Jingyang smiled as her servants helped her up the stairs. Days like this when the air was crisp with snow, the welcoming warmth of Zhiluo Palace felt like a soft embrace even before she set foot inside, the mild gust coming from the open doors rich with the scent of healing herbs and sweet delicacies.
“Sister, you shouldn’t have,” Jing-ping scolded her with a smile after they exchanged the formal words of greeting.
At her side, Chen-fei nodded, only slightly more sternly. In the background, servants were already setting out tea and treats. “Not in your state!” she added.
“They carry me so gently in the palanquin it’s no more effort to come here than it is walking across a room,” Jingyang retorted. Waving the servants aside, she let her sisters-in-law lead her to a seat that had the perfect amount of cushions for a body as heavy with child as hers.
She paused to sink down and arrange herself, now that she was among dear friends and didn’t need to put elegance ahead of comfort. “Besides, I am still but one person. It would be far more trouble for you two to come to the Lin Mansion - and with xiao-Jingyan, too.” She didn’t mention what they all knew - that neither of her sisters could move about the city as freely as she could visit the palace.
Jing-ping and Chen-fei exchanged amused looks. “Well, if you make it about logistics, how are we going to fuss about you, Sister?” Jing-ping asked.
Jingyang laughed behind her sleeve. “I don’t need any more Lins to fuss over me - not when I have your brother!”
Jing-ping gave a mock sigh. “But we can’t let a military man beat us at womanly caring,” she said, and Jingyang was glad to see Chen-fei smiling at the lighthearted joke. Jingyu’s birth had been a difficult one, and in the years that followed it was only Lin Xie’s concern for his sister that brought Jing-ping to help and heal. But if those old wounds still pained Chen-fei, she didn’t let it cloud her expression and darken their moment of levity.
“Oh, believe me. Having a moment’s peace is exactly the care I was looking for in Zhiluo Palace.” Jingyang picked up an exquisite cup, and inhaled the golden fragrance. Enjoying the moment, she decided she didn’t need to spare her husband any teasing from his sisters. “Even just having a conversation with someone that doesn’t talk to the baby first is quite a relief.”
Chen-fei’s eyebrows rose, and Jing-ping bit her lip in a gesture Jingyang recognize meant she was trying not to giggle like a much younger girl. She sipped the tea, enjoying the balanced flavor and their reactions.
“Xie-gege does that?” Jing-ping breathed, her eyes glowing with merriment.
Jingyang nodded. “I think he believes he is starting his child’s education early.”
“You’ll have to pick a nurse who can fight him for the baby, sister,” Chen-fei said, only the slightest curve of her lip belying the seriousness of her tone.
“Maybe we can find someone from Jianghu!” Jing-ping chimed in.
Jingyang pretended to think it over. “What women are on the Langya list this year?”
They shared a rich smile at the image of a fierce warrior woman in a nurse’s outfit, sparring a general of the Imperial army for possession of a tiny infant.
“Speaking of babies…” Jingyang looked around. “Is xiao-Jingyan sleeping? I was hoping to see him, but...”
“Oh no,” Jing-ping looked abashed. “He’s awake. I just didn’t wish for him to interrupt your visit.”
“He’s been so quiet!” Jingyang exclaimed, as Jing-ping turned to ask the servants to bring the nurse.
“That child of hers,” Chen-fei shaked her head. “He’s such a silent baby.”
Jing-ping protested their assertions with a gentle gesture. “Oh, he bellows like a buffalo when he wants to,” she said. Then all of her attention turned to the nurse entering the room, a squirming bundle in her arms.
“Thank you,” Jing-ping beamed, and gestured for the nurse to bring her son over. Seeing his mother, he reached chubby arms for her and smiled.
Jingyan’s own heart swelled with joy at the sight, and she rested her hand on her belly. Soon, that would be her, and her own child. Hers and Xie-gege’s.
The nurse helped xiao-Jingyan stand next to his mother, so that she could tousle his soft hair. He stood - a little wobbly, but on his own two feet - and snatched laughingly at Jing-fei’s sleeve.
Chen-fei exclaimed over how good his balance had gotten, as proud as if he were her own, and standing was a formidable feat only few children ever managed, and Jing-ping smiled and blushed and gently coaxed him to ask politely for a treat. Young as he was, the words were garbled syllables, but he looked at her with luminous eyes when he spoke, attentive and eager to please.
“He’s such a good boy,” Jingyang said, and xiao-Jingyan cocked his head and turned to her. With a laugh, he set his sights on her - or something she was wearing, a color of silk or dangling ornament drawing his young attention. With fierce determination, he moved across the floor, his nurse hovering nearby - at his mother’s glanced command, not interfering. A fall that drew a gasp only from Jingyang didn’t slow him down. On the contrary - back on familiar ground with four points of contact, he shot forward and covered the distance with surprising speed for one so little.
“He does this all the time?” Jingyang asked with mild alarm. The nurse and Jing-ping exchanged an amused glance.
“Often, yes,” Jing-ping confirmed, and Chen-fei nodded.
That instant, Jingyang had to hurry and steady her table, as xiao-Jingyan was using it for leverage. He was close enough now that she could see his long eyelashes, the color in his round cheeks. “Hello there, little nephew,” she said, and he looked back at his mother, as if for permission.
Jing-ping looked at Jingyang, who didn’t get a chance to respond - standing up again, wobbling in his little robes, xiao-Jingyan stood tall enough to reach out and put one small hand on Jingyang’s belly.
“Oh,” she said, startled, as the nurse hesitated between contradicting Jing-ping’s previous command and rescuing her guest. And then, “No, wait.”
Xiao-Jingyan wasn’t hurting her - his touch was clumsy, but only gently curious, not the violent grabbing she remembered from his swaddled baby days. Struck by an impulse, she put her own hand over his, and steadied him by his shoulder. He looked up at her, curious.
“It’s your cousin,” Jingyang told him solemnly. The boy wouldn’t be able to feel anything through silk and skin and womb, but her body registered both his touch and her own child’s presence under his hand. A strange sensation, that. Bridging the gap between born and unborn, between younger cousin and older. Between her husband’s Lin blood, and the life her sister had wrought with her Lin heart.
For a moment, they stayed like that, xiao-Jingyan staring in fascination at the swell of her belly, as if he had grasped the words he was much too young to understand. And then he laughed, and babbled something that she was too old to understand, and grabbed a sweet off her table with his free hand.
“Rascal,” she laughed, releasing him as Jing-ping and Chen-fei both scolded him in stronger words, and the nurse came swooping in and carried him away from the tempting tray of delicacies.
Jingyang wouldn’t hear any apologies. “Look at how eager he was to greet his cousin,” she said, her hand once again resting over the child she carried. “Don’t you feel that they will be great friends?”
Her eyes met Jing-ping’s, and they both smiled.
“Yes.” Chen-fei agreed. “And their Jingyu-gege will take care of both of them.” She paused. “Though I dread to think what trouble they’ll be in a handful of years.”
Jingyang laughed at the noises of concern the two mothers made, imagining all the scraps and pranks two energetic boys could get into, and let their happy talk of the future seep into her tired body. It warmed like Jing-ping’s best tea, and she imagined she could share this joy with the child she carried within.
Come soon, she thought. There are so many of us here who can’t wait to meet you. You are not even born yet, and you already have the best of friends.
Outside the snow fell softly, all the lanterns of Zhiluo palace casting their golden glow among the blue shadows. On the bare tree branches, plum blossom buds draped in snowflakes grew ever closer to bursting into bloom.