12. Chapter Twelve
Chapter Twelve
Xiao Shu
Icarefully chew my food as I study the family sitting around the table alongside me. Fanqing’s family. I glance at her out of the corner of my eye as she carefully takes a bite out of her bowl before she smiles and reaches across the table, grabbing a piece of shrimp and putting it into my bowl.
“Here, have some shrimp, it’s delicious.” I know she is nervous about her parents worrying about her, so she is putting on even more of a show than usual to maintain the illusion of our married bliss. I smile at her as I reach over scooping vegetables into her bowl.
“You should eat these to maintain your health while we travel, dearest,” I say softly.
After all, it’s a part of our contract for me to play along and give the impression of a loving couple. I glance over at Fanqing’s parents to see that they are beaming. Her mom stands up, heaping more shrimp into my bowl. “Indeed, Shu’er, the shrimp is the specialty of our cook.”
I swallow hard, glancing down at the pile of shrimp now sitting in my bowl. When was the last time, I had anyone pile my bowl high with food?
I turn back to Fanqing who is smiling widely as she comments on how good the food is today. She has not one, but both of her parents. I don’t think she knows how incredibly fortunate she is.
The Xiao clan used to be quite large. We were a highly powerful clan, carrying great influence in court. We truly earned our title of the Fourth Family.
But more importantly, we existed. Once, I had parents, grandparents, uncles, aunts, cousins, and a little sister.
And then the day of calamity happened, and I lost all of that. Now only Wen and I remain to carry the Xiao name.
I tighten my fingers around my chopsticks.
I try to think about that day as little as I can.
But seated here with Fanqing’s family, toasting my father-in-law, chatting with my mother-in-law, and exchanging pleasantries with my sister-in-law I cannot help but remember that I will never see my own father, mother, and sister ever again.
It was just an ordinary day when I lost everything, or so it had seemed at the time. The birds sang sweetly, the road stretched on, and I was in the company of my cousin.
In spite of how dearly I would like to forget, I remember everything perfectly as if it had happened only yesterday.
Wen was chatting excitedly about the stars, he had always felt a fascination with them and was planning to become an auger once he finished his preliminary exams. He was always the more scholarly sort, but his father sent him out with me in the hopes that I could help turn him into a proper warrior and spirit hunter.
Since he wasn’t of age, he hadn’t learned our familial secret technique of cancelling magic so he couldn’t travel on his own. Which is why he was sent with me.
That day, I strolled along beside him, nodding and pretending to listen to humor him. The truth was that I had heard enough about the stars to last me an eternal lifetime.
I distinctly remember, the first sign that something was amiss was that the birds stopped singing as though they could sense the death heavy in the air even though Wen and I were both still so unaware.
The second sign was that my sister was not waiting for me at the road marker.
A spritely young girl with her hair kept in twin braids, my sister Xiao Jie was obsessed with spirit hunting.
She couldn’t wait to be a spirit hunter herself and resented that our father would always try to shield her from that life.
He claimed that she was too young to dream of killing things.
She said that she was born a Xiao and that killing things was her destiny.
So, whenever I was out, she would wait for me at the road marker so that she could ask me about my trip before I returned home and was commanded to spare her the grisly details. Sometimes she would even make me give her my sword and teach her some tricks down by the bank of the river.
However, that day, the road marker was bare. A pile of rocks rising up at the bend of the road, informing us that we were almost home. The single red strip of cloth tied to the top blowing in the wind.
Wen had thought it odd as well and had stopped speaking of the stars long enough to comment on Jie’s absence.
I remember shrugging and saying, “Well, she is growing up. Perhaps she is gaining interest in other things.” As though fifteen was such an old age. Compared to immortality it’s as if she barely got the chance to live.
We continued up the road, but our journey was not the same as before. Wen as clearly on edge and didn’t keep up his prattle. This in turn started making me nervous because even back then there was nothing Wen loved more than the sound of his own voice.
Then we found the first body. It was one of the guards.
As a spirit hunter I was not unaccustomed to death, indeed it was my duty to bring it to those that were born without souls. And yet nothing could have ever prepared me for the state the man was in. He was bloodied and disfigured, ripped apart as if by large claws.
Destroyed by a monster. A creature. A spirit.
I remember that Xiao Wen stopped when he saw it, and let out a small, strangled cry.
He may have gone to check on the man to see if he was all right as if his deathly pallor did not already prove that he was deceased.
I don’t know what Wen did because I left him behind.
I raced into our family manor, hurtling over bodies strewn in the courtyards.
I recognized all of them.
That was the maid who slipped me sweets when I got into trouble and was sent to bed without dinner. There was my youngest aunt, lying with her hand clutched in her husband’s.
Face after face, empty but recognizable, form after form torn to shreds by that creature.
And every person I saw my heart sank lower and lower as I realized just what had happened. That in an instant, outside of Wen, I was alone in the world.
The grief was enough to drive me to illness, to the brink of death for several months.
The whole Xiao clan was gone, every last one from the lowliest servant to my father the great head of it all.
Save for me, Wen, and our old steward who had been in the cellar at the time of the attack and managed to barricade himself in.
It was Wen and the steward who nursed me back to health.
I knew I couldn’t leave my cousin alone, so I pulled through.
Although, no one ever said how much work living would be, otherwise I might not have.
Because to live, I had to carry on as if everything I had ever cared about hadn’t been ripped away from me.
Just like that I was the head of a family that no longer existed.
Wen threw himself into his studies to become an auger.
I started dabbling in the world of martial arts and discovered how easy it was to move items from one city to the other while I was on official business for the emperor.
I met Quanyu and formed the Midnight Runners.
Slowly yet surely, I found my purpose in life again.
I smile at my father-in-law as he places a strip of meat into my bowl. I am going to be stuffed if Fanqing and her parents keep putting food in my bowl, and yet I can’t bring myself to be upset about it. Because now by a very strange turn of circumstances… I have a family again.
It isn’t the same as the one I lost, but I determine to do right by them all the same.
“So, you are a minister of justice?” I ask Minister Mu as I lower my bowl.
He nods once. “Hmm, yes, I have been an eighth rank minister since I came of age and was put in the position.”
I feel my eyebrows rise slightly. Being an eighth-rank official in the Ministry of Justice would be enough to cause lesser men to plot and scheme to rise to the top, but this man proudly admits that he has remained in this position since he first came of age.
“Did you never seek any promotions?” I ask, glancing at Fanqing out of the corner of my eye. She had stated that her father abhorred court maneuvering and politics. He just wanted to exist under their notice. I suppose that would be fairly easy to do in an eighth rank position.
“Worse than that,” Mrs. Mu says with a sniff. “He has even gone so far as to turn down promotions.”
“My position is enough for me. Besides, through it I was able to get Ehuang her position.”
I glance over toward Fanqing’s younger sister.
Despite sharing some similarities with Fanqing, she wears her hair and clothing in a youthful manner and her eyes flash in an excitable fashion I’ve not seen in her sister.
She seems younger than Fanqing, more carefree.
She smiles, just before she shoves a massive bite of rice into her mouth.
“You want me to die poor,” Mrs. Mu mutters under her breath.
Minister Mu reaches out and pats her hand. “That will never happen, my dear. If anything, you will die comfortable.”
I pick up my glass and hold it up. “I will toast you then, father-in-law, you are an admirable man. May you continue to live a peaceful and unambitious life even with me as your son-in-law. I hope that it will not bring too much attention to you.”
I feel as though this is the best outcome.
I could have wound up with a father-in-law who would try to use my name to further his goals and would shamelessly embroil me in the court games for his own gain.
Instead, I only have the guilt of dragging this man into my shadow where officials will likely try to win him over in the belief that it would gain them favor and standing with me.
He holds up his glass. “I thank you. And may you have prosperity and peace in your own endeavors.”
I take a sip of the wine before I turn back to my food.
“Qing Qing, do you think you will be able to use very many spells while spirit hunting?” Ehuang asks, leaning forward animatedly on the edge of her stool.
Fanqing looks up from where she had been quietly sipping her soup, observing everything that was happening at the table but not saying anything. Her eyes dart to me. “I cannot say…”
“Whyever not?” Ehuang asks, slapping her hand against the table. She makes her mother start, probably not realizing her own vehemence. “You studied for so many years it isn’t as if it would be a liability.”
“Well, Shu has his own talents,” Fanqing says continuing to watch me. “That makes my magic quite useless.”
I press my lips together as her words bring to mind our first meeting when I had used my family’s magic negating skill and knocked her from a tree.
I clear my throat and lean forward. “I’m sure that it will be a case-by-case basis, but Fanqing’s skills will undoubtedly come in handy.
Every spirit is different and so the way that you have to deal with each of them is different. ”
“I suppose the same can be said for cases involving humans,” Ehuang says with a nod. “Investigators, if anything, must be fully adaptable.”
I’m about to nod but then Minister Mu harumphs.
“No, investigators should be righteous and following the rule of the law at all times. I don’t know what I’m going to do with you girls. You’re both too idealistic. You view the world through a lens of what you want to see rather than what is actually there.”
I glance over to see that Minister Mu is looking at me and hurriedly nod.
He reaches across the table, gripping my arm, giving it a small squeeze and then a pat. “I hate to trouble you, Lord Xiao to keep an eye on my youngest daughter Ehuang as well as her sister. I heard that she has been assigned to a case that your cousin has been working on for the past some time.”
I hold up my hand, cutting him off. “Please, call me Xiao Shu, we are after all family now. And do not worry, I have already spoken with my cousin. I can promise you this, the Mu sisters will be quite safe under our care.”