Ki'el was, frankly, sur­prised at how many peo­ple the as­sis­tant al­lowed in to speak. It wasn't even the kind of ques­tion she would have thought to ask, but then, there were many things that Xam was do­ing that made a great deal of sense to Ki'el... when she learned, usu­al­ly af­ter­wards, that they had been done.

So Ki'el and Xam were ac­com­pa­nied, strange­ly enough, by Broth­er Juno, Sis­ter Be­nai, and Meixu--who had been get­ting more and more ir­ri­ta­ble when­ev­er Xam or one of the oth­ers had said that he could not ac­com­pa­ny Ki'el some­where. It had reached some kind of peak af­ter Ki'el's duel... but she had not been there when the fox had ar­gued with Xam about it.

Some­how, al­though she un­der­stood Meixu to be a high­ly in­tel­li­gent beast, more like a per­son than any­thing, the fox had seemed to want al­most the kind of com­forts that she would ex­pect of dogs or cats. He hadn't de­mand­ed more qi, or any­thing else of her, but had stub­born­ly pressed him­self up against Ki'el as though her mere pres­ence were ward­ing off some kind of aw­ful feel­ing in­side of him. So she had pet him, and al­lowed him to stay close, and no one had ar­gued or even said a word when he re­mained by her side for this meet­ing.

Ki'el, for her part, was un­able to ex­plain how she felt about Meixu, ex­cept that the fox ap­peared... cold. Not emo­tion­less, but like she had felt in­side liv­ing alone. Cold... like a body that strug­gles against an emp­ty world, not the kind of cold that em­braced such lone­li­ness, grow­ing hard be­cause of it.

Ei­ther way, Ki'el found her­self flank­ing Xam as they ap­proached, with Juno on the oth­er side... and Be­nai be­hind Ki'el, and a lit­tle to the side. It felt like a strange for­ma­tion, but she didn't spend much time think­ing about it. In truth, she found it a lit­tle ex­cit­ing, and in­ter­est­ing, but... it was hard for those feel­ings to push their way through the weight that had been on her mind for a while. A weight that Kuli was do­ing... some­thing to tend to, but she was yet un­sure what or how.

The mil­i­tary as­sis­tant who had said "come to­mor­row" had ap­par­ent­ly only lat­er con­firmed a time with Xam, and so it was late af­ter­noon be­fore the five of them showed up, but the as­sis­tant only word­less­ly al­lowed them into an of­fice, stand­ing back as though wor­ried about be­ing seen as part of their en­tourage.

The sub­com­man­der in the of­fice had the kind of en­er­gy that Ki'el had, in her fan­tasies, wor­ried she would have. Per­haps, she had en­vi­sioned her only af­ter she sensed her qi? It didn't mat­ter. There was a ten­sion wrapped around and through her spir­it, that might have dragged her down, but some­thing also pushed back from with­in, and there was some ad­di­tion­al struc­ture or strength that Ki'el couldn't even quite sense. Ki'el might have been in­ter­est­ed to find out more... if such a thing were re­mote­ly pos­si­ble. But Xam sim­ply marched into the room, to a spe­cif­ic dis­tance be­fore the sub­com­man­der, and salut­ed.

"Xoi Xam, of House Xoi, for­mer ad­ju­tant to Gen­er­al Gaum, thanks the Dis­trict Sub­com­man­der for meet­ing with us."

The woman's face was stone, though Ki'el sensed twitch­es of qi through­out her even as she waved a hand dis­mis­sive­ly. "Gen­er­al Gaum... that old lech­er. Still us­ing his mil­i­tary cred­its to gath­er wild flow­ers in­stead of wolves." She held out her hand, and Xam pro­duced the writ from her space ring im­me­di­ate­ly, hand­ing it over. The Dis­trict Sub­com­man­der only glanced over it briefly. "Rai Su Anin...? Of the South­east­ern block, not too far from the Heav­en­fall Scar front. Odd of her to pro­duce such a writ, though..." she glanced up at Xam, and then around at the oth­ers. "As far as I can tell, the one who the writ was in­tend­ed for is not here."

Ki'el swal­lowed a sud­den ner­vous lump, but stepped for­ward. This, at least, Xam had giv­en her in­struc­tions on. "That would be my mas­ter, Shi­va Alas­si. This is with her per­mis­sion, and it will also be with her funds--"

"Right, that much is fine." The woman flicked the pa­per back at Xam sud­den­ly enough that the young woman had to fum­ble to catch it. "Your in­ten­tions aren't to de­ceive or get away with some­thing, and I don't get the im­pres­sion that you're wor­ried about be­ing caught. What you seem to be wor­ried about most, and cor­rect­ly, is whether or not I ap­prove. I do not."

Ki'el flinched, and at a small qi pulse from Meixu, she stepped back to where she had been rel­a­tive to Xam, leav­ing the ne­go­ti­a­tion to her. But... in the mo­ments that fol­lowed, Ki'el re­al­ized that she did not feel an over­rid­ing sense of fi­nal­i­ty to the woman's words, and al­though Xam also seemed to take a mo­ment, she did speak up.

"We are aware, of course, of the many bonds and ex­pec­ta­tions upon a no­ble house. It is our ex­pec­ta­tion that we will be able to quick­ly rise in stand­ing, enough to meet the Di­a­mond Lord's stan­dards--"

"Sup­pose for the mo­ment I be­lieved you," the Sub­com­man­der in­ter­rupt­ed again, her voice a mix­ture of tired and an­noyed. "What ex­act­ly are you ex­pect­ing to be able to pur­chase, with what funds, in or­der to pro­vide what ser­vice?"

Ki'el sensed a twinge of aether--not quite qi--through Xam, as the girl re­strained some thought or feel­ing, though she did a de­cent job of not show­ing it out­ward­ly. "This Xoi is not fa­mil­iar with the prop­er­ty avail­able, but we are no stranger to hard­ship or la­bor. We would glad­ly take a wild moun­tain ter­ri­to­ry, not large in size, to pro­vide both safe­ty to the cit­i­zen­ry, and qi craft­ing..."

"The es­tab­lished trade clans have most of the use­ful min­ing ter­ri­to­ry, and the mil­i­tary clans con­trol the en­tire bor­der. The 'wild moun­tain ter­ri­to­ry' we have avail­able is harsh, un­suit­able even for clans whose ex­per­tise are known." There was a mo­ment, just a mo­ment, of si­lence, as though the Sub­com­man­der was al­low­ing them to process what she had said, be­fore she con­tin­ued. "Even that ter­ri­to­ry, be­ing sov­er­eign ter­ri­to­ry of the Em­pire, is not to be hand­ed out to name­less, back­er­less clans--and if you had a backer or were wor­thy of your name, you would not be here. We are not in the habit of al­low­ing chil­dren to pre­tend to be no­bles. If you want to es­tab­lish a clan, you need to prove that you have what it takes to be wor­thy of a no­ble ti­tle."

The si­lence that fol­lowed felt like it was prompt­ing, but al­though Ki'el knew that Xam had pre­pared for this, the girl didn't seem to find words for sev­er­al sec­onds.

"If I may be al­lowed to speak?"

Ki'el blinked, turn­ing to look, but it was Broth­er Juno who spoke up, and Ki'el thought she saw a look of ex­treme dis­taste flow over the Sub­com­man­der's face for a mo­ment, be­fore she nod­ded. A mo­ment lat­er, so did Xam.

"If I may be so bold, Sub­com­man­der Rui Han Jei­ha, you have us at a dis­ad­van­tage." Broth­er Juno's voice... sound­ed far more re­laxed than Ki'el would have ex­pect­ed. "I trust you un­der­stand that we are all well aware of our faults. And it is com­mon play among the no­bil­i­ty, and oth­ers in high so­ci­ety, to pre­tend to have no faults, even when they are ex­posed by oth­ers. But--my apolo­gies--this Hanzen Juno is but a hum­ble cul­ti­va­tor of the Moon­stone Isles In­ner Sect, with a form of qi that, as you have al­ready no­ticed, is not turned to a mar­tial bent, and lim­it­ed only to Tran­scen­dent Gem."

Ki'el... blinked, still not hav­ing known what qi Broth­er Juno had or how strong he was. Still... Tran­scen­dent Gem was still sev­er­al phas­es ahead of her, was it not? It was a re­spectable ac­com­plish­ment, cer­tain­ly?

"I was won­der­ing why some­one use­less like you was here," Sub­com­man­der Rui's voice was some­how both blunt enough to car­ry no in­sult with her words, and si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly cut­ting enough that Ki'el felt like it had some­how gone right to the heart of Broth­er Juno's words.

"Ex­act­ly so." Juno's words showed no sign of dis­tress or hurt, though there was per­haps a bit of ex­tra guard­ed­ness there. "But let us ex­am­ine this ris­ing house, if you would. To the right of Lady Xoi you will no­tice the Young Mis­tress of our house, the same who, you have doubt­less heard, ac­quit­ted her­self ac­cept­ably in a rigged duel, de­spite her young age and some­what shel­tered up­bring­ing."

Shel­tered? That was not what Ki'el would have called her­self, not af­ter spend­ing so many years with­out ac­tu­al shel­ter from the wind and rains, but she said noth­ing.

"Her mas­ter is the ris­ing house's ma­tri­arch, dis­tinct from that of House Xoi, but it is our young mis­tress her­self who man­ages to at­tract the var­i­ous pe­cu­liar tal­ents to her. My­self, Lady Xoi, and the oth­ers who you have no doubt al­ready cor­rect­ly cat­e­go­rized, are by no means the only ones that she has at­tract­ed, but rather a sam­ple." Broth­er Juno's voice was steady, al­most amused, al­though it re­mained guard­ed enough that he did not sound dis­re­spect­ful. "She is un­de­ni­ably a prodi­gy, though if I may, Sub­com­man­der, I would make a dis­tinc­tion here, af­ter spend­ing many years, my­self, in the Sect."

Juno paused, as though he was ac­tu­al­ly ask­ing per­mis­sion to add a clar­i­fy­ing point, and if so, he must have sensed some kind of agree­ment from the Sub­com­man­der that Ki'el did not. "I have spent more than twen­ty years in the Sect, fif­teen in the Out­er Sect and five more in the In­ner, and I have seen a num­ber of prodi­gies, ones who I would cat­e­go­rize as ei­ther 'id­iots,' 'brats,' or 'ge­nius­es'--some­thing that I'm sure the Hon­ored Sub­com­man­der has her­self no­ticed among the ris­ing and falling clan scions un­der her care.

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Ki'el looked to the Sub­com­man­der, and there was, per­haps, a small af­fir­ma­tive quirk to her mouth, but she said noth­ing.

"The dis­tinc­tion, as I have ob­served it, is this: any prodi­gy will be some­one who ac­com­plish­es things far be­yond what should be safe for them. 'Id­iot prodi­gies' will be im­pressed that they ac­com­plished such a thing and pa­rade it around in front of oth­ers, as though step­ping slight­ly fur­ther than oth­ers makes them unique or spe­cial. A 'brat prodi­gy' will only ever be com­par­ing them­selves to an ide­al hand­ed to them by some­one else, usu­al­ly their fam­i­ly or mas­ter--and I won't lie, I've seen that in our young mis­tress once or twice."

"But a ge­nius prodi­gy is one who is dis­ap­point­ed in them­selves for not yet be­ing able to achieve what they know is pos­si­ble. They are the kind in too much of a hur­ry to grow up, too ea­ger to car­ry their share of the bur­den. They are the sort who are only be­neath drag­ons be­cause their wings have not yet grown." Ki'el couldn't help mov­ing her head so that she could see Broth­er Juno, and she saw him glance her way, the look on his face flash­ing to dis­ap­proval at her for break­ing for­ma­tion, but... Ki'el could still only re­luc­tant­ly turn away.

What Broth­er Juno was say­ing... like what many peo­ple said about her... did not make sense. Did it?

"Our Young Mis­tress is with­out a doubt one of those, and it is ex­act­ly for that rea­son that strange folk gath­er around her. Peo­ple who have tast­ed the im­pos­si­ble, but can­not have faith, can­not gath­er the strength. Ones who would ride a drag­on--"

"All very elo­quent," the Sub­com­man­der broke in, her voice once again some­how both blunt and dead­ly. "Your point?"

"It's sim­ple," Juno said, and al­though Ki'el knew it was bad form, she saw him break his pos­ture to just give an ex­ag­ger­at­ed shrug, from the cor­ner of her eye. "We didn't come here be­cause it was ide­al, we came be­cause it was the clos­est. You are ful­ly aware of the dan­gers the Em­pire is fac­ing. We op­pose the Ren, and we are strong enough to car­ry our weight, or we will be. If that doesn't match your lo­cal pol­i­tics or if you're un­in­ter­est­ed, then we go else­where. We will be an­noyed if we wast­ed our time here, but it's our in­tent to serve both the Em­pire and our­selves. The be­hav­ior of this city has al­ready been an in­sult, and we won't suf­fer too much more. If you're go­ing to say 'no', at least have the de­cen­cy to do it quick­ly. It will be a long trip to the next place."

Ki'el could feel a spike in the Sub­com­man­der's qi, though the woman held it in check. Out­ward­ly, she gave no sign of any­thing more than con­tin­u­ing dis­in­ter­est, and even her spir­it seemed--on one lev­el, at least--to be placid, un­af­fect­ed. But Ki'el un­der­stood that Broth­er Juno's words had been a chal­lenge, es­pe­cial­ly to a woman who--ac­cord­ing to her as­sis­tant, at least--had been com­plete­ly un­in­ter­est­ed in meet­ing any­one who was not no­ble.

Af­ter a mo­ment, Sub­com­man­der Rui turned to look at Ki'el. "You, 'young mis­tress'."

Ki'el blinked, but stepped for­ward. "Yes?"

"What does no­bil­i­ty mean to you? Feal­ty? You aren't even of Djang birth, that's ob­vi­ous. Is­lander, I think."

"Il­lan, Sub­com­man­der."

"Il­lan. That cov­ers a lot of sea ter­ri­to­ry. And even this far from the coast, I'm not ig­no­rant of what Djang forces do to is­landers when they can get away with it. I've seen slave auc­tions even this far in­land, and Il­lianos are not too un­com­mon there." There was a sour dis­taste in the woman's voice, but Ki'el bare­ly heard it.

Not over the flick­er­ing fear and anger that surged through her.

"To serve as a Djang No­ble means sup­port­ing the Em­pire above all else. It means rec­og­niz­ing rights guar­an­teed to the cit­i­zens and the no­bil­i­ty, in­clud­ing forced servi­tude." Her words were cold, and Ki'el felt them pierc­ing into her spir­it. "This is not a false ques­tion. It is not a joke, or a trap. The fate of your house rests on what you say next. What is your an­swer?"

What was Ki'el's an­swer? To what no­bil­i­ty meant? Or feal­ty? In the face of such... dis­gust­ing...

Un­bid­den, Ki'el re­called when Sobon, short­ly be­fore he left, was speak­ing of his home. Of... of a world that was very pow­er­ful, very ad­vanced, but where--in Sobon's con­fused lan­guage--every­one was part of a 'grand so­ci­etal ar­ray', where every­one had a pur­pose, and every­one had to ful­fill their pur­pose in or­der for that ad­vanced world to func­tion. And... Sobon had said that this world was back­wards, bar­bar­ic, cor­rupt and vi­o­lent. She couldn't dis­agree with that, of course.

Still... Ki'el took a deep breath, try­ing to find an an­swer in those thoughts, and what she her­self be­lieved be­fore and af­ter hear­ing them. And... she could not ig­nore Sobon's ques­tion about myth, ei­ther. It felt too hon­est to speak of that here, but she couldn't doubt how it ap­plied--how peo­ple must be­lieve in some 'myth of the Djang Em­pire' or sim­i­lar. Sobon had said as much be­fore.

Af­ter a long mo­ment, Ki'el spoke. "My... mas­ter spoke of peo­ple work­ing to­geth­er to­wards some­thing greater, but that's too lit­tle. It says noth­ing about the Djang, or about my peo­ple. Or about my fam­i­ly, who were kid­napped by Djang slavers. Or about me, when I was ab­duct­ed and to be sold to slavers my­self." She re­fo­cused on the Sub­com­man­der long enough to see the woman's stone face shift, for a mo­ment, be­fore her com­po­sure re­turned. "I do not un­der­stand much of how the Djang view them­selves, but I do un­der­stand that great ideas re­quire much hard work, peace, and or­der. An em­pire that could con­quer the world can­not be built with­out those things."

From what she could tell, from the Sub­com­man­der's face, what she had said was not wrong... yet.

"But what has hap­pened to me, and to my peo­ple, is proof that the Djang are not ready to con­trol the world. That the Ren are re­belling is proof that even among the Djang, the Em­pire's foun­da­tion is not sol­id enough. I do not seek to de­stroy the Em­pire. I do not seek re­venge. I do de­sire to see great things be done. I wish to see peace and or­der. I be­lieve that ab­duct­ing peo­ple, en­slav­ing peo­ple, flies in the face of that peace and or­der. It flies in the face of every­thing that the Djang should be­lieve, if they want to do great things. It does dis­gust me, and I do wish to be rid of it... if I could."

Ki'el felt some­thing over­flow­ing with­in her as she spoke, an an­guish and anger that poured out like wa­ter from a jug sud­den­ly top­pled. She found her­self meet­ing the eyes of Sub­com­man­der Rui. "You say that you have seen things, that you are not an id­iot. I am meant to as­sume that you also dis­agree with what is done, though you did not say that. Base Com­man­der Rai also dis­agreed with what was done, but did noth­ing. I trust you were both think­ing that so long as you sup­port the peace and or­der of the Em­pire, then you sup­port the Em­pire it­self. But al­ready, to­day, 'peace' and 'or­der' are gone. If you wish to see the Em­pire do great things in your life­time, it will only be af­ter peace and or­der are ob­tained."

Be­hind her, Ki'el heard Be­nai speak up. "The girl is im­pas­sioned, and stray­ing from her points, but she isn't wrong." Ki'el had to re­sist the urge to turn, or speak up. "Those of spir­it beast blood­lines have long felt op­pressed, but those who were alive at the time of the Di­a­mond Lord's as­cen­sion re­mem­ber be­ing hon­ored and beloved for their strength and beau­ty. In an era of peace, those old mon­sters re­mained silent in or­der to hon­or the ones who loved them, but they have not been loved by the Em­pire since that era be­gan. 'Feal­ty' and 'no­bil­i­ty' have been col­lars that we put on our­selves, out of love and re­spect. As long as the world is wor­thy of that love and re­spect, we have no rea­son to re­move them. But." The woman's last word had a fi­nal­i­ty to it, an un­re­pen­tant re­fusal to fin­ish the thought.

"We are here ask­ing to join," re­mind­ed Broth­er Juno quick­ly. "To pro­tect and to build, not to con­quer. That should be cel­e­brat­ed in an age like this one, should it not?"

Sub­com­man­der Rui's eyes shift­ed around, but her face and body re­mained sto­ic. The flow of her spir­it and qi, Ki'el not­ed, had slowed, though ex­act­ly what that meant, she was un­sure.

"And you all agree, that you are here to pro­tect and build, and not to con­quer?" There was a cer­tain... mis­trust in the Sub­com­man­der's voice.

Ki'el could do noth­ing but nod, and she thought she saw the oth­ers to her left do­ing the same. When the Sub­com­man­der's eyes fell on Meixu, the spir­it at her shoul­der trans­mit­ted only gen­tly. [ I am bound by con­tract to serve my Mis­tress, here. If I weren't, I would leave rather than try to claim this place. ]

There was an­oth­er long pause, but even­tu­al­ly, the Sub­com­man­der leaned back in her seat and let out a very long, very un-la­dy­like sigh. "Fine," she said, her voice los­ing a lot of pol­ish and be­com­ing a low­er, al­most rum­bling noise. Her at­ten­tion snapped back to Xam. "Orig­i­nal­ly, I only hu­mored this be­cause I've had to fight off id­iot suit­ors like that Zhu brat, and any woman with the back­bone to spit in their faces can at least be re­cruit­ed as a sol­dier. That wouldn't be enough to get you a real piece of prop­er­ty, but it would be a foot in the door." Her gaze shift­ed to Ki'el, then back. "I'm still not con­vinced how valu­able you lot are, but with the Ren in open re­bel­lion, we can't af­ford to ig­nore some­one who choos­es to side with us and against them."

"It just so hap­pens that a trade house here--pre­dictably a very poor, stu­pid one--sud­den­ly tried to get into the Ren's good graces. We in­ter­cept­ed their mes­sages and put them to the sword. Lo­cal pol­i­tics means we have to put most of the par­cel up for auc­tion, the kind of auc­tion you like­ly won't be able to af­ford, but large sec­tions re­vert­ed to mil­i­tary con­trol, be­cause they were wild, con­test­ed, or ad­ja­cent to the de­fense zones."

"De­pend­ing on what ex­act­ly your busi­ness is, we might be able to find a small sec­tion for you. Per­haps with enough wild zone at­tached that your spir­it beast al­lies can have their own domi­cile." Her eyes flick­ered to Be­nai, and Meixu. "But prob­a­bly not enough for each to have a sep­a­rate do­main."

"I am be­low; he is above," an­swered Be­nai, her voice com­plete­ly un­both­ered.

Com­man­der Rui made a dis­mis­sive ges­ture. "I'm not here to en­sure you're hap­py, and I won't be the one who does the ne­go­ti­a­tions. You'll speak to the land min­is­ter and the sur­vey­or each sev­er­al times be­fore any­thing comes back that has to ac­tu­al­ly be agreed to. And you won't be able to talk to them un­til the city mag­is­trate ac­cepts my rec­om­men­da­tion and lets you meet with the City Lord. He also has the op­tion of re­ject­ing your writ, but if he does, it will be for po­lit­i­cal rea­sons--or cor­rupt ones." Her voice chilled with those last words, but she moved on too quick­ly to let them dwell on it.

"Doubt­less you al­ready un­der­stand this, but be­fore you meet the City Lord, you need to de­cide once and for all whether you will call your­selves a trade house or a mil­i­tary one. A no­ble trade house won't get you much at­ten­tion in this city, but not call­ing your­self one drops your chances of hav­ing any use­ful re­sources on your prop­er­ty to about none. The mil­i­tary here needs the help, so that will open doors for you... but we will ex­pect things you may not be will­ing to give." Her gaze, again, moved to Ki'el, and then away.

"Thank you, Sub­com­man­der Rui," Xam bowed, and Ki'el fol­lowed suit. "We will take your guid­ance to heart."

"Go," was all the Sub­com­man­der said, pick­ing up an or­nate pen and be­gin­ning to write some­thing even be­fore they were out the door.