Sen picked them both up on qi platform and flew them away from the manor. He moved them away quickly and, once they got to the city wall proper, he boosted the speed to something he was certain that Lo Meifeng couldn’t match. He’d mostly been focused on making sure that no one was following them to drag him back to make more decisions. He knew he couldn’t escape it forever, but the thought of getting away for even an hour or two had been too much temptation even if it did mean dealing with a princess and her agenda. Not that having an agenda really made her different or special. The sad truth was that pretty much everyone he met these days had some kind of agenda. If he refused to talk to anyone with an agenda, he’d never talk to anyone ever again. He glanced over at the princess in question and suppressed a smirk. Apparently, she wasn’t used to moving quite as fast as he was carrying them. She’d locked her expression into one of calm, but her fists were clenched so tight that it was a wonder her palms weren’t bleeding.
Sen went back to watching where they were going, only occasionally glancing back to make sure there was no obvious pursuit. They were flying north over the wilds at this point, mostly because he knew that part of the countryside better than any of the other directions. There was a place he’d been meaning to go back to for a while now. A nice little spot far enough from the road that no one was likely to go there. If I can remember where it is, thought Sen. He’d found it almost by accident on one of his previous, more covert, trips to the capital. His eyes lit up when he spotted what he was looking for. He shifted the direction they were moving a little and a few minutes later, he lowered the platform into a secluded little area. It wasn’t quite big enough that he’d call it a valley, but it did have a nice little waterfall that dropped down into a startling clear pool of water that fed a few small streams. It might even be a small lake, thought Sen, uncertain about where the lines were between things like pools, ponds, and lakes. Of course, the waterfall wasn’t the main reason Sen liked the place.
“Are those spirit oxen?” asked Hsiao Jiayi, sounding nervous.
Sen looked to what probably qualified as a small herd of the spirit beasts. He watched in amusement as a smaller one broke away from the herd and started thundering toward them.
“They are,” said Sen.
“We need to go. They’re powerful. We can’t fight all of them!” shouted Hsiao Jiayi as she grabbed his arm with vice-like strength.
He rolled her eyes at her as he peeled her fingers off his arm.
“We aren’t going to fight any of them,” said Sen.
“What?!”
Sen ignored her as he started walking toward the charging ox. He smiled as one of the other members of the herd let out a decidedly chiding moo. The smaller ox somehow managed to look guilty as it slowed to a trot and then a walk, even if there was a decidedly excited spring to its steps. It came up to Sen and, almost shyly, bumped its head against his chest. He reached out and rubbed the youthful ox’s head. It pranced back and forth a little in obvious happiness. The rest of the herd made its way over at a more dignified pace. Sen moved through the large animals, petting their heads and offering small treats to the youngest ones that had been held in place by the elder oxen. He spoke with the herd leader, a bull that had accepted him without question, but kept a baleful gaze fixed on the dumbfounded Hsiao Jiayi. The greetings done, the herd moved off again at a slow, but steady pace. Smiling at the retreating herd, Sen walked back over to the other cultivator. She looked back and forth from the herd to him several times before words all but exploded from her mouth.
“What in the thousand hells was that?” she demanded.
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“That was a herd of spirit oxen,” said Sen before he started walking over to the small lake.
He heard the woman spluttering behind him as he moved. Yeah, he thought, this was exactly what I needed. Get away from the city. Pet some oxen. Leave a princess flabbergasted. He’d reached the shore of the lake before the ambassador caught up with him. For some reason, he always expected the shore to be sandy, but it insistently remained a shallow field of smooth stones. He reached down and picked one up. There was nothing special about that particular rock aside from being close at hand, but he held onto it anyway, slowly rubbing his thumb across it as he stared over the water. The lake had perpetual ripples rolling across the surface from the waterfall, and he watched one of them until it slowly broke apart at the far end of the lake. He imagined that was where shallow channels started to carry water away in the streams that kept the area lush enough to feed the small herd. He could feel an inner tension slowly starting to ease inside of him.
“There’s so much noise in the city,” said Sen, cutting the princess off before she could start demanding a better explanation. “So many people. I understand why the mortals do it. Build cities, I mean. The advantages are obvious, but at the same time, I don’t understand how they do it. Living so close together. I don’t know how they breathe.”
“I…” started Hsiao Jiayi, obviously confused by the change of subject. “I suppose they just get used to it.”
“That must be it,” agreed Sen, his eyes still fixed on the water.
“Those spirit oxen,” said the woman.
He supposed he had to give her credit for not being easily distracted. Still, he sighed.
“What about them?” he asked.
“Spirit beasts don’t behave that way.”
He gave her what he hoped passed as an enigmatic smile and said, “Don’t they? Didn’t you just see them do it with your very own pretty eyes?”
She opened and closed her mouth a few times while blinking rapidly. Then, with an almost angry cast to her expression, she regrouped.
“You know what wasn’t what I meant.”
“You’re a princess and an ambassador. Politics is your entire life. How is anyone supposed to know what you mean when you speak?”
The woman didn’t have an easy answer to that question, so Sen took advantage of her unbalanced moment to calmly step out onto the water. A little water qi and it supported him as if he was standing on stone. He walked a few paces before he turned to look at her. She was staring at his feet, once again nonplussed by things he mostly took for granted.
“How many kinds of qi can you use?” she asked.
Sen shrugged and said, “Enough.”
“Did you bring me all the way out here just to avoid answering every single one of my questions?”
“You said you wanted to get away from the city. That you wanted to continue our conversation. So, I brought you here. One of the most beautiful places I’ve found. A place that is about as safe as it gets in the wilds and as private as people like us can hope for. You haven’t looked at it at all. When I tried to have a conversation with you, you immediately tried to ask me questions about those spirit oxen. As near as I can tell, all you really want to do is gather information about a potential enemy of your nation.”
“No! That isn’t what I wanted to do.”
“Alright then. What is it that you really want, your highness?”
“I just want us to be friends,” said Hsiao Jiayi.
Sen pursed his lips. She looked like she wanted to believe that. Maybe she even did believe it. But she was just off balance enough that Sen could see that wasn’t the whole truth of it.
“Why?”
Sen found it a little ironic that he’d been judging Long Jia Wei’s suspicious nature not that long ago. I guess I haven’t left my suspicious nature as far behind as I thought I did. It’d be easier if people stopped giving me such good reasons to hang onto it, thought Sen. When she didn’t say anything, he nodded.
“Right. You want something. Well, that’s not really a surprise. I don’t enjoy having my time wasted. So, go ahead. Tell me what it is that you want so we can skip ahead to the part where I say no.”
“You’ve already decided? You haven’t even heard it yet. How can you be so sure you’ll say no?”
“You’re a princess,” said Sen, almost snarling the last word. “I don’t need to hear it. I already know that it’s something self-serving for you and without benefits for me. Because that’s how princesses work. All that matters is getting what you want. You don’t care about the cost because, in the end, other people are just something for you to use. So, I won’t keep you in suspense. The answer is no.”