“I can’t believe you forgot,” said Shen Mingxia.
Sen was a little amused to see that aggravation had overcome her newfound sense of respect for him. They were flying over the streets of the capital on a qi platform, drawing curious looks, and even some pointing from local kids. Sen figured that since his anonymity was nothing but a memory at this point, there was no reason to go to the clothing shop the slow way.
“I mean, you can’t honestly think anyone will do anything for us today, do you?” she demanded.
“Oh, I’m sure they’ll find someone to help us,” said Sen.
His unconcern seemed to inflame the woman’s outrage.
“You have clearly never had clothing made for you before,” she sniffed, turning away.
If he hadn’t left this to the last possible second out of sheer forgetfulness, he might have taken her words a little more to heart. But he felt like he had a little snide commentary coming his way. He had promised and then completely lost sight of why he was even in the capital. If the worst he got was a bit of the cold shoulder, he was probably ahead of the game. He finally spotted the place that Lo Meifeng had told him to go. He settled the qi platform right in front of the door. Shen Mingxia went from ignoring him to giving the place a wide-eyed look. Her eyes darted from one window display to the next.
“I can’t afford this,” she whispered.
“Good thing you’re not paying then, isn’t it?” said Sen, opening the door and ushering the woman in.
Sen looked around. It was a big place with lots of staff, a handful of which were attending to customers, and the rest were making valiant efforts to look busy and not bored. There was a quiet power struggle between the staff as they tried to be the first to get to the new customers, but a woman who Sen thought was about his own age seemed to appear from nowhere. She shot the other employees a victorious look that was all in her eyes before she turned to address them. She opened her mouth a little to speak and then froze as she got a good look at Sen. The silence dragged on as the woman turned deeper and deeper shades of red. I forgot about this, thought Sen. He’d mostly learned to tune this reaction out unless he was directly dealing with someone. On top of that, people did eventually get used to him, so it had mostly stopped among the mortals in the town where he’d set up his academy. Sen’s thoughts came up short. Did I… Did I never bother to learn the name of that town? No wonder everyone thinks cultivators are arrogant, thought Sen.
Shen Mingxia cleared her throat, loudly, which did bring Sen out of his own thoughts, but proved futile with the shop employee. Sighing a little, Sen walked around the woman, waved off the rest of the staff who looked ready to charge them, and made his way to the counter. He’d spotted an older woman who seemed to be in charge. She looked momentarily stunned at his appearance but managed to recover her equilibrium.
“How can I help you?” she asked, eying them both.
There was something evaluative in that look. It made Sen feel like the woman could determine their personal wealth at a glance. Based on her expression, she had decided that they were too poor to even breathe air in this shop but was far too polite to say so. Sen kept a neutral expression as he spoke.
“We both need something for a formal event. And we need it by this afternoon,” announced Sen.
“I’m afraid that will be quite impossi—”
The woman’s words choked off as Sen casually placed a fistful of gold taels on the counter. The woman’s eyes went almost impossibly wide at the fortune before her.
“We will both need something for a formal event, at the royal palace. And we need it by this afternoon.”
The woman behind the counter dragged her eyes away from the gold and up to Sen’s face, and a kind of dawning recognition took place. All those stories racing around the city about the new Lord Lu, the legendary Judgment’s Gale, the king’s friend who had come for some unknown purpose. Her gaze drifted down to his robes. His blue robes. Robes that bore the telltale signs of having been through some violence. Her eyes darted around the shop before she clapped her hands together sharply.
“The shop is closed for the day. Please return tomorrow.”
The woman only paused long enough to sweep the gold off the counter before she rushed off to help usher the other would-be customers out. Sen turned to find Shen Mingxia looking at him with an open-mouthed expression of shock on her face.
“What?” asked Sen. “I did promise.”
“You could have bought this entire business for the less than that.”
“I don’t want to own this business,” said Sen. “I want them to make us clothes and to be quick about it. I also want them to be enormously helpful if I ever come back or send someone here.”
Shen Mingxia looked like she thought he had completely missed her point, but she wasn’t sure how to put that into words. Before she could find the words, the doors to the shop were closed with a sharp noise. Sen looked over to see the owner or manager, he still wasn’t sure which she was, firmly slide a lock into place. She marched back over to Sen and Mingxia, a determined expression on her face and the entire staff moving in her wake.
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“Lord Lu, I presume,” said the woman with a slight quaver in her voice.
“Yes,” agreed Sen with a small smile.
He didn’t feel like smiling at the woman, but he didn’t want her in a state of fear either. He just wanted everyone in a state of focused attention. If a smile could reduce the tension enough to achieve that, he could fake a smile. It seemed to work. The woman relaxed a little.
“And did you have anything in particular in mind?” she asked, choosing to focus on business.
“Something like this, just nicer, for me,” said Sen, gesturing at his robes.
“And for the Lady Lu?” asked the woman.
Shen Mingxia, normally a bastion of calm normalcy, turned bright red and looked like she was choking on something. Sen’s impish sense of humor saw an opportunity and sprang on it.
“Oh, for the Lady Lu—” he said, pausing as though thinking about it. “Make her look like a queen.”
Shen Mingxia actually did seem to choke on something then. If the woman who ran the shop thought it odd, it didn’t show on her face. She simply started barking orders at people who scattered in every direction to fetch cloth, to fetch tea, to fetch snacks, to fetch the moon itself for all Sen knew. After that, he mostly felt like a passenger to what was happening. He was shown endless samples of cloth, all in shades of blue, all of which looked more or less the same to him. Rather than expose his indifference, he decided that he could give the woman running the place a little face.
“What would the mistress of the shop recommend?” he asked politely, guessing that she was the owner.
It seemed he guessed right because the woman seemed to swell with pride. She turned a sharp gaze on the offered samples before reaching out and plucking one from the hands of an employee. After spending a moment looking at it, he thought it was a bit darker than what he normally wore.
“I would recommend this one. The color will complement your complexion and serve as a fine counterpoint for a secondary color, such as silver. In addition, this particular fabric is known for its ability to take and hold the kinds of enchantments that cultivators prefer on their clothing, such as cleaning and self-repair.”
That caught Sen’s attention. He hadn’t been thinking about that, but it would be nice if he could get those things added to formal robes. Then, he’d have something to wear if he ever got roped into some other ridiculous political event. You’re a house patriarch now, he reminded himself. You are inevitably going to end up stuck at political functions from time to time for as long as you’re in this kingdom. He knew that most of that was going to fall onto the heads of other people, but even then, he wouldn’t be able to escape it entirely. He nodded his approval.
“Then, far be it from me to ignore the advice of an expert,” he said.
He offered input when it was absolutely required of him, but he mostly just agreed to whatever the owner suggested. It wasn’t like he had the faintest idea of what was appropriate, so he tried to interfere as little as possible. Throughout the entire process, he hadn’t so much as seen Shen Mingxia. She had been whisked away to somewhere else. He had occasionally extended a bit of his spiritual sense to make sure she hadn’t been grabbed by someone looking to get at him. So, he knew more or less where she was in the shop, but that was it. There were also long stretches where nothing seemed to be happening. The owner would chat him with briefly and then disappear, no doubt to keep track of whatever was happening with Shen Mingxia. The rest of the staff made sure he was never left without tea, something to eat, or someone to talk to if he wished.
The owner eventually came back and led him to a room. He was asked to stand in a variety of poses as cloth was pressed up against him, measurements were made, and the owner made a variety of noises that he supposed meant something to the staff based on the way they reacted. After that, he was taken back to wait some more. That wait was more substantial. He found himself glancing out the window in the front of the shop and gauging the time. He realized it wasn’t actually that late. He’d just gotten accustomed to racing from one task to the next. He hadn’t been able to devote hours at a time to a single thing since the whole business with the House of Xie had started. Being stuck on just one thing had made the time seem to pass much more slowly.
Finally, he was taken to a room where the new robes had been set out for him. He dumped the robes he was wearing into a storage ring and put on the new ones. He had to admit that having them made especially for him meant that the fit was absolutely perfect. There wasn’t the slightest bit of uncomfortable pull anywhere. He exited the room he was in and the owner smiled at him triumphantly. She snapped her fingers and a large mirror, something Sen knew was a hideously expensive item, was rolled before him. He took a long look. He looked like a stranger, like someone from a story. The robes were definitely darker than his usual clothing. They had a high collar in a blue that was almost black. There was a similar dark material at the cuffs of the robes. He could see that dragons had been stitched into the collar and the cuffs with silver thread. Larger dragons had been stitched into the chest of the robes, one on each side. He noticed the owner starting to look nervous, so he inclined his head to her.
“This is superb work. You and your staff should be extremely proud.”
“Thank you, Lord Lu,” said the owner.
She offered him a deep, formal bow that was instantly mimicked by her staff. She rose and had a whispered conversation with one of her underlings. The young man ran off to the part of the shop where Shen Mingxia had been taken. There was another brief wait before the man poked his head out from behind a door and nodded. The owner lifted a hand and gestured.
“The Lady Lu,” said the woman.
Shen Mingxia stepped out from the door. Sen could tell that she looked embarrassed, but that took a backseat to the dress she wore. It was a white so bright that it practically glowed. It clung to her in a way that was inviting, but not overtly sexual. It also featured a high collar, but where Sen’s robes had loose arms, Shen Mingxia’s arms were tightly sheathed in the white material. The only break in that almost blinding glow were the dragons stitched into the collar and down the arms of the dress. The contrast was so intense that Sen initially thought the dragons were rendered in black thread, but he slowly realized that they were actually in blue. And then, as if the staff had taken his words as a literal command, there was a finely wrought silver diadem resting on her brow. It looked like vines of silver that all wove together to support a sapphire.
“Exquisite,” said Sen.
The staff all looked extremely happy, while Shen Mingxia blushed furiously.
“Well, my Lady Lu, I do believe that we are ready for this evening’s event,” said Sen, just barely able to keep himself from smirking as he turned to the shop owner. "Please prepare another six dresses for the lady. I'll trust in your fine judgment as to the color and design."