Ache.

On many days, that word, that feeling defined her life. The ache of feet that had been stood on all day was the least of them. The ache in her bones from the rain, where she had suffered a broken bone from a client who chose not to pay, when she was still learning to judge without the protection of the house. The inevitable bruises of her regular business, and the soreness from physical labor that was growing more common.

She was lucky, with her age, that her minders seemed to deem trash disposal equivalently filthy to her normal work, at least for now. Perhaps they would even get bored finally and allow her to acquire work as a washerwoman. They had already suffered a close call the year previous, the rasping cough that had swept through the city had nearly seen her homeless and…

“Momma!”

Ling Qingge cracked open her eyes. The light in their single room was dim, the dull light of the hearthfire obscured by the clay pot set over it. But it was enough for her to see her daughter's face. Ling Biyu looked at her with expectant eyes.

…and had threatened to take away the only thing which gave her any purpose. It was only Apothecary Deng’s pity that had seen the medicine she had needed discounted enough to be within her reach.

“Be patient Biyu,” she said quietly. “The water needs to boil.”

Simple rice gruel, they were lucky that prices were down this year, with a good harvest coming in, they could save for winter without cutting meals.

“Hungry now,” Biyu complained, but she grew quiet as Ling Qingge reached across the table to rest a hand on her head.

“Patience,” she repeated.

“Okay,” replied Biyu, leaning into her touch.

Her child's expression made another kind of ache twist in Ling Qingge’s chest, an old, old ache now. How long would she have, before that childish trust broke? She had never brought a client here, she never would. No matter how much more difficult and costly it made things. Not again, never again.

Why couldn’t that child have simply stayed in her room? Too curious, too disobedient. Too…

She squeezed her eyes shut again.

“Momma?”

“I’m just tired little one,” she said, putting on a wan smile. Biyu was so unlike her sister, even now, Ling Qingge could tell she would grow to resemble herself.

…Was that better or worse, she wondered. It made it all too easy to picture this happy child growing into a woman who wore the same expression that Ling Qingge saw reflected back in rain barrels and cloudy glass.

She sat and listened to Biyu’s childish talk as she prepared their meager dinner, nodding and making the odd comment as she served them both the rice gruel in bowls of chipped wood. It was bland, but filling and that was the best that could be asked for, even if her daughter needed a little cajoling to finish hers.

It was as she was carefully cleaning the squirming girls face with a scrap of cloth that a knock came on her door, echoing through the small space.

Biyu looked over to the door curiously, Ling Qingge frowned. There were a handful of her former co-workers who knew where she lived, but at this hour, she could not imagine a good reason for someone to be at her door. The knock came again, more insistent.

She swallowed, and gave Biyu a firm look. “Stay here.”

The child must have detected some part of her intent, as she nodded, eyes wide. “Kay, Momma.”

Ling Qingge stood and approached the door which lead out into the common hall that lay between the rented rooms of the block, and straightened her shoulders as she pulled back the bolt. She carefully cracked the door open to peer outside.

There she saw a slim young man, who looked deeply out of place here, with his meticulously clean pale blue robes and short neatly groomed hair. He looked like he knew it very well too.

“May I help you, honorable sir?” she asked, even more wary. What could such a man want with her, she could only imagine unpleasant scenarios.

“You would be madam Ling Qingge?” he asked brusquely, eyes scanning her. She saw only mild disdain there. Not one of Liu’s hounds then?

“I am.”

“You have a letter and a package, sent by way of the Argent Peak Sect by Outer Disciple Ling Qi. Do you accept this delivery?”

The world felt as if it had tilted, and she stared at the man blankly. Her thoughts felt like mud.

The man, who she noted faintly now, wore a patch with the character for Communication, stared back at her, and his thin mustache twitched with irritation. “Madam. Do you accept the delivery?”

“Yes,” she croaked, letting the door drift open a little further.

“Very good,” he said stiffly, his desire to be gone from this place written clear on his face. He reached smoothly into the canvas satchel at his side and withdrew a clean paper envelope. Such paper would cost more than her monthly rent for this room. Along with it was a small wooden box, no more than a handspan across, sealed with a silk ribbon. It’s price would be enough for shoes that did not leak, or replacement cloth for new clothes for them both.

She accepted them in silence with trembling hands. Thought was beginning to come back. It was absurd. Some sort of trick? A petty cruelty played by her minders out of boredom. What could….

“Good day madam,” said the deliveryman, turning on his heel before she could reply. Ling Qingge heard the creak of wood, eyes peeking out of neighboring rooms.

“Yes, good day,” she said faintly, though the man certainly didn’t hear her. She stepped back hurriedly, shutting the door with a snap. It would do her no good for her neighbors to see her with such things.

She stared down at the letter, the sloppy characters scrawled across it seemed to almost to insult the fine paper. ‘To Mother, from Ling Qi’.

“Momma, okay?”

She looked away, her hands were trembling. “Yes, it is okay.”

“What’s that?” Biyu asked, looking up at her with one hand in her mouth.

“I’m not quite sure yet,” she admitted faintly, forgetting to even chide her.

The little girl tilted her head, uncomprehending.

She slid her thumb beneath the wax seal, breaking it. An official seal, she had remembered learning them, families and sects and ministries. Taking care of correspondence was often among a lady's duties. It would be absurd to fake such a thing on a petty trick. Yet there was the character for silver, interposed over a triangular mountain.

She began to read, and as she did, she slid down along the wall, all but collapsing into a sloppy sprawl. Biyu, in the way that children do, sensed her tension and distress and snuggled up to her side, eyes drooping sleepily in the aftermath of their meal.

She lost count of the number of times she read it before the characters and sentences began to blur into gibberish under her eyes, until the paper was crinkled in her grip. Only then did she turn her eyes to the package, and slide the ribbon free.

Silver glittered inside, one coin sliding off another with a metallic sound. Not copper slivers, or even full coins, but full pieces of silver stamped with the imperial seal.

“Shiny,” Biyu muttered sleepily.

Ling Qing Qingge was not sure whether the laughter or tears came first.

She had long known that there were no fairy tales, no princes to carry you away from suffering, only grasping men who took what they wished and left. There were no kindly elders who rewarded virtue, perhaps at best there might be pity for a wretch. Vanished children were not taken to dream in Fantasia, they simply died in the cold.

Just this once, could that truth be wrong?