Ki'el had not re­al­ly got­ten her hopes up, and yet was still some­what dis­ap­point­ed by the form of the Less­er House it­self. It was a sin­gle large build­ing, per­haps five sto­ries tall. It was too well-built to be called ram­shackle, but too poor­ly main­tained to be called in good con­di­tion; the out­side was some form of paint­ed plas­ter or stone, with only oc­ca­sion­al bits of wood stick­ing through, and al­though it ex­ud­ed a sense of strength, it was ob­vi­ous that the out­side, at least, was main­tained by peo­ple who had no con­cept of build­ing things prop­er­ly. The plas­ter that cov­ered it was high­ly un­even, and the paint, which at least was all the same col­or, had ob­vi­ous dif­fer­ences in thick­ness all across the sur­face.

Ki'el stud­ied it, not hav­ing ex­pect­ed a tall build­ing to be con­cealed be­hind the trees, but Mai Han Du sim­ply kept speak­ing. "Al­though the Sect goes through some trou­ble every few years to en­sure the build­ing is safe, most of the main­te­nance, as well as all of the cook­ing and clean­ing, is done by mem­bers of the house it­self. Out­er Dis­ci­ples have not been per­mit­ted to help, even when they wish to. Mem­bers of the Less­er House are free to at­tempt to re­pair, main­tain, im­prove, and even ex­pand the house, as they wish, though that must be in their free time."

"There are many peo­ple in the House, too many for you to have pri­vate rooms. We gen­er­al­ly in­sist that for the first month, at min­i­mum, a group like yours can have a room to your­selves, though af­ter that, any­one that re­mains," he glanced at Mian, "will need to make arrange­ments with the oth­er res­i­dents. Peo­ple share both large and small rooms, here, but you three will most like­ly be giv­en a sin­gle small room to share."

As they ap­proached, the first per­son that they saw from the Less­er House was a tall and thin woman in a red dress. In spite of Du's as­sur­ances that the peo­ple here all worked, Ki'el though the woman had a con­temp­tu­ous face, and she was lean­ing against the door­frame with a wide pa­per fan. Ki'el frowned at her, if only for a mo­ment, and Ki'el thought the woman's eyes im­me­di­ate­ly snapped to her face, and a scowl crossed her fea­tures.

"Ah, is Se­nior Broth­er Du here to dis­ap­point yet an­oth­er batch of can­di­dates?" The woman fanned her­self with her im­ple­ment, slouch­ing fur­ther. "Un­for­tu­nate­ly our en­tire Less­er House is at ca­pac­i­ty. There are no rooms for new in­com­ing ser­vants, un­for­tu­nate­ly."

"Young sis­ter Lan Wu," Du greet­ed her, half turn­ing so that he could face both her and the oth­er three. "I be­lieve you were asked to in­form an el­der if there would not be space for new ad­her­ents. And I do be­lieve the last I heard was that two peo­ple left the Less­er House, some nine months ago."

"Is that all they told you?" Ki'el frowned, feel­ing some­thing bris­tle in­side of her qi as the woman spoke. "When the Boju Broth­ers left, they de­stroyed sev­er­al of the rooms on their way out. We have all been very busy with our own re­pairs, and many spaces are still not liv­able."

"The sect's ju­nior broth­ers did come to re­pair that dam­age, did they not?"

Lan Wu's lips curled into a sneer. "They deemed the task be­neath them, and said that the Sect's stan­dards were met. But you may ex­am­ine it if you wish, Se­nior Broth­er Du."

Ki'el frowned, but pushed slight­ly on her Right­eous Cy­cle, flood­ing her own qi with pu­ri­fied aether. As she thought, it pushed back some­thing from the woman, some kind of mi­nor spir­i­tu­al ef­fect that was laid into her voice. It seemed strange to Ki'el--many things did, but she did not ex­pect that even in the Less­er House, there would be peo­ple us­ing some form of ex­ter­nal qi to in­flu­ence oth­ers.

Mai Han Du glanced back at the oth­er three, and nod­ded. "Come along."

As Du turned and stepped for­ward, Xoi Xam leaned in to whis­per to Ki'el. "What did you do?"

Ki'el turned and met Xam's eyes, and though she still strug­gled to do it, pro­ject­ed a thought at the oth­er woman. [Do not trust woman's voice.]

Xam frowned, but Ki'el trust­ed the woman had heard her and turned to the build­ing. Lan Wu seemed con­tent to sim­ply step aside and let Sect Broth­er Du through the door­way in­stead of fol­low­ing, so Ki'el moved up to and then past her, try­ing to mea­sure the woman with her eyes as she did.

The woman met her eyes, and Ki'el thought that those eyes were sharp, dis­pleased. Ugly.

If Ki'el had been ap­pre­hen­sive see­ing the state of the build­ing from the out­side, in­side it was worse. The best com­pli­ment she could pay was that the build­ing was kept clean. Al­though the wood plank floors were un­even, they were swept free of dirt; al­though the walls were not straight and had cuts, holes, and burns across them, they had been washed. Al­though the ceil­ing's sur­face was poor­ly fin­ished with some kind of plas­ter or soft rock, they had no cob­webs and no dis­col­oration as from smoke or heat. The door­ways that they passed by were not straight and had no doors hung in their frames; Ki'el no­ticed a kitchen on the left that showed signs of be­ing lived in, and what might have once been a com­mu­nal room on the right that was filled with beds.

Once they passed the im­me­di­ate en­trance, the hall­ways branched to the right and left, while above, a steep cir­cu­lar stair went up, cen­tered in a very nar­row cir­cu­lar hole that cut through all five floors of the build­ing. The stair, at least, was iron or some sim­i­lar met­al, and al­though the steps were nar­row and looked in­se­cure, the cen­tral pil­lar that sup­port­ed them seemed com­plete­ly sol­id. Sect Broth­er Du, as well, seemed to show no sign of con­cern; the man im­me­di­ate­ly be­gan climb­ing the steps with such con­fi­dence that Ki'el at first thought the stairs must be more sol­id than they looked.

But when Ki'el first stepped on the low­est step of the stairs, she felt it be­gin to slide out of its hole, and when she lept back out of sur­prise, the mo­tion only ac­cel­er­at­ed the small flat iron peg out of its po­si­tion, and it fell to the floor with a clat­ter.

Ki'el felt her face im­me­di­ate­ly go flush with shame, more so when Sect Broth­er Du looked down at her, but the man didn't look sur­prised or shocked at all. "Be at ease, Young Sis­ter. The pegs are in­deed loose, which helps with your mind­ful­ness. Put the step back in its place and then fol­low." But he did not stand around to wait for her, and sim­ply con­tin­ued up the steps.

Ki'el leaned down and grabbed the step, push­ing it back into its hole, feel­ing a ris­ing pan­ic. As she straight­ened, though, she felt a com­fort­ing hand on her shoul­der, and found Mian there, a se­ri­ous look on his face. "Calm down," he whis­pered, qui­et­ly. "Don't pan­ic. Re­mem­ber to breathe."

Ki'el was breath­ing, of course, but not in­ten­tion­al­ly. She stepped back and fo­cused on breath­ing with pur­pose, let­ting the act of breath­ing calm her down. It was one of the few pieces of ad­vice Mian had been able to of­fer; the man had not said where and when he'd learned it, and only said that he picked up a few pieces of ad­vice be­fore he be­came a cook, at the small inn where he met Ta­lai Lui and Shi­va Alas­si, the woman whose body her mas­ter Sobon would lat­er in­hab­it. Mian had in­deed known a few things about us­ing a sword cor­rect­ly, though from the looks Sobon gave him, her mas­ter would have much pre­ferred to cor­rect them both, if only she had time.

Sobon nev­er seemed to have time, for them or for much else.

Ki'el's mea­sured use of breath helped calm her a lit­tle, and she rec­og­nized that she had in­deed pan­icked, and her at­tempts to make her­self not seem a fool would only prove that she knew lit­tle. By the time she had calmed, Mian had pro­ceed­ed slow­ly up the stairs, his steps mak­ing the stairs squeak and shift, but none of the stairs came loose, and Xam was start­ing to move up af­ter her, the woman's steps much qui­eter and more sta­ble.

Ki'el watched, but aside from the fact that she could tell that Xam was us­ing her qi in­ter­nal­ly, she had lit­tle un­der­stand­ing of what the woman did. But then... Xoi Xam was old­er and more ex­pe­ri­enced than Ki'el, hav­ing gained her qi in mil­i­tary ser­vice. How ex­act­ly she could do that, and still re­main not much stronger than Ki'el... she did not know, and put out of her mind.

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When she fi­nal­ly steeled her­self to stand on the steps, she felt it shift again, but only mo­men­tar­i­ly, and Ki'el bared her teeth at the stair­case, of­fend­ed by its in­ad­e­qua­cy. While she had no doubt that it had re­mained in such a sor­ry state be­cause some­one de­mand­ed it, she could imag­ine Sobon's dis­gust at the con­cept, and could plain­ly en­vi­sion her fix­ing the steps with a wave of her hand. In­deed, with the pow­er she had gained re­cent­ly, Sobon could prob­a­bly have fixed the whole build­ing in mo­ments, if she wished.

Buoyed by her thoughts of her mas­ter, Ki'el found the courage to con­tin­ue up the steep stairs, al­though she felt some part of her­self re­ject­ing the whole ex­is­tence of the stair­case with every step. As those above her con­tin­ued to mount, prov­ing that their tar­get was not the sec­ond or third floor, Ki'el con­sid­ered that part of her spir­it, fi­nal­ly set­tling on some­thing Sobon had told her.

She said I seemed to be fo­cused in my skin, Ki'el ra­tio­nal­ized. Some part of my spir­it al­ways wants to de­fend me, to keep evil things out. And this stair­case of­fends me. It wish­es to tell me I am wrong in how I walk up stairs. It was hard not to per­son­i­fy the stair­case as some­thing evil, some­thing that would de­light in watch­ing her fail, though Ki'el knew it was not true. And some­how, be­tween those two thoughts... Ki'el thought that their rough edges were sim­i­lar, as though the one and the oth­er may be re­lat­ed, just as Sobon had said.

That thought did not pro­vide an an­swer, but it did help her feel more at peace with the ir­ri­ta­tion that she held for the stairs. As she con­tin­ued to move, con­tin­ued to feel the steps slip slight­ly when she shift­ed her weight, she ac­cept­ed that her in­tense ha­tred for the stairs was a part of her strug­gling to pro­tect her, and fo­cused again on her breath­ing, try­ing to re­main aware of more than just the stairs.

It was a good thing, too, be­cause short­ly af­ter­wards, Xam stopped sud­den­ly and even moved back a step on the stairs, al­most tak­ing Ki'el by sur­prise. For cer­tain, if she had been as fo­cused on her steps at the end as she was at the be­gin­ning, she might have made some kind of mis­take, but as it was, she sim­ply caught her move­ment and stopped, wait­ing.

A minute lat­er, every­one pro­ceed­ed up again, and Ki'el found her­self on the fourth floor, to find that it was a ter­ri­ble mess. The plas­ter cov­er on the walls had all been torn to pieces, most­ly by what looked like blade strikes, but there were places where some­thing worse had clear­ly hap­pened, though what ex­act­ly, Ki'el could not tell. What was cer­tain was that at lesat three rooms on this lev­el opened up into each oth­er, and the hall­way, and the floor above, and the floor be­low, with many ex­posed beams of wood that must have been sup­port­ing the walls or floor bare and ex­posed. Only the hall­way floors had been ful­ly re­paired, al­though Ki'el no­ticed that even the ru­ined rooms had at least been swept, even if no fur­ther at­tempts to clean them had been made.

Mai Han Du stood among it, glanc­ing around, be­fore turn­ing back to them.

"It is a grim sight," he ad­mit­ted, "but it is not un­liv­able. The sect ex­pects the Less­er House to do re­pairs of this lev­el; even with­out qi, as long as the ma­te­ri­als are pro­vid­ed, it should be pos­si­ble. Es­pe­cial­ly for new ad­her­ents, it does not seem un­rea­son­able to ex­pect you to fix small things like this."

"Small things? I do not wish to sound en­ti­tled, Sect Broth­er Du, but this does seem a bit much." Xam's voice sound­ed fierce­ly ir­ri­tat­ed, though Ki'el sim­ply looked numbly at the walls and floors. In truth... the ru­ined rooms brought back mem­o­ries of her own vil­lage, which she had found ru­ined and loot­ed by pi­rates, when she fi­nal­ly made it back af­ter be­ing lost in a storm. In time, Ki'el had forced her­self to take pieces from sev­er­al ru­ined hous­es in or­der to fix one; be­fore that, she had spent many months hid­ing from rain­storms by crawl­ing into the one cor­ner of her house that was still most­ly cov­ered.

Here, at least, the roof of the build­ing it­self was in­tact. She could imag­ine oth­ers be­ing quite up­set with the state of the room, but she her­self had lived in much worse.

"It seems nei­ther of your com­pan­ions shares your dis­dain," not­ed Du, and Ki'el turned her head to fo­cus on Mian. The man had a grim set to his face, but it was a de­ter­mined one, and he turned his head to her, eyes mea­sur­ing her for only a mo­ment be­fore he nod­ded. Ki'el nod­ded back.

Xoi Xam took a mo­ment to school her own breath, but nod­ded. "My apolo­gies, Sect Broth­er. Does the sect at least have in­struc­tion on this kind of main­te­nance for us, or are we ex­pect­ed to find oth­ers among the Less­er House who al­ready have that ex­per­tise?"

"An ed­u­cat­ed ques­tion." Du's face bright­ened, enough that the man no longer looked like he was sur­round­ed by a half-ru­ined build­ing. "As long as you are per­form­ing sect busi­ness--and the Less­er House be­longs to the sect, and so its main­te­nance is sect busi­ness--you may ask any­one in the sect for ad­vice, even mas­ters, al­though not all will have the same pa­tience for small mat­ters. Re­gret­tably we do not have any­one who spe­cial­izes in this kind of con­struc­tion and main­te­nance, with­out the use of qi, though there may be many peo­ple who could com­ment on the ma­te­ri­als. The wall-plas­ter, for ex­am­ple," he not­ed, ges­tur­ing around, "is a com­mon ma­te­r­i­al used by a great many, but I have had sev­er­al fas­ci­nat­ing dis­cus­sions with Broth­er Kemu, who stud­ies both the mu­ndane chem­istry and the spir­i­tu­al alche­my of such ma­te­ri­als, and the dis­cus­sions of each are very dif­fer­ent. I can say that he has of­ten been asked to help with such mat­ters."

"Sim­i­lar­ly, the floors," he ges­tured down. "We have many spe­cial­ists in the mun­dane and spir­i­tu­al prop­er­ties of wood. Here I will sug­gest Sis­ter Muzi, only be­cause I be­lieve most of the oth­ers are busy on as­sign­ment. It is not triv­ial to pre­pare wood such that it can be used for many years with­out trou­ble, and those who at­tempt to make the fastest and sim­plest re­pairs most of­ten are dis­ap­point­ed months or years lat­er."

Ki'el frowned at that, and moved over to the near­est wood­en pil­lar, lean­ing in to ex­am­ine it more close­ly. The wood had clear­ly been cut clean­ly and then at least rough­ly smoothed, but not fin­ished, per­haps be­cause this pil­lar was meant to re­main in­side of the wall. She did not know what it would take to fin­ish walls, or floors, but she had seen more than enough vari­a­tion in the woods used to build the huts in her vil­lage, and those woods that had been ex­posed only af­ter the vil­lage had been at­tacked had rot­ted much faster in the weath­er than those meant to be out­doors. By the time she had not­ed those dif­fer­ences, how­ev­er, there was no one left to ask how the woods were pre­pared, or why.

Her eyes ranged around af­ter that, not­ing that where the beams of wood joined, ei­ther ad­vanced qi tech­niques had been used to merge them, or some­thing like rope, cloth, or leather sur­round­ed the joint, or bits of met­al or wood were forced through one and into an­oth­er in or­der to pin them to­geth­er. The only thing Ki'el felt sure of was that there were far few­er qi joins, and only on the larg­er pieces of wood. The oth­er tech­niques... she wasn't sure which was bet­ter, or would be pre­ferred, or why.

So she sim­ply asked, ges­tur­ing at the joints, and Du glanced at them, nod­ding.

"Each of these joins looks to have been in­fused with at least a lit­tle qi," he said, "and so I imag­ine that they were used as prac­tice by mem­bers of the Less­er House. Al­though it is ear­ly for peo­ple to at­tempt to cre­ate even a rudi­men­ta­ry qi na­ture be­fore breach­ing the Gold­en Wall, many peo­ple, es­pe­cial­ly those from de­vel­oped clans, al­ready have some un­der­stand­ing, and will use it to in­fuse their qi with in­tent. Things like this..." he ges­tured to them, "these are the re­sult of peo­ple prac­tic­ing in pri­vate. Most fre­quent­ly, I be­lieve, the ones who al­ready have a grasp of their fu­ture are not long for these halls, while the ones who lan­guish still to this day do not un­der­stand even mi­nor uses of qi like these."

Ki'el stud­ied the joints and the walls and floors. She no­ticed some very small qi fluc­tu­a­tion as Broth­er Du spoke, but did not no­tice quite when or about what, and had to let the thought go quick­ly. In­stead, she looked at the floor and the walls, notic­ing that some of the bro­ken pieces had been clean­ly cut, while oth­ers had not. "There will be tools as well?"

"Of course, as with all sect busi­ness," Broth­er Du said again, pa­tient­ly. "You will be re­quired to main­tain and re­pair the tools as well, of course."

Ki'el nod­ded, feel­ing more com­fort­able, and glanced to Mian and Xam. The lat­ter looked out of her el­e­ment, but Mian at least showed no signs of flag­ging willpow­er. So Ki'el just looked to Broth­er Du and nod­ded.

"Very good. Now... I will speak with a few oth­ers in the sect to en­sure that the tools and ma­te­ri­als are pro­vid­ed to you, but you will also need to speak with Sis­ter Futi, who is in charge of tasks for the Less­er House. You should ex­pect much of your time to be tak­en with these tasks, and you will need to bal­ance your own cul­ti­va­tion, rest, and pri­vate tasks in the time that re­mains." Du ges­tured back to­wards the stairs. "Come. I will in­tro­duce you."

Ki'el was last down the stairs, as she was last up them, and turned to look back at the ru­ined rooms. The at­mos­phere of the house gave her an un­pleas­ant feel­ing, es­pe­cial­ly now that Du was leav­ing, and Ki'el felt cer­tain that there would be ad­di­tion­al un­pleas­ant­ness as soon as the three of them were alone. There was no rea­son for her to speak of it, not for now; she was sure that Broth­er Du would make any­thing that hap­pened sound rea­son­able, and the oth­ers most like­ly also un­der­stood that their time here would be un­pleas­ant.

If the worst trou­ble Ki'el had here was a room with ru­ined walls and floors, she would feel lucky, and Ki'el did not trust in her own luck.