Xam moved through the ex­er­cis­es with, she knew, a stub­born lack of grace, but she was im­prov­ing. Af­ter mov­ing into the Out­er Sect, a cer­tain amount of dai­ly ex­er­cis­es were re­quired, some­thing over­seen by the hous­ing over­seer for the sec­tion she and Mian were now housed in. At the very least, un­like the Less­er House, here she and her hus­band had pri­vate space--and they had made some use of it.

She was... not dis­sat­is­fied. Mian was an en­thu­si­as­tic lover, did his best to be at­ten­tive, and was im­prov­ing his tech­nique. Like her, he was also com­ing to be in ever bet­ter shape as the Sect de­mand­ed they should, and she saw en­cour­ag­ing im­prove­ments in his mood, not only since they were to­geth­er, but ever since his break­through. The old­er man seemed to have gained some in­sight from his Ton­ic, but the true im­prove­ment seemed to come af­ter he left be­hind the fail­ures of his past.

Now, the two of them, and the oth­er Out­er Sect mem­bers on this is­land, were mov­ing in rough syn­chro­niza­tion through the morn­ing's ex­er­cis­es, at a time when they would have al­ready been work­ing in the Less­er House. They were fed bet­ter, clothed bet­ter, the qi in the air was fresh­er, and Mian had re­ceived word that Ki'el had awok­en and was on her way to re­cov­ery. In short, al­most all of the strain had left them both.

"That's enough." When the word fi­nal­ly came, Xam re­laxed, though she no­ticed many of the oth­er stu­dents con­tin­u­ing, of­ten chang­ing their pat­tern now that they no longer had to fol­low in­struc­tions. "Xam, Mian, your forms are im­prov­ing. Mian, your foot­work is still weak. Xam, you aren't keep­ing your back straight." The in­struc­tor, a Djang man who Xam would have a hard time pick­ing out from a crowd of oth­ers even af­ter star­ing at him every morn­ing, nev­er had much more to say than what he saw wrong in peo­ple's forms. He went on to make point­ed jabs at a few oth­ers, but then left with­out any­thing else.

Xam took a deep breath, but looked at Mian, who nod­ded. The two of them, af­ter briefly wash­ing off their sweat, went to the Hall for their hous­ing is­land, which was a small meet­ing house on the next is­land over. Cloudy Riv­er Hall was not the most aus­pi­cious, they had been told, but it was far from the least of the Out­er Sect halls. The dis­patch­er who over­saw the hall was tall from a Djang and well-built, but re­mark­ably with­drawn, with nar­row eyes that were of­ten closed. It was not odd to find that he had wan­dered from his of­fice, which like Sis­ter Futi's, was filled with glyphs that con­nect­ed the dis­patch­er to oth­ers through­out the Sect, and this morn­ing, he had paced to a seem­ing­ly ran­dom sec­tion of wall and paused, as though star­ing at a spot on it, though Xam would ex­pect to find that his eyes were closed, if she checked.

"Broth­er Meng," Mian said, to alert him, while still a ways away.

As usu­al, the man took a mo­ment to come out of his rever­ie, but turned, his eyes open­ing briefly to con­firm who was there, be­fore he turned back to­wards his of­fice, pac­ing blind­ly. "Sis­ter Xam and Broth­er Mian. A mo­ment." Af­ter cross­ing into his of­fice, he paused, tilt­ed his head like he was lis­ten­ing, and turned to face the glyphs one at a time, as though con­vers­ing silent­ly. "The in­scrip­tion pro­ject from yes­ter­day will be­gin again in an hour, if you are in­ter­est­ed. Oth­er­wise, all I have for you are Spir­it Gem boun­ties, and the same tasks as the Less­er House has."

Xam gri­maced. The in­scrip­tion pro­ject only asked that they pro­vide qi, and as fresh Ti­ta­ni­um Qi mem­bers, they had lit­tle enough, by the Sect's ac­count­ing. And pro­duc­ing Spir­it Gems... al­though they had been taught the method, nei­ther she nor Mian was good at it yet. The Sect would buy even the low­est qual­i­ty gems, but for es­sen­tial­ly noth­ing.

"I see," Mian said, sound­ing dis­ap­point­ed. "We will help with the In­scrip­tion, but..." he looked at Xam, who did her best to read his face, and nod­ded at what she thought she saw there. "We've been mean­ing to go see our friend. Per­haps we should do that this morn­ing, be­fore we get start­ed."

"Sis­ter Ki'el has been moved from the Heal­ing House," Broth­er Meng re­pond­ed, voice still flat. "She and her friend have hous­ing in the In­ner Sect, Bil­low­ing Woods Is­land." He turned back, his eyes open, and his gaze lent his next words a cer­tain weight that they might not have need­ed. "The over­seer says they have ward­ed their house, so you may not be able to find them on your own. Ask at the Hall."

They nod­ded, and de­part­ed, and af­ter ask­ing around, found their way up the chain of float­ing is­lands to one of the few In­ner Sect is­lands ac­ces­si­ble by bridge. The Bil­low­ing Woods Hall, un­like their Cloudy Riv­er Hall, had most of its work rooms sealed shut with tal­is­mans or chains, many ra­di­at­ing in­tense­ly as they passed by to find the hall's dis­patch­er.

In con­trast to Broth­er Meng, Sis­ter Wun was tiny. Xam was a rel­a­tive­ly short woman, but Sis­ter Wun bare­ly came up to her chin. Like most of the dis­patch­ers she had met, Sis­ter Wun had a cer­tain tired­ness to her, one that spoke of end­less hours of small in­signif­i­cant tasks, none of which tasked her, but which al­lowed her no prop­er time to rest. Wun's eyes pro­ject­ed qi cease­less­ly, and Xam was sure that the woman saw right through them both in an in­stant.

"You're the friends of Sis­ter Ki'el," Wun said, be­fore they'd so much as spo­ken. "I'm Sis­ter Wun. They've been pay­ing peo­ple to come in­struct them the past cou­ple days, but not tak­en any work yet. Kind­ly re­mind them when you're there." With a burst of tar­get­ed in­tent, the woman gave them di­rec­tions, then turned away, look­ing out a win­dow in a clear dis­missal.

The path be­hind their Hall led to a nar­row and side­less bridge of sil­ver-edged wood planks, which Xam stepped fear­less­ly on. Like every Sect con­struc­tion, it seemed to shel­ter them from the winds around the Isles, and ad­just­ed only gen­tly to the rise and fall of the two is­lands rel­a­tive to one an­oth­er. Bil­low­ing Woods isle had a restive at­mos­phere and a clear walk­ing path, but aside from that, the some­times dense and some­times loose for­est seemed emp­ty.

They were draw­ing close when Mian sighed. "It's tak­en us long enough that the in­scrip­tion pro­ject will be re­sum­ing by the time we get there," he said. "Per­haps if we only say hel­lo..."

Xam looked back over her shoul­der at him, con­sid­ered it for a minute, and then shook her head. "No," she said, though she didn't im­me­di­ate­ly un­der­stand her im­pulse. "We said we'd see our friend, and we will. It's not a lot of Points to work on the In­scrip­tion pro­ject, any­way."

She sensed Mian nod­ding, but she was slow to con­tin­ue walk­ing. It took her a few mo­ments to un­der­stand the ir­ri­ta­tion with­in her, but not too long. In her youth, and in her time with the mil­i­tary, there had been oblig­a­tions, free­doms, and some small au­thor­i­ty. Now that she was out of the Less­er House, and the oblig­a­tions were less... she still felt like she had few­er free­doms.

And no au­thor­i­ty yet. Or...

When they crossed a line, Xam felt a fa­mil­iar feel, which she was sure was ei­ther Chi­an or Be­nai's work, and then she sensed Chi­an's spir­it en­er­gy, and Ki'el's mix­ture of qi and aether, both ahead of her. Both also seemed im­me­di­ate­ly aware of her, and she felt some­thing stir with­in her as she sensed Ki'el's ex­cite­ment.

Fam­i­ly.

"Xam!" Ki'el's voice sound­ed weak­er than be­fore her tribu­la­tion, but the girl's qi was still ahead of hers by a lot. It was more than quan­ti­ty, and it had been even when the girl was un­con­scious and strug­gling. She was def­i­nite­ly more than Xam was, though ex­act­ly how, it was un­clear. And... for now, Ki'el seemed in gen­uine­ly good spir­its. "Mian! Wel­come. I was wor­ried we would not get to speak soon."

"Our time isn't un­lim­it­ed," Xam ad­mit­ted, re­sist­ing the urge to hide her ex­pres­sion from the girl. It was in her na­ture to be a bit of a tease when she had con­trol, but even now, she didn't feel much like she did. "But we want­ed to see you, and none of the jobs avail­able to us yet are high qual­i­ty." She fi­nal­ly stepped out of the trees, to find that Ki'el and Chi­an were both in front of their small cab­in, and... there were a va­ri­ety of twist­ed bits of wood ly­ing around, many of them crust­ed with sap and with torn and flak­ing bark. Xam glanced around, not­ing that there were sev­er­al around where Chi­an sat... and none near Ki'el.

Ki'el nod­ded. "They haven't forced me to work yet, though I will as soon as I can. I... don't know what I can do for the sect, though. I still shouldn't use my qi, not for a while yet."

Mian seemed pained, as he looked at his sis­ter. "Can you still speak with In­tent?" he asked, and Ki'el nod­ded. "Cer­tain­ly you can of­fer lessons in Fire Qi, if your pre­vi­ous ex­per­i­ments are any­thing to go by."

Ki'el seemed of­fend­ed, and up­set. "I... do not un­der­stand fire qi at all, though. I have no un­der­stand­ing of na­tured qi at all."

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Chi­an gave her a look, and Ki'el turned to look back at her, the mis­un­der­stand­ing plain on her face. Xam felt like she had told the girl this be­fore. "Not all qi ef­fects are born of qi na­tures. Peo­ple of­ten learn a tech­nique first, then cre­ate a na­ture to ce­ment it, strength­en it, make it sec­ond na­ture." She stepped for­ward. "I am only be­gin­ning to think of what I have learned from the Thou­sand Mile Wa­ter­fall Flower, but al­ready, I could claim to have a 'Crush­ing Wa­ter­fall Fist' tech­nique." She sum­moned up the im­age she had built--in bits and pieces only, so far--of that crush­ing weight, the un­re­lent­ing mo­men­tum of the wa­ter­fall, and struck at a low tree branch. Al­though it hurt her hand to do it, the tech­nique was enough to break the small tree branch off. "It is not fin­ished. It is not ready. In bat­tle, it would not be enough. It is the be­gin­ning of some­thing, and if I wish to make wa­ter qi my 'path', it would be one step along that path."

Ki'el nod­ded, but didn't seem to quite un­der­stand.

"When peo­ple of the Sect are try­ing to learn about a qi na­ture, they are look­ing for any kind of ad­vice. As long as the ad­vice is true and help­ful, it will help them en­hance their im­age, shape their in­tent, and repli­cate the ef­fect they wish to ac­com­plish. For me, I have much I need to un­der­stand about flow, mo­men­tum, im­pact..." she trailed off. "Some of this is spe­cif­ic to wa­ter, but much of it is not. And yet, as we un­der­stand more, the im­age grows." She straight­ened. "I be­lieve that there are sev­er­al tech­niques al­ready that you could of­fer in­sight into, but fire is the one that you have al­ready proven you know. While your ad­vice won't be help­ful to every­one, many will have an im­pres­sion of what fire is only be­cause they have seen fire, felt its warmth. Some of those who of­fer ad­vice on fire qi still only know fire by what they see and sense."

"I see," Ki'el said, and Xam thought that per­haps this time, she did. She sighed, look­ing at the girl, and turned to look at Mian, who looked back at her, his ex­pres­sion sim­ple... but most­ly un­read­able. Aside from want­i­ng to help the girl, he didn't seem to have any di­rec­tion.

"I would like to say some­thing," Xam said, be­fore she could put it off more, and Mian and Ki'el looked at her, both tens­ing slight­ly from the way she said it. But... she bar­reled on, nonethe­less. "If... if we tru­ly are to be­have like a No­ble fam­i­ly, to serve your mas­ter, Ki'el, then we are go­ing to need to have a plan. Al­though many in the Great No­ble Hous­es, es­pe­cial­ly the prodi­gies, are free to choose their qi and their path... the House it­self must have a path. Right now, none of us have paths, but the be­gin­nings of the paths we have are all very dif­fer­ent." She looked over at Mian. "Your Hun­dred Hearts ton­ic. My Thou­sand Mile Wa­ter­fall." She looked at the oth­er two. "Ki'el's pu­ri­fied qi, and aether. And Chi­an's spir­it mag­ic, and her spir­it blood­line... if she in­tends to re­main with us." Xam closed her eyes, putting aside the ques­tion of whether she liked or trust­ed the girl yet. "If we wish to be at all se­ri­ous as a no­ble house, what­ev­er paths we put to­geth­er, we should be whole at the end of it. A path that none of us is sep­a­rate from, even as we walk our own ways."

"That's true," Mian mused, but from the way he said it, Xam was sure he hadn't thought about it at all.

"My path is flex­i­ble," Ki'el said. "I hope to learn in­scrip­tions which I can use the way Sobon does. As long as I can learn what I need to know, I will hap­py to sup­port every­one."

The strongest one here by far, and she only thinks to sup­port oth­ers. Xam couldn't dis­like the girl, but some part of her was still of­fend­ed by her sin­cere hu­mil­i­ty. When she didn't re­ply, though, Chi­an spoke up.

"The Rag­ing Storm Spir­it Fox blood­line has res­o­nance with wa­ter and air tech­niques, but a 'wa­ter­fall' would be slight­ly stretch­ing the con­nec­tion be­tween us. At least... I don't know that I could take your wa­ter or air qi and use it for my own as eas­i­ly, though per­haps you could use mine, as long as I al­low it." Chi­an tilt­ed her head, then looked at Ki'el. "I would still like you to con­tract with a spir­it from my fam­i­ly. I will, too, per­haps at Bis­muth or Dam­as­cus Qi. I could do it now, but..." Chi­an's voice trailed off for a mo­ment, then re­turned. "For those with­in the fam­i­ly, bind­ing a ser­vant spir­it is a mat­ter of pres­tige. If I sum­mon one too ear­ly, some in my fam­i­ly will con­sid­er me weak."

"I don't care what your fam­i­ly thinks," Ki'el hissed at the girl. "You are not weak."

Xam watched as the oth­er girl smiled back at Ki'el, her eyes flick­ing be­tween the two. They got along well, and there was some­thing there. So... she took a breath, and as she let it out, tried to dis­miss the lin­ger­ing mis­trust. If only it were that easy, of course, but it would be only the first step of many. To dis­tract her­self, she spoke up. "You don't think your fam­i­ly will mind if you serve a mas­ter who can only take a less­er spir­it guardian?"

"I... well." Chi­an turned to lis­ten to her, then turned away. "You might be right, but--" Then she paused, frown­ing. "There is... the ward is de­flect­ing more qi than usu­al. Not an at­tack. Some­thing out­side the Sect?"

Xam frowned, but turned and moved back to the edge of the bar­ri­er. When she stepped through it, though, she felt some­thing--an edge to the qi of the world, dis­tant, but un­mis­tak­ably like an un­sheathed blade. It was too fa­mil­iar to Xam, re­mind­ing her of bat­tle­fields, though what it meant, and where it came from...

"What is that?" Mian's voice from next to her was trou­bled, but not as trou­bled as Xam felt. Af­ter a mo­ment, Ki'el and Chi­an also stepped out. "Some­one's un­leashed qi?"

"Killing in­tent," Xam said. "Not close. But... un­less I am mis­tak­en, that is to the east. Which would mean..."

Mian looked at her. "The Star­beasts?"

But be­fore she could re­spond, they could all feel it, an­oth­er dis­tant sword un­sheathed. Nei­ther was beas­t­ial; both were hu­man, and af­ter some mo­ments of stand­ing and sim­ply sens­ing the qi of the world, they felt the two auras clash.

"I sensed some­thing like this," Ki'el said. "On the day Sobon was fight­ing. But it was brief. Three pow­er­ful en­er­gies, un­til one fled."

"If we are sens­ing it from this far away, they are high Flame war­riors," Xam said. "But for two Flame Qi cul­ti­va­tors to clash, with­in the Em­pire... will not the Di­a­mond Lord strike one down?"

They all stood and sim­ply sensed, but af­ter a time, they only felt more Flame Qi auras be­ing un­leashed, and the Di­a­mond Lord, at the cen­ter of the Em­pire... she could not feel a shake or trem­ble from it at all.

"What should we do?" Mian's voice was calm, and Xam chose to take some strength from that, rather than judge him. She took a deep breath, try­ing to find an an­swer.

"We can do noth­ing," was all Chi­an had to say. "Ex­cept try to ad­vance. The El­ders will all say the same. If any­thing..." Some­thing to the girl's voice made Xam turn to her, and she found the fox girl was look­ing right at her. "You're ex­a­clty right, Sis­ter Xam. If some­thing is hap­pen­ing, we should--you all should, at least--be able to stand to­geth­er."

But Ki'el put her arms on her friend's shoul­ders. "Chi­an. I meant what I said. I would like you to re­main with us."

It stung Xam, only a lit­tle, that Ki'el seemed en­tire­ly un­con­cerned with what she might have to say on the mat­ter, but then, whether Xam was the leader of the fam­i­ly on pa­per or not... Ki'el was still Sobon's ap­pren­tice. She closed her eyes. "Let's talk in­side the bar­ri­er," she said, and stepped back through, though now she found the calm in­side the bar­ri­er dis­qui­et­ing, rather than com­fort­able.

They all, by un­spo­ken agree­ment, chose for 'in­side the bar­ri­er' to mean 'by the cot­tage.' When they had made them­selves some­what com­fort­able there, by the small fire cir­cle that had been clear­ly used once or twice, Xam spoke again. "If we are a No­ble House... then your mas­ter, Ki'el, is our fam­i­ly's Ma­tri­arch. The one pow­er and voice that trumps all oth­ers, Sobon--Alas­si--is the one that even fam­i­ly lead­ers bow to. Since you can speak to her, and be her voice, you are sec­ond, at least when speak­ing for her." Xam found it sim­ple enough to say the words, but it was frus­trat­ing just how in­signif­i­cant those words felt, as though a pass­ing breeze could undo them. "Of the rest of us... I am the only one rec­og­nized as a no­ble scion by the Em­pire. For that rea­son, un­less your mas­ter ob­jects... I am, and must be, the head of this house­hold."

"Are we a part of your Xoi house?" Mian's voice didn't sound like it car­ried any judge­ment or hos­til­i­ty. If any­thing, Xam imag­ined that he would pre­fer to be part of some­thing greater.

"On pa­per, nec­es­sar­i­ly. If I am forced to choose be­tween the Xoi fam­i­ly Pa­tri­arch, and Alas­si..." she hes­i­tat­ed, un­der­stand­ing that--al­though there was no one there to record her words, to hold her to them--say­ing what she meant to say was a large step. "...I must choose Alas­si. Oth­er­wise, there is no mean­ing to any of this."

"Does that mean you will change your name?" Chi­an's voice sound­ed in­no­cent enough, but the thought burned Xam's ears. Say­ing it isn't do­ing it, some part of her mind ar­gued, but Xam un­der­stood. When she made that choice, she made it for good.

"I will de­cide lat­er. Un­less the sit­u­a­tion de­mands it, do­ing so would only in­vite trou­ble." She glanced at Ki'el. "But you should speak to--to the Ma­tri­ach. See if she un­der­stands the sit­u­a­tion, and if she needs any­thing from us. If she has time... any ad­vice on our paths as a House would be ap­pre­ci­at­ed, but I sus­pect now will not be that time."

Ki'el nod­ded. "I will have Kuli send a mes­sage."

Xam looked around. "And... there are no oth­er ob­jec­tions? To the struc­ture of our house, as I've laid out?"

Chi­an hes­i­tat­ed, and Xam knew she would. "I..." she stopped, and thought for a mo­ment, be­fore speak­ing again. "I don't know what would hap­pen if I tried to of­fi­cial­ly join your House now. I don't think my fam­i­ly would ac­cept such a thing. Like with chang­ing your name, try­ing to do it too soon might only in­vite trou­ble. But... I would like you to think of me as one of you." She looked up at Xam, and then at Ki'el. "For now... I would like to be con­sid­ered a sis­ter of Ki'el. Right now, even if I re­turned to my fam­i­ly, I don't feel like... I would find what I am look­ing for there." Abrupt­ly, her hand reached out and took Ki'el's, and squeezed it. "Per­haps I am find­ing that here, now."

Xam care­ful­ly kept her ex­pres­sion even, al­though she al­lowed her eye­brows to raise. "As long as you take good care of your sis­ter, I have no ob­jec­tions," she said, trust­ing that the fox didn't need to be told that she saw more than she com­ment­ed on.

"Then I also have no ob­jec­tion to you as head of the Fam­i­ly," Chi­an said. "As long as you take care of us all, I'll fol­low you."

Xam nod­ded, feel­ing like she'd just made a promise that she didn't--couldn't--re­al­ly un­der­stand.