Title: Tea with the Envoy
Fandom: Guardian
Rating: G
Length: 1,800 words
Notes: Zhao Xinci, Shen Wei, politics, identity reveal, episode related (set during ep 27). Many, many thanks to trobadora for excellently nitpicky beta. <3
Summary: Shen Wei was openly aligning himself with the Envoy now, inviting censure, and Zhao Xinci felt compelled to oblige. “You’re working for Hei Pao Shi as well as the SID? That’s hardly appropriate. Where do your loyalties really lie?”


Zhao Xinci arrived at the rendezvous early, his curiosity roused. For all the Black-Cloaked Envoy’s theatrical affectations, he was no more inclined to create a scene than Zhao Xinci was, and he’d never requested a meeting in a tearoom or any other public place in the middle of the day, back when Zhao Xinci was chief of the SID. This establishment was on the river, expensive but tasteful. How did he know of it? Zhang Shi was unusually quiet on the subject. Unusually quiet full-stop.

Zhao Xinci accepted a tea menu from the waiter and sat back against the padded seat to peruse it. Perhaps the Envoy had elected to send a proxy.

A figure darkened the doorway, and Zhao Xinci looked up, half expecting the traditional black robes and mask. Instead, Shen Wei, Zhao Yunlan’s consultant and neighbour, was entering the tearoom. Could he be the Envoy’s representative?

Sure enough, he came over to the table, bowed exactly the proper amount and stood there, awaiting acknowledgement.

A suspicion began to form—but no, it couldn’t be. Zhao Xinci nodded without getting up, using his age and recent illness as an implicit excuse for the lack of niceties. “Professor Shen.”

“Official Zhao.” Shen Wei sat down and regarded him impassively.

A waiter came to take their order, and Shen Wei named his choice without consulting the menu. As soon as they were alone again, he said, “You know me?”

“I’ve done my homework.” When the Xingdu Bureau had received notification of Shen Wei’s consultancy at the SID with nary a hint of his qualification for the job, Zhao Xinci had naturally investigated, particularly in light of the professor’s home address being right across the hall from Zhao Yunlan’s.

Zhao Yunlan’s landlord had had nothing but praise for his new tenant. “A university professor,” he’d confirmed over the phone. “So dignified! He only moved in a few months ago. You’d think he’d have chosen somewhere closer to the river—for the amenities, I mean, but the agent said he was quite insistent...” It had not been an accident, then.

And after some gentle prompting over drinks, lao-Gao indirectly admitted to seeing Shen Wei use Dixing powers during the chaos at the Li wedding. Apparently he’d subdued the entire maddened crowd. Your son has a knack for recruiting men of talent, were lao-Gao’s exact words.

Of course, lao-Gao didn’t know who’d started the ruckus. It could have been staged to paint Shen Wei as a hero, but Zhao Xinci refrained from planting that idea in his friend’s mind, at least until he had a shred of evidence.

Zhao Xinci’s third port of call was an acquaintance on the university board. Shen Wei had enrolled at Dragon City University in 2006, studying biology under Professor Zhou. Eleven years later, he’d been granted a professorship of his own based on a ground-breaking PhD thesis on genetic transmutation and an amiable personality. There was nothing in his university file about special powers or unusual incidents.

Still, Zhao Xinci had warned Yunlan off, a tactical error he immediately regretted. Given Yunlan’s reaction, there was something going on between the two of them—quite possibly something sordid, knowing Yunlan—and Yunlan had enough dangerous ideas of his own without a Dixingren putting more in his head. Zhao Xinci should have found a third party to convey the message, someone whose advice Yunlan wouldn’t automatically flout. He’d been trying not to dwell on it.

And now this. How long had Shen Wei been under the Envoy’s thumb? Was it a new development coinciding with his placement at the SID, or did it date back to his undergraduate days? No doubt he’d have been vulnerable to coercion then, but that was no excuse for dishonesty. He’d chosen to stay Aboveground despite being compromised. And what might Dixing hope to achieve through the connection? The possibilities were alarming, ranging from Shen Wei being planted at the SID as a double agent to his being a honeytrap sent to seduce its chief.

If the latter, Zhao Xinci had to admit the gambit was well-pitched: on the face of it Shen Wei was harmless, but with an air of mystery guaranteed to pique Yunlan’s interest.

Anyway, he was openly aligning himself with the Envoy now, inviting censure, and Zhao Xinci felt compelled to oblige. “You’re working for Hei Pao Shi as well as the SID? That’s hardly appropriate. Where do your loyalties really lie?”

Shen Wei met his eye, cool and unruffled. Showing up here in the Envoy’s place, he must have expected a challenge. “You appear to be under a misapprehension, Official Zhao. I’m not working for Hei Pao Shi—”

“You expect me to believe—”

“I am Hei Pao Shi.”

For a second, the words didn’t make sense. This young man, in his pristine suit and silk cravat, a faculty member of Dragon City University with an academic record that spanned more than a decade, a close associate of Yunlan’s—he couldn’t possibly be that otherworldly creature. But there was no gleam of amusement in Shen Wei’s expression, no indication of a joke.

The Envoy had first appeared in Haixing when Shen Wei would have been in middle school. If Shen Wei had been the young man he appeared.

Zhao Xinci felt his eyes widen as the truth settled into his bones. Tea with the Black-Cloaked Envoy. How Zhang Shi must be laughing.

The Dixingren’s hands were on his knees. He seemed unnaturally calm. Of course he did. Nothing about him was natural. And now he’d embroiled Yunlan in his affairs. If Zhao Xinci had known, he would have put a stop to it at any cost.

“How was I not aware of this?” As chief of the SID, he should have been informed.

Shen Wei didn’t react to his sharp tone. “The arrangement was made a long time ago. I doubt you would have had the necessary security clearance then.”

Zhao Xinci clenched his jaw, trying to disguise his anger. None of his superiors had seen fit to equip him with this intelligence, then or in the intervening years. And here was the Envoy, Shen Wei, calmly remarking on his clearance as if he outranked the SID chief and even the Head of the Xingdu Bureau.

Shen Wei seemed to see his disquiet. “Official Zhao, withholding the information was both necessary and appropriate at the time. Peace for both our peoples depends on Hei Pao Shi’s authority. If word had got out, it would have exacerbated an already volatile situation. And if you’d known I was a student, would you have been able to accept my judgements on behalf of Dixing without question?”

Zhao Xinci let out a slow breath. Reluctant as he was to admit it, Shen Wei had a point. Their working relationship had been fraught enough, without introducing further opportunity for complications. And much as having to liaise with the Envoy upon occasion had chafed, the Dixingren had always been scrupulously proper.

Now he’d chosen to reveal himself. Why? Was it a power play, a way of rubbing Zhao Xinci’s face in all the ground the Envoy had gained—entrenched at the SID with influence over Yunlan, respected and respectable by every Haixing metric? Or had he got wind of Zhao Xinci’s inquiries and decided this would protect his cover identity? Even the Xingdu Bureau couldn’t move against the Envoy.

At least now Zhao Xinci understood why Zhang Shi had been reticent about the meeting. And the choice of tearoom as a meeting place was taking on new significance—a place of Haixing refinement, a public place, but discreet. It had been chosen to make a point: the Envoy was on the side of peace; that break-in at the lab had not been authorised by Dixing.

Zhao Xinci dropped his guard along with any attempt to control the conversation and asked, tiredly, “Does my son know?”

“It became necessary to reveal my identity to him some time ago.” Shen Wei was unapologetic, his voice even. “He doesn’t know we’re meeting today. I hope you’ll feel able to speak freely.”

Another conceded advantage: the Envoy wasn’t using Yunlan as a chess piece. Nor was he threatening to reveal confidential information to the SID. That must mean he was here solely in his capacity as the Dixing Ambassador.

“Zhao Yunlan is, however, picking me up not far from here in half an hour,” continued Shen Wei after a moment. “I know you don’t favour long meetings.”

The waiter brought their tea. When he’d left, Shen Wei’s demeanour, which had been formal and contained, turned grave. “We don’t have much time, so I’ll come straight to the point. Do you know of the DoS laboratory’s current research?”

Ah, so that was his concern—that the fearsome talents of Dixingren might soon be shared out among humans too. But that was none of Dixing’s business. “Whether I know or not, does it matter? We’ve been planning the project for a long time. Now it’s started, it can’t be stopped.”

He dropped his gaze to his cup, deliberately ignoring the Envoy’s critical reaction and, too, the slight figure now lurking in the doorway. Yunlan. Well, he wouldn’t be able to hear anything from over there, and being seen together like this was for the best. The Envoy might be willing to skirt the intricacies of their connection, but Zhao Xinci saw no reason to, and if being caught in a clandestine meeting with Zhao Xinci took some of the shine off Shen Wei in Yunlan’s eyes, so much the better.

He kept a tight rein on his hauteur, made a show of casual unconcern. “Even if you know about the project, you have no right to interfere.”

Revealing nothing. Allowing Shen Wei, Envoy and professor, to admit what he knew. That Shen Wei took the opportunity said everything. This meeting had never been a diplomatic request for information or even confirmation of a rumour; it was lobbying, pure and simple. A play by the other side to hamstring Haixing.

But as long as the jurisdictional lines of control and influence were firmly drawn, it did no harm to hear him out. If Zhao Xinci judged any of the Envoy’s arguments to be worth considering, he could do so in his own damned time and act accordingly. He hadn’t exaggerated when he’d said the project was too far advanced to turn back, though. A crisis was looming, and they needed all the strength they could muster, even if the cost of humanity’s survival were a different, lesser kind of trouble.

Perhaps learning that the Black-Cloaked Envoy was invested in Haixing’s well-being would prove useful in the end, too. No sensible person would choose him as an ally, not as long as he spoke for Dixing, but Zhao Xinci wanted him even less as an enemy. And he knew enough to be sure Shen Wei would do whatever it took to protect the things—and the people—that mattered most.



END