Book 8: Chapter 45: A Place to Breathe
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?!”