In truth, Ki'el did not feel a great need to sleep, and she was sit­ting and med­i­tat­ing long be­fore dawn. Her back, as the heal­er had promised, was fine, al­though there was some­thing odd about the qi used. Ki'el, even with­out the as­sis­tance of her aug­ment, thought that it had to do with what Sobon had called Re­vival Aether, which brought things back to how they used to be.

When she start­ed think­ing about the aug­ment, as with many things, she could not help but feel that the name was aw­ful. While Sobon, and those he rep­re­sent­ed, was very in­tel­li­gent, their nam­ing abil­i­ty was aw­ful. And as she sat there, mak­ing a poor at­tempt at be­ing clear head­ed with­out leav­ing the med­ical room, she con­sid­ered the aug­ment with­in her, and it reap­peared in her mind, a vi­su­al­iza­tion of a younger Il­lan girl, one that could have been her sis­ter.

She not­ed, as she fo­cused on the im­age, that the girl was def­i­nite­ly not a younger version of herself. Al­though her mem­o­ries of her past were... nev­er per­fect, and were now fad­ed and mixed up with mourn­ing and re­gret, she could re­call her own re­flec­tion in the wa­ters from a sim­i­lar age. This Il­lan girl had a nar­row­er face than she had back then, she thought, and high­er eye­brows, but oth­er­wise they were very sim­i­lar, more sim­i­lar than Ki'el was to most of the oth­ers in the vil­lage. She sup­posed it was not sur­pris­ing, and did not mind, though she won­dered just how the ar­ti­fi­cial-mind had cre­at­ed such an im­age.

{ I can speak about it if you wish, } the aug­ment replied, { but I think you would pre­fer to think of more im­por­tant things. }

And Ki'el agreed, in­stead di­rect­ing her in­tent to a vague ques­tion about whether the aug­ment al­ready had a name it would like. And the Il­lan girl tilt­ed her head, and con­sid­ered her thoughts.

{ I only wish for your com­fort, } it replied, { but if you would like me to come up with one, it is sim­ple enough. I be­lieve you would be hap­py with the name Kuli. }

I don't only wish for my own hap­pi­ness, a part of Ki'el want­ed to say, but the aug­ment had al­ready said that it had no will of its own. And Kuli was a nice name, one that she thought her moth­er would have liked. Where Ki'el was giv­en the name of a bird in the sky, Kuli was a type of cloud, one of the small­er ones, but still thick enough to cast a shad­ow; a cheer­ful cloud, not a stormy one. Al­though by now, she bare­ly re­mem­bered the sound of her moth­er's voice, it was not hard for her to imag­ine the woman say­ing, "Look at the ki'el up by the kuli." Or, per­haps, "Look at that kuli, over by the ki'el."

When the heal­er en­tered the room some lit­tle while lat­er, Ki'el had to wipe a few tears from her eyes, but they were not bit­ter ones.

"You look well," Broth­er Yong said. "Thank you for not do­ing any­thing rash with your back. Please lay down and let me ex­am­ine you."

So Ki'el lay once more on her chest, and Broth­er Yong ran his fin­gers up and down her back. Ki'el felt more med­ical qi press gen­tly into her back, but she could tell it was not a great deal. "It feels much bet­ter," she said, as Broth­er Yong's fin­gers pushed gen­tly on the meat around her spine. "I felt that I could have stood and walked."

"You can, and you will," Yong agreed, re­mov­ing his hands. "My heal­ing path is based on the works of the Whis­per­ing Sage, who has walked this world for many cen­turies, and he speaks of this tech­nique as though the pa­tient is com­plete­ly un­harmed once it is per­formed. My own mas­tery of it is not near­ly to that lev­el, but it has been many years since fur­ther treat­ment was nec­es­sary, if a wound was caught as ear­ly as yours. You will be sore, es­pe­cial­ly when you bend your back, but no fur­ther heal­ing should be re­quired. You may leave, or if you de­sire, re­main for a few hours more."

"I will go." Ki'el low­ered her shirt and stood, painful­ly aware when she did that Broth­er Yong was very tall. Ki'el was not... too short, for her age, but the heal­er was doubt­less one of the tallest adults she had yet met. Still, al­though there was a mo­ment when she was look­ing up in sur­prise at him, she caught her­self eas­i­ly and sim­ply bowed, giv­ing a mar­tial salute. "Thank you very much, Broth­er Yong."

"Go and be well, Young Sis­ter Ki'el." He sim­ply re­turned the salute and stepped aside, and Ki'el left with­out any fur­ther words.

She found, when she stepped out­side, that it was only mo­ments be­fore dawn, the sky hav­ing light­ened enough that it was very clear where the sun was, though it was not vis­i­ble. There was a pro­found peace to the spir­it of the Moon­stone Is­land Sect, one too in­tense to be idle; she closed her eyes and breathed in the air, try­ing to grasp the feel­ing of the world be­fore dawn, feel­ing the chill air that was so much thin­ner here than it was in her home. The air was... not dry, ex­act­ly, but there was so lit­tle...

A noise from be­hind her re­mind­ed Ki'el that she was still stand­ing at the door to the heal­ing house, and she star­tled, then moved away. It was not Broth­er Yong, but what seemed to be an Out­er Dis­ci­ple car­ry­ing a wood­en bas­ket full of jars and vials, and he paused when he saw her stand­ing there. His eyes flashed over her, per­haps see­ing signs that she had been in­jured, and he just nod­ded. "If you need to get back to the Less­er House," he said, "down the path and to the right. We don't mind if you linger... but they might." And then he moved on, the bas­ket full of glass not mak­ing so much as a sin­gle tin­kle as he moved.

Ki'el watched the hall­way where he had gone for a mo­ment, some part of her still lost in the in­ter­rupt­ed mo­ment she'd had, but the sun peeked over the hori­zon, seem­ing to part a thin cloud of fog and she had to raise a hand to shield her eyes from it.

Some­how, she thought she felt the col­lec­tive spir­it of the sect take a deep breath as the first rays of dawn struck; in, and then out. And Ki'el, though she was a few mo­ments late, also took a deep breath. And by the time that she had fin­ished, the peace­ful spell that had been over her van­ished, and the Sect was com­ing alive.

Re­gret­ting the missed mo­ment, Ki'el turned down the path, see­ing it as though for the first time, al­though there had been enough light when she first reached the door­way. This house of heal­ing was sur­round­ed by grassy fields, with no trees nor boul­ders nor oth­er build­ings for a long ways, and the few gar­dens around were neat­ly sec­tioned off. The path­way she walked down was stone brick, but so smooth­ly laid and joined that it bore no re­sem­blance to any stone brick she had ever seen, and as her eye was drawn to them, she no­ticed that the bricks them­selves were carved, but not en­graved; they were dec­o­rat­ed, but no pow­er flowed through them, or not that she could sense. And as she con­tin­ued on, she no­ticed the is­land sur­face curv­ing down gen­tly, like a hill, un­til the path split.

At the split, there was a shift in the qual­i­ty of the paving stones, but it was not an in­sult­ing dif­fer­ence. She could tell that the stretch of road that she fol­lowed to the right was laid with in­cred­i­ble at­ten­tion to de­tail, but not by the same mas­ter that had done the up­per stretch of road. It was even, but the spac­ing was not as tight, and the stones per­haps had shift­ed with time, now slight­ly high­er in one cor­ner here, an­oth­er cor­ner there. There were carved dec­o­ra­tions, but not on every brick; in­stead, the carv­ings were along the edges, with the oc­ca­sion­al burst of bricks etched with a pat­tern here or there.

When at last Ki'el reached a rope and wood plank bridge, she felt both com­plete­ly at ease, and also dis­ap­point­ed that the stretch of per­fect road was fin­ished. It was, at least, bridge in per­fect re­pair, and Ki'el could tell that there was a thread of qi run­ning through the ropes hold­ing the bridge up. When she touched the rope and placed her foot on the planks, they felt steady as sol­id ground, and she moved eas­i­ly across them, feel­ing the wind blow, but not feel­ing any sway to the bridge.

The road on the next is­land in the chain was good, but it was no com­par­i­son to the road on the is­land of the heal­ing house. As Ki'el moved down the road, it was clear that what she saw was only Out­er Dis­ci­ples, and she glanced around at the build­ings. There were sev­er­al build­ings here that seemed to be gath­er­ing places, the pur­pose of which was not ob­vi­ous from out­side, but they were open on the in­side, per­haps with ex­tra rooms along the sides. Al­though they had names, they were all un­spe­cif­ic--this one was Cloudy Riv­er Hall, that one was Fall­en Thun­der­bolt Hall. She itched to know more, but kept it to her­self; if she was pa­tient, she rea­soned, she would know some day. There was no rea­son to rush.

One hand­some broth­er stand­ing by an in­ter­sec­tion not­ed her com­ing and wait­ed un­til she drew close, look­ing her up and down. "Com­ing from the heal­ing hall... and you seem new. Head­ed to the Less­er House?"

"I am." Ki'el paused to give a small bow and salute to the man. "Would you di­rect me?"

The man smiled, look­ing like he want­ed to say some­thing, but thought bet­ter of it. "It is a path I walked a time or two. You will be tak­ing a right turn at each of the next three in­ter­sec­tions." He ges­tured to Ki'el's right. "That is only be­cause you can­not fly. The fastest way to get to the Less­er House would be straight that way," he ges­tured an­oth­er di­rec­tion. "But... don't try that un­til you can at least sur­vive the jump. And even then... make sure not to miss."

Ki'el laughed, and in­clined her head in thanks. "Thank you, Se­nior Broth­er. I am Ki'el."

"I would say to call me Broth­er Ba, but there are at least three peo­ple with that name here." He grinned. "I am Hem Ba."

"A plea­sure, Broth­er Hem Ba. Per­haps we will meet again." Ki'el in­clined her head and con­tin­ued on the path he had in­di­cat­ed. As he had sug­gest­ed, be­fore long, she passed onto an­oth­er bridge to an­oth­er is­land, this one with many more trees and many small­er build­ings, ones that Kiel thought must be hous­ing for the Out­er Sect. And at the next in­ter­sec­tion, she turned right, walk­ing un­til she en­coun­tered an­oth­er bridge to an­oth­er is­land with more hous­es, and then right again.

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By the time that Ki'el had made it back to the is­land of the Less­er House, she had be­gun to pass peo­ple from the House head­ed into the sect on one as­sign­ment or an­oth­er, and it was only when she stepped off the fi­nal bridge that she fi­nal­ly saw some­one she knew.

"Xam!"

"Ki'el." Xoi Xam sound­ed re­lieved to see her, and she sprang up from where she had been sit­ting next to a tree. The Djang woman nor­mal­ly looked rather se­ri­ous, but now she seemed to calm, at least for a mo­ment. "Sis­ter Futi said you were al­right, and you seem to be. But Mian said that you..." she paused, her voice wa­ver­ing.

"I was struck from be­hind. I..." Ki'el only re­al­ly un­der­stood when she be­gan to speak just what might have hap­pened, had the Sect not so ca­su­al­ly healed her. Be­cause... the blow seemed to have tru­ly dam­aged her in a way that Broth­er Yong's tech­nique had eas­i­ly un­done, but she knew from ex­pe­ri­ence that it was no sim­ple thing to have done that kind of dam­age. And as she stood there, the peace of the sect seemed to blow away from her, as she un­der­stood.

Some­one had struck her with the in­tent to kill. For what? For turn­ing her back? For of­fer­ing ad­vice in­stead of in­sult­ing a man, in­stead of spit­ting on his face, in­stead of strik­ing him?

"Sis­ter Futi says that there will be an in­ves­ti­ga­tion," Xam's voice was sur­pris­ing­ly cold. "She... did not seem im­pressed by the Sect and its in­ves­ti­ga­tion. She... you will want to speak with her."

"I will." Ki'el could not imag­ine go­ing any­where else, not when Sis­ter Futi also gave work as­sign­ments. "What hap­pened to Da Chi­an?"

"Who?"

"The one with red hair. They were... they helped me dur­ing the fight." That was be­ing per­haps a bit kind, but she did not imag­ine that Da Chi­an would not have wished to pro­tect her if they thought they could.

"Oh. I saw her around, but I do not know where she is." Xoi Xam ges­tured for Ki'el to fol­low, and they moved to­wards the Less­er House.

There were sev­er­al streams of peo­ple at the en­trance, now, and Ki'el found her­self sur­prised to see the faces. Some of the peo­ple who she had seen yes­ter­day sneer­ing at her and at Da Chain with de­ri­sion passed out of the door with faces like wax and spir­its as dull as ash, with hard­ly a spark to be found. Many of the faces that passed by might have once been hand­some or be­at­i­ful, and might be if you caught them in an­oth­er mo­ment, but every one that passed them now was emp­ty, soul­less.

Ki'el felt some­thing strange in her as she watched the in­hab­i­tants of the Less­er House pass by, and she un­der­stood as though for the first time that they were chil­dren of no­bles and mer­chants, born of fam­i­lies with enough mon­ey to send their chil­dren or re­tain­ers to a sect in the sky. And yet when Ki'el looked at them...

She saw no fu­ture.

When there was a open­ing in the flow, Ki'el and Xam stepped through, find­ing Sis­ter Futi with her eyes aglow in the mid­dle of her room, scrolls and sheets of parch­ment float­ing in the air around her, some­times shuf­fling to near­by shelves and piles. Al­though she turned, and her eyes lit on Ki'el as soon as she ap­proached the door­way, it was sev­er­al long mo­ments be­fore she re­act­ed.

"Ki'el, come in. Xam, I do not have some­thing for you yet, but I be­lieve I will soon. Don't go far." Futi ges­tured, and the door closed as soon as Ki'el was through. When she spoke, her voice, too, was sur­pris­ing­ly cold. "I was watch­ing what hap­pened last night, girl, but if any­one asks, I was not a wit­ness. I know every­thing that hap­pens in the Less­er House, but pre­cious few peo­ple know that, and it must re­main that way."

"You are kind, Ki'el, and that may be a good thing in the long term, but the Less­er House is dan­ger­ous. What you will need to re­mem­ber is that if the Sect want­ed these peo­ple gone, they al­ready would be." Futi's eyes ceased to glow, but what was left over was a hard glare. "They could do with­out us all, to be sure. But the ex­tra la­bor is use­ful, and so some dan­ger­ous peo­ple are al­lowed to re­main as long as the squab­bles they have here do not af­fect the Sect it­self."

"Xan Bu has harmed peo­ple be­fore, Ki'el, and pa­tience wears thin with him, but he re­mains be­cause he is use­ful. One of the two dis­ci­ples who came here last night finds him par­tic­u­lar­ly help­ful, and the oth­er res­cued you. Do you un­der­stand?"

Ki'el found her mouth go­ing dry, half in anger and half in fear, but she nod­ded. "You think there is no chance he will fall be­cause of this?"

"When the in­ves­ti­ga­tion be­gins, Ki'el, you must only speak of facts. If you make an ac­cu­sa­tion and are proven wrong, your case may be dis­missed. There­fore you must know that Xan Bu is not the one who struck you."

Ki'el frowned, but had no doubts in her mind that it was true. "What is that bracelet of his?"

"If any­one asks, Ki'el, you did not ask me that ques­tion." Sis­ter Futi raised her chin and gave a cold smile. "I am not the per­son you should be ask­ing it, and now is not the time to be ask­ing. It may also not be quite the right ques­tion, though it is close. Do you un­der­stand?"

Ki'el thought she did, and she flashed her teeth back at Futi. "When will the in­ves­ti­ga­tion be­gin?"

"Most like­ly, lat­er this morn­ing. A mas­ter will come, and he will not be in­vest­ed in the out­come. You will not be as­signed any work un­til then, and nei­ther will Xan Bu. I would not go any­where that he can catch you alone." She blinked, and with­in the space of that blink, the glow re­turned to her eyes, and sud­den­ly, the door swung open be­hind her. "Send your friend in, and stay near the house."

"Yes, Sis­ter Futi." Ki'el stepped out, nod­ding to Xam, who was sit­ting on a bench against the wall. "You can go in," she said, but paused. "Do you know where Mian is?"

"Weed­ing the gar­den, I think," Xam said, stand­ing and fac­ing her. "Are you al­right?"

"I be­lieve I will be fine," Ki'el said, tak­ing a breath to steady her­self.

"Then I'll go." She reached out and gripped Ki'el's arm. "Be care­ful, Ki'el. You are a good per­son, and you don't de­serve... any more of that." She let her go quick­ly and im­me­di­ate­ly stepped into Futi's of­fice.

Ki'el watched her back for a mo­ment, but de­cid­ed it was rude to sim­ply stand in the door, and so she stepped out, and kept go­ing un­til she got to the front of the Less­er House. There, she breathed in deeply, find­ing that the air near the build­ing smelled a lit­tle dif­fer­ent than it had at the heal­ing is­land. It was... stale, she de­cid­ed, in a way that the air of the rest of the sect was not. And... as she moved to the side and sat, she thought about the walk back. The air... had got­ten more and more stale as she had gone down, had it not?

Kuli, she thought. I am not mak­ing this up, am I?

{ The dif­fer­ence in the aether is real, but it is a small dif­fer­ence, } Kuli replied. { I can speak on it if you like, whether briefly or un­til you are sat­is­fied. }

Briefly, Ki'el thought, mak­ing her­self com­fort­able.

{ Aether is nec­es­sary for life, and a part of life, and aether is very much like life in many ways. } Ki'el could al­most hear a shad­ow of Sobon's thoughts to what Kuli ex­plained. { And it is im­por­tant to re­mem­ber that no life lasts for­ev­er. Those who hold on to the aether of the past are much like those who can­not ac­cept death and move on. They de­vel­op an un­healthy at­tach­ment, when we must all start each day anew. }

Ki'el closed her eyes, breath­ing in, and thought about those words. In truth... they seemed strange, con­sid­er­ing that Sobon had spo­ken of fate and prophe­cy, but she also could not deny that the qi or aether of the Less­er House al­most felt like some­one who held their breath too long, and now had no strength.

Is there any way to fresh­en the air here?

{ You al­ready do, and not be­cause of your Pow­er Cy­cles. New pat­terns and new life breathes new aether into a place like this. When you leave, that too will bring new changes. What is stale is the aether of the peo­ple here, and you can­not change that with aether. }

Ki'el was med­i­tat­ing for a while be­fore a noise near­by caught her at­ten­tion--just the sound of foot­steps that stopped and then turned to ap­proach her. She opened her eyes, half ex­pect­ing to need to face Xan Bu, un­til her eyes caught the bright red of Da Chi­an's hair.

Da Chi­an's eyes, like most she had seen leav­ing the Less­er House, were bor­der­ing on be­ing com­plete­ly crushed, but she thought there was a light in them. The red-haired... girl? boy? Even this close, and de­spite some peo­ple sug­gest­ing for sure that Chi­an was a woman, Ki'el was un­clear, but Chi­an moved close and bowed, deeply. "Sis­ter... thank you for yes­ter­day. I owe you a great deal."

"You owe me noth­ing," Ki'el said, al­ready find­ing her­self an­gry at the be­hav­ior of Xan Bu. "I only... wish to pro­tect peo­ple who are in­no­cent."

Chi­an seemed to flinch at that. "Ah... Sis­ter is kind, but I am..."

"You are in­no­cent," Ki'el said, though it was odd to her to find that she be­lieved it so im­me­di­ate­ly and so thor­ough­ly. "I... do not know why Xan Bu was at­tack­ing you. But I know that you did not de­serve it."

"I..." Chi­an re­mained bowed, and be­gan to trem­ble. When they be­gan to speak, they were trem­bling, as though cry­ing. "I... do not de­serve to be in such a place, Sis­ter."

Ki'el was un­sure what ex­act­ly drove them to say such a thing, but be­fore she could ask, she caught a flick­er of move­ment, and sev­er­al fig­ures land­ed in the clear­ing near the house, as though from the win­dows of the Less­er House it­self. Ki'el leapt to her feet as she saw that one of them was Xan Bu, but she did not rec­og­nize the oth­ers. Al­though there were as many with him now as there had been last night, she was cer­tain that sev­er­al of the ones who had been there be­fore had left on tasks. Ki'el nar­rowed her eyes in thought at she no­ticed, and be­fore Xan Bu even opened his mouth, she flushed her spir­it with Right­eous Aether.

"The mon­ster and its new pet," Xan Bu's voice dripped poi­son. "A reck­on­ing is com­ing, and you will not fore­stall it. Nei­ther of you be­long in this Sect, and I will see you re­moved."

Da Chi­an's qi spiked and be­gan to flick­er, but Ki'el only placed a hand on their shoul­der, press­ing fresh aether into them as well, and they qui­et­ed. "Xan Bu."

"Try not to make a fool of your­self like you did last night." Xan Bu's voice was raised, and Ki'el frowned, won­der­ing who he was per­form­ing for, but al­ready guess­ing the an­swer.

"Your con­cern for my fu­ture is touch­ing," Ki'el said, not both­er­ing to hide her mock­ing tone, and she tight­ened her grip on Da Chian as they had to fight against their own urge to ar­gue. "But we will be fine." She pulled Da Chi­an back a bit, and whis­pered into their ear. "Do not lis­ten, and let me talk. I be­lieve that us speak­ing out in anger is ex­act­ly what he wants. Be calm."

Da Chi­an stiff­ened when Ki'el came close, but nod­ded, and willed them­selves to qui­et. And soon enough, Ki'el caught sight through the trees of a man walk­ing slow­ly, if not so slow­ly as the first time she had seen him. El­der Gol let his eyes roam across the trees and the path­way, across the house and the ar­eas around it, but his eyes seemed to nev­er set­tle on the peo­ple ahead of him. Still, the El­der did not seem un­aware of them, just as he seemed to be care­ful­ly as­sess­ing every­thing else.

When at last El­der Gol stood al­most in the mid­dle of them all, he turned and locked eyes with Ki'el, and she could feel an in­tense depth there that she could not be­gin to imag­ine, a depth that she thought no­ticed and re­act­ed to the fresh aether that she had cir­cu­lat­ing through her own body. And al­though she could not be sure of any­thing, much less the one small frag­ment of a thought, she thought she sensed ap­proval deep with­in him.

"Speak no lies, and speak no guess­es," El­der Gol said, turn­ing to look at Da Chi­an, and then turn­ing to face Xan Bu. "Jus­tice is nev­er served by those who only pre­sume they know the truth. Ask, and speak true. Lies will not be tol­er­at­ed. Giv­en the cir­cum­stances, wrong an­swers may be pun­ished se­vere­ly. Now." A cir­cle of dark­ness sud­den­ly swirled into ex­is­tence in the ground around them all. "Let us all in­ves­ti­gate and seek to find out the truth of what oc­curred here, shall we?"