BOOK 11: CHAPTER 58: INTRODUCTIONS

Sen was happy and a little relieved he could put off what he expected to be an uncomfortable meeting with Sua Xing Xing, at least for a little longer. He’d decided to get some actual sleep for once and had been woken by an ecstatic Ai jumping on him in the morning. That had led to breakfast and, then, to his excuse to procrastinate for a few minutes longer. Grandmother Lu had come to the galehouse to meet Ai. Sen had somewhat expected his daughter to be shy around the new person, but it seemed that was another change he’d missed in his time away. While Ai did hover a little closer to him, she mostly looked at Grandmother Lu with curious eyes. Sen did his part.

“Ai, this is my grandmother, Lu Jia. Grandmother, this is my daughter, Ai,” he said.

Ai performed a mostly correct bow and said, “This one is honored to meet you.”

The words sounded a little stiff and rehearsed to Sen’s ears, like it was something that someone had taught her to say in situations like this. Which is probably the exact thing that happened, thought Sen. Auntie Caihong probably taught it to her. If Grandmother Lu noticed the stiffness, she didn’t seem to care at all. She beamed at Ai and performed her own shallow bow.

“And I am very happy to meet you, Ai. You can call me Grandmother Lu.”

Ai glanced at Sen, as if to check and see if that was okay. Sen gave her a gentle smile and nodded. With that, whatever restraint had held Ai’s words in check disappeared.

“Grandmother Lu,” said Ai. “I’m a beautiful orchid. Papa said so.”

“And he was right! You are a beautiful orchid.”

With that, Grandmother Lu began her short road to becoming one of Ai’s favorite people. Sen followed behind them as Ai led Grandmother Lu outside to meet her bird friends. There was an explosion of feathers from every nearby tree as the girl’s flock of avian minions did their best to show off for their mistress, Grandmother Lu, or both. Ai chattered in an excited voice about the different birds for a while before she abruptly looked straight up.

“There’s my big bird!” she shouted excitedly.

Sen also turned his gaze up to see the sky monster circling far, far above. How Ai had sensed the thing at such a distance was anyone’s guess, but she had.

“Come down and meet Grandmother Lu!” shouted Ai into the air.

If he hadn’t seen her issue equally ludicrous commands in the past, Sen might have doubted the usefulness of those words. Yet, the Fenghuang dutifully began to descend. Grandmother Lu shot him an incredulous look to which he could only shrug. He’d warned her about this, but he supposed some things simply had to be witnessed with one’s own eyes. It seemed that a supposedly extinct spirit beast willingly taking the orders of a small child was just one of those things. The Fenghuang touched down with nearly impossible gentleness. Ai raced over to the spirit beast, long since having moved past even a modicum of fear, but Grandmother Lu was more cautious. She kept her distance and sent more than one questioning look at Sen.

He finally walked over to the sky monster. The spirit beast looked at him briefly and nudged his shoulder with a beak before turning back to Ai. It was only after witnessing that exchange that Grandmother Lu straightened her back and walked over to them. Sen stepped back a little to let that meeting play out in whatever way it would. He thought that the danger mostly existed in Grandmother Lu’s mind. Not that anything as powerful as the core cultivator equivalent spirit beast could be considered safe. At best, it could only ever be considered safe for a given person to be around. She

, Sen reminded himself. This Fenghuang is female.

It was only after introductions had been made and the spirit beast nominally accepted Grandmother Lu’s presence that Sen walked back over to them. He crouched down next to Ai.

“I need to go and talk with some people at the sect,” he told her. “I want you to listen to Grandmother Lu while I’m gone.”

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“Do you have to go?” she asked even as her eyes openly pleaded with him to stay.

“I’m afraid so, little orchid. I’ll try to be as quick about it as I can.”

“Promise?”

“I do,” said Sen.

Ai released what sounded like a very adult sigh of resignation before she nodded. Sen wavered for a moment. One of the people he intended to talk to was Auntie Caihong. He wanted her opinion about letting Ai fly on the Fenghuang again, but he decided that he could make a smaller promise without blatantly undoing any rules that had been established.

“If I get back early enough,” said Sen, “just for today, I’ll go flying with you and Dancing Cloud.”

He’d almost called the Fenghuang a sky monster before catching himself. Thankfully, his thoughts were not on open display. Instead, the spirit beast was staring at him with intense eyes, while Ai was practically shoving him toward the sect proper.

“Hurry!” she shouted. “Go talk to people and come back!”

“I will,” laughed Sen, before planting a quick kiss on the top of Ai’s head.

Grandmother Lu caught his arm as he walked by and whispered, “Don’t hurry too fast.”

“I won’t,” he whispered back.

With that, the fun, joy-filled part of his day came to a swift and unwelcome end. He did his best to push his discontent to the back of his mind. This was going to be his life from now on. He might particularly loathe that fact at that exact moment, but it wasn’t going to get better. It would only get worse. He couldn’t afford to let his emotions lead him into rash decisions the way he used to. It would only cause more problems, and then he’d be forced to deal with the consequences of those problems on top of the problems he already had. He just wished this all could have been done somewhere else, at some other time, when it didn’t intrude on his time with Ai.

He didn’t hurry through the sect. The very moment that word reached Sua Xing Xing that he was walking toward the building that housed his office, she would undoubtedly race to meet him there. Sen wanted to give her time to arrive and compose herself. He even went so far as to stop and observe a group of formation foundation cultivators practicing sword forms. Most were adequate. A few were above average. Some of their problems would be solved through additional practice or advancement. He could have offered advice, but he knew that would take more time than he had to give at the moment. Instead, he nodded at the instructor.

“Well done,” he said to the group of students. “Continue to train with diligence, and you will bring honor to the sect.”

Sen felt a little oily for speaking such empty words, but the lower-stage cultivators were all smiles as they bowed to him. The reactions baffled him for a moment before he reasoned out that even empty praise from a patriarch was still praise. He resumed his steady walk and soon found himself approaching the office that he’d never even bothered to decorate in any way. An unfamiliar woman sat outside the office. He blinked at her in confusion. There had been a gatekeeper that someone had assigned to sit at that desk. Sen was just certain that the person had been a man.

“Patriarch,” said the woman in a voice that only quavered a little. “I am Tan Yu. I have been assigned to—”

She trailed off as Sen looked at her quizzically.

“Patriarch?” she asked in a voice that was little more than a squeak.

“Didn’t there used to be someone else who sat at that desk?” Sen asked.

“That was before you left with no indication of when or even if you would return,” said Sua Xing Xing from inside the room. “His talents were needed doing something other than sitting outside an empty office.”

“Oh,” said Sen. “That makes sense.”

He nodded to Tan Yu, who looked ready to collapse in relief, and strode into his office. He found Sua Xing Xing standing there. She offered him a very deep bow. Sen was no master of the intricacies of bows, but even he recognized that it was inappropriately deep given the position of authority he’d left her in. Unless, that was, both of them knew that she had made some grave error. Sen made sure to close the door behind him and create a wind barrier to obscure their words before he spoke.

“Oh, stand up,” he muttered as he walked behind the stone desk and sat down in the comfortable chair he’d left there.

“Patriarch—” she began.

He could see she was making an effort to appear calm, but her right hand kept twitching like she wanted to grab her robes with it.

“If I meant to kill you, it’d be done already. So,” he said while pointing at a chair, “sit down.”

Sen took a few minutes to brew some tea, shamelessly using qi to speed up the heating and cooling processes. It did reduce the quality of the finished tea a little, but he doubted that Sua Xing Xing was going to remember the taste of anything she drank during this meeting. He poured them both a cup and slid one over to sit in front of the nervous woman. She waited until he lifted his cup to his lips before she almost snatched her cup, seeming desperate for something to do with her hand.

Sen looked at her over the rim of his cup and spoke.

“You think I’m not going to like what you’ll have to say.”

“No, Patriarch. I do not.”

“You’re almost certainly right,” agreed Sen. “I know this because you elected not to inform me about any of what was happening. You seemingly ordered everyone else not to inform me as well. So, why don’t we start with that? Do tell, Sua Xing Xing. Just why was it that you made such a monumentally poor choice?”