The next few days found Sobon most­ly ig­nor­ing his young pupil, and in­stead work­ing on re­fin­ing four pat­terns on stones, to help his mem­o­ry: telekine­sis, an en­er­gy bar­ri­er, the ri­fle pat­tern, and a grenade pat­tern suit­able for use with in-spin aether. The last two were very dan­ger­ous, not be­cause of the type of aether, but be­cause they could only op­er­ate above a cer­tain in­ten­si­ty of aether; there were no test-fir­ings of those pat­terns, not with his lim­it­ed stores, and not in a place he wished to de­fend.

It's not that he ex­pect­ed to blow up the vil­lage if he got the pat­tern wrong, but decades of train­ing told him to only ex­pose ar­eas to hos­tile aether pat­terns if they were en­e­my con­trolled, shield­ed, or could be re­paired. To do oth­er­wise would not only hin­der re­cov­ery in the area, but also... it would leave a very de­tectable trace. While he sus­pect­ed he would be fight­ing in the vil­lage, or at least in the near­by sea, there was no rea­son to draw them in, not if they might still pass the area by.

By the time the ap­proach­ing ship was vis­i­ble, it had long since been a mas­sive bea­con to his sens­es. When he fi­nal­ly car­ried his pat­tern stones to the shore, he found Ki'el al­ready there, star­ing out across the sea rest­less­ly from be­hind a tree, her aether and qi not so much qui­et as drowned out by the waves of en­er­gy. Nev­er­the­less, he not­ed that she sensed him ap­proach­ing, even when she didn't turn.

Such a cheeky stu­dent, he thought qui­et­ly to him­self with ap­proval. Thinks she's be­ing sub­tle.

"It is a ter­ri­ble aura," she said, as he hopped up to a tree branch near her, and Sobon not­ed the word, for fu­ture use. "I do not know what it is, but it feels... ter­ri­ble. Like death."

Sobon stud­ied the waves, as pas­sive­ly as he could. Like all qi he had seen, it was a com­plex mix of greater and low­er spins; he thought he felt left and right, in, and... on­ward-spin aether? Per­haps both on­ward and re­verse, at once. [ It is the... aura of a band of killers. Some pieces of it are util­i­ty for them­selves, strength­en­ing them and keep­ing their spir­its up. Oth­ers are a mes­sage to oth­ers--a promise of vi­o­lence and cru­el­ty that they will doubt­less keep, if giv­en an ex­cuse. ]

Ki'el shiv­ered, but he chose not to no­tice. In­stead, he spoke qui­et­ly, in case he should not have an­oth­er chance to of­fer her guid­ance. [ The pat­tern--the promise of vi­o­lence, en­forced in aether--helps them to do ter­ri­ble things if they de­cide to, at the cost of cor­rupt­ing them. It gives them courage against stronger or equal foes, and it helps them crush their own re­sis­tance to harm­ing in­no­cents. Your dai­ly habits are sim­i­lar--a pat­tern that ex­ists out­side your­self, which you hold to in or­der to make dif­fi­cult things eas­i­er to ac­cept. The pat­tern it­self may be used by he­roes, or mon­sters--as with weapons of all types. ]

There was a minute or two of qui­et, as Ki'el, in her own way, ab­sorbed that. Fi­nal­ly, though, she shift­ed her weight, slight­ly. "I am no hero," she said.

[ I don't mean that only he­roes and mon­sters ex­ist, ] Sobon replied, sud­den­ly wor­ried that he had been mis­un­der­stood. [ It can be used by teach­ers, el­ders... I am sure that your vil­lage had many such pat­terns. Sim­i­lar things teach lessons from par­ent to child, both in the womb, and through­out their lives. It is im­por­tant that you un­der­stand that these things are ex­ter­nal, and they can be cre­at­ed and de­stroyed... as well as cor­rupt­ed. ]

There was a long stretch of si­lence, and then Ki'el shift­ed again. "I should not have said what I did that day," she said, and he felt her strug­gling to find more words, to find a way to make up for what she did.

[ You should not have, ] he sim­ply agreed. [ It is the na­ture of... ] he al­most said chil­dren, but chose not to. [ ...stu­dents, to make mis­takes, and be cor­rect­ed. And even grown men like me, ] he added a wry sense of irony to the thought, over­layed with a men­tal im­age of his cur­rent form, [ are still stu­dents. I have much to learn, and in or­der to learn, I must be cor­rect­ed, and this is true of all teach­ers, of all ages. When you feel some­thing is wrong, you should speak. ]

Ki'el did not speak for a long time. Even­tu­al­ly, she just turned to him, said one fi­nal, "I'm sor­ry," and re­turned to the vil­lage, or so he as­sumed.

Min­utes be­came an hour, and it be­came clear to Sobon that the ship in­tend­ed to pass by. That should have been no sur­prise; he and Ki'el were not enough to at­tract at­ten­tion, and if they were the pi­rates who had ran­sacked this vil­lage, they had al­ready done a thor­ough job. If not, they like­ly didn't even know it ex­ist­ed.

Still, he stud­ied the aether giv­en off by the boat as it steered by. By the time it was near­ing its clos­est ap­proach, and get­ting ready to pass, he had be­come cer­tain of some­thing that he had been grow­ing to in­creas­ing­ly sus­pect.

He looked away, search­ing for Ki'el, to find her not far away, sit­ting against the base of a tree and star­ing dag­gers at the ship from the shade. He hopped down from his own spot and ap­proached her. [ There are pris­on­ers, slaves, aboard that ship, ] he said. [ I will need to take your boat. I am go­ing af­ter them. ]

Ki'el stood, her ex­pres­sion not seem­ing to change. Per­haps she knew, or had sus­pect­ed, or maybe she sus­pect­ed that her own peo­ple had been hauled off, or at least some of them. As they moved through the woods, though, she spoke, qui­et­ly. "I will be com­ing with you."

Sobon didn't both­er ques­tion­ing, or ar­gu­ing. His own mind re­turned to thoughts of his home­world be­ing in­vad­ed. [ It will be hard to pro­tect you, there in the mid­dle of every­thing. I will try, but be pre­pared. ]

All Ki'el said in re­sponse was, "Death would be prefer­able to know­ing that I did not try."

It was not long af­ter that she and Sobon were on a small boat, the girl pad­dling smooth­ly, every stroke pow­er­ing the craft no small amount. They were on the op­po­site side of the is­land from the ship, still, but Sobon knew that it wouldn't take long for them to make their way around. "...Mas­ter," she said, fi­nal­ly, af­ter too long in si­lence. She hadn't called him that, he re­flect­ed. "Do we at­tack in the day, or...?"

[ If it were clos­er to evening, we might wait. Un­less you think we should? ]

"At their speed..." Ki'el frowned. "No. By the time evening comes, un­less they stop, they will be in wa­ters I do not know."

[ If you can think of an am­bush spot... ]

Ki'el just shook her head. "We will sim­ply move swift­ly."

When they came around the end of the is­land, and found the ship with its sails start­ing to bil­low a bit more strong­ly in the wind, Ki'el took the op­por­tu­ni­ty to re­al­ly dig in with her oar. A life­time of ex­pe­ri­ence kept her from mak­ing too much of a splashy mess with it, but Sobon was sur­prised to find that she could still put great pow­er be­hind each stroke. Still, every smack and every gur­gle of the wa­ter made him wish he had come up with a stealth pat­tern. He had known one or two, but they seemed too tech­ni­cal to him, and would take too much guess­work.

"Boat ap­proach­ing!" Sobon heard the cry, al­though it was very dis­tant. More dis­tant, he sus­pect­ed, than he should have heard it from; his hear­ing was good, but he had nev­er no­ticed a faint sound be­ing so clear. "One girl, un­armed, or maybe a staff."

There was a smat­ter­ing of laugh­ter.

[ I will do what I can to keep you safe, ] Sobon promised, even as Ki'el be­gan push­ing her­self even hard­er on the oar. [ But... ]

She didn't stop work as she replied, "But what?"

[ You would also make an ex­cel­lent dis­trac­tion. If you are will­ing. ]

"No mat­ter what, I in­tend to board that ship," she said, her qui­et voice in­tense. "I hope to at least beat one of them to death. Af­ter that, we will see."

----------------------------------------

Ki'el bare­ly paid at­ten­tion when Sobon hid him­self, and didn't both­er look­ing for him or try­ing to sense how close he was. When she got the boat close enough to the side of the pi­rate ship, she snatched up her staff with one hand and leaped over, grab­bing one of the planks on the side that served as a crude lad­der. Even with only one hand, she found her­self mov­ing more smooth­ly than she had ex­pect­ed, step­ping up and snaking her climb­ing hand up to the next plank be­fore she could be­gin to pull away. It wouldn't have been odd if that was a thing that she prac­ticed... but no, she just felt her body mov­ing with pur­pose and clar­i­ty.

It was hard­ly the time to be dis­tract­ed with thoughts of why.

When she got near to the edge of the ship, there was an ugly, wiry Djip lean­ing over to grab at her shirt and pull her up, but she braced her­self quick­ly and jabbed the staff at his face, in­stinc­tive­ly pres­sur­ing both of her new cir­cu­lar cores. As she did, she felt them both push­ing en­er­gy into her, and... as Sobon had said, one of them felt right with­in her, while one of them felt wrong. With her bare­ly pay­ing at­ten­tion, all she could do at the mo­ment is back off the pres­sure--which she was only able to do be­cause the man at the edge of the ship backed away for an in­stant, spooked.

She held on to where she was only long enough to lay a men­tal hand on the right-hand cir­cle and re­lease the oth­er, and be­fore she even had it un­der con­trol, she pulled her­self up onto the ship. As her head cleared the edge, she saw a group­ing of two dozen sailors, some Djang, some Djip, some Iji, and even some Il­lans like her­self. The crew were all men, though, and they all had the same ill taint to their spir­its, at least as far as her sens­es could tell. The group had a mixed group of ex­pres­sions on their faces, none of them pleas­ant; some were just an­gry, oth­ers, pained or tired, oth­ers show­ing an ea­ger­ness to fight that she dared not think too hard about.

As her feet fi­nal­ly reached the deck, the most heav­i­ly built man took a half-step for­ward, his greasy skin shin­ing in the ear­ly af­ter­noon sun. Al­though he was at least half Il­lan, he spoke Djangese with lit­tle ac­cent "What a lit­tle treat has worked its way up onto our deck. In­ter­est­ed in sign­ing up, lit­tle lady?"

The laugh­ter that rolled through the crowd could have meant any one of a num­ber of things, but none of them were good. At least, not know­ing who these men were.

"This crew," she said, "de­stroyed my vil­lage."

One of the crew­man turned and boffed an­oth­er on his shirt­less chest. "I said it was this place," he said in bro­ken Djangese, proud­ly, though no one seemed im­pressed with him at all.

If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

Ki'el took a deep breath and tried to steady her thoughts. She would have han­dled this very dif­fer­ent­ly, if she didn't have Sobon with her. If he didn't say he need­ed a dis­trac­tion. Even so, it felt very much like she was throw­ing her life away for noth­ing, or maybe, for her own pride.

She just opened her eyes and looked at the man who'd stepped for­ward. "I'll have my sat­is­fac­tion from you. One on one du­els, un­less you are afraid."

The roar­ing laugh­ter of the en­tire crew is not what spooked her. No, what made her soul shiv­er in its deep­est depths was just the slight­est trem­ble in the aura that suf­fused the whole ship. She turned to look, but the source of the aura was be­hind a door--the large door on the stern of the ship. Which, she rea­soned in­stant­ly, must be the cap­tain's quar­ters; it made sense that the strongest man would lead, es­pe­cial­ly on a crew like this.

Her at­ten­tion was drawn back when one of the men took his al­ready-bared saber and leaped at her even as most of the rest were laugh­ing. She was quick with the staff, knock­ing the ver­ti­cal slash aside, and im­me­di­ate­ly shift­ed for­wards and dropped her weight, bring­ing the end of her staff down on the man's foot with that weight plus all the force she could muster. She would have known with­out look­ing that she had shat­tered the man's foot with the strike, but she didn't ex­pect the blow to also push her staff a fin­ger width into the wood deck, blood and splin­ters ex­plod­ing from the strike.

She ig­nored the ob­ser­va­tion and caught her weight, slip­ping for­ward, yank­ing her staff clear and spin­ning it into a blow to the back of the pi­rate's head, which knocked him clean off the ship, and also made a loud crack like it had split his skull, though she... couldn't imag­ine why her blow would have been that strong.

"This bitch..." At least two men charged her af­ter that, and Ki'el put aside all thought of lis­ten­ing, or even hear­ing what they said, her mind clamp­ing onto that right-hand cir­cle that her mas­ter had giv­en her, as she forced her mind into the pat­terns she had drilled. They were not war­rior pat­terns--not tru­ly. They were counter-at­tacks and dodges, ones that would have been use­less if she were much slow­er than she was now. The two blades charged in, mov­ing aside to give them­selves space from each oth­er, each poised to thrust.

Ki'el picked one and stepped for­ward, mov­ing her staff as though she was go­ing to con­front the man, but in­stead putting the staff in mo­tion so that as soon as the oth­er blade was thrust at her, she could ma­neu­ver it to block. In the mo­ment of con­fu­sion, when the blade didn't meet its mark, she stepped a half step for­ward, twirling the staff to re­gain mo­men­tum, and then aimed a blow up­wards into her first tar­get's crotch.

The man's feet left the deck, briefly, and he dropped his sword.

Ki'el whirled and had her staff ready to deal with the sec­ond blade, but he had start­ed to raise his own qi, and she knew even be­fore the wood struck that her blow would bare­ly find pur­chase. She al­lowed the blow to con­tin­ue but weak­en, ready­ing to turn it into a feint, but she also no­ticed, in her pe­riph­ery, that sev­er­al of the oth­er crew were now start­ing to cir­cle around her, weapons out, all with ter­ri­ble looks on their faces, now fo­cused and in­tent.

She would lat­er re­al­ize that there was a sin­gle mo­ment, per­haps, when at least ten of them lined up. In the mo­ment it­self, how­ev­er, she flinched, with­out know­ing why. It felt like a line was burned through her thoughts, and when that in­stant passed... in­stead of men, there were charred half-corpses of men, all in a line, and be­yond them, a leg-sized hole in the edge of the deck, which she could see went straight through and out the side, though it was high enough it wouldn't en­dan­ger the ship it­self.

She, with every­one else, turned to look, though she knew who it must have been. Sobon float­ed there, next to the corpse of the pi­lot, one of his lit­tle rocks glow­ing red to her eyes, and shed­ding sparks of aether to her sens­es, like the coals of a fire when stirred. In that mo­ment, she also felt the aura of the Cap­tain stir, and she knew that what­ev­er came next, it would be be­yond her abil­i­ty to deal with.

So in­stead, she turned to the near­est, half-stunned pi­rate, and put all of her strength into thrust­ing the end of her staff into his neck. He al­most re­cov­ered in time to block it, or at least re­sist it with his qi, but it was enough to stun him ful­ly, and she spun in place and put as much mo­men­tum into her staff as she could, smash­ing him in the chest with it. The pi­rate, with no words but an un­pleas­ant crunch­ing noise, flew off the ship.

The re­main­ing pi­rates seemed as ea­ger as her to avoid be­ing use­less, al­though bare­ly a third of them de­cid­ed that she was the next rel­e­vant threat. That worked out in her fa­vor; the four men bran­dish­ing their sabers at her didn't look like the bravest or strongest of the lot, and two of them brushed each oth­er and had a mo­men­tary spat, tak­ing their eyes off of her to glare dag­gers at one an­oth­er, pre­sum­ably each want­i­ng to claim the right to fight next. Of the oth­er two, one had a near­ly blank look on his face, al­though he kept his sword mov­ing nim­bly, and the oth­er had a tense look on his face that Ki'el didn't both­er try­ing to read. She took her staff in both hands and force­ful­ly blocked a heavy blow from the more ag­gres­sive fight­er, slid his blade aside, and start­ed to turn to­wards the blank one.

His fist was a sur­prise as it knocked the air out of her lungs. In the mo­ment of shock, she looked again at his eyes, won­der­ing if per­haps they were a look of deep con­cen­tra­tion, but still, all she could see was empti­ness, even as his lips peeled back into a nasty gri­mace.

At that mo­ment, the Cap­tain's door opened, and a man stepped out, a man whose aura par­a­lyzed near­ly every­one aboard the ship the mo­ment he ful­ly un­veiled it. His own sailors flinched back from it, and Ki'el lost feel­ing in her legs, bare­ly man­ag­ing to catch her­self on her staff and keep up­right, in or­der to bet­ter see the man. He was ugly, most like­ly, though Ki'el could only un­der­stand him in terms of that ter­ri­ble aura; it was an oily black­ness that ra­di­at­ed out from his soul, soak­ing into every board, rope, and stretch of can­vas in sight, claim­ing them with fa­mil­iar­i­ty and fi­nal­i­ty. His own peo­ple seemed to shy away from the all-cor­rupt­ing waves of en­er­gy, but when they could not es­cape, af­ter only a mo­ment, they straight­ened, look­ing back at their cap­tain more brave­ly, per­haps, or per­haps just with no re­main­ing will to re­sist. Ki'el felt the wave flow into her, but in­stead of claim­ing her, she could feel it crash over her like a curse, her mus­cles siez­ing, her bones weak­en­ing, her eyes go­ing dark.

"Who dam­aged my ship?" The words were sim­ple and to the point, and the oth­ers point­ed to where Sobon must have been, but Ki'el couldn't see him any­more. She could see very lit­tle ex­cept the deck, and the dark­en­ing sky, and the Cap­tain who strode through it all. He turned to look, one man in a sea of sil­hou­ettes, and squint­ed, and looked in­cred­u­lous­ly at the man who must have been his sec­ond in com­mand.

[ I'm aware that my form isn't in­tim­i­dat­ing, ] her mas­ter spoke clear­ly, this time not only into her own mind. [ But sure­ly you're one who knows just how wrong per­cep­tions can be? ]

"Keep talk­ing, meat," the Cap­tain said, and Ki'el felt waves and waves of dark en­er­gy pour from him. "I'll dunk you whole and alive in cook­ing oil and only bring you out to breathe. Once you're fried alive I'll eat you in a sin­gle bite, and you'll suf­fer your fi­nal undig­ni­fied death in my stom­ach, fi­nal­ly know­ing your place as you're un­made and con­sumed by my core."

[ ...Hum, ] Sobon's men­tal voice man­aged to clear Ki'el's head, just a bit. He sound­ed... im­pressed. [ That's quite a threat. My counter will be... ]

And then, with a speed Ki'el had only sort of known the squir­rel was ca­pa­ble of, he flew through the air next to the Cap­tain, and un­leashed an­oth­er blast like the first, which blind­ed Ki'el's mind like the sun once again, straight into the side of the man's head.

The re­sult­ing wave of qi wash­ing over the ship was like the tolling of a bro­ken ship's bell, off-key and un­mis­tak­able. A heavy strike had met a high­ly ar­mored shell... and the shell held. Ki'el's eyes snapped open, and she blinked away shad­ows that had nev­er been, look­ing up to see the Cap­tain still stand­ing there, Sobon still float­ing next to him, a burned and bloody gash along the side of the pi­rate's head, but noth­ing more.

It felt like min­utes passed, but Sobon must have re­act­ed in­stant­ly, and the Cap­tain wasn't far be­hind. As the fly­ing squir­rel dashed away, the pi­rate's saber was coat­ed with an in­deli­ble black, which rip­pled off the tip of the blade, ex­tend­ing it first inch­es, then feet, then a whole ship's length, be­fore re­tract­ing, but Sobon had dodged. Ki'el glanced at a mast, well with­in range of the swipe, but the dark­ness with­in it didn't seem phased by the cap­tain's own strike; no hiss or thunk came off of it as the strike passed through. The pi­rate dashed for­ward, far faster than a hu­man should have been able to move, but Sobon man­aged to ma­neu­ver a whole bar­rel into his way that hadn't been there be­fore. The pi­rate cap­tain bare­ly hes­i­tat­ed, cleav­ing through it with a sin­gle swipe of his saber, and spilling wa­ter across the deck.

Ki'el tried to fol­low Sobon with her eyes, but she felt like she was watch­ing a dream, as the squir­rel's po­si­tion shift­ed rapid­ly and con­fi­dent­ly, as though fol­low­ing a plan she couldn't be­gin to fath­om.

Fi­nal­ly, the cap­tain stopped, and with a shout of, "Enough!" reached up with a hand, his qi scream­ing the tech­nique name, Sphere of Pitch, into her mind. In­stant­ly, black en­er­gy from the whole ship con­verged on Sobon, sur­round­ing him in a mas­sive black shell.

"Enough!" the cap­tain re­peat­ed, and Ki'el felt strange, re­al­iz­ing that his voice wasn't car­ry­ing any qi-based pow­er to her any­more, most like­ly sav­ing it for the fight. "I'll ad­mit that was per­haps the sec­ond most pow­er­ful blow to the head I've ever tak­en, rat, but you won't catch me with it again. I don't know what kind of name­less tech­nique you in­her­it­ed, but if that's the best you can do--"

[ The best I can do? ] Sobon's voice was amused. [ How about this, then? ]

Ki'el must have sensed it a few mo­ment af­ter the cap­tain did. It was, af­ter all, too pow­er­ful a feel­ing to be missed, most like­ly even by those with­out any qi sense; Ki'el rec­og­nized it as Sobon pour­ing sev­er­al of his rings of pow­er all at once into one of his float­ing stones, which cap­tured that en­er­gy and com­pressed it into a point. The waves that she felt--that every­one felt--didn't feel like a tech­nique be­ing ex­e­cut­ed. In­stead, it felt... a lit­tle like a scream, mut­ed by be­ing con­tained be­hind a wall, but heard clear­ly through the cracks. A scream that was only grow­ing loud­er, mo­ment by mo­ment, and if even the noise of it was so in­tense...

The cap­tain waves his hand to scat­ter the sphere of black and leaped for­ward, his saber length­en­ing with black pow­er to try to stab at Sobon, but the squir­rel just ca­su­al­ly tossed the stone past the cap­tain and to­wards the ship. Ki'el flinched; she was sure, if that tech­nique re­leased, she would die, along with the cap­tain, crew, and pris­on­ers. But the cap­tain, no doubt think­ing the same, threw his qi into stop­ping his own mo­men­tum, and spun and bat­ted the rock away from the ship with the flat of the blade, his qi all di­rect­ed at push­ing the tech­nique away. Sobon, she was sure, al­lowed it to go, float­ing away from the ship in the oth­er di­rec­tion.

When the rock fi­nal­ly ex­plod­ed, the ship rocked so hard that it near­ly cap­sized, and Ki'el was thrown over­board, along with many of the crew, and this time Ki'el was sure that most of the oth­ers were also blind­ed and stunned by the wave of qi--no, aether--that fu­eled the ex­plo­sion. It took her long, long mo­ments to awake from a sense of dev­as­ta­tion that she couldn't un­der­stand or place; Ki'el, though, found her­self lay­ing safe, and even dry, in her boat. Im­pos­si­ble, she knew, since it should have fall­en well be­hind the ship af­ter she board­ed. With a jolt of pan­ic, she sat up and looked around, in­stant­ly spot­ting Sobon and the Cap­tain--the squir­rel float­ing serene­ly, and the Cap­tain stand­ing on an im­pos­si­bly calm sec­tion of the tur­bu­lent wa­ters.

[ I am not afraid of you, pi­rate, ] Ki'el heard him say, from quite a ways away.

"Then you'd bet­ter kill me," the Cap­tain said, and in the qi of his voice, she could feel an im­age of his face, sneer­ing in con­tempt, along with a set of words she couldn't un­der­stand.

[ Yes, ] Sobon sim­ply replied, tired­ly, [ I sup­pose so. ]

And then, with an­oth­er spark that mo­men­tar­i­ly blind­ed Ki'el--this a spot, and not a line like the ones be­fore--the Cap­tain's head sim­ply ex­plod­ed into pieces, and his body dropped in­stant­ly into the wa­ter, the ar­ti­fi­cial still­ness be­neath his feet van­ish­ing like it had nev­er been, the wa­ters churn­ing and thick streams of red run­ning through them for a mo­ment. There was qui­et, for a mo­ment, and Ki'el looked around, for any of the oth­er sailors to be swim­ming or stand­ing on the wa­ters, prepar­ing one last come­back--or per­haps, strug­gling to get away, to fight an­oth­er day.

She saw noth­ing.

[ Ki'el. ] Sobon's voice was close, and she turned to find that he had ap­proached with­out her even know­ing, and was now perched on the bow tip of her boat. She... didn't know too much, ex­cept that she could tell he was tired. Per­haps, very tired. [ You have done an ad­mirable job. Thank you. ]

Ki'el stiff­ened, un­cer­tain about why and how the words seemed to weave around her... only to re­al­ize, af­ter a mo­ment, that she was sag­ging, her qi long since de­plet­ed, and she col­lapsed to the floor of the boat, ex­haust­ed.