The next day turned out to be busy in sev­er­al ways. The eas­i­est one, for Sobon her­self, was at­tune­ment--overnight, she had fo­cused on her shoul­der blades as the first ar­eas she ful­ly at­tuned to Out­ward--that is to say, Gen­e­sis aether. She had cho­sen the shoul­der blades for half-prac­ti­cal, half-nos­tal­gic rea­sons; the Fairy Marines, as a mat­ter of pol­i­cy, gen­er­al­ly af­fixed Out­ward-spin ad­vanced telekine­sis pat­terns at the shoul­der blades, un­less they had a spe­cif­ic rea­son not to choose that spot on their bod­ies. Cy­borg Marines, as a prac­ti­cal mat­ter, of­ten linked sim­i­lar or iden­ti­cal pat­terns in the same place, so that an en­tire Mixed Ma­rine unit could train to­geth­er and work un­der the same con­di­tions.

Alas­si's cur­rent bones wouldn't take near­ly the strain that Sobon was used to, but she was still hap­py to fi­nal­ly be able to store those pat­terns in their right­ful place. As soon as Sobon woke, well be­fore dawn, she shift­ed the aether adap­ta­tion pro­gram to her right humerus--the up­per arm bone--and set in to store the two linked pat­terns across her back. It was a te­dious, and some­times painful process... but Sobon knew this pat­tern back­wards and fore­wards.

It was bare­ly mid-morn­ing when she fin­ished, feel­ing quite pleased. She flexed, feel­ing her aether wings link­ing to­geth­er, and picked her­self up off the floor from her med­i­tat­ing po­si­tion, land­ing so eas­i­ly and light­ly on her feet that she felt a fa­mil­iar thrill. It still felt aw­ful to be trapped in­side flesh... but now, fi­nal­ly, she could stop feel­ing lim­it­ed by her flesh.

[ I... don't un­der­stand, ] Some­where with­in her, Alas­si's spir­it was mar­veling, ei­ther at the new lev­el of at­tune­ment, or the pat­terns Sobon had placed in them, or per­haps at the part of Sobon's own soul that had im­me­di­ate­ly and deeply linked with the pat­terns. [ This is all... this feels so... ]

[ This is a frac­tion of what I was be­fore, ] Sobon replied, let­ting her tele­ki­net­ic sens­es slip not only through the world around her, but through her body it­self, mas­sag­ing mus­cles, nudg­ing joints, re­duc­ing pres­sure on nerves. She had no in­ter­est in us­ing the pat­tern for those sorts of things con­stant­ly, but it was nice to scratch the many metaphor­i­cal itch­es that her flesh prison had, and she felt her spir­it ease as lit­tle nui­sances were ad­dressed. [ Once you have be­come more than flesh, it's so very hard to go back. ]

When she fin­ished stretch­ing, Sobon no­ticed that Lui had al­ready left. They'd had a nice con­ver­sa­tion the pre­vi­ous evening, but Sobon had meant to speak with her more. As it turned out, Sobon could tell that some­one else was com­ing to the house any­way--un­less she missed her guess, Lord Shi­da with a "gift" she had sensed be­ing col­lect­ed yes­ter­day.

So, af­ter greet­ing Mian and Ki'el, both of whom were med­i­tat­ing, she opened the gates with an aether pulse just as the guests ar­rived.

For whichev­er rea­son, Lord Shi­da led a pro­ces­sion which looked as for­mal as if he were greet­ing an em­press. Al­though the man seemed a lit­tle more com­fort­able around Sobon than he had ever been, he still went through all of the mo­tions of com­plete sub­servience, stop­ping at what Sobon thought and Alas­si con­firmed was a dis­tance de­fined by Djang high so­ci­ety's cus­toms, and then bow­ing deeply, as the two at­ten­dents and two guards did the same.

"Lady Alas­si," he said, "I would like to pre­sent to you those scraps of Core Tis­sues that we were able to re­cov­er from the re­mains of Lord Mofu Gin. I be­lieve these should be of val­ue to you."

Sobon just nod­ded, as the two at­ten­dants hur­ried for­ward, each with rather large box­es, both look­ing very hum­ble and com­plete­ly ter­ri­fied. Sobon was nev­er one for tra­di­tion, but for the sake of those ter­ri­fied at­ten­dants, wait­ed un­til they had set their car­go down be­fore flex­ing her new tele­ki­net­ic pat­terns to open both chests at once, study­ing what the box­es con­tained.

The con­tents were gris­ly, show­ing lit­tle at­tach­ment to the body that they had once been a part of. Al­though Sobon had sensed that the man's hands were spe­cial, and eas­i­ly guessed that they had in­te­grat­ed the ma­te­r­i­al from Star­beast cores, she had writ­ten them off--Mofu Gin's aether had det­o­nat­ed when her can­non broke through his de­fens­es, her own de­struc­tive aether chan­nel­ing back­wards through his merid­i­ans with more force than his body could sus­tain. And since his aether chan­nels were strongest near his hands, those had tak­en no small por­tion of the ex­plo­sion, scat­ter­ing most­ly out be­yond her own com­pound and into the city.

What re­mained were al­most like light­ly glow­ing threads of translu­cent grey, which in some places were still at­tached to mus­cle, bone, sinew, nerve, or skin, but which most­ly had been cleansed of any­thing fleshy that re­mained. Sobon tried not to re­act at the sight, or at the aether stench that the threads gave off, in­stead keep­ing an im­pressed look on her face. In truth, she knew that it must have tak­en a lot of work to col­lect them.

"I ap­pre­ci­ate the gift deeply, Lord Shi­da." She glanced at the at­ten­dants, who had paused in fright when the box­es opened by them­selves, then bowed and rushed out of the court­yard, stop­ping at the gate only long enough to turn and bow again. She felt the itch, again, of ir­ri­ta­tion at all the sub­servience, the pow­er wor­ship, but did her best to ig­nore it. When the only ones that re­mained with­in the cout­yard were Shi­da and his two, oath-bound guards, she closed the gates again and sighed. "Re­gret­tably, it's not as use­ful as you might think."

"Is it not?" Shi­da Ken let him­self re­lax as well, though she thought the City Lord was also ap­prais­ing her; he must have no­ticed the dif­fer­ence in how she had cre­at­ed her tele­ki­net­ic pat­tern. "I would think that Star­beast Cores, even once they have been processed, must be very rare in­deed..."

"With time and with ef­fort, you can cleanse the ma­te­r­i­al ful­ly, re­mov­ing all taint of what it used to be," Sobon ex­plained. "I was telling my peo­ple this a cou­ple days ago. Stor­ing aether pat­terns, or even at­tune­ment, with­in a ma­te­r­i­al leaves deep scars with­in it, and few things that get as deeply 'scarred' as parts of a per­son's body. This," she ges­tured to one of the box­es, "must have been rel­a­tive­ly new, be­cause the aether hasn't ful­ly soaked in. I could cer­tain­ly use it for a script­ed weapon, but not in­te­grate it my­self. But this," she ges­tured at the oth­er one, "this is dif­fer­ent, com­plete­ly in­te­grat­ed with the spir­it of a dead man. Even with an ide­al process, would take a few months to cleanse."

"So it is dif­fer­ent than a core straight from a Star­beast? I am led to be­lieve that those can be in­te­grat­ed al­most im­me­di­ate­ly." Lord Shi­da stepped for­ward so that he could see the con­tents of the two box­es, let­ting him­self put aside every­thing else and study them as in­tent­ly as he could.

"It's far from my spe­cial­ty," Sobon said hav­ing stud­ied the Ri'lef notes on the sub­ject but un­will­ing to dive too deeply into that knowl­edge, "but from what I un­der­stand, they use them dif­fer­ent­ly. Beasts, even in­tel­li­gent ones, have no con­cept of pu­ri­ty, and if they in­te­grat­ed their cores the way--that way," she ges­tured at the ru­ined frag­ments of core tis­sues, "their cores would am­pli­fy their strength in ways that would not be safe, and they would tear them­selves apart. In­stead, I imag­ine they use their cores to am­pli­fy a small­er pat­tern, but with­out bond­ing so deeply."

More cor­rect­ly, Sobon ex­pect­ed that the idea of beast cores--both less­er aether beasts and the Ri'lef Star­beasts--had been en­gi­neered by the Founders, specif­i­cal­ly so that they could be­come a re­source, but there was no point in say­ing that.

"Fas­ci­nat­ing," Shi­da Ken said, as he looked down at the box­es again, then forced him­self to look away. "But you be­lieve at least one of these will be use­ful?"

"I will start them both pu­ri­fy­ing," Sobon said, "I hope that by the time I... ex­pect to leave, I will be able to use one of them. As a shield core, most like­ly."

"Not a weapon?" Shi­da Ken half turned and very ob­vi­ous­ly eyed the holes in the ground, now in­ex­pert­ly filled in with dirt from Sobon's stor­age ring.

"A war­rior's first duty is al­ways not to die," Sobon said, para­phras­ing a string of lec­tures she'd heard in Ma­rine train­ing camps. Those lec­tures had seemed to be with­out end... right up un­til they de­cid­ed that Sobon had grad­u­at­ed. "not un­less dy­ing can com­plete their mis­sion, and even then it is dis­cour­aged. Even a blade must first not break, if it is to cut down its foe. I have over­whelmed my en­e­mies up to this point, but there is every rea­son to be­lieve that in time, I will at­tract the at­ten­tion of some­one I could not oth­er­wise sur­vive, or per­haps, a per­son I am not al­lowed to kill, for oth­er rea­sons, like pol­i­tics. A per­fect shield means much more in those cir­cum­stances than a per­fect sword."

Shi­da Ken's eyes re­mained glued to the holes burned into the ground as he ab­sorbed that wis­dom. Af­ter a mo­ment, Sobon flexed her new pat­terns, rak­ing through the dirt un­til there was much less sign of the holes.

"Your tech­nique is new, or more deeply in­te­grat­ed," Shi­da Ken said, as he turned. "And you have be­come stronger overnight. It is fair­ly ob­vi­ous."

Sobon men­tal­ly checked her core, al­though she was grow­ing to feel com­plete dis­dain for its "stars" and col­orations. It now said that she was at three Ti­ta­ni­um stars, and it flick­ered at the edge of a fourth. That was only bare­ly stronger than Mofu Suno had been when she'd shat­tered his core, there at the inn.

She could have been coy about it, but with every­one here sworn to se­cre­cy, she just smiled. "This pat­tern to ma­nip­u­late things is an old one, just fi­nal­ly back where it be­longs," she said, un­able to keep a fair bit of pride from her voice. "Be­fore I came here the first time, I had decades of ex­pe­ri­ence with it."

Sobon pressed hard­er on the pat­tern, let­ting the full struc­ture of her Cy­borg Wings spread out be­hind her. De­spite the name, they were more than just wings, al­though those were there, and that was an easy way to vi­su­al­ize them for nor­mal tasks. Sobon's wings had three main re­gions--the wings prop­er, which stretched out like bird wings made of swords, then a pair of low­er arms with pre­ci­sion ma­nip­u­la­tors in their tips, and third, a flex­i­ble thruster that wrapped around her tor­so, let­ting her launch quick­ly in var­i­ous di­rec­tions if need­ed.

For longer flights, she would still pre­fer to use some­thing more like her flight pack--which had tak­en es­sen­tial­ly no con­cen­tra­tion on her part to main­tain or di­rect. The pat­tern un­der­lay­ing the Wings was re­al­ly just telekine­sis, and it strained her mind to use con­stant­ly. In time, if she sur­vived--or (op­ti­misti­cal­ly) next time, if she didn't--she would in­te­grate oth­er pat­terns near­by that build on top of these to lessen the strain con­sid­er­ably, but for now, she was just hap­py to be her­self again.

Him­self, a now-half-buried part of Sobon's soul want­ed to grump, but she ig­nored it. She was what­ev­er her cur­rent cir­cum­stances re­quired.

Shi­da Ken kept his mouth shut for sev­er­al sec­onds, work­ing his fa­cial mus­cles in what Sobon was fair­ly sure was an at­tempt to mask his awe. "It is im­pres­sive," he said, a lit­tle stiffly. "Though per­haps... in­dis­creet."

Sobon just laughed. "I don't usu­al­ly let it man­i­fest vis­i­bly. But it's im­por­tant to be able to, for a num­ber of rea­sons. But we should speak of more im­por­tant things." Sobon picked up the two box­es and dumped them out, then be­gan etch­ing onto the in­sides of the box, as she be­gan to lec­ture on the ba­sics of aether tiers and the com­plex struc­ture of qi. Ki'el and Mian had heard all this be­fore, but it was worth re­peat­ing it for their sake, as well.

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She con­tin­ued un­til the af­ter­noon, when she had a most­ly-un­ex­pect­ed vis­i­tor.

----------------------------------------

Lui was busy every day, now, as she worked for Lady Fau. Al­though she found it fas­ci­nat­ing and ex­cit­ing when­ev­er Grand­ma Sobon spoke of aether and its in­tri­c­as­ies, she had no per­son­al in­ter­est in pow­er. She... would like­ly have spent her time here doubt­ing this path through life, but Lady Fau kept her con­stant­ly busy. It wasn't idle work; she had been giv­en books to mem­o­rize, full of con­se­quen­tial things about plants that Lady Fau owned or had just pur­chased, and Lady Fau seemed to nat­u­ral­ly and calm­ly trust Lui to un­der­stand which plants were what, and in what con­di­tion.

Lui had of­ten been full of doubts, but the tasks she was giv­en were of­ten very straight­for­ward, re­quir­ing her to sim­ply see, or smell, or sense. If she hadn't been told by Granny Sobon, and Mian, and Lady Fau, just how rare her sen­si­tiv­i­ty was, she might have com­plete­ly dis­re­gard­ed the val­ue of it. That same sen­si­tiv­i­ty had cer­tain­ly been a prob­lem in the past, when her fa­ther need­ed her to ac­com­plish a task that was... un­pleas­ant. In­cor­rect, some­how. Clean­ing up af­ter cer­tain guests, or serv­ing cer­tain peo­ple, who looked at her wrong, or want­ed to touch her.

It felt very strange in­deed to ad­mit that the tasks be­fore here were only sim­ple be­cause of that same trait, but she was get­ting used to it, a lit­tle bit each day.

Lady Fau paced into the back room where she worked, the woman choos­ing to stoop as though she was el­der­ly, al­though she looked no more than mid­dle-age. She would, at times, adopt a stern ex­pres­sion, es­pe­cial­ly around cus­tomers, but Lui was cer­tain that she was hap­py as long as she was sur­round­ed by grow­ing things, and there were a great many herbs and plants hang­ing or hid­ing around the shop. As she stud­ied more of Lady Fau's books, she had be­come quite con­cerned by all those plants--a great many of them were placed where they would nev­er see nat­ur­al sun­light, and al­though there were wards and stones that ra­di­at­ed light gen­tly on them, she couldn't help but think of the many words she'd read here and there in the books about how this or that plant was sen­si­tive to wards and spell ef­fects.

In any case, Lady Fau cared a great deal for the many plants in her store, and in the gar­den hid­den in the back, and she was in a good mood as long as that was all that was on her mind.

For now, Lady Fau held up a bit of cut-off leaf stem, as though ask­ing Lui to look at or take it. Lui, trust­ing what she knew of the woman, looked close­ly first, then took it from her fin­gers and turned it around, not­ing the touch­es of Con­sump­tion Qi that lin­gered in a few black spots across the plant.

"What do you think is wrong with this?" Lady Fau asked, her tone mea­sured. An­oth­er les­son, then.

"Some­thing is eat­ing at it," Lui an­swered im­me­di­ate­ly, squint­ing hard at the spots to try and see if she could tell what it was.

"Why do you say that?"

Lui blinked and looked at the old­er woman, re­call­ing that the things that Granny had told her were... se­cret, or close enough. She couldn't ex­act­ly ex­plain what she knew, ex­cept in gen­er­al terms. "Ah. It's... how do I..." she looked away. "The feel of the qi at those points. The na­ture of that qi pulls in­wards, and it is not nat­ur­al to the plant, so some­thing must be con­sum­ing it."

Lady Fau had an ex­cel­lent mask, Lui knew, and she knew that the woman was judg­ing her silent­ly for hav­ing knowl­edge she couldn't share, but she just nod­ded. "You are cor­rect. It is a form of dis­ease born of fun­gus. Not all of our herbs are vul­ner­a­ble to it, but those that are--" she paused, and turned her head slight­ly.

Lui heard it too. Ar­gu­ing, from out­side.

Lady Fau of­ten in­ter­rupt­ed when peo­ple ar­gued too close to her shop, of­ten say­ing some­thing about their voic­es and qi be­ing dirty and bad for grow­ing things. But this time, she had a cer­tain air about her when she turned out of the back room and to­wards the door. It was enough for Lui to set down the bit of plant sam­ple and close her book, to fol­low the woman.

She was sur­prised to see one of the neigh­bor­ing shopown­ers kick­ing a street urchin around. The brat was tru­ly di­sheveled--her hair a mess, her clothes noth­ing but rags, and she scram­bled out of the way of the man as he tried sev­er­al times to land blows, of­ten just miss­ing by a hair. As she saw the urchin's hair flop around, though, Lui could al­most imag­ine that the girl's face was spread into a mad grin.

Lui start­ed to rush to­wards the door, only re­al­iz­ing af­ter a few steps that al­though Lady Fau would al­most al­ways in­ter­fere in some­thing like this, she had stopped at the win­dow and just watched. "You don't want to help?" Lui asked, feel­ing scan­dal­ized.

"You may, if you wish," Lady Fau said, her voice even. It was... a very odd thing for the woman to say. She knew that Lui wasn't a fight­er, or any­thing like one. And she nor­mal­ly would charge out just to stop a man like that from mak­ing a scene in front of her shop.

But she heard words com­ing from the man that she couldn't stand, the kind of words that she was sure she would have buried, be­fore that old spell over her had bro­ken. "Gut­ter whore," the man said, "when I get my hands on you I'll break your arms and--"

Lui found her­self al­ready rush­ing out, feel­ing her pound­ing pulse in the palms of her hands. Those hands, which were al­ways so sen­si­tive, felt swollen and bloat­ed sud­den­ly, as she dashed for­ward. The man--Lui couldn't name him, but she knew he was a men­ace--had per­haps a touch more qi than Lui her­self, but was also no war­rior, just strong due to his size and work. But... even so, he raised a foot as though to stomp on the girl, his face a mask of fury and in­dig­na­tion.

Al­though Lui should not have been able to reach the man in time, she raised her hand as she rushed for­ward, and some­how, the man's stomp--was it a thrust­ing kick of some kind?--was pushed aside, and he stum­bled. Lui used those mo­ments to throw her­self in be­tween, over-­con­scious of her hands, and the pulse pound­ing with­in them.

"You..." the man threw one kick at Lui in the im­me­di­ate mo­ment af­ter she stepped in, per­haps not rec­og­niz­ing her. Lui raised her hands to block the blow; she cer­tain­ly felt it sting­ing at her palms, and she stum­bled back­wards and fell, but some­how the kick failed to im­press her, not the way she had ex­pect­ed it to.

"Kan Fen." Lady Fau's voice was ice, and it echoed. Lui felt the pulse of a qi wave be­hind the name, and she turned to look at the big man, who stum­bled back­wards phys­i­cal­ly from the al­chemist. "Do you know ex­act­ly who you just struck?"

"I--she--" Kan Fen scowled cross­ly. "Bah! Don't pre­tend--bah!" The man wiped sweat from his fore­head and backed away, even though Lady Fau was sim­ply stand­ing there, star­ing dag­gers at him. "Fau Mide, don't... you...!"

"Do you know who she is?" Lui could sense that a great many peo­ple heard Lady Fau's words, even those who were not able to see what was hap­pen­ing. Per­haps, if Lui's fevered imag­i­na­tion were true, things were lis­ten­ing that were not even peo­ple.

Kan Fen glanced away. "Your ap­pren­tice."

"Next time you want to com­mit sui­cide, don't get my shop in­volved in it. Lui, Popo, step in­side."

Lui scram­bled to her feet and checked on the urchin, but the girl was look­ing out from be­hind shag­gy bangs, an in­tense look on her face, her teeth bared in a snarl. She... Lui paused. Al­though Lui wasn't ex­act­ly great at de­tect­ing wounds, or most oth­er things, what she felt from the street urchin was more than sim­ply an un­harmed girl. She had care­ful­ly masked depths of qi, such that Lui couldn't be­gin to guess what her strength was.

Still, she smiled at the girl. "Come on," she said, and Popo glanced at her, still scowl­ing, but turned and, some­what rude­ly, scam­pered into the al­chemist's shop.

Lui glanced at Lady Fau and Kan Fen, but they re­mained stand­ing and fac­ing one an­oth­er, so she fol­lowed the oth­er girl. She stopped, though, as soon as she walked in the door--be­cause the girl had dived onto the counter, her head dis­ap­pear­ing down be­hind it, her torn and loose short pants fac­ing the door and af­ford­ing the poor girl no dig­ni­ty at all. Lui let out a shocked gasp, but rushed for­ward, grab­bing the girl's legs. "What are you do­ing?"

For her trou­ble, Lui got kicked in the face. The blow stunned her and knocked her back; she fell to the ground, un­sure of ex­act­ly what had just hap­pened for a mo­ment, but she turned to find the girl was hang­ing from both hands and both legs from one of the ceil­ing planters, star­ing around at oth­er plants around the alche­my shop like a starv­ing, fer­al beast.

"Get down from there!" Lui leaped at the child, but Popo just twist­ed around, press­ing her dirty feet against the walls to swing and jump to an­oth­er planter. Lui squeaked--she was sure that the planters shouldn't be able to hold an en­tire per­son's weight, not since they had no qi re­in­forc­ing them. She chased af­ter the ur­chi­n again, but the girl just leaped back onto the counter, and scam­pered into the back, past Lui's work space and into the stor­age room.

Lui fol­lowed, too shocked and con­fused to even guess what she would find, but the girl was climb­ing on the many shelves like a grem­lin, her face stuck in be­tween two cab­i­nets, an odd growl com­ing from her throat. "Stop it!" Lui pant­ed even as she shout­ed at the girl. "Get down from there! You're go­ing to break some­thing!"

Popo turned to look at her, her face peer­ing out from her bangs, her mouth frozen in an open-mouthed gri­mace of some kind. But in­stead of speak­ing, she just glanced to each side, then jumped and clutched at the door frame above Lui, catch­ing it and swing­ing, her tor­so smash­ing straight into Lui's as­ton­ished face.

Lui stum­bled and half-fell into the wall be­hind her, slid­ing down the wall in shock as the girl scram­bled and clung to the door frame for an­oth­er mo­ment be­fore drop­ping.

Lui heard the front door, and Lady Fau's voice. "Popo?"

"She's here!" Lui shout­ed, un­sure of ex­act­ly what was hap­pen­ing, but feel­ing quite pow­er­less to do any­thing about it.

"Of course she is," Lady Fau's voice sound­ed a lit­tle tired, and maybe a touch amused. "Are you hav­ing fun scar­ing my ap­pren­tice, Popo?"

"She's fun," the grem­lin in front of Lui agreed with a smirk. "And she smells a bit like my new friend. I bet you know her, too?"

"New friend?" From the front of the shop, Lady Fau fi­nal­ly ap­peared, and Lui was some­what sur­prised that the woman was com­plete­ly un­per­turbed. "Did you meet some­one on your way here?"

"Heh." The grem­lin stood up straight, but raked her hands through her hair and shook them, just mess­ing her un­ruly mop of hair even more. "No, not around here, but she says she lives here. I'm glad you're keep­ing the wards main­tained this time, Mimi. I thought for sure you'd for­get the ver­min seals."

Fau Mide just sniffed, seem­ing in­dig­nant. "Not af­ter the last time. I lost a lot of good herbs to those foul in­sects."

Lui just looked back and forth be­tween the two of them. "L... Lady Fau, who is this?"

"Lady," chuck­led Popo, look­ing down at Lui with a grin. "Girl, I could tell you such sto­ries about your 'Lady!' Did you know that she slept with every mem­ber of the No­ble House of Gaum--"

"Don't say it like that," Lady Fau said, her voice full of ex­as­per­a­tion.

"--that was of age, and above the lev­el of Ti­ta­ni­um Qi. In­clud­ing three El­ders, and the House Pa­tri­arch! And I don't think a one of them knew about the rest un­til the end of the Tour­na­ment. Tsk, tsk, Lady," she purred.

Lui couldn't help the ex­pres­sion on her face, but Lady Fau, far from be­ing in­sult­ed or ashamed, sim­ply walked up and punched the girl's shoul­der, with more than enough qi in the blow that it would have se­ri­ous­ly hurt Lui. Popo, though, just shrugged it off with a grin, let­ting the blow knock her off-bal­ance just so that she could hop on one leg play­ful­ly be­fore set­tling down.

"This brat," Lady Fau ges­tured at her, "is an old friend of mine, who helped me get es­tab­lished out this way. A gen­uine nui­sance, but her tal­ent with wards and qiscripts is real enough to get adopt­ed into a no­ble house. Now I just let her do what­ev­er and qui­et­ly keep a black­mail log just in case I ever need mon­ey. Popo, who was it you said you were look­ing for?"

"An odd one. Said her name was Shi­va Alas­si, but that's clear­ly half true at best. She said to ask for Sobon." Popo shrugged as though the words meant lit­tle to her.

Lui felt her face flush, and she saw Lady Fau turn­ing to look at her with raised eye­brows. The urchin caught the mo­tion, and end­ed up cross­ing her arms over her chest and look­ing down at Lui.

"Uh..." Lui couldn't keep the blush off of her en­tire face, and felt her ears burn­ing, and her pulse pound­ing in­side of her skull. "She... she's my grand­moth­er."

"Mmm." Popo squat­ted down in front of her with a grin. "I knew you smelled like her. Good. That means you'll grow up to be an odd one, too. I'll look for­ward to it." She ex­tend­ed a hand. "I'm Lai Shi Po."

Lui ner­vous­ly took the hand, but when the girl--no, Lai Shi Po was def­i­nite­ly a woman, just short and crude--sud­den­ly pulled her to her feet, Lui be­gan to un­der­stand that she nev­er had a chance of mak­ing her do, or not do, any­thing. And the man who had been try­ing to fight her... Lui un­der­stood ex­act­ly why Lady Fau had let him try.

Lui wasn't the type to watch some­one get beat­en, even for a good rea­son, but as Lai Shi Po slipped away and start­ed ram­bling about some­thing to Lady Fau, Lui re­al­ized that she might have felt... hap­pi­er, if she had seen the man ac­tu­al­ly put in his place.

She shook her head to clear it, and fol­lowed Lady Fau and her guest into the main room, start­ing to lis­ten as two kept talk­ing.