Sobon spent much of the rest of her day prepar­ing ad­di­tion­al quartz rods from the sandy soil, while also spend­ing part of her at­ten­tion at­tun­ing her bones and mus­cles to aether. It felt very good to have a body that was be­com­ing at­tuned; both Sobon and Alas­si could feel the world so much more clear­ly, al­though Alas­si's sens­es, be­ing at­tuned to qi and not aether, strug­gled. For Sobon, at­tun­ing her body to pure, un­tainted aether left her feel­ing more and more like she was stand­ing on breezy cliff, her nose catch­ing scents as they min­gle and me­an­der on a jour­ney from some­where far away to al­most any­where else.

[ Your po­et­ry is aw­ful, ] Alas­si groused. [ And I just don't like this feel­ing. It's so hard to sense what else is out there when there is this... field of noth­ing al­ways right there, in the way. It's... be­yond my ex­pe­ri­ence. It feels like it should be a sign of some­thing hap­pen­ing, but it's just... you. ]

[ Well, I did steal your body and your life, ] Sobon re­mind­ed her, suc­cess­ful­ly sup­press­ing any in­stinct to feel bad for the old woman. It wasn't as though she hadn't had her chance. [ You will grow used to it. ]

By the end of the day, when Mian and Lui re­turned, Sobon had used up all of the free sand in the court­yard, down to a depth of a foot or so. That had turned out to be a rel­a­tive­ly large por­tion of the lo­cal soil, and so Sobon had been forced to leave re­gions close to the build­ing foun­da­tions untouched. The re­sult­ing dip in the rest of the soil was noticeable, but Sobon wasn't in­ter­est­ed in that part of the aes­thet­ics. And giv­en that she had craft­ed a large num­ber of the thin rods...

"You look like you had a good day," was all Mian said as he closed the gate be­hind the two of them.

Sobon shift­ed her at­ten­tion eas­i­ly, fin­ish­ing her thoughts offhand­ed­ly as she looked at the two. Mian was in a ri­otous­ly good mood, his spir­it pos­i­tive­ly spin­ning, and he'd clear­ly gained a star, ap­proach­ing the top of Iron and the edge of Sil­ver. Lui looked good, too, if tired. "You both as well."

Lui was ob­vi­ous­ly about to speak, but Mian stepped over her with­out notic­ing. "I found what I was look­ing for--cor­rupt pa­trollers, of course. Not a whole lot of them, per­haps two or three, but they had a wealthy pa­tron who had put pres­sure on the city pa­troller's guild not to take ac­tion. I wasn't sure that I had the right group, but... some­one tried to kill me, so I must be get­ting close. Not any­one re­al­ly strong, yet." He took his mas­sive butch­er sword out of its sheath, and Sobon could see that it was once again blood­stained, and slight­ly more chipped than it had been. His eyes fol­lowed Sobon's to the blade. "Only wish I could use my qi bet­ter. The strength is nice, but I feel like I need an in­script­ed blade to make bet­ter use of it."

Sobon con­sid­ered, for a long mo­ment, be­fore look­ing to Lui. The girl had shrunk slight­ly, dis­ap­point­ed that Mian had got­ten his words in first, and so Sobon spoke to her. "And you, Lui? You seem hap­py."

"I am, very much." Lui's smile widened, and was per­haps a lit­tle hard. "I saw Lady Mide mak­ing a pill. Al­though I couldn't fol­low every­thing that was go­ing, on, I think I un­der­stand the process, and she liked that. She has me prepar­ing a few sim­ple in­gre­di­ents, now. It's very care­ful work." Her smile slipped a lit­tle, and she looked down at her hands. "I... wor­ry a lit­tle. My hands have al­ways shak­en, some­times. Es­pe­cial­ly when I'm scared. But it didn't hap­pen at all, to­day."

Sobon stood and moved over to her body's grand­daugh­ter. With her hands more or less at­tuned, now, Sobon could feel the flow of aether through them with much high­er sen­si­tiv­i­ty, al­though it was far from per­fect. She took the girl's hands and felt along them, her fin­gers trac­ing up and down the aether struc­tures of the arm. Lui sucked in a breath at first--the girl was still fair­ly shy, even here and with her--but Sobon was gen­tle, and Lui didn't so much as flinch at the con­tact, or her search­ing mo­tions.

"There is a lit­tle knot," Sobon said af­ter a mo­ment, "but it isn't a flaw, ex­act­ly. You've al­ways..." Sobon sought for words to de­scribe at­tune­ment. "...felt more at­tached to your hands than the rest of your body, haven't you?"

Lui looked em­bar­rassed at that. "Uh... well, yes? I saw so many dif­fer­ent kinds of hands when I was serv­ing. Some were strong, oth­ers frail. Some were fat, and oth­ers... not." She looked down at her hands, and then quick­ly away. "I... got com­ments on them, a lot. But most­ly, I just knew that I had to hold the plates and mugs with­out let­ting any­thing drop, and many of them were heavy, when I was young. I guess... I thought about them a lot?"

It was Alas­si who thought she un­der­stood, and Sobon let her come for­ward to speak, her voice chang­ing sub­tly. "You hat­ed them, in oth­er words."

Both Lui and Mian snapped their at­ten­tion to the woman. Alas­si let the girls' hands drop, but not be­fore briefly squeez­ing her. "I didn't hear them; I didn't lis­ten. But I know the com­ments you must have heard. Al­ways about how you would be a good moth­er or a good woman, how you would find a good man. Nev­er about your strength or your will, and they would nev­er ask about your de­sires or dreams. And I know you had dreams, Lui. I didn't..." The woman frowned, but Sobon forced her to speak. "I didn't... care, back then. I should have. But I did hear you talk­ing about them, about run­ning your own busi­ness some­day, about show­ing your fa­ther that you could do it. They were good dreams."

"The way they looked at my hands," Lui agreed, qui­et­ly, "al­ways seemed wrong to me. Some­thing in their eyes saw some­thing in my hands. I don't know what."

Alas­si and Mian both chose not to an­swer that, and Sobon didn't dis­agree.

"You can be proud of your hands," Alas­si said, though it took Sobon to push her into break­ing the awk­ward si­lence ear­ly. "I don't know... what Sobon saw, ex­act­ly. But I ex­pect your hands shake when you doubt and fear, be­cause they are at­tached close­ly to your spir­it, and your spir­it is very sen­si­tive. As long as you can keep this," she tapped Lui's chest, clos­est to her heart, "calm and sta­ble, your hands will an­swer you. Of that I have no doubt."

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Lui con­sid­ered, but nod­ded. "Thank you, Grand­ma Alas­si."

The woman tsked slight­ly, but Sobon didn't force her way back in front. The woman con­sid­ered her grand­daugh­ter, and then the man be­side them. "It isn't all bad, you know."

The two of them tensed, but Alas­si just sighed.

"I... should have been dead. I don't think I ever re­sent­ed him... re­sent­ed Sobon for tak­ing away my life, or not af­ter the first mo­ment. It stopped be­ing my life a long time ago." Alas­si shook her head. "I sup­pose you both know that well enough. You were both wait­ing for me to come back. I was just wait­ing to die. Maybe I am dead. Maybe Sobon just keeps me here to ask me for help. I don't know, and as I un­der­stand it, he didn't have any choice in this, ei­ther. But it's not tor­ture for me to be locked away. It isn't painful, re­al­ly, es­pe­cial­ly know­ing that he would do the right thing. Has done the right thing."

"Sobon is a man?" Mian's voice was some­where be­tween doubt­ing and scan­dal­ized. Lui turned to look at him, a dis­ap­prov­ing look on her face.

"As I re­call, one of his first thoughts was so dis­mis­sive of the dif­fer­ence be­tween men and women that he con­sid­ered it lit­tle more than shapes. He has worked to think of him­self as me, since then." Alas­si shrugged. "He has not dis­re­spect­ed my body or my will, which is more than I can say about many."

Sobon, with an ef­fort of will, dis­tanced her­self from the con­ver­sa­tion by think­ing about Mian's sword, in or­der to give the woman space to talk. In truth, al­though Sobon had been flip­pant with the in­scrip­tion­ist, she wasn't en­tire­ly cer­tain how mere­ly chan­nel­ing qi through the blade would af­fect it. Us­ing pure aether scripts to en­hance the blade would be triv­ial, but if Sobon was go­ing to work with qi scripts, she had to un­der­stand how they were all meant to in­ter­act with the var­i­ous qi na­tures, or what­ev­er the fla­vors were called.

A quick pe­rusal of the Ri'lef notes on qi brought her to a sec­tion about the ac­tu­al geom­e­try of qi, which was fas­ci­nat­ing. Sobon had known that it in­volved sev­er­al dif­fer­ent spins--or, as the Ri'lef thought of them, the essence of sev­er­al dif­fer­ent lay­ers of re­al­i­ty all bun­dled to­geth­er into a sin­gle en­er­gy. Ac­cord­ing to Ri'lef thought, qi con­tained links to var­i­ous re­gions on dif­fer­ent lay­ers, each of which may con­tain in­nate scripts that link to each oth­er. These scripts were re­spon­si­ble for the "na­tures" of qi, and each na­ture of qi had dif­fer­ent ways in which those scripts would need to be cre­at­ed to work suc­cess­ful­ly.

For what­ev­er rea­son, the doc­u­ment didn't go into depth on what those scripts ac­tu­al­ly were, in­stead sug­gest­ing that prac­ti­tion­ers would fig­ure out how to add na­tures to their qi as long as space was pro­vid­ed to do so, and so qi was giv­en at­tach­ment points on all of its spins--us­ing the Ri'lef terms for them, Right­eous and Sin­is­ter, Gen­e­sis and Con­sump­tion, Ac­cel­er­a­tion and Re­vival, Sa­cred and Cor­rupt. The "raw" en­er­gy had some ba­sic scripts at each point to make sure that qi could still ful­fill the ba­sic func­tions of aether, and which reg­u­lat­ed what kinds of scripts could be writ­ten into the qi, but the notes also in­di­cat­ed that they ex­pect­ed--and to some ex­tent, knew for a fact--that the aether war­riors of the plan­et would dam­age those scripts when cre­at­ing qi na­tures, cre­at­ing things that did not func­tion as in­tend­ed and which could be cor­rupt­ed.

With that back­ground, Sobon looked back over the li­brary of qi in­scrip­tion sym­bols, not­ing that there were sets of glyphs in­tend­ed to copy scripts into and out of the qi, ef­fec­tive­ly adding in­tent and na­ture to the qi, or re­mov­ing them from it. There were also de­tect­ing and block­ing glyphs of a sim­i­lar char­ac­ter, but now that Sobon un­der­stood that they were based on these qi ex­ten­sions, they made more sense. In her mind, then, she sketched out a sim­ple set of en­grav­ings for some­thing like Mian's sword, with a qi chan­nel that strength­ened the sword, and one that emit­ted any en­er­gy from the very edge of the blade, with an op­tion­al mode for that chan­nel to re­place the emit­ted qi's in­tent with one of pure, Sin­is­ter de­struc­tion.

It was rough, in Sobon's opin­ion, and it was still waste­ful com­pared to us­ing raw aether. Giv­en the size of Mian's blade, she also knew that she could add all kinds of ex­tra func­tions if she chose, but she didn't ex­pect the man would want it. The only real ad­van­tage over some­thing like Sobon's bar­ri­er blade was that the blade strength­en­ing in­scrip­tion didn't need to rely on geom­e­try, al­though the cut­ting edge script did. In the end, Sobon couldn't con­tent her­self with the ba­sic ver­sion, adding a script to de­tect the geom­e­try of the blade, and then adapt­ing the strength­en­ing and cut­ting edges to use that geom­e­try, de­pend­ing on the user's will and in­tent.

Sobon came out of her de­sign fo­cus to find Alas­si and the oth­ers hav­ing a meal to­geth­er. Al­though Sobon would have let her stay a while longer, Alas­si sim­ply passed the body back, and so Sobon found her­self back in con­trol mid-chew. It was a sim­ple meal, as the ones at home of­ten were--rice and cooked veg­eta­bles, with a lit­tle spice. Sobon found her­self pay­ing at­ten­tion to the taste sim­ply be­cause it hit her out of nowhere, and she had to ad­mit, again, that Mian was a de­cent cook.

The eyes of the oth­er two were on her, of course, but Sobon fin­ished her mouth­ful and swal­lowed. "Yes, I'm back," she said. "I thought she de­served some time with you. And I spent some time think­ing about how to en­hance your sword, if you want it." Sobon glanced at Mian, who im­me­di­ate­ly bright­ened. Sobon then turned to Lui. "And Lui... I am a war­rior, not a doc­tor, but Alas­si was right about your hands. The knot that I saw is a deep con­nec­tion be­tween body and spir­it; the con­flict comes when you can't keep your spir­it in con­trol." She paused, frown­ing. "But sen­si­tiv­i­ty, es­pe­cial­ly height­ened sen­si­tiv­i­ty like yours, re­quires nev­er try­ing to con­quer your spir­it, which means not be­ing able to force con­trol. I am very sen­si­tive, for a war­rior, but I may still not be the right per­son to teach you how to keep con­trol with­out los­ing what you have."

Lui nod­ded, set­ting down her own bowl of rice. "Grand­ma Alas­si had a few words, but I think I will ask Lady Mide. She is sen­si­tive enough that she must have dealt with it as well."

Sobon just nod­ded, and con­tin­ued eat­ing. Af­ter she fin­ished, Mian lent her the sword, which--af­ter a few min­utes spent clean­ing and sharp­en­ing it--Sobon at­tempt­ed to en­grave, af­ter first run­ning through every­thing in her mind twice. The en­grav­ing process took a cou­ple hours, and Lui and Mian both left her to it, al­though Mian re­turned fre­quent­ly just to watch.

By the end, when Sobon filled the in­tent marks with the right specifics to strength­en the met­al and emit de­struc­tive in­tent, the sword worked just the way she had drawn it up. Us­ing her own body's qi and care­ful­ly craft­ed in­tent, she was able to shift the blade re­in­force­ment from full-body, to the cut­ting edge, to one of the broad sides of the blade, and she could ac­ti­vate the cut­ting edge emis­sion with or with­out the sin­is­ter qi fla­vor added to it, and even shift which parts of the cut­ting edge emit­ted qi.

It felt odd, then, to hand it over to Mian, and see him com­plete­ly fail to ac­ti­vate the sword.

"I've nev­er used ex­ter­nal qi be­fore," Mian ad­mit­ted, cy­cling en­er­gy into his hands but fail­ing to pro­ject it down the qi chan­nels of the blade. "I thought I knew... I thought it would be ob­vi­ous, and sim­ple. I guess I was wrong."

Sobon just sighed. "I'll teach you," she said af­ter a long mo­ment. "But not to­day. To­mor­row, af­ter you es­cort Lui."

The smile on Mian's face said that he more than ac­cept­ed that in­vi­ta­tion.