Ki'el, in the days that fol­lowed, prac­ticed speak­ing with in­tent to try to con­vey sub­tleties to Mian and Xam about her cul­ti­va­tion method, and theirs. Al­though she felt it was a use­ful skill... nei­ther of them seemed par­tic­u­lar­ly keen to try to learn the method them­selves. It was, she sup­posed, a method nei­ther tru­ly need­ed right now, and it would only be a dis­trac­tion for ei­ther of them--and yet, Ki'el did not feel it was a dis­trac­tion for her.

Part of that was that she could do it when she was do­ing oth­er things, even at times when she didn't feel com­fort­able speak­ing aloud. When she had time to her­self, she most­ly spent it on her qi turn­ing cy­cle, and she was be­gin­ning to tru­ly re­fine the method--and im­prov­ing her yield in the process. By the end of the third day, af­ter she had last met Chi­an, Ki'el ac­tu­al­ly felt com­fort­able start­ing a large qi turn­ing cir­cle, then con­ceal­ing the ring with­in her spir­it, as she did the aether rings. This might--no, def­i­nite­ly would--have be­trayed the point of the pu­rifi­caiton ring, but Kuli promised that she could iso­late the im­pu­ri­ties and con­tain them for her, al­low­ing her to dump them all out lat­er.

Ki'el wasn't ex­act­ly sure why Kuli drew the line there, when it came to help­ing, but ap­pre­ci­at­ed it. She did tru­ly feel a sense of em­pow­er­ment and ac­com­plish­ment to be cul­ti­vat­ing pow­er even as she worked at oth­er things, al­though un­like the aether rings, her qi turn­ing ring did take some of her con­cen­tra­tion. She was pleased when all three of her re­questers for the day seemed en­tire­ly un­con­cerned when she found a need to stop and ad­just some­thing in her spir­it, and one even en­cour­aged her when she ex­plained it briefly as work­ing on 'a tech­nique'.

"Good for you," he said, sound­ing like he meant it, as Ki'el worked at re­pair­ing a weath­er-dam­aged seal around a win­dow. The con­cen­tra­tion she had need­ed in mak­ing sure every small crack and crevice was filled with seal­ing com­pound had mo­men­tar­i­ly desta­bi­lized the ring, but it was not dif­fi­cult to re­store. "Few of my peers, even my 'bet­ters' at the time, re­al­ly found the mo­ti­va­tion to con­tin­ue im­prov­ing them­selves as they worked. I sup­pose it's a mat­ter of sta­mi­na--be­fore they got into the Sect prop­er, and had to go through the ex­er­cis­es, many of them seemed to think they al­ready had all the dis­ci­pline and sta­mi­na they need­ed." He snort­ed. "Watch­ing them suf­fer through ex­er­cis­es for years af­ter­wards might have been more amus­ing, if I had been much bet­ter. I still felt a warm glow from see­ing them sweat, though."

Ki'el, wise­ly, didn't com­ment any more on that.

Once Ki'el was con­fi­dent she was able to keep the qi turn­ing cy­cle turn­ing all through­out the day, she be­gan to feed it with­out claim­ing her boun­ty of pu­ri­fied qi. It was not re­aly nec­es­sary, but it did feel much bet­ter to not wor­ry about re­veal­ing her tech­nique in pub­lic or leav­ing it idle when it could be work­ing. Her ben­e­fits, of course, were sub­stan­tial--in only a few days time, she found her­self at six Gold Stars, up from three, and her core felt sub­stan­tial­ly dif­fer­ent.

Mian, in the same time, was also ad­vanc­ing, and Ki'el found him to be at Sil­ver 8 when she re­turned. The man, though, seemed strange­ly dis­con­tent.

Al­though the look he gave her when she asked struck Ki'el as though he want­ed to avoid the top­ic, he re­lent­ed quick­ly. "It's the qi turn­ing cy­cle," he said. "It's not that it's not work­ing. It is. But I feel like it's spend­ing more en­er­gy and time try­ing to pull bad qi out of me, rather than gath­er­ing qi from the en­vi­ron­ment."

"Isn't that good?" Ki'el itched at the very con­cept of hav­ing bad qi with­in her­self, though in truth, she hadn't tried to turn her own in­ter­nal qi. She only hoped it would be pure.

"If it were a tech­nique Sobon gave you di­rect­ly, I would be cer­tain of it," Mian ad­mit­ted, his voice sound­ing a bit stressed. "And... I can rec­og­nize that Kuli con­tains some of his wis­dom. I just... have doubts. And I'm not sure that I see, or feel, a dif­fer­ence. I'm sure that what­ev­er 'bad' qi means, it's bet­ter that I don't have it. But... what if it's sim­ply wrong? What if I'm sim­ply grind­ing away at some part of my own spir­it that re­al­ly should be there?"

{ From my un­der­stand­ing of his his­to­ry, } Kuli whis­pered into Ki'el's mind, { that is un­like­ly. He has spent many years with lit­tle ad­vance­ment and much men­tal and spir­i­tu­al con­flict. The qi that he gath­ered in those years would be far too im­pure for the tran­si­tion to Sil­ver Qi to ful­ly purge. }

Ki'el would not have made any such judge­ment, but it did match her un­der­stand­ing of Mian, Lui, and Alas­si's his­to­ry to­geth­er. Mian, chas­ing a younger Alas­si--the woman whose body Sobon had tak­en--had fall­en into de­spair when he found her be­trayed, bro­ken, and de­spair­ing. Al­though his spir­its picked up again when Sobon took over... the fact that Alas­si was tru­ly gone, and Sobon was not her, was cer­tain­ly also a shock.

What could all of that do to a man's qi? Was a sim­ple pu­rifi­ca­tion tech­nique re­al­ly enough to shake it off?

"I think you should con­tin­ue," was all Ki'el could say. "What­ev­er was in your qi be­fore, you did not have any tech­niques or way to use it. You were not taught in­tent or qi na­tures, so what would you be los­ing?"

Mian stopped in his gath­er­ing of wood for their camp­fire and stood there, think­ing to him­self, or per­haps just feel­ing. "I don't know," he said af­ter a mo­ment, con­tin­u­ing. "But I do feel like I'm los­ing some­thing."

Ki'el gave him a look, but the more she saw and sensed of him, the more she was con­vinced that the man had some­thing buried with­in him, per­haps some­thing ugly. "Some­thing?"

"I don't know," he said. "But I also don't dis­agree, Ki'el. Don't get me wrong." He picked up one more chunk of wood and turned back to­wards the fire pit. "What's in my past isn't wis­dom or qi tech­niques, hero­ism or grand ad­ven­tures. In some ways, I could wish it would all dis­ap­pear. But it also scares me to think that some­thing is chang­ing, es­pe­cial­ly be­cause of a tech­nique I don't even un­der­stand."

That, Ki'el could ac­cept, though when she met him by the fire, the man proved un­will­ing to speak more on the top­ic. So Ki'el un­veiled her qi cy­cle, which only had a thin line of qi still turn­ing, and a rather large thorn. She sum­moned the thorn it­self to her hand, feel­ing the con­tained qi, and con­sid­ered it for a long time, silent­ly. She... un­der­stood that the qi thorn it­self was near­ly a tech­nique, though what she could do with it was a mys­tery. Or rather, she knew that she had to take qi from the thorn and ap­ply in­tent. But what?

Or rather... it couldn't be that sim­ple, could it?

Ki'el looked at the fire that Xam had be­gun, and pulled light­ly from the qi thorn, fo­cus­ing on one par­tic­u­lar stick in the fire, and fo­cus­ing on the in­tent of [nat­ur­al fire]. Al­though it was a dif­fer­ent process to "speak" her in­tent to the qi, she could feel some­thing shift in the qi in her hand. As long as she held it there... noth­ing seemed to change. So she pro­ject­ed the qi at the stick.

Again, noth­ing changed.

Ki'el frowned, but not be­cause she was sur­prised. She had only in­tend­ed for the qi to car­ry an un­der­stand­ing of fire; she had not giv­en it any in­tent to ac­cel­er­ate or cause fire. If any­thing, her qi seemed to dis­si­pate harm­less­ly, which... is what she would ex­pect, if her qi re­al­ly had no stray in­tent to it. She pulled an­oth­er mote of qi, charg­ing it with the in­tent-speech of nat­ur­al fire.

"Be care­ful," she heard Xam say, and glanced at the woman. Xam was not a talk­a­tive woman, and Ki'el trust­ed her, but...

No, no buts. Ki'el took a deep breath, and stood up, back­ing away from the fire. In­stead of se­lect­ing a larg­er stick, she picked out a sin­gle coal with­in the fire, and chose that with her in­tent. That, that will burn. She flicked the qi to­wards the fire--

The tiny ex­plo­sion caught her off-guard, de­spite the warn­ing, and she jerked back re­flex­ive­ly. It wasn't enough to scat­ter the whole camp­fire, but small bits of flam­ing twig and char­coal danced away, and it had seemed to blow straight in her face, de­spite her stand­ing sev­er­al feet away. But when she blinked away the spots, there was a clear spot where the coal had been, and... not a lot else.

"That was too much qi," groused Xam, lean­ing over to put out a bit of flam­ing twig that had es­caped the fire pit. "If you're go­ing to ex­per­i­ment, you should use a lot less."

"Sor­ry," Ki'el said, glanc­ing around for oth­er burn­ing bits. "I... have nev­er used a qi tech­nique be­fore."

Xam paused and looked at her. "Did Kuli teach you that?"

"No," Ki'el said, then thought bet­ter of it. "Not ex­act­ly. I used the un­der­stand­ing of nat­ur­al fire she gave me. But all I did--"

"All you did was ap­ply in­sight, in­tent, and qi, and cre­ate a tech­nique." Xam's tone was... dif­fi­cult to un­der­stand, or per­haps Ki'el was sim­ply still wired from the flash. "That is how tech­niques work, Ki'el."

"But it's not na­tured qi," she protest­ed, un­sure of ex­act­ly why she felt the need to ar­gue any point here. "It's sim­ply--"

"It's sim­ply a tech­nique," Xam re­peat­ed. "Ki'el--peo­ple de­vel­op na­tured qi in or­der to spe­cial­ize. But tech­niques don't re­quire na­tured qi. They re­quire what the qi con­tains. Na­tured qi is qi that stores in­sight into an el­e­ment, a phe­nom­e­non, a type, a crea­ture, a thing. It ex­ists so that we do not need to mem­o­rize the na­ture of things, in in­tent form, in or­der to per­form tech­niques."

Ki'el looked over at Mian, but he wasn't pay­ing at­ten­tion to her or to Xam, in­stead star­ing into the fire, seem­ing­ly a world away.

I didn't mem­o­rize it, Ki'el want­ed to protest, but she sat down in­stead. It felt... wrong, to ad­mit that she was us­ing Kuli, and the space with­in Sobon's gift, to per­form such a tech­nique. It felt more wrong to ad­mit it than it felt to con­ceal it, and she wasn't sure why. Was she scared that some­one might over­hear? That they would look at her dif­fer­ent­ly?

"If you want to spend your time learn­ing about fire, that is up to you," Xam con­tin­ued af­ter a few mo­ments of si­lence, "but I don't think it fits you, Ki'el. You have al­ways been straight, like a sword. Per­haps some form of Sword Qi would be bet­ter for you."

"Why would qi--" Ki'el stopped, and shook her head. "As long as I have my sword, I don't need to use qi to do the same thing."

"Are you re­al­ly sure you want to bring out your sword when­ev­er there is dan­ger?" Xam's voice sound­ed a lit­tle sharp, and Ki'el looked at her, sur­prised that the woman was mak­ing such an ar­gu­ment right now. Shouldn't you be telling me to fo­cus on my cul­ti­va­tion first? Or are you that con­fi­dent-- Well, re­al­ly, Ki'el was also con­fi­dent that she could pass the Gold­en Wall, and prob­a­bly well be­fore the month was fin­ished. "Your bar­ri­er stones are a dif­fer­ent ver­sion of the same tech­nique, are they not?" she con­tin­ued. "You should more ful­ly learn the tech­nique. And..." her voice dropped. "We... re­al­ly need to take the time to re­place that floor."

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Ki'el, in truth, had grown used to sleep­ing on her aether bar­ri­er, while Xam and Mian slept to­geth­er on the wood of their room. It was... it had long since stopped feel­ing like a room, that space that they were oc­cu­py­ing. It was a place they were forced to sleep, a camp­site. She did her best not to think about it, and since none of them were in­ter­est­ed in stay­ing there ex­cept to sleep...

Is it pos­si­ble to sim­ply cre­ate bar­ri­ers like that with qi? She di­rect­ed the thought to Kuli.

{ Of course, } her aug­ment replied. { You could per­form a crude ver­sion right now, with the un­der­stand­ing you have. But the floor and sword are built from pure con­cepts, raw geom­e­try. If you wish to spec­i­fy the bar­ri­er's lo­ca­tion with in­tent, it needs to ei­ther be very spe­cif­ic--or the re­sult will be very crude. }

Ki'el un­der­stood that, and con­sid­ered, hold­ing out her hand be­fore her. She... no, she re­fused to ex­per­i­ment so crude­ly, not with the same tech­nique that could cre­ate her sword. In­stead, she closed her eyes and tried to sum­mon up the in­tent of the bar­ri­er. She... didn't have it all in mind, but she didn't ask Kuli to help. She sim­ply thought about what she knew, and about the sym­bol and its in­tent, the one that even Lai Shi Po had ac­knowl­edged. She tried to gath­er and arrange her thoughts, but she end­ed the night un­sat­is­fied.

The next day might eas­i­ly have been more of the same, but Ki'el was sur­prised to re­ceive a late-morn­ing job from the In­ner Sect. Per­haps she should not have been quite so sur­prised--al­though Sis­ter Futi gave her no de­tails at all, Ki'el, as she walked her way up the is­lands of the Moon­stone Is­land Sect, very quick­ly was able to pin the blame for the as­sign­ment on Broth­er Du, and when she ar­rived, she was not dis­ap­point­ed. He, and three oth­er In­ner Sect dis­ci­ples, were all sit­ting on a set of stone bench­es be­neath a very beau­ti­ful tree, speak­ing in a tongue that Ki'el did not know or could not un­der­stand at all.

When she came close, though, a bub­ble seemed to burst, and Broth­er Du waved her over. "Broth­ers and sis­ter, this is Ju­nior Sis­ter Ki'el." Du nod­ded to her, then waved around the cir­cle. "This is Broth­er Kam, Broth­er Bon, Broth­er Juno, and Sis­ter Xari."

Ki'el bowed to them all po­lite­ly. "Good morn­ing, Sect Broth­ers and Sect Sis­ter."

"I heard from Sis­ter Futi that you seem to have sta­bi­lized your qi tech­nique some," Broth­er Du said, and Ki'el thought that ad­mis­sion was quite shame­less, since Sis­ter Futi had nev­er born wit­ness to the tech­nique her­self. Al­though Ki'el had known that Sis­ter Futi ob­served much, and had im­plied she knew that... she wasn't sure it was some­thing that even Broth­er Du should be speak­ing of so flip­pant­ly. But then, per­haps every­one here had al­ready known?

"I have been work­ing on it," Ki'el agreed, draw­ing her qi ring from with­in her spir­it. "It is... still in­com­plete, and will be for a long time. But I be­lieve it is sta­ble enough, un­til I can achieve the..." she paused, un­sure how to com­plete the sen­tence. "...the next lev­el of pu­rifi­ca­tion that is re­quired."

All four of the oth­ers leaned in to look at her qi ring, with Broth­er Du sat­is­fied to look smug and proud of his ju­nior sis­ter. "Next lev­el of pu­rifi­caiton?" The one Du had in­tro­duced as Broth­er Juno was the one that asked the ques­tion, though she was sure they were all cu­ri­ous. Juno was the most re­laxed-look­ing of all of them, even giv­en that they were all re­lax­ing un­der a tree, and his face had a soft­ness to it that was dif­fi­cult to put words to.

"I am un­sure just how much I should re­veal about what my mas­ter taught me," Ki'el ad­mit­ted, "but there are forces more fun­da­men­tal than qi, and they are lay­ered. This... can only ac­count for the low­est two lay­ers, at most, and I'm not very good at the sec­ond."

"Yes, there are def­i­nite­ly lay­ers of in­tent that you don't seem to in­ter­act with at all," said Broth­er Bon. Al­though he sound­ed quite good-na­tured, his high fore­head and an­gled eye­brows gave him a strange look, one that made Ki'el a bit anx­ious. "Still--for a young girl at Gold Qi, it is tru­ly re­mark­able. Can you de­scribe the first lay­er? Would that be too much?"

Ki'el hes­i­tat­ed. She looked at Broth­er Du, but the man didn't seem to be judg­ing her, just watch­ing. Was he giv­ing her an op­por­tu­ni­ty to show off? Or hop­ing that she would re­veal more? She fo­cused her mind on Kuli, but the aug­ment gave her no feed­back, no con­dem­na­tion of the idea of say­ing more. Ki'el swal­lowed, and tried to or­ga­nize her thoughts.

"I don't un­der­stand what it is, or where it comes from," Ki'el said. "I only know that each lay­er has two op­pos­ing na­tures, and the first lay­er--it sim­ply seems to ei­ther work with oth­er sources of en­er­gy--of aether, or against them. If they are of the same na­ture, they build on one an­oth­er, and if they are of op­posed na­tures, they con­flict. My mas­ter called them Right­eous Aether and Sin­is­ter Aether."

"Right­eous? That's quite a word for such a sim­ple force," Juno, still sound­ing quite re­laxed, sud­den­ly leaned back, away from her qi cy­cle. "But I sup­pose it's right­eous be­cause it sup­ports, right? And sin­is­ter is sin­is­ter be­cause it hin­ders. Sim­ple words to con­vey the ob­vi­ous are of­ten best, even if it does end up sound­ing just as sil­ly as Sev­en-col­ored rain­bow sword and the like."

Broth­er Kam, whose face was just a lit­tle plump, gave a sharp laugh at that, but Sis­ter Xari gave Juno a judgmental look, the woman's al­most-ex­ces­sive eye shad­ow mak­ing the ex­pres­sion even more se­vere. "Be care­ful who you say things like that around," she said. "There are many who would hap­pi­ly re­peat what you said in the wrong com­pa­ny."

Juno just waved it off, but Ki'el looked at Sis­ter Xari. "Is that a fa­mous qi na­ture?"

"One of the Im­pe­r­i­al Fam­i­ly's," Xari said, sound­ing quite se­ri­ous. "The Prince uses it, and is quite proud of it. Many peo­ple who sup­port the Roy­al Fam­i­ly all but wor­ship the Im­pe­r­i­al Fam­i­ly's qi styles, and at­tempt to repli­cate them."

"Ki'el," Broth­er Du in­ter­rupt­ed, and Ki'el looked to him along with the oth­ers. "You said you could sim­ply ab­sorb the pu­ri­fied qi. May I see you do so?"

Ki'el nod­ded, and held the cy­cle out in front of her. With­out sum­mon­ing the thorn or its en­er­gy to her hand, she sim­ply pulled at it, feed­ing the en­er­gy back into her­self as though she had sum­moned it from her dant­ian and then thought bet­ter of us­ing it.

"Sim­ple," Broth­er Kam said, "but ef­fec­tive. I think the hid­den trick here is the bar­ri­er around the qi stor­age, which keeps it pure once it has been gen­er­at­ed. It's not ro­bust enough to stand up to an at­tack, but as long as noth­ing in­ter­feres with the qi... it's no less hers than if it had been to her dant­ian al­ready."

"It should be re­in­forced," agreed Bon, "if it will be used in com­bat. I can just imag­ine some­one in­ject­ing a spir­i­tu­al poi­son into it, and that go­ing straight into her dant­ian." He leaned back, look­ing sat­is­fied. "Do you have any sort of tech­nique to use it?"

"Sis­ter Ki'el is quite ju­nior," Broth­er Du hedged, glanc­ing at her.

"I am still learn­ing," Ki'el agreed. "But I have suc­cess­ful­ly ap­plied fire in­tent to it. It's not quite a tech­nique..."

"Ap­plied in­tent?" Xari cocked her head and looked... al­most looked down at Ki'el. "What, you just have 'fire in­tent' around? A spir­it gem, per­haps?"

But Ki'el shook her head. "I... was taught some­thing about the na­ture of nat­ur­al fire. A gift from my mas­ter, that I mem­o­rized. I have been prac­tic­ing speak­ing with in­tent, and I used the same process to add in­tent to the pure qi, then an­oth­er lay­er of in­tent to con­trol it."

"Ah, so you en­hanced an ex­ist­ing fire a bit? Or put it out, maybe?" When Ki'el nod­ded, Xari seemed con­tem­pla­tive. "In­ter­est­ing. In­ef­fi­cient, though. How many dif­fer­ent words of in­tent can one per­son mem­o­rize?"

"I could mem­o­rize dozens," Broth­er Juno said, lean­ing back and flex­ing his spine so that his face was point­ed up. He sound­ed quite pleased with him­self. "Hun­dreds, maybe. Prob­a­bly not thou­sands. I feel like it would just get bor­ing at that point."

Broth­er Du, though, had a look on his face, one that Ki'el thought was very stern and se­ri­ous. She couldn't help re­mem­ber­ing how he had been up­set at her idea of keep­ing pu­ri­fied qi, and ma­nip­u­lat­ing it with­out in­tent. "I sup­pose that's one Way," he said, seem­ing to com­plete­ly ig­nore Broth­er Juno. "A very... aca­d­e­m­ic Way. Studying in­tent, mem­o­riz­ing it, but keep­ing it sep­a­rate from your qi un­til you choose what you wish to use. But how well can you mem­o­rize in­tent? Are you sure that you have a pure un­der­stand­ing of [Nat­ur­al Fire]?"

Ki'el blinked, not hav­ing ex­pect­ed Broth­er Du to speak with in­tent, but closed her eyes. He... was very close to her un­der­stand­ing, but there was a mis­take. She con­cen­trat­ed, and Kuli helped her pick out ex­act­ly the part of the thought that she dis­agreed with. "Not all [heat] is qi, Broth­er Du. The nat­ur­al en­er­gy that cre­ates fire does not need qi, or even aether."

"Oh-HO!" Juno snapped up­right. "The girl has a spine, chal­leng­ing Broth­er Du!"

"You are cer­tain?" Broth­er Du's voice was not even du­bi­ous, only cu­ri­ous.

Ki'el opened her eyes and looked at him. "It is what I was told. It is what I un­der­stand. And it feels right."

"But qi is pre­sent through­out the world. And the qi of heat and fire, even nat­ur­al fire, can be ab­sorbed." Broth­er Du's voice re­mained lev­el, but Ki'el could feel some­thing like in­tent slic­ing at the air be­tween them.

"I am no ex­pert, Broth­er Du," was all she could say in re­sponse. "But I know that qi is com­pli­cat­ed... and pow­er­ful. I can be­lieve that a per­son with qi can turn nat­ur­al fire into qi, and ab­sorb its strength. But is that be­cause the fire al­ready is qi, or is it be­cause qi can make it so?"

Ki'el was aware that the oth­ers were look­ing back and forth be­tween them, but did her best to keep it out of her mind. She was al­ready push­ing a lit­tle bit of right­eous aether into her spir­it, to keep her anx­i­ety in check, though she hoped it was lit­tle enough that she would not be called out for it. For now... a qui­et reigned in the mo­ment.

"I would not have ex­pect­ed to hear that ar­gu­ment in one so young," Du said at last. "But then, per­haps it is ex­act­ly be­cause you are young. Yes, qi can make a great many things hap­pen that would not hap­pen with­out qi. Schol­ars ar­gue about whether that means the world is, fun­da­men­tal­ly, made of qi--or whether qi is sim­ply pow­er­ful enough to break all oth­er rules." He held up a hand. "I shouldn't have asked you to have an an­swer to a ques­tion that those with Flame Qi still de­bate. You still look up at the whole world of pos­si­bil­i­ties from be­low, in­clud­ing many things that we now see from above. I will med­i­tate on your in­sight into nat­ur­al fire, but I feel like it would be pre­ma­ture for you to say that you know that heat is not a form of qi."

It isn't, Ki'el knew. I know, be­cause I know what Pri­mor­dial Qi is. But she did not think it wise to say so, es­pe­cial­ly since she couldn't speak her un­der­stand­ing of it. Lai Shi Po had spo­ken it to Broth­er Du be­fore, but the man may not have mem­o­rized the in­tent af­ter hear­ing it once.

"Still," Broth­er Kam said, "It's im­pres­sive that you can speak with in­tent at all. Can we hear you speak in­tent? Again, I mean? I did catch that bit about heat."

Ki'el nod­ded, and took sev­er­al steady­ing breaths, re­call­ing the in­tent of Nat­ur­al Fire, and spoke as clear­ly as she could. "[Nat­ur­al fire] is the [re­ac­tion] of [fuel] and [oxy­gen] with [heat]." Sud­den­ly, she felt dizzy. Had she had that much dif­fi­cul­ty mak­ing her words reach the oth­ers? Was she do­ing some­thing wrong?

"Ooh," Broth­er Bon rubbed his head. "Now that's not nice, girl."

Ki'el blinked, her head still swim­ming, and be­gan to stam­mer an apol­o­gy, with­out know­ing what she might have done wrong.

"No, this is my fault," said Kam. "Ki'el--don't, stop apol­o­giz­ing. You didn't do any­thing wrong."

"Yes, she did," grumped Juno, slouch­ing on the bench. "She did the worst thing."

Ki'el glanced at him, mortified, even though Sis­ter Xari put a com­fort­ing hand on her shoul­der. "Don't tease the girl--"

"I'm se­ri­ous," Juno said, point­ing a fin­ger at Ki'el. "Girl--if you learn just one thing to­day, learn this. Are you lis­ten­ing? Good." He leaned in, and his voice was un­be­liev­ably stern. "Nev­er give away in­sights with­out de­mand­ing pay­ment. In. AD­VANCE."

The oth­ers sighed, but Ki'el just sat there, blink­ing and con­fused. Even the right­eous aether in her spir­it wasn't enough for her mind to ful­ly catch up to what had just hap­pened. Was he say­ing--?

"It's a good de­f­i­n­i­tion for fire," Du said, sound­ing as un­flap­pable as ever. "Bet­ter, ap­par­ent­ly, than my dear Broth­ers and Sis­ter were pre­pared for, Ki'el. I will en­sure that an ap­pro­pri­ate bonus is paid--"

"Don't do that," hissed Juno. "If you re­ward her for giv­ing things away for free, she'll nev­er learn!"

"Juno," Bon reached over and moved as if to bop the for­mer­ly re­laxed man on the head, but Juno sprung away in a mo­tion that Ki'el couldn't be­gin to catch.

"Don't touch my hair!"

"I think the girl needs some rest, Du," Xari said, pulling Ki'el to her feet. "Come on, girl. Let's get some food in you--prop­er food. My treat."

Ki'el let her­self be pulled away, but looked back over her shoul­der. Strange­ly, it was Broth­er Bon who still looked put out, and he was mut­ter­ing some­thing to Du.

"That can't be how it works," he was say­ing, sound­ing bit­ter. "I've been study­ing the alche­my ta­bles for years--"

When Ki'el got a cer­tain dis­tance away, though, the man's voice fad­ed into un­rec­og­niz­abil­i­ty, again, and Ki'el blinked, then turned to look at Sis­ter Xari, who did not look down at her, but con­tin­ued fo­cus­ing ahead.

So Ki'el stead­ied her walk­ing un­til Sis­ter Xari seemed com­fort­able let­ting her go, and fol­lowed the woman on to­wards what she as­sumed would be a meal hall for the In­ner Sect.