A Great Escape chapter 6

“What?!” spluttered Xun, looking like someone had just given him a hard shove in the stomach.

“What?!” cried Masters Storming Ox and Croc in unison, both of them seeming certain that they hadn’t heard correctly.

“Really?” exclaimed Yue eagerly, a broad grin stretching over her beak as she leaned forward.

“Okay, I’m dreaming this, right?” Xun rubbed his furry head, shooting Shen a meaningful look. “Please tell me I’m dreaming this.”

Shen glanced over at the wolf, hoping that his eyes were sending the message I’ll explain later, before turning back to Jie and Yue and forcing his tone to remain calm and unimpeded. “You heard me. I said that I’ll marry your daughter.”

Jie was blinking rapidly. “You will? But…you don’t even know her!”

“Perhaps not, but I do know a thing or two about panic attacks.”

“You do?” demanded Master Croc disbelievingly, glaring at the peacock suspiciously.

“Yes, I do,” answered Shen without missing a beat, glaring right back.

“This is all very abrupt…” Jie rubbed his head. “I’m not certain if I know why you would want to propose to our daughter so suddenly like this.”

“Please, sir, I assure you that I have good intentions. Don’t question my motivation…”

“Well, I’m questioning your motivation,” he heard Xun mutter behind him. “As well as your sanity.”

Before he could hiss at his friend to be quiet, Yue gripped his wings and yanked him towards her, pulling him out of his chair with nearly enough force to dislocate his shoulders while simultaneously cutting off the circulation in his hands. “Oh thank you, thank you, Master Shen!” she practically squealed. “I cannot tell you how much this means to me! To think, my little Lanying finally married off to a good husband!”

“A good husband, right.” A touch of ice had crept into Jie’s expression. Shen didn’t blame him for that; dealing with a former warlord hadn’t been a huge deal before, but now that the well-being of his daughter was at stake, he was suddenly much more concerned about his present company. A logical progression.

“He has a solid reformation record, I’ll give him that,” grumbled Storming Ox. “Although sometimes, his behavior can be extremely confusing.”

“But nowadays, people usually agree that my actions make sense in time,” added Shen pointedly.

“Oh, the masters have told us all about you, darling!” Yue clapped her hands delightedly. “We know how hard you have been working the past few years. You’re here now to work on the city’s defense system, is that right?”

“Er, yes, I am,” he managed, still thrown off by her vigorous enthusiasm.

She leaned across the table and clasped the hoof of Storming Ox. “Masters, you have no idea how perfect this is. I thank you so much for introducing me to Master Shen! What a payment for this little assignment!”

“Which reminds me,” Jie interjected, “we still have to deal with Lady Xuilan…”

Yue waved her wing dismissively. “Oh, so dramatic, dear! We’ve handled people like her so many times before. We can discuss it tonight, and come back first thing tomorrow morning to deal with this troublesome lady. And also bring Lanying to meet Shen!”

“But…well, I suppose that would be all right.” Jie’s rigid crest drooped slightly in resignation. He turned to Shen, his eyes carrying that serious and faintly concerned look that Shen had so often seen on his own father. “Are you sure you’re prepared for a marriage? Especially to our daughter…as we said, she’s considered to be an invalid.”

“What you’ve told me has made me genuinely concerned about her,” Shen answered honestly. “And yes, I’m prepared for a marriage. I have a stable home in the Valley of Peace, and I’m about to come into quite a bit of money for my work on Gongmen City’s defenses.” Saying this served to remind him that yes, he actually was going to be paid for what he was doing on this little trip, and he wondered what he would ultimately do with the money.

Because he wasn’t actually planning to get married.

Jie nodded quietly and stepped back, seemingly satisfied. “You seem to be telling the truth. I hope you are, anyway, because our daughter Lanying will need a lot of support. As it is we have to keep her all but locked in her room…we wouldn’t want her to have one of those panic attacks in public, would we?”

“No, I suppose you wouldn’t,” Shen agreed, even though he was, if anything, further mortified by hearing that they had turned this girl into a shut-in. What did they think she was, a psychopath? She was having episodes of extreme anxiety, not embarking on killing sprees! Of course, this was now giving him even more reason to hide his own panic attacks; considering his history in this city, he would probably be thrown in jail if the general populace ever found out.

“We will tell our daughter the news,” said Yue excitedly. “We’ll be back with her first thing tomorrow morning! Masters, tell your Lady Xuilan that we will meet with her at noon. You won’t have to deal with her anymore after that, I assure you.”

“Well we…thank you…for that…very much.” Storming Ox was speaking through gritted teeth. “We do appreciate your help, both of you.”

“And we appreciate yours!” Yue wrenched her husband up from his seat and threaded her wing through his. “We’ll see you all tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow.” Shen bowed, tucking his hands into his sleeves in a typical masterly fashion. “I can’t wait.”

…

Once the sounds of Yue’s elated chattering had faded away, Xun announced, “Okay, Shen, you have fifteen seconds to explain what you just did. Go.”

Shen was very prepared for this. “Don’t worry, I have a plan. You need to hear me out on this. First of all, I’m not really going to marry their daughter.”

“Then why did you – ” Xun started, only to find himself silenced by a raised wing.

“However, I am interested in helping her. It might be foolish, but I can’t help but feel bad for anyone who’s being downtrodden by their parents on account of an uncontrollable condition.” He cleared his throat. “What I’m intending to do is to take this girl – Lanying, if that’s her name – back to the Valley of Peace. That way she can be in an environment where people aren’t thinking of her as a cripple. She’d probably be perfectly self-supporting if given a chance, and the marriage won’t happen anyway because, let’s face it, no woman in her right mind would consent to marry me. Particularly not one from Gongmen.”

There was silence all around as everyone considered this.

“Well, that’s more plausible than I thought,” Storming Ox finally spoke up. “I never thought of you as one to take on a charity case, Shen.”

Shen shrugged. He didn’t want to get into the whole panic attacks issue.

“Jie and Yue aren’t going to be happy when they realize that their daughter isn’t really getting married,” Croc pointed out.

“I’ll tell their daughter to keep up the pretense for a while. Then, once she proves herself to be capable of taking care of herself, she can tell her parents the truth. They might be shocked, but I’m sure they’ll be proud of her once they see that she can make something of herself. After all, they’re her parents.”

Xun was the only one who really read between the lines of that statement. Shen had realized the similarities between his own disadvantages when he was younger and those of the Xifengs’ daughter. If someone had given Shen the opportunity to prove himself capable when he was growing up, then he wouldn’t have been stuck trying to manufacture his own success, desperately striving for his parents’ attention, turning to explosives and genocide and insanity to carve his path in life.

Over the past few years, he had proven himself to be devoted to his reformation. He had helped Kurisu, Xun, and Lady Biming, righting the wrongs that he had done to each of them. This was the first time that he would be faced with assisting someone who he didn’t even know – a complete charity case. Despite themselves, everyone was interested to see how this would turn out.

Just then, the soothsayer appeared in the kitchen doorway, her arms stacked with the parcels that must have been the fruits of her morning shopping trip. “What’s going on?” she asked, placing her load down on the table. “Why are you all gathered in the kitchen like this?”

“Shen’s getting married,” Xun said point-blank.

“Xun!” Shen snapped, and then smiled weakly when he saw his nanny’s stunned expression. “Look, I can explain…”

…

Lanying Xifeng had been in her room painting when she received the news.

Up until then, her day had been normal. She’d spent the morning staring out her window at the city that was now virtually forbidden to her. Oh, she could have snuck out, of course, especially since her parents were called away during the afternoon for an assignment. She had snuck out quite often in her younger, more rebellious years. But now she was older and her view of life was stilted, and she didn’t see much point in going out there. People knew who she was: that political advisor’s daughter who had incurable fits, so don’t get near her, she’ll infect your unborn children…

Back when she was nineteen, Lanying had taken samples of her prose and artwork around the city, literally spending a day visiting every single printer who wasn’t a scam artist. Of those printers, not one had wanted to give her a chance. Some called her writing boring and her artwork mediocre; others wouldn’t give her a second glance simply because of who she was and what was known about her. That had been seven years ago, and she still hadn’t lived it down.

When she had returned home from that day of disappointments, her parents had given her falsely sympathetic smiles that still stung her to this day. “We told you so,” they’d said. “We told you that your silly dreams were just that: impossible fantasies. You didn’t believe us. Well, now you know.” That was what they had told her, their heartbroken daughter who had literally just suffered from dozens of rejections.

Oh, how she had wanted to prove that they were wrong, how she had longed to be successful and show them that she wasn’t some mentally deficient cripple and she didn’t need their support any longer! Even to this day she fantasized about her success and how her parents might react to it, even though she knew that her success was not going to come. She was long past the age of miracles. In fact she was so old that her parents had recently expressed concern that she was too old to marry. Marriage had been her last hope for escape, in the sense that at least it would get her away from her awful parents. Now it seemed that she would have to give up even that shallow hope.

Lanying had been mulling over such thoughts that day as she painted a landscape, her envisioning of what Gongmen City would look like once the Tower of the Sacred Flame was standing over it once more. The walls of her bedroom were layered with similar pictures, some done in paint and some done in inks; many of her pieces were realistic representations of the world beyond her hemmed-in environment, while others were fantastic imaginings of what her life could have been like. They depicted images of her being praised, being triumphant…being happy. Such pictures were her only form of freedom, even if on her worst days, looking at them only served to make her sadder.

As usual, she found herself stuck on a certain aspect of today’s image…in this case, whether or not she should depict the Tower of the Sacred Flame as a comforting guardian, or an oppressive watchman. She was tilting her head at the painting and wondering what approach to take when she heard a voice call from the front room, “Lanying, would you come here, please?”

She cleared her throat in irritation. Why did her parents have to come home so soon? “Coming, mother,” she shouted back, quickly setting down her painting supplies on a splattered table and hurrying out to meet her mother and father.

Predictably, Yue scoffed in disgust as soon as Lanying was within her sight. “Oh, look at you! You’re filthy! Why can’t you pay attention to making yourself look presentable for once?”

Lanying glowered bitterly and didn’t say anything. It was true that she was hardly decked out in her mother’s idea of finery. She was wearing a threadbare, eggshell-colored robe that was blotched with various paint and ink stains, tied around her waist with a long, ragged sash. Still, she was stuck in the house all day, every day, so who did she have to impress?

Jie cleared his throat. “Lanying, my love, we have some interesting news for you – ”

“Some very wonderful news!” Yue interrupted enthusiastically. “You’ve received an offer – you are going to be married!”

Lanying blinked. “Married?! But…you said I was too old for – ”

“Oh, I thought you were too old for it; you’re twenty-six, you’re very nearly an old made. Nevertheless, you have received a proposal,” Yue continued excitedly.

“Very well, then,” Lanying sighed. An arranged marriage was certainly not the worst thing to ever happen to her. “Who am I being married to?”

“To a kung fu master whose name bears some weight. I daresay you’ve heard of him before.” Jie cleared his throat. “You would know him as…Lord Shen.”

Lanying gasped.

“Lord Shen?” she demanded shakily. “Do you mean the Lord Shen who slaughtered a village of pandas, who tried to take over China, who is considered to be criminally insane – THAT Lord Shen?!”

“You are so dramatic, darling.” Yue produced her fan and waved it at the younger peahen accusingly as she spoke. “Lord Shen has reformed now. Why, he is in the city because our very own Masters Council invited him to work on Gongmen’s defense system! He seemed perfectly gentlemanlike when we met him, and he says that he is coming into quite a bit of money soon, so…”

Lanying clenched her fists. Out of all the insults her parents had dealt her, this was the worst, and that was really saying something. But what could she gain by speaking out against them? Nothing, except for another tongue lashing. She’d always suspected that they didn’t care about her, but to engage her to a proven maniac…

Jie placed his hands on her shoulders. “My dear, I’ll admit this is just as surprising to me as it is to you, but Master Shen seemed genuinely concerned when we told him about you. As far as I know, deception is not one of his greatest skills, and he really did seem sincere. Besides, we know we care about your well being and support, and, well, you probably won’t receive another offer…”

Lanying only continued to glare. She had never said that she hated her parents – she’d never said that she loved them, but she’d never said that she hated them either. But that was only because she didn’t have to. Her cold, bitter eyes said everything for her. It saddened Jie, whether she realized it or not.

“Just think of marriage as a release, Lanying,” he said, trying to sound reassuring. “As a great escape of sorts…”

Her expression unchanged, she lifted up the hem of her robe, hurried into her room, and made sure to slam the door behind her.