he! How could he make this the way she would find out! Could he not have told her himself? He would know how to comfort her so it didn't feel so awful, he always knew how, he would have tea and sweets and they would be somewhere private and soft and she would cry and he would run circles in her back and-and-and- There is no time for fantasies.
She confronts her brother-husband, her husband-brother. What else can she do? She needs the truth, needs to know that her life isn't a lie, needs to know the slippery-slick feeling of despair and relief is unfounded. He avoids answering, how had she never noticed how he never answered a question he did not like? He tries to twist the words around on her and she feels her insides rebelling. You did this! she wants to scream You did this to us! You did not have to do this! We could have found a way out of this! but no words come, only harsh gasping breaths. She is going to be sick. She tells him this.
He does something to her and she is trapped in her own body, her own flesh rebelling against her. She has never felt so betrayed, so afraid, so relieved. At least it was nothing she did. He could not touch her because she is his sister. A hollow relief. She can be angry now. She is so very angry, it is like a bird beating against the bars of the cage that is her body. But she cannot do anything, she is trapped, frozen behind his bronze mirror in a body that will not listen.
She watches as he carefully removes a large object from the treasure room and replaces it with a knife. She watches as he comes and goes, reorganising. She watches him leave and not come back. Then she watches the empty room. She can do nothing else.
It seems like forever before she is disturbed again, though it had not been long enough for her to feel the pangs of hunger. This time there is a contingent accompanying her husband. She wants to tell them he is a liar, he lied to her and he's lying to them, but she cannot move. He lies so well. Her husband is going to get away with this and the thought fills her with incandescent rage and gutwrenching despair. He was going to get away with all of this and she could do nothing to stop it. A heavy certainty settles upon her. If he will win this, then she will rob him of her. She refuses to be his caged bird any longer. If he will get away with what he did to Rusong, she will at least punish him for it in the only way she knows how. Suddenly her body is her own again and she moves.
Stabbing herself was not like how she'd imagined it. It hurts, but her husband is angry and she is pleased. He ruined her life like it was nothing, she could at least inconvenience him in this way. Surely they would be curious why she'd killed herself. If only she could come back as a vengeful ghost and expose him herself, then her revenge would be complete. She wishes she could spit in his face but once again her body is rebelling against her.
The world is becoming dulled at the edges when Nie Huaisang walks in the room. He sees her, she sees him. She sees a brief flash of surprise, then of sadness before he summons confusion to cover it. She had not meant for this. Had he meant for this? Had her husband angered him that much? Or is that sadness for her? Had he wanted her alive? Had he really meant it when he said he would ensure she came out of this blameless? Is he simply sad she did not trust him?
A-Sang, she wants to say, what did you want me to do? He was going to get away with it! All their accusations were sliding off of him! A-Sang, I couldn't live knowing what he'd done, to me, to my son. A-Sang, I'm sorry to leave you this way. A-Sang, I'm free now, don't cry. Her body is growing colder and Huaisang has fallen to the floor in a faint. She wants to laugh at his dramatics. He always loved people to make a fuss over him. He is so ridiculous. He is so beautiful. At least the last thing she sees will be something beautiful. At least the last thing she sees will be him.
Her memorial tablet is kept in the Jin Ancestral Hall. Nie Huaisang is not allowed there. A part of him wishes he could visit it, to pay his respects, but bitterly he accepts that it makes sense. His relationship with her was secret in life and it seems fitting that it would be secret in death. No one would believe him if he said he'd had an affair with Jin Guangyao's wife for almost a decade. He didn’t want other people to know.
He sits on the peak where he had painted her favourite landscape and drinks tea alone, setting out a second cup for a woman who cannot drink it. He sits in silence and watches the view. He was going to take her here, once her husband was dead. She had always loved it when he'd told her of the places he'd travelled. He was going to help her slip her chains and then take her to all the places she'd most wanted to see. It seems foolish now. He should have done it sooner. The tea is salty, but there is no one else here to comment on it.
He sits until it is dark, until the tea is cold, until the tears have dried on his face and then a little longer. Finally, he packs away the tea set and mounts his saber. Tomorrow he will return to work commanding his Sect and pretending he is useless. Tomorrow his eyes must be dry and his heart unburdened by grief. Tomorrow is tomorrow. Today is today. He turns his saber towards the Unclean Realm. If his eyes are watering as he flies, it is only natural at the speed he is traveling.
He arrives home and lets himself in past the guards. It is those soft, silent hours just before people start waking up and going about their day. Usually he would take some time to enjoy how fresh the air tastes. Tonight he is fighting a losing battle with his grief. He heads straight to his room where he can be alone.
He opens a bottle of rice wine and sips it as he puts away his tea set and his saber and pulls off his outer robes until he is clad only in that which he wears to bed. Reverently he brushes his fingers over the painting he had been working on for nearly three years. Her face, soft with sleep, stares languidly out at him. He sighs, morose and solemn, and then gently rolls it up and places it with the portrait he had painted of his brother. It is finished, if he worked on it any longer it would be ruined. He polishes off the last of the rice wine and slides into bed. When he wakes he will put this behind him as best he can but he at least has now to let himself feel what he feels. He cries himself to sleep.