Sobon met with Ki'el some time be­fore din­ner, and was pleased to find that the girl's knee was fair­ly well healed, though her sys­tem was be­gin­ning to get clogged by sticky med­i­c­i­nal qi, as Jom's had been. With a lit­tle ex­tra time to kill, Sobon de­cid­ed to study it, tak­ing a cou­ple sam­ples of the qi and form­ing aether and qi pat­terns that would re­veal the spe­cif­ic com­bi­na­tions of in­tent that went into it, while also promis­ing to Ki'el that she would ex­plain more lat­er on.

In truth, Sobon knew to ex­pect some com­bi­na­tion of ac­tu­al in­sight and child­ish mis­un­der­stand­ings. She was some­what sur­prised, though, to find that the ac­tu­al make­up of med­i­c­i­nal qi seemed al­most to be a cor­rup­tion of some­thing much bet­ter de­signed. Some of the qi seemed to be tak­en from plants, which was no sur­prise; it had ex­act­ly the sort of deeply for­ti­fied, sto­ic na­ture of an en­ti­ty which could only act upon the world from with­in, hav­ing no mus­cles to speak of. And there were lay­ers of hu­man in­tent, some of which guid­ed the med­i­c­i­nal qi, oth­ers of which re­ject­ed parts of it.

But those lay­ers of in­tent were then buried by an­oth­er lay­er, which forced high­er en­er­gy into and through all of the calmer, more pro­duc­tive aether pat­terns. The in­tent was clear--high en­er­gy plus med­ical qi had to equal high­er pow­er med­ical qi, right? Sobon made a face. It wasn't even ex­act­ly wrong, just poor­ly done. The am­pli­fi­ca­tion in­tent, if you want to call it that, was dis­mis­sive of many of the sub­tleties, and so the high in­ten­si­ty heal­ing also came with dam­aged, left­over qi that was vi­o­lent­ly torn away from the whole it had been a part of.

In all, it was a pass­able at­tempt at med­ical aether, Sobon de­cid­ed, and easy enough to repli­cate if you had the right plants to sup­ply the base, though she would still pre­fer to use the Coro­na's med­ical pat­terns where pos­si­ble. Plants had a place in most worlds' med­ical his­to­ries for a great many rea­sons, but in the end, they were sim­ple en­ti­ties who had no un­der­stand­ing of ad­vanced an­i­mal bi­ol­o­gy or mind. Both chem­i­cal­ly and in spir­it, plants touched on fan­tas­tic in­sights, but ap­ply­ing those in­sights to a hu­man could be prob­lem­at­ic.

"Hm," was all that Sobon ac­tu­al­ly said out loud, af­ter study­ing the sam­ples of med­ical qi for a good half an hour, then shook her head. "Well, it's in­ter­est­ing, but my ad­vice is what it would have been be­fore. Flush out the med­ical qi with your own aether once the treat­ment is done." She glanced out a near­by win­dow, to get an un­der­stand­ing of the time. "We are in­vit­ed to a din­ner with the Base Com­man­der tonight. I pro­vid­ed her... some in­sight. Per­haps too much."

Ki'el gave Sobon a look, which in­clud­ed a bit of judge­ment that Sobon sup­posed she had earned. "In­sight. De­spite what these peo­ple have done."

Sobon shrugged. "I don't think it will let them take over the world. And in truth, I ex­pect they will... mis­un­der­stand. We can speak more on it, lat­er." Sobon flicked a med­ical di­ag­nos­tic pat­tern over Ki'el's knee again, al­though she had al­ready done so when she came in. It just... re­as­sured her, see­ing that the girl would be able to walk with­out do­ing more dam­age. "For now... we should prob­a­bly get some­thing to wear."

Ki'el looked dis­gust­ed at that, and Sobon didn't blame her. In truth, Sobon had no in­ter­est in play­ing fa­vors with even a high-rank­ing mil­i­tary agent, but there was a spir­i­tu­al as­pect to dis­play­ing one­self a cer­tain way, one that res­onat­ed deeply in peo­ple's hearts. As at the Bilg mil­i­tary base... it could be very easy to con­vince a per­son's spir­it that one per­son was right, and an­oth­er one wrong, if out­side fac­tors res­onat­ed with those truths. And while Alas­si's clothes were in good con­di­tion, nei­ther she nor Sobon had picked them for so­cial pur­pos­es. Ki'el, who had picked up new clothes since Sobon had last seen her, had a mis­matched look that showed clear­ly that she would take what­ev­er she could get with­out com­plaint.

Al­though Sobon end­ed up ar­gu­ing for a mo­ment with the med­ical or­der­ly in charge of Ki'el, the two were able to leave peace­ful­ly with­in a few min­utes, and Ki'el flushed out her sys­tem with her own right-hand aether as the two walked out of the base and into a large town at­tached to the base, which Sobon ex­pect­ed the lo­cals would also la­bel a 'city'. A few ques­tions asked and an­swered led them to a fan­cy-look­ing cloth­ier's shop, whose name, if Sobon's lim­it­ed un­der­stand­ing of Djang writ­ing was cor­rect, was some­thing like "Transcendent Gem Shin­ing Per­son's Hon­or Shop." The char­ac­ters seemed a bit am­bigu­ous, and Alas­si sug­gest­ed they might have mul­ti­ple read­ings, but Sobon frankly didn't care about the de­tails.

As with the shops Sobon had seen in Emer­ald Val­ley, there was a youngish girl sta­tioned near the door, whose de­meanor was that of a man­nequin un­til pressed into ser­vice as a sales­per­son. For­tu­nate­ly, she passed Sobon and Ki'el off to a more know­ing fig­ure with­in min­utes, es­sen­tial­ly the very mo­ment Sobon men­tioned din­ner with the Base Com­man­der. And thus was Sobon in­tro­duced to a chub­by man in very el­e­gant, well-fit­ted clothes, who in­tro­duced him­self as Man Gai.

"Wel­come, wel­come," Man Gai said, look­ing ac­tu­al­ly pleased to have some­thing to do. Al­though his eyes tore over every bit of Sobon's and Ki'el's bod­ies and clothes, Sobon could sense noth­ing to his gaze but pro­fes­sion­al in­ter­est. "You are look­ing for clothes, but more than just that, I think? Nei­ther of you shows in­ter­est in the art of cloth, but I sense that you are pow­er­ful peo­ple, in­ter­est­ing peo­ple. I think there is much in­side to show off."

Ki'el bris­tled at that, or per­haps at the chub­by man eye­ing her, but Sobon just spoke qui­et­ly. "We would sim­ply like to rep­re­sent our­selves well in front of Base Com­man­der Rai at din­ner. We do not need to... dom­i­nate, so­cial­ly. But we would like to pre­sent our­selves as peo­ple who will not be con­trolled."

Gai tapped his chin with one pudgy fin­ger, meet­ing Sobon's eyes, and then nod­ded. "You have your se­crets, and wish to keep them."

"Ex­act­ly." Giv­en what Sobon had seen of Djang cloth­ing so far, she had sus­pect­ed that a re­spect­ed cloth­ier would un­der­stand these sub­tleties.

Some­how, with lit­tle more than that from ei­ther Sobon or Ki'el, the man be­gan his work, call­ing out to back rooms for cloth of var­i­ous col­ors, ma­te­ri­als, and pat­terns. Al­though it end­ed up tak­ing a cou­ple hours--only the first half-hour or so re­quir­ing their ac­tive at­ten­tion--by the end of it, Sobon and Ki'el were dressed in clothes that even Ki'el had to ad­mit were a per­fect fit for them, at the very least in their cur­rent cir­cum­stances.

Ki'el was dressed in what Alas­si rec­og­nized as Djang fight­er's wear, and which Ki'el her­self would lat­er ad­mit was clear­ly in­spired by Il­lan style, though Ki'el had not told him she was from the Il­lan isles. It was mod­est­ly cut in many ways, styled for free move­ment, and if Sobon looked close­ly, she could con­vince her­self that it was in­tend­ed to take some bat­tle dam­age with­out los­ing its over­all struc­ture; the pieces that clung to her pri­vate parts were re­in­forced, but sub­tly, and al­though the piece in to­tal hung from her shoul­ders, once she fas­tened it shut, the low­er part would hang off of her hips even if the up­per part were de­stroyed.

Sobon's own dress was ma­tron­ly, ac­cord­ing to both Ki'el and Alas­si, and Sobon could agree as she looked in the mir­ror that they gave her the look of a wise old­er woman, if one stiffer than Sobon hoped she was. Sobon her­self couldn't quite pin what gave off the im­pres­sion, and stopped try­ing; it was enough that it was a good piece, with sev­er­al sub­tle and less-sub­tle tex­tures that blend­ed to­geth­er well, and Sobon was pleased to find that there were also many sub­tle, hid­den pock­ets on the in­te­ri­or and ex­te­ri­or of the gar­ment. Alas­si also be­grudg­ing­ly ad­mit­ted that the dress had styl­is­tic nods to her peo­ple, but didn't say more than that, and Sobon didn't press.

Sobon paid for the clothes with a stipend that Com­man­der Rai had giv­en her, most­ly un­sur­prised that the ex­per­tise didn't come cheap. Sobon chose not to hag­gle, al­though Alas­si warned it would be wise, and the two walked out as Man Gai bowed and wished them well, while his spir­it shone with a ra­di­ance that sug­gest­ed Sobon had prob­a­bly over­paid. In truth, Rai had giv­en her a sub­stan­tial amount of mon­ey--around a hun­dred gildra, gold-edged coins that Alas­si con­veyed were ten sil­vra, sil­ver edged coins apiece.

The coin names, Sobon not­ed, were them­selves not Djang, and Alas­si ad­mit­ted that many peo­ple used the old Ijian names for cur­ren­cy, which it­self had his­to­ry. Be­cause be­fore the Djang em­pire had been the Ijian Em­pire, and be­fore them had been oth­ers. There were some places that in­sist­ed on us­ing Djang names for cur­ren­cy--but the cur­ren­cy was the same, and ef­forts by the Djang Em­pire to squash the old names had failed. [ Failed com­plete­ly, ] Sobon grumped qui­et­ly to her­self, [ if even their mil­i­tary base guards don't use their own names. ]

[ In truth, the Djang names are aw­ful. I was told that they have some­thing to do with qi, but I nev­er un­der­stood, and most peo­ple don't ei­ther. It is why the Djang Gildra have gem shapes along the sides. Elec­tra, above Gildra, have di­a­mond edges specif­i­cal­ly, and Pla­tra, above Elec­tra, have flame edges. But they in­sist that the of­fi­cial names of the coins are No­ble Gem, and Lord's Di­a­mond, and Im­mor­tal Flame coins. It would have been bad enough if they were sim­ple names, but they're em­bar­rass­ing to say. ]

Sobon in­ward­ly re­turned Alas­si's com­ments with amuse­ment, but didn't let the ex­pres­sion show through her face. Since there was still a lit­tle time, Sobon found her­self wan­der­ing to­wards an­oth­er in­scrip­tion­ist's shop, al­though she sus­pect­ed that if they were any good, they would have been hired by the Base Com­man­der to fix some of the prob­lems Sobon her­self had dealt with. Or... per­haps they sim­ply wouldn't want to be hired to fix wa­ter heaters and cleans­ing sta­tions.

Sobon found her­self pleased, then, to walk into the shop and find it well-stocked and with two ob­vi­ous guards. Her eyes roved around the room, tak­ing in a num­ber of dif­fer­ent items, and she filed away var­i­ous rune com­bi­na­tions as she looked around, both the ones that seemed cor­rect and the ones that were ob­vi­ous­ly mis­takes.

"No eye shop­ping," said a woman be­hind the counter af­ter a mo­ment. "Our de­signs are pro­pri­etary. Buy some­thing or get out."

Sobon glanced over to find, for the first time in a while, a Djang woman whose dress well and tru­ly didn't fit her style. She was dressed al­most shab­bi­ly, and Sobon not­ed that al­though she looked ful­ly adult, she was short, freck­led, and her hair a mess. She was, how­ev­er, in­tent­ly carv­ing into a bracelet with a sty­lus, one whose carv­ing point nar­rowed down to an in­sane­ly stiff hair.

Ki'el bris­tled, and Sobon won­dered why the girl seemed to take an in­stant dis­like to the lit­tle grem­lin. "How are we sup­posed to shop with­out look­ing at your wares?"

The woman paused, very care­ful­ly re­mov­ing the sty­lus from the work, then point­ed it at Ki'el with­out look­ing up. "Not talk­ing to you, dum­b­ass. You're too stu­pid to steal my de­signs. You," she point­ed the sty­lus at Sobon, "I can sense what you're do­ing. You're not just look­ing, you're read­ing. Buy some­thing or get out."

Sobon couldn't help but smile and laugh at that, a re­ac­tion that nei­ther Ki'el nor the shop­keep­er seemed to un­der­stand im­me­di­ate­ly or ap­pre­ci­ate. She shook her head. "You are a sharp one," she said, and went back to glanc­ing around, though not with the in­ten­si­ty she'd had. "I don't in­tend to com­pete with you, I am only pass­ing through."

"Com­pete," scoffed the woman, set­ting down her sty­lus and rais­ing her head. She had in­tense eyes, and looked weary. "I'm just sick of peo­ple copy­ing what I've done and claim­ing they're mas­ters be­cause of it. And al­ways, al­ways they get things wrong. Worse, they do all that af­ter not even hav­ing the de­cen­cy to buy some­thing. Just walk in, look around, smile through their teeth, and open up a shop claim­ing to be mas­ters. And then, af­ter that, they come back, des­per­ate­ly try­ing to look like they aren't try­ing to steal my work as they bore holes in them with their eyes. It's pa­thet­ic."

Sobon nod­ded along, glanc­ing over the items. "Your work does seem bet­ter than oth­ers I've seen. Most of them rely on care­ful in­tent in the glyphs, not just the lay­out of the script. I can see how--"

"It's both, of course," the woman in­ter­rupt­ed, sud­den­ly hop­ping up on the counter and swing­ing her legs over the front, show­ing that her feet were bare. Her loose shorts might have also been... some­what im­mod­dest, but Sobon didn't care. The woman, like Sobon, seemed pleased to have de­cent con­ver­sa­tion, for once. "But the tru­ly pro­found in­scrip­tions re­quire pro­found in­tent, and pro­found in­tent with­out pro­found in­scrip­tions is use­less." She raised her hand, and a knife from be­hind the counter flipped into her hand, as though of its own ac­cord. Then, with­out even flinch­ing, she drove the knife straight into her own thigh--and re­moved it again, as Ki'el gasped, to show that the blade had left no mark on her own body. "Pro­found truths re­quire pro­found minds to un­der­stand, while com­mon peo­ple can only stare in won­der and won­der what kind of cheap trick you just pulled."

Sobon stud­ied the knife, but tried not to fo­cus on the in­scrip­tions them­selves. "That's cer­tain­ly not a cheap trick," Sobon ad­mit­ted, try­ing to make sense of what she'd seen. "Spa­tial pock­et?"

"Got it in one." The woman sheathed the knife and tossed it hap­haz­ard­ly over her shoul­der. "Spa­tial mag­ic is a fas­ci­nat­ing dis­ci­pline even for the great­est in­scrip­tion­ists, but it's only knock­ing on the doors of a greater truth. What that truth is still es­capes even me, but I can see it. I just don't un­der­stand it." The short woman kicked her legs idly, like a child, but only as she was think­ing hard about some­thing. As soon as she came back to her­self, she stopped. "I get the feel­ing you know what I'm talk­ing about."

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

Sobon let a grin spread over her face. "I know a great many thing, enough that I too must keep se­crets. Es­pe­cial­ly, if you'll par­don my say­ing so, from the Em­pire."

The shop guards trad­ed ner­vous looks, but the woman sitting on the counter just nod­ded. "They won't touch me, not as a na­tive Djang, but any for­eign­er who has some­thing they want, some­one will try to take by force. I un­der­stand. Per­haps some­day I'll take a trip, and we can talk far from any lis­ten­ing ears." She paused. "Oh. I am Lai Shi Po. Just in case, as you say, you're a for­eign­er and don't know my shop from a hole in the ground."

Sobon laughed. "Shi­va Alas­si, from Emer­ald Val­ley to the west. Though I don't know if that is al­ways where I'll be, or what I'll be called." Sobon paused, very care­ful­ly as­sess­ing Lai Shi Po, be­fore quick­ly throw­ing to­geth­er a pri­va­cy pat­tern and send­ing her an aether pulse. [ If you go to the city, have the guards di­rect you to Sobon. It is... a slight­ly com­pli­cat­ed mat­ter. ]

The woman nod­ded, out­ward­ly ig­nor­ing the aether con­struct, al­though she had a strange look in her eyes. "I doubt I'll go that way right away, but per­haps. The re­mote parts of the Em­pire are al­ways in­ter­est­ed in buy­ing up a few spa­tial rings for a hefty prof­it." Lai Shi Po snort­ed. "Those are al­ways the worst to have copied. Usu­al­ly, they copiers will say it's some­one else's work, which means that when they in­evitably fail, some­one else's rep­u­ta­tion gets dragged through the mud. It's why I don't even put them out for dis­play, or sell them to oth­er in­scrip­tion­ists."

"Hm." Sobon let her­self sound a lit­tle dis­ap­point­ed, al­though it didn't sur­prise her. Any­one who did a bad job of mak­ing a spa­tial ar­ti­fact was play­ing a dan­ger­ous game, al­though since the Ri'lef's qi script re­lied on spa­tial pock­ets, it was more like­ly that the con­tents would sim­ply be­come lost. "Well, we have a din­ner to get to, but... what about a pro­tec­tive ar­ti­fact for my com­pan­ion, here?"

In the end, they left for din­ner a good forty gildra lighter, but Sobon had both a pro­tec­tive bracelet that Ki'el wore on her wrist, and also, Lai Shi Po had thrown in what Sobon rec­og­nized as a non­func­tion­al spa­tial ring, one with the cor­rect in­scrip­tions but no in­tent. The two had trad­ed amused looks at that, Sobon rec­og­niz­ing it as a test, but she sim­ply pock­et­ed the item with­out com­ment.

The restau­rant Rai Su Anin had cho­sen was, to sur­prise, ex­treme­ly ex­pen­sive and ex­clu­sive, the ex­act sort of place that Sobon had known she would feel en­tire­ly out of place walk­ing into with her pre­vi­ous clothes. Even the ones she had bought, though they were in per­fect con­di­tion and well-made, were in­ex­pen­sive com­pared to any­thing else she saw with­in. The maitre d' who met them at the front, a tall and thin woman who could have ri­valed Alas­si for hav­ing a per­ma­nent frown etched onto her face, gave their wear clear and un­mis­tak­able dis­ap­prov­ing looks, al­though she di­rect­ed the two of them to the Base Com­man­der's pri­vate table with­out com­ment.

The in­side was lav­ish, and al­though Sobon could have found rea­son to com­plain about it, in truth she found it at least a bit re­fresh­ing. Not be­cause Sobon, in his old life, had hung out at in­cred­i­bly ex­pen­sive restau­rants in the past; no, it sim­ply was a much small­er con­trast to mod­ern restau­rants than any­thing else she'd seen. There were a few ta­bles through­out the mid­dle of the room, with qi fields for pri­va­cy, and a num­ber of pri­vate booths along the edges. There was live mu­sic be­ing played by well-dressed mu­si­cians, who were both very ob­vi­ous­ly be­ing seen not to be spy­ing on any­one, and also, very clear­ly spy­ing on who­ev­er they could. Wait­ers hur­ried to and from back doors to the kitchen, and every­thing was kept im­pec­ca­bly clean and fresh smelling. There were even sev­er­al wa­ter­falls, set against the sup­port­ing columns that held up the sec­ond floor, which had a bal­cony look­ing down on the first floor, which pro­vid­ed a pleas­ing mo­tion and sound.

Sobon was a lit­tle sur­prised that the Base Com­man­der didn't take a sec­ond-sto­ry table; in­stead, they were tak­en to a pri­vate booth on one side of the low­er floor. Sobon not­ed that the booths to ei­ther side were filled, but with stiff peo­ple that seemed mil­i­tary them­selves, and she also not­ed that the pri­va­cy screens were not ful­ly set up, so that the guards on ei­ther side could hear the Base Com­man­der, at the very least if she shout­ed.

"Lady Shi­va, and your dis­ci­ple. Doua Ki'el, I be­lieve?" Com­man­der Rai ges­tured to the bench across the cir­cu­lar table from her, as she re­laxed into her own couch, mak­ing no mo­tion to get up. "Please, be seat­ed."

Sobon made no ef­fort to be for­mal, and with­in mo­ments, a serv­er that Sobon had not no­ticed hang­ing around near­by ar­rived, look­ing very pa­tient and for­mal. "Good evening. Do you need to be told what we have avail­able?"

"I'll have my usu­al," Com­man­der Rai said, dis­mis­sive­ly, and the serv­er shift­ed his eyes to Alas­si and Ki'el."

"What­ev­er the chef rec­om­mends," Sobon said, not par­tic­u­lar­ly keen on learn­ing a menu she wouldn't like­ly see again.

"Fish and rice," was all Ki'el had to say.

The serv­er sim­ply bowed and backed away, and Com­man­der Rai gave a wry grin. "As with a great many war­riors I have met, Lady Shi­va, you don't seem to ap­pre­ci­ate the fin­er things in life. In truth, in my first hun­dred years of life, I was much the same." She lift­ed a wine gob­let smelled it, and set it down with­out drink­ing. "By the time I could no longer pre­tend that I had lived one full life in its en­tire­ty, I be­gan to re­al­ize that I tru­ly did not en­joy liv­ing that way. Al­though death does not come eas­i­ly for those of us in the Gem Phase of Qi, it still can come. It would be a pity to live an­oth­er full cen­tu­ry and still re­gret my life."

Ki'el shift­ed un­com­fort­ably, clear­ly un­cer­tain of how to deal with a girl that looked her age speak­ing of a cen­tu­ry of life, but Sobon ig­nored it. Al­though Sobon was tempt­ed to talk about his own past--since Com­man­der Rai would like­ly not know all the de­tails of Alas­si's--she stuck to the more ob­vi­ous an­swers. "I have my own re­grets in this life, Com­man­der Rai," she said. "Of time that I've wast­ed. Mis­takes made, and things left un­done. If I live long enough to see some of those mis­takes atoned for, per­haps there will be time for pleas­antries af­ter­wards. And if I do not live to see those mis­takes atoned for, I don't be­lieve that crea­ture com­forts in the mean­time will make up the dif­fer­ence."

Com­man­der Rai's face dark­ened with those words, enough that it took the youth­ful cast off her fea­tures again, if not quite as much as Sobon's in­sight into qi had. "Re­grets," she said, lean­ing back onto the couch and let­ting her arms splay over the top of it. "Yes, war­riors have those. And I sup­pose that is part of why you no longer wish to be a war­rior. Those of us raised to war, es­pe­cial­ly, are told to bond with our teams, work close­ly with them, and then thrown into a mess that all but guar­an­tees we won't all come back alive."

"By the time we are old enough and wise enough to un­der­stand what we could have done dif­fer­ent­ly, we can­not undo the at­tach­ments, can­not change back into the chil­dren we were be­fore." Her eyes flicked to Ki'el. "We can­not re­move the stains on our skin, or the mon­sters from our souls. We have be­come war­riors, through and through." One hand reached out to take the wine, and she swirled it and smelled it, but didn't drink.

"It is not only war­riors who have scars," Ki'el said, her voice heavy with judge­ment. "My peo­ple were tak­en by pi­rates. My home--my fam­i­ly raped and mur­dered by peo­ple who went on to sell the sur­vivors as slaves. And I am led to be­lieve that the buy­ers were Djang."

"I wouldn't doubt it," Rai Su Anin said, with a sigh. "The Di­a­mond Lord Him­self au­tho­rized a pro­gram of pri­va­teers, ships who would pil­lage to sell peo­ple to us. Not us, the mil­i­tary," she cor­rect­ed, her oth­er hand com­ing up to stop Ki'el be­ing riled up. "No­ble fam­i­lies, most­ly. There is too much work that needs to be done, too much mon­ey to be earned. If the no­ble fam­i­lies did the kind of aw­ful things they do to slaves to oth­er Djang in­stead, this coun­try would tear it­self apart. It's eas­i­er to pre­tend we are civ­il when we don't see our­selves in the vic­tims."

Sobon could see the many in­tense feel­ings on Ki'el's face, and put a hand on her arm. Ki'el shot her a glare, and Sobon met her eyes. "I think this is not a healthy con­ver­sa­tion to have, Base Com­man­der," she said, "though I am sur­prised you speak so open­ly about your own peo­ple's sins."

"Sins... that is a word for it. There are many for­eign con­cepts around evil. The Djang tend to fo­cus on the de­mon­ic, and I ful­ly agree that slav­ery is a de­mon­ic thing, but it is one that some em­brace as a source of pow­er." Com­man­der Rai fi­nal­ly took a sip of her wine. "But every word for evil be­comes un­der­stat­ed, even mean­ing­less, in the face of suc­cess, does it not? The few... pri­va­teers that I have had the un­pleas­ant for­tune to meet all had de­mon­ic qi in­side of them. But they were all of them suc­cess­ful. If I were to ar­gue that they should not have been demons... would any of them have seen suc­cess? The world would be a bet­ter place, but if they sunk into pover­ty and de­spair as a re­sult, wouldn't they dis­agree?"

"I can­not be­lieve--" Ki'el be­gan to say, but the Com­man­der raised her voice to drown it out.

"I don't agree with what they do," she said, with­out much emo­tion in her voice, "and I nev­er will, young Ki'el. I do not have the scars you have, but I see plain­ly that what they do cor­rupts them, the Djang, and the world at large. What I am try­ing to say, and what you would do well to un­der­stand, is that theirs is an evil that will not dis­ap­pear as long as it is giv­en a place to thrive. It must be erad­i­cat­ed, and as a mem­ber of the Di­a­mond Lord's Army, I am not per­mit­ted to do so. What­ev­er ar­gu­ments you have, they are not with me."

"I can­not take your words as any­thing but the words of a cow­ard," said Ki'el, ac­cus­ing­ly.

Sobon didn't sense any re­ac­tion in Com­man­der Rai, but did sense dis­com­fort from the booths on ei­ther side. They were in­ter­rupt­ed, though, when the servers re­turned, plac­ing three dish­es on the table. Ki'el had some kind of thin­ly sliced fish in sauce over rice and veg­eta­bles, while Sobon had a sur­pris­ing­ly mod­ern-look­ing dish of bread­ed and deep-fried meats and veg­eta­bles, with heav­i­ly spiced sauces over a small­er bed of rice. Rai had a mix­ture of sev­er­al dif­fer­ent items, but only a lit­tle of each--meats, dumplings, fried veg­eta­bles, all arranged around a sin­gle cup of sauce that smelled ex­treme­ly in­tense.

"I am not hun­gry," Ki'el start­ed to com­plain, but Sobon put a hand on her arm, again, send­ing her a brief pulse of aether. [ It mat­ters how you phrase it to your­self, ] Sobon tried to say. [ The food isn't hers, and the mon­ey she paid doesn't taint your soul. This is just... tak­ing some small part of her re­sources for your­self. You might as well eat it. ]

Ki'el looked back at her, strug­gling to put to­geth­er an an­swer­ing aether pulse. [ No like her. ]

[ I know, ] Sobon said. [ Just eat. ]

When Ki'el be­grudg­ing­ly start­ed eat­ing, Com­man­der Rai fi­nal­ly spoke. "Cow­ard... in a sense, I sup­pose. I could re­tire and fight the em­pire, but it would only get me killed. Al­though I have nev­er met the Di­a­mond Lord him­self, I am told that he is greater than any war­rior in our army, and pro­found­ly so. As though even our great­est war­riors, even the ones at the Flame Phase of Qi, are be­neath him. And those war­riors who are in the Flame Phase of Qi... they are so far be­yond me that to chal­lenge them would be fol­ly." The girl­ish woman dipped one of dumplings in sauce and bit into it, tak­ing a long mo­ment to chew and sa­vor the fla­vors.

"In the end, all cow­ardice is un­will­ing­ness to face our own death or in­jury. In that sense, you are right. I will not face death, not when it won't change the Di­a­mond Lord's mind."

Sobon took the time to eat her own food, and Ki'el forced her­self not to speak, which Sobon thought was a lit­tle out of the girl's char­ac­ter. So Sobon de­cid­ed to change the top­ic. "What can you tell me about the Di­a­mond Lord? What do the peo­ple who have seen him say about him?"

"Very lit­tle," Com­man­der Rai ac­knowl­edged. "There was a pan­ic some years ago, when every­thing changed for the sec­ond time. They said that at that time, some­thing hap­pened to the Di­a­mond Lord. And since then, very lit­tle has come down from him. But peo­ple still meet with him to dis­cuss mat­ters of em­pire. They say that his per­son­al ma­sion on the Great Moun­tain is so full of pro­found ar­ti­facts that every­one who vis­its rais­es their qi just by lay­ing eyes on things that the Di­a­mond Lord had made. And yet... they also say that peo­ple fear to meet him. As far as I know, none have died vis­it­ing him, per­haps be­cause none were fool enough to chal­lenge him. He is far enough be­yond them all that no one dares ques­tion his will, or his wis­dom. But there has also not been a time since the Em­pire was found­ed that he has fought."

Some­how, amidst her speak­ing, Com­man­der Rai man­aged to keep eat­ing, re­ly­ing on qi waves turned to ver­bal speech, in­stead of let­ting the waves car­ry the in­tent them­selves. Most like­ly, Sobon thought, that was so that the guards would know what she was say­ing, or per­haps be­cause she wor­ried Ki'el wouldn't un­der­stand. It didn't mat­ter, ei­ther way. "When every­thing changed, the sec­ond time?" Sobon asked, hop­ing the woman would clar­i­fy.

"Mm," Com­man­der Rai nod­ded. "Of course, there was the ap­pear­ance of the Star­beasts. That was the first change, when the world tru­ly be­gan to shift to a more pro­found state. But some years af­ter that, there was a shift, and the na­ture of it was un­clear. Some­thing that a few clear­ly know of, but which none will speak about. Since then, the Di­a­mond Lord has changed. I be­lieve, or per­haps sim­ply hopoe, that he is in seclu­sion, try­ing to reach new depths of pro­fun­di­ty. None will say what oc­cu­pies him, only that some­thing clear­ly does. Some­thing more im­por­tant to him than mat­ters of Em­pire."

He's try­ing to get into the Founder's fa­cil­i­ty, Sobon thought, the idea stick­ing to her and sour­ing her stom­ach. Al­though the food wasn't bad, the idea that the man--giv­en all else that he'd ac­com­plished--was still ac­tive­ly work­ing at it ter­ri­fied Sobon.

I'm al­ready tak­ing too long. There is too much at stake. Sobon tried to keep the pan­ic down, and most­ly man­aged, but she couldn't stop it from re­turn­ing to the fore­front of her mind. So she shook her head, and asked what she hoped was a sim­ple, in­no­cent ques­tion.

"I'm not too fa­mil­iar with the ge­og­ra­phy. How far is the Great Moun­tain from here?"

The look that Com­man­der Rai gave showed enough cau­tion that Sobon knew that the woman sus­pect­ed some­thing from Sobon's tone or nerves, though she clear­ly wasn't sure what Sobon was think­ing. "It is in the very cen­ter of the Em­pire, the One True Moun­tain that puts all oth­er moun­tains to shame. Raised by the Di­a­mond Lord, it stands upon the great­est nexus of ge­o­mat­ic pow­ers in the world. Those who fol­low the Di­a­mond Lord can al­ways feel it, shin­ing like a bea­con in the night. But as to how far..." she shrugged. "Per­haps two thou­sand Li from here? For a long time, I have been more fo­cused on maps of the sea and the near­by lands, not the in­ner ge­og­ra­phy of the Em­pire."

"I see." In truth, Sobon had guessed the gen­er­al di­rec­tion while fly­ing east, but had been far more in­ter­est­ed in find­ing Ki'el to wor­ry about it. How that she was sure... it was a lit­tle dif­fi­cult not to try to fly clos­er, but Sobon had no doubts that some­one like the Di­a­mond Lord would sense her com­ing, es­pe­cial­ly once she was ac­tu­al­ly strong enough to do some­thing of con­se­quence.

For the rest of the din­ner, both Sobon and Ki'el most­ly plas­tered on masks of po­lite com­pa­ny, and lit­tle else was said of note. Both of them were too dis­turbed to en­joy their food, al­though Sobon did take her own ad­vice to Ki'el, and con­tin­ued eat­ing. It was, af­ter all, good food--ex­cel­lent­ly spiced and per­fect­ly cooked, it de­served what­ev­er cost the Base Com­man­der had paid. But when all was said and done, like Ki'el, Sobon re­al­ly wasn't in­ter­est­ed in en­joy­ing the Djang lux­u­ries.

And so, af­ter fin­ish­ing their meals and en­dur­ing a few more un­in­tend­ed barbs from the Base Com­man­der, they left.