Sobon chose, once the rest were think­ing about their ad­vance­ment, to spend her time work­ing to repli­cate Lai Shi Po's space ring, or rather, make a sub­sti­tute. The two main prob­lems with repli­cat­ing her des­ign were the ma­te­ri­als, and the fine en­grav­ings; Lai Shi Po's ring was some al­loy that Sobon might have iden­ti­fied in time, but prob­a­bly could nev­er have repli­cat­ed, since she doubt­less had some spe­cif­ic sup­pli­er. For such a small en­chant­ed item, even with Sobon's un­der­stand­ing of the sub­tleties, ma­te­ri­als mat­tered; the dense­ly packed scripts could leak out and in­ter­fere with one an­oth­er, or aether flux could slip from one en­grav­ing to the next.

And while Sobon could cre­ate the tools nec­es­sary to write any script in any size, it took ef­fort to de­sign such a tool for a giv­en ring ma­te­r­i­al, size, and shape, and more ef­fort to de­sign a tool flex­i­ble enough to be reused for any item. A more mod­est pro­pos­al was just an en­graver that was more or less man­u­al, with a vari­able aperture on its en­graver, and a sec­ond head to fill the new space with di­a­mond and fuse it.

More prac­ti­cal­ly, though the whole de­sign was eas­i­er if Sobon sim­ply made it big­ger. She was sure there were cul­tur­al and prac­ti­cal rea­sons for space rings, but for some­one in the process of learn­ing, there was lit­tle rea­son not to work with a bracelet. It got rid of most of the com­pli­ca­tions, and let Sobon ex­am­ine how the aether pat­terns in­ter­act­ed with the ma­te­ri­als.

Al­though Sobon had seen, ear­li­er in her ca­reer, ba­sic ta­bles of aether and ma­te­r­i­al in­ter­ac­tions, and had even mem­o­rized parts of them at one point. But that was a lot of high­ly com­plex data, and while Sobon had it in her cy­borg data­base ever since, she no longer had ac­cess to that, and had no rea­son to look at it in a very long time, so it was no longer in her own per­son­al mem­o­ry. More than that, even if Sobon could get the same data from the Coro­na, it would still take a lot of ex­per­i­men­ta­tion to see how the the data af­fect­ed this de­sign.

There were ba­sics, of course. Sta­ble mol­e­cules were good chan­nels, and lighter el­e­ments had low re­sis­tance to flow. Heav­ier el­e­ments gripped the aether more tight­ly, let­ting you an­chor pat­terns more pre­cise­ly, and stor­ing aether sta­bly. But the ways in which ma­te­ri­als re­ject­ed aether were more nu­anced. Some trapped it, some re­flect­ed it, some re­fract­ed its cur­rents in var­i­ous di­rec­tions. Re­ac­tive ma­te­ri­als gen­er­al­ly were ac­ti­vat­ed by aether, con­sum­ing some of its pow­er. Those had to be planned around, en­sur­ing that any side ef­fects were de­sir­able, though that was nor­mal­ly ir­rel­e­vant when work­ing with­in a sin­gle met­al al­loy.

That was, as­sum­ing you could get the pu­ri­ty high enough. Sobon could write pat­terns to make a pure sub­stance, like di­a­mond, but she was in­ter­est­ed in com­plex met­al al­loys, some of which were not straight­for­ward struc­tural­ly or chem­i­cal­ly. That's why she wasn't try­ing to roll her own vari­ants of steel, or at least, not yet. The lava rocks were, among oth­er things, a source of chromi­um, which was a nice, un­re­ac­tive met­al, not only for the pur­pos­es of aether, but for mun­dane chem­i­cal cor­ro­sion. The lo­cals didn't seem to have dis­cov­ered it, or at least, the met­als sup­pli­er Sobon had met had no idea. But the rocks were also a good source of mag­ne­sium and alu­minum, which in con­trast were both high­ly re­ac­tive met­als.

In­stead of try­ing to mix them into an al­loy, though, Sobon mere­ly fab­ri­cat­ed a struc­ture where the dif­fer­ent met­als were placed where she thought they be­longed, bond­ed to­geth­er. She knew her first at­tempt would be naïve, and it was. It was also time con­sum­ing enough that af­ter she fin­ished the blank, she de­cid­ed she would need to work on a more vi­able in­come source for the short term.

It was easy enough to come up with some­thing sim­ple. Al­though Ki'el's aether blade was a bit more ad­vanced than Sobon re­al­ly want­ed to share, much less mass-pro­duce, and the work she'd put into Mian's blade was too much for a sim­ple prod­uct. But there was a hy­brid, with the sim­plic­i­ty of Ki'el's blade and the ma­te­r­i­al an­chor of Mian's.

In­stead of us­ing Mian's butch­er sword as a tem­plate, though, Sobon chose a straight sin­gle-edge sword with a chis­el tip, and forged the blank out of lo­cal steel. The whole of the en­grav­ing was placed with­in the tang, and it amount­ed to lit­tle but qi gath­er­ing, stor­age, and re­in­force­ment, in­clud­ing chem­i­cal re­sis­tance. There were a to­tal of sev­en points defin­ing the geom­e­try, cre­at­ing one line to re­in­force the blade, an­oth­er re­in­forc­ing the chis­el tip, two to re­in­force the rear, and two more con­nect­ing the rear to the tip. Even with­out turn­ing the geom­e­try into planes of force, it wouldn't yield as long as it was fu­eled with qi--ex­cept to an at­tack that pierced through the cen­ter of the blade. That wasn't an im­pos­si­ble sce­nario, but adding even one force plane ex­pand­ed the log­ic and pow­er drain by a large per­cent­age.

The sword, un­like Mian's, was in­tend­ed to be used by peo­ple with­out ex­ter­nal qi, and there­fore it had to sip at pow­er. Any­one hold­ing the blade would slow­ly charge it, and any time the re­in­force­ments were need­ed, a lit­tle pow­er was con­sumed. For an every­day swords­man, though, it was sim­ply a sword that nev­er need­ed sharp­en­ing, one that would soon­er drain all of their qi through their hands than yield to an­oth­er sword.

Sobon, one she had con­firmed that the de­sign worked as in­tend­ed, made ten, placed them with­in her stor­age ring, and went to vis­it the City Lord. As be­fore, she not­ed that Kibar, the man who talked about spir­its and fate, was seat­ed at the foun­tain with his eyes closed. She passed by him, nei­ther avoid­ing him nor mov­ing clos­er. There was no sub­tle sense, this time, of her com­ing to the at­ten­tion of the god that stood be­hind him, but even so, Kibar's eyes opened as she passed, and he re­gard­ed her, say­ing noth­ing.

Sobon was able to meet again with Lord Shi­da, who was once again very def­er­en­tial.

"Lady Alas­si! Con­grat­u­la­tions on your... break­through." The man seemed at once in awe and ashamed to see that Sobon had al­ready reached Ti­ta­ni­um Qi, when he had not even ful­ly ad­vanced a sin­gle Gold star dur­ing the same time. He bowed again, servile in­stincts com­mand­ing him, but straight­ened when Sobon made it clear she didn't ap­pre­ci­ate that. "I was not in­formed that the break­through we felt was you, al­though giv­en its brevi­ty, I should have guessed."

"If I'd want­ed it known, I would have said some­thing, Lord Shi­da."

The man nod­ded, though as al­ways, he seemed ill at ease. "How may I help you, Lady Alas­si? I be­lieve that you should have been con­tact­ed by the builder I rec­om­mend­ed...?"

"He is busy at cur­rent," Sobon waved the thought away. "No, Lord Shi­da, I would like to dis­cuss mon­ey, and more specif­i­cal­ly, I would like to sell some­thing."

At the men­tion of sell­ing some­thing, Lord Shi­da's eyes be­came more guard­ed. "Some­thing, my lady?" Sobon moved her hand to the table and re­moved one of the swords from her space ring, but was ful­ly aware that the man's eyes locked onto her space ring. "Lady Alas­si... would that hap­pen to be a gen­uine Lai Shi Po space ring?"

Sobon's opin­ion of the man went up a touch, even as she paused, plac­ing her hand over the sword for a mo­ment to leave the ring ex­posed. "Yes, and no. I had the good for­tune to stum­ble upon Lai Shi Po's shop when I went east, to res­cue my com­pan­ion. It seems I made a good im­pres­sion on her, be­cause she gift­ed me an in­com­plete ring as a test. Un­til I can repli­cate the en­tire thing, I see no rea­son to claim cred­it, so if asked by any­one else, I would sim­ply call it..." she smirked. "An... ac­cept­able im­i­ta­tion of Lai Shi Po's work. Though I am cu­ri­ous, how did you rec­og­nize it on sight?"

"Hm? Oh." Lord Shi­da's face had fall­en slight­ly at Sobon's ca­su­al tone, and he tight­ened it up into a some­what tense smile. "It's the ma­te­ri­als, of course, Lady Alas­si. I am sure you have no­ticed the sub­tle dam­as­cus col­orations. They say that Lai Shi Po or­ders ten thou­sand ring blanks at a time, and only ac­cepts be­tween one and ten. Her stan­dards are such that any­thing less than per­fec­tion is in­ad­e­quate."

Sobon nod­ded. She had no­ticed the strange­ness of the ma­te­ri­als, but had hoped that Lai Shi Po had a bet­ter so­lu­tion for get­ting them than count­ing on ran­dom chance in the forg­ing process. Still, it made sense; some­one with her in­ten­si­ty and skill would like­ly be able to tell if a ring blank could be used, but not nec­es­sar­i­ly be able to put into words why, or what the smith should do in or­der to ac­com­plish her goals.

"Well... I in­vit­ed Lai Shi Po to come vis­it, and she men­tioned per­haps sell­ing more of her work this far west, though I do not know if or when she will come."

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That thought had Lord Shi­da's eyes bug­ging out again. "My lady... if that is so, then the mere pres­ence of Lai Shi Po is it­self an­oth­er gift of yours to this city." He made a head bow, meant once again to ap­pear servile, be­fore turn­ing his at­ten­tion to the blade. "And this... the sword is what Lady Alas­si would like to sell?"

Sobon nod­ded, mov­ing her hand away from it. "It is a sim­ple de­sign. I'm cu­ri­ous what you see and sense in it."

The City Lord picked it up with rev­er­ence, but stud­ied the en­tire­ty of what was ex­posed with a frown on his face. "There is no ob­vi­ous in­scrip­tion work, but... clear­ly an in­scrip­tion was done. With­in the hilt?" He took a firm grip on the hilt, and his eyes flicked to it. "Pas­sive­ly ab­sorbs qi. And I sense... threads. No, thin qi chan­nels. Re­in­forc­ing the blade?"

Sobon nod­ded. "The way the chan­nels are set up, they will not bend or shift as long as there is qi to pow­er them. If pres­sured, the pat­tern in the hilt will draw more qi to en­sure that the blade re­mains per­fect­ly stiff and sharp." She drew an­oth­er from her ring, and stood up and away from the desk, ges­tur­ing for Lord Shi­da to come. "Try it. Edge to edge."

The city lord looked pen­sive, then sus­pi­cious, but the two of them moved into the am­ple free space of the man's ex­ces­sive­ly large of­fice, and then with no warn­ing and lit­tle ap­par­ent ef­fort, the man swept for­ward into a fast and flaw­less thrust, his feet leav­ing the ground as he swept his en­tire body be­hind the blow.

Sobon, even an­tic­i­pat­ing the at­tack, was sur­prised by the man's flu­id­i­ty and poise, and was on the de­fen­sive im­me­di­ate­ly, knock­ing the sword away and step­ping the oth­er di­rec­tion. Lord Shi­da fol­lowed up with a straight­for­ward se­ries of slices and chops, mix­ing in only the oc­ca­sion­al stab, and Sobon im­me­di­ate­ly start­ed sweat­ing as she par­ried each in­com­ing strike, then im­me­di­ate­ly had to shift to de­fend again.

When Shi­da stopped and be­gan to ex­am­ine his blade, though, he was en­tire­ly cool, un­per­turbed by the mo­tion. "Flaw­less," he de­clared, run­ning his fin­gers along the very edge. "No chips or gouges at all. And yours, I be­lieve, is in the same con­di­tion?" Sobon held her own blade out, and he took it with his oth­er hand, eye­ing the oth­er weapon. "In­deed. The re­in­force­ment runs to the very tip of the blade, and the wider rear sur­face is also re­in­forced. To block with­out us­ing the edge, I imag­ine." He eas­i­ly re­versed his grip on Sobon's sword and re­turned it to her, then moved back to the desk and set the one he'd been hold­ing down.

"These are qual­i­ty swords. I imag­ine the pas­sive draw is so that they can be used by those not trained in ex­ter­nal qi." At Sobon's nod, he be­gan to stroke his chin. "At the same time, they pro­vide no, or lit­tle, ben­e­fit to those war­riors who do have ex­ter­nal qi. They are not in­tend­ed for use by mas­ters at all, but more than ad­e­quate for a guards­man. If noth­ing else, the fact that they could stand up to a qi-re­in­forced blade with­out dam­age is worth some­thing."

"Be­cause the re­in­force­ment is fo­cused on the cut­ting edge," Sobon point­ed out, "the re­in­force­ment will also help pierce qi de­fens­es, though it will drain the wield­er to do so."

Lord Shi­da picked the weapon up again, and with a mo­ment of hes­i­ta­tion, heav­i­ly re­in­forced the qi around one hand while stab­bing it with the oth­er. Sobon raised an eye­brow, but the man didn't press hard enough to come close to in­jur­ing him­self, al­though she could sense the qi around his hand sep­a­rat­ing and spark­ing from the dam­age.

"In­deed. It is a pure cut­ting ac­tion, and not a de­struc­tive qi na­ture, but it will help." He set the blade down, and moved to the oth­er side of the desk. "I would glad­ly pay one gildra per sword, though I would ad­vise Lady Alas­si that oth­ers may pay more or less. In par­tic­u­lar, there are guilds that hire non-cul­ti­va­tors as guards, who would like­ly be very in­ter­est­ed, while most of the no­ble fam­i­lies would have no in­ter­est at all, or very lit­tle at best. And even those who are in­ter­est­ed will hag­gle much more than I will on the price."

"I have ten at pre­sent," Sobon said, mov­ing back to the desk her­self and set­ting the blade in her hand down, then ap­pear­ing the rest of them. "I trust you un­der­stand, Lord Shi­da, that I am good at a great many things, but these sort of ne­go­ti­a­tions are not my forte."

To his cred­it, Lord Shi­da chuck­led at that, rather than be­ing un­com­fort­able or rude. "I have had the for­tune to meet a great many peo­ple, Lady Alas­si, and none of them has been per­fect. Of­ten enough, those who fo­cus on al­most any­thing to an ex­treme let slip their abil­i­ty to be so­cia­ble. It is enough that you un­der­stand in gen­er­al what your work is worth. I would be hap­py to as­sist on mat­ters such as these, or else I can point you to­wards those who can be trust­ed to know bet­ter."

Sobon just nod­ded at that. Lord Shi­da took a mo­ment to con­firm that all of the swords laid out were the same, and sent off a qi pulse mes­sage, but then seemed to pause and con­sid­er.

"Lady Alas­si..." He turned to her. "It would per­haps be too for­ward of me to sug­gest that you have some need to train in sword­play, but I be­lieve that you would do with a great deal more prac­tice, and per­haps the at­ten­tion of a mas­ter. I would be re­miss if I didn't of­fer to rec­om­mend you to a sect. I my­self was nev­er ac­cept­ed into one, but as a City Lord, I have some sway."

Sobon had to prod Alas­si to ex­plain ex­act­ly what that im­plied, here. [ I've nev­er vis­it­ed one or even seen one of their peo­ple, but the sects are sup­pos­ed­ly de­vot­ed to the study of qi and mar­tial arts, ] she said in brief. [ They are en­tire­ly sep­a­rate from the na­tions they oc­cu­py, and many who join them spend their whole life med­i­tat­ing on the ways of qi. It was a Djang tra­di­tion orig­i­nal­ly, and it is still strongest in their part of the world, but it has spread along with their em­pire. Some romanticize the sects as be­ing a pure quest for truth, while oth­ers de­mo­nize them for be­ing sin­gle-mind­ed in their search for pow­er. ]

"Some sway, but not enough for them to share the se­cret to en­ter­ing Gold Qi?" Sobon let doubt fill her voice.

Lord Shi­da just shook his head. "Sects do not share se­crets, Lady Alas­si. Their knowl­edge is giv­en to their mem­bers, not spread. They search for tal­ent and knowl­edge, and are will­ing to take rec­om­men­da­tions should a new prodi­gy or great tal­ent ap­pear. There is only one that is close­ by, the Scin­til­lat­ing Glac­i­er Sect, which is deep in the moun­tains. I am sure that they would agree your rate of progress qual­i­fies you as a prodi­gy, even... at your age."

Sobon didn't have to think hard about it. "I do not have the time or in­cli­na­tion to spend a great deal of time learn­ing in a re­mote lo­ca­tion, Lord Shi­da. I would be... in­ter­est­ed, to speak to a mas­ter of qi, if I could trust them to keep cer­tain things se­cret. Es­pe­cial­ly, to un­der­stand their teach­ing meth­ods, and perhaps offer something in return."

Lord Shi­da seemed to un­der­stand that. "I will pass on a dis­creet in­quiry, though I am not sure that the Glac­i­er Sect has a mas­ter that would meet your stan­dards. I know of sev­er­al oth­er sects, but I will need to find out more to rec­om­mend any of them."

Sobon stood and nod­ded at Lord Shi­da, who sent off an­oth­er qi pulse. A side door opened, and one of the staff came in with Sobon's mon­ey, which she took, then bowed to the City Lord, and left.

Out­side, Sobon was not sur­prised to find that Kibar had again moved away from the plaza foun­tain, only this time, she no­ticed him stand­ing in a side street, watch­ing her. Al­though Sobon moved past him, Kibar sent her a qi pulse, one that was mod­er­ate­ly well put to­geth­er, al­though they con­tained too much of the man's voice in­stead of be­ing a pure mes­sage.

[ I have been think­ing about spir­i­tu­al ful­fill­ment, as you said, ] the man's qi puls­es felt a lit­tle heavy in Sobon's mind. [ You seem to draw a dis­tinc­tion be­tween ac­com­plish­ment and ful­fill­ment. Why do you seek ac­com­plish­ment if not for ful­fill­ment? ]

Sobon kicked her mind into high gear only long enough to craft a per­fect­ly formed re­turn pack­et, most­ly out of spite for the man's heavy and pon­der­ous thoughts. [ That's a stu­pid enough ques­tion to be of­fen­sive, 'sir' Kibar. I have a pur­pose which, if I fail, will re­sult in a great deal of death and suf­fer­ing. The quest doesn't make me hap­py, and I don't ex­pect it to. While there is more to spir­i­tu­al ful­fill­ment than self­ish want and need, the idea that a per­son won't do the right thing un­less fulfillment awaits them at the end is a doctrine of he­do­nism. Dif­fer­ent peo­ple have dif­fer­ent needs, and spir­i­tu­al ful­fill­ment is just one of many. ]

Sobon could sense the man be­ing briefly over­whelmed by the mes­sage pulse, but didn't stop to bandy more words with him. What­ev­er the man and his pa­tron god be­lieved, it was ob­vi­ous to Sobon that they were ex­pect­ing her to be some­one very dif­fer­ent than she was. Dif­fer­ent, Sobon thought, than Alas­si may have been, too, al­though she wasn't think­ing hard about it.

On the walk back, though, Alas­si seemed to con­sid­er that. [ Ful­fill­ment... ] the dead woman's thoughts rat­tled around in Sobon's head, when she fi­nal­ly deigned to put words to them. The woman's spir­it was un­fo­cused, per­haps a bit dis­tressed. [ I had be­lieved such a thing was im­pos­si­ble. That af­ter all my mis­takes and fail­ures, and all my bad for­tune, there was no place for me in the world. Some­one who said oth­er­wise... if they could have got­ten me to be­lieve it, they might have man­aged to change me. ]

[ What do you think now? ] Sobon could sense that the woman wasn't any­where near done think­ing through the mat­ter.

[ My own time is over. I think that if I had any de­sires of my own, it would be to see Lui suc­ceed, and since you are help­ing with that, I see no rea­son to sep­a­rate my fate from yours. And... I can ac­knowl­edge that you have made me, and Lui, and Mian, and your... adopt­ed daugh­ter, Ki'el, stronger. I am not sure what one like sir Kibar could of­fer me, to make me ful­filled, but it would need to be at least that much. I... don't think I'd be hap­py... search­ing only for my own com­fort if Lui and the rest were left be­hind. It would be too much like go­ing back to who I was. ]

[ I am hap­py to have your trust, ] Sobon re­turned, as she drew near to home. [ For my­self, spir­i­tu­al gods wor­ry me. I am sure that for those who have no plans for their own life, it is fine to let them guide you. But even back on my own world, I felt like they would lead me away from where I want­ed to go, and to­wards where they want­ed me to be. Per­haps it is un­kind to as­sume, but I would rather not be... en­tan­gled with them. ]

Alas­si con­sid­ered that for a long time af­ter­wards.