Book 4: Chapter 34: The Capital (2)
Sen mentally throttled the urge to yell at Chan Yu Ming. Of course, she’d left out that trivial detail of being royalty. Much as he might like to, though, he couldn’t really blame her for not bringing it up. Sen had his prejudices, and she knew about them. He didn’t like nobles. From her point of view, it would be an all too easy leap to make to assume that he’d see royalty as nobility, only worse, and she’d have been right. That was something they’d have to deal with later, though, because there was still a bunch of people standing there and staring at him instead of Chan Yu Ming, which did not make Sen expect that good things were about to happen. Taking a soothing breath, Sen turned back to the seemingly random assortment of people arrayed before him. He picked the person who looked the least like they were attached to some powerful governmental body. He was an excessively lean man with deep-set, nervous eyes and more silver than black left in his hair.
“How can I help you?” Sen asked the man, ignoring the affronted looks from all of the other people.
The man silently held out a sealed envelope. Sen took it, broke the seal, and slid a folded sheet of paper out. He glanced over it, then pulled a silver tael from a storage ring and tossed it to the man. The lean man deftly snatched the money from the air, only for his eyes to go a little wide. He offered Sen a deep bow.
“My gratitude,” said the man.
“Do you know where the person who sent the note is?” asked Sen.
The man nodded. “I do.”
“I’d take it as a kindness if you’d let her know we’ve been,” Sen looked at the other people waiting on him, “delayed.”
“Of course.”
Sen offered the man a shallow bow. “Thank you.”
The lean man disappeared back toward the gate. Sen next turned his attention to the city guard. He pointed at the one in front, assuming he was the one in charge, and asked, “Me or her?”
The guard looked up at Sen. “I do not understand.”
“Are you here for me or for her?” he asked again, hiking a thumb at Chan Yu Ming.
The man slammed his forehead into the ground. “We were sent to greet the princess.”
A little bit of relief passed through Sen as he looked at Chan Yu Ming. “They’re your headache.”
Chan Yu Ming looked frustrated, but she stepped apart from the group. At a gesture from her, the city guards sprang to their feet and trailed after the princess like ducklings after their mother. Sen finally turned his attention back to the one person who was apparently there to talk to him. He studied the woman for a moment. She looked caught between amusement and annoyance for a moment before she smoothed her features into a neutral expression.
“You are the one called Judgment’s Gale?” she asked Sen.
Sen said nothing for several moments before he ignored the question entirely and asked one of his own. “Who are you?”
The woman seemed startled that Sen hadn’t simply jumped to answer her question, which told Sen that the woman expected people to obey when she spoke. Her expression didn’t change, but Sen could see in the woman’s eyes that she was reassessing him in some way. He supposed he might have been more worried, but the woman and the men she’d brought with her were all mortals. So, any threat they posed was more likely political than physical. That didn’t mean he should antagonize her needlessly. Sen had been reflecting on some of the things he’d done under the influence of his heart demon. While some of the more objectively insane things he’d done could be laid directly at its feet, many of the simply offensive things he’d done had been driven primarily by his basic dislike of certain groups of people. Automatically taking a hostile stance hadn’t served him especially well, but he hadn’t gone looking for this woman either. She’d come looking for him. He didn’t think it was too much to expect her to identify herself or at least identify whoever had sent her before hiding demands for information in the form of a question.
“Do you always answer questions with questions?”
“Do you?” asked Sen with an amused smile.
The woman paused and seemed to realize that she’d done exactly what she was implicitly complaining that he’d done. A hint of a rueful smile ghosted across her face, and Sen sensed an inner rigidity bleed away from the woman.
“I suppose that’s fair. My name is Tiu Li-Mei.”
“Lu Sen.”
“Not Judgment’s Gale?” asked the woman, a little twinkle in her eyes.
“Only on the truly bad days. I’m hoping today isn’t going to be one of those.”
“I can’t really help with that. I was instructed to bring you this,” she said, holding out an ornately carved scroll case.
Sen stared at the proffered case without reaching for it. The case alone was probably worth more than everything Lu Sen had to his name. That meant it came from someone extremely rich, extremely powerful, and probably both. The exact people Sen didn’t want to be drawing attention from. Yet, the messenger had recognized Chan Yu Ming on sight, which meant that whoever sent this was probably someone he was going to have to deal with at some point. The appearance of the woman and the case before he’d so much as set foot inside the capital raised some serious questions, though. Unless the Clear Water sect or the Order of the Celestial Flame had sent word ahead about him, and why would they, no one should know he was coming. Yet, someone clearly had known. The question was how they had known. More importantly, how had they known the timing so exactly? Unless this poor woman had been sent to wait by the gate day after day, it seemed that someone had access to information they shouldn’t. That also likely meant that Sen couldn’t simply escape this problem by disappearing into the city. He’d no doubt find Tiu Li-Mei or someone very much like her waiting for him within a day or so.
Tiu Li-Mei frowned at Sen’s obvious reluctance to even touch the scroll case. “Is something wrong?”
“Who is that from?” asked Sen.
The woman’s eyes went a little wide at some thought. “Prince Zhang Jing. I apologize. I’m used to people knowing who I represent.”
Sen grudgingly took the case, opened it, and slid out the scroll inside. His eyes skimmed over the introduction and got to the meat of the missive. It was a casual invitation to visit with the prince. Sen schooled his expression to neutrality, rolled the scroll up, and slid it back into the case. Then, he handed it back to the Tiu Li-Mei. He inclined his head to her.
“Thank you for delivering the message,” he said.
The woman looked down at the case in her hand like she wasn’t sure why she was holding it. She turned confused eyes on Sen.
“I was told that I should wait for an answer.”
Sen had worried about that. He understood exactly nothing about the local political situation and, loathe as he was to admit it, that a problem entirely of his own making. He could have spent the weeks on the road at least getting a basic handle on those matters with nothing more than some simple conversations with Chan Yu Ming. He hadn’t bothered with it because he hadn’t expected to need the information after turning down her ill-conceived plan. Also, she’d turned largely inward during that time. More damning, though, was that he’d avoided it because he just didn’t want to deal with it. Even Sen could recognize that as a lousy reason to avoid gleaning potentially useful information, even if the recognition came too late.
If he knew the local political situation, even in general terms, he’d probably have a sense of who this prince was and whether he was someone Sen was willing to have himself tied to, however casually. Granted, that information would have been filtered through Chan Yu Ming’s biases, but even biased information would be worlds better than the big, fat nothing he had to go on. He couldn’t see all the potential ramifications of his two options, but he didn’t like them. If he said yes and the prince was an awful human being, that reputation would very likely stain Sen. If he said no, he could very well make an enemy of Chan Yu Ming’s brother. While he didn’t know how bad that would be, he didn’t imagine it would be a good thing. There was potential disaster down either path, but declining ultimately provided him with more options. If it came down to it, he could always fall back on the truth and say his commoner upbringing left him ill-equipped to respond to an unexpected invitation.
“Please convey my regrets to the prince,” said Sen. “I fear my existing obligations will likely leave me little time to socialize.”
Sen could tell that he’d shocked Tiu Li-Mei, even if she covered it well. Most people in the capital would probably commit murder for an invitation like the one Sen had just turned down. Of course, most people in the capital would likely have known what they would have been getting into by going. At the very least, he needed to talk to Chan Yu Ming about her family before he started accepting invitations to meet them privately, although he feared such invitations would soon become an impossible-to-avoid feature of his life. Tiu Li-Mei offered him a bow.
“I will convey your words to the prince,” she said.
“I am grateful,” said Sen, offering her a polite nod.
Sen watched the woman and her guards walk back toward the gate. Not too long after, he saw the city guards heading the same way. Chan Yu Ming came over to him.
“What did Li-Mei want?” she asked.
“Zhang Jing invited me over for a visit,” said Sen.
“He did? Why would he do that?” She mused out loud.
“I don’t know. I was hoping you could explain it to me.”
“What did you say?”
“I said no.”
“Hmmm,” said Chan Yu Ming, her face thoughtful.
Sen sighed. “You do realize that I don’t have any of the information you’re considering right now. I’m really going to need you to do some of that thinking out loud.”
“What? Oh,” she said, then her eyes went a little wide. “Oh!”
“Yeah,” said Sen. “Now, we’re reading from the same scroll.”
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