Book 3: Chapter 15: The Call
For a few moments, Sen didn’t know how to feel as vying emotions went to war inside his chest. A small part of him rankled at the knowledge that he was, once more, under the watchful eyes of a minder. Even though he’d suspected all of those bodies had been Lo Meifeng’s work, he was still shocked to see that she was actually alive. Part of him had truly believed she was dead. An irrational piece of his heart was deeply angry at the woman for leaving them behind when she went back to the city. The feeling that won out, in the end, was a profound, overwhelming, complicated sort of relief.
The knowledge of her survival eased the guilt he’d been carrying around for weeks. The fact of her return lessened the burden of providing protection for him and Lifen. Mostly, though, he discovered that he was almost disturbingly relieved that he no longer needed to lead. Lifen had provided input and advice, but left the final decisions up to him, as though his handful of months on the road before somehow qualified him to ensure their survival. Sen had found it a task for which he felt wholly, utterly unfit. Not sure how he should treat the returned minder, Sen just cocked an eyebrow at her?
“What bet?”
“About which way you would go,” said an all-too-smug Lo Meifeng.
“So, I’m predictable,” said Sen. “That’s reassuring.”
“Not really. You only had so many options. Well, you only had so many sane options. You’re not stupid. You’ve been heading south for a long time now. Tactically speaking, a change in direction made sense. It was just a question of whether you’d do it here or farther south. I bet myself a silver tael that you’d pick here.”
“Congratulations?” asked Sen, not sure if it was entirely warranted.
“Thank you,” said Lo Meifeng. “So, what’s the plan?”
Sen stared at the woman in utter disbelief. “You’re joking, right?”
“Didn’t you figure it out, yet? My plan was only ever to keep you alive. Running away and hiding were the best ways to do that, so we’ve been running and hiding. My plan never went beyond that. As long as we’re going to keep doing that, I don’t need to call the shots.”
“We’ve been running and hiding. You’ve been doing other things. I saw your handiwork back there.”
Lifen piped up then. “Handiwork? What are you talking about?”
“You didn’t tell her?” asked Lo Meifeng with a bit of genuine surprise.
Sen shrugged. “They were dead. I didn’t see the point.”
“Who was dead?” demanded Lifen, her voice laced with concern and anger.
With a sigh, Sen explained. “Lo Meifeng has been busy on her vacation. If you went back and searched the woods around the road the way we came, you’d find bodies. A lot of them. I assume those were people hunting for us.”
Lo Meifeng nodded. “They were.”
Lifen punched Sen in the arm. Sen thought she must have put a lot of effort into that punch because he felt a bit of a sting where it landed.
“You didn’t tell me?!”
“Tell you what? You already knew we were being chased. Those people were already dead. Did you want to see the bodies?”
“You should have told me that they were that close.”
“Oh, by the countless hells. Why?”
Lifen seemed lost for a moment before she said, “So that I would know.”
“Again, why? What would knowing have accomplished other than making you worry more than you already were?”
“I had a right to know.”
Sen wanted to brush that aside but couldn’t. He’d kept the information back with the best intentions. He didn’t want to make a long, difficult journey more difficult for her by piling on extra mental and emotional pressure. Especially when there was exactly nothing that she could do with the information other than worry it like a dog with a bone. Still, he supposed that hadn’t really been his call to make. He’d been nominally in charge, but the fact that their enemies had been that close was relevant knowledge. In her place, he would have wanted to know, even if there wasn’t anything he could do about it. He’d been trying to protect her, but there had probably been a better way to go about doing it.
“You’re right,” admitted Sen. “You did have a right to know. I didn’t see any benefit for you in sharing it, so I held back. But it wasn’t my place to decide that for you. I’m sorry.”
Lifen still looked angry, but at least partially mollified. “Thank you. But I want a promise from you right now. No more secrets.”
“Don’t be stupid,” said Lo Meifeng.
“What?” shouted Lifen, incensed at the words.
“I said, don’t be stupid. We all have secrets. Some secrets we only share when we’re ready. Some we’ll never share. You don’t have a right to all of his secrets or anyone’s secrets. After all, are you prepared to tell him all of your secrets?”
Lifen went a little pale at those words and whispered, “No.”
“Then, don’t go demanding promises you wouldn’t make. We will all, however, share information relevant to our mutual safety from here on out. Agreed?”
Sen and Lifen murmured their agreements.
“Good,” said Lo Meifeng, fixing her gaze on Sen. “So, what’s the plan?”
Sen felt the unwelcome mantle of leadership drop back onto his shoulders like a mountain. Yet, it wasn’t like there were any real decisions to make at this point. He and Lifen had already made the decision. Gritting his teeth a little, he forced himself to stay calm. Being in charge doesn’t really change anything, he assured himself. It’s just like it was before she came back. Even in his own head, the words sounded like a lie.
“We go west,” he said.
Then, suiting actions to words, he started walking. They were a quiet group for the next few hours, each lost in their own thoughts. For Sen’s part, he kept thinking about his oh-so-inaccurate map. There were cities out to the west, but he was all too aware that those cities might well be hundreds of miles away. While he wasn’t eager to visit any more cities for the next, oh, one thousand years or so, resources were concentrated near to cities. That made them an annoying, necessary risk. They didn’t necessarily need to go into the cities, but they had to get close. Getting close meant potentially exposing themselves to the demonic cultivators or their agents. Sen chased that circle inside his head for a long time before Lo Meifeng stepped up beside him and matched his pace.
“I was happy that you left the inn when you said you would,” she said.
Sen found himself gritting his teeth again. “That makes one of us.”
She gave him a sidelong glance. “You aren’t?”
“I get that it was the smart move. Probably the safest move for me and Lifen.”
“But?”
“But I hated it,” snapped Sen. “You don’t really know me, yet. So, you’re probably not aware that I don’t know very many people. It’s more now than it was, but it’s not a lot. Leaving one of them behind, leaving them to die, it might not matter that much to some people, but it mattered to me.”
Lo Miefeng was quiet for a while before she said, “You felt guilty.”
“Yes.”
“But you did it anyway.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
The low burn of anger that had been building up inside of Sen vanished beneath a flood of emotional fatigue. “Because I knew going back was stupid. Getting Lifen killed, getting myself killed, all in some attempt to save someone who might not need saving, would have been stupid.”
“Yes, it would have been,” said Lo Meifeng. “Listen to me, Sen. Leaving people you know behind, especially when you think they’ll die, it’s hard. It should be hard. Cultivators treat life pretty cheaply a lot of the time. The heavens know that I do. Still, we make friends and form relationships. As hard as it is, though, leaving people behind is also necessary sometimes.”
“So, how are you supposed to live with it afterward?”
“Everyone finds their own way. For most people, it’s by doing their best that make sure those sacrifices weren’t for nothing.”
“For you?”
“Oh, well, I take a different approach.”
Sen gave her a sidelong glance. “Care to share?”
Lo Meifeng considered that question for almost a full mile before she answered. “When one of my friends gets killed, I find the people who did it.”
“And?”
She shrugged. “And what you’d expect. I murder them all.”
“Does it help?” asked Sen, not really surprised by the answer.
“It helps me. I’m not sure if it would help someone else.”
“What if they’re more powerful than you are?”
“That’s what lists, patience, and poison are for.”
Sen gave her a sharp look. “What exactly is it that you do for Master Feng?”
She smirked. “I solve problems.”
Sen decided not to pursue clarification about what that meant. They walked next to each other for a little way before Lo Meifeng bumped his arm with her shoulder. He glanced over at her.
“Yes?”
“I’m glad you didn’t go back looking for me. But I appreciate that you wanted to, even though you don’t like me.”
“Oh, I like you fine. It’s your job I can’t stand. Besides, even Lifen wanted to go back for you.”
That caught Lo Meifeng off-guard, and she would have tripped if Sen hadn’t caught her arm. She gave him an incredulous look before sneaking a glance over her shoulder at the younger woman. She gave a frustrated shake of her head.
“I may have been a bit too hard on that girl.”
“How so?” asked Sen.
Lo Meifeng waved the question away. “I just said some things that, in hindsight, may have been ill-considered.”
With that, Lo Meifeng dropped back to walk with Lifen. Sen heard the quiet sounds of their voices but made a concerted effort not to listen in. He finally called up a light breeze to carry their voices away from him. It wasn’t that he wasn’t curious. He was burning with curiosity, but Lo Meifeng had clearly meant for it to be a private conversation. That made it something that was simply not his business. Instead, he focused inward for a time, consciously cultivating instead of letting his passive cultivation handle the process. He was about ready to condense a bit more liquid qi. Now that Lo Meifeng was back to pick up some of the slack for keeping them safe, he might even get the opportunity. He was idly poking at that ribbon of strange qi in his dantian when he felt something he hadn’t felt for months. He stopped in his tracks, his eyes focused on the distance. He’d felt a tug on his soul.
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