Sobon felt ex­cep­tion­al­ly lucky that the auc­tion start­ed al­most im­me­di­ate­ly, be­fore Lai Shi Po had time to make any counter ar­gu­ment or find some­thing else to ar­gue about. In truth, Lai Shi Po was al­low­ing her­self to avoid think­ing about things, and would have been con­tent for a while longer--but there was no need.

"Hon­ored cus­tomers!" The man who en­tered the stage was thin and an­gu­lar, ex­tra­or­di­nar­i­ly well dressed, and ex­ud­ed a sense of joy that was in­fec­tious. "We have a love­ly col­lec­tion of only the finest ar­ti­facts in store for you to­day, in­clud­ing a new col­lec­tion from our fa­vorite pa­tron, the Hon­ored Lai Shi Po, as well as a mys­te­ri­ous sub­mis­sion by a per­son she has per­son­al­ly vouched for. But our first items up for bid are per­haps the rarest raw materials we have seen--Star­beast Cores at the [Yel­low Flame] lev­el!"

Even be­fore the item was re­vealed, as a sealed con­tain­er was be­ing brought onto stage, Sobon could feel the warp­ing of the aether, and she knew she was far from the only one who could. Be­fore Sobon could even think of ask­ing, the man on stage spoke again, his voice res­onat­ing with in­tent.

"[Yel­low flame] is the low­est flame col­or with­in the [Im­mor­tal Flame] phase of qi, which is the sec­ond phase of [Flame Qi] af­ter [Mor­tal Flame], which it­self comes af­ter the [Tran­scen­dent Gem] phase, from which the Di­a­mond Lord him­self takes his name. This par­tic­u­lar core is known to res­onate with a con­cep­tu­al qi known as [Thrust Qi], a pow­er­ful form of move­ment qi ide­al for fast trav­el. The [Grand Saber Whale] which pos­sessed this core was known to have bro­ken through a forty li is­land with a sin­gle thrust of its [Im­pe­ri­ous Saber Tooth], which re­gret­tably is not for sale at this auc­tion. Thrust Qi con­cep­tu­al­izes mov­ing an en­tire body with­out ap­ply­ing strain to any part of it, and is an ex­cel­lent con­cep­tu­al qi for all move­ment tech­niques and ar­ti­facts. Bid­ding be­gins at 100 [Im­mor­tal Flame Coins]."

In the mid­dle of the speech, the box was placed in the cen­ter of the stage, and then a frame­work of shields was erect­ed, the box open­ing on its own to re­veal a sligh­ly mis­shapen gold­en orb, which leaked flick­ers of yel­low qi-light like promi­nences from the sun. Sobon could ad­mit the item had high­er qi that she was nor­mal­ly com­fort­able wield­ing, es­pe­cial­ly with­out shield­ing--and it was only a ma­te­r­i­al. The idea of a per­son in­cor­po­rat­ing that into their body or an item they wield­ed seemed en­tire­ly fool­hardy.

"Mag­nif­i­cent," breathed Lai Shi Po, and Sobon glanced over to see rap­tur­ous looks on the faces of the rest of the group. For Sobon, of course, the core was ob­vi­ous and straight­for­ward in its in­tent: a man­u­fac­tured core to re­place dam­aged star­ship thrusters. As­sum­ing the Coro­na was a light cruis­er, Sobon cal­cu­lat­ed off­hand, it might take dozens of such cores to get it back to sta­ble or­bit, if not hun­dreds. The Rapi­er would cer­tain­ly take at least fifty, as­sum­ing it didn't leave most of its mass be­hind to fo­cus on es­cape, and it was an es­cort frigate, not a cruis­er.

Lai Shi Po didn't try to bid on the item, de­spite her rap­tur­ous at­ten­tion, and the core sold for for just shy of 200 Flame Coins. The seal­ing box snapped shut, still be­hind shields, and a cleans­ing ef­fect was trig­gered to re­move the stray en­er­gy be­fore the at­ten­dants came to re­trieve the box and haul it away. Even as they did, how­ev­er, an­oth­er item was be­ing brought from back­stage.

"Our sec­ond Star­beast core, also at the [Yel­low Flame] lev­el, res­onates with a con­cep­tu­al men­tal abil­i­ty, whose spe­cif­ic na­ture has not been named. It seems to ac­cel­er­ate thought, and al­lows one to grasp much more com­pli­cat­ed con­cepts, and even per­ceive the world very dif­fer­ent­ly..."

When the gem was re­vealed, Sobon nod­ded to her­self, rec­og­niz­ing that the auc­tion­eer would nev­er un­der­stand its orig­i­nal use. It was a spe­cif­ic com­put­er core ma­te­r­i­al, a prob­a­bilis­tic ma­trix, one used in a lot of cal­cu­la­tions. Which cal­cu­la­tions was usu­al­ly set when it was in­stalled; it could en­hance sen­sors, fab­ri­ca­tors, med­ical equip­ment, nav­i­ga­tion, or the main AI core, but in every case, its full pow­er could only be dis­played when built into a spe­cial­ized frame­work.

Sobon glanced over at Lai Shi Po to see an in­tense look on the woman's face, and she re­al­ized that the woman was con­sid­er­ing bid­ding, even as oth­ers were al­ready do­ing the same.

"It would be dif­fi­cult to make use of," Sobon said qui­et­ly, and Lai Shi Po's head snapped around, the look some­where be­tween ful­ly fo­cused and an­gry at hav­ing her thoughts in­ter­rupt­ed. "At least, prop­er use. And for this sort of ma­te­r­i­al, if you were go­ing to ex­per­i­ment, you would want a ma­te­r­i­al with low­er in­her­ent qi. Only some­one who al­ready knew how to use it could avoid wast­ing the ma­te­r­i­al."

"All of that is true," Lai Shi Po said, turn­ing back to look at the glow­ing orb, sealed be­hind mul­ti­ple bar­ri­ers. "And yet, the abil­i­ty to en­hance my mind even more..."

"You could not in­te­grate it," Sobon said, dis­mis­sive­ly. "Ma­te­r­i­al that pow­er­ful would be tox­ic."

"I know that," she hissed back. "I've han­dled ma­te­ri­als in the Im­mor­tal Flame tier. I know I couldn't main­tain that with­in my body. But even to en­hance my mind for a few mo­ments at a time..."

Sobon let her say what she was think­ing out loud, and watched as the act of speak­ing sur­faced more of the doubts in Lai Shi Po's mind. In the end, she didn't bid on it, and the ma­te­r­i­al sold for 121 Flame Coins. Al­though there was a long mo­ment in which she could have bid, and chose not to, Lai Shi Po still eyed the trea­sure with jeal­ousy un­til it was ful­ly sealed away.

"Now, as is our cus­tom, I will be­gin the first of our sales of gen­uine Lai Shi Po [space rings]. For those who are not aware, Lai Shi Po space rings con­tain vast­ly more [pro­found fea­tures and abil­i­ty] than those of less­er ar­ti­sans, as less­er ar­ti­sans re­quire [per­fect­ly formed in­tent] from the own­er to op­er­ate. Lai Shi Po's pro­found space rings are be­yond the abil­i­ty of any oth­er ar­ti­san to repli­cate..."

Al­though she was in­tent­ly lis­ten­ing, Sobon not­ed Lai Shi Po turn­ing to glare at her, and turned and gave the woman a smirk in re­turn. Still, Sobon could un­der­stand the ar­ro­gance and its place. She her­self would have been able to do every­thing she want­ed with a 'less­er' space ring, be­cause she could spec­i­fy in­cred­i­bly com­plex things with her in­tent, but for the av­er­age war­rior, es­pe­cial­ly of this world... they would need to learn a great deal to use such a ring when un­der any stress. But Sobon, hav­ing grown up in a world where they teach class­es on user in­ter­face de­sign... didn't need to cre­ate from whole cloth the con­cepts Lai Shi Po had ap­par­ent­ly made of her own ac­cord.

"...[con­trol and in­sight] over the ring's con­tents and the [meth­ods of in­ser­tion, re­moval, and spec­i­fi­ca­tion of its con­tents]. We have to­day a prodi­gious har­vest of three space rings, of which this is only the first. The sec­ond will be in the mid­dle of the auc­tion, and the third at the end, so if this is what you are here for, you may wish to save your mon­ey un­til the end--if you can stand to!"

Al­though the bid­ding for the ring start­ed at only fif­teen flame coins, it quick­ly bal­looned to near­ly eighty. Just be­fore the auc­tion could fin­ish, though, one of the pri­vate booths sud­den­ly boost­ed the to­tal by twen­ty flame coins, and no one dared chal­lenge it.

"That booth is re­served for mem­bers of the Djang Im­pe­r­i­al Fam­i­ly," Lai Shi Po said. "If they had spo­ken ear­li­er, few would have chal­lenged them. They have nev­er been shy about wast­ing their mon­ey to dis­play their pow­er." She smirked. "And how could I dare ob­ject? They might have pres­sured oth­ers into si­lence even by meet­ing the min­i­mum bid, but in­stead they give me an ad­di­tion­al eighty sev­en flame coins."

Sobon raised an eye­brow. "What ex­act­ly do you do with all of that mon­ey?"

Lai Shi Po turned and gave Sobon an odd look, but be­fore she could speak, the auc­tion host stepped for­ward again, rais­ing his voice. "Next, we have a se­ries of [pro­duc­tion-fo­cused items], be­gin­ning with this piece, also by the in­com­pa­ra­ble Lai Shi Po. This six-piece set of items res­onates strong­ly with [Forg­ing Qi], and is de­signed to aid in the cre­ation of ar­ti­facts up the lev­el of [Black Flame Qi], the low­est qi lev­el in the [Mor­tal Flame] phase of qi."

The items that were brought for­ward were odd, to Sobon's eye, al­though she fol­lowed the log­ic in all of them, as far as she could see it. There was a soft­en­ing foundary, for re­shap­ing items with­out nec­es­sar­i­ly us­ing heat, a pair of sealed tongs to ma­nip­u­late items safe­ly with­in the soft­en­ing field, a pair of thin gloves spe­cial­ly de­signed to re­sist the soft­en­ing-forg­ing qi once the item is re­moved from the field, so that the item can be shaped by hand, a cleans­ing foundary to re­move the soft­en­ing-forg­ing qi, a hard­en­ing fur­nace to se­lec­tive­ly ap­ply the right sort of qi to en­hance each ma­te­r­i­al in the item, and an en­grav­ing sty­lus, which from a dis­tance seemed much like the one Lai Shi Po was us­ing when Sobon first met her in her shop, end­ing with a point as thin as a hair but ex­treme­ly stiff.

"Much ex­per­i­men­ta­tion is re­quired," Lai Shi Po said, as the items were be­ing dis­cussed, in very glow­ing terms. "Even when you know that a thing has been cre­at­ed by an­oth­er crafts­man, even if you are able to see the fi­nal re­sult, too of­ten the ex­act meth­ods of pro­duc­tion are en­tire­ly se­cret. How­ev­er you man­aged to de­duce the true in­tent of the ring that I gave you, no crafts­man I have ever met can so eas­i­ly per­ceive the means and tech­nique of oth­ers. This set," she ges­tured down at the auc­tion­eer, who seemed gen­uine­ly ex­cit­ed to be talk­ing about the six items, "is still ex­per­i­men­tal, and I have had to pay for a lot of re­sources, both to make and re­make items, and to buy raw ma­te­ri­als to test the set on every­thing I can ob­tain, es­pe­cial­ly Star­beast Core ma­te­ri­als."

Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

Sobon looked down, but only nod­ded. In her mind, she was cat­a­logu­ing things she would have done dif­fer­ent­ly--even set­ting aside that she would use mol­e­c­u­lar as­sem­bly pat­terns, the meth­ods to ap­ply and re­move qi seemed like­ly to leave a lot of residue, which would re­quire an­oth­er method to com­plete­ly re­move. The gloves were an ad­e­quate tool in the right hands, but the auc­tion­eer said noth­ing about con­form­ing per­fect­ly to the user's hands--per­haps be­cause they need­ed to avoid con­t­a­m­i­nat­ing the re­sults with more qi, but if the gloves had an in­ex­pert fit, it would make them dif­fi­cult to use. And the en­grav­ing sty­lus--again, in or­der to avoid con­t­a­m­i­na­tion, most like­ly--was re­ly­ing most­ly on its phys­i­cal sharp­ness to etch into ma­te­ri­als, which was not ide­al for all cir­cum­stances.

In short, Sobon de­cid­ed, what was miss­ing in most of these was the abil­i­ty to prop­er­ty con­tain and ma­nip­u­late qi, which would like­ly be im­pos­si­ble with­out un­der­stand­ing aether and its many forms and flows. To­tal con­trol re­quired the cre­ator to be aware of what qi would do, and there­fore, un­der­stand not only the en­tire in­tent of the qi, but its nat­ur­al prop­er­ties. Even pu­ri­fied qi con­tained essence of space, time, and fate aethers, and im­pure qi was tan­gled to­geth­er with the nat­ur­al aethers of life.

All of this was why Sobon was en­tire­ly con­tent to work with sim­pler, pu­ri­fied fla­vors of aether, in spite of the mas­sive abun­dance of qi through­out this world.

"You do well enough," she fi­nal­ly said, af­ter watch­ing the auc­tion for the forg­ing equip­ment be­gin and near its end. The price was steep, and only a few spe­cif­ic groups were com­pet­ing for it, none in pri­vate booths--they were all in cheap­er, low­er booths, away from oth­ers but open to the air. Those few crafts­men com­pet­ing for the items were hurl­ing in­sults at one an­oth­er in be­tween their bids, all be­smirch­ing the oth­ers' abil­i­ty to pro­duce any­thing of val­ue, as the oth­ers looked on with some com­bi­na­tion of amuse­ment and an­noy­ance. "Even if you knew every­thing you need­ed to know, it would be dif­fi­cult to cre­ate a per­fect set of tools. And this world, like most oth­ers, was in­tend­ed to find the an­swers for them­selves, and not have them hand­ed over by some­one like me."

Lai Shi Po huffed in ir­ri­ta­tion, but her snarl only last­ed a mo­ment. "You have al­ready giv­en me a great many hints, and I can see al­ready that I would do things much dif­fer­ent­ly. But I know from every­thing that you do that your meth­ods are tru­ly pro­found." She paused, then spoke, her words touched light­ly with in­tent, and sound­ing like a quo­ta­tion. "[Even hav­ing glimpsed the true heav­ens, I can­not be­gin to fath­om their depths.]"

Sobon raised an eye­brow. "Who said that?"

"The only one who has glimpsed the heav­ens. The Di­a­mond Lord."

They were qui­et for a mo­ment, as the auc­tion con­clud­ed, net­ting Lai Shi Po more than an­oth­er hun­dred Flame coins, though it amount­ed to less than twice the start­ing price. There was a short pause as the ar­gu­ing among the crafters con­tin­ued, but then they were si­lenced, though Sobon didn't make any ef­fort to in­ves­ti­gate how. And then the au­cion mas­ter spoke up into the si­lence again.

"Our next item is a [Grand­mas­ter Alche­my Fur­nace] by none oth­er than the ven­er­a­ble alche­my Grand­mas­ter Mu­jin Bing." Sobon no­ticed Fau Mide, who had been hang­ing back, im­me­di­ate­ly bounce to the rail­ing and lean out, ex­cit­ed­ly. Sobon looked down, see­ing a mas­sive stone and met­al pot be­ing brought for­wards, which shim­mered to Sobon's eyes with mul­ti­fac­eted, com­plex aethers. "This item is high­ly com­plex, and not to be used by those who are un­able to grasp [Spa­tial Qi]. It uses that Spa­tial Qi to [ex­pand and sep­a­rate its in­ter­nal vol­ume], al­low­ing [heat­ing, cool­ing, sep­a­ra­tion, dis­til­la­tion, pu­rifi­ca­tion, and re­fine­ment] process­es to act at once with­out any fear of mix­ing. Al­though care­ful con­trol is re­quired to use the item, it of­fers un­par­al­leled abil­i­ty to [per­ceive, con­trol, and reg­u­late] its in­ter­nal process­es. As an ex­am­ple, ven­er­a­ble Grand­mas­ter Mu­jin Bing has pro­vid­ed us these ten tinc­tures, which will be sold sep­a­rate­ly dur­ing this auc­tion, as items pro­duced by this Fur­nace. They have all been ap­praised as be­ing [suit­able qual­i­ty and pu­ri­ty] for [prac­ti­tion­ers in the Im­mor­tal Flame Phase of Qi]."

The alche­my fur­nace, Sobon could eas­i­ly ad­mit, was not any­thing in her field of study, al­though she could un­der­stand its con­struc­tion even from a dis­tance. It used a vari­ant of pock­et di­men­sions that in­ter­locked through aper­a­tures, each pock­et hav­ing a con­trol­lable in­scrip­tion to pro­duce a va­ri­ety of ef­fects, and each aper­a­ture hav­ing mul­ti­ple con­trols. Sobon was too far to get into the de­tails, and she as­sumed that any­thing built by a grand­mas­ter of alche­my would in­clude a num­ber of sub­tle de­tails she couldn't be­gin to repli­cate, but at least the rough struc­ture of it was fa­mil­iar.

In the end, the Im­pe­r­i­al Fam­i­ly si­lenced bid­ding on it be­fore it crossed 150 Flame Coins, ex­cept for a sin­gle bid of a sin­gle coin high­er--clear­ly a co­or­di­nat­ed ef­fort from the Fam­i­ly to en­sure that a spe­cif­ic crafts­man got their way.

As the alche­my fur­nace was be­ing tak­en away, Sobon felt a fa­mil­iar qi shift, and straight­ened. "It's time."

Not only Lai Shi Po, but every­one in the booth tensed with ex­cite­ment. And sur­pris­ing­ly, Sobon no­ticed a fa­mil­iar form come strid­ing out of the shad­ows be­low as the auc­tion man­ag­er spoke.

"Next, we are very pleased to pre­sent to you to­day the work of an un­named mas­ter, rec­om­mend­ed to us by Lai Shi Po. As a demon­stra­tion of our faith in this mas­ter crafts­man, the Ap­prais­er him­self has cho­sen to speak for the items be­ing pre­sent­ed."

"[Wel­come!]" The Ap­prais­er's voice rang out, his voice per­fect­ly mod­u­lat­ed with in­tent, every word crisp and clear. The ef­fort­less­ness of his abil­i­ty to in­fuse his words with in­tent and truth made the for­mer auc­tion man­ag­er seem al­most am­a­teur­ish in com­par­i­son. "[I had the lux­u­ry to­day to meet with a hid­den mas­ter, and was in­tro­duced to these two items, which will be put up for auc­tion sep­a­rate­ly. As a mat­ter of fact, the dis­cus­sion with that mas­ter was so pro­found that I was able, to­day, to com­plete­ly re­fine a new con­cept, one a great many of us had strug­gled with over time.]" The obese man prac­ti­cal­ly frol­icked on the stage, bound­ing around on his toes like a child fed too much sug­ar. "[That con­cept, so that you may all un­der­stand what fol­lows, I will call Pri­mor­dial Qi. It is qi that is not only pu­ri­fied, but true and pro­found, speak­ing to the ori­gin of qi it­self, so com­plete­ly un­spoiled that it re­quires care­ful pro­tec­tion to avoid con­t­a­m­i­na­tion. Pri­mor­dial Qi is a con­cept so pro­found, I was tempt­ed to cre­ate an In­tent Plate on the spot and put it up for auc­tion sep­a­rate­ly! But alas, if I did that, I could not use the con­cept to de­scribe these mas­ter­work items, and so as a pro­fes­sion­al, I put the needs of our dear cus­tomers above my own self­ish de­sires.]"

Sobon felt a lit­tle em­bar­rassed, al­though she un­der­stood that every word the man said was cor­rect. And she knew, but forced her­self to ig­nore, the look that Lai Shi Po was giv­ing her, as every­one else had their eyes glued to the fat man in very ex­pen­sive clothes mak­ing a fool of him­self on the stage. It would be... cru­el, to say that she was es­sen­tial­ly fol­low­ing di­rec­tions from a tech­ni­cal doc­u­ment. She could say many things that would de­tract from the show go­ing on be­fore them, but none of it would change the very sim­ple fact that to all of these peo­ple, all of the dis­tinc­tions be­ing laid at her feet were true and hon­est.

"[The two items which will be sold to­day are iden­ti­cal, and the name giv­en to them by this hid­den mas­ter was the (Crestan Crown). Be­fore it is re­vealed, I would be re­miss not to high­light the box­es, them­selves the work of this same mas­ter, or so I be­lieve. Al­though it looks to be forged of only steel and bronze--the two low­est met­als in the Com­mon Met­al Phase of Qi--it was de­lib­er­ate­ly de­signed to dis­guise the true wealth with­in. By se­cret and un­know­able means, it was de­signed and con­struct­ed in such a way that no hint of Forg­ing Qi re­mains, not even in the small­est de­tails, and every etch and edge is so smooth that it might have been pulled into cre­ation from its cre­ator's own imag­i­na­tion. The hinges and latch...]"

Sobon sighed, al­though in­ward­ly, she was still pleased, and some­what ex­cit­ed to hear the ex­pla­na­tion. "In spite of his demon­stra­tion, I re­al­ly didn't think he was go­ing to talk about the box."

But all the oth­ers were hang­ing on every word that came from the Ap­prais­er's mouth. "[...the small­est de­tail. But of course, the true trea­sure lies with­in!]" with a flour­ish, the first of the two box­es was opened with a wave of the man's hand, from where it stood on a pedestal in the mid­dle of the room. "[The Crestan Crown is a qi pu­rifi­ca­tion trea­sure, which con­tains a sin­gle mote of Pri­mori­dal Qi as a tem­plate against which the wear­er's qi is mea­sured. And then, care­ful­ly and in sev­er­al stages, the wear­er's qi is pu­ri­fied of stray in­tent, al­low­ing any­one at any lev­el of qi to ben­e­fit from its ef­fects. To be clear: it is in­tend­ed for use with un-na­tured qi, and even qi na­tures will be stripped from it dur­ing this process, pro­duc­ing qi one step clos­er to Pri­mor­dial Qi than that which was cir­cu­lat­ed through it. One is able to tell by which pu­rifi­ca­tion cir­cuit en­gages how pure the in­com­ing qi is. If one is able to feed the crown only the purest, high­est-qual­i­ty qi, one may even be able to re­fine their own Pri­mor­dial Qi!]"

Lai Shi Po slammed her hands against the rail­ing, and shout­ed with a spe­cif­ic in­tent to by­pass the screen­ing wards. "[100 Im­mor­tal Flame Qi Coins!]"

In spite of all the wards, Sobon felt like the eyes of the world fell on Lai Shi Po's bal­cony, and the Ap­prais­er turned and grinned up at her, of­fer­ing a bow. "[And the ven­er­a­ble Lai Shi Po her­self has de­cid­ed on an open­ing bid for the first of these two trea­sures, at 100 Im­mor­tal Flame Coins. Does any­one in this au­di­ence dare of­fend such a mas­ter by bid­ding against her?]"

Across the way, Sobon sensed a rip­ple as an­oth­er hand was placed on a bal­cony, and a voice rang out. "[200 Im­mor­tal Flame Coins.]"

Lai Shi Po im­me­di­ate­ly hissed, glar­ing over at the rail­ing where she had said her hus­band resided. "[300!]"

Sud­den­ly, the Im­pe­r­i­al Fam­i­ly booth broke in. "[304 Im­mor­tal Flame Coins.]"

Lai Shi Po breathed a sigh of re­lief. "[305.]" She glanced at Sobon. "It is an old arrange­ment. If they had fa­vored my hus­band, they would have bid 309."

In­deed, there were no oth­er bids, and Sobon shook her head at the in­sane rate at which her for­tunes had risen. "That is... a lot of mon­ey."

"It is the mak­ings of a less­er no­ble house," Lai Shi Po said, se­ri­ous­ly. "And in the hands of a non-Djang, at that. But with my pro­tec­tion, there is no rea­son to fear. At most..." She swal­lowed, and looked across the way, to where the Lai fam­i­ly leader stood, his sil­hou­ette clear at the bal­cony. "At most... you may be pushed into un­pleas­ant cir­cum­stances. But that mon­ey can­not be tak­en from you, and most like­ly, your next item will fetch a sim­i­lar price."

Def­i­nite­ly high­er, Sobon judged, even as she no­ticed that Ki'el and Mian were speak­ing qui­et­ly, and Lui was ask­ing some­thing of Fau Mide, who just looked be­wil­dered. They wouldn't have stopped if they weren't in­ter­rupt­ed, and there is only one more.

As the Ap­prais­er spoke in glow­ing terms about her­self, Lai Shi Po, and the Im­pe­r­i­al Fam­i­ly be­fore mov­ing on to re-it­er­ate what he'd said and bring for­ward the sec­ond crown, Sobon just tried to keep her breath­ing even, re­al­iz­ing just how much so­cial pow­er she could have wield­ed, if she were any­one else, in any oth­er cir­cum­stance. And she be­gan to think about what she would do, should do with the mon­ey that was com­ing in.

And as best she could imag­ine, she only had one good op­tion, one that just might line up with the things she thought she'd glimpsed through the fu­ture of the Crowns.