Ki'el quick­ly dis­cov­ered that the In­ner Sect did not rely on any­thing like a meal hall or din­ing room, but rather had a num­ber of restau­rants, and the qual­i­ty of Sis­ter Xari's choice was not not­i­ca­bly be­neath what she had been served when din­ing with the Djang Im­pe­r­i­al Prince and Princess.

That was, how­ev­er, the qual­i­ty of the food. The pre­sen­ta­tion of the restau­rant, in keep­ing with the aes­thet­ics of the en­tire Sect, was aus­tere, plain. Sis­ter Xari had an en­tire con­ver­sa­tion with the chef with­out meet­ing them face to face, pass­ing mes­sages with cod­ed in­tent that... per­haps Ki'el might have been able to un­der­stand, had it not been so quick and out of nowhere. Xari seemed to mis­un­der­stand Ki'el's pen­sive look, though, at miss­ing the com­mu­ni­ca­tion, be­cause she waved at her dis­mis­sive­ly as they took seats at a plain-look­ing, thick wood­en table.

"Those who cook, even in the In­ner Sect, are also dis­ci­ples, and those who make it into the In­ner Sect are al­ways work­ing at and think­ing about qi," she said. "Whether that is com­mu­ni­cat­ing with in­tent, or con­sid­er­ing how the same prin­ci­ples be­hind pill alche­my can make the best pos­si­ble roast­ed cab­bage." She gave Ki'el a strange look. "You need to promise, Ki'el, not to spend your own mon­ey or points on In­ner Sect food un­less you get all the way here. Even for a rel­a­tive­ly wealthy mem­ber of the Out­er Sect, com­mis­sion­ing food from an In­ner Dis­ci­ple is un­rea­son­ably ex­pen­sive."

Ki'el nod­ded, but hav­ing dined at high qual­i­ty restau­rants be­fore, she thought she was pre­pared. She was... only half right.

In truth, Ki'el had not been mo­ti­vat­ed by her stom­ach in a long time, and she did not wish to be. As she had spent years gath­er­ing fish and over­ripe fruit, and find­ing ways to cook them de­spite min­i­mal ed­u­ca­tion, she un­der­stood that fla­vor was a lux­u­ry. When Sobon had ac­cept­ed an in­vi­ta­tion from a Djang mil­i­tary com­man­der for din­ner, she had suc­cess­ful­ly re­sist­ed any food lust, as she did not want to see the Djang as her bene­fac­tors in any way, not af­ter what hap­pened to her vil­lage, and not af­ter what al­most hap­pened to her.

Din­ing with the Im­pe­r­i­al Prince and Princess had been more tempt­ing, but she un­der­stood that restau­rant to be a cor­rupt thing, one that would charge any amount of coin it pleased and sim­ply pay to have suit­able in­gre­di­ents and la­bor brought to­geth­er to per­form culi­nary mir­a­cles. See­ing spoiled peo­ple par­tak­ing so greed­i­ly of mounds of food had made it clear to her that what­ev­er good there was in the food she was served, there was also a hid­den cost, a dark­ness be­neath it all, and while she could ad­mit the food was good, she did not feel a de­sire for more of it.

But here, when a hand­some cook came out with two plates of cooked veg­eta­bles, his hair tied up in a bun, smelling of the kitchen and only his own in­tent touch­ing the food, she found very lit­tle ex­cuse to place a bar­ri­er in her heart be­tween her­self and good food. And when she se­lect­ed a radish cov­ered in light sauce from her plate and tast­ed it, she un­der­stood that she was in dan­ger.

The fla­vor it­self had in­tent. Not mere­ly did the in­tent ex­ist; it was a dis­cus­sion, com­plex and in­ter­wo­ven be­tween in­gre­di­ents and meth­ods, spices and sauces, tools and con­tain­ers, flame and air. There was in­tent to the fact that a wood­en la­dle had been used to spoon the radish out of its con­tain­er, in­tent that con­veyed knowl­edge, wis­dom of cook­ing. Though there were only traces of the ef­fect that the choice had, at least to Ki'el, the ex­is­tence of the in­tent it­self could not be de­nied. There was in­tent be­hind every cut of a knife, be­hind the amount of heat, be­hind the cool­ing, be­hind the stor­age. And be­hind all that in­tent...

Ki'el blushed deeply, and all the way from her hair to her toes, as she re­al­ized she was un­able to shake the chef's face and hands from her mind, as every dis­cus­sion of meth­ods and in­gre­di­ents showed them in a dif­fer­ent light, from a dif­fer­ent an­gle. Ki'el was not a girl who crushed eas­i­ly on peo­ple, but his clear com­pe­tence, fo­cus, and en­er­gy were there on dis­play, nev­er erring, al­ways fo­cused on cre­at­ing an ab­solute­ly per­fect ex­pe­ri­ence.

For her.

"Yai s'wei, Broth­er Boloi," Xari said with a laugh, "I should have asked you to tone down your qi. The poor girl can't take it!"

"I wouldn't have even if you'd asked," the man said, his voice not as smooth as his in­tent, though Ki'el was not in a state of mind to care. "It's the onion brais­ing method. I am sure that if I can per­fect­ly con­tain fla­vors with­in an onion--"

"Ah-ah, we've had this con­ver­sa­tion be­fore," Xari said, wag­ging a fin­ger Broth­er Boloi. "I don't care how alike they are, you won't make a per­fect pill sim­ply be­cause of your onion sauce."

"I'm clos­er," the Broth­er said, his voice al­ready dis­tant even as he turned back to the kitchen. "It's just not the right in­tent, not yet."

"Breathe," Xari whis­pered to Ki'el, "he's used to the at­ten­tion by now. I think half the rea­son he mar­ried his wife is be­cause she's one of the few who still finds fault with his cook­ing. Who still can." She took a bite of mixed rice and veg­eta­bles, and had a... some­what em­bar­rass­ing re­ac­tion to them her­self. "Good­ness knows, I can­not," she added, with her mouth half full.

Ki'el ap­pre­ci­at­ed the per­mis­sion to look fool­ish, and also, ap­pre­ci­at­ed the word that the man was mar­ried, as it made it eas­i­er. The knowl­edge was not enough to stop some part of her imag­i­na­tion from run­ning wild, with the im­ages of the man's dex­trous hands...

She had to stop and take a deep drink of tea, let­ting the ac­tion and the heat clear her head a lit­tle, though not enough. Nev­er enough.

"In some ways, Ki'el, you al­ready strike me as a per­son who be­longs more here in the In­ner Sect than in the Out­er Sect," Xari said con­ver­sa­tion­al­ly, and Ki'el glanced at her, un­sure whether to re­spond yet, or at all. The woman took an­oth­er bite of food, en­joy­ing it for a long mo­ment, be­fore con­tin­u­ing. "Sev­er­al of the in­struc­tors I've had over the years have said some vari­ant of an old adage--that the Less­er House are those who feel en­ti­tled to knowl­edge, that the Out­er Sect is for peo­ple who un­der­stand that they need knowl­edge, that the In­ner Sect is for those who gen­uine­ly search for knowl­edge, and that the Core Sect is for those who will con­sume every scrap of knowl­edge we have and still hunger for more." She paused, and added, "One said that the El­ders are those who for­got why they came in the first place, stay­ing un­til they had no home left to re­turn to."

Ki'el con­sid­ered the first part, even as she laughed at the last part. Do I feel en­ti­tled to knowl­edge? Do Mian or Xam? Or Chi­an She frowned a lit­tle, as she thought about it. Many have said that we do not be­long, per­haps be­cause of that, or in that way. But the way for­ward is not easy, ei­ther. She paused, and cleared her throat, find­ing that with her whole-body flush her voice was some­what strained. "I... I do not know where I be­long. I do search for knowl­edge, and I am hum­bled to have a chance to pur­sue it. I... do not know that I could con­sume all the knowl­edge that a place like this could have. I imag­ine there is a great deal here that I do not re­al­ly wish to know."

Xari spooned up more rice with sauce, not look­ing at Ki'el. "Oh, it's not a rule in any sense, but it is a clev­er­ly word­ed ob­ser­va­tion. And don't think about the Core Sect--if they in­vite you, then they in­vite you, but no amount of wish­ing or striv­ing will make them view you as one of their kind. They are hun­gri­er for knowl­edge than you are hun­gry for Broth­er Boloi."

Ki'el shot Sis­ter Xari a hate­ful look at that, but the woman just laughed, and fin­ished her plate. Ki'el, some­what more in con­trol of her­self, also en­deav­ored to fin­ish her food, but... it was dif­fi­cult. She... sup­posed that she could have asked Kuli to fil­ter out the in­tent, or some­thing, but... but this was... nor­mal.

It was nor­mal, to re­act to good food and a hand­some man. And it was strange to think about, but Ki'el had not had a nor­mal life, and she did not want to turn im­me­di­ate­ly back into the strange Is­lander girl who car­ried a strange mas­ter's lega­cy in her mind, though she knew that was who she was. It was... bet­ter, for her to sim­ply be a girl teased for blush­ing when she thought of a man.

Her emo­tions stead­ied... no, they be­gan to dead­en the more she thought of it. Per­haps if she could have nev­er thought of it, she might have re­mained as she was, but... she looked down at her plate, and al­though she lift­ed the fla­vor­ful rice and beets and onion pieces to her lips, the spell over her was bro­ken.

"Get­ting lost in your own head?" Xari ob­served, as Ki'el chewed and swal­lowed, en­joy­ing the taste and ap­pre­ci­at­ing the in­tent, but no longer con­sumed by it. "That's an­oth­er thing. You're not near­ly nor­mal enough for the Out­er Sect. Broth­er Du has said noth­ing about your back­ground, Sis­ter Ki'el, but it could not be more plain. You are one of the greats, or you will be."

Ki'el looked up at her, sur­prised by the frank praise. "You think I am will be a great per­son?"

"Broth­er Boloi is one of the best cooks in the en­tire Moon­stone Is­land Sect, Sis­ter, and dare I say one of the more hand­some, and he could not keep you from brood­ing for more than a few min­utes. You will spend your en­tire life with­in your own mind, and you will ei­ther mas­ter it or be crushed by it." Xari flick­ered her hand across her own plate, and the sauces and left­over rice van­ished, leav­ing the plate as though it had nev­er been used. "Giv­en what you showed us ear­li­er, I don't think you will fail. That means you will be some­thing very spe­cial, some­day."

Ki'el felt a flush go­ing across her face, but for a very dif­fer­ent rea­son. "Thank you, Sis­ter."

"It's noth­ing. And I should say, be­cause I know you are think­ing it." Xari leaned for­ward onto the table, the prox­im­i­ty and her eye­shad­ow mak­ing her eyes seem huge to Ki'el. "It goes be­yond what your mas­ter taught you. I have seen peo­ple blessed by spe­cial mas­ters, Ki'el. Many of them can­not be kept down, and many end up in the In­ner Sect. But many of them do not. Some peo­ple blessed by mas­ters be­lieve that the mere fact they were cho­sen is what makes them wor­thy. Those of us who take on ap­pren­tices learn quick­ly enough that be­ing cho­sen is a guess, a leap of faith. Few mas­ters, if any, are con­sult­ing the fates and gods to de­ter­mine who is the one most wor­thy of their bless­ing. They do not know what we will make of our­selves, just as we don't know what our ap­pren­tices will make of them­selves. I have been very dis­ap­point­ed by sev­er­al of my ap­pren­tices, and one young boy who I had no ex­pec­ta­tions of proved to be a gen­uine prodi­gy, once giv­en a chance to thrive."

"You may have great gifts giv­en to you by a mas­ter, Ki'el, if you did not choose, your­self, to make use of them, what good would they be? Can you not imag­ine a way that you could mis­use what you were giv­en?" When Ki'el seemed un­in­ter­est­ed in fin­ish­ing the last scat­tered bits of her own food, Xari waved her hand over the plate, mak­ing the re­mains of it van­ish as she had her own. "Those who are des­tined to re­main in the Out­er Sect--those are peo­ple who un­der­stand that knowl­edge will make them stronger, but they do not have a rea­son to grow stronger, not one they have found yet. And if they re­main for­ev­er in the sect, it is like­ly they will nev­er find such a rea­son. But most are loathe to leave, just as those in the Less­er House are."

Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

"Those who come to the In­ner Sect are those who are not ad­vanc­ing as fast in the Out­er Sect as they might wish. They have pur­pose, and they have the be­gin­nings of a path, but the Out­er Sect's re­sources could only let them reach that path if they spent a life­time study­ing. They strug­gle day by day, hour by hour, to get where they are go­ing, but the path is longer than they have time for. And a mem­ber of the In­ner Coun­cil sees the promise of their path, and brings them in. It is here that we can ask ques­tion that would be laughed at by those in the Out­er Sect, pro­pose pro­jects that seem ridicu­lous. And even if it takes years, even decades, we make them work."

Pro­jects that seem ridicu­lous... Ki'el couldn't be­gin to imag­ine what pro­jects she might see her­self un­der­tak­ing, in a few years. What even ex­ist­ed be­yond the lev­els that she knew? What would she find when her own qi had risen above Bis­muth, where Sobon had been when he left? Even the thought of pass­ing out of his shad­ow was ter­ri­fy­ing, but to imag­ine stand­ing where Sobon him­self had stood, and plan­ning to go fur­ther...?

"You are a long way from the In­ner Sect, even if you some­day end up here," Xari said, and Ki'el was sur­prised that there was no cau­tion in the woman's tone. But then... did Ki'el need that cau­tion? She could not imag­ine that she could get to a place where she could con­sid­er her­self on par with Sobon, or even Broth­er Boloi, or Broth­er Du. "The path is long. I be­lieve that you will pass out of the Less­er House with­out a prob­lem, but if you wish to raise even fur­ther, you must al­ways have a goal. It is by mea­sur­ing the progress to­wards your goals, es­pe­cial­ly no­ble and dis­tant goals, that you feel dis­sat­is­fied, and your dis­sat­is­fac­tion will lead you for­wards." She took Ki'el's plate, and her own, and moved to the kitchen. "I'll be back in a few mo­ments. I want­ed to speak to Broth­er Boloi."

Ki'el sat there, con­sid­er­ing Xari's words, and sud­den­ly asked Kuli, What do you think? Al­though she had no par­tic­u­lar in­tent with the ques­tion, and no real un­der­stand­ing of why she would ask, she... val­ued the thoughts of the aug­ment, what­ev­er its true na­ture was.

{ There are many things I could say, } Kuli re­spond­ed, { but per­haps this will set­tle your mind. In Sobon's world, peo­ple who gain great pow­er also lay that pow­er down when they do not need it. Sol­diers whose pow­er can ri­val the Di­a­mond Lord re­turn home to be nor­mal, mor­tal peo­ple. To be­come a great per­son does not need to mean re­main­ing atop the world for your en­tire life. At least... not there. }

Not there. Ki'el un­der­stood the mean­ing. If she wished to re­main in a place like the Sect, or like the Djang Em­pire, then once she reached the peak of her pow­er, there would be those who would fight her to prove them­selves, and if she was weak, they would kill her. She closed her eyes, think­ing of her is­land vil­lage. No... it is too close to the Em­pire. Even if I can find it again, even if I could con­vince oth­ers to re­set­tle it, I would not be able to hide there. But there must cer­tain­ly be places in the world where she could live in peace.

But then... Sobon had also said that he had hopes she would help him--with what, she did not yet know. And Ki'el did want to help, and want­ed to un­der­stand her mas­ter. But... was it her de­sire to gain great strength? To be­come a great blade, a sword that could pro­tect oth­ers? She had her doubts, but... but it was also very ear­ly for her to be try­ing to de­cide.

"Come along," Xari said, and Ki'el star­tled, then got up and fol­lowed her out. "If I know Broth­er Du, Sis­ter, he will give you a mod­est sum of Sect Points for what you have done. But trust me when I say that per­form­ing any ser­vice for a mem­ber of the In­ner Sect is worth far more than we can rea­son­ably give you, and you have giv­en us some­thing very in­ter­est­ing to think about, which would be worth a great deal, if it were prop­er­ly paid. But if we gave you that many Sect Points, you would not know what do to with them, and your time in the Less­er House and Out­er Sect would be very un­usu­al. So please con­sid­er me, at the very least, to owe you a few small ser­vices. It is the least I can do for not let­ting you have the ac­tu­al re­sources you de­serve." She paused, and looked back. "I will walk you back, and if you have any ques­tions at all on the walk, just ask, and I will an­swer."

Ki'el swal­lowed, but nod­ded, catch­ing up to walk be­side Sis­ter Xari. "I re­ceived sev­er­al in­gre­di­ents in a for­fei­ture, but ne­glect­ed to ask the El­der about them--"

"El­der Gol is stingy about in­for­ma­tion in the best of times. Ask."

Ki'el leaned on Kuli only slight­ly to have the in­for­ma­tion at the tip of her tongue. "A few grams of Cloud Pil­lar Sil­ver. Less­er Cir­cu­la­tion Herb Pills. Mel­low Riv­er Herbs. Less­er Spir­it Crys­tals and Low Spir­it Gems. And time with a Less­er In­scrip­tion­ist."

Xari nod­ded. "Mel­low Riv­er Herbs are med­i­c­i­nal, I be­lieve, and not an in­gre­di­ent for any cul­ti­va­tion aid that I know of. I re­call they re­duce pain, es­pe­cial­ly, pain in the nerves. Less­er Cir­cu­la­tion Herb pills help your spir­it and in­tent to reach parts of your body that it nor­mal­ly does not, and is very use­ful for at­tun­ing your body to your qi. Those whose spir­it does not re­spond to their qi may find it help­ful... but it can also lead to qi de­vi­a­tion. They are use­ful pills, for the ear­ly phas­es, but like all aids, you can­not rely on them for­ev­er."

"For Cloud Pil­lar Sil­ver... it is a com­mon and less­er met­al, which is nor­mal­ly used as the in­ert part of an in­script­ed item. It is not el­e­men­tal­ly aligned; the term cloud here refers to the apho­risms about clouds and drag­ons." She paused, and glanced over at Ki'el. "If you are not fa­mil­iar... the most com­mon phras­ing is Soar­ing over a drag­on to be­come a cloud. That is, pass­ing over greater tal­ents--tak­ing the re­sources that could have gone to them--and en­ter­ing the heav­ens your­self, but be­com­ing some­thing ul­ti­mate­ly com­mon and low. Cloud pil­lar in this sense would be a cloud that reach­es down to the ground and up to the heav­ens, but does not go be­yond them. Cloud Pil­lar Sil­ver can hold mod­er­ate amounts of qi, but is not the right met­al to chan­nel great pow­er through it."

Ki'el nod­ded, but won­dered idly what Sobon would have thought of the ma­te­r­i­al. He turned sand into a weapon ca­pa­ble of killing an el­der at Mithril Qi. I imag­ine his un­der­stand­ing of any ma­te­r­i­al would be very dif­fer­ent from the Sect's.

"For the Spir­it Gems--I am tempt­ed to say that you should sim­ply be rid of them, re­turn them to the Sect for points. I trust that these are mere reser­va­tions?" At Ki'el's nod, Xari con­tin­ued. "They are a re­source for those who are des­per­ate­ly search­ing for in­sight, a crys­tal­ized frag­ment of in­tent, and at the Low rank­ing, it will be gen­er­al and unin­spired. For some­one who can un­der­stand spo­ken In­tent, you would be bet­ter off ask­ing a mem­ber of the Out­er Sect to sim­ply say a word that trou­bles or con­fus­es you. It might be prici­er than a spir­it gem--cer­tain­ly prici­er than a mere Low gem--but gen­er­al­ly, if you buy that kind of ser­vice, you can at least ask them to rephrase the same In­tent sev­er­al dif­fer­ent ways, as long as you are ask­ing the same ques­tion each time. That is more valu­able than even a bet­ter Spir­it Gem."

"For Spir­it Crys­tals... they are a re­source for those who have dif­fi­cul­ty cul­ti­vat­ing their own qi. Even in the Less­er House, it is dif­fi­cult for me to imag­ine some­one ac­tu­al­ly mak­ing use of Less­er crys­tals, but... I sup­pose there are many there who have var­i­ous kinds of dif­fi­cul­ty. As with many of the oth­ers, Sis­ter Ki'el, I imag­ine they are use­less to you, though per­haps you can find some­one who needs them." She paused. "As for the less­er in­scrip­tion­ist... along with the ma­te­r­i­al you al­ready have, you would want a good chan­nel­ing ma­te­r­i­al to make even the most ba­sic of items, and you would want to have a firm un­der­stand­ing of what you want done. Even ques­tion­ing them takes time, and most will cut you off the mo­ment your time is up, even in the mid­dle of work. Have your ma­te­ri­als and your in­tent ready, and don't let them waste your time."

"Is a chan­nel­ing ma­te­r­i­al nec­es­sary?" Her own in­scrip­tions--and the ad­vanced ver­sion Lai Shi Po had done--had sim­ply made use of the space left be­hind by the act of en­grav­ing into the base ma­te­r­i­al.

But Sis­ter Xari huffed at that. "I sup­pose there are base ma­te­ri­als that do not re­quire it, but as I said, Cloud Pil­lar Sil­ver is not good for chan­nel­ing. An en­grav­ing with­out filler ma­te­r­i­al in an un­suit­able base ma­te­r­i­al will of­ten fail, if not im­me­di­ate­ly, then af­ter months or years of use. Some­one above the Less­er grade might do bet­ter with the same ma­te­ri­als, but so long as you are pur­chas­ing a Less­er In­scrip­tion­ist's time, trust that their abil­i­ties will not meet any lofty ex­pec­ta­tions you might have."

Ki'el con­sid­ered that, and glanced at Xari. "Are you an in­scrip­tion­ist, Sis­ter Xari?"

The woman half turned and gave her a grin. "I'm not much for con­ceal­ing my in­ter­ests. Yes, but not as my main fo­cus. I of­ten use scripts pro­ject­ed onto qi, and in par­tic­u­lar, am quite pro­fi­cient in set­ting up for­ma­tions of sev­er­al par­tic­i­pants."

"Ah." She nod­ded. "My mas­ter's fo­cus is sim­i­lar."

"Re­al­ly?" Xari fa­vored her with a strange look. "I wish I could meet him. Giv­en the ef­fect he's had on you, I have to imag­ine that he could say three words to me and trig­ger a break­through. I wish some­one would." She glanced away, sound­ing ir­ri­tat­ed. "I've been stuck at Sap­phire Qi for too long."

Sap­phire? The same as Base Com­man­der Rai? Two whole tiers above El­der Mofu? Ki'el swal­lowed, but nod­ded. "What is it like?" She asked, to cov­er her ner­vous­ness. "Be­ing at Sap­phire."

Sis­ter Xari just hummed at her, as they be­gan to pass over a bridge, which Ki'el re­al­ized was only two away from the Less­er House. They were most of the way there, now. "The tran­si­tion to Earth­ly Gem phase was strange. Many peo­ple stay trapped at the peak of Mithril for a long time, un­sure of how to face the Tribu­la­tion or how to face their own demons. But for me, that tribu­la­tion less trou­ble than cross­ing the Gold­en Wall. Amethyst Qi, the low­est of the Earth­ly Gems, brought with it a pro­found sense that I had mis­un­der­stood my own qi, and I have ever since been search­ing for in­sight into ex­act­ly how. I only reached Sap­phire Qi, the sec­ond tier, af­ter un­der­stand­ing some­thing," she added a teas­ing lilt to her voice, "that I won't be spoil­ing for you."

Ki'el nod­ded. "And in re­turn, I promise I won't spoil your progress by spilling any of my mas­ter's se­crets." Al­though she said it with a jok­ing tone of voice, Ki'el won­dered whether things that Sobon had al­ready told her might con­tain se­crets that Sis­ter Xari need­ed. Was it pos­si­ble? She sup­posed so, though how like­ly it was was an­oth­er ques­tion en­tire­ly.

"Ah," Xari said, not sound­ing too dis­ap­point­ed, al­though she mimed be­ing shot or stabbed in the heart. "How ever will I go on with­out the pro­found in­sights of my Ju­nior Sis­ter?" She grinned down at Ki'el a mo­ment lat­er. "In truth, some­day I hope to be able to have bet­ter dis­cus­sions with you, Sis­ter Ki'el, but those con­ver­sa­tions will be bet­ter for the ex­pe­ri­ences you have be­tween now and then. You will speak more con­fi­dent­ly and know bet­ter what we are ready to hear. Un­til then..." She glanced ahead, but they were still an is­land away from the Less­er House. "...Care to hear some gos­sip about Broth­er Du?"

Ki'el gave the old­er woman a strange look, but she couldn't hide a smile, and couldn't hon­est­ly turn down the of­fer.

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When at last Djang Ren Xari said good­bye to her cute new ju­nior sis­ter, she took a few mo­ments to go to the edge of the is­land and look down. It was nev­er quite the same, look­ing down at the world from any of the dif­fer­ent is­lands of the Moon­stone Is­land Sect. The flow of qi through­out the is­lands gave each of them a dif­fer­ent feel, and... it had been a long time since she'd had rea­son to come here in par­tic­u­lar.

She looked off into the dis­tance, her mind bounc­ing be­tween many thoughts, but set­tling on the one she least want­ed to face, the dis­turb­ing mes­sage from her un­cle.

There is to be a meet­ing of the Ren fam­i­ly very soon, he said. One of your cousins has done some­thing very fool­ish. There may be war with the Ban fam­i­ly. If it comes to that, your ser­vices will be re­quired. Fam­i­ly above all, Xari.

Her thoughts skipped over the mes­sage, re­fus­ing to ac­knowl­edge it. A war with the Im­pe­r­i­al Ban Fam­i­ly might mean the end of the Em­pire, or else, the end of her fam­i­ly, and if so... it might well mean her own death as well. Even if she want­ed to dis­tance her­self from her fam­i­ly name, the Di­a­mond Lord might not be so for­giv­ing. And she did want to dis­tance her­self from her fam­i­ly; there was too much hate in the core of the Ban fam­i­ly, too much poi­son.

But with­out them, where would she be?

Xari closed her eyes and growled. She hat­ed pol­i­tics, and she al­ways would. Why not let a stu­pid cousin be pun­ished for what­ev­er fool thing he did? She huffed and turned away from the edge, try­ing to keep her thoughts on some­thing bet­ter, brighter. On Broth­er Boloi, and the se­cret thoughts that they had shared, the thoughts he was quite good at keep­ing hid­den from his wife. That put a smile back on her face, and she wan­dered idly back up the is­lands, hard­ly notic­ing the oth­ers as she passed them, even when the mem­bers of the Less­er House gave her wide berth as they passed.