BOOK 11: CHAPTER 43: A LONG WALK

The morning was overcast, and the wind was particularly bitter on the day that Kang was driven from the city. Sen didn’t allow him to slip away quietly, either. The former general had been dressed in peasant clothes. They were appropriate for the season but lacked all of the sophistication and refinement of his old clothes. The man had been given a pack with a tent, a few pieces of basic gear, and enough food to last for two weeks. From the way the man was bent, Sen couldn’t tell if the pack was weighing him down or the shame of what was to come. Maybe it’s both, thought Sen as they marched Kang out of the palace gates.

The route had been selected in advance, and there were soldiers guarding the entirety of it. Sen hadn’t seen the need, but everyone had argued that Kang likely wouldn’t reach the city wall without them. It seemed that the public looked very poorly on those who tried to tarnish a hero of the land. As Sen saw the many angry faces in the crowds who had gathered to watch the disgraced general’s final walk through the capital, he started to understand. Those people looked ready to commit murder. He just hoped that their bloodlust would hold until the afternoon, when the executions were scheduled.

Sen and a small contingent of the military leadership walked behind Kang. In theory, they were there to bear witness. In practice, they were coming along to brief Sen on the army’s preparedness to march. Sen listened to their reports with half an ear while he studied the crowds. He genuinely did not understand their anger, which he suspected said more about him than them. He knew that his education had been haphazard at best. There were still tremendous gaps in it, but he often felt that the biggest gap was how much he didn’t understand about society.

He could deduce certain things from their outsized reaction to the news of Kang’s betrayal. They had all obviously been raised with an almost religious reverence for the heroes of the land. So, the betrayal of one hero by another hero had to have cut them deeply. However, it all felt artificial to Sen. They didn’t know Kang or Mo. At best, some of them might have glimpsed one or the other a handful of times or at some great distance. It struck him that they weren’t reverent toward the men, but toward some ideal they thought the men represented.

There was a power in that, but it felt dangerous to him. Sen knew from painful, personal experience that ideals were often static, inflexible, and absolute. Everyone needed something to believe in, but he couldn’t help but wonder if ideals were a poor choice. The world wasn’t made for absolutes. It was too complex for that. People were too complex for that. Unfortunately, he couldn’t think of anything better that people could use to replace ideals. Perhaps nuance is simply one of those things that people need to acquire through time and experience

, he mused.

No sooner had that thought crossed his mind than he saw a man who had to be at least seventy draw back and hurl a rotten piece of fruit at Kang. Sen considered stopping it, but settled on simply redirecting the spoiled material enough that it missed the former general. And so it went for the rest of the very long walk to the city wall. People cursed Kang, his parents, and his entire family line. They threw rocks and food that belonged in the trash at him. Sen redirected those weapons of convenience. He’d decided that Kang would be exiled, and so he would see the man put through a gate. Beyond that, he wouldn’t give any thought to the man’s fate.

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The public shaming did seem to break the man more and more as they walked. Kang didn’t look left or right. He didn’t even look forward. He stared at the ground as he bent a little more with each passing mile. This was what Sen had intended. To show the former general that he would find no allies in this city. There would be no triumphant return from exile. No popular uprising of sympathetic peasants. If the man dared show himself here again, Sen doubted he would last an hour. The sun had crossed its zenith by the time they finally drew into sight of a gate. The city guards at the gate had been given very specific orders about how to handle this moment. They stopped Kang, searched him, and searched his pack.

It was only then that Sen approached him. When Kang looked up, it was as though someone had cast a terrible spell on the man. He appeared to have aged a decade in the last few days. The expression on his face was complicated. Kang might have been on the verge of tears or an apoplectic fit. The only thing that was clear was the hate in his eyes. He hated Sen more than anything else in the world at that moment. Sen lifted a hand and summoned a single bronze tael into it. He held it up to his eyes for a moment, as though he was examining it. All he really wanted to do was let the crowd get a clear view of it. Then, he dropped it on the ground in front of Kang.

“For your service,” said Sen.

It was such an egregious insult for someone like Kang that Sen expected him to turn around and walk through the gate. Kang shook with rage as he glared murder at Sen. However, it seemed the reality had sunk in just enough. There was no money in the man’s clothes or pack. That insultingly minuscule amount of money was the only money Kang would get from anyone. Looking like it cost him a piece of his very soul, the fallen general crouched down to scoop the coin up. He stood and tried to muster some dignity, but the hateful gazes of the crowd seemed to steal whatever energy he’d been using to fuel that effort. Hunching over, Kang passed through the gate and out into the cold of winter. Then, Sen lifted a hand and, with a minor expenditure of qi, a tiny red ball flew into the sky and burst into a signal that could be seen for miles. It was then that, on his orders, all of the gates to the city were closed and barred.

“Kang has been cast out,” said Sen, using qi to make his voice carry for miles. “His betrayal has been punished. The gates have been barred, so he knows there is no return.”

An upswell of noise that might have been cheering or screaming or a portal to the thousand hells opening shook the ground. Justice, of a sort, had been done. Sen glanced at the barred gates. For all his talk about the symbolism, he’d had a much more practical concern in mind. He hadn’t wanted someone with more motivation than sense to follow Kang and murder the man a half mile from the city walls. Sen wished that the day was over, but he needed to return to the palace almost immediately if he was judging the position of the sun correctly. There was more justice to be doled out.