Book 10: Chapter 1: Dancing Cloud

“What is that?” Sen asked as he peered skyward.

“That’s my big bird, Papa!” exclaimed Ai from her perch on his arm.

“Well,” said Sen thoughtfully, “it certainly is big.”

He kept starting up and trying to make sense of the thing. It didn’t look like a bird so much as a hodgepodge of animal parts that were thrown together into the general shape of a bird. He was pretty sure he saw some kind of shell on its back.

If I didn’t know any better

,

I’d think those were fins instead of tail feathers

, thought Sen. He’d never seen anything like it before. He’d never even heard of anything like it before. He finally turned to look at Uncle Kho.

“Do you know what that thing is?”

Uncle Kho glanced up from the scroll he’d been reading before letting his gaze wander skyward.

“Hmmm? Oh, yes, that’s a Fenghuang. The heavens only know where she found it, though. I thought they were extinct.”

“Is it safe?” asked Sen expressing his deepest concern.

It had been one thing when a flock of birds was chasing after his daughter and eating insects on command. This…

This

was something else entirely. That thing was big enough to swallow Ai whole in the blink of an eye. If it was dangerous, he might have to do something about it regardless of how much Ai seemed to love the bizarre flying creature.

“Safe?” murmured Uncle Kho. “I think it’s probably safe enough for little Ai. She does ride the odd beast.”

Sen shot Uncle Kho a look that bordered the lands of panic and disbelief.

“She does?” he demanded before turning his look to Ai. “Do you ride that giant bird?”

“Yes,” she answered with a look of distracted innocence before shouting upward. “Hey! Come meet Papa!”

Sen watched with increasing amazement as the enormous bird circled down toward them. He felt a fierce grip on the arm that wasn’t holding Ai and a harsh whisper.

“Is that entirely wise?” demanded Cao Kai-Ming.

Her gaze was locked onto the descending beast which just kept getting bigger and bigger as it descended. Sen had seen huge birds before. He’d fought a fire eagle once. That had probably been larger than this bird, but it had been full-grown. Sen was not at all convinced that this bird was an adult yet. He didn’t know why he thought that. It was just an intuition that this thing was still young. Young enough to have attached itself to his daughter without concern. Sen glanced over his shoulder at the very, very nervous-looking farmers and townspeople he’d helped Cao Kai-Ming shepherd across what felt like half the kingdom. He knew it hadn’t been half the kingdom but oh it had

felt

like it. They were muttering to each other, and most of them looked ready to flee at the first loud noise. A reaction that he found wise, on balance.

“Ai, is your big bird friend going to hurt anyone?” Sen asked.

She peered at him with large, dark eyes and shook her head.

“She only hurts bad things,” said Ai.

Sen wanted to follow up on what, precisely, Ai meant by

bad things

, but he didn’t have the time. The Fenghuang dropped to the ground right in front of him and Ai. He’d expected the impact to be enough to knock the unwary off their feet. Instead, the ridiculously large thing settled to earth with barely a puff of displaced dust from the road. The bird stretched its neck out so Ai could cheerfully pat her beak.

“Good bird,” said Ai. “This is Papa. Papa, this is my big bird.”

“Does—” Sen hesitated as he thought back. “Does

she

have a name?”

“She didn’t tell me,” said Ai with a shrug.

The Fenghuang studied Sen with intelligent, silver eyes. She cocked her head back and forth a few times before stretching her neck again, putting her beak within reach. At a nudge and a look from Ai, Sen reached out and patted the frankly terrifying beak. It looked like it could punch straight through, well, pretty much anything alive. Sen glanced over at Cao Kai-Ming. She was standing frozen in place, her eyes wide, and her face pale. He couldn’t really blame the other cultivator. The Fenghuang’s physical presence was intimidating enough, but he could feel the bird’s power too. She almost glowed with fire qi. Not quite on the same level as a nascent soul cultivator, but more than powerful enough to be a mighty deterrent to anything or anyone looking to bother Ai.

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He risked another look over his shoulder. The farmer and townspeople were huddled together and slowly backing away while trying to not appear like they were backing away. They all looked like they thought this entire venture had been a fool’s quest, and now they would pay for pursuing it. Not that all of them had pursued it. No matter how much Cao Kai-Ming exhorted them and Sen tried to reason with them, some of the people from that little village had simply refused to abandon their homes. He understood why. He even respected it a little, but it gnawed at him. Staying there was almost certainly a death sentence, but there had been little other choice but to leave them behind.

Okay

,

I probably could have made them leave

,

but I’d have had to watch them every second of every day if I did that

, thought Sen.

He’d had more than enough of telling other people what to do and cutting down those who didn’t listen. Not that he imagined those days were behind him. He knew they weren’t, but he wasn’t going to do that if he didn’t

have

to do it. There were enough tyrannical cultivators in the world without him joining their ranks all of the time. He shook off those thoughts and focused on the bird again.

“It’s very nice to meet you, Fenghuang,” he said.

The bird opened her beak. Sen braced himself for an overwhelming noise. What he got was a gentle warbling sound that seemed to pass over him like water from a brook. Ai got a distracted look and nodded.

“She says her name is Dancing Cloud. She says she is very pleased to meet the—” Ai’s face scrunched up in a moment of adorable confusion before she continued. “The oxen-friend.”

That gave Sen a moment of thoughtful pause. He couldn’t help but wonder if the spirit oxen had sent this bird to him, or to Ai, as a gesture of friendship. He’d have to ask the next time he ran across them. It did go a long way toward making him feel better about having his daughter wander around with the Fenghuang. It wasn’t exactly a stamp of approval. He was making some assumptions that only a long conversation with the bird could clear up. A conversation he did not want to have in the middle of the road with a bunch of terrified mortals behind him. He inclined his head to Dancing Cloud. There was another brief warbling, and Ai sat up a little straighter. She gave Sen’s neck a firm squeeze with her little arms before wiggling a bit to let him know she wanted to get down.

Sen was more than a little loathe to let her go but there was still a lot of work to do before his day would be over. He set Ai on the ground. The little girl looked curiously at all the villagers cowering behind Sen. A bright smile lit her face as she tackle-hugged his waist. Then, she trotted over to the Fenghuang and scrambled up on the bird’s broad back. She wrapped her arms around Dancing Cloud’s neck.

“Let’s go, bird!”

With a single flap of her wings, Dancing Cloud launched into the air with a laughing Ai on her back. The Fenghuang let out a single, piercing cry like that of an eagle. That elicited a few frightened shrieks from the villagers. Sen noticed Uncle Kho rolling his eyes.

“The time to be afraid was when she showed up,” said the nascent soul cultivator. “Not when she decided to leave.”

Sen shook his head and said, “Agreed.”

“You’re just going to let your daughter ride that thing?” asked Cao Kai-Ming.

“I don’t see why not,” said Sen with a glance at the still ashen-faced woman. “If Dancing Cloud wanted to do something, she’s had plenty of opportunities. Plus, I know exactly where they are.”

“As do I,” said Uncle Kho.

“And you are?” asked Cao Kai-Ming.

Uncle Kho was hiding his strength, so Sen decided to keep that secret for when it would be most hilarious to reveal the truth. The tail end of a long, tedious journey was not that time.

“He’s my Uncle Kho,” said Sen before waving an arm in a general

let’s move

gesture. “We’re almost there, so let’s not be slow about this. I have people I want to see.”

Sen recognized that for the half-truth it was. There

were

people he wanted to see. It was just a short list consisting of family and Glimmer of Night. The reality was that there would be a lot more people who wanted to see

him

that he wasn’t especially interested in spending his valuable time on. It was unavoidable, though. It was the price he paid for being Patriarch or Lord Lu or Judgment’s Gale or a fistful of other titles he didn’t appreciate or want all that much.

Tomorrow’s problems

, he told himself.

Those are tomorrow’s problems

.

Today’s problem is getting these people settled

. Even that would be temporary. Sen had sent word ahead to build the necessary housing and prep land for the farmers, but sorting out who went where was going to take some logistics. It would also take more time than there were hours left in the day. At least, that was a problem he could foist off onto Sua Xing Xing’s shoulders.

“Where’s Falling Leaf?” Sen asked Uncle Kho as the group moved toward the ever-growing town walls.

The elder cultivator frowned and said, “I’m not entirely sure. Probably beating some spirit beasts senseless based on the expression she had when she left.”

Sen knew that Falling Leaf had been unsuccessfully trying to negotiate with some rogue spirit beasts that weren’t falling in line with the beast king. They hadn’t been pleased when Sen had laid down the cold fact that they were never going to rule anything, no matter which way the war went. He wondered if Falling Leaf had finally reached the end of her patience. If she had, he wouldn’t want to be the fools waiting to receive her displeasure. He’d seen that displeasure in action once or twice. It tended to get messy.

“Yeah, I’m just brimming with sympathy for them,” offered Sen in a dry tone.