The investigation turned out to be a surprisingly brief matter. Misty Peak and her foxes spent less than a day on it before returning with their evidence. That didn’t make the entire thing a pleasant affair. Many of the detained nobles complained relentlessly, even the one who hadn’t suffered an accusation of disloyalty. That was when they weren’t trying to bribe their guards to either release them or carry messages. It got bad enough that Sen threatened to make trying to bribe a member of the army a crime that carried the sentence of death to be carried out immediately.

The guards might be loyal, but that pack of nobles was offering sums that would have made Sen sell his soul during those years he lived on the streets. It would have been unreasonable and unrealistic to expect the guards to resist that kind of ongoing temptation. As it was, no less than four of the guards did try to slip away to claim those absurd sums. They were captured or reported by their more honest fellow guards. Sen left their punishment up to General Mo. Even the combination of Sen’s threats and potential punishment by Mo didn’t entirely solve the problem. It did reduce the bribery attempts to a more livable level, and there were only two more guards who foolishly tried to carry messages.

The reports of the nine-tail foxes had surprised Sen. Kang, in a moment of good sense, had chosen not to implicate anyone innocent. The involvement of a few of the nobles was peripheral enough that Sen would find some lesser way to deal with them. But that apparent honesty on the part of the former general did spare Sen the ugly necessity of inflicting poverty on the rest of the man’s family. Unfortunately, it also meant that he had to punish those nobles with the deepest involvement. He was tempted to exile them the same way he intended to exile Kang.

Doing that might send the wrong message, though. After all, Sen had framed exile and sparing Kang’s family as a reward for not lying. He could imprison them, but he doubted that would have the intended effect. It would be too difficult to prevent their families from bribing guards to deliver luxuries or even to overlook an escape. Yes, the foxes could almost certainly track any escapees down, but that would waste the time of valuable resources that could be better applied elsewhere.

“What are you brooding about?” asked Grandmother Lu.

Sen’s attention returned to the little courtyard where he’d secluded himself. He’d retreated to Lu Manor to escape the constant attention at the palace for a few hours. It had proven a dubious decision. He could escape the people but not the responsibilities.

“I’m trying to decide what to do with the nobles who conspired with Kang.”

Grandmother Lu lifted an eyebrow and asked, “Are you, now?”

“I am,” said Sen.

Even as he said it, he tried to ignore an uncomfortable feeling in the back of his head. It was the same one he always got when someone was about to chide him for ignoring something obvious that he didn’t want to look at too closely. Grandmother Lu heaved a dramatic sigh and leveled a frown at him.

“You say that like there’s a choice.”

“There’s always a choice,” said Sen.

Digging his heels in made him feel both better and worse. He felt better because he was right. There was always

a choice. He felt worse because of how blatantly and distressingly hollow that choice was in practice. Grandmother Lu tutted softly.

“I see. So, it’s that sort of thing.”

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“What sort of thing?” asked Sen.

“The sort of thing where you’ve already decided, but you don’t want to deal with the aftermath. So, you’re trying to think of any possible way you can avoid it.”

The uncomfortable feeling intensified before Sen said, “Am I really that transparent?”

“No. You’re a person,” said Grandmother Lu, sitting down next to Sen on the bench. “When you get to be as old as I am, you’ll have seen a lot of people in a lot of situations. You learn to recognize the signs of someone avoiding an unpleasant duty.”

“I’m just sotired of death. Maybe this would be easier if I didn’t know that there’s so much more death coming.”

“It wouldn’t. And I’m glad of that.”

“Glad? Why would that make you glad?”

“Because it means you haven’t become like the old monsters. I don’t just mean your teachers, but all of those terrible old nascent soul cultivators. They’re so disconnected from the lives of mortals and even lesser cultivators, so disconnected from what makes everyone value those lives, that it’s too easy for them to take life. For me, living another hundred years or two hundred years is an incomparable gift. And that’s because it came to me so close to my death. I’ve been old and infirm. I know what it means to yearn for youth, to yearn for freedom from pain, to yearn for more life.

“They all take another hundred years or thousand years for granted. They expect it. Barring someone like Feng Ming coming along and killing them, they’ll probably get it. That expectation robs them of something. Empathy, perhaps. Maybe it just steals pity from their hearts. I don’t know. So, yes, I’m glad that you still struggle with taking life, even if that taking is unavoidable. It means that you haven’t lost that ability to feel empathy or pity. I’m sure that day will come. I think it probably must come, for your sanity if nothing else, but I’m glad it hasn’t come yet.”

Sen sat with all of that for several minutes. He knew he’d be lying to himself if he said he was also glad. There was a part of him that envied those old monsters and their coldness. Everything he was being asked to do would be so much easier if he just didn’t care. But he did care. He might not care personally about those nobles, but he cared what happened to humanity. He cared that doing what he needed to do was going to end with more dead mortals and no dead spirit beasts.

“I understand that I must make my political control of this place as unassailable as I possibly can before I leave. I just loathe the bloodshed it calls for. I hate that I have to make myself look ruthless and indifferent for the message to take. This isn’t who I wanted to be.”

“I know,” said Grandmother Lu. “It’s not the life I would have chosen for you. I’d hoped you would find a kinder life. I know now that was always going to be impossible. Still, I wish that I had the power to kill that old bastard for pushing you into all of this.”

Sen couldn’t help but smile at the thought of Grandmother Lu beating Master Feng unconscious. He didn’t think that she’d actually kill him, even if given the opportunity, but maybe she would. There had been a particularly spiteful gleam in her eye when she said that. For all that, he found it strangely comforting to know that she was still more worried about him than the war. It seemed that everyone else was worried about Judgment’s Gale, the new ruler of the kingdom. Grandmother Lu was only worried about Sen.

“So, what will you do?” she asked.

“What I was always going to do,” he admitted. “I’ll just do it with fewer regrets. I’ve been letting myself avoid some of the harsher decisions because they were harsh and because I had an excuse. The army wasn’t ready. As long as that was true, I could put things off. I could pretend that I wasn’t really in charge. That excuse is gone now. Once we march, I have to be a leader in fact and not just name.”

“Are you ready to do that?”

“I doubt it, but I’ll do it anyway. Who knows how many people have died while I avoided things?”

“You say that like you’ve been gardening this whole time,” said Grandmother Lu.

“Fair. I haven’t been shirking everything, but there were things I could have done that I just didn’t. The world isn’t going to keep waiting. It’s time for me to do my part.”

“By conquering the continent.”

Sen groaned.

“Every time someone says that, I can’t decide if I feel like a complete ass for even contemplating it or like an imposter playing at being an emperor.”

“You shouldn’t limit yourself that way. You can be both and still conquer the continent.”

Sen stared at Grandmother Lu with his mouth hanging open before the laughter bubbled up and burst out of him.

“I suppose I can.”