Sobon had no in­ten­tion of forc­ing Ki'el to wait un­til they got back home be­fore tak­ing treat­ment. In truth, Sobon could have erect­ed a tem­po­rary struc­ture in the mid­dle of the sea, or some­thing sim­i­lar­ly dras­tic, but all of her in­stincts were to get to safe ground, ei­ther back to civ­i­liza­tion or some­thing less ex­posed.

In the end, al­though it took a lit­tle while to get back to sol­id ground, Sobon found a shel­tered sec­tion of coast a ways away from all else. When she set Ki'el down, the girl flinched, and im­me­di­ate­ly re­sumed flood­ing her in­jured knee with right-hand aether.

"Let me see it," Sobon said, gen­tly touch­ing the girl's wound­ed knee. From what she could tell, sev­er­al of the joint tis­sues were torn, and there was some dan­ger of them heal­ing wrong, al­though if any­thing, pure right-hand aether with­out any kind of in­tent would be un­like­ly to cause the body to make hasty re­pairs. And Ki'el, whether on pur­pose or by lack of train­ing, was still us­ing aether with al­most no in­tent, feed­ing her body and trust­ing it blind­ly in­stead of try­ing to con­trol it. What was most im­por­tant, though, was that the bone hadn't bro­ken--giv­en how the girl had moved on it so far, even a small break would have made every­thing much worse.

As she set up the more com­plex aether heal­ing pat­tern and a di­ag­nos­tic to mon­i­tor it, she be­came aware that Ki'el was star­ing. By the time that she looked up at the girl's face, Ki'el just looked over­whelmed. Sobon gave her a small smile as she sat back against a rock. "You'll be al­right. It will be use­able in a cou­ple hours, and we can wait on more un­til lat­er."

Ki'el just nod­ded, her face try­ing to blank back into a sto­ic look, though she didn't quite man­age it. "You changed," was the first thing she de­cid­ed to say.

Sobon looked away. "Not for the first time. I didn't get to choose. The woman who used to have this body... wasn't do­ing any­thing with her life. She's still in here; you can speak to her lat­er, if you like. But there are im­por­tant things that must be done." She looked back at the girl, but Ki'el just looked back, as plain as she could. "I'm glad you're okay."

That flus­tered her, a lit­tle, but she kept her calm af­ter some ef­fort. "At first... it was... dif­fi­cult. Very dif­fi­cult." She looked down at her hands. "I spent too long in the shat­tered ship, where you... where you had..."

"I know," Sobon said. "I could see a lit­tle bit of it, from the oth­er side."

Sobon could see that Ki'el want­ed to ask about that, but she plowed through in­stead. "The sense that you were there lin­gered, but not long. And yet... I was so sure. So sure that some­thing was wrong. That you were not gone. Af­ter liv­ing among the dead for so long, af­ter hav­ing buried my past once be­fore, I thought I would not be so weak. And I hat­ed my­self for even briefly think­ing that you would come back. Un­til that voice told me that you would."

Sobon nod­ded. "It passed the mes­sages from me. And it passed your mes­sage back." She paused. The aether near­by was shift­ing, most like­ly some­one draw­ing near­er. She stood, look­ing around, be­fore adopt­ing a semi-for­mal stance. "Just a mo­ment."

There was no sur­prise from any­one, ex­cept per­haps Ki'el, when three pow­er­ful qi war­riors land­ed near­by, all of their eyes on Sobon, and her match­ing their own in re­turn. They didn't quite share what Sobon would call a uni­form, al­though they had sim­i­lar pos­tures and col­ors, and their qi were all aligned well enough to show that they worked to­geth­er fre­quent­ly. All of them felt above Sobon in pow­er, al­though their qi col­ors were un­fa­mil­iar; two of them shared the mul­ti­col­ored qi that Mofu's hench­man had, while an­oth­er was at least a rank above that, with dark and light band­ings.

With prac­ticed ease, the one in charge stepped for­ward, his aura in­tense and threat­en­ing, but his fea­tures serene. It was a mea­sure Sobon rec­og­nized eas­i­ly as in­tim­i­da­tion be­hind a civ­il mask. "Good evening," he said, po­lite­ly, his thin mous­tache twitch­ing only slight­ly. "I trust you un­der­stand that you are tres­pass­ing."

"Only so long as it takes my com­pan­ion to heal." Sobon's choice of a pow­er move, against the aura that was like­ly at least two col­ors above her own, was be­ing com­plete­ly re­laxed. It wasn't triv­ial, though it would have been if Sobon had his cy­borg body back. As it was, with her in­creas­ing at­tune­ment, her body re­mained most­ly keyed to her will even when the threat­en­ing qi waves passed through her. "I re­ceived no­tice that she was in dan­ger, and I re­trieved her. When she can be moved with­out dan­ger, I will leave."

The man and his two lieu­tenants con­sid­ered this, the pair be­hind him trad­ing looks. The one in front, af­ter a time, spoke up.

"You un­der­stand that as a non-Djang in our ter­ri­to­ry, we have every right to de­tain you, and your com­pan­ion. Es­pe­cial­ly should you fail to pro­vide the cor­rect... doc­u­ments."

"You could in­sist, if you chose," Sobon re­turned, feign­ing ease. While she sus­pect­ed that the ri­fle rods she had left would suf­fice to hold the three of them off, and maybe kill one or two of the less­er ones, she had no in­ter­est in be­com­ing a want­ed woman. And the rods, now al­ready de­cay­ing, prob­a­bly wouldn't last long enough, not in a pitched bat­tle. "It would be a shame­ful waste of your re­sources, but you could in­sist."

The two low­er-ranked war­riors tensed, but in­stead of an­swer­ing, the leader just glanced out to sea. Sobon imag­ined he was trac­ing back the path she took, or per­haps re­call­ing some sense of the bat­tle that had oc­curred. Af­ter a time, he looked back. "You don't show any signs of cor­rup­tion or evil in­tent. And the in­juries to your com­pan­ion are ev­i­dence enough that your in­ten­tions are as you say. In­stead of... in­sist­ing, I would in­vite you to speak to my com­man­der, Lady Rai Su Anin. I am sure that she would be in­ter­est­ed in an ac­count­ing of why you are here." He held up a hand be­fore Sobon could say any­thing to ob­ject. "She is a rea­son­able woman. If she agrees that your cause is no­ble, any oth­er mat­ters will be con­sid­ered in­signif­i­cant in com­par­i­son."

Men­tal­ly, Sobon con­sult­ed Alas­si, but the woman wasn't fa­mil­iar with the woman, or how the mil­i­tary func­tioned in this sec­tion of the coun­try. So Sobon just shrugged. "If it's nec­es­sary."

When that put the oth­ers at ease, Sobon fi­nal­ly re­lent­ed, tak­ing Ki'el and al­low­ing her­self to be es­cort­ed to a rather large naval base--or per­haps, a matched pair of army and naval bases, with lit­tle dis­tinc­tion be­tween the two. Sobon had no idea how the lo­cals would draw dis­tinc­tions in their mil­i­tary, al­though she thought that per­haps there were two or more ma­jor pat­terns across the sprawl­ing com­plex. That only meant mul­ti­ple com­man­ders, each with their own rules, but there were plen­ty of dif­fer­ent things it might have meant.

Al­though the pa­trol­men, or what­ev­er they were, did com­mu­ni­cate some things with qi puls­es, they most­ly seemed to do things the frus­trat­ing and slow, old fash­ioned way. They land­ed out­side the base's de­fens­es, in a set-off area for re­ceiv­ing fliers, and moved into a con­trolled check­point, where the guards iden­ti­fied them­selves and stat­ed their busi­ness. Pre­dictably, then, the non-com­bat­ant in charge of the pa­per­work turned to Sobon with a kind of dull-eyed stare that felt dis­tinct­ly of stale, rigid aether.

"Do you have iden­ti­fi­ca­tion pa­pers?"

Alas­si in­sist­ed on some­thing, and Sobon let her come for­ward and speak. "I do not. How­ev­er, you should have records for Shi­va Alas­si, now re­tired."

The man at the desk didn't bat an eye­lash, in­stead turn­ing to a crys­tal globe in the back of his squat of­fice. When Sobon ex­am­ined it clos­er, she dis­cov­ered it was a mas­ter­work of tight qi in­scrip­tions, one that linked some­how into what Sobon imag­ined was a wide­spread bu­reau­crat­ic net­work. When he ac­cessed the crys­tal, it pulsed, send­ing a qi wave straight down, though that ap­peared to be a mis­di­rec­tion; Sobon just bare­ly could track it turn­ing a cor­ner and shoot­ing away. Some minute or two lat­er, a re­turn pulse came from a dif­fer­ent di­rec­tion, and the globe lit up.

"Shi­va Alas­si, alias the Blood Witch, re­tired due to in­jury. Out­rid­er, for­eign. Grant­ed cit­i­zen­ship for ser­vice. Last known to be stuck in Iron Qi." The man turned back, look­ing Sobon up and down. "You could cer­tain­ly be her, af­ter two break­throughs." He brought for­ward a met­al plate, putting it on an emp­ty spot of desk for her. "Body and core check, then."

Sobon let Alas­si place her hand on it and cy­cle her--re­al­ly, Sobon's--qi through the plate. The man be­hind the desk frowned, but only for a mo­ment. The plate flashed sev­er­al char­ac­ters across it, al­most too fast for ei­ther Sobon or Alas­si to parse, al­though they thought they were var­i­ous facts about her body and aether's com­po­si­tion.

"Match," the man said, and with­drew the plate. "You should get new iden­ti­fi­ca­tion pa­pers be­fore you leave. Saves us the trou­ble." He looked over at Ki'el. "And her?"

"Un­der my pro­tec­tion," Alas­si said im­me­di­ate­ly. [ Where the hell is she from, did you say? ]

[ Some­where in the isles, ] Sobon gave a dis­mis­sive men­tal ges­ture. [ I don't know that she ever said. ]

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"I am from an Il­lan vil­lage that was de­stroyed by pi­rates," Ki'el said. "My name is Doua Ki'el."

The bu­reau­crat looked to the head of the pa­trol­men, who just shrugged. He sighed. "If you aren't need­ed in the base, you should wait here."

"She is in­jured," Alas­si in­ter­ject­ed. "If you can give me a mo­ment--"

"If you want her treat­ed at the hos­pi­tal, she'll be un­der guard. And you'll pay the fee." The bu­reau­crat's eyes locked on Sobon, or now Alas­si, with the flat, unim­pressed look of some­one whose sole job in an or­ga­ni­za­tion was con­stant­ly re­mind­ing every­one of the rules. "Sev­en sil­vra per hour. For an out­lander."

"I can set up--"

"I will wait here," Ki'el forced her way into the ar­gu­ment, catch­ing Alas­si's eyes. "As long as I have a place to sit. It is far less painful now than it was on board the ship."

[ Most like­ly, they won't like us set­ting up a heal­ing pat­tern with­out their ap­proval, ] Sobon ad­mit­ted men­tal­ly to Alas­si. [ It would be a se­cu­ri­ty risk. ]

[ As though you couldn't sneak some­thing in, ] Alas­si grumped in re­turn, but closed her eyes and breathed out to re­lease a lit­tle stress. "As long as you are al­right, Ki'el."

"I will be fine. Go." The girl's pos­ture was very ob­vi­ous­ly that of a girl try­ing to brave her pain, as she turned and limped to a near­by bench, but they could all also clear­ly see that she was cy­cling en­er­gy through her knee, keep­ing it from get­ting any worse while def­i­nite­ly not do­ing any­thing to fix it.

In­stead of ar­gu­ing, Alas­si looked to the pa­trol­man, who shrugged. "If the com­man­der isn't busy, you will be done quick­ly. And then you should be free to go. I will leave one of my men here to guard her, if you like."

Alas­si di­gest­ed that, then nod­ded, and then, with Sobon's per­mis­sion, de­tached the quartz frame from her back, set­ting it next to Ki'el. To the pa­trol­man who had been cho­sen to stay be­hind, she glared im­pe­ri­ous­ly, and said, "Both she and that will be un­touched on my re­turn." And while every­one had looked at the frame when she drew at­ten­tion to it, the man just nod­ded, and Alas­si fol­lowed the lead pa­troller in­side.

[ I wish I had just thought to bring mon­ey, ] Sobon grumped. [ Ki'el would do bet­ter with prop­er at­ten­tion. ]

[ Don't over­val­ue the army's med­ical corps, ] Alas­si re­turned, do­ing an ad­mirable job of keep­ing her­self straight and at at­ten­tion. [ While they could have healed the dam­age to my hip, it would have tak­en months to do what you did in a week. ]

Sobon con­sid­ered that, but it didn't line up with what she--what Jom had seen. Or did it? Sobon had no idea how long Jom had been un­con­scious be­fore be­ing awok­en for the ex­e­cu­tion of the Bilg sol­diers. Giv­en every­thing else, Sobon had as­sumed it had come quick­ly--but Jom had also re­cov­ered from an as­tound­ing amount of in­jury, fa­tigue, and mal­nour­ish­ment. And it wouldn't sur­prise Sobon at all if the mil­i­tary pro­ce­dures in­volved in ques­tion­ing sol­diers, de­ter­min­ing fault, and lin­ing up an ex­e­cu­tion could take weeks. It also wouldn't have sur­prised him if that had been done overnight, if they were run tight­ly enough.

By that time, Alas­si was stand­ing in a wait­ing room with the spare wing­man, while the pa­trol­man had gone ahead. The room had a stench to it, a stench most­ly in its aether. It wasn't stale, un­like most of the bad aether Sobon had run into; it sim­ply car­ried an un­be­liev­able amount of re­sent­ment, all from dif­fer­ent sources, and con­stant­ly re­freshed. The feel, Sobon judged as she sensed just a taste of it, of a great many man and women who thought they were bet­ter, and de­served bet­ter, than to be sit­ting in a room wait­ing to be yelled at.

There was a rip­ple, but just that, from ahead, and Sobon con­cen­trat­ed, try­ing to tease out which source of qi ahead was the source. When the pa­trol­man re­turned to fetch her, Sobon fig­ured she had locked on to the strongest source of qi in the im­me­di­ate area, and de­cid­ed that was prob­a­bly both the source of the rip­ple, and the per­son they were go­ing to meet. By the time the door opened and Alas­si was faced with the base com­man­der, Sobon was no longer shocked, al­though Alas­si was.

The base com­man­der was a Djang woman who, if Sobon didn't know bet­ter, would have passed for un­der­age, with shock­ing blue hair that per­fect­ly matched her vivid blue qi. Her qi, if Sobon were to put a word to it, was crys­talline; dense and rigid, with deep pat­terns to the en­er­gy it­self, ex­act­ly the col­or of a per­fect blue sap­phire. Her qi core had also de­tached from its usu­al place; Sobon re­called that reach­ing Gem phas­es of qi re­quired us­ing one or more Star­beast cores, so she sup­posed that this was how they were be­ing used, to let the core reach greater den­si­ties with­out poi­son­ing the body.

Still, Sobon thought as she mea­sured the den­si­ty of the woman's aether, this is in­ef­fi­cient. Com­plete­ly at­tuned flesh could reach that aether den­si­ty safe­ly, if it were flaw­less. Not that Sobon had any il­lu­sion that any­one na­tive to this plan­et could un­der­stand aether well enough to flaw­less­ly at­tune them­selves that deeply.

Re­turn­ing her at­ten­tion to the com­man­der, Sobon not­ed that her at­tire was plain and mil­i­tary, and her face was set in a hard ex­pres­sion. Her fea­tures them­selves were soft and beau­ti­ful, the very pic­ture of health and youth; if her face had split into a wide smile and she had bound­ed up to Sobon and talked about what hap­pened at school, Sobon wouldn't have found it odd, at least on the sur­face. But her aether was full of sharp edges and dead­ly por­tent, and there was a world of depth be­hind her eyes. Sobon, with­out know­ing the woman's his­to­ry at all, would have eas­i­ly gam­bled that she was at least a hun­dred years old.

"Shi­va Alas­si, for­eign out­rid­er, re­tired." Her voice, too, sound­ed too child­ish for Sobon's tastes. While Sobon had af­fec­tion for Ki'el and Lui--who were ac­tu­al­ly chil­dren--this mask of youth just chafed at her. It took her only a mo­ment to put a fin­ger on why. Cy­borgs can ap­pear any age. I don't know if she chose to look this young, but if a cy­borg did it, it would be... a sign of ill in­tent. In­tent to de­ceive and ma­nip­u­late. In­ward­ly, Sobon nod­ded, dis­miss­ing the thought for now. "You know, be­fore I was ap­point­ed to this post, I don't know that I would have read be­tween the lines of your record. But I have over­seen more than enough dirty busi­ness to know ex­act­ly why you were 're­tired'." The girl­ish woman ges­tured to a chair across from her, but didn't sit her­self. Alas­si chose to. "Still, that won't gain you any­thing, not with me. I am Base Com­man­der Rai Su Anin. I want to know why you passed through my ter­ri­to­ry, and then why you stopped on your way back."

The men­tal back and forth be­tween Sobon and Alas­si was quick, most­ly just Alas­si mak­ing sure she didn't step on any­thing Sobon would have cho­sen not to say. "I re­ceived word from an ally that my dis­ci­ple had been kid­napped. I flew out with all haste and re­claimed her. We paused to let her heal in­juries. There is lit­tle else to it."

"A dis­ci­ple, now." The woman--Alas­si in­formed Sobon that her giv­en name was the last two words, and so she was Com­man­der Rai or Su Anin to her friends--glanced over her, her ad­vanced qi flick­er­ing out and pierc­ing through any shad­ows that Sobon might have tried to con­ceal. Sobon, for the most part, hadn't been deeply scanned by peo­ple since she was Jom, and it was un­com­fort­able to re­mem­ber that her aether dynamos would be eas­i­ly vis­i­ble, even when con­cealed. "You have de­vel­oped an un­usu­al tech­nique in your re­tire­ment. In­ter­est­ing. But it seems a bit ear­ly for you to claim your­self wor­thy of be­ing any­one's mas­ter, when you haven't even passed the Gold­en Wall."

"I do not choose to re­veal all my ca­pa­bil­i­ties," Alas­si said, some­what ner­vous. "And I have fo­cused much of my at­ten­tion on in­scrip­tions since then." That, from Alas­si's per­spec­tive, was en­tire­ly a bluff, but a brief back and forth sug­gest­ed that Sobon would hap­pi­ly back her up if chal­lenged on it.

Which proved to be nec­es­sary. Com­man­der Rai scoffed at the proclamation, and ap­peared a sword out of what Sobon mo­men­tar­i­ly thought was thin air--al­though she and Alas­si both quick­ly no­ticed the in­tense aether around her ring, which Sobon rec­og­nized as a com­pli­cat­ed spa­tial con­struct. "By all means, then. Tell me what's wrong with this blast­ed thing, if you can claim to be a mas­ter. Don't wor­ry, it's only a Bis­muth-ranked in­scrip­tion.

The term, once spo­ken, locked into Alas­si's mind as Bright Met­al qi lev­el above Ti­ta­ni­um, with the hid­den col­ors to it. She frowned, but tried to keep a straight face, ac­cept­ing the sword and un­sheath­ing it, lay­ing bare a rel­a­tive­ly com­plex set of runes up and down the blade. At Sobon's in­sis­tence, and with Com­man­der Rai's ap­proval, she also re­moved the hilt, lay­ing bare an­oth­er set of runes down the tang.

Sobon, for her part, spent most of those few mo­ments try­ing to fo­cus on the com­man­der's spa­tial ring. Al­though she couldn't get a very close look at it, she mem­o­rized as many of the scripts and con­structs as she could see be­fore shift­ing her at­ten­tion to the blade. When she did, though, she al­most re­gret­ted be­ing dis­tract­ed; the blade it­self was a high­ly con­vo­lut­ed mess that played with qi na­tures and had a num­ber of spir­i­tu­al locks and seals on it to con­ceal the spe­cif­ic spir­i­tu­al in­tent that went into its con­struc­tion.

Com­man­der Rai gave them sev­er­al mo­ments to study the blade, busy­ing her­self by star­ing at some of the pa­per­work on her desk, al­though she didn't move to pick it up or ri­fle through it.

"If that's too much be­yond your abil­i­ty--"

"No," Alas­si said, stay­ing in front of Sobon but re­peat­ing what he said. "There are flaws in its struc­ture, but the largest prob­lem seems to be that the blade's chan­nels for steel qi and blade qi are re­versed." She took one fin­ger and touched it, gen­tly, on a pair of en­grav­ings. "The cut­ting edge can be en­hanced by sword qi, but the in­scrip­tion is try­ing to en­hance the en­tire width of the blade with cut­ting pow­er."

There was only a mo­ment's pause, and then the Com­man­der gave a sin­gle, sharp laugh. "Full marks! Im­pres­sive. Al­though my un­der­stand­ing is that the er­ror is the oth­er way around--that the glyphs for steel and blade qi were placed in the wrong or­der, rather than that the chan­nels were re­versed."

Alas­si shook her head at that, even with­out need­ing Sobon to cue her. She had, in part, fol­lowed Sobon's log­ic as she ex­am­ined the scripts. "No," she said, "There are a num­ber of sup­port­ing char­ac­ters nec­es­sary to en­hance and fil­ter the spe­cif­ic qi na­tures, and the sets of script for steel and blade qi are dif­fer­ent. I think, giv­en how tight the writ­ing is, the qi glyphs were set be­fore the chan­nels were put in."

Com­man­der Rai hummed, and then, with­out ob­vi­ous ef­fort, the blade lift­ed from Alas­si's hands, along with the hilt and pom­mel that she had set aside. The blade was put back to­geth­er in midair, and then van­ished back into the Com­man­der's spa­tial ring. "Very well. I ad­mit you have learned enough to at least take on a dis­ci­ple. And I will freely grant that res­cu­ing your dis­ci­ple is a wor­thy use of a mas­ter's time."

"I would even be will­ing to for­give your at­tack on one of our pri­va­teer ships, if you are will­ing to do us a few fa­vors. I'll even throw in med­ical at­ten­tion for your dis­ci­ple at no cost."

Sobon and Alas­si both shared an im­me­di­ate and in­tense headache, but Alas­si just put on a po­lite mask, one that showed in no un­cer­tain terms that she was dis­pleased, and said, "What ex­act­ly do you want me to do?"