Sobon was pleased to find that Lai Shi Po was able to en­gage the third loop in the Crestan Crown, of a to­tal of five, rel­a­tive­ly quick­ly. There was, Sobon re­flect­ed as she watched, a mas­sive dif­fer­ence be­tween how she had been trained com­pared to peo­ple of this world; work­ing with pure aether, ma­nip­u­la­tion with­out in­tent was a stan­dard train­ing course. For these peo­ple, how­ev­er, putting in­tent into every­thing was the ba­sic les­son, and only lat­er did they be­gin talk­ing about turn­ing the in­tent-filled qi into some­thing more cor­rect.

It only re­in­forced in Sobon that she had no idea how she should be teach­ing her stu­dents, even if she had the time, and she knew that she didn't. In­stead, she was be­gin­ning to fil­ter through her thoughts, us­ing the men­tal data­base that the Ri'lef had giv­en her to put to­geth­er, or­ga­nize, and re-or­ga­nize her thoughts, with the hope that she could pass it on to Ki'el, and per­haps Lai Shi Po. And she was al­ready be­gin­ning to think, that if she wasn't go­ing to be there for her found fam­i­ly for the im­me­di­ate fu­ture, that she need­ed bet­ter go­ing-away gifts, things to keep them safe and give them a fu­ture.

Think­ing was, at least, some­thing she could do while not oc­cu­pied by any­thing else.

As the auc­tion drew to a close, and Lai Shi Po's third space ring was pre­sent­ed, the woman came back out of her med­i­ta­tion, clear­ly pre­oc­cu­pied. Al­though she stepped up to the bal­cony to watch the ring be­ing fought for--and it was a rea­son­ably hot con­test, end­ing at a price just high­er than the first ring--she quick­ly turned away from it to speak to Sobon.

"I would rec­om­mend some ex­tra ef­fort to dis­guise your­self, and your peo­ple," she said, glanc­ing over at Fau Mide, who re­turned the woman's look with a se­ri­ous ex­pres­sion. "Al­though they will be peace­able, I have no doubt that the Im­pe­r­i­al Fam­i­ly will meet you be­fore we are able to leave. Af­ter all they have gone through, it would be de­cid­ed­ly im­po­lite to flee from that en­counter, al­though they will not con­test ef­forts to con­ceal your iden­ti­ty."

"You said some­thing about an item?" Sobon wasn't sure ex­act­ly how much the woman had pre­pared for this in­evitabil­i­ty.

"I have a few," she said. "It all de­pends on how much you wish to dis­guise your­self. Your tech­nique is ad­e­quate to con­ceal your name, and I have var­i­ous clothes and ac­ces­sories to dis­guise your face and skin." She glanced around at the oth­ers. "The same prob­lem ex­ists for your peo­ple. While none of you, ex­cept Fau Mide, would be known to the no­bil­i­ty, they are not stu­pid, and their cu­rios­i­ty will in­spire them to or­der an in­ves­ti­ga­tion. Any clues you giv­en them will sim­ply ac­cel­er­ate their suc­cess, and I sus­pect their suc­cess will be in­evitable."

Sobon had her own thoughts. Al­though the Crowns had not shown her own fu­ture--and would have bro­ken if she had tried, as the time flux tried to adapt to too many changes--she'd got­ten cer­tain im­pres­sions. It was dif­fi­cult, since she had nev­er been trained to ma­nip­u­late and use fate aethers, but if she ex­trap­o­lat­ed from her train­ing in On­ward and Re­verse aether... she had to trust her in­stincts, and not try to process it too strong­ly. She was still con­cerned, both in try­ing to learn from fates she had seen, and be­cause she had put Cor­rupt aether into the crowns to dri­ve away cer­tain fates... but she had to trust her in­tent. Her fate ma­nip­u­la­tion abil­i­ties would nev­er come close to match­ing her abil­i­ty to cre­ate and use aether weapons and de­fens­es, but those were based on math and cen­turies of en­gi­neer­ing, not a cou­ple days of ex­po­sure and some aca­d­e­m­ic the­o­ry.

"I leave it to the oth­ers to de­cide how com­fort­able they are be­ing known," Sobon said fi­nal­ly, af­ter a mo­ment of re­as­sur­ing her­self. "But there is some­thing in­evitable here, al­though I don't know quite what it is, yet."

Lai Shi Po frowned, giv­ing Sobon a look. "First your talk of prophe­cy, and then this. I didn't take you for the kind to yield to fate, Shi­va Alas­si."

"Yield?" Sobon was go­ing to ar­gue against that, but stopped. In truth, the fu­ture she had seen was dan­ger­ous, fright­en­ing, and un­pleas­ant--but it was less dan­ger­ous than the world she had al­ready thought she lived in. The near­ly sui­ci­dal mis­sion to at­tack the home of the most pow­er­ful per­son in the world, to se­cure an ar­ti­fact that no one would will­ing­ly give her... the fate she thought she could see was much less dan­ger­ous than all of that. But what if she was be­ing ma­nip­u­lat­ed?

She took a deep breath and shook her head. "I don't know. But I know that fate and time are real con­cepts in qi, Lai Shi Po. The over­ar­ch­ing, gen­er­a­tion-span­ning prophe­cies are the weak­est ones--that is, the mag­ic en­sur­ing the prophe­cy can­not be changed is weak. But if a prophe­cy is made and passed down that long, that is a sign of some­thing else in play, some­thing that needs to be known and ac­count­ed for. Some­thing that of­ten will not be un­der­stood un­til that ex­ter­nal fac­tor is re­vealed."

"Some­thing like you, you mean," Lai Shi Po glanced back over the rail­ing, as the an­nounc­er fi­nal­ized the last bid on her ring. "It will be dif­fi­cult to get to the aca­d­e­m­ic who can speak on your prophe­cy, not as long as the Roy­al Fam­i­ly are in­ter­est­ed."

"Would the Prince or Princess them­selves know it? Aca­d­e­m­i­cal­ly?"

Lai Shi Po turned back and frowned at Sobon. "And here I thought you were try­ing to avoid trou­ble."

"I am try­ing to read the hand that fate has al­ready played for me," Sobon said, al­though the trans­la­tion of the Crestan phrase didn't quite sound right to her ears, and from the look on Lai Shi Po's face, it didn't quite fit for her, ei­ther. "You said that there would be an ob­serv­er from the Roy­al Fam­i­ly when the Mofu fam­i­ly comes."

"You ex­pect that will be a some­one at their lev­el? Ridicu­lous." Lai Shi Po shook her head. "They are both en­rolled in a pres­ti­gious school, and even this out­ing is time away from their stud­ies. Even if they were to take in­ter­est in the dis­pute, they would send some­one."

"I'm not al­ter­ing fate," Sobon said. "But there is a greater chance than you may think. Did you not see pieces of vi­sions while us­ing the crown?"

"I--" Lai Shi Po paused, her mouth open. "No. Or yes, if that's what it was. But it wasn't vi­sions, only flick­ers and flash­es of some­thing that I couldn't see."

"What I saw wasn't much more," lied Sobon, al­ready re­gret­ting start­ing the con­ver­sa­tion. "But you have to un­der­stand how fate works. The Crown can only ever see its own fate, and that fate is least clear when the per­son see­ing it can change that fate. While wear­ing it, you can only see parts of the Crown's fu­ture that you can­not, or will not, change. The more in­ter­est you have in ma­nip­u­lat­ing fate, the less clear it will be."

Lai Shi Po frowned, glanc­ing at the oth­ers. "Could they see its fu­ture?"

"Speak­ing of fate changes fate. It's no sim­ple trick to change that kind of fu­ture, Lai Shi Po. I could not see the in­for­ma­tion I was look­ing for, but what I saw should be in­evitable. And un­der­stand­ing what should be in­evitable gives me hints of things that will not change. I also doubt that the Prince or Princess will be there, but you should also re­mem­ber," Sobon ges­tured at the crown, which Lai Shi Po had put care­ful­ly in its box. "They also can­not wear the crown. Not at their lev­el."

"Ah. They would give it to a trust­ed at­ten­dant, and per­haps send that at­ten­dant to over­see House Mofu." Lai Shi Po looked at the crown. "Fate... are things tru­ly in­evitable?"

"No," Sobon said, tired­ly. "The flow of time is ex­act­ly what it takes to cre­ate the fu­ture, Lai Shi Po. The process to cre­ate the fu­ture is dif­fi­cult and im­per­fect, full of de­tails and nu­ances. And the process to read the fu­ture is frag­ile, with prophe­cies break­ing as new snarls in time and fate change the de­tails. That is why I want to know if the prophe­cy from be­fore still ex­ists. If the prophe­cy it­self still ex­ists, the fu­ture that was read still ex­ists."

"And if that fu­ture still ex­ists... then what?"

"That de­pends on what the prophe­cy ac­tu­al­ly says," Sobon said. "But prophe­cies are com­plex things, and myth and prophe­cy can be dif­fi­cult to tell apart. Myths can also ma­nip­u­late peo­ple's fate, by ma­nip­u­lat­ing how peo­ple think and what the be­lieve is cer­tain. It can be­come a mag­ic that ma­nip­u­lates souls and the fu­ture, back­wards and for­wards through time, just as prophe­cy does. It would take... a spe­cial­ist, to know the true dif­fer­ence be­tween a prophe­cy and a well-es­tab­lished myth."

"Is this why you asked about myth?" Lai Shi Po made a face. "It seems to me the world would be bet­ter off with­out myth. Per­haps all such things should sim­ply be de­stroyed."

Sobon took a deep breath, prepar­ing to ar­gue that, but to her sur­prise, Ki'el spoke up. "But that's im­pos­si­ble, isn't it?" When Sobon and Lai Shi Po turned to look at her, Ki'el shiv­ered, like their col­lec­tive qi pres­sure was a bit too much for her, but she stub­born­ly set­tled her­self and said what she was think­ing. "In truth, myth is sim­ply ig­no­rance, is it not?"

"That's a bit..." Sobon hes­i­tat­ed to call it re­duc­tion­ist, af­ter all that her peo­ple had said af­ter study­ing Myth and its ef­fects on so­cial struc­tures for cen­turies.

"I have been think­ing about it since you spoke, be­fore," Ki'el said, look­ing from Sobon to Lai Shi Po. "You said that myth was only be­lieved by the fool­ish. But I do not know which of the things I be­lieve to be true are myth. When So--when Alas­si first spoke to me of... of qi, and how my pre­vi­ous un­der­stand­ing was wrong, I wasn't sure what to think. I had be­lieved a myth about qi, one giv­en to me by my grand­moth­er, and it was pre­cious to me be­cause it was all that I had re­main­ing from my fam­i­ly. A few words on how things were sup­posed to work, and a bro­ken home. And some graves." She looked away, per­haps see­ing some­thing in Lai Shi Po's eyes that she didn't like.

"But the truth is that I wasn't fool­ish, I was only ig­no­rant. I was giv­en a sto­ry that didn't sound cor­rect, but I had noth­ing else. When I was faced with some­thing bet­ter, I changed. I can imag­ine that if the sto­ry my grand­moth­er had passed to me sound­ed cor­rect, I might nev­er have lis­tened to Alas­si, and I would not be as strong as I am now. Isn't a myth sim­ply some­thing spo­ken by the ig­no­rant, but which sounds cor­rect? Or at least cor­rect enough?"

Lui piped up, as though in sup­port of Ki'el, and the girl seemed to re­lax when she did. "Don't we all think we know things, but we're just guess­ing? And when we tell oth­ers what we think we know, we're of­ten wrong. If we nev­er find out the truth, if peo­ple nev­er do over their en­tire lives, how is any­one sup­posed to know what's right and what's wrong?"

Sobon ap­pre­ci­at­ed what both of them said, and nod­ded en­cour­ag­ing­ly at them, but spoke up as Lai Shi Po stood frown­ing at the two younger girls. "In worlds with strong qi, like this one, strong myths be­lieved by a great many peo­ple can take on a life of their own, be­com­ing some­thing akin to prophe­cy, but with­out be­ing con­nect­ed to the truth. Peo­ple can have their fates al­tered, even in good and help­ful ways, be­cause they be­lieve in some­thing that isn't ac­tu­al­ly true. In time, these qi-backed myths must be iden­ti­fied, stud­ied, and un­healthy ones re­moved, or else they will be­gin to com­pete for con­trol over the fu­ture with truth it­self."

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"But not all myth is un­healthy myth. There are myths to dis­suade peo­ple from do­ing stu­pid and dan­ger­ous things, myths that en­cour­age peo­ple to trust in oth­er, well-in­ten­tioned peo­ple, myths that dis­cour­age trust­ing er­rat­ic or dan­ger­ous peo­ple, and myths that sim­ply stop peo­ple from ques­tion­ing why things work, as long as they do work. The ques­tion 'what does myth mean to you?' sounds sim­ple, but it is not."

"It seems like a rather sil­ly thing to study in such depth," Lai Shi Po said, with a sigh, but she turned to look at Sobon. "And I be­lieve we have got­ten off top­ic. You be­lieve that the prophe­cy... or promise, that was made to the Di­a­mond Lord, about a name­less threat, could only be a myth?"

"As­sum­ing there is some­thing there, a qi-backed thing that af­fects peo­ple and the fu­ture, then peo­ple who have stud­ied it can name it with [aca­d­e­m­ic in­tent]," Sobon said. "That qi-backed thing may be one of three gen­er­al cat­e­gories: a [spir­i­tu­al truth], a [myth], or a [prophe­cy]. Telling the dif­fer­ence be­tween them re­quires an ex­pert, which I am not, but I be­lieve I can con­tact some­one else who can, as long as I have that in­tent."

Lai Shi Po sighed, and shook her head. Af­ter a long mo­ment of si­lence, she spoke up. "Then, yes, I be­lieve one of the two mem­bers of the Roy­al Fam­i­ly could an­swer your ques­tion. And if they could not, once the ques­tion was posed to them, I be­lieve that they would want an an­swer to the ques­tion, and may in­sist all vis­it the aca­d­e­m­ic to­geth­er."

Sobon nod­ded. "Then, as­sum­ing they are there to meet us, I will meet them with only my name hid­den, and light­ly con­ceal­ing my ap­pear­ance. If I am right, I will meet some­one from their par­ty again soon, and I be­lieve that them rec­og­niz­ing me will only help with what comes next."

"What a mess," Lai Shi Po said, but she with­drew some items, look­ing to the oth­ers. "The rest of you should prob­a­bly be more dis­guised. I will let you bor­row a few things--"

"No," Ki'el said, stub­born­ly, and Sobon glanced at her. "None of them will know me, and I do not like to dis­guise who I am."

"Your iden­ti­ty was reg­is­tered with the mil­i­tary," Sobon re­mind­ed her.

Ki'el looked at Sobon for a mo­ment be­fore it seemed to click in her head, and she looked ashamed. The oth­ers put up no fight at all af­ter that, and be­fore long, short­ly be­fore the last item was put up for dis­play at the auc­tion, Lai Shi Po led them back out to­wards the plat­form where their fly­ing trans­port had left them, re­quir­ing no as­sis­tance from the auc­tion house at­ten­dants to find it.

The Lai fam­i­ly guards, and the swords­man from be­fore, were all wait­ing when they ex­it­ed the room, and Sobon sensed two sets of qi puls­es go out, no­ti­fy­ing the two dif­fer­ent groups that they were leav­ing, but no one tried to stop or slow them. Al­though it was only a rel­a­tive­ly short walk to the out­side plat­form, still by the time they ap­proached the last in­ter­sec­tion, a fig­ure stepped out of the dark­ness, one that hadn't been there for more than a mo­ment.

Lai Ten.

Sobon could sense the many and tan­gled emo­tions with­in Lai Shi Po's spir­it, al­though her new pu­ri­fied qi seemed to ab­sorb some of them, mut­ing the ef­fect. Sobon watched her glance at him, and then to­wards the arch­way lead­ing to the bal­cony, with frus­tra­tion and im­pa­tience, but she stopped and looked at him. "Hus­band."

"Shi Po." Lai Ten looked like he want­ed to take a step for­ward, but stopped him­self, cross­ing his arms over his chest. "I trust that the re­sults of this auc­tion were agree­able to you?"

"My new pur­chase is sat­is­fy­ing, yes," Lai Shi Po didn't quite look away from Lai Ten, al­though she wasn't ex­act­ly meet­ing his eyes, ei­ther. "I would have thought you would have more sense than to make en­e­mies of the Em­pire, Ten."

"There are many dan­ger­ous peo­ple in the world," Lai Ten said, with some­thing of a scoff. "I have nev­er found the Im­pe­r­i­al Fam­i­ly to be among them. They are trained..." Sobon could al­most hear the word dog drop from the man's lips, though he re­frained. "...to be­come bu­reau­crats and over­seers, not war­lords or as­sas­sins. In a way, that is well, be­cause the Em­pire would have no peace if they were fight­ing amongst them­selves, or up­set­ting our neigh­bors."

Bu­reau­crats don't have, or know how to use, Flame phase qi, Sobon want­ed to ar­gue, though in truth, she had no idea how the Em­pire worked. If they did have peo­ple with great pow­er who sim­ply nev­er used it, they wouldn't be any dif­fer­ent from the Founders, who raised every gen­er­a­tion with great abil­i­ty, and yet kept the peace... some­how. The galac­tic com­mu­ni­ty wasn't giv­en any in­sight into in­ter­nal Founders pol­i­tics, but they would def­i­nite­ly know if the Founders waged war. That was the kind of things that made stars van­ish from the sky--and not one or two of them, but many.

"I am sure that the El­der re­mind­ed you how your words af­fect more than sim­ply your­self," Lai Shi Po said, her voice sound­ing dan­ger­ous. "Even if you have very lit­tle chance of be­ing af­fect­ed, the House could eas­i­ly lose stand­ing."

"If the Em­pire tried, they would find any re­place­ments in­fe­ri­or," Lai Ten said, dis­mis­sive­ly. "The Lai Fam­i­ly have been ex­cel­lent stew­ards and over­seers for many gen­er­a­tions. Be­ing dis­mis­sive of our ex­per­tise would cost them more than they would gain."

Sobon felt the foot­steps, even though she didn't hear them, but the voice that came from the oth­er branch of the hall­way was both qui­et and clear. "What a shal­low analy­sis, Lai Ten."

Nei­ther of the Lai Fam­i­ly mem­bers was sur­prised, both turn­ing slow­ly and bow­ing, as the guards all dropped to a knee. Sobon, al­though she could have been proud and stood her ground, also took a knee. The veil she was wear­ing, which was just enough to hide her face, flick­ered slight­ly, as the qi in the area be­gan to in­crease, and the sen­si­tive threads in the cloth be­gan to fray of their own ac­cord. Sobon frowned, glanc­ing at it, and glanced back at the oth­ers, who were kneel­ing un­com­fort­ably.

Sobon threw to­geth­er a rough qi pat­tern, not a su­pe­ri­or aether one, to blunt the ef­fect for Lui, Ki'el, and Mian, and she sensed the Prince and Princess glance her way, but the con­ver­sa­tion ahead was un­af­fect­ed.

"We are not fool­ish enough to spark con­flict where none ex­ists," Prince Djang Ban Dai was say­ing, "but the strength of the Djang Im­pe­r­i­al Fam­i­ly ex­ists to be used when­ev­er and wher­ev­er con­flict does ex­ist. Should it so hap­pen that con­flict comes from a trad­ing house, that trad­ing house may be wiped out, no dif­fer­ent than con­flict aris­ing from a pow­er­ful Star­beast or for­eign army." He was walk­ing smooth­ly, as though un­hur­ried, with his arms crossed or clasped be­hind his back. "As for the cost... you are aware that we are hap­py to pay a high price for things that we de­sire."

"Al­ways with wis­dom, Prince Djang Ban Dai," Lai Ten re­turned. "And it would be un­wise to dis­turb the en­tire mar­ket sys­tem of the Djang Em­pire over a few words at an auc­tion house."

"No one is say­ing that bid­ding at an auc­tion will cause the death of you or your house, Lai Ten." Djang Ban Dai stopped when he was about as close to Lai Ten and Lai Shi Po as they were to each oth­er. Be­hind him, Princess Djang Ban Fen con­tin­ued just a step fur­ther to stand at his side, her arms crossed over her chest. Djang Ban Fen, for her part, had her eyes closed, seem­ing­ly deep in thought, al­though Sobon thought that she must still be pay­ing care­ful at­ten­tion. "But choos­ing not to give the Im­pe­r­i­al Fam­i­ly face is both un­wise, and a sign of a deep­er lack of re­spect. Should there be such a lack of re­spect..." The Im­pe­r­i­al Prince paused. "We may need to close­ly mon­i­tor House Lai in or­der to en­sure that it is not a sign of a deep­er prob­lem."

"We would nev­er wish to cause prob­lems for the Djang Im­pe­r­i­al Fam­i­ly," Lai Shi Po broke in be­fore her hus­band could say more. "And if our fam­i­ly leader does any­thing to of­fend you, I hope you would not paint the en­tire Lai fam­i­ly with the same brush."

Al­though the vo­cal em­pha­sis was slight, Sobon didn't need any train­ing in diplo­ma­cy to see the line in the sand that Lai Shi Po was draw­ing. Alas­si--whose spir­it had been say­ing less and less late­ly, as Sobon's advancement seemed to be weak­en­ing her--sur­faced a thought about the Im­pe­r­i­al Fam­i­ly of­ten wip­ing out whole fam­i­ly trees due to the of­fens­es of one or two lead­ers, in or­der to en­sure that there would be no reprisals.

"We are ful­ly aware that Lai Shi Po in par­tic­u­lar does not stand with the rest of House Lai," Djang Ban Dai said, only glanc­ing at her for a mo­ment. "And there may be a few oth­er ex­cep­tions. But House Lai ris­es and falls by the ac­tions of its leader. As long as House Lai stands be­hind Lai Ten, there is noth­ing for the Im­pe­r­i­al Fam­i­ly to say that has not al­ready been said."

"Of course House Lai would nev­er do any­thing to of­fend the Djang Im­pe­r­i­al Fam­i­ly," Lai Ten said, in a voice that Sobon thought meant he thought he was be­ing smooth. "My com­ments ear­li­er were short sight­ed and in anger. I hope that you will not con­sid­er them to have been se­ri­ous."

"Anger is anger, Lai Ten, and anger alone is enough to ruin bread and ships." Sobon blinked, that phrase sound­ing like it meant more than the words in it, but the Prince con­tin­ued smoothly. "But it is not you we are here to see. Lai Shi Po, are we to un­der­stand that the ex­pert who cre­at­ed these ar­ti­facts re­mains with you at this mo­ment?"

Sobon rose smooth­ly to her feet, aware that with the qi pres­sure in the area, that should have been dif­fi­cult for her. The veil in front of her face re­mained in­tact, al­though Sobon could sense, and smell, that it was con­tin­u­ing to de­grade from the Im­pe­r­i­al auras. Sobon ig­nored it for the mo­ment, and put her hands to­geth­er in a Djang mil­i­tary salute, bow­ing, with Alas­si feed­ing her the stan­dard mil­i­tary ways of speak­ing. "Prince Djang Ban Dai, Princess Djang Ban Fen, this one is hon­ored to be in your pres­ence."

"None of that." Djang Ban Dai stepped clos­er, though he stayed far enough away to not be in­tru­sive. "And since you are ca­pa­ble of shield­ing your­self from our qi aura, we will not take of­fense if you ex­tend that pro­tec­tion to your­self. We are im­pressed by your spir­it, but we are aware of the con­se­quences of ex­po­sure to high­er qi.

"This one has no such need," Sobon said, smooth­ly, al­though she kept an eye on both her veil, and the spir­i­tu­al con­struct block­ing her name broad­cast, as well as the ones she had block­ing the oth­ers'.

"I see. It is no co­in­ci­dence that you could pro­duce some­thing like Pri­mor­dial Qi." Princess Djang Ban Fen stepped around her broth­er, to the oth­er side, and looked at Sobon. Sobon thought that the aura that the Princess leaked was less in­tense, al­though ear­li­er, she had seemed stronger. More con­trol, so prob­a­bly, more po­ten­tial, Sobon thought, though she kept those thoughts pri­vate. "As ex­pect­ed, you are some­thing very odd, even for a for­eign­er. Your qi con­structs are very in­ter­est­ing, and I see that they in­clude many spe­cial­ized con­cepts be­yond our un­der­stand­ing. It is fas­ci­nat­ing, and I am tempt­ed to in­vite you over to speak more on them, should you ever reach a lev­el where that is ap­pro­pri­ate."

Qi Con­structs. Sobon eas­i­ly kept her face neu­tral, al­though she re­mem­bered, not quite for the first time, that the Dy­namos she had con­cealed in her spir­it and buried in her core would be vis­i­ble to them. "With re­spect, Princess Ban Fen, not all of the se­crets I guard are mine to give away."

"A sen­ti­ment rarely seen in mas­ters," Djang Ban Dai said, rais­ing his head and putting a hand to his chin ap­prais­ing­ly. "Those who reach mas­tery by learn­ing at the feet of oth­ers of­ten show no re­spect to their mas­ters' wish­es. We are pleased that you show def­er­ence to the wise ones who came be­fore you, though a bit sad­dened that it keeps your thoughts from us. We will, of course, not in­sist, though we won­der if per­haps there is some­thing you would be will­ing to trade, in ex­change for even the small­est in­sight?"

"What I tru­ly de­sire is be­yond even the Djang Im­pe­r­i­al Fam­i­ly to give me," Sobon felt like that was a tru­ism, al­though she knew many of the sim­pler, more ma­te­r­i­al peo­ple of the world wouldn't be­gin to feel the same. "But I have two re­quests, both hum­ble, and I would be will­ing to speak some se­crets that are my own, in ex­change."

"Make your re­quests," the Prince said.

Sobon glanced at Lai Ten. "With re­spect, the hon­ored Lai Fam­i­ly Leader does not need to be pre­sent for this dis­cus­sion."

Lai Ten bris­tled, and his con­trol over his qi slipped, show­ing a dan­ger­ous and un­sta­ble emo­tion­al core be­neath. "Any­thing that my wife can hear--"

"Lai Ten." Al­though Djang Ban Fen un­leashed part of her core strength, she care­ful­ly shaped all of the re­leased qi pres­sure to be away from Sobon and the rest, so that only Lai Ten could feel it, and it was enough to make the man sink to his knees af­ter only a mo­ment or two. "Your habit of not re­spect­ing the wish­es of mas­ter crafters is ex­act­ly why the Djang Im­pe­r­i­al Fam­i­ly sides with your own wife against you. Please do not think that we would side with you when deal­ing with an in­de­pen­dent mas­ter crafts­man."

Lai Ten open­ly scowled at that, and glanced at Lai Shi Po, who was al­ready glar­ing dag­gers at him. But he re­sealed his spir­it and bowed deeply from his kneel­ing po­si­tion. "As you wish, Prince, Princess. This Lai Ten will take his leave, then."

But even as got to his feet and left, and Djang Ban Fen re­sealed her own qi, Djang Ban Dai spoke, sound­ing amused. "Per­haps this is a dis­cus­sion best had in a more pri­vate lo­ca­tion. If you and your par­ty would join us for an evening meal? We would de­light in treat­ing you all to the best food avail­able in this city."

Sobon bowed a lit­tle low­er and spoke her words of agree­ment, hop­ing that, as was of­ten the case, good food would put the Im­pe­r­i­al Prince and Princess in a good mood, and that they would take Sobon's words well, and not as a warn­ing. Be­cause, it wouldn't be dif­fi­cult to imag­ine Sobon's re­quest for knowl­edge spark­ing some­thing in ei­ther of them, some­thing that might lead their thoughts in the wrong di­rec­tion.

She would be care­ful, and she knew this was all dan­ger­ous, but she hoped she un­der­stood what was com­ing well enough to be able to make her way through it all. If it did... hope­ful­ly, her mis­sion would be over soon, or at least, much less dan­ger­ous.

She would have to see.