BOOK 11: CHAPTER 41: NONE OF YOU WILL LIKE THIS

Kang made the only choice he could. The only choice available to a man who cared in the slightest about what happened to his family. He talked. A fact that was not received with universal joy in the throne room. As Kang named the people he’d been conspiring with, space opened up around certain individuals in the room. It was as if the other nobles wanted to physically distance themselves from someone who had come down with a lethal and highly contagious disease. Those who were named glared murder at Kang, not that the former general noticed. He stood there as a broken man. His shoulders were stooped. His eyes remained fixed on the floor. His voice trembled like a person approaching the last years of a very long life.

Sen found the still-breathing members of Kang’s supporters much more interesting. A few looked shocked and stared with incredulity while their deposed leader dragged his noble allies down into hell with him. Some appeared lost, as if some guiding star in their night skies had suddenly and violently disappeared from sight. Sen supposed that those had been the ones who genuinely looked up to Kang as a hero of the land. The rest just looked afraid. No doubt fearful that some real or imagined role they might have played in this disaster would be revealed to all.

What he didn’t see were looks of guilt. It seems Chan Dishi took care of those people for me, thought Sen. I probably should have made him spare at least one of them for questioning. He took that as yet another lesson in just how inexperienced he was at being a tyrant. Capturing them and using their version of events as a way to at least partially verify Kang’s claims would have probably been obvious to a lifelong dictator. Hells, thought Sen. It might have even been obvious to Jing.

He tucked that away as something to keep in mind for the future, because he didn’t believe that this would prove the final time he’d be forced to purge military leadership or the ranks of nobles. Visions of needing to do something like it in all of the kingdoms he captured plagued him. That kind of bloodshed was not what he wanted. The spirit beasts were already killing plenty of mortals and cultivators. They didn’t need help getting the job done. At the same time, he knew it might prove unavoidable, at first. He just hoped that it would become less necessary as time went by, if only to spare his conscience.

None of which helped him with the problems in front of him. He’d only been giving Kang’s words middling attention, confident that Misty Peak and others in the room were making very careful note of the people he named. They would need to be investigated immediately, before they could get word to their servants to destroy anything that might make them look guilty. And Sen did want something more solid than Kang’s accusations. Kang was probably telling the truth about most of the people he’d named. Even so, Sen wouldn’t put it past the man to try to slip in a few people he just didn’t like.

There was a lot happening in the very near future, so it might stand to reason that there simply wouldn’t be time to be thorough. If that happened, Sen might just do away with the entire lot of them. He wouldn’t, but he could also see why people might believe that he would. Fortunately, he wasn’t going to need to deal with that task on his own. He suspected that nine-tail foxes were being dispatched as each name was uttered, even if he still rankled a bit every time he thought about that particular ability. He’d offered a handful of communication cores to Misty Peak, but she’d only taken one to facilitate communication between him and her.

“What about communication between you and the rest of the foxes?” he’d asked.

“Whatever makes you think we need such a contrivance, clever as it is?” she’d asked sweetly.

Then, she’d refused to answer even one of his many questions about how they communicated over any meaningful distance without such clever contrivances. It was both irritating and entirely consistent with what he knew about how the foxes operated. Still, now that Kang appeared to be winding down his very public accusations, Sen was going to have to do some things that weren’t going to make him any new friends. Unfortunately, that had been a predictable enough outcome, and he’d prepared for it. He could feel the people waiting out in the corridor in neat rows. They were waiting for his word. Sen focused his attention on Kang for a moment.

“Anything else you’d like to confess?” asked Sen.

“No,” said the former general in a raspy voice.

“Very well. Stay there for a moment,” said Sen, letting his gaze sweep around the room. “There’s something else I need to deal with first.”

Kang didn’t answer. He just nodded a little.

“None of you will like this,” announced Sen. “If the matter were less serious, I wouldn’t have to take such measures. For now, all of you will remain in the palace as guests. You will not be permitted to send word to your houses. Before you imagine that you’ll bribe some servant to do it for you, you will not be interacting with them. General Mo, if you would, please.”

Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

The general marched across the room to the main door. He reached up and struck the door three times with a closed fist, paused, and then struck it twice more. The doors swung open, and troops from the army marched in. One of the nobles who had been named by Kang made a desperate dash for the door. Sen could understand the action, even if it was futile. Chan Dishi covered the intervening distance in the blink of an eye. He shot Sen a big grin as he just held his arm out straight to the side, letting the panicked noble run his own face into it. By the time the noble had regained his senses, his arms and legs had been efficiently bound with ropes. Most of the nobles were more restrained with their actions, but their mouths continued to spew objections. Sen finally grew tired of it.

“Be silent,” he commanded. “Do not pretend that you would act differently if you had found such treachery in your own house. I suspect that you would do far worse and for less reason. Those of you who were not accused by Kang, I apologize for the inconvenience. I simply cannot dismiss the possibility that one of you will act on a misguided sense of loyalty. If you warned the houses of those who have been accused, I would be forced to act against you as well. Do not force my hand that way. You will not be mistreated. You will all be permitted to leave once the matter has been investigated to my satisfaction. I doubt that most of you will spend more than a night here.”

There was still anger on some faces, but he also noted a grudging recognition of the truth on many. They would have done worse and on far flimsier information. He suspected that it also occurred to a few of them that they preferred this restrained response. The entire situation could have been far bloodier if he’d just started executing everyone Kang pointed a finger at. Better by far, they would no doubt come to believe, that he at least looked for evidence that an allegation held weight. They didn’t want a world where an accusation alone could mean a death sentence, and neither did he. It might just take them a little while to recognize that through their current indignation.

As everyone was being escorted away, Sen called out, “Matriarch Fong, would you please stay for a moment?”

Fong Huifen looked at him with a serene expression before she nodded in acquiescence. She, Quon, and the newly hired Huang Muyang remained behind as the room all but emptied. General Mo and a few soldiers lingered near the door, their gazes fixed on Kang, who appeared nearly catatonic. Sen used his spiritual sense and qi to examine the man. He almost winced involuntarily. Kang wasn’t long for the world. He clearly hadn’t been in great condition before all of this started, but the strain of the impromptu trial seemed to have pushed several important parts of his body to the very cusp of failure. The man’s heart appeared ready to give out at any additional shock.

As long as he doesn’t die right now, thought Sen and turned his attention to the approaching Fong Huifen. She’d left Quon and Huang Muyang standing by the wall and approached alone. She slowed to a stop before giving Sen a long, inscrutable look, and then turning the same gaze on Lai Dongmei. The matriarch snorted.

“I hope the two of you know that there is such a thing as too beautiful,” observed the leader of the House of Fong.

Before Sen could decide how to react, Lai Dongmei burst into laughter. That seemed to set Jing off. By the time they started to gather themselves, Chan Dishi had wandered over to Fong Huifen.

“I know, right?” he asked. “I mean, look at them. It’s like the gods created the pair with the singular purpose of making the rest of us feel ugly.”

When Fong Huifen nodded in agreement, Sen felt a reflexive temptation to object. Then, he looked at Lai Dongmei, sighed, and kept his mouth shut. There was no argument to be made. They weren’t even being disrespectful. It was true. The part of him that remembered being thin and awkward briefly tried to convince him that it only applied to Lai Dongmei, but Sen had been in the presence of a mirror recently. He knew better. It still felt wrong to know better, but he did. Rolling his eyes at the cultivator and house matriarch, Sen rose from the hateful throne and stepped down to the floor. He still towered over them, but it felt a little less like he was projecting his tyranny.

“If you’re done amusing yourselves,” said Sen, “I actually do have a question for Lady Fong.”

“Yes?” asked Fong Huifen.

“I’m certain that you have a far better grasp than I do about the personalities of the nobles Kang accused. Do you think he was lying about any of them?”

That question seemed to burn any of the humor out of the matriarch. She mulled the question for a time with a serious look in her eyes.

“I know all of them. Hells. I watched most of them grow up. I even like a few of them,” said the woman with a disappointed sigh. “I’m hoping he was lying about them. But I can’t say that I find the prospect unthinkable for any of them. But that’s not what you’re really asking, is it?”

Sen gave her a gentle smile in reply.

“You want to know if I knew and kept it to myself.”

“Information is what you do,” said Sen. “At least, that’s the impression you worked very hard to leave me with.”

“I suppose I did, at that. It didn’t occur to me that impression might come back to haunt me like this. In answer to your question, no. I didn’t know. Quon didn’t know. There were rumors about something, maybe, happening with a general, but that’s as far as it went. We never learned what it was.”

That was the answer Sen had expected. Fong Huifen had worked too hard to stay on his good side to have thrown in with Kang. His mind knew it, but all the recent plotting against him had let a worm of paranoia take root inside him. He knew that was a problem that he couldn’t allow to linger for long. Otherwise, he’d start to doubt everyone, and that could only take him down a path to madness.

“Very well,” said Sen and turned to Kang. “Now, we just need to get you ready for your exile.”