(2) Kindred Spirits

Traveling day and night, worn from the road, Tian Xu's party finally reached Chang'an on the evening of the sixth day, slipping through the city gates in the very last moment before the closing drums sounded and the gates shut for the night, arriving at last at the Four Seas Inn.

Guo Huilian had been given a room at Han Jian's Four Seas Inn, where Wang Qiugui and Yuelan had at first taken charge of watching over her. But once her raging fever finally broke these past few days and her awareness returned, the horror of having witnessed the annihilation of the entire Guo household came rushing back over her, and faced now with unfamiliar surroundings and unfamiliar faces besides, Guo Huilian was overcome with fear. Zhou Mengda was the only person she recognized, and so she would allow no one near her but him. Left with no other choice, Wang Qiugui and Yuelan had to withdraw, leaving Zhou Mengda alone to tend to and comfort Guo Huilian, while Yuelan kept watch outside the door, ready at Zhou Mengda's call.

By the time Tian Xu arrived at the Four Seas Inn, Han Jian had already been waiting there a good while. All along the road he had kept Tian Xu informed of Guo Huilian's condition—there was relief that she had finally been pulled back from death's very door, yet also worry: where was a mere twelve-year-old orphaned girl to go from here? She stayed curled up in the corner of her bed, her eyes still full of unsettled terror; it took nothing less than a grown man past forty coaxing her to eat, to take her medicine, even to fall asleep—and no sooner had he finally coaxed her into slumber than a nightmare would jolt her awake again, sending her right back to trembling and weeping in the corner of the bed, over and over in an endless cycle that was truly heartbreaking to witness.

Listening to Han Jian's account, Tian Xu's brow stayed knit tight the whole way. He took the stone seal Han Jian handed over and closed it in his palm. The lively, unaffected Guo Huilian he remembered from over two years ago had lost her entire family to the Jingyuan Mutiny, and of the whole Guo household, she alone had survived. Was that fortune, or misfortune?

Tian Xu sent Yue Heng and the four Yue-disciples ahead to their rooms to rest—after days of traveling day and night without pause, everyone was thoroughly worn out—while he himself, with Yueying beside him, went straight to Guo Huilian's room.

Tian Xu stopped in front of Guo Huilian's door and motioned for Yuelan to knock.

"The Manor Lord is here." Yuelan rapped lightly on the door and called out clearly toward the room within.

Hearing this, Zhou Mengda hurried to open the door. He had been watching and waiting, and Tian Xu had finally arrived. How on earth was Guo Huilian's predicament to be resolved? He had turned the question over and over these past few days, and by now he was fairly certain Tian Xu was the best solution at hand.

"Fourth Sister has been terrified beyond measure—her spirits are in an extremely fragile state." The moment the door opened, Zhou Mengda murmured this warning to Tian Xu.

"You've worked hard, Uncle Da." Tian Xu nodded and thanked Zhou Mengda, then walked to the bedside and said softly to Guo Huilian, "Don't be afraid, Fourth Sister. It's only that I came too late."

Hearing Tian Xu's voice, Guo Huilian, curled up tight with her arms around her knees, instinctively shrank back further still.

"Have you forgotten Tian Xu, Fourth Sister? I'm its master." Tian Xu's tone turned gentler still. He sat down at the edge of the bed, opened his hand, and held the stone seal out before Guo Huilian.

Seeing the stone seal in Tian Xu's hand, Guo Huilian slowly lifted her head to look at him. In truth she retained hardly any real memory of his face—only a vague recollection that he had always worn plain, coarse hemp robes, and that he had been sturdily built, almost matching her own father in stature. Over the past two years Tian Xu seemed to have grown taller still; he now wore a pure white fox-fur cloak over a pale blue round-collared robe. Guo Huilian studied him for a long moment, and once she was certain it was indeed Tian Xu before her, she suddenly broke down into halting, hiccuping sobs.

"You really came... you really kept your promise... Father, Mother, my brothers, my sisters, Xiaocui—they're all dead... all of them... there's only me... me... left, all alone..."

This was the first time Guo Huilian had spoken since her fever broke, and now her tears came pouring out like a river breaking through its banks, unstoppable. She and Tian Xu had met only a handful of times, and yet his word had proven worth more than gold—set against the snobbery and hollow pretense she'd found in Chang'an, against the Yang family who, despite years of friendship, had abandoned her in the end, Tian Xu, this near-stranger who was not quite a stranger at all, had honored his promise again and again. From the preserved fruit sent to her unasked from Zhenbao Tower, to the helping hand he had extended in her moment of deepest helplessness, Tian Xu had become, in this instant, the person she trusted most in all the world. And so every ounce of fear, grievance, helplessness, and bewildered dread pent up inside her burst forth all at once, transmuted entirely into tears, and she wept without any way to stop herself.

Tian Xu had been thirteen the year he lost both his parents, and even with the whole family of Yueyue Manor still around him, the grief of that loss had been almost impossible to bear. Guo Huilian was younger still than he had been then, and her ordeal was crueler yet—every member of her family gone in a single night. Tian Xu understood that particular anguish all too well, and it was precisely why he had insisted on coming to Chang'an himself.

"I'm here, Fourth Sister. Don't be afraid." Tian Xu comforted her, his voice gentle but firm. Perhaps from years of watching and absorbing it without realizing, he had learned that his adoptive father's simple, resolute "I'm here" had always given his mother the greatest comfort and support of all—and so, without quite meaning to, Tian Xu found himself following the same pattern, the words coming out utterly naturally.

"If I could choose... I'd rather... rather... be punished by Mother... every single day... made to kneel before the ancestral tablets for hours... beaten on the palm... every day... just as long as... as long as... Mother... Mother... were still... still... here..." Guo Huilian's words came out bitter with grief, and she wept all the harder for it. She had always feared her mother more than anyone—but now, what she wished for most was the one thing she could never have again.

At last she collapsed face-down onto the bed and wept aloud, unrestrained...

Guo Huilian's crying left Tian Xu rather at a loss. In all his years he had genuinely never faced anything quite like this. He could handle every affair, great or small, at Yueyue Manor without the slightest hesitation, but confronted with a mere twelve-year-old girl weeping so bitterly, he found himself utterly green—like a young bride climbing into the wedding sedan for the very first time in her life. Every woman at Yueyue Manor was older than he was; Yuelan and Yueming, raised since childhood under his adoptive father's even-handed, iron-fisted discipline, might as well have been men themselves—fierce and formidable in a fight, they were hardly the sort to dissolve into tears. As for Sister Han Qian, she was no pushover either; her guiding philosophy in life was "better to make others cry than to cry oneself," and so her reputation for being "not someone to trifle with" had spread through the streets of Daming Prefecture long ago. In the whole course of Tian Xu's upbringing, then, the experience of a young girl weeping so heartbreakingly before him had simply never come up. Borrowing his adoptive father's line just now had seemingly done no good at all, and so he glanced over at Zhou Mengda standing to one side, his eyes all but pleading for rescue.

Zhou Mengda caught the distress signal in Tian Xu's eyes and couldn't help but find it rather funny. This boy, normally so composed and old beyond his years, steady as an old dog, whose depth of guile matched or even exceeded his own at forty-some years of age, was now, of all things, appealing to him for help because he couldn't manage one small girl? Only a moment ago he'd looked so utterly confident, and now he was caught completely flat-footed?

With no better option, Zhou Mengda gestured with his eyes and hands, indicating that Tian Xu should pat Guo Huilian's back to soothe her.

Surprise flickered across Tian Xu's face at the suggestion. He gestured first at Guo Huilian, then at himself, meaning to convey that proper distance must be kept between men and women, and that such contact would hardly be appropriate. Zhou Mengda felt his head begin to ache at this—a twelve-year-old orphan was facing the utter depths of despair, and this was the moment to worry about propriety between the sexes? So he pointed at Guo Huilian again, more insistently this time, making clear that this was Tian Xu's job to do.

Receiving Zhou Mengda's instruction, an expression of both bashfulness and awkwardness crossed Tian Xu's face at once—perhaps that particular rawness belonged only to a fifteen-year-old boy. He hesitated a good while before reluctantly extending his hand, then gently, slowly, began patting Guo Huilian's back.

"My father and mother are gone too, just over three months ago now, when my chronic illness flared up again... so you and I share the same wound. No matter how much I long for my mother, she can never come back..."

As Tian Xu patted Guo Huilian's back, trying to comfort her with these words, he hadn't expected that in speaking them, he would talk himself into tears as well.

For a moment the air seemed to freeze, a heavy silence settling over all four people in the room—but then, unexpectedly, Guo Huilian heard the sound of Tian Xu sniffling, and she forced her own crying to a halt, sitting up amid her hiccuping sobs. She raised her left hand and wiped her own tears with her sleeve, then, glancing at Tian Xu, raised her right hand as well and used her sleeve to wipe away his tears too, saying as she did, "You're a man—don't cry!"

Tian Xu froze for a moment, startled by Guo Huilian's sudden gesture—and it wasn't only Tian Xu who was caught off guard; Zhou Mengda and Yueying standing nearby were equally taken aback. This little girl, even at her most fragile and helpless, had still found it in her to comfort Tian Xu in her own way—clumsy, perhaps, but utterly sincere.

"Second Brother... used to cry a lot... when he was little... Father... Father always told him... 'You're a man, don't cry'... but to me... he always... said... 'Father will... hold you... Yaya, don't cry'..." Guo Huilian began to cry again as she spoke. Her left sleeve was already soaked through with tears and could no longer keep up, so she pulled back her right hand as well, using both sleeves together to wipe her eyes.

"When Father... wasn't home... Eldest Brother... Eldest Brother... would hold Huilian too... coax... coax me... but... but... they can... never... again... never..."

Guo Huilian had meant to comfort Tian Xu, but instead found herself growing more heartbroken the more she spoke, her tears falling faster and faster until both her sleeves could no longer keep up at all, and she simply buried her face in her hands and wept.

In truth, Guo Huilian was not the only one crying—everyone present had reddened eyes by now.

Watching Guo Huilian shake and tremble, tears and sobs streaming freely, Tian Xu felt his own grief from over two years ago rise vividly to the surface once more. He understood her completely, precisely because he had lived through it himself, and so his heart ached all the more—and gently, he drew Guo Huilian into his arms.

"Though none of them can ever come back, I still have the whole family of Yueyue Manor with me. We share no blood ties, but they are truly, genuinely family who love and care for me. The political situation in Chang'an is unstable, and I couldn't rest easy leaving you here alone. If you're willing, you could come back with me to Yueyue Manor for now—as for whatever relatives you might still have to turn to, we can take our time figuring that out later, no rush. Why don't you think of Yueyue Manor as your own home, and think of us as your family? Would that be all right?"

Perhaps it was Tian Xu's solid, warm chest, so much like the embrace of her own father and eldest brother, that gave Guo Huilian such a steady, settled sense of security; or perhaps it was that his words fell like a beam of light into the dark, friendless world she now inhabited. Little by little her crying eased, tapering off into broken, hiccuping breaths.

"Is Yueyue Manor... is it Tenth Brother's home? Where... is it?"

"It is. It lies in Daming Prefecture, a thousand li away—the journey is long, so Fourth Sister needs to recover her strength before we set out."

"So Tenth Brother... rushed here... all the way to Chang'an?"

"You could say that."

No sooner had Tian Xu finished speaking than he heard Guo Huilian begin to cry once more. He asked her anxiously, "What's wrong?"

"We... aren't even related... why are you... being so good... to me? On the road... I ran into... Yang Chong... and... and... Lady Yang... Chong... got down from the carriage... to check on me... but Lady Yang... only told... told me... to go to... Mochou Hall... to find... Uncle Da... and then Lady Yang... pulled Chong... away with her..." Guo Huilian spoke through her tears, the words coming out halting and strained with effort.

"We may not be related, but we do have history between us. The one who truly owed Tian Xu nothing at all, and yet helped him unconditionally, was General Guo. My mother taught me that a single drop of kindness received should be repaid with a whole spring—and it was General Guo's kindness back then that has led to this 'spring' of repayment today!"

Tian Xu knew that a twelve-year-old girl raised behind the walls of her family home could not possibly understand the complicated, chaotic state of the empire, let alone the tense relationship between the Tian clan of Weibo and the imperial court. General Guo's chivalrous assistance was something Tian Xu was sincerely grateful for, and it was precisely what had allowed him, back then, to hide safely within the Guo residence while he laid his plans and struck Shen Wan and Hong Tai completely off guard. Since Guo Huilian could not understand any of this, Tian Xu saw no need to explain it, and instead offered her the simpler, easily understood account of repaying a debt of gratitude, to set her mind at ease.

Seeing that Guo Huilian seemed to accept this explanation, her emotions settling somewhat, Tian Xu went on to ask, "And who are Lady Yang and Yang Chong?"

Guo Huilian did not immediately know how to explain, so Zhou Mengda spoke up in her place. "Yang Nian, Vice Minister of the Court of Judicial Review, was an old acquaintance of General Guo's, and the two families were on close terms. When Fourth Sister was still five months along in her mother's womb, I had already determined that her mother was carrying a girl. Since the Yang family's Third Young Master had already been born seven months earlier by then, Yang Nian and General Guo made a verbal agreement between themselves to betroth the two children in infancy, so that the two families would become one."