Wen Tang Changpu directs Lan Qiren towards a bench, and they sit down.
"For months now, I've been worried about my brother. He hasn't been sleeping well, and this has worsened his mood swings. He wouldn't let the healers examine him, much less myself, giving one excuse after another, and you might have noticed that he's lost a lot of weight recently." She stares at her hands, lost in thought.
"Wen-Zhongzu did not eat at the banquet," Lan Qiren states after it looks like Wen Tang Changpu is too distracted to continue.
"Huh? Oh, yes. That's just the surface of the problem. As you noted in the greeting ceremony, he also loses his temper frequently, lashing out at the servants without due cause. But there has been another development. You see, whenever there is a festival, the Wen family has always gone into the city and given alms, fed the homeless, you know, good deeds to gain celestial blessings for longevity But two weeks ago, when I went into town with the children to do just that, I couldn't find a single vagrant! Usually, I make accommodations for at least fifty or so homeless people, sometimes more. But they're gone!"
Lan Qiren doesn't want to admit it, but she looks a little wild.
"Where could they have gone? It's not unreasonable to assume that they left to seek out their fortunes elsewhere."
"All of them?" She asks sceptically.
"And you think this has something to do with your brother?" Lan Qiren diverts the conversation.
"Well, naturally, I had to inform him, since he's the Sect Leader."
"What did he say?" Privately, Lan Qiren thinks, probably not much. This new Wen Ruohan is a far cry from the caring man who had escorted his sister to the guest lectures in the Cloud Recesses all those years ago.
"He listened to everything I had to say, and then he said he would take care of it."
"Did he?"
"No. He was lying to me. I could tell. But I had to pretend to believe him because it ensured my safety and that of my family. But A-Ren, I have to tell you another secret. A few nights ago, we received a diplomatic missive from one of the smaller sects, needing an urgent reply. I went looking for my brother as he had been waiting for correspondence from them for a while, but I couldn't find him anywhere. No one had any idea where he might have gone, and time was running out. There was only one place left to look.
"You see, the Wen ancestors hadn't bothered to knock down our previous clan headquarters when they needed to expand; they merely built up and around an existing structure, mostly because the volcanic bed of stone was too strong and a replacement foundation would have had the opposite effect of weakening the entire palace. But few people are aware of the caves under Nightless City.
"The old leaders had a tunnel built from their quarters to a place embedded deep underground, a place I had only read about in a forgotten book. No one had seen Wen-Zhongzu leave our home, so I entered his bedroom and looked for the door leading to the subterranean caves. The tunnel was supposed to be used in case of attack. If the palace was compromised, the leaders of old would have escaped into the caves and reached safety.
"I found the door hidden behind a life-size portrait of our great-grandfather, and I was just about to open the door when my brother stepped out from there. Imagine our collective shock at seeing one another. What was worse was the state of him! At first, I thought he had been attacked by a traitor, because no Wen disciple would ever inflict such harm on our leader...I brought him to the table and helped him clean his wounds, both of us as silent as a graveyard.
"He didn't say a word about his countless injuries, and I never asked; how could I, without it sounding suspicious? But just as I was about to leave, after explaining why I had been looking for him in the first place, he said, "Once the conference is over, I will make arrangements for you to transfer over to our supervisory office on Dafan mountain," and I didn't know what to make of it. So I replied that I would make sure my family and I were ready. But he laughed most cruelly and replied that there was no need to make any arrangements because it would be just myself going. He claimed it was to further my interest in medicine and my studies in healing, explaining to me how my children and my husband would just 'get in the way'!
