Book 11: Chapter 3: Complicated

“You go ahead,” Sen told the cultivators.

Sen knew that it still made them a little uncomfortable to enter the capital ahead of him. All of their sect training told them that he should go first as the leader, but he always made a point to hang back and make them go first. They were always greeted with enthusiasm whenever they came back from one of these missions. Sen took a lot of amusement out of the way the mortals and cultivators interacted with each other now. The cultivators were used to mortals treating them with courtesy or something like it, but he doubted most of them had ever experienced anything approaching genuine appreciation. Fear had a way of undercutting that.

The mortals in the capital were less formal now, which seemed to trip up some of the cultivators, but their earnest words and gestures largely bridged the gap. Sen observed from a dark shadow near the gate, cloaking himself in even more of that darkness, and

hiding

on top of it. He watched as the cultivators and mortals mixed in a way that was more natural even than what he’d been able to accomplish back at his own sect. Surviving what had surely seemed like certain death together had forged something new.

“This is a stroke of genius,” said a quiet voice from right next to him.

“Misty Peak,” said Sen, greeting what appeared to be a patch of empty ground right next to him. “What makes you say that?”

“Having them interact this way helps to remind everyone of what happened in a positive way. It reinforces the mortals’ view of the cultivators as their protectors, and does the same thing for the cultivators. Was this your idea?”

“Most of

my

good ideas come from other people, but this one was mine. I’ve been on both sides of this particular problem. People want heroes, and people also want to be heroes. Of course, once people start thinking of you as a hero, treating you like a hero, you tend to feel like you need to live up to that. There are always going to be a few who don’t get it,” said Sen as he marked a cultivator who left immediately with a nasty expression on her face, “but I’m starting to believe that most people will rise to the challenge if you give it to them.”

“Hmmm,” said Misty Peak. “What if they can’t live up to it?”

“Why do you think I spent so much time running away from all those stories about me?”

“No more running for you these days, though,” observed the fox-woman with a note of amusement in her voice.

“Oh, thank you so much for that reminder.”

“You’re very welcome.”

Sen watched the cultivators and mortals mix for another minute before he sighed.

“Did Lo Meifeng send you to fetch me?”

“Not this time. I’d heard about this little ritual and wanted to see it for myself. Besides, you never come to see me,” the fox-woman pouted.

“I never go to see anyone anymore. As Lo Meifeng, and Grandmother Lu, and Jing, and you have all pointed out to me more than once, everything I do is political now. If I’m seen visiting you, people will read at least twenty things into it, only one of which might be true if I’m having an exceptionally good day.”

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“And yet, I suspect that if you wanted to go somewhere without being noticed, you could do it.”

Sen wanted to sigh again, but didn’t. She wasn’t wrong. He

could

do exactly that. He just didn’t want to go have a conversation with the fox-woman only to find himself in the middle of some awkward seduction attempt. Well, it would be awkward for him at any rate. He wasn’t entirely sure that Misty Peak was capable of experiencing those kinds of feelings. At least, not the way he experienced them or for the same reasons. He supposed she must be able to feel embarrassment, but he didn’t have the faintest idea of what would cause it.

“Probably,” he admitted. “Even so, do you want to risk me drawing that level of attention to you if I’m not sneaky enough?”

“No—” she started to say before seeming to change her mind. “Actually, yes.”

“What? Why?”

“Because you’re not that careless. And that damnable sect matriarch has stolen a march on me.”

Sen repressed yet another sigh. He’d hoped that this infatuation with him would have faded over time. Still, it seemed that Uncle Kho and Auntie Caihong had the right of it when they warned him that he’d, however unintentionally, nurtured more than a passing interest on the fox-woman’s part. Sen also wasn’t oblivious to the tension between Lai Dongmei and Misty Peak. Oh, neither of them ever said anything to

him

about it, but they hadn’t needed to say anything. It was almost painfully obvious whenever they interacted.

He’d rarely seen such empty smiles or cutting doublespeak. That was just what he’d picked up on, and reading those things was not one of his strengths. He felt like this was a problem he needed to fix sooner rather than later. He hadn’t wanted to do it because he didn’t like being harsh to people, but it looked unavoidable.

“You have to understand that I don’t—” he considered his words with care. “I don’t share your interest in that kind of relationship.”

There was a long pause before she became abruptly visible. She looked at him with a kind of intensity that made him feel oddly exposed.

“How would you know?” she asked. “Weren’t you the one who said that you didn’t really know me at all?”

Sen found himself without a good response to those questions. He had said that. It was still true. He didn’t know her. At least, he’d never believed he knew her. It always seemed like she was putting on some kind of show. For all he knew, this entire conversation was her playacting out some kind of fantasy. Except, he didn’t believe that’s what was happening. She was different now. So much of the frivolousness had been stripped away from her personality. Of course, he didn’t know this version of her any better than he’d known the last version of her. Before he could come up with any kind of answer, she spoke again.

“If you’re not even going to bother to try to get to know me, how can you say that with so much certainty? For all you know, I might be the love of what will be your exceptionally long life.”

A dozen objections to that line of reasoning sprang to mind, but they all hinged on suspicions he held about what was happening to him that there was no way for her to know about. It also didn’t help that she was, for all intents and purposes, a princess. And he just didn’t have good experiences with princesses.

Damn it

, he thought.

Why are these things always so messy and complicated

? He wanted to just tell her he didn’t like her, but that wasn’t precisely true. He didn’t know her. So, that would just be an excuse and a flimsy one at that.

The real problem was that he didn’t trust her. He trusted her more than he used to, but that wasn’t the same thing as putting true faith in her. Of course, the same objection would apply. That could potentially be solved if he put in the time to get to know her. He did have an excuse for that, though.

“It’s not exactly the best time for me to be getting to know anyone. There is that pesky matter of a war to deal with. It’s soaking up most of my time.”

She gave him a narrow-eyed look that told him she knew exactly what he was doing and was not amused by it.

“It’s

never

the best for things like this. Life will always be happening,” she said, leaning in closer. “If you put things off every time there’s a crisis, you’re going to discover someday that you never got any living done.”

With that, she disappeared again. Sen was quite certain that the empty spot beside him was actually empty now.

“So damn complicated,” he muttered.