Sobon used her de­tec­tion ar­ray to track the rel­a­tive progress of the army that the Mofu fam­i­ly was as­sem­bling over the next few days, as she at­tuned two new arm bones, and forged her new Star­beast cores into a weapon and a shield con­struct. And she con­tin­ued to do her best to spend time with her fam­i­ly, al­though Mian wan­dered off to speak to Lai Shi Po and Lady Fau and nev­er seemed to re­turn, and Lui... seemed to be struck by a melan­choly that Sobon had no way to dis­si­pate. Ki'el, for her part, did her best to pester Sobon with ques­tions about qi and aether, though it was clear she didn't un­der­stand too many of the an­swers. Still... she seemed to have a good mem­o­ry, and did her best to ab­sorb every­thing she was told.

Sobon let her­self be con­vinced that she had enough in the way of heavy weapons to han­dle an army, and moved from that to util­i­ty. The Cy­borg Wings were the foun­da­tion for some­thing greater, and very flex­i­ble tools, but only when Sobon was able to craft a sim­ple har­ness with a Star­beast Core at its cen­ter was the thrust enough to make se­ri­ous com­bat move­ments. Ide­al­ly, she would do the same for her wings--but that would take too long. The best way to en­hance that would be to weave core ma­te­r­i­al into her shoul­der blades, re­plac­ing the sec­tions of bone where telekine­sis scripts were, but even un­der the best of cir­cum­stances--with mod­ern ma­te­ri­als, a sur­geon on hand, and ma­te­ri­als that her body was guar­an­teed not to re­ject--the heal­ing time for such a graft would be weeks, not days.

So in­stead, she fo­cused on time ma­nip­u­la­tion, craft­ing a rel­a­tive­ly sim­ple bauble that would ac­cel­er­ate her mind, body, and aether with On­ward-spin aether. Paired with her Out-spin aether spir­it bones, which let her build aether struc­tures in midair us­ing only her mind, she would be able to ad­just and adapt her con­structs very rapid­ly.

All of those prepa­ra­tions led her to one con­sis­tent prob­lem, though: aether ac­cu­mu­la­tion. When her spir­it had ad­vanced to Ti­ta­ni­um Qi, it had opened up a spir­i­tu­al stor­age core for pour­ing qi into, but Sobon hadn't fo­cused on ac­tu­al­ly us­ing it for that, nor had she been run­ning her dy­namos at full pow­er to grow their thorns. And al­ready, she had seen that when pressed, she could ma­nip­u­late more aether than the lo­cal en­vi­ron­ment could give her--though this area was prob­a­bly light­ly set­tled ex­act­ly be­cause it didn't have a large amount of free aether, or qi, in the air and ground.

One an­swer, if she were cold-heart­ed, would be to con­struct an­oth­er crown, or some­thing like it, and pull qi from the air, pu­ri­fy it, and con­dense it into sol­id form un­til she had enough to wage prop­er war with. That, how­ev­er, would have side ef­fects; the free aether was nec­es­sary for liv­ing things, and 'min­ing' that qi for sev­er­al days, or even a large frac­tion of one day, would do sig­nif­i­cant harm to the re­gion.

Sobon had an an­swer... and one none of the lo­cals would ex­pect or un­der­stand, but even though she could make it with rel­a­tive­ly sim­ple ma­te­ri­als, and even giv­en the rel­a­tive­ly low like­li­hood any­one would be able to grasp the tech­nique... she wor­ried about set­ting prece­dent. Still, she threw to­geth­er the tools in an af­ter­noon--just two sim­ple crys­tal spikes, a matched set, which con­tained a matched pair of spa­tial nodes con­nect­ing one to the oth­er.

Still, de­spite some reser­va­tions, she queried the Coro­na for the math, and af­ter form­ing a rather tricky aether ar­ray, and then dou­ble and triple check­ing the math... tele­port­ed one of those aether spikes to the moon's L2 La­grange point, a point on the far side of the moon, where the mo­tion of the moon and plan­et would hold it in po­si­tion. Be­cause of the spa­tial nodes, she could cast through one spike to reach the oth­er--so she could draw on aether from be­yond any­one else's reach.

She test­ed the aether out there--cold and un­at­tuned, with­out much qi mixed in, but there was a lot of it, as she'd sus­pect­ed. Plan­ets like this one could cre­ate their own aether, but by and large, the qi in the uni­verse came from the same source as the mat­ter in the uni­verse--forged and then cast off by stars of unimag­in­able size, age, and pow­er, aether sim­ply float­ed through the cos­mos in ways that de­fied nor­mal physics. The uni­verse be­longed to those who un­der­stood aether and its sources--but life still pre­ferred to live in these shel­tered lit­tle worlds, of which there were few. And there would be far few­er with­out the Founders, who (if Sobon were to be­lieve Crestan in­tel­li­gence, though per­haps it was some­thing they were told by the Founders them­selves) moved plan­ets into new or­bits and seed­ed them with wa­ter and life in the quest to cre­ate new civ­i­liza­tions through­out their part of the galaxy.

In short, if a plan­et had great aether, there was like­ly more in the sur­round­ing space. In its own way, that tilt­ed the scales in a bat­tle like the one be­tween the Di­a­mond Lord, who most like­ly drew on lo­cal aether... and some­thing like the Tidal Coro­na, or even the Rapi­er, ei­ther of which would have used its pow­er cores in­stead. The pow­er dis­tri­b­u­tion net­work aboard a ship that size was a mas­sive bot­tle­neck, and while it was pos­si­ble to cre­ate large ar­rays in space the same way that Sobon did, those were gen­er­al­ly spe­cial­ized sys­tems on spe­cial­ized war­ships, with a whole crew ded­i­cat­ed to the art aboard. Sobon had seen war­ships of oth­er races, in par­tic­u­lar, that used such tech­niques, but they were not a fa­vored tool in the Crestan Em­pire.

Sobon shook her head and sim­ply put the oth­er spike in her space ring. With­out go­ing out of her way to cre­ate an­oth­er pu­ri­fi­er, ac­cu­mu­lat­ing en­er­gy in that way wasn't a great idea, and Sobon didn't want to spend the rest of her time ac­cu­mu­lat­ing and pu­ri­fy­ing en­er­gy. Not when she still wasn't sure what would hap­pen af­ter the com­ing bat­tle. So in­stead, she asked Ki'el to bor­row the aether sword again, and took it apart to make some up­grades with the Core ma­te­r­i­al she had left.

Sobon ex­pect­ed to wor­ry more about it--about the bat­tle, the pos­si­ble af­ter­math, and the few go­ing-away pre­sents she had more or less de­cid­ed on--but as she fin­ished up­grad­ing Ki'el's sword, leav­ing her one last gift con­cealed care­ful­ly in­side, she felt strange­ly calm. There was no deny­ing that some of what she was do­ing was fool­hardy, es­pe­cial­ly giv­en how much of the fu­ture she hadn't seen, but if there was one thing that felt right, it was leav­ing the sword for Ki'el. Al­most every­thing else, she doubt­ed, but that... per­haps not. Still... she knew that the girl wouldn't un­der­stand, cer­tain­ly not right away. Es­pe­cial­ly not giv­en how Sobon had con­cealed the real prize with­in.

For Lui, Sobon asked her sev­er­al ques­tions about how Lady Fau did her alche­my, and then did her best to cre­ate an ap­pro­pri­ate tool to help. The best thing that Sobon could come up with was an alche­my pot which had some ba­sic chem­istry process­es built in, but which also con­tained Sobon's Re­verse-spin, or Re­vival, aether dy­namo, care­ful­ly mount­ed into place with a rel­a­tive­ly com­plex en­grav­ing. The Re­vival aether, along with its matched en­grav­ing, would let one very slow, re­sist, or slight­ly re­verse a process that seemed to be go­ing wrong, giv­ing more time to fix it--but it was too weak to ac­com­plish much more than that. Sobon did her best to demon­strate the con­cept, and ex­plained the chem­istry scripts, but in truth, she wasn't sure it was re­al­ly the use­ful tool she in­tend­ed it to be.

Fi­nal­ly, though, when in the morn­ing a check of her de­tec­tion ar­ray showed the army on the march, Sobon couldn't de­lay any longer. Af­ter let­ting Lui and Ki'el know, she moved quick­ly to the City Lord's man­ner, and was quick­ly able to meet him and the pris­on­er, who Sobon was ...some­what dis­pleased to note had been tor­tured to some ex­tent. Not sur­prised, ex­act­ly, but dis­pleased.

Lord Shi­da didn't seem to ex­pect any sort of cen­sure for it, though. "We did our best to en­sure he would spill se­crets about House Mofu," he said, sound­ing dis­gust­ed, "but his strength was too much for us, even with your ar­rays con­tain­ing and weak­en­ing him. But you said that you need him?"

"Just as I said when I cap­tured him," Sobon said, mak­ing no pre­tense of hid­ing her words from the man... Mofu Kaishin? Sobon didn't quite care. "He will de­liv­er a mes­sage to the house of Mofu, which has raised an army to de­feat me."

"Ah." The pan­ic in Lord Shi­da's voice was ev­i­dent, but Sobon shat­tered the re­straints around the Mofu scion with­out a care. The man fell to the ground with­out a sound, but when he looked up at Sobon, his eyes had mur­der in them.

"Go and tell your fam­i­ly leader that they may pick a bat­tle­field any­where along the route be­tween this city and your home," Sobon said. "I al­ready know where they are, and my prepa­ra­tions are all but com­plete. I will come to them, and they may set up what­ev­er de­fens­es or ar­rays they like. Since House Mofu has de­clared war on me, I will wipe them out. But if they do not pre­pare... I will am­bush them along the way." Sobon held up her hand. "If I do not show up with­in three days, they may blas­pheme my name and de­stroy my home all they like. But whether you con­sid­er it warn­ing them, or let­ting them know that I am a fool, you will tell them that I am com­ing. And that I know they have a mem­ber of the Im­pe­r­i­al Fam­i­ly there as wit­ness." Sobon half turned and glared at the guards be­hind her. "Let him go."

The man, Mofu Kai Shin, fled the city like his life de­pend­ed on it, and Sobon was sure that all of his haste would bare­ly have him meet­ing the army in two days--far clos­er than the halfway point, but Sobon couldn't spend the time wor­ry­ing about that.

"You plan to meet them far from here?" Lord Shi­da's voice sound­ed... bet­ter, Sobon re­al­ized, than it had short­ly af­ter the Mofu el­der had at­tacked Emer­ald Val­ley. She turned to look, and thought the man's eyes were brighter, his aether more ac­tive. "To pro­tect the city, and all you have built, I as­sume?"

"All of that, and be­cause the kind of war­fare I rage is not meant to be done in a city," Sobon said, look­ing away from the City Lord again. "I wish I could tell you this would all end well, Lord Shi­da. But there is still a chance that they have brought along some oth­er, more ter­ri­ble en­e­my, that I may not be able to de­feat."

"Any ob­serv­er from the Im­pe­r­i­al Fam­i­ly will pre­vent an out­sider from..." Lord Shi­da's voice drift­ed off. "...but then, you are not Djang."

"No. I am plac­ing many bets on the fu­ture, Lord Shi­da, be­cause I be­lieve I un­der­stand what is hap­pen­ing. But if I am wrong, then every­thing that comes af­ter­wards will be ter­ri­ble. For me, for those I care for, for you, for the city. Most like­ly, for the whole world."

Lord Shi­da swal­lowed, and Sobon thought she sensed swirls of myth en­er­gy around the man--a re­minder that she had yet to send a re­port to K'val about the prophe­cies. She frowned--she was good at re­mem­ber­ing these things. Why had she put it off? She as­sem­bled the mes­sages for the Coro­na to re­lay, wor­ried that there was some force of fate work­ing against her... but noth­ing felt like it had changed, not re­cent­ly.

"If I am right, how­ev­er, then all will be for the best. I can only hope I am not mis­tak­en." Sobon forced her feet to move, tak­ing her out of the City Lord's dun­geon, and the man and his guards fol­lowed. "I should have told you ear­li­er, and for that I apol­o­gize--but there is lit­tle I can re­al­ly do to en­sure your safe­ty be­yond win­ning, and I trust you un­der­stand, that was al­ready the plan."

This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.

"I trust that Lady Alas­si's prepa­ra­tions are sub­stan­tial, then?" Sobon could feel the man prob­ing her spir­it. "You have cer­tain­ly... ad­vanced very far. Though I con­fess I do not un­der­stand the dis­tinc­tion be­tween Ti­ta­ni­um and Bis­muth Qi."

"I couldn't care less," Sobon said, not hav­ing even con­sid­ered or no­ticed when her spir­it en­er­gy changed col­ors. "My qi is in­signif­i­cant. The pow­ers I wield will not be fu­eled by them, and the bat­tle will not hinge on them. Or, it most­ly will not."

"Ah..." Lord Shi­da's voice be­came hes­i­tant again, al­though again, Sobon couldn't help feel­ing like there was more strength be­hind the man than there'd been. "As you say, Lady."

"Just..." Sobon turned and looked at him. "If I do lose, or even if I win, if peo­ple come de­mand­ing an­swers, feign ig­no­rance and pro­tect my peo­ple as best you can, al­though I am hop­ing they will not be here, ex­cept per­haps Lui with Lady Fau, and even they would like­ly be safer else­where. I may still come back some day, so if some­one shows up with the Seal of Sobon that I gave you be­fore..."

"I have kept it safe," Lord Shi­da con­firmed. "It will be there to con­firm their iden­ti­ty, even if some­thing hap­pens to me."

"That is all I can ask." Sobon shuf­fled men­tal­ly through her space ring, then hand­ed the City Lord a large bag of coins, ones that made the man's eyes widen even be­fore he saw them. "These are for the trou­ble, past and fu­ture. You have been more than fair to us, Lord Shi­da. I have hope that you will not suf­fer as a con­se­quence of all of this... but I do not con­trol the fu­ture."

"Lady Alas­si--! Per­haps, at the auc­tion...?"

"Let a woman keep her se­crets," was all Sobon chose to say, be­fore leav­ing.

She looked for Lai Shi Po at Lady Fau's, but nei­ther of the women were there. Sobon thought she sensed them some­where in the city, but wasn't in­tent on chas­ing them down. In­stead, she left a mark that she was sure one or both of them would find, and re­turned home.

Lui and Ki'el were there, both scared out of their minds.

In­stead of try­ing to be­lit­tle them, Sobon moved in front of them and stood, meet­ing their eyes. They were both try­ing to keep a brave face, and each fac­ing dif­fer­ent demons; that much Sobon knew. She of­fered a sad smile. "We have an­oth­er cou­ple days, I think," she said, "and my work is... ba­si­cal­ly done. I am still hop­ing that this will all work out, but... it's worth tak­ing some of the time re­main­ing just to be to­geth­er." She found her­self not quite ea­ger to say the word, though she forced it out. "...Like a fam­i­ly."

Lui smiled more gen­uine­ly, al­though Sobon thought the word meant more to Ki'el, be­cause Sobon had nev­er been her fam­i­ly--and Alas­si had been Lui's. And Sobon sat and talked with them, not about qi or war or the fu­ture or oth­er grand things, but on the sad state of the house, and de­li­cious food, and all the ma­te­ri­als Sobon had gath­ered. They talked about the weath­er, and the rea­son for the sea­sons, and the sun and the moon, the winds and the tides. And be­fore long, it was din­ner time, and Lai Shi Po and Lady Fau ar­rived.

Along with Mian, and a guest that Sobon would nev­er have ex­pect­ed to meet.

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

"The Lady is tem­porar­i­ly back from a mil­i­tary cam­paign over­seas," Mian was say­ing, his face flushed with some com­bi­na­tion of pride, em­bar­rass­ment, and ea­ger­ness, as the woman next to him let her eyes rove around, from one thing to the next. "Al­though her fam­i­ly prop­er is not here, her un­cle runs a lo­cal trad­ing house--"

"Un­cle Mon is kind enough to put up with me, while my par­ents find my oc­cu­pa­tion dis­taste­ful," Xoi Xam said, not let­ting her eyes rest on any­thing in par­tic­u­lar. "The fam­i­ly busi­ness is a mat­ter I find quite dis­taste­ful--a high­ly spe­cif­ic vari­ant of ge­o­man­cy for peo­ple close to break­ing through, to in­still in them the right mind­set, or so we like to say. And this house... has the sec­ond-worst ge­o­man­cy I've ever seen."

"Ah, your un­cle then is Lord Xoi," Sobon nod­ded, un­der­stand­ing that the com­ment had been a snub, but not com­ing close to car­ing. "I met him the oth­er day, and passed him be­fore that when meet­ing with Lord Shi­da."

"Yes, es­pe­cial­ly with the re­spect­ed mas­ter Lai Shi Po's in­tro­duc­tion, I was cu­ri­ous to find out about the man who was in­ter­est­ed in a po­lit­i­cal mar­riage, but more in­ter­est­ed in this mys­tery backer." Xoi Xam's eyes met Sobon's, though the oth­er woman showed not even a faint hint of recog­ni­tion. "Want­i­ng to make use of the Xoi fam­i­ly name, to hide po­lit­i­cal refugees... and be­ing will­ing to work with one who is cur­rent­ly in the mil­i­tary? Very brazen in­deed."

"Only you're not ex­act­ly cur­rent­ly in the mil­i­tary, are you?" Lai Shi Po's voice was teas­ing, but with an edge as sharp as a knife, as though she knew she had the oth­er woman at her mer­cy. "Some­thing about a mil­i­tary coup?"

"Not a coup, an at­tack." Xoi Xam sighed. "We were sta­tioned in a re­mote colony, and there was a promis­ing lo­cal. One so promis­ing that a lo­cal ex­pert offed him just to en­sure we didn't get to re­cruit him. They have a dim view of the Djang em­pire out there."

"Ah," Sobon said, find­ing that her voice had no warmth to it at all. "And this at­tack was dam­ag­ing to your ca­reer, Lady Xoi?"

"As some­one who had just re­cent­ly en­coun­tered the prodi­gy, I was held re­spon­si­ble for his safe­ty, which is ridicu­lous. The en­tire fa­cil­i­ty was mil­i­tary con­trolled, and the at­tack­er was above my cul­ti­va­tion lev­el." She sighed, cross­ing her arms over her chest, and slump­ing slight­ly. "Ever since then, there have been a num­ber of slights by the mil­i­tary lead­er­ship. I have not re­tired, not been re­tired by any­one else," she turned to glare at Lai Shi Po. "But it is clear that a num­ber of ter­ri­ble things have hap­pened to me ever since that in­ci­dent, and it all feels quite un­fair."

Sobon cleared her throat, cast­ing her mind back for just the right words. When she found them, she looked di­rect­ly into Xoi Xam's eyes, and spoke with the most false­ly sin­cere tone to her voice that she could.

"If you'd like me to add to your un­com­fort­able list of trag­ic ex­pe­ri­ences, please give me time to change out of this dress. It is dif­fi­cult to clean."

Sobon could feel that some­where in the woman's spir­it, she rec­og­nized the words as ex­act­ly the ones she'd said to Jom, al­though in a dif­fer­ent lan­guage, and the qi in her veins all but seized, slow­ing down to a crawl. In­stead of say­ing more, Sobon pro­duced two sim­ple dy­namos from with­in her spir­it--one left, one right--and let them hov­er over her hands, know­ing the woman would rec­og­nize the tools that she'd sensed in Jom's spir­it.

"Who--how?" Xoi Xam looked at the two cores. "That boy--"

"Lady Xoi," Sobon said, se­ri­ous­ly, ig­nor­ing the out­burst and re­plac­ing the cores in her spir­it. "I do not in­tend to com­pel you into a po­lit­i­cal mar­riage, es­pe­cial­ly not if you found it to be un­fa­vor­able. But trust me when I say that for all my short­com­ings, I am a very ...strange per­son, and it is far bet­ter to be my friend than my en­e­my. And un­der­stand, also, that very few peo­ple in this world will like­ly have a chance to be­come my friend."

Xoi Xam looked at her, then at Mian, who was mak­ing a very in­no­cent face, though Sobon thought most every­one else here--per­haps not Lui--could read the thoughts be­hind that face. "That's... I'm not go­ing to make that kind of de­ci­sion on a mo­ment's no­tice. It would be--"

"It would be a very fool­ish idea, I agree," Sobon said, se­ri­ous­ly. "In­stead I am ask­ing for some help in en­sur­ing that my peo­ple do not fall into any dan­ger. If af­ter some re­flec­tion, you and Mian find each oth­er to be a match, I only hope you will not think that you are ac­cept­ing an un­prof­itable bar­gain." Sobon raised her nose, wrin­kling it. "I will also say that your com­ing here, our meet­ing like this, smells of fates, of things be­yond our con­trol. But in spite of all that, I hope you un­der­stand that this whole mat­ter of po­lit­i­cal mar­riages is some­thing I have lit­tle ex­pe­ri­ence and less in­ter­est in. If you can keep my fam­i­ly safe, I will en­sure that you are com­pen­sat­ed."

"Can you re­al­ly trust her?" Ki'el wrin­kled her nose at the woman. "She's not much stronger than..."

"Her strength isn't what I want from her," Sobon said, though she ap­praised the woman's spir­it again, now that she knew more about qi. When Sobon had known her, she was at 9 Gold Stars, and now, she was at the peak of gold, 10 Gold Stars. From the steadi­ness of the woman's core, Sobon guessed (some­what blind­ly, for sure) that she knew how to pass through the Gold­en Wall, the tribu­la­tion that marked the ris­ing to Ti­ta­ni­um Qi, but was ready­ing her­self for it care­ful­ly. And she was still fair­ly young, though not a child; she was doubt­less younger than Mian, in truth, though it was hard to tell for sure since Xoi Xam's body was kept younger by her qi, while Mian's body was not. Mian had, in truth, lan­guished at low lev­els of qi for... prob­a­bly decades, af­ter he had fol­lowed Alas­si to her fam­i­ly's inn.

"I don't ex­act­ly have sway over my fam­i­ly, and you clear­ly have some con­nec­tion to Un­cle Mon al­ready," Xoi Xam caught her­self look­ing for too long at Mian, and looked away, with what Sobon hoped was em­bar­rass­ment at be­ing caught star­ing, though she didn't hold on to that hope too tight­ly. "I... can ask. And I sup­pose it wouldn't be hard to take one or two peo­ple with me, es­pe­cial­ly if I can say one is a re­tain­er, and the oth­er... a mar­riage can­di­date would be only a lit­tle strange to be car­ry­ing along, noth­ing too out­landish." Xoi Xam sighed. "But I need po­lit­i­cal cap­i­tal if I want my mil­i­tary ca­reer to re­sume, and get­ting caught up in all of this..."

Fau Mide whis­pered in Lai Shi Po's ear, but the oth­er woman just nod­ded. "As it so hap­pens, Lady Xoi, I hap­pen to have a small num­ber of rec­om­men­da­tions to a rather ex­clu­sive sect, one with enough con­nec­tions to the mil­i­tary that they could fore­stall any judge­ment. You have heard, I imag­ine of the Moon­stone Is­land Sect?"

In an­oth­er crowd, that name would like­ly have turned many ears, but Sobon and her crew had nev­er heard of it, and Lai Shi Po and Fau Mide both al­ready knew of it, so only Xoi Xam and Mian had any re­ac­tion. "The float­ing sky is­land sect?" Mian said, when Xoi Xam was sim­ply star­ing. "Aren't they a place where only, like... high­ly elite no­bles go?"

Lai Shi Po snort­ed. "Any sect will claim that 'only' high­ly elite no­bles go there, and all will be ly­ing. But the Moon­stone Is­land Sect has con­nec­tions to many mil­i­tary fam­i­lies. I be­lieve even Gen­er­al Gaum went there, did he not?"

"...He did." Xoi Xam shook her head. "It is a place with a steep en­trance fee, even with a rec­om­men­da­tion. My fam­i­ly will not af­ford to give me two hun­dred Flame Coins for that, and I can't imag­ine--"

"If you will keep my fam­i­ly safe, six hun­dred flame coins is not too much to ask." Though Sobon looked to Lai Shi Po as she said that, giv­ing the woman a very dirty look for rec­om­mend­ing some­thing so ex­pen­sive.

But Xoi Xam just turned her eyes wide, and im­me­di­ate­ly snapped into a servile mode that im­me­di­ate­ly grat­ed on her, tak­ing a for­mal pose and bow­ing deeply. "If... if the Lady is will­ing to put that much in me... then of course, I will do every­thing in my pow­er to en­sure that your com­pan­ions re­main safe­ly by my side, at least as long as the Sect will have us. Though..." She looked up, and half turned to Mian. "...they will ex­pect great per­for­mance, and not hes­i­tate to kick peo­ple out who can­not meet that ex­pec­ta­tions. Even with a rec­om­men­da­tion, if you can­not ad­vance..."

"I will en­sure that Ki'el is sent along with some of my wis­dom," Sobon said. "I trust that she and Mian, when giv­en time and re­sources, will be able to un­der­stand, and find their way for­ward."

Mian looked with some pan­ic at Xoi Xam, then at Sobon. "I mean... if you be­lieve I can do it, Alas­si. But you know I'm be­hind..."

Sobon shook her head. "I don't know, Mian, but I be­lieve you can. There will be a great many who be­lieve it can­not be done. There were those who be­lieved I was ca­pa­ble of noth­ing, too." She glanced at Xoi Xam. "Dif­fer­ent cir­cum­stance re­quire dif­fer­ent teach­ing meth­ods. My own wasn't too help­ful for you--"

"Not at all!" Mian stepped around Xoi Xam to more ful­ly face Sobon. "Your in­sight about me be­ing cen­tered in my heart has made all kinds of dif­fer­ence. The progress is slow, I ad­mit, but it makes sense now, where it re­al­ly didn't be­fore."

Sobon not­ed the look on Xoi Xam's face, of con­fu­sion, but ig­nored it for now.

Ki'el looked to Mian, and then to Sobon. "He has had to un­learn things," she said, sound­ing gruff. "As have I. I am also un­sure that a... a Djang sect would be a great place for me. But I un­der­stand what you mean, and if you be­lieve it would be good for me, I would do all that I can to en­sure that the op­por­tu­ni­ty is not wast­ed."

Sobon just nod­ded. "Then that part is set­tled." Sobon glanced around, then shook her head. "But we have been stand­ing around for too long. Let's get din­ner, and we'll talk more lat­er." And the rest, with some prod­ding, moved on, though Sobon didn't miss how Lai Shi Po shot her a strange look, one that she knew meant the two of them would have at least one more pri­vate chat be­fore every­thing was through.