Be­fore Sobon even left the build­ing, a dif­fer­ent at­ten­dant hur­ried over with a set of doc­u­ments, which she scanned, and then al­lowed Alas­si to sign, tak­ing one copy for her­self while an­oth­er re­mained at the City Lord's hall. It was a sim­ple le­gal doc­u­ment, one that Alas­si was al­ready fa­mil­iar with--in fact, it had much less legalese than the deed for the inn, which had been a de­tailed agree­ment be­tween Alas­si, Tuli, and a banker. This was al­most uni­lat­er­al, giv­ing own­er­ship of the prop­er­ty to Alas­si, and all rights that the City Lord him­self had the au­thor­i­ty to grant.

Alas­si her­self was quite pleased by this. [ Among oth­er things, I be­lieve this al­lows us--well, you. Or any­one, I sup­pose--to op­er­ate a busi­ness there. One of the rea­sons why we built the inn so far away was that it would cost much more to own a busi­ness close to the city, or with­in it. I nev­er checked, but I'm sure the shops on the Ways of Gold and Sil­ver are so ex­pen­sive to pur­chase that only a no­ble fam­i­ly could af­ford them. ]

Sobon hadn't con­sid­ered ex­act­ly how re­strict­ed prop­er­ty deeds might be, but nei­ther was she sur­prised. Con­trol of prop­er­ty was a very easy way to con­trol pow­er in any world, and good lo­ca­tion in busi­ness was pow­er­ful. Still, as Sobon dis­missed the at­ten­dant and made her way back out­side, her mind was on the small signs, here and there, that things were wrong in the city. The slums, the peo­ple pos­si­bly sup­port­ing the thieves over the guards, and the fact that there were deed re­stric­tions against busi­ness use on most prop­er­ty, en­sur­ing that poor­er peo­ple had to have mon­ey to be­gin a busi­ness. Com­bined with the ex­is­tence of slums... that would prob­a­bly pre­vent the ex­is­tence of low-cost, lo­cal food or sim­i­lar, as well.

Sobon let those thoughts clear as she quick­ly searched the plaza area for the man from ear­li­er, but he had left his spot at the foun­tain. Sobon frowned, but only briefly, and al­lowed her feet to car­ry her past the same spot on her way back out. There was no sig­nif­i­cant sign, ex­cept maybe the slight­est touch of aether where he was sit­ting and med­i­tat­ing.

In­stead of head­ing di­rect­ly back, Sobon let her­self wan­der gen­er­al­ly in the di­rec­tion of the Al­chemist where Lui was, al­though she didn't get par­tic­u­lar­ly close. Once she could see the place, and got a gen­er­al im­pres­sion of the aether there, she de­cid­ed she was sat­is­fied. There were plen­ty of things that might have been wrong--stale aether would have been the most sub­tle one, but af­ter the tea she was served, it was on her mind--but the aether was smooth, blend­ing in to the sur­round­ings while still hav­ing its own ob­vi­ous char­ac­ter. Like­wise, the sur­round­ings were calm, with sev­er­al oth­er crafts shops of var­i­ous kinds around, none of them hav­ing ob­vi­ous bad char­ac­ter. Just down the road, near where Sobon de­cid­ed to turn back, was a tea house. Sobon was sure that she could have sat there and in­ves­ti­gat­ed the shop at her leisure, but she didn't want to be in con­trol of Lui's life.

So she glanced around at the shops, pre­tend­ing to be in­ter­est­ed in those in­stead. The only ones that re­al­ly in­ter­est­ed her were in­scrip­tion­ist shops, of which there were two, one clos­er to the al­chemist's and one clos­er to the trade road. Of the two, Sobon liked the aether of the for­mer shop bet­ter, but de­cid­ed to poke her head in to the clos­er one, to avoid tempt­ing her­self to mon­i­tor Lui and Fau Mide.

The in­scrip­tion­ist's shop was wealthy enough to have a full time sales­per­son, who stiff­ened im­me­di­ate­ly when it was ob­vi­ous that Sobon was com­ing in. She was young, per­haps re­lat­ed to the real crafters, with her hair done up neat­ly and fine silk clothes, but Sobon didn't like see­ing such a young lady force a mask over her fea­tures, hid­ing every last one of her thoughts. It wasn't the prin­ci­ple of the thing, but the ex­e­cu­tion--she was too good at sup­press­ing her own feel­ings, which spoke of heavy-hand­ed dis­ci­pline. It doubt­less served a pur­pose, and per­haps served it well, but it was one of those things that dam­aged a per­son's spir­it.

Sobon stud­ied the girl, but also and more ob­vi­ous­ly stud­ied the var­i­ous in­scribed items in the shop, tak­ing men­tal notes where she could of the in­scrip­tions. Al­though the Marines had not taught her aether med­i­cine, be­yond first aid, she was keen­ly aware that forc­ing one's spir­it into a pat­tern that didn't fit it would re­duce your sen­si­tiv­i­ty to aether sig­nif­i­cant­ly. And the girl did show just the slight­est signs that she might be a bit aether-in­sen­si­tive, al­though Sobon was only guess­ing, as the oc­ca­sion­al aether wave or ping passed by with­out her ob­vi­ous­ly notic­ing.

"Is the Lady in­ter­est­ed in in­scrip­tions?" the girl asked fi­nal­ly. "We have many tal­is­mans and seals avail­able, and the Mas­ter is ca­pa­ble of set­ting up ad­vanced for­ma­tions."

Sobon con­sid­ered, look­ing around. "Is the Mas­ter avail­able?"

The girl men­tal­ly fum­bled for a mo­ment be­fore send­ing off a qi pulse, al­though she kept her face al­most straight. "I be­lieve he will be in a few mo­ments."

Sobon took the time to study the most ad­vanced item she could find, a jew­eled amulet hang­ing on the wall that was dense­ly packed with qi in­scrip­tions. Al­though Sobon was sure that part of the script was on the rear, out of sight, what she could see from the front was a large set of de­fen­sive scripts, many of them specif­i­cal­ly trig­gered to some source of dan­ger or oth­er. A few of the tricks were clever; the most broad trig­ger would de­fend the wear­er if her own qi didn't will­ing­ly mesh with an in­com­ing aether ef­fect above a cer­tain in­ten­si­ty. That would al­most al­ways be the case when be­ing at­tacked, but might have also blocked some types of heal­ing, es­pe­cial­ly while the bear­er was un­con­scious. An in­tent fil­ter was at­tached there, to pro­vide an ex­cep­tion, but Sobon wasn't en­tire­ly sure she liked the so­lu­tion.

Sobon didn't miss the sound of the in­scrip­tion mas­ter com­ing up a set of stairs from a shield­ed base­ment, and shift­ed her at­ten­tion to the sim­plest in­scrip­tion in the shop--an en­hanced dag­ger. It was dis­tinct­ly less im­pres­sive than her broom han­dle work, mere­ly en­hanc­ing the strength of the steel it­self, and do­ing so by fill­ing it with a spe­cif­ic type of hard­en­ing qi. Sobon hadn't looked too close­ly at the qi types--it seemed most­ly point­less to her, as much of qi's spe­cif­ic func­tions did--but they had a va­ri­ety of spe­cif­ic prop­er­ties and en­hance­ments, and were gen­er­al­ly themed around el­e­ments and ef­fects. This dag­ger was es­sen­tial­ly be­ing told by its in­scrip­tions to be­have more like an ide­al dag­ger--in oth­er words, strong, sharp, and re­sis­tant to wear.

Where­as Sobon's broom han­dle had sim­ply cre­at­ed a cut­ting edge from pure geom­e­try and force planes. Every bit of en­er­gy put into the pro­jec­tion was do­ing what she asked of it, as op­posed to this... ide­al­is­tic crap.

"May I help you, my Lady?" Sobon glanced at the mas­ter in­scrip­tion­ist, who was a mid­dle-aged man with sharp eyes, his fea­tures clean ex­cept for a sin­gle, short sec­tion of beard hang­ing from the cen­ter of his chin. Sobon didn't like him; al­though most of his aether was calm and even, there was a sin­gle flaw buried deep in­side, and it wasn't small or sub­tle. Out of view, per­haps, but no less real.

"I am some­what in­ter­est­ed in your process," Sobon said, glanc­ing around, but find­ing no bet­ter ex­am­ple than the dag­ger. "Though not the de­tails of in­scrip­tion. For in­stance, this dag­ger." She nod­ded at it. "I see the in­tent and the pur­pose of it. But is this re­al­ly the best way to cre­ate such a weapon?"

The in­scrip­tion­ist frowned, and Sobon could feel a riot of emo­tion run­ning through him, and it felt like much of it swirled around that flaw, though not di­rect­ly through it. Pride, she sus­pect­ed, or some­thing close enough. Ar­ro­gance, maybe. "Met­al qi is the best way to en­hance met­al weapons, of course. This is a very sim­ple ex­am­ple." He im­me­di­ate­ly turned to an­oth­er blade, a stan­dard sin­gle-edged sword with a gen­tle curve. "For in­stance, this one uses met­al qi for re­in­forc­ing and en­hanc­ing the blade, but its cut­ting pow­er is en­hanced with blood qi. Once it has opened a wound, it will pen­e­trate much fur­ther than nor­mal. Of course, this is best with stab­bing at­tacks." He moved on to an­oth­er, some­what short­er blade. "This uses thun­der qi to ex­tend the tip of the blade when mak­ing slic­ing at­tacks. It is in­tend­ed to de­ceive the op­po­nent into think­ing they have dodged, and re­quires ac­tive in­tent to use."

Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

Sobon stud­ied both ex­am­ples. The blood cut­ting sword... Sobon thought it was over­built, most like­ly be­cause it had to steal pow­er from an op­po­nent's blood, which would op­pose the in­tent. It would build up pow­er nec­es­sary to over­come that re­sis­tance, and then hold onto blood once it had at­tuned some. Again, Sobon could see the point and pur­pose of it, but it was in­ef­fi­cient. The 'thun­der' cut­ting sword used light­ning qi and a bit of geom­e­try--it was the clos­est Sobon could see in the room to her bar­ri­er blade, but it too built up a lot of func­tions in or­der to work with, and there­fore, work around the spe­cif­ic na­ture of qi in­volved. Af­ter all, light­ning was an el­e­ment that flowed from one thing to an­oth­er--it didn't just hang around do­ing noth­ing.

"What about a blade that would re­spond to the user's qi, what­ev­er type of qi they chose to use?"

The man frowned. "That would be... com­pli­cat­ed, my Lady."

Sobon just raised her eye­brows. "Oh?"

The in­scrip­tion­ist met her eyes, but Sobon wasn't sure she could un­der­stand what she saw there. "There are too many vari­a­tions on how qi could be used in­side of a sword, and a prop­er in­scrip­tion would need to res­onate with the na­ture of qi and its pur­pose. Hold­ing blood qi along the edge of a blade is very dif­fer­ent from do­ing the same with light­ning qi, or fire qi, or met­al qi. It would be triv­ial to sim­ply provide qi-con­duc­tive chan­nels through the weapon, but that would not en­hance or mul­ti­ply the pow­er of the qi. Such chan­nels would sim­ply be al­low­ing a novice to do what a qi mas­ter can al­ready do."

Sobon dis­agreed, of course, but won­dered if it was a dif­fer­ence in per­spec­tive, ed­u­ca­tion, or phi­los­o­phy. "I would ex­pect that a mas­ter in­scrip­tion­ist such as your­self could cre­ate not only chan­nels, but also re­lease the qi from that chan­nel along the blade, while shield­ing the blade from the re­lease it­self. Al­though it would not work for every qi na­ture, it would be a fun­da­men­tal tool that al­lows a war­rior to more eas­i­ly prac­tice do­ing the same with their qi."

For some rea­son, that sim­ple sug­ges­tion set the mas­ter in­scrip­tion­ist to sweat­ing. Sobon just looked at him, gen­uine­ly cu­ri­ous why a few sim­ple words had got­ten him up­set, but af­ter a mo­ment, he sim­ply cov­ered it up by putting a thought­ful look on his face.

"I had not con­sid­ered that ap­proach, my Lady, he said, sim­ply, and then cleared his ex­pres­sion, de­lib­er­ate­ly. "Do you have any oth­er de­sires, my lady? Or any de­sire to pur­chase some­thing?"

Sobon made a show of look­ing at every­thing dis­played, one at a time, be­fore say­ing, "Not to­day," and then walk­ing out.

Sobon took a me­an­der­ing path through the city on her way back home, but al­though she not­ed var­i­ous shops and roads on her walk, she was most­ly think­ing about the in­scrip­tions she'd seen. It put into con­text some of what the Ri'lef had sent her about qi and in­scrip­tions; there were many words in the lan­guage of qi in­scrip­tion that were high­ly spe­cif­ic, as they ap­plied to not only some spe­cif­ic na­ture of qi, but also a spe­cif­ic ap­pli­ca­tion. The set of scripts, for ex­am­ple, that held light­ning-type qi in space rel­a­tive to the blade were more com­plex than just con­tain­ment, re­lease, and shield­ing, as Sobon had sug­gest­ed. It in­stead cy­cled through a num­ber of states, each state stor­ing and dis­charg­ing the qi in spe­cif­ic ways.

But the 'words' in the script that did that were fun­da­men­tal con­cepts, and even the cy­cling func­tion was a spe­cif­ic mul­ti-word phrase that ap­peared in the doc­u­ments, all so that the elec­tric dis­charge of the qi would look re­al­is­tic--a con­cern for the Ri'lef en­gi­neers putting such a sys­tem to­geth­er. See­ing it in ac­tion, Sobon could imag­ine adapt­ing the cy­cling func­tion to cre­ate a vi­brat­ing cut­ting edge, per­haps with small ser­ra­tions to ex­tend the range of the ac­tu­al cut­ting sur­face slight­ly. It would have, ul­ti­mate­ly, much more ef­fect than turn­ing a lit­tle bit of cap­tured "blood qi" into an ad­di­tion­al cut­ting edge.

By the time that Sobon re­turned to her house, she had near­ly for­got­ten about the mys­tery man at the foun­tain. But as she reached out men­tal­ly to un­lock the gate, she paused, look­ing down the street.

Where, by all ac­counts idly, the same man walked out of an al­ley­way, his eyes look­ing away at some­thing else, a pleas­ant look on his face.

It didn't take him long to turn back her way, of course, and he smiled broad­ly when he saw Sobon stand­ing there, and walked in her di­rec­tion. He didn't raise his voice, or try to speak un­til he was rea­son­ably close. "Good day, Lady," he sim­ply said, smil­ing. "I see that for­tune has brought us to­geth­er once more."

"I doubt it was sim­ple for­tune," said Sobon, not dis­guis­ing the sus­pi­cion in her voice.

"Fate, then." The man made a pleas­ant, if shal­low and short, bow, one more per­for­ma­tive than sub­servient. "I am known as Kibar. And you, lady?"

Sobon, hav­ing been re­mind­ed that peo­ple could read one an­oth­er's qi, con­sid­ered the ques­tion a mo­ment be­fore re­ply­ing. "You may call me Alas­si."

"Charmed. Al­though, that is not quite who you are, is it?" The look in his eyes wasn't ma­li­cious, more like a man who en­joyed find­ing and keep­ing se­crets, though Sobon still wasn't sure how much to trust him.

"It is a name. It is mine." Those were true enough, though Sobon's thoughts con­tin­ued on, rec­og­niz­ing that the man seemed to want to chat, and what­ev­er he in­tend­ed to do, it might be bet­ter to at least see where it was go­ing. "But a name is only a word to de­scribe a per­son. Too of­ten, it says very lit­tle."

"Ex­act­ly so." The man's smile widened for half a mo­ment. "If any­thing, it is the very fact that it is yours that makes it mean­ing­ful. It can nev­er be­long to any­one else, af­ter that."

Sobon chose not to even en­gage with that in­sin­u­a­tion. "Did you have some­thing you need­ed, sir Kibar?" The word 'sir' that she used, ac­cord­ing to Alas­si, was some­what less po­lite than call­ing a per­son a lord. For­mal, but not near­ly as re­spect­ful.

"Only a chance to speak with a beau­ti­ful and in­tel­li­gent woman," Kibar said in turn, with hard­ly a pause. "I won­der, my lady... what do you be­lieve that fate is?"

That was a ques­tion that Sobon didn't want to an­swer, be­cause she knew that the an­swer she had was tech­ni­cal, in­volved time ma­nip­u­la­tion, and wouldn't be looked fond­ly on by most. Still, she was still orig­i­nal­ly a cy­borg, and could think on her feet. "It ties us to some­thing larg­er than our­selves", she said, that sum­ma­ry not touch­ing on the Ri'lef's con­cept of a mas­sive fate-al­ter­ing struc­ture de­signed and built by aliens to ma­nip­u­late the course of the en­tire world.

"It does," the man replied, cheer­ful­ly. "To the past of our peo­ple, and to its fu­ture. We were fat­ed to meet, to­day. The Spir­its willed it."

Sobon con­sid­ered the man, what he had said, and the sud­den flick of tan­gled aether that she had felt when she passed by him. Per­haps that was ex­act­ly true--that a spir­i­tu­al god, or oth­er greater spir­it, had placed him in her way specif­i­cal­ly to en­tan­gle her into some scheme. "And do you trust the spir­its?" She stud­ied him, and the sub­tle but deep aether be­hind him.

Al­though she ex­pect­ed him to be equal­ly blithe about that ques­tion, in­stead he paused, let­ting his smile slip a lit­tle as he con­sid­ered. "That is the question, isn't it? The spir­its have pow­er, enough to shape des­tiny. But not all spir­its are well-mean­ing. It would not be dif­fi­cult for us to fall into the sway of a spir­it who means ill. Many have done so in the past, and many, I am sure, will fall into such traps in the fu­ture." Still, his smile re­turned. "I do not trust all spir­its. But I trust my [kar­ma]."

Sobon blinked, sur­prised that the man went out of his way to ful­ly en­com­pass a spo­ken word with a data­gram trans­la­tion. It wasn't as though the word made no sense--Alas­si rec­og­nized and un­der­stood it--but the man still put his heart into say­ing the word, fill­ing it with mean­ing, if not in­tent. To him, kar­ma was a near­ly in­de­scrib­able love that had guid­ed him through hard times, a love that had ex­ist­ed for him be­fore he was born, and which trust­ed him and which he trust­ed in turn. In short, it was a con­nec­tion to some­thing which, at least to him, was kind and benev­o­lent.

Sobon was not ful­ly over her dis­trust of the man, or what­ev­er spir­i­tu­al backer he had, but she con­sid­ered. It wouldn't be hard to be cyn­i­cal, dis­card­ing the man and his spir­i­tu­al ally. And it would be shock­ing­ly easy to be­come en­tan­gled with him and his kar­ma. But in­stead, Sobon closed her eyes and gen­tly re­leased sev­er­al waves of aether in var­i­ous pat­terns, try­ing to find and dis­en­tan­gle the web that had brought the man to her doorstep.

When she found some­thing like a small aether knot, Sobon got a sense that be­yond it was a kind en­ti­ty, but not a bril­liant one. Sobon sent it a pulse of some­thing like grat­i­tude, but qui­et­ly re­moved the knot with­out any fur­ther dis­cus­sion.

"It is good that you have good... kar­ma," Sobon said. "But my pur­pose is heavy, and com­plex. I do not hate you, or your kar­ma. But I do not trust you to lead me where I need to go."

For some rea­son, the smile on the man's face had slipped, and he looked... strange. Still, he was a bright man, and he con­sid­ered her words, and not mere­ly the ac­tion that he had clear­ly sensed her tak­ing. "It is al­ways good when a good per­son knows what they must do in life. But you are sure...? That you do not need, or want...?"

"I be­lieve the word you are look­ing for is ful­fill­ment," Sobon guessed. In a word, that de­scribed the man; he seemed kind, and was loved, and led to good things in life. "I have more im­por­tant mat­ters than my own spir­i­tu­al ful­fill­ment." And with that, Sobon fi­nal­ly un­locked her gate, open­ing it with a touch of aether, and giv­ing the man a look that was quite plain in not invit­ing him in. "I wish you a good day, sir Kibar."

He plas­tered a con­fused smile on his face, and gave his shal­low bow again, and Sobon walked in­side and closed the gate af­ter her.