Book 8: Chapter 25: Secrets

Book 8: Chapter 25: Secrets

Sen was pleasantly surprised when the crowds dispersed and even the sects departed. He had half expected the patriarchs to come down and offer their very unwanted opinions to him. That was an event he was in no mood to deal with. The servants— Your servants now, he reminded himself – decided that this wasn’t the time to let the Xie children mob him with what were countless questions. Instead, the children were unevenly herded back into the manor. The younger ones mostly just seemed confused. Based on the dark looks he got from a few of the oldest ones, though, they had at least a sense of what was going on. Worse, there wasn’t much he could do about them. Unlike the parents, the children couldn’t give him bidding vows. The heavens were often fickle and even ruthless, but they did mandate that people actually understand the vows they took. It was generally understood that there was no point in asking for them from anyone who hadn’t come of age. For some of the youngest, that time was easily a decade away. For the oldest, it was just a few years.

“What do you mean to do with the children?” asked Long Jia Wei. “We can keep them here for now, but that’s a short-term solution at best.”

Sen honestly had no idea what he was going to do with them. On the one hand, he had forcefully claimed responsibility for all of them. That meant it was on him to see to things like providing them with food, shelter, and some manner of education. On the other hand, every single one of those children could blossom into an enemy that might trouble him or his interests one day. He wasn’t particularly interested in arming them with skills that would help them toward those kinds of ends.

“I don’t know, yet. I suppose some of it will depend on how many of their parents come back.”

Long Jia Wei seemed to waver for a moment before he said, “Then if I might offer a suggestion.”

“Go ahead.”

“Take them out of the city. You said you run some manner of school in the north. Take them there, far beyond easy reach.”

Sen had to admit that the idea had some merit. The academy was comparatively isolated and largely under Sen’s direct control, which made it easy to keep watch for trouble. Of course, making that work would mean hiring and relocating a lot more people just to teach the children the essentials. Maybe for the first time in his life, Sen wished he had more people with him. There were a lot of things to investigate and a decided shortage of people he could trust. However, he supposed he could ask Shen Mingxia and Wu Gang to look into things that were strictly mortal. Their status as cultivators would open a lot of doors. Even so, what he could really use was about a half-dozen core formation cultivators he found reliable. Sadly, he didn’t think he even knew six core formation cultivators that he would trust to go buy salt in the market, let alone handle something important. He supposed that was one advantage of the sect system—willing and semi-trustworthy minions.

Sighing, he dismissed that daydream. He'd just have to work with what he had available. He supposed he might be able to borrow a couple of bodies from Jing for mortal stuff. Maybe Lai Dongmai has someone in her sect who doesn’t hate me that I could borrow for cultivator-related issues, thought Sen. He didn’t like the thought of relying on people he didn’t know, but he also didn’t want to spend six months away from Ai trying to get things settled in the capital. He decided then and there that he wouldn’t let that happen. If it came down to it, he didn’t care that much about setting up the House of Lu. He could make other arrangements for Ai. Plus, he had sent word to Grandmother Lu. Depending on where she was at the moment, she might arrive sooner than later. He knew he could rely on her, and she had a small army of loyal employees that he could lean on by proxy. Sen realized that Long Jia Wei was giving him a questioning look. I must have been standing there staring at nothing for a while, thought Sen.Thê source of this content n/o/v/(el)bi((n))

“It’s worth exploring,” said Sen to the man’s idea about taking the children out of the city. “For the very immediate future, though, just make sure that they’re getting fed and bathed. I have to assume that some of these servants were employed as teachers. Find out which ones. If these children were being taught to read, write, and do math, there’s no reason to stop that.”

“Reasonable,” said Long Jia Wei.

“Use that to buy some loyalty from the servants. It’s going to take a while to figure out the finances, so some silver now will probably go a long way toward keeping them on task. A little show of good faith.”

“I doubt most of them earn an entire silver in a month.”

“Even better. Tell them it’s a bonus for choosing to stay.”

“Very well,” said the man, slipping the purse into a pocket.

Most of what the pair discovered after that was more mundane. They found countless small amounts in purses that had obviously been left in the walls for centuries. They also found inexplicable things, such as a wooden hairpin with a cat’s face carved on it, a doll that crumbled to dust the moment it was touched, four daggers, a diary that detailed either some very vivid dreams or a particularly torrid affair, a bowl, filigreed chopsticks, and a dozen stone vials that had probably contained elixirs or poisons that had long since turned into sludge. Sen immediately claimed those, going so far as to slap one out of Long Jia Wei’s hand before the fool could open it.

“It probably had poison in it,” said Sen. “Given how long it’s probably been in these walls, it might be harmless, or it might have turned into something even I won’t know how to stop before it kills you.”

“I hadn’t considered that,” admitted Long Jia Wei. “My teachers would likely be disappointed in me.”

“I think it’ll be fine as long as we don’t open anything,” said Sen.

The sheer number of hiding places in just the main manor was enough to make Sen ready to give up on the whole task for the day. It was clearly going to take more than one night of exploration to find everything there was to find. But he noticed a hollow space in a wall that had no business being there. He supposed there was no harm in checking out one more hiding spot. He gestured at the spot and Long Jia Wei went to work. It was a testament to how well-hidden the catch was that it took nearly ten minutes for the man to find it. A door swung open and stale air spilled into the hallway. Sen eyed the narrow stairs that led down, shrugged, and began his descent. He ignited a ball of fire qi over his hand to light their way as Long Jia Wei stepped in behind him and closed the secret door. Wherever the stairs led, it was clear that no one had been down there in a long time. Sen kicked up clouds of dust with every step. When he finally reached the bottom of the stairs, well below the lowest floor of the manor itself, and stepped out into the rock-walled room, he drew up short.

“Well now,” he muttered as Long Jia Wei joined him. “Isn’t this interesting?”