BOOK 11: CHAPTER 51: IT WAS MY LAST CHANCE

Sen stood near the frozen-over pond where he’d once had a very tense conversation with a princess about why he wouldn’t help her. Sen tried to recall her name. He felt like he should remember the names of anyone he’d threatened quite that intensely. Hsiao Jiayi, he thought. That was it. As far as he knew, she’d returned to her nation over the Mountains of Sorrow. He wondered what she found there. Had she fallen in line behind the father she meant to kill? Had she used the chaos to usurp his throne? It was mostly idle speculation. He’d been harboring the fear that, if he ever did cross the mountains, he would have little choice but to make uncomfortable, unsavory alliances with people he’d rather kill given any choice in the matter.

If Hsiao Jiayi had managed to seize power, though, she might make for a marginally better ally. She, at least, knew his mind regarding the treatment of mortals. That was assuming anything like government remained intact in any of those far-away places. Something Sen found increasingly unlikely. He didn’t have any proof to back it up, but he had the intuition that the Beast King was primarily focusing his efforts on this side of the mountain. It wouldn’t make strategic sense for him to do that. It made sense to keep the mortals and cultivators busy, but there was a lot more continent to worry about beyond those soaring peaks. Assuming his intuition or educated guess was correct, the odds of finding meaningful civilization there in a few years were poor.

The odds of finding pockets of humanity that had managed to dig in behind walls supported by cultivator elites, on the other hand, were much higher. Those people would be in desperate need of help. If he went there, though, his assistance would not come free. He’d make every effort to guide whatever mortals he found to a safer harbor. As for the cultivators, they could swear their obeisance to him and his heirs, or they could be left to die. And that fealty would not include power over anyone. Not even themselves. Let them enjoy the taste of slavery for the rest of their very long lives

, thought Sen as his hands closed into fists. It sounded like justice in his head, even if he didn’t really believe it. He didn’t even believe he would do it, but maybe endless conflict would harden his heart enough by then.

A plaintive moo brought him back from those dark thoughts. He glanced over at the calf that had been following him around ever since he’d managed to regain nominal use of his leg. Sen huffed out a little laugh and resumed petting the calf’s head. A look over his shoulder informed him that the herd was still there. They had formed a protective cluster nearby. It was nothing too obvious, but it would be damned difficult for anything or anyone to approach without meeting interference. He’d first thought it was their way of ensuring the calves didn’t wander off into danger again. It was only later that he realized with a sudden bolt of gratitude that they were, in their concern, clustering around him.

It was a gentle show of affection and loyalty. He’d often felt that he hadn’t truly done enough to warrant those things from the spirit oxen. They always seemed to give him more than he gave them. Perhaps, this time, he had finally earned it. He had no doubt that those spirit beasts that Lai Dongmei had finished off would have preyed on the herd. Especially the one he’d fought. It might have killed them simply to deprive Sen of allies. That spirit beast was weighing on his mind. The possibility that it had been distracting them so something else could escape felt less and less like a possibility, and more and more like a certainty. That it had most likely succeeded left Sen feeling like he had a bone stuck in his throat.

The one and only benefit was that the spirit beasts here had clearly been intended to hide themselves. Being driven off was a disruption to their plans, which Sen could only see as a good thing. Still, that was a very thin good to balance whatever evil might come from allowing something else to escape. Something that could hide even from him and Lai Dongmei’s spiritual senses. I wish Falling Leaf were here, thought Sen. Her sense of smell has always been better than mine.

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He considered that and decided that it was probably true, but the real difference was that she’d grown up using her sense of smell. She’d learned to hone and rely on it. She knew what the different smells were or what they meant. His own physical senses were borderline absurd, but he spent most of his time trying to suppress them. He might actually smell more than she did now, but he was hampered by ignorance. He wouldn’t know what smells were important even if he could distinguish them. Given a few decades of focused practice, he might be able to learn enough to make it useful, but there was simply no time to train that sense.

“There’s never enough time,” he complained to the ice of the pond. “Why does it feel like I’m always saying that?”

The calf turned its face to look up at him. Sen knew that the calf didn’t actually have a quizzical expression, but he also knew that it was looking at him quizzically. It struck him as odd that he should know such a thing. Then again, if little Ai could command a legion of bird minions and subjugate the will of the sky monster, he supposed it wasn’t that strange that he could interpret ox expressions. Sen smiled at the small spirit beast and patted its head.

“I wasn’t really asking you,” he said.

Sighing to himself, he started making his way over to Grandmother Lu and Lai Dongmei. He’d left them to their own devices for the last few hours. That was something that made a spot between his shoulder blades itch for some reason. The herd miraculously moved in ways that meant his path was wholly unobstructed. Something that seemed to annoy Lai Dongmei for some reason. Sen had been putting this off for a little while because he knew that neither of the women he was about to face was done talking about how he’d handled that fight with the spirit beast. He even knew why they were concerned. He just didn’t want to talk about it because it would make him sound as childish as he’d been. Rather than waiting for the question, he just provided the answer.

“Because it was my last chance,” he said.

Grandmother Lu blinked at him in evident confusion, while Lai Dongmei frowned.

“You were going to ask me why I acted that way. You were going to ask why I let sentiment make the decision for me. It’s because it was probably my last chance to do it. I can’t behave that way at the capital. I’ve been saddled with a mountain of responsibility I don’t want and can’t trust to anyone else. The price of that choice is that I can’t just be Lu Sen. I have to be Lord Lu there. I have to be the royal presence. Or, is it the imperial presence? I guess it doesn’t make a difference. The point is that I have to always be that. Cold. Hard. Unyielding. I can have whims, but I can never have sentiment. At least, I can’t for the foreseeable future. Not about most things.

“I can make sentimental choices about children or pets because everyone understands those sentiments. I can’t be that way about anything that might expose a personal weakness. I could justify saving the spirit oxen because they’re allies. I could never justify saving this piece of the wilds because it would be problematic to move the oxen. It would expose that I don’t just see the oxen as allies. I view them as friends. That would make them targets. Yes, it was sentimental. It was even childish. And,” he took a deep breath, “it was my last chance. I didn’t recognize that at the time, but that is the why you’ve been searching for.”

There was a protracted silence while the other considered his words. Lai Dongmei eventually nodded with a sympathetic look. He’d expected that she would understand. She, of all people, knew what it was to wear a mask at all times. Grandmother Lu was a different matter. She closed her eyes and seemed to age a little right in front of Sen. When she opened her eyes, they were filled with such an intense sorrow that Sen was taken aback.

“It’s a terrible thing they’ve done to you,” she said.

Sen weighed those words before he said the only thing he could think of.

“I suspect most necessary things are.”