"I'm not sure what most of those do," said Xoi Xam, when Ki'el next had the op­por­tu­ni­ty to speak with her about the med­i­cines she was due to re­ceive. "Though I'm pret­ty sure that Spir­it Crys­tals and Spir­it Gems are ex­act­ly what they sound like--stones in which a lit­tle qi has been stored, nat­u­ral­ly or through ef­fort. Whether 'Less­er' or 'Low' is bet­ter, you'd have to ask some­one." She gave Ki'el a wary look, one Ki'el wasn't en­tire­ly sure she could read. "I'm not sure whether to be proud or up­set you didn't bring some with you in your new Space Ring. A ring should pro­tect its con­tents well, but... it would be easy for peo­ple at our lev­el to waste re­sources. Very easy."

"It did not seem wise to take things sim­ply to have them with me," ad­mit­ted Ki'el. "Not with­out know­ing the first thing about what they were, how to han­dle them, or whether they would even be of use to us. Things like the Sil­ver and the time with the in­scrip­tion­ist were both..." she gri­maced. "They seemed too ad­vanced for us to use."

"And yet too valu­able to just give up," Xam agreed. "You said the cost of an at­tempt to pass the wall was one hun­dred...?"

"But not un­til the first month is com­plet­ed," Ki'el agreed. "And med­ical ex­pens­es are not cov­ered."

"Cru­el. But, to be ex­pect­ed, I sup­pose." She frowned. "You gained a Star Rank in the last day, far faster than I had as­sumed. Do you ex­pect you will be ready to rise by the end of the month?"

Had she? Ki'el had been at Two Gold Stars, and when she closed her eyes to fo­cus on the core with­in her, she dis­cov­ered that, true enough, she now stood at three, of a pos­si­ble ten. She... did not feel dif­fer­ent, but then, she had felt dif­fer­ent when adding pu­ri­fied qi to her dant­ian, al­though it had not im­me­di­ate­ly added to her rank­ing at the time. She had... ex­pect­ed, per­haps, that she would feel much stronger as she pushed through the rank­ing, but... then, if that were true, Xoi Xam would be worlds ahead of her.

"I don't know," Ki'el said, hon­est­ly, as she re­opened her eyes, watch­ing the woman who watched her. "But I do not wish to leave Mian be­hind, ei­ther. Or Da Chi­an."

Xam seemed to hes­i­tate, glanc­ing around. The two had met on the road lead­ing out of the Less­er House, Ki'el re­turn­ing from a sim­ple man­u­al la­bor job, and Xam leav­ing for an­oth­er. There seemed to be no one else around, not at the mo­ment, though Ki'el felt that there was a dif­fuse sense of an­oth­er's qi.

"It is good to care for your friends," Xam fi­nal­ly said, straight­en­ing and forc­ing her­self back into shape. "And I would feel bet­ter know­ing that Mian will have help with the tri­als that are com­ing. But I wor­ry about you lin­ger­ing here, Ki'el. You made en­e­mies far too ear­ly."

The voice that seemed to come from nowhere made Ki'el jump, though she didn't think that Xam re­act­ed so bad­ly. "En­e­mies?" Ki'el found, be­hind her, the woman in the red dress who had been wait­ing by the en­trance when Broth­er Du had brought them by--Sis­ter Lan Wu, Ki'el re­called. "Per­haps with some, though there will al­ways be those grate­ful to see... im­ped­i­ments re­moved."

Lan Wu was, at the mo­ment, lean­ing her shoul­der against a tree, far too far into the woods to look nat­ur­al, giv­en her dress. She did not, this time, have a pa­per fan, though Ki'el not­ed one of her hands was be­hind her back, and what seemed like a sheathed blade was leaned against the tree, half con­cealed by her legs.

"There is no ques­tion that Xan Bu was an im­ped­i­ment," Xam agreed, her voice too smooth and po­lite for Ki'el to see it as nat­ur­al. But then... Sis­ter Wu was no dif­fer­ent, in that re­gard. Ki'el frowned, re­call­ing the woman had put qi into her voice, be­fore, though she didn't sense any­thing at this mo­ment. Still, she pushed a lit­tle right­eous aether through her spir­it, notic­ing no dif­fer­ence.

"Many of those who re­main here be­come warped by the strug­gle," Lan Wu pushed away from the tree, leav­ing her blade be­hind. "It is all too easy, es­pe­cial­ly for us no­bles." Ki'el no­ticed, with a start, that Lan Wu's at­ten­tion was en­tire­ly on Xoi Xam, though she wasn't sure why that felt note­wor­thy. "We are raised to be use­ful tools, for our fam­i­ly and our na­tion, and here we are treat­ed as use­less. While it makes some sense for the wor­thi­est to rise to the top... it is an in­sult to sug­gest that we are un­wor­thy of more re­sources than we are giv­en." She moved di­rect­ly up to Xam, cross­ing her arms over her chest, and met the oth­er woman's eyes unashamed­ly. "And we do need more than we are giv­en. You are al­ready dis­cov­er­ing that, are you not?"

Ki'el could sense the ten­sion in Xam, and placed a hand on her shoul­der, press­ing a lit­tle Right­eous Aether into the woman through the con­nec­tion. Xam didn't star­tle at the touch, but did seem con­fused and up­set by the aether--though whether that was the aether push­ing out a qi ef­fect, or sim­ply her not un­der­stand­ing the sen­sa­tion, Ki'el wasn't sure. Af­ter a mo­ment, though, Xam firmed her re­solve, and Ki'el let her hand drop. "I've been here a cou­ple days, Sis­ter Wu. I would be a com­plete fool if I ex­pect­ed to be hand­ed re­sources with­out ask­ing for them or work­ing hard to achieve them."

"Is that how you were taught?" Lan Wu tilt­ed her head slight­ly. "You are of the Xoi Trad­ing Fam­i­ly, are you not?"

"I am," Xoi Xam an­swered, though Ki'el thought she sound­ed wary, again.

"Are they not al­ready ex­pect­ing great things of you? Are you not ex­pect­ed to rise to the top with the re­sources they have in­vest­ed in you?" The woman's head tilt­ed back. "We rec­og­nize our own kind here, Sis­ter Xam. You have high ex­pec­ta­tions of your­self, and you see the lack of re­sources for what they are: they treat us as all as com­mon peo­ple, here. At first, I thought it was a no­ble cause--en­sur­ing that the hot-head­ed fools burn out ear­ly, and the lazy and ig­no­rant are taught their place. But even those with the strength and tal­ent to rise are de­nied the re­sources nec­es­sary."

Ki'el found her­self giv­ing the woman an un­pleas­ant look, only notic­ing when Kuli forced her way into her thoughts. { You are not mis­tak­en, } the aug­ment said, { but you are too ob­vi­ous in your dis­trust. Try to keep an even ap­pear­ance. }

So Ki'el turned away, re­al­iz­ing that her face had be­come pinched with her ir­ri­ta­tion, and she did what she could to ease up the ten­sion. Why does this woman think that re­sources are nec­es­sary to rise? As though this is sim­ply the na­ture of things?

{ I am not ed­u­cat­ed in the ways of this world, } Kuli an­swered, { but it seems most like­ly to be her­itage, or tal­ent. A child of oth­ers who only rose be­cause they were giv­en enough re­sources to as­sure it, and in turn is giv­en what she re­quired. Per­haps she could rise fur­ther if she fo­cused on her tal­ent in­stead of re­sources, but if that is not what she was taught... }

Ki'el fo­cused on her breath­ing as Kuli, some­how, evened out her think­ing even as her words made Ki'el more an­noyed. Yes, most like­ly, the woman was ex­cus­ing her own lack of tal­ent--but it was an in­her­i­tance from her fam­i­ly, per­haps. Ki'el let the ir­ri­ta­tion pass, for now, not­ing that Xam had made some oth­er de­fense of her own, as-yet, lack of anger at the Sect.

"You will see," was all Lan Wu said in clos­ing, be­fore turn­ing back to the tree and snatch­ing up her sheathed weapon, then walk­ing away. The woman didn't even sound an­noyed, or re­sent­ful, as though she didn't see the con­ver­sa­tion as a loss, though Ki'el thought that it was. She shook her head, turn­ing back to Xam, but her friend had a se­ri­ous look on her face as well.

"It is not all about re­sources," Ki'el said. "There are ways."

Xoi Xam glanced at her, and the se­ri­ous look eased. "Re­sources are more than stones, Ki'el. 'Re­sources' in a sect in­cludes time with in­struc­tors, ac­cess to scrolls and books of meth­ods and tech­niques." She low­ered her voice by a lot, so that Ki'el had to work to pick out the words against the rustling of the trees. "Your Kuli is a great re­source that you were kind enough to share last night. Those with­out such re­sources strug­gle not only to have enough qi, but to find the an­swers they need."

Ki'el met the oth­er woman's eyes and nod­ded. Xam's fea­tures re­laxed some more in re­sponse, and her voice raised again. "You are kind, Ki'el. And I hope that you find oth­er good and wor­thy peo­ple to raise up with the re­sources you have ac­cess to. But don't mis­take that what she said is true. I have been ask­ing around about the cost of in­struc­tion, and it is not cheap. Even an hour of in­struc­tion from some­one in the Out­er Sect is not cheap--ten points for an av­er­age mem­ber of the sect, more for some­one with spe­cial knowl­edge. Ten points is five tasks for us--and only if we ful­ly sat­is­fy the pe­ti­tion­er. That may be very lit­tle time and ef­fort, or it may be hours or even days of it. And one hour of a nor­mal Out­er Sect Dis­ci­ple's time is not much."

Ki'el blinked, not hav­ing looked into any of that. In truth... she didn't know what the val­ue of her la­bor had been, al­though El­der Gol had said she had four points from nor­mal tasks, which had been... two or three tasks, de­pend­ing on how they were re­port­ed to the El­der. And in­struc­tion... Ki'el wasn't even sure how much in­struc­tion from the Sect she re­al­ly need­ed, cer­tain­ly not yet. She had al­ready seen oth­ers, even Broth­er Du, whose an­swers clashed with what Kuli seemed to be­lieve was true.

But Xam was also very ob­vi­ous­ly not wrong. What was the val­ue in be­ing tu­tored by some­one who had not ac­com­plished any­thing but scal­ing the Gold­en Wall? Was the tribu­la­tion re­al­ly so great? Or was in­for­ma­tion sim­ply that scarce?

"I see," Ki'el said slow­ly, as she be­gan to un­der­stand the har­ried look on Xam's face. "That only makes me wish to of­fer more help to you and Mian, and Chi­an, and the oth­ers. Though..." she looked away, in the di­rec­tion Lan Wu had gone, catch­ing her walk­ing through the trees a ways away. "per­haps not all oth­ers."

Xam laughed at that, as Ki'el had hoped she would. "No, Ki'el. Not all oth­ers." Xam pat­ted her shoul­der, af­fec­tion­ate­ly. "I should go to my task. I ex­pect I will med­i­tate alone tonight. See if you can do any­thing for my hus­band."

If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

Ki'el still felt strange to hear Mian spo­ken of in such a way, and felt the small­est flush on her face, but nod­ded and let the woman go. A few min­utes lat­er, she re­turned to see Sis­ter Futi, who had an as­sign­ment for her--clean­ing a roof, of all things, again in the Out­er Sect. Ki'el frowned, but ac­cept­ed the job, find­ing her­self a short while lat­er clean­ing goo that looked sus­pi­cious­ly like the im­pu­ri­ties she had ex­pelled at the start of Sil­ver from ce­ram­ic roof tiles. When she first saw it, she flashed back to the ru­ined clothes and boat from back then, but... with the brush and soaps that the Sect pro­vid­ed her, Ki'el was able to clean the tiles.

With some ef­fort, of course.

It seemed odd to Ki'el, though, and she con­sid­ered the goop as she worked. The mem­bers of the Out­er Sect should not be sig­nif­i­cant­ly more pow­er­ful than... well, at the very least, Ki'el didn't ex­pect them to have been above the last qi lev­el Ki'el had seen Sobon have, and Sobon had not had an­oth­er im­pu­ri­ty purge when she ad­vanced past Ti­ta­ni­um Qi. Per­haps there was an­oth­er purge lat­er with­in the sec­ond phase of Qi... or per­haps, there were pills to do some­thing sim­i­lar?

Was the Out­er Sect filled with peo­ple who had ad­vanced fur­ther than Sobon had? The idea bog­gled her mind. She un­der­stood that Sobon had start­ed at the bot­tom and worked his way up--but he had left her to go fight an army. It was hard, in her mind, to dis­tance the stage of qi that he had at the time from the lev­el of pow­er he dis­played, though she knew that it must be true. Af­ter all... he had start­ed off weak­er than Ki'el was now, and she could un­der­stand that.

Re­sources, Ki'el thought, con­sid­er­ing Xam's words. In that way, Sobon was a trea­sure be­yond all oth­ers, and Ki'el was be­yond lucky to have even a few words of his to guide her. Even so, it felt wrong to use the same word for that in­sight as one did for stone, or lum­ber, or... spir­it stones, or what­ev­er.

{ Peo­ple are not re­sources, or at the very least, not in the same way. } Kuli's state­ment, rather than be­ing dis­tinct from Ki'el's own voice, seemed to be an echo of her own thoughts, help­ing her put them in or­der. { Sobon was giv­en re­sources and ed­u­ca­tion from his own peo­ple, and he can choose who to pass them on to, just as you can choose who you pass your own knowl­edge to. To call peo­ple 're­sources' im­plies a lack of choice on their part; they ex­ist to be used. }

Ki'el nod­ded to her­self, as she scrubbed away at the tiles. Per­haps in a place like this, where knowl­edge and time could be bartered away or sold for points, it made sense to think of peo­ple as not hav­ing the right to choose who they shared their gifts with, but it was not true in gen­er­al. She was for­tu­nate that Sobon cared for her and wished to raise her up... but it re­mained his choice.

Ki'el briefly con­sid­ered whether Kuli had a choice in the mat­ter, but the aug­ment had ex­pressed more than once that it con­sid­ered it­self less than a per­son, and Ki'el, though she felt some­what of­fend­ed by that, could do lit­tle but re­spect its wish­es.

Ki'el's day end­ed with­out fur­ther in­ci­dent, and she glad­ly ate the meal that Mian had once again a hand in cre­at­ing. Al­though she had not seen the oth­er cook again, she heard them oc­ca­sion­al­ly in the kitchen, and the oth­er man's voice was some­what less cut­ting, if still not kind.

In the evening, the three of them, with­out Chi­an, went into the for­est again, though their last camp­site was tak­en by some­one else. Ki'el, con­scious that she felt them be­ing ob­served again, led them fur­ther away, to­wards the edge, and they sat and talked in qui­et voic­es, Ki'el hav­ing asked them with her in­tent to not speak of se­crets. In­stead, they all worked on Qi turn­ing cy­cles, and Ki'el and Kuli helped Mian in par­tic­u­lar with a with dou­ble cy­cle, one that passed his qi out­side his body, where it turned along­side a cy­cle of am­bi­ent qi. Al­though they did not get to a point where Mian's turned qi joined the thorn, ready to re­ab­sorb, the man was be­gin­ning to get the hang of con­trol­ling the flow of his qi out­side of his body.

The next day start­ed qui­et, as every­one scat­tered to their work once again, but when Ki'el re­turned from her first task, she was all but am­bushed by a red-haired fig­ure.

Da Chi­an's form flick­ered slight­ly the mo­ment she spot­ted Ki'el, and they were upon her al­most be­fore she crossed the fi­nal bridge. Ki'el stam­mered a greet­ing, try­ing not to re­coil at the sud­den ap­proach, but Da Chi­an grabbed her and took her aside with an in­sis­tence just short of vi­o­lence.

"What is the mean­ing of giv­ing me your Sect points?" Chi­an's voice quiv­ered, and Ki'el was cer­tain that she saw ears half-ap­pear­ing in their hair. "I have done noth­ing to de­serve this."

"Ah..." Ki'el blinked, try­ing not to fo­cus on the half-ap­pear­ing spir­it flesh. "It is not pay­ment, Da Chi­an. It is a part of the for­fei­ture from Xan Bu."

"I know what it's from," Chi­an said, their voice sound­ing ir­ri­tat­ed. "I'm ask­ing why you gave it to me."

But Ki'el could only stare at them, baf­fled by the ques­tion. "Were you not... also a vic­tom of Xan Bu's abuse?"

"What--" Chi­an's spir­it seemed to surge for a mo­ment, but they forced it down. "Ki'el. Are you re­al­ly say­ing that you gave me those points out of some mis­guid­ed jus­tice?"

"Mis­guid­ed?" Ki'el looked at her friend, strange­ly. "Do you not need them?"

"Need?" Chi­an's spir­it surged again, but again, they fought it back. "Ki'el. I am a be­ing with strong spir­it blood. Do you know what that means?"

Ki'el eyed the spir­it, un­sure of what kind of an­swer they were ex­pect­ing, be­fore shak­ing their head no.

Chi­an stared at her, as though up­set, and fi­nal­ly let out a sigh, al­though their ten­sion didn't seem to ex­act­ly ease. "Fear, Ki'el. It means fear." They raised one hand, and Ki'el could clear­ly see claws ap­pear­ing at the tips of their fin­gers. "We fear oth­ers, oth­ers fear us. It is more than that, true. But spir­it beasts have very strong in­stincts. Hate, fear, love, lust, hunger, need. When peo­ple trig­ger our in­stincts, it makes us ir­ra­tional. And while you may not un­der­stand that, oth­ers do."

Chi­an turned, then, and buried her claws in a near­by tree, for no rea­son that Ki'el could see, or even sense, though it made their anx­i­ety ease, for a few mo­ments at least. Chi­an turned to glare at her, and Ki'el could see plain­ly that their eyes held deep con­fu­sion and un­rest. "I have been trained, Ki'el, from a young age. Trained to be­lieve that every at­tempt to bring my in­stincts to the sur­face is an at­tempt to con­trol me, that it was bet­ter to be an­gry than naive. And they were not wrong. I was pro­posed to be­fore I was five years old. I bare­ly knew how to talk, but a man want­ed me to make a bind­ing promise to mar­ry his son. I only un­der­stood lat­er that I had been kid­napped, and was be­ing fed sweets and told love­ly lies. I only es­caped a ter­ri­ble fate be­cause I re­peat­ed what my par­ents told me to say. Over and over, when they tried to tell me to say some­thing else."

Ki'el swal­lowed, feel­ing ab­solute dread in the pit of her stom­ach. She... could bare­ly re­mem­ber be­ing that young, and cer­tain­ly couldn't un­der­stand the idea of be­ing at­tacked or ma­nip­u­lat­ed at such an age. Would she have been able to de­fend her­self? Would she have even un­der­stood that she need­ed to do so?

Da Chi­an turned to face her, and Ki'el got the strong im­pres­sion once again that they were not a girl, not now. But they sheathed their claws, and Ki'el could sense the faint out­line of a tail be­hind them. "I think I be­lieve that you mean it, when you say felt that you should do it. But do not gift me things with­out speak­ing to me first. It feels like..." Chi­an's face twist­ed into a gri­mace, a tense look that did not look good on them. "...chains."

Ki'el looked down. "You are not bound to me, Da Chi­an, and I will nev­er at­tempt to bind you." She looked back up, able again to glimpse the shad­ow of their spir­it tail be­hind them. She glanced away and around, see­ing no one, but un­sure she could see things well enough to be cer­tain. "Ah... and your tail is show­ing, a lit­tle."

"Prob­a­bly," Chi­an said, let­ting their spir­it ease up a bit. "I can feel it, so I'm not sur­prised. It's at least dis­guised, right?"

"It's bare­ly there," Ki'el ad­mit­ted. "I just... don't know how sen­si­tive oth­ers would be."

"Prob­a­bly less than you." Chi­an took a deep breath, and for a mo­ment, their tail flick­ered into ex­is­tence ful­ly, but then it van­ished, along with her ears and claws. Chi­an took sev­er­al more deep breaths, but when she looked back at Ki'el, her face was still se­ri­ous. "I am se­ri­ous, Ki'el. There are times when I can­not con­trol my in­stincts, and I will not let my­self be con­trolled. Things like that... when I do not un­der­stand what is hap­pen­ing, I can some­times..."

The look on Chi­an's face shift­ed, sud­den­ly, and she looked away, her face red­den­ing with sud­den em­bar­rass­ment. "I... guess I can some­times be re­al­ly stu­pid," she said. "I guess it makes sense that you aren't an en­e­my. And you're right, the for­fei­ture should prob­a­bly have come to me, along with... a few oth­ers that were ha­rassed by Xan Bu. But it... I..." Chi­an sud­den­ly ran her fin­gers through her hair and shook it out, the tan­gled red waves be­com­ing only more chaot­ic in the process. "Aargh. I don't know. This is stu­pid. I'm stu­pid. I'm sor­ry, Ki'el."

"You have noth­ing to be sor­ry for," Ki'el said, do­ing her best to sound gen­uine and not at all con­flict­ed or afraid. Pri­vate­ly... she knew that she was spooked by Chi­an's sud­den ac­tion, and ap­pre­ci­at­ed the apol­o­gy, but know­ing Chi­an's his­to­ry made it hard for her to think of her own com­fort first. In­stead of con­fronting the thought, she de­cid­ed to force a change in sub­ject. "Did you make any progress try­ing to cul­ti­vate in the new way?"

Chi­an paused in her at­tempts to comb her fin­gers through her hair to smooth it out a bit. "The new way? Oh." She looked away. "I... got dis­tract­ed last night. I was think­ing about that whole 'tail cen­ter' thing, but I didn't try to ac­tu­al­ly con­trol my qi with it. The idea that I nat­u­ral­ly 'speak' to my own spir­it, or to oth­er spir­its, is in­ter­est­ing. But it was dif­fi­cult to put into prac­tice, be­cause that feels wrong."

Kuli pushed a thought at Ki'el, who re­peat­ed it, though she felt like she didn't quite trans­late the thought cor­rect­ly. "Were you think­ing about us­ing your tail as a voice?"

"As a voice?" Chi­an's re­ply sound­ed ob­vi­ous­ly con­fused.

"Ah, sor­ry. Kuli..." Ki'el paused, try­ing to sense if any­one was around, and de­cid­ed against con­tin­u­ing, when she couldn't be sure. "I am try­ing to say that your tail is a part of how you com­mu­ni­cate. Com­mu­ni­cat­ing for you should in­volve it, some­how. Though... I do not un­der­stand ex­act­ly, my­self."

Chi­an con­tin­ued to stare at her, and Ki'el won­dered if what she had said made any sense, be­fore at last there was a light in the oth­er girl's fea­tures. "Ah," she said. "In­stincts. Right."

Kuli seemed like that was a cor­rect an­swer, but Ki'el asked any­way. "In­stincts?"

"Sor­ry. You're prob­a­bly right not to speak about things now, but..." she ges­tured to­wards the Less­er House, and be­gan walk­ing. "They are used for com­mu­ni­cat­ing. Real ones, I mean, and spir­it ones as well, but they are more... pos­ture and in­tent, rather than words. To be in a cer­tain pos­ture or state is to con­vey cer­tain things about how you un­der­stand the sit­u­a­tion."

Da Chi­an paused, then, and con­sid­ered, and cre­at­ed a small qi ball be­tween her fin­gers, study­ing it. Then, care­ful­ly, she shift­ed her spir­it slight­ly, and then flicked the qi ball at a near­by bush.

Ki'el... could not tell what just hap­pened, but Chi­an seemed sat­is­fied.

"I think," she said qui­et­ly as she moved, "I can change the in­tent of my qi af­ter it has left me. It's small, but... per­haps it is for the best that I think more about this. It might be very use­ful."

Ki'el felt a strong urge to pat the oth­er girl on the shoul­der sup­por­t­ive­ly, but couldn't stop her­self from hes­i­tat­ing. In the end, though, she did, and Chi­an seemed to re­spond well to the ges­ture. But Ki'el... be­gan to un­der­stand that it would be dif­fi­cult be­ing friends with Da Chi­an. She had no idea what might set her off in the fu­ture.

She sup­posed she would just need to ask, and learn, and do what she could to as­sure Chi­an of her good in­ten­tions go­ing for­ward.