The act of in­ves­ti­gat­ing Lan Wu start­ed, and might well have end­ed, with Ki'el ask­ing oth­ers about her. Most­ly through the work of oth­ers, Ki'el was gath­er­ing a num­ber of peo­ple she could at least ask these kind of ques­tions to--Chi­an, Be­nai, Ben Jito and Fei Taru, but also the cook that Mian still worked with, Boi Hau­ti, and some peo­ple who were friends or ac­quain­t­ences with them, or who Ki'el had struck up pass­ing con­ver­sa­tions with. There was also, of course, Sis­ter Futi, but... Ki'el un­der­stood in­tu­itive­ly that the woman, giv­en her po­si­tion, would be un­will­ing to take sides or speak be­hind some­one's back, and would doubt­less re­sent be­ing dragged into any mat­ter of in­ter­nal House mat­ters.

Fei Taru, for his part, was one of the few peo­ple with will­ing to share in­sight into the woman. Ki'el struck up a con­ver­sa­tion with him as they trav­elled to tasks--she had wait­ed for him, be­cause she--rather, Kuli--had sensed that he was at­tend­ing to some­thing but would like­ly leave soon. As they moved on­wards, Broth­er Taru, whose pinched face seemed gaunt in the morn­ing light, heard her re­quest with a grim look.

"Lan Wu is a per­son, like many of us, who has re­mained for some years," he said, sound­ing tired. "Al­though she re­mains at peak Gold, there is some in­sight that she is lack­ing, some train­ing that she re­ceived from her fam­i­ly that does not suit her, or some­thing sim­i­lar. She is stub­born and cal­lous, and she is firm in her be­liefs that the No­ble fam­i­lies are su­pe­ri­or to com­mon Djang." He paused. "I don't know that she is against non-Djang specif­i­cal­ly, but if she puts her­self above her coun­try­men, you can bet that she won't ever con­sid­er you an equal, es­pe­cial­ly as a non-no­ble your­self."

Ki'el heard all that, nod­ding ea­ger­ly. "Do you know much about her tech­nique? I know that she does some­thing with her voice. I... dis­like the feel­ing."

"We all do. But her ef­forts to ma­nip­u­late peo­ple are poor." Taru glanced around, con­vinc­ing him­self that no one else was lis­ten­ing, and leaned in. "I'm no ex­pert, but I think that she ut­ter­ly fails to add in­tent to her voice. A con­trol­ling tech­nique with­out any or­ders. The few times I've seen her use her qi any oth­er way, it's the same." He leaned away again. "I sup­pose the sect as a whole is bet­ter giv­en that she can't ac­tu­al­ly use her voice the way she wants, but the Less­er House is poor­er for it."

Ki'el nod­ded. "Can you think of any rea­son why she would be keep­ing an eye on me? Af­ter what I have been through, I am forced to think she al­lies with some­one who is in­ter­est­ed in me."

"I think that if Lan Wu had any al­lies out­side of the Less­er House, they would have giv­en her a path for­ward long ago," Fei Taru said. "But at the same time, wouldn't the promise of such a thing be the eas­i­est way to ma­nip­u­late woman like her?" He shrugged. "I'm not aware of who she as­so­ci­ates with, and it would be im­pos­si­ble to find out with­out sneak­ing af­ter her every day for a month. I'm sure you've al­ready dis­cov­ered that many of us make our friends and ac­quain­t­ences while on jobs, not while wast­ing our time and en­er­gy on the low­est of the Moon­stone Is­lands."

Not long af­ter that, he and Ki'el part­ed ways, and Ki'el con­sid­ered all of that as she went about her day. Most of the peo­ple she spoke with af­ter that--in­clud­ing Ben Jito--said lit­tle or re­fused to com­ment at all, most­ly not want­i­ng to get in­volved. Bai Be­nai, how­ev­er, also spoke freely with her.

"Lan Wu is of the Lan dy­nasty, a less­er scion of a branch fam­i­ly from a North­ern Djang war­rior clan," she said. "It's telling that she re­fus­es to use her branch fam­i­ly name here, as though she has the right to use the Lan fam­i­ly name alone, which I am sure she does not. The most com­mon of their qi na­tures are ice and stone, fit­ting for moun­tain peo­ple, and it is ob­vi­ous nei­ther res­onates with Lan Wu. She is far from her fam­i­ly here, and I am sure that she and they are both hap­pi­er for that." Be­nai, who had sim­ply been keep­ing guard over a group of oth­ers as they trained, made a fa­cial ex­pres­sion and noise that Ki'el took as con­de­scend­ing, though she was un­fa­mil­iar with both.

"Do you know if she has oth­er al­lies here? Ones who might be in­ter­est­ed in me af­ter the in­ci­dent--my sec­ond in­ci­dent with Broth­er Mon­shu?"

"You'd need to in­ves­ti­gate the en­tire Out­er Sect, and per­haps be­yond that, to find every­one with the de­sire and re­sources to med­dle in the af­fairs of the Less­er House. An Out­er Sect dis­ci­ple could dan­gle re­sources gained in a sin­gle day over our heads and most peo­ple here would sali­vate like dogs." The look on her face only dark­ened. "Fifty sect points per day is a bare min­i­mum ex­pect­ed for the Out­er Sect. Five hun­dred is not un­usu­al. And a mem­ber of the In­ner Sect could earn five hun­dred sect points by adding in­tent to their bow­el move­ments and sell­ing it as fer­til­iz­er."

Ki'el just gaped at the woman, and Be­nai's face twist­ed into an ac­tu­al cheer­ful face for once, and she laughed. "Ah, you are too in­no­cent, Ki'el," the woman said, seem­ing to re­lax a lit­tle. "But in truth, it's not as much a lie as I'd like it to be. The law of the en­tire low­er half of the Sect--and per­haps more--is ig­no­rance, child. It is peo­ple dis­cov­er­ing for the first time that things they held as myth are real, and play­ing with them as though they were child­hood toys. And there are many chil­dren ea­ger to be­lieve that some­thing is fun sim­ply be­cause an old­er child says so, even if it should be clear that old­er child is noth­ing more than a bul­ly."

Myth. Ki'el shut her mouth at the word, lis­ten­ing to the rest of what Bai Be­nai had to say. When she was fin­ished though, Ki'el, al­though she hes­i­tat­ed to do it, de­cid­ed to re­peat the ques­tion, her­self. "What does the word 'myth' mean to you, Sis­ter Be­nai?"

"Hm?" Bai Be­nai turned and gave Ki'el an in­cred­u­lous look, and when she saw that Ki'el seemed se­ri­ous, she con­sid­ered the ques­tion. "Well--I've nev­er thought it was a word wor­thy of con­sid­er­a­tion. Myth is some­thing we hold in awe, is it not? Some­thing for­eign and dis­tant, like an­cient deities and an­ces­tral spir­its, like wise mas­ters and prodi­gal chil­dren. In truth, the point of say­ing that it is a myth... is that we do not know whether it is only a myth. It is some­thing worth speak­ing of, but many things worth speak­ing of are true, and many are false. All that you know is that it makes a fan­tas­tic sto­ry ei­ther way."

Ki'el con­sid­ered that an­swer, and when she re­al­ized she'd been silent for a while, put the thought aside. "My apolo­gies. It is a ques­tion that my mas­ter was asked by some­one else of pow­er, and he asked it sev­er­al times him­self, as though search­ing for a deep and pro­found an­swer. I thought I had my own an­swer, but it seems like the kind of ques­tion worth ask­ing oth­ers as well."

Be­nai just nod­ded. "Pow­er­ful sto­ries have the abil­i­ty to shape the hearts of peo­ple," she said af­ter a mo­ment. "A sto­ry, es­pe­cial­ly one wor­thy of be­com­ing myth, can shape the fu­ture of in­di­vid­u­als and of so­ci­eties. Of­ten­times, the sto­ry is bet­ter than the truth." She shrugged. "But if the sto­ry is good enough, it can still shape the world, even when there are many who know it is a lie. At times like that, some­times it's bet­ter to say noth­ing and let the lie per­sist. Who knows how much of the world is shaped by peo­ple stay­ing silent to let a pow­er­ful myth spread, know­ing that it is false?"

Ki'el nod­ded at that, and put those thoughts away, same as the ones be­fore. "If Lan Wu be­comes a prob­lem for me... what do you rec­om­mend I do?"

"I might al­most sug­gest you find a way to buy her off, but since you are not no­ble, even if you had the re­sources, she would like­ly refuse. She seems to have that kind of pride." Be­nai frowned. "She would be more re­cep­tive to the words of an­oth­er no­ble, even a less­er no­ble like your Sis­ter Xam. But from the few times I've seen them, it seems more like she is try­ing to sway Sis­ter Xam to her side. If you can con­vince her that your side will al­ways be su­pe­ri­or to what Sis­ter Wu is sell­ing... enough that even her buried heart demons agree, then I have no doubt that your Sis­ter Xam can pro­tect you, both in qi and in so­cial mat­ters. Al­though she has been qui­et re­cent­ly, it is clear that she is a per­cep­tive and clever woman."

Ki'el had found that to be true, al­though Xam clear­ly re­sent­ed the Less­er House and what it rep­re­sent­ed. If what Be­nai and Xari said was true, per­haps she would be un­hap­py in the Out­er Sect as well. But did she tru­ly be­long in the In­ner Sect? She cer­tain­ly didn't have the same at­mos­phere as Broth­er Du and his friends. But then... they were peo­ple who had stayed in the sect for a long time. The three of them, at least, in­tend­ed to use the Sect to grow strong... but still had things ty­ing them to the out­side world, things they would need and want to re­turn to some day. Ki'el had no way of know­ing what sort of char­ac­ter or in­tent was aus­pi­cious for that kind of path.

In the end, an­oth­er half dozen in­quiries didn't bring any bet­ter in­sight than those two. The only oth­er out­lier was Broth­er Hau­ti, the cook.

"Thank­less woman," he groused, when she stopped by to speak with him and Mian af­ter din­ner, and end­ed up help­ing clean dish­es. "She wants some­thing here, and I don't think it's qi. When you catch her look­ing around, when she thinks no one is watch­ing, it's pan­ic on her face. What­ev­er dri­ves her, noth­ing else mat­ters."

Mian glanced at him, but Ki'el had not seen the two in­ter­act ex­cept pro­fes­sion­al­ly, and Mian didn't break that streak to­day. But also, the man re­fused to say more, look­ing al­most ashamed that he had said even that much out loud.

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That was all Ki'el had to show for around nine days of in­ves­ti­ga­tion. On the qi side, she had used that time on the same three core mat­ters--her qi cy­cle, in­tent train­ing, and at­tun­ing her body to her qi. The at­tune­ment, or ac­clima­ti­za­tion, caused Ki'el more gains than she was ex­pect­ing--far more. She had nev­er sensed re­sis­tance to her qi or aether us­age be­fore, but when she be­gan to use en­er­gy through ac­cli­ma­tized parts of her body, things that had once seemed nor­mal be­came easy, and things that had been easy seemed al­most ef­fort­less.

It ex­cit­ed Ki'el, in ways that her in­ves­ti­ga­tion def­i­nite­ly didn't. But also... she be­gan to look at Xam, and see her as a woman that held pow­er, but didn't know what to do with it yet, and so she ap­proached her about it, once she was sure that her own in­ves­ti­ga­tions were not go­ing to find any­thing more about Lan Wu.

"If I may ask, Xam," she said, un­sure which way was the best way to pry into the woman's cul­ti­va­tion, even though they were sit­ting out­side, wait­ing for Mian to fin­ish clean­ing the kitchen. "What were you told about prepar­ing for the Gold­en Wall?"

"Very lit­tle," Xam said. "As I've said be­fore. The tribu­la­tion in­volves be­ing struck by light­ning by the gods. You've said it may be about be­ing able to han­dle great qi. That means per­form­ing dur­ing the event, or do­ing some­thing while han­dling enough pow­er to de­fend your­self." She frowned. "My grand­fa­ther spoke with me once about the Gold­en Wall, but I was very young. As I re­call, he said that pass­ing his first tribu­la­tion was like shak­ing hands with a god."

Ki'el nod­ded. "That fits with what I have heard." She paused only briefly. "Kuli spoke to me about at­tun­ing my body to my qi. Com­press­ing qi in­side of my body, one small part at a time, so that the parts are used to the weight of it."

"That's..." Xam frowned. "I've heard sim­i­lar said about what is done af­ter pass­ing the wall. Forc­ing the body to en­dure the pow­er that you now wield, is... sup­posed to be a sig­nif­i­cant part of the Bright Met­al phase. But I sup­pose that it can be done at any time."

"Start­ing at Gold Qi, ac­cord­ing to Sobon," Ki'el agreed. "As long as you have enough qi to do it--and es­pe­cial­ly, pu­ri­fied qi, so that what your body adapts to is qi with­out any mis­tak­en in­tent."

Xam made a very un-la­dy­like grunt at that. "Of course this is all to tell me I should be do­ing your stu­pid qi cy­cling ex­er­cis­es," she groused, but went qui­et a mo­ment lat­er. "Ki'el. You are very fast to give away an­swers to these kind of things. As your sis­ter, now, I ap­pre­ci­ate it." She lift­ed a hand to her mouth and looked over at Ki'el, giv­ing her­self a con­tem­pla­tive look that Ki'el thought was prob­a­bly per­for­ma­tive, false. "Ul­ti­mate­ly, we are all alone in this world, you know?"

For some rea­son, Ki'el felt weird, like that state­ment, and the in­tent be­hind it, were a poi­so­nous jab at her. It was the fur­thest thing she would have ex­pect­ed from Xam, and she eased away from Xam, feel­ing un­com­fort­able. "Xam... I... I do not un­der­stand."

But Xam just blew a deep sigh through her nose and dropped the pre­tense. "Sor­ry. I try to put on airs with some peo­ple, but the truth is..." Xam took a mo­ment to put her words to­geth­er. "...I am where I am to­day be­cause my own fam­i­ly didn't show as much in­ter­est in me, my will, and my na­ture as you've shown me over the last cou­ple weeks. The mil­i­tary at least had the de­cen­cy to ex­pect that af­ter the train­ing and suf­fer­ing I went through, I would end up cold and cal­lous, but they..." she put ven­om into the word, "they ex­pect­ed me to be hap­py and cheer­ful af­ter try­ing so hard to bend me out of shape."

"I was alone, Ki'el. I was ready to re­main alone my en­tire life. It's ex­act­ly for that rea­son that I was at all will­ing to hu­mor Un­cle Mon when he sug­gest­ed I mar­ry some id­iot con­nect­ed to mon­ey. Mine is a life that nev­er went to plan, and even now, here in the sect..."

Ki'el moved over, and put her arm around Xam, though the woman was not pro­ject­ing the kind of emo­tions or in­tent that made her seem vul­ner­a­ble. When Xam looked back at her, there was some­thing dark there, some­thing an­gry.

"Tell me," Ki'el said. "Sis­ter."

Xam looked at her, then looked up and away again, sigh­ing ex­plo­sive­ly again. "Here in the sect," she said, "and in the mil­i­tary, and at home. I've al­ways felt alone, like the jour­ney was one I would have to un­der­take with­out any­one else." But Xam reached out and re­turned Ki'el's side hug. "Ex­cept for you, and to a less­er ex­tent, Mian. You look at me like you ac­tu­al­ly want to see where my jour­ney goes, and what hap­pens af­ter. You al­most make me think you'll ac­tu­al­ly be there with me when it hap­pens." Xam of­fered her a frag­ile-look­ing smile, but not one so frag­ile that it looked like the woman her­self might break. It was more like... she hoped to build some­thing, but was scared she would fail.

"Aren't we al­ready on a road to­geth­er?" Ki'el looked away from her, not sure that she liked how the woman seemed so un­cer­tain of her in­tent de­spite her be­ing right here. "Xam. I lived so many years ac­tu­al­ly alone. In a ru­ined vil­lage with no way to reach an­oth­er per­son even if I wished to. Those peo­ple who are able to pre­tend to be friends with some­one while not mean­ing any­thing good... I do not know how to deal with them. I do not like them. I do not like to even think about them. And I would nev­er, ever wish to be­come one of them."

Ki'el, un­sure of the feel­ings in her her­at, squeezed the oth­er woman just a lit­tle, then re­leased her, and Xam did the same. "If not for Sobon... I think the first per­son who told me I could trust them, I would fol­low for the rest of my life. I would wish to watch them through their jour­ney, even if I was not a part of it. I would want to help them when they stum­bled or when they strug­gled to get ahead. Be­cause I do not want to be alone again." She looked back up at her adopt­ed sis­ter, who met her eyes. "If you will re­al­ly have me as your sis­ter, I will fol­low you through the jour­ney. If not al­ways at your side, then at your side when­ev­er you need me."

"Be­cause, sis­ter," Ki'el found tears run­ning down her face, al­though she had not no­ticed her­self start to cry. "I do not want to be alone. I do not..." she found her voice break­ing up, and was able to no­tice, with some de­tach­ment, that she had in truth be­gun cry­ing, and not only shed­ding tears.

And Xam pulled her into a full hug, and Ki'el cried, and al­though there was still some dis­tance be­tween them, Ki'el thought that it was per­haps less.

Af­ter that, and af­ter Mian joined them, Xam seemed more will­ing to speak about qi pu­rifi­ca­tion, but still un­in­ter­est­ed in Ki'el's tech­nique. Kuli, though, sug­gest­ed a dif­fer­ent so­lu­tion--one that in­volved qi pu­rifi­ca­tion bar­ri­ers, us­ing the in­sight that Xam gained by walk­ing the area where she would cul­ti­vate. In­stead of sim­ply not­ing the qi sources around her and mov­ing to an area that felt safer, Kuli said, she should use qi and in­tent to re­ject qi and in­tent from sources that she iden­ti­fied, or qi af­fect­ed by those sources.

{ You will still be sub­ject to in­tent you can­not de­tect or com­pre­hend, } Kuli ad­mit­ted, { but this is al­ways the case, with Ki'el's ver­sion of the tech­nique as well as al­most all oth­ers. }

Xam con­sid­ered it, and nod­ded. "I can see the wis­dom of it," she said, "In­stead of tak­ing any qi and im­prov­ing it, take only that qi which can be con­sid­ered pure. There will be times and places where it means I can­not cul­ti­vate at all, but..." she sighed, but only a lit­tle, not like her heav­ier sigh­ing be­fore. "In those sit­u­a­tions, it would have been un­wise to trust my own ef­forts to pu­ri­fy it as well, wouldn't it?"

{ You are not wrong, } Kuli replied. { This tech­nique will also not help to pu­ri­fy the qi you al­ready have, which Ki'el's tech­nique can. But it should lessen fu­ture im­pu­ri­ties. }

"I see. In the end, it does lit­tle to help me with Ki'el's 'ac­clima­ti­za­tion' strat­e­gy." She glanced at Mian. "What do you think, hus­band?"

Mian, who had been con­tent to let them speak, raised an eye­brow at her. "Ask­ing my opin­ion, now?" There wasn't so much bit­ter­ness in his voice, as a bit of sad­ness, or per­haps dis­tance.

"We've not had much op­por­tu­ni­ty to ac­tu­al­ly act like a cou­ple. Or, I sup­pose, even be­come a cou­ple." She glanced at Ki'el so quick­ly that she thought she might be mis­tak­en for think­ing it had even hap­pened. "But we are on the same jour­ney to­geth­er, are we not?"

Mian laughed light­ly. "In truth, Xam, I think you both are amaz­ing. I think that Ki'el's tech­nique, if you could mas­ter it, would make you much stronger. But if you have a good rea­son not to do it, then you do, and noth­ing will change that." He also looked at Ki'el, but when he looked back at Xam, Ki'el was sure that the man re­al­ly had eyes for her. "But also... I saw Sobon com­press­ing aether into his body be­fore he reached the gold­en wall. Pure aether, not qi. I know this has to be part of how he did so many amaz­ing things. I un­der­stand you can't use some­one else's qi, but per­haps you could use Ki'el's aether? It would be en­tire­ly free from in­tent."

Ki'el had not re­al­ly con­sid­ered us­ing pure aether for her own at­tune­ment, most­ly be­cause the sub­stance was so much lighter than qi. Even if she used all of the right-hand dy­namos that she had... com­pared to the weight of qi she could pu­ri­fy in a day, it would take sub­stan­tial­ly more aether. But then, Ki'el re­al­ized, she could al­ways cre­ate more pow­er cy­cles, more dy­namos, as Sobon had, un­til she could pro­duce as much aether as she need­ed.

{ If you have a large num­ber of dy­namos, you must align them, just as you must if you wish to cre­ate In­ner and Out­er spin dy­namos, } Kuli cau­tioned her. { Oth­er­wise, the small dif­fer­ences in their cy­cles will cause the en­er­gy and the cy­cles to re­act strange­ly with each oth­er. If it is only a few dif­fer­ent spins, it is fine, but with many... }

Ki'el word­less­ly ac­knowl­edged that, and spoke her con­cerns to Mian and Xam. The two con­sid­ered it for a long mo­ment, be­fore Mian spoke up. "If you can teach me to pro­duce the cy­cles, and pro­duce them cor­rect­ly," he said, "I don't mind be­ing re­duced to noth­ing more than a source of aether for you. For us," he rephrased. "I'm sure I could use it for the same thing, couldn't I? We would all ben­e­fit."

"You would not be lim­it­ed to only that," Ki'el ob­ject­ed, but Xam spoke over her.

"Even if you're will­ing to do that, I would trust you a lot less with­out your mas­ter there to en­sure that every­thing is per­fect," she said. "Sobon, Alas­si, Jom... who­ev­er your mas­ter re­al­ly is at heart, there is no doubt that he un­der­stood a great deal. But all of us, even you," she glanced at Ki'el, though Ki'el thought that per­haps she meant Kuli, "are all small peo­ple, and defin­te­ly not mas­ters. Com­mit­ting to such a course ful­ly is dan­ger­ous, if we don't know for sure that it will work the way we wish."

Mian looked hurt, but didn't ob­ject, and Ki'el hes­i­tat­ed to speak up. "I will con­tact him," she said, with some fi­nal­i­ty. "I do not be­lieve he can show up to as­sist us in any way, but he should be able to at least an­swer ques­tions."

Mian gave her a sym­pa­thet­ic look at that, but Xam at least seemed sat­is­fied, and led them onto an­oth­er top­ic, let­ting Ki'el re­treat into her thoughts. Be­cause she did wish to speak with Sobon, but she was wor­ried she would not be able to. He... had been busy, ever since he left. He had even said that he may not be able to speak with her.

Sure­ly it was only that... right?