“Where should we go from here?” Qianqiao wonders idly, voice little more than a murmur against the soft liquid soundscape of the bathing room.
It’s a very fine bathing room, as befits a sect leader, with its shelves of little tinctures and oils; pots and textiles; delicately-painted screens. Candlelight caresses the naked form of her lover, a bold stroke of pale amber swaying just beyond swirls of rising steam. The warm night that still drifts in through the shutters is nothing compared to the flush of heat she feels at the sight.
Du Pusa pours herself into the space outside the tub as she pours another bottle out into Qianqiao’s bathwater.
“Wherever we want to, of course.”
Of course.
Her face and voice are not blunted even slightly by her lack of makeup, nor by the way her hair is tied up out of reach the same as Qianqiao’s. She ought to look vulnerable without her costume–as much a mask as any Qianqiao wears–but somehow she looks precisely as dangerous while completely bare. Qianqiao smiles up at her and closes her eyes, leans back, relaxing into the touch as her arm is manoeuvred and a soft cloth begins to wash away the blood on her skin. Du Pusa’s hands always betray her like this, so gentle in a way the rest of her never deigns to be.
As the pretty perfumes usher out the stench of death and Du Pusa’s scrubs her clean of their good deeds, Qianqiao wonders if she ought to feel something apart from the shimmering relief of freedom.
Indulgent, Du Pusa dips the cloth back in the water and once more to Qianqiao’s neck. Water sluices down over her collarbone, her shoulder, luxurious to an absurd degree. It was really a good idea after all, to use his own bathing room to clean themselves up. No one will be along to discover the body until at least dawn, and Qianqiao is starting to agree that perhaps he had owed her a bit more than just his life.
Du Pusa makes a sweet, cajoling sound, perhaps sensing her thoughtfulness, perhaps just in the mood to play. She brushes the cloth yet further up Qianqiao’s neck, pausing to run the point of a delicate, manicured fingernail along her jaw as if appreciating the sight.
“Why?” she finally bites the hook. “D'you have somewhere in mind, darling?”
Indeed Qianqiao does, but she knows already it won’t suit. “Mm, a farm,” she replies, syrup-slow and deliberate, letting the hint of a lilt into her words. “Or a little cottage tucked away out of sight.”
There’s a slight pause in everything as the tone registers and then Du Pusa laughs, genuine and tinkling. “Oh, darling, you’re teasing me now. You are too delicious.”
Qianqiao doesn’t open her eyes, but she can picture exactly the face she would see if she did–wickedly sharp grin, flinty eyes laced with mirth, forehead damp with condensation enough to almost appear human, awash in dim light and wreathed in pleasant fog. The curve of Qianqiao’s mouth is just the right blend of satisfaction and humour; sometimes the best deception, she’s long learned, is the simple, unadorned truth.
Du Pusa leans in just as she finally lets her eyes flutter open, crowds further over her, going up to the elbow in sickly pink-orange water just to brace her hand on Qianqiao’s submerged hip, brush her lips over her freshly-rinsed shoulder.
“Tell meimei what you’re really thinking,” she says against Qianqiao’s skin.
The prickle of breath stirs the fine exposed hairs at the base of Qianqiao’s scalp and it sends a shiver racing down her spine; sense-memory and experience prepare her for the chance that such a gesture brings with it spark-bright pain from Du Pusa’s special poison. She doesn’t let herself flinch, and the possibility passes unfilled.
It must be the strangeness of the night, but for the first time Qianqiao is almost disappointed.
“Well, I was thinking about your skin, speckled with blood, and your lips, coated in poison,” she whispers, seeking out Du Pusa’s arm underwater, following it down to her hand, pressing it harder into her hip as she tilts her head just so. She smothers her smugness at Du Pusa’s slightly hitched breath; this is the arena she truly spars in, and she almost always wins. “I was thinking about how long the list of the unfaithful is, and the merits some two women could accrue by wandering the world to see it further shortened.”
Du Pusa digs her fingertips into Qianqiao’s thigh and inhales sharply at her neck before she pulls back. Her eyes are wild.
“Oh, jiejie, you are something special after all.”
Qianqiao waits to be kissed, and is not disappointed.
She is neither disappointed by the promise of their plans sealed by the demanding mouth against hers. There is a cottage somewhere, she thinks; the shape of it familiar to her after all these years of dreaming. She was patient as a ghost and that has found her someone to help her fill a cottage with more than her own wistful voice. She can be patient still, then, and enjoy their days to come, and someday they will find it. She will let Du Pusa ruin her, and bring ruin in return.
For now, she lets herself be pushed harshly against the back of the tub, sloshing scented bathwater onto the floor, and encounters ruin in an entirely different way.
