Set course for the lawless land

They were on Beidou’s ship before the light had the decency to finish leaving the resort.

A few hours. That was all the island got once the decision had a direction. Packing, in this company, meant finding clothes that still closed. Ather was a bit surprised seeing Ineffa dressed, her only pasties top made him think that going nude could be more dignified for her.

(https://im.ge/i/QQutgyF)
(artist: gitaniai)
Nod-Krai was not a long crossing. Close enough that the group — Rosaria first, then the rest in that wordless harem arithmetic — decided Aether could spend the water doing something radical.

Rest.

Abstain from too much of what the last five days had been. Not a vow of silence. Not Rosaria locking him in a cabin with a chain. Just a ceiling. Save the Flame and the body under it for whatever a weakening moon actually wanted from him. He had emptied himself into half a nation-worth of leftover vacationists and an android that had crashed on a fertility field. The ship could be a bed that did not require a score.

Beidou took one look at the boarding party, snorted, and pointed them at cabins like a woman who had already heard this speech from a Tianquan.

The send-off happened on the dock, where the air still smelled like incense and spilled wine and the specific musk of a resort that had been used properly.

Ningguang and Yae stood in the last of the heat as if they had agreed to split the goodbye without discussing it. The fox had already chosen to stay. Easybreeze had her now, and she was in no hurry to give it back. Vacation, for Yae, had turned into a longer theft the moment she realized she was already here and Ei was already a public amenity.

“She can survive her fucktoy existence without me for a while,”
Yae said, airy, hair lazy in the wind.
“The nation is using her. That was the point. I am not going to rush home to hold her hair because a line formed at the palace steps.” A smile that was all teeth and shrine-gold.
“I will come back when I am bored of being a guest. Or when she writes something pathetic. Whichever is funnier.”

Aether almost asked how Ei was actually doing.

Yae did not give him the opening. She stepped in close enough that the advice had to be for him and not the dock.

“A small thing,”
she said, in that kitsune register that always sounded like a riddle wearing perfume.
“No matter what the public thinks, none of the three sides of the moon ever represented purity. Remember that when the water starts looking holy. People love a clean story. The moon does not.”

He knew better than to ask what she meant.

He had asked her things before. He had watched her enjoy not answering. A better sentence would not come out of her tonight, and she would enjoy his hunger for one. He nodded once.

“Good boy,” Yae murmured, pleased that he had not taken the bait, and kissed the corner of his mouth like a stamp on a document she was not done with.

The other farewell took longer because it was not one farewell.

Nilou and Candace clung to Dehya in the ugly, ordinary way of women who had shared a road and a cock and a village lie and were now being asked to split on a timetable. The dancer had her face in Dehya’s shoulder, still talking, still bright, still not quite ready to be a person who had crossed half of Sumeru for an afternoon and now had to carry the result home. Candace was stern about it and failed. She held Dehya by the back of the neck and said practical things about the well and the watch and writing, and none of it disguised the fact that she did not want to let the lion go back onto a ship without her.

“You chose the road,” Candace said.

“I chose him,” Dehya answered, not unkind. “The road came with the choice.”

Nilou laughed wetly and made Dehya promise to come back so the oasis special could have a second verse. Dehya promised nothing in words and everything in the way she kissed them both, hard, public, uninterested in whether the sailors were watching. When they finally stepped back, Candace’s hand sat on her own lower belly for a second too long. Nilou’s smile had the dazed leftover of a name screamed into pillows. They left the dock like a cut that would heal and still show.

That was when Ningguang stopped pretending the goodbye could be dignified.

She had dressed for departure the way she dressed for surrender now: the golden sling barely a suggestion, wealth converted into access, the Tianquan reduced to a woman who had learned that money bought her a place in line and not a guarantee. She went to her knees on the planks in front of him without a speech first. The dock noticed. Beidou, up on the rail, made a noise that might have been a laugh and might have been respect.

Ningguang bent and kissed his shoes.

Not a peck. A mouth on leather that had walked through sand and a hundred and eight hours of other women. Once. Again. Her lips lingered on the instep like she could taste the road. When she looked up, the proud architecture of her face was still there — and it was aimed entirely at being used.

“Call on me again,”
she said, and there was no conference-table left in it.
“Do not put Liyue in a drawer because the moon is prettier this month. When you need a ship, a room, a slut who already knows how to ask — send for me. Let this one be of service again. I will come on my knees if that is the invitation.”

She kissed the other shoe. Her voice dropped.

“I am not asking to be first. I am asking not to be forgotten. You already taught my body what happens when I scheme. I will scheme anyway. I will also crawl if you tell me the crawl is what gets me back on your cock.”

Aether looked down at the most powerful woman in Liyue with her mouth on his footwear and felt the old, fond meanness stir. Rosaria, at his shoulder, did not stop it. She watched like a fiancée who understood this particular religion.

He tipped Ningguang’s chin up with two fingers.

“I’ll call,”
he said.
“Not because you paid for the cat. Because you look like this when you mean it. Stay useful. Stay hungry. Don’t meet us in Nod-Krai unless I send for you.”

Ningguang shuddered like the sentence had gone straight between her legs, kissed the side of his hand, and let herself be drawn up only as far as he allowed. One more press of her mouth to his shoe, shameless, and then she was the Tianquan again from the neck up, eyes wet, dignity worn as a coat over a woman who had just begged on a public dock.

Yae clapped once, delighted.

“Beautiful. She learns faster than Ei”

The gangplank took the rest of them.

Dehya came last, jaw tight, not looking back long enough to make Candace walk after the ship. Lynette boarded like luggage that could climb a ladder, collar dark against her throat. Rosaria kept a hand on Aether’s belt until he was on the deck, then let go as if rest were a rule she intended to enforce with her body if she had to.

Beidou shouted them off the dock. Sails took the wind. Easybreeze shrank into a smear of lanterns and leftover heat.