Al­though Ki'el spent a lit­tle time try­ing to find ei­ther Mian or Xam, in the end, she could find nei­ther, and so she elect­ed to go to the edge of the is­land of the Less­er House and look out at the world be­yond. Al­though she kept in mind the warn­ing from Sis­ter Futi that she not go where some­one could trap her alone, it felt to her like now would be a very bad time for any­one to at­tempt to kill her if they were try­ing to re­main hid­den. Even so, she did not get close to the edge, in­stead find­ing a time- and care-worn boul­der that was set far back from the edge, and sat there, look­ing out.

A part of her had ex­pect­ed the aether here to be much fresh­er than the aether by the Less­er House, and when it did not, she qui­et­ly asked Kuli if she had an idea why.

{ There is a field sur­round­ing the whole of the Moon­stole Is­land Sect, } Kuli re­spond­ed, { such that the fresh qi and aether of the sect is drawn in through the high­est is­lands, and the spent qi is re­leased at the bot­tom. While it would not be im­pos­si­ble to gath­er fresh­er aether here, most of it is drawn away by pow­er­ful scripts sunk deeply into the is­lands. }

Ki'el felt that was un­fair, but also, she could imag­ine it be­ing the log­ic of a place like this. The heal­ing house had it­self not been the high­est is­land, but the qi there was much fresh­er than it was here, and she had no­ticed its fad­ing as she moved down the path. Sure­ly, with all the dis­ci­ples and mas­ters here, what­ev­er made fresh aether so de­sir­able would be con­sumed first by the most pow­er­ful, and what re­mains di­vid­ed among the rest, with the Less­er House get­ting the least. She could even imag­ine, af­ter hav­ing sensed pow­er­ful qi sev­er­al times--from the Djang Prince and Princess, from Sobon, from Lai Shi Po, and now from El­der Gol--that it was some mer­cy not to ex­pose peo­ple to aether too pow­er­ful.

{ That is not wrong, but it is not right, } Kuli re­spond­ed. { There are sources of qi here, but the fresh aether from the world is no dif­fer­ent from a cool­ing breeze. It is not in­tense enough to do harm, though some may be dis­tract­ed if they must strug­gle against out­side in­flu­ences in or­der to study and mas­ter their own qi. }

Ki'el looked out over the world, and she could con­vince her­self that the world be­yond the is­lands looked wrong--that the aether that she thought she saw did not quite match the aether of the world as it must ac­tu­al­ly be. Kuli said noth­ing of that, and Ki'el did not ask her to com­ment, in­stead clos­ing her eyes and fo­cus­ing in­wards in­stead. She knew, or she trust­ed Sobon when he had said, that she should not have used quite so much aether as she did re­cent­ly, but what that meant for her, she was un­sure.

It took a few min­utes for Ki'el to qui­et, but when she did, Kuli was there, a com­fort­ing sis­ter with no pres­ence of her own. { You are not like Sobon, } she said, { and his meth­ods will not work quite right for you. Sobon did not make much use of his--of Alas­si's qi core. In truth, he does not know much of qi cores, but his friends, who cre­at­ed the Voice of the World, do. I con­tain some of their knowl­edge, when you are ready to ask. }

Ki'el ac­cept­ed that, though she was a lit­tle ir­ri­tat­ed that Kuli used Ki'el's own name for the Voice, when she knew what it tru­ly was. Kuli's own thoughts, though, kept her fo­cused, and af­ter a mo­ment, Ki'el asked a sim­ple ques­tion. What am I sup­posed to be do­ing next?

{ Your dant­ian--your qi core--stretch­es as you fill it with qi, or aether, } Kuli said, { and your merid­i­ans--spir­it veins--must be ex­er­cised, so that they can eas­i­ly and safe­ly han­dle any amount of qi that you wish to use. You will also not wish your qi to sim­ply sit with­in your dant­ian, or it will grow stale. } Kuli paused. { The qi that you gath­er from the world is also im­pure, and most will strug­gle with un­der­stand how that can pos­si­bly be true, es­pe­cial­ly when it feels good or right. You trust Sobon when he says that it is true, but you also do not un­der­stand it yet. }

Ki'el ac­cept­ed those thoughts, and ac­knowl­edged that she did not, in truth, un­der­stand why qi was im­pure. But the way that Kuli had phrased it made some things clear; qi that was only gath­ered would be very much un­like the aether from her pow­er cy­cles. She knew, be­cause Sobon had said so, that it was im­por­tant for the Cy­cles to pro­duce aether with­out in­tent, and she could un­der­stand why--be­cause it would copy what­ev­er came in, and if the in­tent that came out did not match what she need­ed, it would be trou­ble.

Sobon... had said oth­er things, about great and pow­er­ful qi caus­ing mu­ta­tions and death, but she pushed those thoughts away for now.

If the qi that came in was also qi with in­tent, for­eign in­tent be­long­ing to oth­ers, then of course Ki'el would wish to pu­ri­fy it be­fore us­ing it, but what hap­pened if she did not? She asked Kuli, but for once, the aug­ment with­in her mind was qui­et, let­ting her think for her­self. And when Ki'el could not think of an an­swer, she raised her hands be­fore her and at­tempt­ed to play with the qi in the air around her.

It's not as though Ki'el knew much or any­thing about what one should do with qi, and so she spent her time try­ing to do the only thing Sobon had tru­ly taught her--to cre­ate a Pow­er Cy­cle, but of qi in­stead of aether. It was still a tricky thing to do, even when she could use her own, care­ful­ly con­trolled aether, and trick­i­er still with qi, which seemed a great deal heav­ier. It was clear to her very quick­ly that the same prin­ci­ple would not hold--that she could not cre­ate a wheel that would sim­ply cre­ate pu­ri­fied qi. Aether and qi were sim­ply too dif­fer­ent.

And yet, that was not re­al­ly the ex­er­cise she want­ed, not the an­swer that she need­ed. She want­ed to know what hap­pened if you used qi when it was im­pure. And so she took the qi that she knew to be im­pure, and at­tempt­ed to cy­cle it, in­tend­ing only that the qi that cy­cled would be free from all else.

It was not dif­fi­cult to de­tect the "dirt" that fell out of the qi as she did this.

It was amaz­ing to Ki'el, amaz­ing enough that she had a lot of dif­fi­cul­ty con­tin­u­ing her cleans­ing ex­er­cise, and even­tu­al­ly she forced her­self to stop pe­ri­od­i­cal­ly and try to ex­am­ine the dirty qi's flakes of in­tent and na­ture that came from it as she turned it. It was im­pos­si­ble to her to see any­thing in the flakes--she un­der­stood noth­ing of greater uses of qi, and could not have been able to say if qi was med­ical, poi­son, or like the sun, not from the col­ored flecks that shed away from the qi as it bent. And she knew, as she cy­cled qi, that what fi­nal­ly gath­ered at the cen­ter, at the cy­cle's thorn, was not pure qi.

Ki'el had seen pure qi, true pu­ri­fied qi, what oth­ers had called Pri­mor­dial Qi. Lai Shi Po even had an ar­ti­fact, one that Po had promised Ki'el could use some day, that would let her cre­ate this true pri­mor­dial qi for her­self; hav­ing seen the real thing, it was clear that this was not it, and even if the mas­ters of the Moon­stone Is­land sect told her that her qi was pure, she would know bet­ter.

If pri­mor­dial qi was true white, then this was... white-ish. It was once-white cloth that had been dirt­ied and washed. Even if Ki'el could re­move the worst of the stains, it was not white. And Ki'el sat there, con­sid­er­ing the flecks that had fall­en out of her qi when she turned it, and un­der­stood that if she used qi that was not pure, then those flecks would be in­side of her in­stead of scat­tered across her open palms.

{ Cor­rect, } Kuli fi­nal­ly said. { The world's qi sys­tem pro­vides sev­er­al times, like you ex­pe­ri­enced at Sil­ver Qi, when it strug­gles against the im­pu­ri­ties that you have re­leased. But if you have less im­pu­ri­ties, it will do a bet­ter job. }

Ki'el shiv­ered, and not from the chill of the wind and the thin air of the sect. The ex­pul­sion of... some un­de­fin­able shit from her body when she reached Sil­ver Qi had been sud­den and dis­gust­ing. She had been fight­ing pi­rates with Sobon, in his squir­rel form, and... and she had briefly been knocked un­con­scious by the fight­ing, to­wards the end. Though she had not spo­ken of it with Sobon, she had felt some­thing, when it hap­pened, al­though she had not awok­en.

It felt very un­com­fort­ably like throw­ing up, only with every pore of her body.

Even now she could re­call the sen­sa­tion, if fad­ed like a dream. It was an aghast feel­ing, like dis­cov­er­ing a dead and rot-bloat­ed mouse in the pitch­er of wa­ter you'd drunk from. A part of her had awok­en to the idea that some­thing aw­ful had hap­pened, and every ounce of her body re­ject­ed that aw­ful truth, ex­pelling every­thing--good or bad, to­geth­er--so that it could deny it all, pro­tect her from the aw­ful con­se­quences.

The idea that some­day in the fu­ture, she would think that way about her pre­sent self and what she was do­ing, was un­com­fort­able.

Once Ki'el's thoughts had set­tled, Kuli con­tin­ued. { The im­pu­ri­ties in your qi in­clude things you can­not yet un­der­stand, from the dif­fer­ent lay­ers of aether you may nev­er ful­ly learn. As you come to un­der­stand how the oth­er lay­ers of aether work, you can de­tect and re­move those im­pu­ri­ties. The stones are a use­ful ex­am­ple, here. Now that you un­der­stand that qi is not mere­ly emit­ted around you, but also af­fects the world around you at a dis­tance, you can find im­pu­ri­ties that make use of that part of qi. }

Ki'el stud­ied the qi that she had been pu­ri­fy­ing, and she thought of those riv­er stones, and she un­der­stood. Even the less-dirty white qi that she had gath­ered at the cen­ter of the cy­cle con­tained bits of in and out in­tent, and she pulled that qi back into the cy­cle and turned it, try­ing to be con­scious of that in­tent as well as she turned it, and as she did, the qi seemed to im­prove once more. When that qi fin­ished its turn­ing and gath­ered at the cy­cle's thorn, she could tell that it was whiter, but not white. Clean­er, but still wrong in a way that she could not yet de­tect.

Al­though she was ea­ger to try and pro­duce the purest qi, she calmed her­self, tak­ing this ad­van­tage for what it was. So far, Kuli was do­ing a good job ex­plain­ing things to her, but she knew that hop­ing to un­der­stand fur­ther lay­ers of aether was too much for her to ex­pect, now. Sobon had spo­ken of the na­tures of aether as in­escapably true, but also had spo­ken of very com­pli­cat­ed things as though they were sim­ple, and Ki'el was sure that what­ev­er came next would be that sort of thing.

So she med­i­tat­ed for a while longer, try­ing to re­fine her un­der­stand­ing of this qi-clean­ing pow­er cy­cle, and when she had cleansed a rea­son­able amount of qi, Kuli di­rect­ed her to breathe it into her dant­ian, us­ing care­ful in­tent.

The sen­sa­tion that came when she did was an awak­en­ing. Ki'el had felt her dant­ian open­ing up when she passed the tri­al that Sobon had guid­ed her through, the one that brought her Qi to the first star of Gold, and she had dim­ly sensed some of her aether leak­ing into a spir­i­tu­al vol­ume with­in her. But now that she breathed in clean qi, she sensed some­thing more. Parts of her that had been qui­et stirred to life. Some­thing with­in her that had nev­er known strength stirred, and she be­gan to won­der if she could sim­ply... per­form a qi tech­nique, as she had ma­nip­u­lat­ed aether be­fore.

Kuli was silent on this mat­ter, and so Ki'el at­tempt­ed to re­lease qi from her right hand. There was... some con­fu­sion with­in her, as the qi in­side of her core was not from the same place that she drew her aether, and the path from her dant­ian to her hand was not the same as... as...

How had Ki'el even ma­nip­u­lat­ed aether? How did she ma­nip­u­late qi? She blinked, feel­ing a shock run through her sys­tem, as sud­den­ly things that had once made sense sud­den­ly seemed for­eign, im­pos­si­ble. It should--

{ BREATHE. }

Ki'el sucked in a breath, greed­i­ly, and then breathed out. Once she had done so, she be­came aware of her­self as a per­son sit­ting on a rock, hold­ing her breath be­cause she had cho­sen to breathe out but not yet cho­sen to breathe in again. And she chose to breathe deeply, again, in and out, and chose again in the mo­ment af­ter that, un­cer­tain of what had tran­spired.

{ Qi and aether are not meant to co­ex­ist, } Kuli told her. { Not meant to, but they can. The part of you that deals with qi was con­fused. But it is only a part of you, Ki'el. You can han­dle qi, and you han­dle aether. You can do both things. You have more than a sin­gle part. }

The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

Ki'el forced her­self to choose breath­ing, time and time again, but her mind felt par­a­lyzed, even as Kuli con­tin­ued to qui­et­ly coach her. And in time, breath­ing start­ed to seem like the nat­ur­al thing to do, and she no longer need­ed to choose. And when she reached for her qi, it felt strange, and when she reached for aether, it felt strange. How­ev­er, both qi and aether were still there.

Ki'el sat there for a long while be­fore at last Kuli seemed to switch the way she talked. { You are go­ing to be fine, } Kuli said, { but you must stop for now. The parts of you that deal with qi and aether must rest. Do not wor­ry. What you have done is right, and you will be able to do more, lat­er. }

Ki'el forced her­self to her feet, feel­ing a lit­tle strange, and looked out over the world be­yond her. And al­though Kuli had said noth­ing about it, Ki'el looked out over that world and felt bet­ter be­cause of it. Be­cause it was a very large world out there, full of a great many things, and a great many peo­ple. Each of them would be dif­fer­ent, and each of them had their own prob­lems, their own ad­van­tages.

Ki'el took a last deep breath as she looked out at the world be­low, and thought to her­self. The worst time in my life was be­ing alone. When no one would help me. But Sobon, and Kuli, and Mian and Xam, and per­haps Chi­an, they will help me, and I will help them. The times in my life when I had no help are gone. I am go­ing to be fine.

Ki'el turned away from that view know­ing in her heart that those things were true, and they helped a great deal.

----------------------------------------

When Ki'el re­turned, she found Mian sit­ting out­side with a rather de­pressed pos­ture, al­though once she was clos­er and look­ing at his face, she de­cid­ed that the man might only be in med­i­ta­tion. In­stead of in­ter­rupt­ing, she sat down near him, con­sid­er­ing every­thing that she'd seen, and whether she could pro­vide any sort of ben­e­fit to the man.

When she con­sid­ered Mian... the cen­tral piece she knew of his cul­ti­va­tion was that Sobon has as­so­ci­at­ed the man's spir­it with his heart and blood, the same way Ki'el's spir­it was as­so­ci­at­ed with her skin. Where she want­ed to keep for­eign things out, Mian's qi sup­pos­ed­ly want­ed the whole body to be as one, all with­in reach of his soul and source of pow­er. And that... more than any­thing, that re­mind­ed Ki'el very firm­ly of the riv­er stones, and most specif­i­cal­ly, the Out-flow­ing aether of the pair. Al­though she was not en­tire­ly clear on how the body worked, with­in, a heart that pumped blood through the body, in a cy­cle, was not un­like an in­fi­nite flow out that still re­turned to its source.

In spite of the di­rec­tion her thoughts were turn­ing, Ki'el was still star­tled when Mian spoke. "Ki'el. You could have said some­thing."

"You seemed to be think­ing," Ki'el said, straight­en­ing to look at him. "How have you been?"

"Bet­ter since I heard you aren't in trou­ble." He turned in place to look at her. "The peo­ple watch­ing from the win­dows say you drove a de­mon­ic cul­ti­va­tor to mad­ness with words alone and he struck out at an El­der try­ing to es­cape. But they also laughed when they said it, and it's hard to un­der­stand what's so fun­ny." Mian's face didn't change as he spoke, and Ki'el be­gan to un­der­stand that the look was wor­ried--very wor­ried. "I'd like to hear more--but maybe we wait un­til Xam is back."

"I'm not sure how much more there is to say," Ki'el said. "It seemed to be be­cause of a bracelet, one that let the wear­er con­trol oth­ers, but which was..." How could she say more? In­deed, what more did she re­al­ly know? She shook her head. "Sis­ter Futi asked me not to spread ru­mors, but if there is a 'de­mon­ic' thing in­volved, it was that. Or, 'that' was in­volved some­how."

Mian grunt­ed, think­ing, and Ki'el changed the top­ic as smooth­ly as she could. "Mian. Do you re­call what Sobon said about Out­er Aether?"

"Out­er?"

"Gen­e­sis," she cor­rect her­self af­ter a mo­ment. "The aether that seems to flow end­less­ly out."

"Only a lit­tle," Mian said, lean­ing back. "Maybe... not much more than what you said, re­al­ly. Did she re­al­ly say much more than that?"

Ki'el paused, but brushed past the ques­tion. "When I was do­ing an as­sign­ment yes­ter­day, col­lect­ing riv­er stones, I found a pair of them that seemed to be re­lat­ed to that pair of flows, one al­ways out­ward, one al­ways in­ward. I... did not col­lect them," she ad­mit­ted, with a gri­mace, "but I re­mem­ber them clear­ly. But I was think­ing also of what Sobon said about your Heart cen­ter."

"My heart," Mian said, con­sid­er­ing. "A sin­gle lo­ca­tion where blood al­ways flows out, and al­ways flows in. I can see the com­par­i­son, but I'm not sure..." he frowned.

Ki'el knew there was some­thing there, and men­tal­ly prod­ded Kuli, who sur­faced a thought. "Part of what Sobon said was that Out--that Gen­e­sis Aether push­es en­er­gy into things, and Con­sump­tion Aether pulls it out. If this is a part of your na­ture, then it stands to rea­son that you will..." she paused, un­sure of what ex­act­ly she was say­ing, and al­though she was sure Kuli knew, the girl with­in her did not say, Ki'el as­sumed so that ei­ther she or Mian would fig­ure it out on their own.

"I'm still qi gath­er­ing," Mian said, slow­ly, as Ki'el searched for words. "So for now, the part of the heart that is al­ways pulling is more rel­e­vant, isn't it? Only... I don't know that that's how hearts work. If an an­i­mal or per­son is cut open, they bleed, but noth­ing from the body pulls." He reached up and tapped his chin, then looked at Ki'el. "Do you have any way to demon­strate the flows?"

Ki'el con­sid­ered, and even tried to fo­cus on the aether around her, but she was un­clear on how to do that. Sobon had cre­at­ed cy­cles specif­i­cal­ly for out­er and in­ner aether, but she could not. The only thing that made her think it was at all pos­si­ble was that Sobon had said all the aethers were pre­sent with­in qi it­self.

Fi­nal­ly, she shook her head. "There must be a way," she said. "But I do not know it. I wish that I could share the mem­o­ry. It felt... nat­ur­al." She gave Mian an apolo­getic look.

"De­scribe it, then," Mian said, lean­ing back.

And so Ki'el spent some time try­ing to find dif­fer­nt ways to de­scribe those thoughts and feel­ings, of the wa­ter push­ing in, but also, the wa­ter slip­ping away, un­til the pair of stones be­came that pair of con­cepts, a pair that be­came a sin­gle thought when put to­geth­er. And Mian sat with his eyes closed, breath­ing deeply, and Ki'el could feel his qi stir­ring, as he tried to un­der­stand his own heart in the de­scrip­tion of the flow­ing riv­er.

Un­til at last there was a mo­ment, and a strange mo­ment at that, when Mian opened his eyes, and there was a strange sense to the aether around him, but a very weak feel­ing over­all. And Ki'el though that the aether around him was touched by his spir­it, and most like­ly also flowed back into him.

And Ki'el re­al­ized as he did this that he had no way to pu­ri­fy his qi, and felt sor­row­ful, be­cause she un­der­stood that the qi in this place was not pure. And she frowned, and thought about what she had ex­pe­ri­enced with her bend­ing of qi, hop­ing that she could find a way to share the method, or change it so that it fit Mian.

"I think this will help," Mian said, his voice a touch dis­tract­ed, but he blinked it away and looked at her. "...You have con­cerns?"

Ki'el con­sid­ered, un­sure of how se­ri­ous to be, and prod­ded Kuli, but the aug­ment sug­gest­ed that they had time. So Ki'el blinked away her con­fu­sion and nod­ded. "Yes, but I be­lieve it can wait. Only... try to find places where the qi... or the aether is pure. It is... not great, here."

"I can't tell," Mian said, glanc­ing around, and Ki'el re­al­ized that they were sit­ting on the edge of a small gar­den plot, in an area that was... hand­some, in its own way. Not per­fect­ly kept, but some­one clear­ly did keep it. "Where would you rec­om­mend? Wher­ev­er you were ear­li­er?"

Ki'el frowned at that. "Per­haps not there. And I don't know that I will go back there too of­ten, not af­ter mak­ing en­e­mies."

Mian start­ed to say some­thing, but stopped him­self. "I see. But didn't your en­e­my get killed by an El­der?"

"He was ma­nip­u­lat­ed. And that ar­ti­fact was tak­en, but there may be some­one be­hind it." Ki'el shook her head. "I do not know. But I in­tend to be cau­tious."

"Bet­ter than Sobon in that re­spect," Mian said, with a bit of a jok­ing tone, and Ki'el smiled back at him, though she knew that she had been in­cau­tious more than a few times her­self. Most like­ly, she would be again. But she was also not go­ing to be dis­mis­sive of an un­known threat. And also... Sobon had spent much of his time... her time build­ing cau­tious­ly up. It was only her en­e­mies throw­ing them­selves at her that forced her hand.

"But any­way," Mian said sud­den­ly, slap­ping his legs and stand­ing up, "I was wait­ing for you to show you to our 'room', such as it is, since you didn't come back last night. Re­mem­ber that we were en­ti­tled to one for our first month, at least." He start­ed to­wards the en­trance, and Ki'el got to her feet and fol­lowed. "It's one of the bro­ken ones, as you might guess, with patchy floors and lit­tle walls. The Floor Leader says that it is ours for that pe­ri­od."

Ki'el had to pause as they ap­proached the in­fu­ri­at­ing spi­ral stair­case. Mian con­tin­ued up a half ro­ta­tion, paus­ing when he saw her hes­i­tate. "It's aw­ful," he said, sound­ing sym­pa­thet­ic, "but I think we can get used to it."

"It is an in­sult," Ki'el said, forc­ing her­self to step to the stairs and take the first one, gin­ger­ly. "Call­ing it a way to train is cru­el. It feels like tor­ture."

"I can't say I un­der­stand that," Mian said, speak­ing slow­ly and mak­ing his way up with care­ful steps, "but I agree it's more like­ly some­one be­ing a jerk rather than some kind of tool to help us.

Ki'el fol­lowed up to the fourth floor, seething silent­ly the whole way, and con­tin­ued to feel in­sult­ed even as Mian led her two door­ways down the hall, past where they had stopped be­fore. It was... worse than Ki'el might have imag­ined, be­cause the floor was most­ly gone ex­cept for a few patch­es and for the sup­ports. And the walls...

Ki'el caught sight of some­one else in the neigh­bor­ing room, a man who might once have been hand­some, and was now marked by age and a lack of care. When he sensed her eyes on him and turned, Ki'el saw noth­ing in the man's face but de­spair and re­sent­ment. Like so many of those she had seen in the morn­ing, it was hard to imag­ine the man wish­ing to be here. And yet... could he not leave? Was there some oth­er thing bind­ing peo­ple to the Less­er House, if they failed to ad­vance?

Ki'el shiv­ered and looked away, back to the floor. At least the floor's struc­ture was in­tact; Ki'el, when she bent down and looked clos­er, saw signs that those beams had even been re­paired, most like­ly by the sect mem­bers who Sect Sis­ter Lan Wu had com­plained about.

Ki'el took sev­er­al steady­ing breaths, push­ing down the part of her that want­ed to be in­sult­ed. It was eas­i­er for her, she sus­pect­ed, than for many here. Liv­ing in the ru­ins of her vil­lage had left her with few il­lu­sions about the fair­ness of fate. It was... cru­el, she thought, that she had to grasp on to those lessons again af­ter so long, and be­cause of the Sect it­self, but she did it.

In­stead of fo­cus­ing on why it was re­quired, Ki'el did her best to fo­cus on the ques­tion that mat­tered: how would they re­pair the floor?

Her mind strayed to the in­scrip­tions Sobon had used to turn sand to quartz. Al­though she didn't un­der­stand the in­scrip­tions, she had done her best to mem­o­rize both the form of the in­scrip­tions and the in­tent be­hind them. With the help of Kuli, Ki'el imag­ined that she could repli­cate it, even if Kuli was of­ten silent so that she could learn on her own. But... the quartz that Sobon had formed was also com­plete­ly clear, and that made it the wrong ma­te­r­i­al for floors and walls. The more prac­ti­cal an­swer was for Ki'el to do what the sect ex­pect­ed--sim­ply take the tools and ma­te­ri­als from the sect to make ba­sic wood­en walls and floor, and with time and care, shape them into the right form.

De­pend­ing on the tools, it might not even be dif­fi­cult, and yet Ki'el dis­agreed with the thought. The tasks that need to be done, need to be done, Ki'el thought, and they may need to be done a cer­tain way. But this task is only about the re­sults, is it not? If we can ac­com­plish it while learn­ing to do more with qi, or aether, then per­haps we should.

It was not ex­pect­ed of peo­ple in the Less­er House, she knew. Those here were not ex­pect­ed to fig­ure out new ways to use qi all by them­selves. Ei­ther they re­lied on script­ed ar­ti­facts, or knowl­edge from their up­bring­ing. Per­haps some few prodi­gies were giv­en chances to learn while they were here--but it had to be few, giv­en the at­ti­tude every­one had to­wards the Less­er House. This was a place that seemed to ex­ist only to make sure even the most tal­ent­ed and pow­er­ful ini­ti­ates suf­fered be­fore pass­ing through.

"Ki'el?" Mian's voice was con­cerned, and Ki'el looked up at him. "You don't have to do it all alone, you know. Xam and I are al­ready talk­ing about it, mak­ing plans. We'll get this re­paired."

Ki'el nod­ded, re­luc­tant­ly, and stood, but looked back at the re­paired floor struc­ture. There was no deny­ing, with that re­pair, that the sect had sim­ply de­cid­ed on a rule, and the peo­ple who did the re­pair car­ried it out. There were signs of it every­where, she knew, but this... stung her. It felt like this would be a very dif­fi­cult place to sleep, be­yond hav­ing no pri­va­cy. And... al­though the ring that Xam car­ried had thin mat­tress­es for each of them, the idea of sleep­ing across the sup­ports re­mained com­plete­ly un­ap­peal­ing.

Kuli? Is there any way to fix this to­day?

Ki'el could tell even be­fore her aug­ment replied that Kuli did not par­tic­u­lar­ly en­joy hav­ing to say no. { If you wish to use a vari­ant of Mas­ter Sobon's pat­terns, I could help, } she said, { but the pat­terns you saw were meant to be writ­ten as a script, not used freely. You would need to en­grave them, and you would need ma­te­r­i­al. But I think you miss an ob­vi­ous an­swer. }

Ki'el's head perked up, with­out be­ing con­scious of how that might look to some­one else. An ob­vi­ous an­swer?

{ Your sword, } Kuli replied, { and Mas­ter Sobon's base­ment. Straight walls of pure aether, de­fined by rigid points. It is not a per­ma­nent fix for the room, but if you sim­ply need a floor, and walls, to­day... it might be pos­si­ble. }

Ki'el con­sid­ered that, though she was a lit­tle sur­prised that Kuli had sug­gest­ed it. Sobon had been much more se­cre­tive. I would still need to en­grave some­thing.

{ You would, } Kuli agreed. { And it would take prac­tice. It is pos­si­ble, but not easy. But far bet­ter than try­ing to sleep on a bro­ken floor. }

Ki'el agreed with that, and blinked away her con­cen­tra­tion to look up at Mian. "I have an idea," she said. "I may be busy for a lit­tle while."

Mian just shrugged. "If you don't need to do sect work, then by all means. For me... I be­lieve Sis­ter Futi is al­ready call­ing for me. I just want­ed to make sure you knew about the room."

Ki'el nod­ded, and the two start­ed back down the hall­way, Ki'el men­tal­ly go­ing over what she un­der­stood about Sobon's en­grav­ings, with lim­it­ed help from her new fa­vorite sis­ter.