Ki'el's next morn­ing start­ed ear­ly. She was no stranger to wak­ing ear­ly, though there had been... lit­tle rea­son, for a long time. She was a bit dis­ap­point­ed to be told, in the evening pri­or to sleep­ing, that many tasks start­ed well be­fore dawn, and it was the for­tu­nate or the bro­ken who were only mov­ing af­ter dawn, when Ki'el had ar­rived the day be­fore.

Sis­ter Futi, most like­ly for this rea­son, woke ear­li­est of all. Ki'el might have imag­ined that the woman nev­er slept, though she sus­pect­ed in­stead that she took her time in the evenings. The truth... mat­tered lit­tle to her. Even two hours be­fore dawn, there was a line of peo­ple, a line that seemed to nat­u­ral­ly stop out­side of the woman's door, with peo­ple speak­ing only briefly and walk­ing away, with some be­ing giv­en to­kens or small items with lit­tle more than a toss.

"Ki'el." When she was at the head of the line, Sis­ter Futi was just as brusque and brief with her as with every­one else. "There is a road paving job on Is­land Four that needs la­bor." When Ki'el just nod­ded, ac­cept­ing it, Futi lev­i­tat­ed a small to­ken to her, her eyes im­me­di­ate­ly mov­ing to the next per­son in line. Ki'el need­ed no fur­ther words to un­der­stand that now was no time to speak on any oth­er top­ic, and so she moved away.

What served for break­fast was re­warmed at best and sim­ple, not cooked or fresh, and Mian had said that the mid-day meals were no bet­ter, though din­ner had been fine. Sect points could be used, else­where on the is­land, for bet­ter food... at the cost of less saved up at the end of the day, or even a loss. Ki'el could un­der­stand the sys­tem, even if it seemed cru­el, like many things. So she took a sin­gle starchy fruit to eat on her way, and left the is­land by the only path out that she knew. Along the way, she ex­changed a few friend­ly words with an­oth­er mem­ber of the Less­er House, in­clud­ing di­rec­tions to Is­land Four, but he seemed un­in­ter­est­ed in get­ting to know her, or re­veal­ing more about him­self. Giv­en his some­what old­er and gen­er­al­ly frail fig­ure, Ki'el un­der­stood him to be yet an­oth­er person re­signed to nev­er ris­ing fur­ther.

She con­sid­ered that as she walked. It was... not im­pos­si­ble, that she had in­sight that could help many of the Less­er House to ad­vance. Lai Shi Po, Broth­er Du, and oth­ers had made sug­ges­tions to the ef­fect that the peo­ple who re­mained here de­served to, but... the man she part­ed ways with at the next in­ter­sec­tion was not ar­ro­gant or crude, for all that there was a sim­mer­ing re­sent­ment be­neath his fea­tures.

Even with the help of Kuli, she knew that she was nowhere near Sobon's lev­el of ex­per­tise, and Sobon had said he was nei­ther heal­er nor teacher. But sure­ly, for peo­ple at this lev­el...?

{ It is pos­si­ble to both force as­cen­sion, and guide most peo­ple through it, } Kuli said, { but do­ing so re­quires time, ef­fort, and re­sources. It might be wis­est to only make promis­es when you have those time and re­sources to spare. }

Ki'el could not deny that. She wasn't sure if any­one--her, them­selves, or the Sect--would be able to tell what held peo­ple back, and if she were to promise any­one any­thing, time would be the cheap­est thing she could give, and time was not free for those in the Less­er House.

That be­came more ob­vi­ous when she fi­nal­ly made her way to Is­land Four.

It was not a cheap place. From the looks of those around her, Ki'el de­cid­ed she was still in the Out­er Sect, on an is­land of hous­ing and halls that she had not passed through on her way back from the Heal­ing House. The build­ings were well con­struct­ed, and there was a stone paved path to every build­ing.

One sec­tion of the is­land was wrecked and new­ly re­built, the dirt turned over and bright, thin sprouts of grass that Ki'el sus­pect­ed had bare­ly any roots grown in. What­ev­er had hap­pened to the old paving stones, there was a stack of new ones laid to the side with some hand tools, and one Out­er Dis­ci­ple lay­ing on the ground near­by.

"Ah," the dis­ci­ple said as Ki'el came close, and she sat up. "A work­er from the Less­er House? I'm ask­ing that you do the work of po­si­tion­ing the stones, and the..." she ges­tured at the dirt, where the road should go. "dig­ging, and the think­ing parts of it. Try to make sure the spac­ing is good and tight, but no one will com­plain as long as it's lev­el." She laid back again, and raised her voice slight­ly so Ki'el could hear her as she lay there. "Let me know if you want the stones trimmed. That part is easy."

Ki'el eyed the paving stones, which were not thin, and de­cid­ed the woman must have a stone-el­e­ment qi tech­nique.

Ki'el's morn­ing be­came a frus­trat­ing ex­er­cise in dig­ging out enough room for a paving stone, ask­ing the Out­er Dis­ci­ple to ad­just its shape to fit the stones near­by, and then work­ing the stone and the dirt so that the paving stone would lay flat. It was te­dious work, and not work that Ki'el had any par­tic­u­lar affin­i­ty for, but it was, for the most part... only work. At least the dirt was clean and soft, though that meant Ki'el had to com­press it be­fore plac­ing each stone, or press­ing the stone in would do the work for her, low­er­ing it be­low its neigh­bors in the process.

At dawn, Ki'el took a break, not­ing that the Out­er Dis­ci­ple did the same. She faced the dawn, and when the mo­ment seemed to come... this time, she breathed in, and out, along with the rest of the Sect. It was a small thing... but it felt right. When she re­turned to her work, Ki'el found that her mind was more awake, and there was some­thing...

{ There is a spir­i­tu­al ef­fect, } Kuli con­firmed to her. { A mi­nor de­ity's bless­ing. No more than that. }

Ki'el paused in her work for a mo­ment to con­sid­er it. She... on one lev­el, she didn't re­al­ly like the idea of some­one bless­ing her, or at least, not with­out her knowl­edge. She sup­posed that was a part of her Cen­ter. But the feel­ing of be­ing a part of some­thing larg­er than it­self... it did feel pos­i­tive, and not harm­ful. Still, she told Kuli, silent­ly, as she went back to her work, if you see any rea­son not to per­mit it, say so.

{ It is not a bind­ing, } Kuli an­swered. { Bind­ing spir­i­tu­al ef­fects would al­low con­trol. If re­peat­ed every day for years... and if you nev­er use fresh aether to purge it, it might act sim­i­lar­ly to a bind­ing in time, as you be­come fa­mil­iar to the de­ity. But I sus­pect your use of aether will loosen it too much for that. }

Ki'el con­sid­ered that, as she worked for sev­er­al more hours. By the time she had fin­ished lay­ing a good two dozen stones, an­oth­er Out­er Sect dis­ci­ple had come along and en­cour­aged the new shoots of grass to grow thick­er and their roots to spread, and some had stopped by only to talk with the lazy rock-shap­ing Out­er Dis­ci­ple, who was fre­quent­ly dis­re­spect­ful, but only ever seemed to be friend­ly while do­ing so.

Ki'el found her­self less able to fo­cus on her work when they ac­tu­al­ly spoke about qi, but it was not use­ful to Ki'el.

"You said be­fore that you were work­ing on the Frac­ture as­pect to Stone Na­ture," one said. "But I thought your ex­plo­rations of Stone Qi were more about its stur­di­ness, Sis­ter."

"They are the same prob­lem," the Stone Sis­ter said, still lay­ing in the grass. "Un­der­stand­ing how to shat­ter stone with the least pos­si­ble qi use, and with the most con­trol, means un­der­stand­ing the strength and weak­ness of the ma­te­r­i­al."

"But sure­ly, Sis­ter...?" The oth­er dis­ci­ple sound­ed an­noyed, for rea­sons Ki'el would nev­er know. "Qi re­in­forced stone is dif­fer­ent enough that it doesn't mat­ter?"

Even Ki'el could imag­ine an an­swer to that, and she frowned, though she re­mained fac­ing her work, and there­fore fur­thest from the mind of ei­ther Out­er Dis­ci­ple. Sure­ly hold­ing things to­geth­er with qi was eas­i­er and used less strength if you un­der­stood the un­der­ly­ing na­ture of the ma­te­ri­als...?

But the Stone Sis­ter's re­ply wasn't that. "That's not how na­tured qi works," she said, sound­ing... per­haps ir­ri­tat­ed, her­self. "When we gain en­light­en­ment in an el­e­ment, our qi be­comes stronger. Search­ing for the true Way of Stone re­quires ex­plor­ing its prop­er­ties. Sure­ly your ex­plo­ration of Ice Qi is no dif­fer­ent?"

"Ice is ice," said the oth­er dis­ci­ple, and Ki'el could not read his voice. "It's find­ing fast and ef­fi­cient ways to per­form the tech­niques that's trou­bling. Mak­ing things cold is no trou­ble at all."

Ki'el--and from the sound of her word­less re­ply, the Stone Sis­ter as well--doubt­ed that Ice was so sim­ple, but she con­tin­ued her work with­out com­ment.

An­oth­er stu­dent came by and asked the Stone Sis­ter some spe­cif­ic things about the na­ture of sol­id things, about nat­ur­al pat­terns and qi's in­ter­ac­tions with them, and while there were mo­ments Ki'el was sure she un­der­stood what was be­ing said, it wasn't a con­ver­sa­tion she un­der­stood over­all. In all, with Ki'el be­ing most­ly able to fo­cus, she was fin­ished lay­ing all the stones by ear­ly af­ter­noon.

When the last stone was laid, the Stone Sis­ter took her time stomp­ing on each to en­sure they were seat­ed, but nod­ded when none of them shift­ed by more than a tiny bit. "It'll do," she said. "Thanks. Now that I can say my part's done, I guess re­lax­ation time is over." She held out a hand, and Ki'el, un­cer­tain­ly, fetched her to­ken and held it out. The woman held it only long enough to pass an in­tent pulse into it, then re­turned it and turned away. "Good luck, then."

Ki'el, hav­ing al­ready got­ten the im­pres­sion the woman would not make any at­tempt at friend­ship, just watched her de­part with a small sense of wrong­ness, then turned back to the road and be­gan walk­ing back to the Less­er House.

I do not know what I should be ex­pect­ing from these jobs, Ki'el de­cid­ed as she walked. But also, I do not know what to ex­pect from my own cul­ti­va­tion. It is... not as sim­ple as gath­er­ing qi, now, is it?

{ No, but that is where you start, } an­swered Kuli. { Gath­er­ing and clean­ing qi, so that you can use pu­ri­fied qi to at­tune parts of your body, what Sobon called ac­climi­ti­za­tion. }

Ki'el did re­mem­ber Sobon say­ing ex­act­ly that. And yet... it felt very strange to sug­gest, af­ter all that Ki'el was dis­cov­er­ing and all that she might yet learn... that for now, it was sim­ply her task to turn qi in a cir­cle un­til it was clean, and breathe it in. Her work with aether cy­cles had been more com­pli­cat­ed, and felt more pow­er­ful. What do I have to do, if I want to pre­pare for the next lev­el of that? Al­though she was sure Sobon had said be­fore--no, she even re­mem­bered him say­ing it, she want­ed to hear it from Kuli.

{ Cre­at­ing a set of dy­namos with per­fect­ly equal threads and per­fect­ly equal size, } Kuli re­port­ed, pa­tient­ly. To help with this, I can teach you a thing about cy­cles, and sound. }

That in­ter­est­ed Ki'el, and as they walked, Kuli spoke briefly about how vi­bra­tion and sound were sim­ple cy­cles of a dif­fer­ent type, and how the pitch of a sound was its fre­quen­cy, and how two pure sounds that were close in fre­quen­cy--close, but not equal--would cre­ate a sound based on the dif­fer­ence. A beat fre­quen­cy.

Ki'el was ea­ger to ex­per­i­ment, but none of her aether cy­cles were close enough to one an­oth­er, and she had no way to pro­duce pure sounds. So she sim­ply con­tin­ued on to the Less­er House, find­ing Futi dis­cussing jobs with two peo­ple she did not know. So she wait­ed, for a short while, and nod­ded po­lite­ly to the two as they left, but both eyed her cold­ly.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

"Ki'el." Futi ges­tured for her to come clos­er. "Al­though I have not been told the de­tails, the El­ders have de­ter­mined that you are due the for­fei­ture of both Xan Bu, and Man Di, the woman who was be­ing used by the bracelet at the time that Xan Bu at­tacked the El­der." Futi, her eyes still glow­ing, ges­tured for Ki'el to sit. "I as­sure you, it is much more un­for­tu­nate for her than it is for­tu­nate for you. Some have said that Man Di re­fused to co­op­er­ate with the El­der... though I am un­sure how much of that is true. Ei­ther way, she... does not re­main in the sect."

Ki'el shiv­ered, be­liev­ing quite firm­ly that Futi was de­liv­er­ing news of the woman's demise, but did not ques­tion fur­ther. "I would like to split the for­fei­ture with Da Chi­an."

"I thought you might, but all those mat­ters are han­dled by El­der Gol in the Hall of Earth­en Recita­tion. That build­ing is the most promi­nent build­ing in the Out­er Sect, which I do not be­lieve you have seen yet. It lays near the Low­er Heal­ing Hall, but by an­oth­er path."

"Earth­en Recita­tion?" Ki'el was still un­sure whether the hall names she had seen on her way down had been any­thing more than fan­ci­ful.

"'Those who speak of mor­tal mat­ters'," Futi said, with a voice that con­veyed some dis­dain. "That is to say, the Low­er Hall of Mon­ey."

"Ah." Ki'el con­sid­ered that for a mo­ment, then shrugged. "I sup­pose I should go there next, then?"

"You might eat some­thing. And per­haps wash the dirt off." Futi's voice sound­ed a lit­tle amused. "Per­haps not in that or­der. But yes, El­der Gol will let you know where you now stand with the Sect. If you have suf­fi­cient Sect points, there will be less need for du­ties, though you will be ex­pect­ed to work dai­ly, ex­cept as ex­cused."

Ki'el just nod­ded. "And where ex­act­ly is this Hall?"

Af­ter re­ceiv­ing the di­rec­tions, Ki'el walked to the near­er well and rinsed her­self off, then took some not-quite-stale bread from the kitchen and walked her way up again. To her dis­ap­point­ment, she got caught in a burst of wind cross­ing the first bridge from the Less­er Sect, and lost her grip on the last bit of her bread--no great loss, but she couldn't deny that she was hun­gry. She was be­gin­ning to un­der­stand how so many of the peo­ple in the Less­er House looked un­der­fed.

On her way up, Ki'el passed Ben Jito, soaked in sweat. The oth­er man ac­tu­al­ly smiled at her and said a few words, call­ing her by name, but didn't pause in his steps even when she did. She watched him go, a bit dis­tressed that even friends seemed so tak­en by the busi­ness of Sect points that they could not fo­cus on any­thing else.

Her mood was some­what sour when she fi­nal­ly crossed the last bridge to the Out­er Sect is­land con­tain­ing the Hall of Earth­en Recita­tion, and she looked ahead to what she knew must be the hall, as it was in­deed rather promi­nent. Though a ring of trees was al­lowed to grow around the wide, three-sto­ried cir­cu­lar hall, and al­though sev­er­al paths led to its many en­trances, there was lit­tle else in the area--no gar­dens or dec­o­ra­tions. All of the en­trances were arch­es with­out doors, and even from a ways away, it be­came clear that the out­er wall was only just that, and there was a sep­a­rate build­ing, equal­ly tall, some twen­ty paces in from it.

The ex­te­ri­or of the Hall was odd. Each of its lev­els had an ex­ter­nal walk­way around, and on every lev­el, there were a se­ries of nooks set back into the build­ing, with var­i­ous craft­ing sta­tions fill­ing them. Not all were manned; at this mo­ment, less than half, and the ones that were filled had only one or two peo­ple at them, work­ing away at some­thing or oth­er with in­tense fo­cus. Her eyes trav­elled across, but there was no con­sis­ten­cy that she could see to the arrange­ment of the sta­tions, or even their types; there were smithing and glass-blow­ing and clay fir­ing sta­tions along­side writ­ing nooks, thread weav­ing, and var­i­ous table crafts that she couldn't see the de­tails of with­out get­ting clos­er.

The en­trance to the in­ner build­ing, though, was large and be­fore her, an arch­way with an open pair of heavy dou­ble doors. Ki'el stepped through with­out care, though she felt a qi pulse run through her as she moved through the doors, and thought she sensed an an­swer­ing pulse from the sect to­ken that Sis­ter Futi had giv­en.

The door led to a long cor­ri­dor, and past that, she was in a room that looked quite sim­i­lar to the build­ing's ex­te­ri­or, ex­cept that the nooks were most­ly tak­en up with stor­age of var­i­ous kinds--most­ly, stacks of bas­kets and chests of draw­ers, but also book­shelves and scroll racks and var­i­ous oth­er shelves. These nooks were both on the in­te­ri­or wall, mean­ing they must mir­ror the arrange­ment on the out­side, but also on a cen­tral col­umn ahead. That col­umn, as well, had a door­way lead­ing fur­ther in, and since Ki'el saw no sign of the El­der or any­thing that seemed like a place to wait or ask ques­tions, she con­tin­ued in, though she felt more ner­vous the longer she went with­out guid­ance.

At least it turned out that the in­te­ri­or of the last col­umn was the cor­rect place to go, as Ki'el came out in a sit­ting room where sev­er­al Dis­ci­ples were wait­ing around. One thin man stood in the ex­act cen­ter, next to a small raised table, but he sim­ply eyed Ki'el and spoke words that she had no doubt he re­peat­ed quite a lot.

"The el­der is cur­rent­ly mak­ing his rounds. I do not know when he will be back. You may wait or re­turn lat­er."

Ki'el nod­ded, and found a seat along a bench, look­ing around, but all of the var­i­ous Dis­ci­ples here were lost in their own thoughts. She looked around, find­ing that the room was sur­pris­ing­ly sparse--she would have thought that the place in the Sect where ac­counts were han­dled would be full of books or scrolls of var­i­ous ac­counts, but it was most­ly bare. There were cir­cles, she not­ed, in the floor and ceil­ing both--this room was at most a sin­gle sto­ry in height--that she sus­pect­ed might open for the right peo­ple, though there were no ob­vi­ous hinges or mech­a­nisms, only scripts that Ki'el could not read.

She glanced them over any­way, and when sec­onds be­came min­utes, asked Kuli if she un­der­stood the writ­ing.

{ I un­der­stand more about qi in­scrip­tions than you or I should ad­mit to any­one, } Kuli replied. { I do not think it would be wise to teach you right now, but your thoughts are most­ly cor­rect. The cir­cle in the ceil­ing is a door, and the one in the floor is a dif­fer­ent kind of pas­sage, one that takes ac­tive qi use to pass. }

Ki'el con­sid­ered that, but ac­cept­ed that she was too young and too ju­nior to the Sect to show more than pass­ing in­ter­est in com­pli­cat­ed qi in­scrip­tions, es­pe­cial­ly if they ei­ther led to the El­der's pri­vate spaces--or to sealed stor­age of some kind.

With noth­ing more use­ful to do, as she wait­ed, Ki'el prac­ticed mak­ing pure aether threads and let­ting them go, con­ceal­ing the ac­tion be­hind her laced fin­gers as she sat there. As she had more or less un­der­stood, it was very tricky to try to cre­ate the threads to a spe­cif­ic length or thick­ness, es­pe­cial­ly since she could not try to use in­tent to do so--that would con­t­a­m­i­nate the re­sult and make them use­less for her pur­pos­es. In­stead, she strug­gled to fix her thread cre­ation process it­self, so that she could gath­er and cre­ate a cer­tain amount of aether a time, emit­ting it at a steady rate. In the­o­ry, if she cre­at­ed enough aether cy­cles... not only could she use them to cre­ate some kind of greater cy­cle, but she could cer­tain­ly find use for all the spare aether. She wasn't sure ex­act­ly what that was, but doubt­less they could be used to ac­cli­ma­tize her body; that was doubt­less what Sobon had done.

{ It is, } Kuli con­firmed, { But you will want to at­tune your body to qi more than aether. They do be­have dif­fer­ent­ly. }

Ki'el didn't re­spond to that, and sim­ply con­tin­ued practicing for a while, be­fore at last the sound of the oth­er Dis­ci­ples salut­ing brought Ki'el out of her trance, and she dis­missed her last aether threads and stood, find­ing El­der Gol there, his eyes for now fo­cus­ing on the peo­ple be­fore him.

Ki'el let the oth­ers go first, and each of them made sim­ple re­quests--for re­sources, or to trans­fer Points to some­one else, and one sim­ply asked his ex­act Point to­tal, which the El­der must have con­veyed with in­tent, be­cause Ki'el heard noth­ing.

When the Dis­ci­ples that had been wait­ing were all ad­dressed, Ki'el stepped for­ward, of­fer­ing the salute that the oth­ers had. "El­der Gol."

"Xoi Doua Ki'el." El­der Gol turned to look at her, and Ki'el felt strange. Every time that she had seen the El­der, he had moved slow­ly and let his eyes range over every­thing near­by--she was sure that he was see­ing be­yond, some­how, and now his eyes trav­elled over her like she was noth­ing more than a near­by bush, and she felt cer­tain that his qi, or some spe­cif­ic na­ture of qi that he held, was ded­i­cat­ed to see­ing through things, iden­ti­fy­ing them, know­ing them. She shiv­ered, but de­spite that, had he not been at­tacked by an Out­er Dis­ci­ple? Sure­ly he was not sim­ply able to see every­thing a per­son was.

Kuli prod­ded Ki'el back into fo­cus, and she bowed. "Yes, El­der. I was told that there was a for­fei­ture...? I do not know how any of this works yet, my apolo­gies."

"Hm," El­der Gol con­tin­ued to stare, but only for a mo­ment. "Xan Bu and Man Di have both for­feit­ed their en­tire pres­ence in the Sect, and their points and re­source reser­va­tions have both been as­signed as for­feit, ben­e­fit­ing the ag­griev­ed. Pri­or to the for­fei­ture," he went silent, and Ki'el caught his in­tent. [ You had four Sect Points from nor­mal ser­vices, plus six­ty from Mai Han Du, for un­spec­i­fied ser­vices, totaling six­ty four. ] "With the for­fei­ture..." [ You are at three-hun­dred and sev­en­teen Sect Points, and have reser­va­tions for the fol­low­ing: Sev­en grams of cloud-pil­lar sil­ver; six Less­er Cir­cu­la­tion herb pills, four Less­er Spir­it Gems, ten Low Spir­it Crys­tals, and three Mel­low Riv­er Herbs, and the ser­vices of a Less­er In­scrip­tion­ist for up to two hours. Ad­di­tion­al­ly, the for­fei­ture in­cludes one Less­er Space Ring, how­ev­er, its con­tents are sill be­ing stud­ied, due to the na­ture of the in­ci­dent. A sub­sti­tute, with­out con­tents, may be re­quest­ed. ]

Ki'el was as­ton­ished at the haul. "Xan Bu had all of that?"

"No. Xan Bu trans­ferred many of the Sect Points and re­sources he gained to oth­ers. Man Di was one of the peo­ple with whom he trad­ed." There was no hu­mor or irony in the El­der's voice, only facts. "Xan Bu him­self ac­count­ed for only," [Sev­en­teen Sect Points and one Less­er Spir­it Gem.]

Ki'el swal­lowed, but nod­ded. "I would like the Sect Points from the for­fei­ture split even­ly be­tween my­self and Da Chi­an."

"Done. You stand at," [ One hun­dred and nine­ty one Sect Points. ]

Ki'el nod­ded, and--as much to prac­tice as any­thing--formed a mes­sage with crude in­tent and passed it to the El­der. [ Would like sub­sti­tute Space Ring now. ]

"Very well." The El­der moved to the cir­cle in the floor. "Wait here."

Ki'el was watch­ing as close­ly as she could when the El­der reached the ring in the floor, but even with that, she could not un­der­stand quite what she saw. She had ex­pect­ed the El­der to sim­ply sink into the stone floor, but in­stead, the space around him seemed to bend, and he es­sen­tial­ly fold­ed into the floor. Ki'el blinked, try­ing to keep that im­age in mind, though in a strange way it seemed to re­mind her of Sobon's space ma­nip­u­lat­ing demon­stra­tion for Lai Shi Po.

Then... was that re­al­ly so strange? Per­haps this was one of the Space Qi pro­jects that Lai Shi Po was in­ter­est­ed in here.

{ It is a nat­ur­al vari­a­tion on space ma­nip­u­la­tion tech­niques, which re­lies on spe­cif­ic qi na­tures, } Kuli an­swered. { I do not think Lai Shi Po would study it, be­cause it is not pure. }

It was only a few mo­ments be­fore the El­der re­turned, a space ring hovering above his fin­gers. "If you re­quire train­ing in the use of Space Rings, it can be pur­chased. I trust you are aware that these are not the ad­vanced rings that you have have been ex­posed to from Lai Shi Po."

"I am aware, and I have used such a ring on an as­sign­ment. Thank you, El­der Gol." She ac­cept­ed the ring, but frowned. "El­der... what is the cost of at­tempt­ing to pass the Gold­en Wall?"

"It is one hun­dred Sect Points per at­tempt." The El­der only paused briefly. "You will not be per­mit­ted to make an at­tempt be­fore the end of your first month. Ad­di­tion­al­ly, it is rec­om­mend­ed that you set aside an ad­di­tion­al six­ty points. This is to en­sure that you can af­ford the med­ical care that may be re­quired from a suc­cess­ful, or es­pe­cial­ly, an un­suc­cess­ful at­tempt."

"Ah." Broth­er Yong had said noth­ing about Sect Points as pay­ment. "Are all med­ical ser­vices to be paid for?"

"You pay for any heal­ing caused by your own ac­tion. If you re­quire heal­ing due to no fault of your own, you will not be re­quired to pay. Your re­cent med­ical ex­pens­es were paid for by Moi Xe, the per­son who in­jured you." Ki'el blinked, not hav­ing any idea who that was. "I would not rec­om­mend in­sist­ing that you are not at fault for mis­takes. The in­quiry in­ves­ti­ga­tions in such mat­ters are thor­ough and un­com­pro­mis­ing. Do you have oth­er ques­tions?"

Ki'el thought she sensed ir­ri­ta­tion in the El­der, and in truth, she was con­tent for now, so she bowed and thanked the El­der, and walked away.

She was not near­ly far enough away to be un­able to hear, when the man who had been fill­ing space in the room spoke scorn­ful­ly and loud­ly be­hind her. "Who in the hell was that?"

"A promis­ing, and very strange new ar­rival," El­der Gol said, in a low­er voice that Ki'el was sure she should not have heard. What­ev­er was said be­yond that... did not sim­i­lar­ly reach her ears.

Ki'el put it out of mind, and put on the space ring, find­ing it emp­ty, as she had ex­pect­ed. And she felt a lit­tle ex­cite­ment go through her, know­ing that the wind­fall should help at least one of her friends es­cape the Less­er House. And de­pend­ing--

"Ah," Ki'el re­al­ized, paus­ing in the space out­er hall­way. "I should have asked what the med­i­cines and stones did." She glanced back over her shoul­der, but shook her head. An­oth­er time. Or per­haps oth­ers will know.

So she con­tin­ued on, won­der­ing just what the oth­ers would say.