Min found herself at loose ends for the first time in many years. She rattled about in the nearly empty sect house, directing the servants to clean dusty corners or better rearrange the rooms to suit the new needs. She reordered supplies and filed the paperwork Chang-li had left for her with the Office of Cultivation here at the Tower Climb. She still wasn't used to being addressed as "Lady Morning Mist," but until they acquired a higher-ranking cultivator spouse, that was her title. That took most of the afternoon after arriving back at the camp, and then she waited.

There was no word yet from Joshi and Chang-li or the disciples. She told herself not to worry. After all, none of the other cultivators had returned either. But she couldn't help wondering what was happening on the fourth floor. Were they making strides toward the Peak of Mental Refinement? Had some terrible fate befallen them? Would Feng realize they were there and turn his anger on them?

On the second day back, she was startled from her musings by the arrival of a servant from the Moon Whispers sect. One of her Brotherhood women showed him into the parlor where Min waited. The servant bowed low before delivering his message.

"My mistress, Lady Moon Whispers, wishes your presence at her evening gathering."

Surprised, Min blurted out, "What?"

The servant looked pained. "Lady Moon Whispers hosts a gathering of the cultivator spouses for dinner twice a week. As you are the newest member of that grouping, she's extending the message to you."

"Oh, yes, of course." Min cleared her throat. "I will be there. Please extend my thanks."

The servant left. Min recruited help from a chambermaid, a low-level Brotherhood member who was excited at this opportunity to serve in an important role, and who thankfully had several sisters on whom she had practiced hair arrangements. It was early but Min wanted time to run out and seek other help if the girl’s work proved insufficient. Finally, when Min decided her hair and makeup were as good as they would be, the girl helped her into her best sect robe. Then, waiting for the appointed time, Min resumed her other concern, looking over the sect's account books.

That was her chief worry for sect management. From the library records she had studied, Min had a vague idea of what sort of things the sect needed, but the stark red figures at the top of the ledger, proclaiming their debt. Everyone in the Brotherhood was conditioned from birth to have a keen awareness of debt. The ties of obligation and debt were the life blood and skeleton of all Brotherhoods. The sect’s debts left a bitter taste in her mouth.

Min slammed the book shut and stood. Pacing the floor, she had to admit to herself she was worried about Chang-li. What would Feng do to him if they encountered each other in the Tower? Was he truly prepared to face whatever challenges Floor Four offered? And if he did return, how could she help to shore up their fragile new relationship?

Their marriage was like their sect; something that should have no possibility of success, built on a foundation of lies between two people who weren't being honest about who they were, held together by fear of what might befall them. The smart thing to do, assuming Chang-li ever made it back, would be to keep their heads down until all the new paperwork and endorsements were done, then going their own separate ways. A cultivator divorce was serious business, requiring permission from a representative of the Emperor himself. Min suspected her elder brother could arrange it if he chose. But she doubted he would, not any time soon. she was less of a threat to the family, married off to an inconspicuous cultivator, and he'd leave it stand. Maybe in a few years, when his position was more established, he might consider it.

But even without a divorce they could separate, living their own lives, apart, until she could convince her brother to end the sham.

What did she want? She had promised Chang-li to help him build Morning Mist into something real. She meant it. She believed in his potential and in the sect, even if she was clutching stubbornly to her own previous ideas. Min found herself wanting the sect to succeed more than just to prove herself right. She was starting to care about their name, their appearance. She had to care. If she was going to make this real, it had to be real to her first.

And so too did her marriage. She couldn't be halfway in, halfway out, looking for an escape clause, considering backup plans. She would commit to this marriage and to the sect, and devils take anyone who stood in her way.

Resolved, Min threw a cloak around her shoulders and hurried along the dimming streets of the camp to the Moon Whispers compound. It was far larger than the building that housed Morning Mist. Servants met her at the door.

There was music playing softly somewhere above, and a dim murmur of voices. One of the servants took her cloak. Another, bowing low, directed her up the steps to the second level. There, she found a library with a connecting office. The screens between the two had been pushed back to form one large room. A table had been set down the middle, and the cultivator spouses were congregating on the office side, where a fire burned merrily.

On the library side, three lux lanterns gave off light, an ostentatious display of the sect's power, even if it probably was good to keep spark and flame away from the sects’ scrolls. It looked as though the sect had occupied this building for decades instead of the handful of months she knew it to have been.

Lady Moon Whispers stood flanked by the Lady of Soaring Heavens and an elderly man in Jade Lotus colors. She smiled and beckoned to Min. Min took a deep breath and stepped over the threshold, holding herself high.

The other people in the room turned to her. There were five in all: two from Jade Lotus, Lady Moon Whispers, Lady Soaring Heavens, and the Dowager Pearl's personal attendant, Lady Morningrise, who had been a cultivator spouse herself before her own wife was killed some decades and she had returned to the Court of Gems to serve the Dowager, rather than seeking a new spouse. She at least was a familiar face. Min had interacted with her many times as part of the Court of Gems.

The faces in the room were cold and scrutinizing. Everyone here was at least two decades older than Min. Min felt herself shiver, and then she got mad. She knew this technique. She had arrived five minutes prior to the time appointed by Lady Moon Whisper, yet everyone else was already here. That was deliberate. They were trying to put her on the defensive, playing on her youth and inexperience, make her feel an outsider, and then they would win her over. In this scheme, her gratefulness at being allowed into the confidence of her betters would establish a power dynamic. Min would be forever be the junior party in the relationship.

But Min had played these games from the cradle. Her head went up, her chin lifted. She floated across the room on delicately whispering feet, as confident as a soldier striding across the battlefield. As she went, she practiced the Purification of Mind and Soul technique, cycling the lux in her core and reminding herself she truly did belong here. She was a cultivator's spouse. She had taken her own first steps along the Heavenly Climb, and none of these judgmental old fools were going to scare her.

"Welcome, Lady Morning Mist," Lady Moon Whispers said. "And congratulations on your marriage."

"Yes, congratulations," Lord Jade Lotus proclaimed. "Come over here and tell us all about it, girl." He laughed. His gaze, at least, was friendly, perhaps too friendly. Min noted how his eyes slid up and down her body.

She warned herself there was much she did not yet know about how cultivator spouses interacted. She knew they were a key mechanism for sects to communicate with each other, trading knowledge, resources, even occasionally disciples. She had deciphered that much from the papers of Tradewinds Sect. How exactly such matters were handled was a mystery to her.

A servant brought her a flute of plum wine. She sipped a tiny amount, then held it casually in her left hand as she kept her right hand free.

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"We were sorry not to make your acquaintance at our last meeting," Lady Moon Whispers said. "But your sect had left the camp."

"Training mission," Min said. "In preparation for the fourth floor."

"You were cutting it fine," Lady Soaring Heavens said. She was a short woman, thin and dour, like a shriveled-up stick with a jet of silver in her dark hair. Min wasn't sure if Feng was a blood relative of hers or merely a promising recruit to her sect.

"And we are all sure you would have preferred it that way, Lady. Trust me," Lord Jade Lotus said. Min thought his pot shot was off-script for the power play against her.

Lady Soaring Heavens fixed him with a glare. "I have no fear for our sect's disciple. Bring as many as you choose and Feng will destroy them all."

"Yes, yes. We've all seen his little displays," Lord Jade Lotus said. He crooked a finger toward Min. She did not step any closer. "So, we have dispensed with the pleasantries. Everyone here has been properly greeted and their sect title used. Since this is a social meeting, we may use each other's names. I am Koban. You are Min. She is Elita," he gestured to Lady Moon Whispers.

"Koban," the other Jade Lotus spouse said severely. "You forget yourself. This girl has thirty years our junior and is a red-ranked noble, no more, and she's not even married to a Young Master."

“Ah, that's incorrect. My spouse has been raised to that rank.” It was part of the paperwork she had filed on behalf of Chang-li and Joshi, bearing Joshi's stamp.

Lady Soaring Heavens frowned. "How is that possible when you have no senior here? Surely, your sect requires more than the signet of a single Young Master to raise others to that rank."

"Our sect," Min said proudly, feeling the words in her mouth and enjoying how they tasted, "rewards those who show great initiative. My spouse has reached the rank of the Peak of Bodily Refinement on his own with no outside aid, been commended for his efforts by a Dowager Pearl and a Grand Inquisitor, and now accompanies our sect's most promising Young Master. How could he not receive proper ranking?"

Lady Moon Whispers’s eyes narrowed. "Well said, Lady Min," she said. "Come, sit down. Dinner is served."

The six sat at a round table. Min at Lady Moon Whispers’s left hand. Lady Soaring Heavens was seated at the other side with Lord Jade Lotus, or Koban, as he insisted on Min calling him, on Min's own left.

Servants brought in the first course, a clear seaweed soup. It was quite tasty. The other cultivators were talking amongst themselves, and attention fell from Min briefly, for which she was grateful. The female Jade Lotus spouse was conversing with Lady Morningrise about a supply of the cloth they needed to get ordered from down the mountain.

Lady Moon Whispers was busy making various pronouncements on how long this fourth floor might take, and what her husband expected to see as a result. Min realized she didn't know anything about it and tuned her out, as the bowls of soup were taken away and replaced with heaping bowls of perfectly steamed rice and platters of delicious vegetables cut into star and flower shapes.

The conversation shifted. Min had a radish shaped like a lotus dangling from her chopsticks halfway to her mouth when Lady Soaring Heavens addressed her directly.

"Lady Min, since you were most recently in the Court of Gems, perhaps you can answer the question. Is it unusual for a Court of Gems to have made so few matches after such a stretch of time?"

Min lowered her food back to her plate. "This was the first time I ever attended a Court of Gems," she said. "Perhaps you should address Lady Morningrise."

"The Dowager Pearl is completely satisfied with the current state of affairs," Lady Morningrise said. It had the ring of a statement she'd given many times before.

Min knew better. There'd been plenty of gossip within the Court of Gems. If she could keep the others posturing and veiled comments directed at each other instead of herself then she could maintain control over the situation.

"That said," Min lowered her voice and was pleased to see the other cultivator spouses leaning in. They might think of her as a junior, but she had information they wanted, and she knew how to best use it. "The other gem nobles, some of them, are, shall we say, disappointed in the inroads they are making with the cultivators. We have several fine cultivators here," she lied.

Only Feng and Joshi could be considered anything other than mediocre. Li Jiya had made it clear she was uninterested in marriage. With Li Jen dead and Chang-li off the table, that left the Jade Lotus Young Masters, or a few unranked disciples who had made it to the Peak of Physical Refinement without much distinction among the other three sects. "But well, it can be hard to fix your eyes on the foothills when the peaks above you are wreathed in heaven's glory." She quoted a line from a famous poet of three hundred years before, who had himself been a member of the Gem Court.

The other spouses nodded. Their expressions were frankly grim. "So we have seen," Lord Jade Lotus said. "My own disciples have enjoyed meeting with the various gem nobles, but though I have urged several of them to press their suits, none of them seem eager to, ah, shall we say, settle?"

"You mean the Indigo Princess?" Lady Moon Whispers said bluntly. Everyone else looked at her. "Yes, I'll speak my mind," she said. "You know now that I have no stake in this fight, with my husband's granddaughter intent on becoming one of the brides of the Emperor, and his grandson having unfortunately lost the approval of heaven, we have no one who is likely to make the princess a worthwhile spouse. And yet our lesser disciples refuse to court the red and orange nobles. They cannot help but stare toward the sun, and I fear they will be burned."

Lord Koban was nodding. "It is the same. If only the Indigo Princess would make her choice clear, I think that we could arrange for some matches. I don't like having so many unattached young prospects."

Lady Morningrise looked annoyed and defensive. "The Dowager Pearl has made it clear Princess Hiroko will not be pressured to make a choice. She is too great a treasure to throw at the feet of the unworthy.”

“As though there were more than one choice." Lady Soaring Heavens said. Her pointed features looked even more sharp as she jabbed out with her chopsticks. "We all know there is only one cultivator at this Tower Cull who is worthy of Princess Hiroko. Young Master Feng may not be my flesh and blood, but I am proud to have him as a member of my sect. Once he has completed this Tower Cull, all will see his worthiness to be Princess Hiroko's spouse."

"Well," Lord Koban said. "Though I do not much care for the boy's manners myself, I am forced to agree with you, Lady Lia. Feng is the only one here who could possibly be a worthwhile match for Hiroko."

Min was starting to enjoy herself. It was going to take more than one interaction with these nobles to understand the way their alliances might shift and remake themselves. She could already tell there were lines of stress here to take advantage of. "That's not entirely true," she said. "Young Master Joshi has proved himself in the Tower twice over now. First, in coming to the Princess's aid, and second, his actions in the day that Young Master Li Jen, unfortunately, perished."

"Oh, well, that I'll have to see. From a sect no one had even heard of before," Lady Loa spat. "Nonsense. The Princess will show better taste than that."

"The Princess will do as she pleases," Min said.

Lord Koban held up his hand. "As a disinterested party, in the matter of who Princess Hiroko chooses, I instead lay emphasis that she must choose, and quickly. Or else I think we can expect this behavior at the next Tower as well. I presume all of you will be proceeding to Vardin City for the cull there."

Nods all around the room.

"The Dowager Pearl and the Office of Cultivation have already issued us a conditional invitation," Lord Koban said. "Presuming that we perform well on the fourth floor and at least two of our Young Masters reach the Peak of Mental Refinement. They say without a cultivator at Mental Refinement, no cultivation group has a prayer inside Vardin City Tower."

Min's interest stirred. Vardin City was, of course, her hometown. She had seen cultivators arrive every ten years to perform a Tower Cull. Unlike this Tower, Vardin City Tower was complete, not broken. As the Governor's granddaughter, she had been present, though only a child, ten years ago, to help entertain the cultivators for the last cull.

Which made her realize if Morning Mist really did receive an invitation to the cull in Vardin City, she would be encountering her brother again, and her grandfather. That was a worry for another day. Instead, Min turned her focus back to the matter at hand.

What if Hiroko could be forced to choose? Surely she would pick Joshi, whom she had obvious affection for and had spent time inside the Tower, over the arrogant and demanding Feng. If Hiroko joined the sect, they would have access to political connections beyond what Min could bring, to say nothing of the sort of wealth an indigo princess might command. What sort of dowry might she bring? Enough to wipe out the sect's debts? Min resolved to find out.

She smiled. "Speaking for my former friends in the Court of Gems, if you were able to convince Princess Hiroko to make her choice, you would have their gratitude. I think, personally, it's irresponsible of her to delay this long. We are here. The cultivators are here. What more?" She spread her hands. "I can speak only for myself, but I think there are plenty of worthy young cultivators to choose from. Hiroko's intransigence is merely delaying the cultivators from the true start of their path. We all know no cultivator can hope to rise in the Emperor's favor without a spouse of the Gem Court at their side."

"Spoken like a woman twice your age," Lord Koban said, patting her hand with his rather sweaty one. Min forced herself not to wince and pull away. She smiled up at the old fool.

Lady Moon Whispers turned to Lady Morningrise, a triumphant smile on her face. "There, Lady Kaleitha, please be sure to relay our conversation to your mistress, as you always do."

"You think to direct a Dowager Pearl?"

"Not a bit," Lady Moon Whispers said, "merely to ensure that she is aware of the mood here in the court."

When Min went home that night, she slept well for the first night since her wedding, feeling as though she'd done a good job at last.