Sis­ter Futi was, to Ki'el, a woman very far from the looks of an av­er­age cul­ti­va­tor. Ei­ther she did not hide the marks of age on her body, or she wished to look mid­dle aged, per­haps even el­der­ly, with a stom­ach that was too large and flab along her limbs. Al­though she was not with­out qi, the woman dis­played only a gold­en star rank­ing, which meant to the sect that she be­longed in the Less­er House.

And yet, when Sect Broth­er Du met with her, Ki'el felt that his bow was not forced or fake, and the man smiled with­out guile at her.

"Sis­ter Futi," he said, with some fond­ness. "May I pre­sent to you Xoi Xam, Xoi Dulle Mian, and Xoi Doua Ki'el."

Sis­ter Futi was crammed into a cor­ner of­fice of the Less­er House's first floor, and sur­round­ed by a great many ar­rays in­scribed into the walls, floors, and ceil­ing. Al­though Ki'el had no doubt that they were all real and prac­ti­cal in­scrip­tions, she could also see at only a glance that the writ­ing of the glyphs and the care­ful cir­cles of the ar­rays were all faulty, full of mis­takes and crooked­ness. What she could not tel, at a glance, was whether those in­scrip­tions were all her own and main­tained out of pride, or whether she could sim­ply not find some­one to fix them.

Arranged hap­haz­ard­ly in places where they would not block the in­scrip­tions were book­shelves, scroll racks, and piled stacks of to­kens. The only thing that did in­ter­fere with the in­scrip­tions was a sim­ple desk and an odd bent wood­en frame that must have been a chair. The table was emp­ty of all but a sin­gle un­rolled scroll, an inkwell, and a bronze sty­lus that was se­vere­ly bent out of shape, laid be­side the inkwell with­out any kind of pro­tec­tive cloth and with no signs of drips or stains. Ki'el glanced around, not­ing that there was many emp­ty book­shelves and scroll racks as there were filled ones, but that none of them seemed dusty or for­got­ten. Al­though she could see lit­tle or noth­ing on the shelves that she could read--no la­bels and few cov­ers or free pieces of pa­per--Ki'el got the sense that every­thing here was used fre­quent­ly, or at least, had been used re­cent­ly.

"Ah, more new trou­ble for me, ex­cel­lent." Sis­ter Futi her­self was stand­ing, not sit­ting at her desk, and she reached out to a near­by in­scrip­tion. She only need­ed to place her hand at the cen­ter and pull, and her hand came away with a rolled scroll, now crum­pled along one edge, which she walked over and threw down on the table, climb­ing onto the bent wood in a kneel­ing po­si­tion, the frame bend­ing only slight­ly to hold her weight. When the woman un­rolled the scroll onto the desk, some­how it came away as three sep­a­rate sheets, al­though Ki'el was un­clear on whether it had been cut or had ap­peared from the in­scrip­tion as ex­act­ly what she need­ed. "Sib­lings? No, or not en­tire­ly, not with a pure fam­i­ly name and two ex­tras. A no­ble and her ser­vants?"

"My hus­band and sis­ter," Xam said, still sound­ing a lit­tle testy. "If that is in­for­ma­tion that the sect re­quires."

"Oh, it's not all for the sect, though such mat­ters will oc­ca­sion­al­ly be of in­ter­est." Sis­ter Futi snagged the sty­lus and dipped it into the ink, and Ki'el not­ed the woman's grip on the im­ple­ment matched its form per­fect­ly. But was the sty­lus matched to her writ­ing style, or had she grown used to it? "Xoi as the house, us­ing the char­ac­ter for Rush, cor­rect?" She glanced at Ki'el. "And I as­sume Doua is from the Il­lanese Sand. Rush­ing Fox, Rush­ing Sand Ea­gle, and..." she looked at Mian. "Dulle... you don't look like one of them."

Mian squirmed slight­ly, though Ki'el felt some­thing pleas­ing stir with­in her. She had not thought hard about Xam's fam­i­ly name, even when her un­cle Mon had talked for a while about it, but some­how this woman made it seem like a very hon­or­able thing.

"It is com­pli­cat­ed," Mian said fi­nal­ly.

But Sis­ter Futi only shrugged. "I can't ar­gue against keep­ing se­crets, but per­haps have your lies bet­ter pre­pared for oth­ers, Xoi Mian. You can trust, though, that what­ev­er pol­i­tics you be­lieve you will es­cape here, you have only en­tered into a new world of very dif­fer­ent pol­i­tics, and I for one do my ut­most best to avoid both. Now." The woman' who had writ­ten their names on top of the three scrolls with­out look­ing, set the sty­lus down. Ki'el not­ed that Mian's sheet did not list his false fam­i­ly name, though it did list Ki'el's true one. "It is im­por­tant that I, more than the sect or any oth­ers," she glanced at Broth­er Du know­ing­ly, "know what you are ac­tu­al­ly ca­pa­ble of. Im­press­ing the sect is not crit­i­cal, but it is best to avoid up­set­ting them by claim­ing you can do a task you can­not. I have seen sev­er­al no­ble scions who take on tasks, ei­ther com­mon or ob­scure, as­sum­ing with­out proof that they are up to the task."

"For years, the sect would hound me for send­ing them fools and id­iots, but by now, I have their sym­pa­thies. Again and again, those who think they can lie their way into the sect," the woman's glance shift­ed to Mian, "dis­cov­er that even raw tal­ent can fall afoul of the slum­ber­ing ir­ri­ta­tion of mas­ters who were promised some­thing that was nev­er de­liv­ered. If a task is ac­cept­ed and not com­plet­ed, they do ask who should have done it. Word does spread. And when a fa­mil­iar name is put for­ward for a pro­mo­tion test, it is not dif­fi­cult to re­call where the name was heard be­fore."

"I have no prob­lem with hard work," Mian said, some frus­tra­tion ap­par­ent in his voice and ap­pear­ance. "I only wish to leave my past be­hind."

"Hard work is good; in the eyes of many, it is bet­ter than skill. It will cer­tain­ly put you ahead of some oth­ers in the Less­er House. But this is still a sect, and much of what needs to be done re­quires spe­cif­ic skills and abil­i­ties." Her eyes slipped from one of them to the next. "I don't know how much you are aware of this, but your qi star lev­el means very lit­tle. There can be great dif­fer­ences in pow­er even with­in a sin­gle star rank­ing."

Both Ki'el and Mian strug­gled not to dis­play their amuse­ment too ob­vi­ous­ly at that, al­though from the sud­den pause, and the slight edge to Sis­ter Futi's voice when she con­tin­ued, she no­ticed their re­ac­tion.

"The many tasks the Sect will re­quire your as­sis­tance with in­volve both mun­dane mat­ters and mat­ters of qi. Al­though you are only at... or be­low Gold Qi," she gave Mian a look, "it mat­ters how much qi you have, your abil­i­ty to mold in­ter­nal and ex­ter­nal qi, and your abil­i­ty to im­bue your qi with in­tent. Gen­er­al­ly, more ad­vanced mea­sures, such as be­ing able to co­op­er­ate with an­oth­er with­out your qi clash­ing, will not mat­ter un­til you are at least an Out­er Dis­ci­ple, though if you wish to be mea­sured for some­thing spe­cif­ic..." she shrugged. "Tell me, and I will find a suit­able spon­sor."

Ki'el con­sid­ered men­tion­ing her aether rings, the pow­er cy­cles that Sobon had taught her, but kept qui­et about them for now.

"What mat­ters least, to the point where it need not even be men­tioned, is abil­i­ty to fight. Even among the Out­er Dis­ci­ples, fight­ing out­side of spars is frowned upon, but for the Less­er House, mak­ing use of any weapon is only go­ing to have the at­ten­tion of the el­ders brought down upon you, and they will not look fond­ly on any­one in the Less­er House en­dan­ger­ing them­selves, Sect prop­er­ty, oth­ers of the less­er house... but most of all, they have no pa­tience for mem­bers of the Less­er House at­tack­ing prop­er Sect dis­ci­ples." She huffed, and glanced at Broth­er Du, who re­mained silent. "There have been a great many who passed into this house be­liev­ing that they would qual­i­fy for bet­ter ed­u­ca­tion, soon­er, if they de­feat­ed, wound­ed, or worse killed a dis­ci­ple. Those prob­lem­at­ic stu­dents were all of them thrown off the is­land."

There was a si­lence, and Ki'el thought she de­tect­ed a trace of qi pass­ing be­tween Broth­er Du and Sis­ter Futi, as though one ask­ing the oth­er some­thing, be­fore at last, Broth­er Du spoke up.

"Yes," he said, "ac­tu­al­ly thrown off, over the side. Mem­bers of the Less­er House are not to at­tack Sect Dis­ci­ples un­der any cir­cum­stances. I..." he frowned. "I don't know, but I do be­lieve I heard at least one of them sur­vived, but that may have been strange cir­cum­stances, or per­haps a fam­i­ly guardian. In any case..." he turned to glance at them, one at a time and start­ing with Xam, "do not test your luck."

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Ki'el had no in­ten­tion to fight any­one, but the thought did bring up a few ques­tions, one of which Xam was quick to ask.

"What if we are at­tacked first?"

"There will be an in­ves­ti­ga­tion. De­pend­ing on your rep­u­ta­tion, and the rep­u­ta­tion of the oth­er, it may be a long in­ves­ti­ga­tion... or a very short one."

Ki'el hes­i­tat­ed, but spoke up. "And what if... our cause is just?"

Sis­ter Futi glanced at her, frown­ing, but Broth­er Du only gave a strange smile in re­turn, to that. "There are those who will say that the Less­er House is nev­er jus­ti­fied in strik­ing first, no mat­ter the cir­cum­stances. There are also those much more nu­anced. But I spoke of pa­tience. The sect will not be pa­tient and take the time to de­ter­mine who is at fault, not for those who have not even reached the rank of Out­er Dis­ci­ple. Lat­er, when the con­flict is be­tween an Out­er Dis­ci­ple and an In­ner Dis­ci­ple, or be­tween an In­ner Dis­ci­ple and a Core Dis­ci­ple, or when oth­er con­flicts come up..." Broth­er Du gave a large, ex­pres­sive shrug. "There will be more pa­tience on dis­play. More, but of­ten, not much."

"Is pa­tience such a rare quan­ti­ty in a sect?" Ki'el was sur­prised that Mian spoke up, even if his voice was edged with hu­mor.

"In my ex­pe­ri­ence, stu­dents have a way of test­ing their teach­ers' pa­tience no mat­ter how high or low you go," Broth­er Du said. "As I was say­ing, what the Sect least needs from the Less­er House is the abil­i­ty to fight," he turned and gave Ki'el a strange look, the taller man look­ing down on her in a way that did not feel ac­ci­den­tal at all. "Al­though fight­ing is a time-hon­ored tra­di­tion, and an ad­e­quate way for dis­ci­ples to test their un­der­stand­ing of qi, and al­though there will even­tu­al­ly be hunts for qi cores and... star­beasts, in gen­er­al, your task in the sect is not to learn to fight or kill, but to un­der­stand the deep­er na­ture of re­al­i­ty, and cre­ate your iden­ti­ty. And... your task in the Less­er House is to prove you de­serve the chance to en­ter the Sect. Fight­ing should be fur­thest from your mind, no mat­ter what you see or hear."

Ki'el, though she felt re­luc­tant, nod­ded. She also not­ed, how­ev­er, the strange lilt to Broth­er Du's voice when he spoke, as though he dis­liked the term or top­ic, but since his pa­tience seemed to be stretched, she did not press the mat­ter.

"So," Sis­ter Futi spoke up once it was clear that no one else would in­ter­ject, "please tell me things you are good at, or have done com­pe­tent­ly be­fore."

Xam spoke up first. "I worked for the Djang Mil­i­tary, and I can do a va­ri­ety of pa­per­work. My cal­lig­ra­phy and arith­metic ex­ceed the Djang mil­i­tary stan­dards. I am fa­mil­iar with the use of tal­is­mans to speed com­pre­hen­sion of lan­guages, hav­ing used them sev­er­al times. I have used stealth and move­ment tal­is­mans ex­ten­sive­ly, pow­er­ing them with my own qi. And of course, the Xoi clan has sev­er­al per­cep­tion tech­niques, al­though they are not to my taste."

As Xam spoke, Sis­ter Futi took care­ful notes, and Ki'el not­ed that Broth­er Du had stepped back and closed his eyes, ei­ther think­ing or sens­ing some­thing be­yond their cur­rent cir­cum­stances.

"I'm a fair cook and butch­er, even ex­tract­ed a core or two in my time, though al­ways for sell­ing," Mian said, "I've done my fair share of log­ging and wood­cut­ting, and a lit­tle car­pen­try, though I'm no good at it. I've used in­ter­nal qi to en­hance my strength, but only a lit­tle. I only... just start­ed with ex­ter­nal qi at all, and I'm no good at it. Can't say I can sense qi very well, ei­ther. Late­ly I've start­ed pow­er­ing script­ed items with my qi, but I'm not sure how good I am."

Sis­ter Futi nod­ded, her eyes fi­nal­ly slid­ing to Ki'el.

And what was Ki'el to say? Re­al­ly? She had been noth­ing for a very long time, and now, ...much of what she could claim all came from Sobon. And while not much had been said, Po and oth­ers had sug­gest­ed keep­ing much of what she knew from Sobon qui­et, es­pe­cial­ly for now."

"I don't know," she said, tak­ing a breath. "I was taught to sail, swim, and fish, but I do not think those are use­ful here. I have also cooked, and har­vest­ed fruit, and tend­ed to some fields, but not well. I... have had some suc­cess deal­ing with an­i­mals," she did well not to let her thoughts drift to Sobon here, "and I have done some small re­pairs to hous­es." She looked down at her hands, un­sure of how to qual­i­fy her skills with qi. In truth... she al­ready knew, from speak­ing with Mian, that it was dif­fer­ent from how she had used aether, though ex­act­ly how... she was still un­sure.

"I have... a strange tech­nique," she fi­nal­ly said, know­ing that both Broth­er Du and Sis­ter Futi had perked up, "which was giv­en to me... by my mas­ter." She turned to look at Mian, but the look on the man's face was only sup­port­ive. "It is not quite the same as us­ing qi nor­mal­ly, so I do not know how to com­pare it. I have... used it. With­in me, and ex­ter­nal­ly."

"In­ter­est­ing." Sis­ter Futi glanced up at Broth­er Du. "I... would rec­om­mend you speak with some­one about how use­ful it may be. But it is very ear­ly for you to be us­ing na­tured qi."

Ki'el hes­i­tat­ed, but spoke. "I am un­sure how to de­scribe it, but it is not na­tured qi."

"Is that what your mas­ter told you?"

Ki'el nod­ded. "He spoke a great deal about it," she said, re­al­iz­ing af­ter she spoke that she was re­fer­ring to Sobon as a man, again. For what­ev­er rea­son, it was still how Sobon struck her, even af­ter hav­ing known her in Alas­sis' body for a time. "I... am un­sure how much he would wish me to share."

"I see. While it's not im­pos­si­ble you will find a schol­ar in­ter­est­ed in such things here, I wouldn't en­cour­age you to hope. A few peo­ple might wish to see strange tech­niques, but many in the sect are pre­oc­cu­pied with mas­ter­ing their own qi. It would take some­thing tru­ly spe­cial to in­ter­est most of them."

"I was not ex­pect­ing to use it to gain sup­port," Ki'el said, quick­ly. "I only... know that it will com­pli­cate things."

"In­deed." Sis­ter Futi put down her sty­lus, again. "In that case, it is wise to speak with some­one who you trust, who you can demon­strate your tech­nique to and com­pare meth­ods. For now, I will not rec­om­mend you for any qi-based tasks... but, you un­der­stand, that doesn't leave you with a lot. As you say, your wa­ter-re­lat­ed skills are of lit­tle use here."

Ki'el frowned at that, her heart beat­ing in­tense­ly, as she was faced once again with hav­ing to jus­ti­fy her place here. She... was sure there were things, but...

"She also has a very good mem­o­ry," prompt­ed Mian. "In­clud­ing for com­pli­cat­ed things, and I think she's pret­ty sen­si­tive to qi. She and I were ex­am­in­ing an in­scrip­tion, and she could say a lot about it, even a while lat­er. She no­ticed things I didn't, and could re­mem­ber them clear­ly."

Sis­ter Futi picked up her sty­lus and looked at Ki'el, who took a mo­ment to breathe deeply, try­ing to keep her mind sharp, and nod­ded. "I have al­ways had a good mem­o­ry, but... I am un­sure how clear my per­cep­tion of qi is."

From be­hind her, Broth­er Du spoke up. "Ki'el. Which wood join, of the ones you saw up­stairs, was re­paired by more than one per­son?"

More than one per­son? Ki'el half turned, cast­ing her mind back to it, but it seemed a strange que­si­ton. "I would imag­ine most of them were. More than one of the joints that was fused to­geth­er with a wood qi tech­nique also showed signs of oth­er meth­ods. But the one that strikes me is the joint with the short met­al spikes. There was some­thing else, dam­age to the wood done with qi and in­tent, though it was un­clear what was done."

"Ex­cel­lent re­call, and that is suf­fi­cient qi sen­si­tiv­i­ty." Broth­er Du smiled down at her. "A good mem­o­ry will be use­ful for as­sist­ing many peo­ple, though much of it will wait un­til you reach Out­er Dis­ci­ple, or at least, un­til you gain a prop­er rep­u­ta­tion."

"In­deed." Sis­ter Futi swept up the three scrolls with a ges­ture, plac­ing them in a small stack on a near­by rack. "And next... is the mat­ter of your sect to­kens." She moved grace­ful­ly around her desk, pick­ing three to­kens from a large stack in a cor­ner of the room. Ki'el could tell, at a glance, that they were rel­a­tive­ly cheap, but and while they were en­graved, they did not con­tain qi.

But once Sis­ter Futi had passed one to­ken to each of them, she turned to one of the in­scrip­tions on the wall, plac­ing her hand to a mark on its side. "Take your to­ken and press it to the cen­ter of the in­scrip­tion here. It should link your spir­it to the to­ken, with my own spir­it as a wit­ness. Once that is done, that to­ken will be your proof as a mem­ber of the Less­er House. When you are ac­cept­ed as an Out­er Dis­ci­ple, you will be giv­en a dif­fer­ent to­ken. Do not at­tempt to take any­one else's to­ken, and if you find one loose on the grounds, bring it to any­one else im­me­di­ate­ly."

First Mian, then Ki'el, then Xam all touched their to­kens to the cir­cle as in­struct­ed. Ki'el thought she sensed some­thing odd when she did, a quick tug at her spir­it, but gen­tly, and only for a mo­ment. When that was done, the to­ken al­most seemed a part of her, con­nect­ed as it was to her spir­it, though she could also sense Sis­ter Futi's spir­it with­in the to­ken. Cu­ri­ous, Ki'el pressed light­ly on her right­eous aether ring, but the aether that passed through her spir­it did not also pass into the to­ken. She sensed that she could have forced it, but... did not think it was wise to try.

"I will also be able to use the to­kens to com­mu­ni­cate with you," Sis­ter Futi was say­ing, "at least, for those of you who are sen­si­tive enough to no­tice it. If you sense a qi pulse from it, please come and see me as soon as you can. For now..." she ges­tured. "I will send out in­quiries for work for you all. Ex­pect that you will be work­ing most of the day, every day. If you per­form well and prove trust­wor­thy, you should ex­pect bet­ter work, but there are many un­pleas­ant things that must be done, and you will all be called for it. Now, leave."

They did, though Ki'el glanced back at the woman as she passed through the door­way. Sis­ter Futi seemed to be a good per­son, she de­cid­ed, though there was more to her than Ki'el could sense or un­der­stand. She hoped that the woman was trust­wor­thy, though, be­cause she seemed to be ex­cep­tion­al­ly sharp. If she was not to be trust­ed... then that bod­ed ill for all of them.