“Who are you to judge me without even hearing my words?” demanded Hsiao Jiayi, fury lighting her eyes.
Sen met her furious glare with one as cold as ice.
“Very well, then. Explain.”
“I seek to bring down a tyrant. To free my people.”
Sen nodded and said, “Oh, a worthy goal, no doubt. So, you’ll bring down this tyrant and replace them with who exactly?”
Hsiao Jiayi ground her teeth when she said, “Me.”
“Yes, how hasty of me to think that your goals are self-serving. And these people you’re going to free. You meant cultivators, didn’t you? You mean to free the cultivators. Not the mortals, who I assume are little better than slaves in your kingdom.”
“It’s more complicated than that.”
“It’s really not. You can dress it up with whatever justifications you want, but it’s not complicated. In summary, you want me to help you replace one tyrant—who I’m perfectly willing to believe is horrible—for another tyrant who will also treat most of the people living under her rule as slaves.”
“That’s naïve sophistry, and you know it. Oversimplifying things doesn’t alter the fact that change doesn’t happen overnight, and it has to start somewhere.”
“Oh, so you plan to bring true freedom to the mortals in your land?” asked Sen.
Sen saw the hesitation, the brief flash of disgust at the very idea, and held up his hand before she could speak again.
“It’s clear that you don’t. And even if I was willing to set aside your self-serving agenda, and your intention to keep mortals as slaves, there’s one other thing that we haven’t talked about.”
“What’s that?” asked Hsiao Jiayi, clearly wary.
“There’s absolutely nothing in it for me.”
“That’s… I could reward you with anything you want.”
“You say that like I couldn’t just go out and take anything I want if I truly wished to. The number of people in the world who can stop me has grown exceedingly small. The number of them inclined to stop me has grown smaller still. As for rewards, I don’t need riches. I have them. I don’t need titles. I have one. I don’t need natural treasures. Anything you could offer me, I can go out there,” Sen gestured to the wilds around them, “and get them. Probably with a lot less risk involved. In short, you have nothing to offer. A fact that would have been immediately apparent if your thinking involved anyone but you.”
The two of them stood in strained silence, staring at each other for a long time. Sen couldn’t tell if she just didn’t have anything to say, or if she was simply in such a state of rage that she couldn’t make the words come out. Not that it especially mattered to him one way or the other. He thought of one other thing to say that might at least take a bit of the sting out of his words.
“Besides, you don’t want my help. Not really. It wouldn’t be good for your rule.”
Hsiao Jiayi looked like she was assembling her response one word at a time in her head.
She finally asked, “What does that mean?”
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“I don’t like nobles. I don’t like most cultivators either and frequently for the same reasons. They’re arrogant. They’re entitled. They treat people with less power like they don’t matter. I’ve been on the wrong side of that, which has made me particularly unforgiving. You’ve got a whole ruling class of people who are both, which I expect has only exaggerated those traits in them. If I went to your kingdom to help you, I doubt most of your cultivator nobles would survive it.”
That idea seemed to bring Hsiao Jiayi up short as if she’d never even considered the possibility that Sen might go on a loathing-fueled killing spree and deprive her of her entire support structure. She went a little pale as she seemed to think it over and found it plausible. Then, she shook her head.
“You wouldn’t kill all of those people because you dislike them.”
Sen lifted an eyebrow and asked, “Why not?”
“It’d be a pointless exercise in bloodshed. You said it yourself. You don’t like wasting your time.”
“You only believe that because you expect me to think like the nobles where you come from. I’d be willing to bet every single one of them has killed mortals for sport, or spite, or no reason at all. Come to think of it, I expect that you probably have too. I would not find it a waste of time to visit that kind of pain and terror on people so callous. I would not find it a waste of time at all. So, tell me, your highness, how clean are your hands? If I look hard, will I find the blood of farmers on them? The blood of servants? The blood of mortals? The kind of blood that runs in my daughter’s veins.”
“Your what?” asked Hsiao Jiayi.
“My daughter. The mortal girl I adopted. Under your rule, you would turn my beautiful, innocent little girl into a slave,” said Sen, drawing his jian. “So, I’m forced to wonder if the best thing I can do is kill you here and now. Then, go to your terrible little kingdom and butcher every last person I find who calls themselves a noble or a royal. Simply wipe your civilization from history.”
Hsiao Jiayi had drawn her own sword and adopted a defensive stance. He could feel her cycling qi. It had an odd quality. He didn’t immediately recognize it. For all her preparation, though, he could see she was frightened, no doubt considering the gap between their cultivation levels, and the kind of power she’d already seen him demonstrate. He took a single step toward her, and she flinched back.
“You’re insane,” she hissed at him.
“I’m not,” said Sen, sheathing his blade.
Her confusion was plain to see on her face.
“What are you doing?” she demanded.
“That feeling you’re having right now, that fear thrashing around inside of you, that terror that comes from having someone more powerful threaten you just because they can… Remember it. That is what the mortals in your kingdom experience, except it’s all the time for them. Every second of every day. That wretchedness is what you’re so casually ready to condemn them to for the sin of not being cultivators. And you want me to help you? If anyone here is insane, it’s you.
“Now, put your sword away. I’m not going to kill you. The truth is that killing you, killing your father, killing all of those cultivator nobles truly would be a pointless exercise in bloodshed, just not for the reason you think. It’d be pointless because it wouldn’t change anything. The second I left, one of the other kingdoms that are exactly like yours would swoop in and start it all over again. If I really wanted to change things there, I’d have to conquer the whole damn continent and purge most of the cultivators from it. And that would be insane.”
She didn’t put her sword away or stop cycling as Sen walked off the water and back onto the rocky shore. He started to walk toward where the spirit oxen had gone before he paused and looked over his shoulder.
“I assume you can find your own way back, your highness.”
He started walking again but didn’t fully relax until he felt her presence rise into the air and fly away. That had not turned out to be the fruitful discussion that he’d hoped it might be. He also knew that he’d been pushing too hard, and taking out some old angers on her. For all that, though, when he’d seen that look of disgust cross her face at the very notion of giving true freedom to mortals, he’d stopped caring very much about what she thought about anything at all. Sen had to force himself to acknowledge that it wasn’t entirely her fault. He’d probably think the same way if he’d been brought up in her kingdom as a cultivator noble. Even recognizing that fact, he couldn’t bring himself to forgive her for holding that view. He probably would have died as a child in her kingdom. Once again, he was forced to reassess the sects. While he was of the opinion that they didn’t do a good enough job of it, they clearly were exerting a restraining influence on the cultivators who lived on this side of the Mountains of Sorrow.
“Even thinking that left a bad taste in my mouth,” said Sen to no one.
Deciding that he’d done enough distasteful things for one day, he went to play with the ox calves.