Ki'el learned quick­ly just how naive it was of her to as­sume that she could learn in­scrip­tions, even with Kuli's help, in a day.

Ul­ti­mate­ly, the goal as she knew it was to cre­ate four to­kens that would sit in the four cor­ners of the room and pro­duce a sim­ple floor from what­ev­er mys­ti­cal force Sobon used. But be­fore she could get to the log­ic of the in­scrip­tion, she had to first get the hang of cre­at­ing any kind of script. And Ki'el was... not ex­act­ly prac­ticed with writ­ing, in gen­er­al.

It's not as though she had nev­er. It had sim­ply... not seemed like a thing to prac­tice once every­one died, like most things.

{ If there is any hope, it will be by learn­ing from the start, } Kuli sug­gest­ed. { Find dirt where any suc­cess, or fail­ure, will not both­er oth­ers, and I will show you which is the first con­cept. }

So Ki'el wan­dered into the woods, dis­re­gard­ing places where the nat­ur­al qi gath­ered or flowed strange­ly, and found a patch of loose dirt. With only her fin­ger and her in­tent, she in­scribed a very ba­sic mark, not much more than a cir­cle with a dot in its cen­ter. And... nat­u­ral­ly, the mere act of hav­ing vague 'in­tent to in­scribe' in her fin­ger was not enough. She con­sid­ered it for a long mo­ment, then moved on to what Sobon had taught her: form­ing a thread of aether, as she had done when she cre­at­ed her aether cy­cles.

This seemed clos­er, but there was noth­ing to an­chor the thread to the dirt, and in­deed, Ki'el could not think of a rea­son why the hole in the dirt would ever con­tain a much small­er thread of aether. And yet Kuli re­mained pa­tient­ly and silent­ly there, as though cer­tain that an an­swer would come to her.

And it had worked, Ki'el knew. Sobon, and Lai Shi Po, and many oth­ers, carved into ma­te­ri­als and left be­hind in­scrip­tions. But why--how? How could script re­main in emp­ty space, car­ried along by a thing that did not touch it? Or was the carv­ing, the emp­ty gap, some kind of lie? But no--Sobon of all peo­ple would not have carved into ma­te­ri­als if the carv­ing was not mean­ing­ful.

She con­sid­ered, and con­sid­ered, and de­cid­ed at last that Sobon spoke al­ways of aether be­ing a force that con­nects things. And if the act of cut­ting into some­thing is nec­es­sary for in­scrip­tion, there must be a way to con­nect the cut to the script. And she al­ready knew that Out­er and In­ner spins of aether both af­fect­ed the area around them, even if she didn't un­der­stand.

Even­tu­al­ly, rather than try­ing to fig­ure out the nu­ances of how to do it with pure aether, Ki'el de­cid­ed to ap­ply the in­tent with qi, with only the in­tent to re­main with­in the gap. That pro­duced what she de­sired--but ex­act­ly that. It was only a thread of qi, with­out use­ful in­tent, that re­mained in the de­sign that she etched in the dirt.

Still, it was progress, and in spite of Kuli's ini­tial as­sess­ment, Ki'el was very hap­py to have got­ten that much done with­in the first... how long had it been? Ki'el looked up and de­cid­ed that it had been, per­haps, an hour or more, but not much more than that. That was good--but she also didn't need prod­ding from Kuli to know that it did not suf­fice, a fact that Kuli her­self clear­ly un­der­stood, for she re­mained qui­et.

Next will be an in­scrip­tion with in­tent, Ki'el rea­soned, look­ing at the dirt. What is the in­tent of this cir­cle, Kuli?

{ It is ex­act­ly and only a mark­er, } Kuli replied. { Al­though this is a bit messy, you can imag­ine the in­tent is only to give the place, the ex­act cen­ter, a name. Only... it is not a name, or it does not need to be. To cre­ate a floor, you will need at least three 'named' places, but four will give you a square floor. }

Ki'el con­sid­ered. Al­though she did not un­der­stand Sobon's math, she could imag­ine that there was a lan­guage to it, a lan­guage that only had to be spo­ken once places and con­cepts had names. This place; every­thing with­in a dis­tance of this place; every­thing be­tween these places. Her sword, she knew, had a place in the hilt, and cre­at­ed a place in midair, and cre­at­ed a pure blade be­tween them. When Sobon had sim­ply done that, it seemed al­most god­ly. But when she con­sid­ered the pos­si­bil­i­ty that she could do things like that with mag­ic... it made sense that there must be words, must be a lan­guage. Must be a way of be­ing clear about what you in­tend­ed.

Can you not do it all with a sin­gle point? Ki'el asked, while think­ing these things, know­ing that Kuli was lis­ten­ing silent­ly.

{ The word for 'down' that you would need is com­pli­cat­ed. This is much sim­pler. }

Ki'el frowned, will­ing to ac­cept that it must be true, but com­plete­ly un­cer­tain as to why. What is com­pli­cat­ed?

{ It is tricky to ex­plain in only a few words, } Kuli re­spond­ed, very pa­tient­ly. { You have nev­er been with­out weight. The way to be cer­tain where 'down' is re­quires know­ing how to find the ground with­out feel­ing weight, or falling, or see­ing or touch­ing. It can be done, but it is... tricky. }

Ki'el ac­cept­ed this af­ter only an­oth­er mo­ment of thought. But this could still be done with few­er marks.

{ Yes. If you make the main in­scrip­tion more com­plex. It will not hap­pen to­day. }

No, Ki'el knew, it would not. In­stead of wor­ry­ing any fur­ther, she looked back at the first in­scrip­tion she had made, con­sid­er­ing the shape once more. A sym­bol only to pro­vide a name.

{ A name for the ex­act spot in the cen­ter. }

Ki'el imag­ined that she un­der­stood, be­cause she was feel­ing clever, that the form of the in­scrip­tion didn't re­quire us­ing the cen­ter point, but she had no rea­son to ques­tion or fight against it. In­stead, she went back to draw­ing shapes in the dirt, and with­in a... per­haps third of an hour, had man­aged to per­form a mark well enough that Kuli told her it was cor­rect. And she sat there in the dirt next to it, with an in­scrip­tion that did noth­ing, and asked Kuli how she could be sure, her­self.

{ Form a thread of right­eous aether, } Kuli sug­gest­ed. { In­tend for it to move to­wards that point. Do not re­lease it. }

Ki'el did, and she bare­ly had start­ed to form such a thread when it seemed to pull away from her, and to­wards the point. She blinked, im­me­di­ate­ly aware of how use­ful it would be to be able to point to­wards some­thing of hers, but when her con­cen­tra­tion lapsed, so did the thread and its pull. She frowned, think­ing. Could I in­tend my aether to pull to­wards any­thing I choose?

{ That is com­pli­cat­ed. It is sim­i­lar to some things Sobon spoke of. Much lat­er, if you know the in­tent 'name' of a thing, you may be able to. But even some things that have been named are not able to be reached, even if they are close. The rules are not worth speak­ing of to­day. }

Ki'el ap­pre­ci­at­ed that Kuli un­der­stood her ques­tions as broad, and not need­ing full an­swers, and she was sure that Kuli also ap­pre­ci­at­ed that she did not push too hard. But now, Ki'el looked back to the dirt, think­ing of a dif­fer­ent, and prob­a­bly much hard­er, ques­tion. How can I make a mark like this that I can take to our room?

{ With some­thing sharp. Or with aether, or qi. } Kuli didn't see much rea­son to elab­o­rate.

Ki'el con­sid­ered, then stood and walked back to the kitchen. The grumpy man who Mian had been as­sist­ing was there, clean­ing things, and looked up at the door when she paused there, squint­ing in what was not quite a glare.

"I would like to bor­row a knife," she said.

"My knives are not for crafts," he said, sound­ing very cross. "Ask Sis­ter Futi."

Ki'el flinched, but nod­ded, and moved away. Sis­ter Futi, at the mo­ment she ar­rived, was speak­ing qui­et­ly to a rather short, mid-aged man, one whose age and lack of cul­ti­va­tion had cost him much of his hair and giv­en him rough and un­pleas­ant skin, though when he heard the last of Futi's wis­dom and turned to the door with a nod, his eyes at least seemed po­lite. Still, as with many that Ki'el had met, the man moved past her with­out a word.

"Young sis­ter Ki'el." Sis­ter Futi's voice was, to her sur­prise, a lit­tle sharp, if qui­et. "I did tell you I know what hap­pens around this house, did I not?"

Ki'el felt a small wave of em­bar­rass­ment come over her, and she gri­maced. "It is noth­ing--"

"In­scrip­tion is dif­fi­cult, and get­ting it wrong will of­ten lead one to dam­age one's own spir­it," Sis­ter Futi said, her glow­ing eyes nar­row­ing as they locked on to the girl. "But more than that, it is clear to me that you were speak­ing to some­one. Were you not?"

Ki'el could feel Kuli's alarm, as well as her own, but she closed her eyes, took a breath, and stepped ful­ly into Sis­ter Futi's of­fice. "Yes. A gift from my mas­ter, which con­tains part of his wis­dom."

"I trust you un­der­stand how that looks, on the same day you ac­cuse a man of de­mon­ic pos­ses­sion."

Ki'el... had not, but chose not to ran­kle at the ac­cu­sa­tion. "It is not de­mon­ic," she said. "and I could ex­plain what I was do­ing, and what I in­tend." She paused, feel­ing the old­er Sis­ter con­tin­u­ing to glare at her, and de­cid­ed to say just a bit more. "I know it is rush­ing," she said. "But trust that I would not be do­ing it if we had been giv­en a room with a func­tion­ing floor."

"You want to use en­grav­ings to re­place the floor?" Futi's voice went from a lit­tle cold to ac­tive­ly scorn­ful.

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"No. A tem­po­rary one. Noth­ing more." Ki'el could feel her good mood ac­tive­ly slip­ping away. In truth... she had been lost enough in the de­tails of what Kuli had been teach­ing her that she had giv­en no thought to how oth­ers felt. Or rather...

Or rather... when was the last time Ki'el had re­al­ly need­ed to think about how oth­ers felt?

She swal­lowed as she stood there, sud­den­ly feel­ing an age old­er than her body ac­tu­al­ly was. Mian, Sobon, and Lui had been kind, but each of them had kept a dis­tance and asked lit­tle of her. She had not been around peo­ple as a nor­mal mat­ter... not since be­fore.

"You seem dis­tressed," Futi said, her voice not show­ing any sym­pa­thy.

"I... apol­o­gize, Sis­ter Futi." Ki'el blinked away tears. "I... was think­ing that I have got­ten slop­py. And I re­al­ized that I have not had to wor­ry about peo­ple mis­un­der­stand­ing my in­ten­tions since my vil­lage was de­stroyed. And that was... a while ago."

"De­stroyed by what?"

"Pi­rates. Djang slavers." Ki'el looked away. "My mas­ter Sobon and I even­tu­al­ly found and killed them."

"Are you sure?" Ki'el blinked, sur­prised, as Sis­ter Futi moved around the desk. "For de­mon­ic cul­ti­va­tors, pro­longed de­cep­tion is noth­ing un­usu­al. If your so-called mas­ter was se­cret­ly be­hind the whole thing--"

Ki'el could not help laugh­ing at the thought, which stopped Futi mid-sen­tence.

"You find that fun­ny." Sis­ter Futi leaned back against her desk, her glow­ing eyes fi­nal­ly fad­ing, to take in Ki'el with their nat­ur­al forms. "Clear­ly you think you know your mas­ter very well."

"No, Sis­ter Futi," Ki'el ad­mit­ted, "I can as­sure you that I do not know my mas­ter well at all. How­ev­er." She stood up proud­ly. "My mas­ter's pri­ma­ry fo­cus is in­scrip­tions. I have seen things you could not be­gin to imag­ine, Sis­ter. What­ev­er you imag­ine fool­ing me would do, it would be un­nec­es­sary for him. I do not know his past, but I can as­sure you that if he were a de­mon, the world would be in grave per­il in­deed."

"I see." Sis­ter Futi crossed her arms over her chest and leaned back a lit­tle more ag­gres­sive­ly into her desk. "And this gift from your mas­ter con­tain­ing his wis­dom, it is also a form of in­scrip­tion?"

"It is... a com­pli­cat­ed thing. I could not de­scribe it."

"Did it in­volve your blood? Was any­thing done to you by force, even for a mo­ment?"

Ki'el just smiled and shook her head. "No."

Sis­ter Futi still ag­gres­sive­ly took a breath. "Still, I do not like the idea of you do­ing in­scrip­tion work with­out train­ing."

Ki'el raised her eye­brows, and for once, let a shred of gen­uine ir­ri­ta­tion into her voice. The cold­ness to it sur­prised her. "You seem al­right with me sleep­ing with­out a floor. Per­haps what you like should not be ter­ri­bly im­por­tant to me."

Futi in­stant­ly tensed, but forced her­self not to re­act. "What­ev­er your re­la­tion­ship with your mas­ter or the out­side world, Ki'el, to me, you are only an­oth­er child who thinks them­selves in­fal­li­ble when they are not."

"I am not in­fal­li­ble," agreed Ki'el. "I am cau­tious, and I am fol­low­ing close­ly the ad­vise of my mas­ter."

"I know noth­ing what­so­ev­er of your mas­ter. He could be a ge­nius or he could be a drunk­ard in a ditch."

Ki'el opened and then im­me­di­ate­ly shut her mouth. In­stead of an­swer­ing di­rect­ly, she looked away, won­der­ing how ex­act­ly to phrase things that would not draw too much at­ten­tion or be too thor­ough­ly ques­tioned. And yet... in the end, a pride­ful part of her­self still spoke up into the si­lence, per­haps un­wise­ly. "My tu­ition here was paid for by an ar­ti­fact my mas­ter pro­duced and sold at auc­tion. One ar­ti­fact." She looked back at Futi, who still leaned against the desk, look­ing un­con­vinced. "And... ah, per­haps it would have been eas­i­er to say. As El­der Gol and Se­nior Broth­er Du can at­test, we ar­rived at this is­land in the com­pa­ny of Lai Shi Po."

That got Sis­ter Futi's at­ten­tion. "Your mas­ter is a friend of Lai Shi Po?"

Ki'el start­ed to say more, but a push from Kuli cooled her head just a touch, and she re­con­sid­ered. "My mas­ter stud­ies spa­tial qi, which is a top­ic that Lai Shi Po..." she con­sid­ered her words, so as not to sound like she be­lieved the woman was in any way less­er. "...con­tin­ues to re­search. Since they share in­ter­ests, they have co­op­er­at­ed some­what."

"I see." Futi frowned at her. "And yet you were not pro­vid­ed with tools, which means your own in­struc­tion had not reached that lev­el. I am will­ing to be­lieve your mas­ter is an in­scrip­tion­ist, as­sum­ing Broth­er Du backs up your claim. But you have no tools and only gold qi. Even if your mas­ter left you a talk­ing scroll or any such non­sense, do­ing in­scrip­tion work with­out some­one to as­sess the qual­i­ty of your work is reck­less, and invit­ing any such ex­per­i­men­tal script­ed ob­jects into the Less­er House is for­bid­den. If you wish to prac­tice in the for­est--"

"I don't sup­pose Lai Shi Po re­mains at the Sect?" Ki'el in­ter­rupt­ed, though in truth, she doubt­ed it was so. While she had no doubt the woman could get com­plete­ly side­tracked by a top­ic, she had also been in­tend­ing to de­liv­er oth­ers of the Xoi fam­i­ly to an­oth­er city af­ter leav­ing this place. At least when Ki'el and the oth­ers had left the fly­ing box be­hind, there had been no talk of giv­ing them a tem­po­rary place to stay, or even ask­ing them to walk around.

But then, Lai Shi Po had gone off to look into a "pro­ject" on very lit­tle prod­ding, and Ki'el could imag­ine the woman sim­ply for­get­ting the pas­sage of time.

"If you think I'm go­ing to ask her any­thing on your say-so, you're out of your mind," snapped Futi. "I may be tied into many mat­ters re­lat­ed to this is­land, but I hold no sway what­so­ev­er, and cer­tain­ly not over vis­i­tors."

"If she re­mains, I would only ask that she be told I wish to speak with her," Ki'el said, in­no­cent­ly. "If she does not, you do not need tell me. I am aware enough of the woman's tem­per to know that even if she re­mains, she may not be in­clined."

Futi paused, swal­low­ing, and her eyes lit up sil­ver for a mo­ment be­fore the light fad­ed. "A mes­sage will be passed to her."

"Thank you. I will... sim­ply be med­i­tat­ing out­side." Ki'el went out, al­ready feel­ing the con­fi­dence that she had been dis­play­ing un­rav­el.

She had not told Po about the gift of knowl­edge Sobon had left her. And in­deed, Po knew al­most noth­ing about Ki'el. It was fool­ish for her to try to pre­tend that she, her­self, was any­thing like ready to take even a mo­ment's in­struc­tion from Lai Shi Po, even with Kuli to help.

All I want­ed was a knife, and a floor to sleep on, Ki'el grumped silent­ly to her­self. It has... bare­ly been a day since we ar­rived, I sup­pose. And yet in that time I've worked, learned, fought, healed, ar­gued over and over...

As she stepped out­side, Ki'el was pleased to see a friend­ly face, at least. "Xam!"

"Ki'el." Xam had an un­ex­pect­ed­ly hag­gard look on her face. The slim Djang woman, who so far to Ki'el had seemed most­ly el­e­gant and per­haps a lit­tle ar­ro­gant, now was start­ing to look like she had been though a lot worse than Ki'el. "I heard you sur­vived your tri­al very well. I'm glad."

"Thank you." She paused only for a mo­ment, be­fore blurt­ing out, "Can I have my sword back?"

Xam paused, but held out her hand to Ki'el's, de­posit­ing the sword hilt in it a mo­ment lat­er. "Go­ing to prac­tice?"

"Med­i­tate." Ki'el ex­tend­ed the blade in its dullest, staff form, re­vers­ing it and plac­ing it in her lap as she sat to the side. "It calms me."

"Be­cause of your mas­ter?" Xam hes­i­tat­ed a mo­ment, but sat down be­side her. "She seemed very wise."

Ki'el start­ed to say some­thing, then stopped, un­sure. Xam knew some­thing was strange about Sobon--they had met with Sobon in a dif­fer­ent body, and Xam had seen that boy killed. But any dis­cus­sion of Sobon's gen­der sound­ed strange in her head. Even so, af­ter a mo­ment, she said, sim­ply, "He."

"He?" Xam looked at her, and it clicked af­ter a mo­ment. "Ah. Of course." They sat there, Ki'el not so much med­i­tat­ing as try­ing to calm down and clear her mind. It was start­ing to work, when Xam spoke again. "Ki'el... back then, Mian said some­thing about be­ing cen­tered in his heart. And I've asked him about it since, but he re­al­ly doesn't sound like he un­der­stands the con­cept, not in words. Can you... say more?"

Ki'el blew out a breath and looked up at the sky. She didn't re­sent the ques­tion at all, and thought Xam de­served an an­swer. "Mas­ter said that peo­ple... that their spir­its are made of parts, like the or­gans in the body. And a giv­en per­son's spir­it may be as­so­ci­at­ed with an or­gan, or some­thing sim­i­lar, and it... is use­ful." She frowned, feel­ing that it was not a great an­swer, and gen­tly prod­ded Kuli for help. Though the aug­ment re­mained silent, Ki'el felt her mem­o­ries and un­der­stand­ing clar­i­fy a lit­tle in re­sponse. While she con­sid­ered that, she spoke a lit­tle about her own Skin cen­ter and Mian's Heart na­ture, and what Sobon had said about each.

"I do not re­al­ly know how it af­fects most peo­ple," Ki'el said, "and I'm not sure how I would rec­og­nize your na­ture or what to do about it. But Sobon made it sound very sim­ple, in prin­ci­ple. Un­der­stand your­self as... per­haps as, hav­ing to deal with that part of your spir­it most di­rect­ly. When I had to go up the stairs the first time," Ki'el turned and glared at the en­trance to the Less­er House, "it felt like an at­tack. Be­cause I have to deal with my skin na­ture, my re­sponse to at­tacks is..."

It dawned on Ki'el that her re­sponse to Futi had been much like re­spond­ing to an at­tack as well. She had not been vi­o­lent, but she had done a great deal to en­sure that she could con­tin­ue to be as she was, even ask­ing that Lai Shi Po be con­tact­ed. She felt sud­den­ly em­bar­rassed, and cleared her throat to avoid think­ing about it.

"...my re­sponse to at­tacks is to close off and... try to re­main as I was. Mian... it is bet­ter for him to ex­plain, even if you say he does it poor­ly. But he seems to be­lieve it helps."

"I see." Xam ex­tend­ed her legs out in front of her, look­ing at her cloth shoes. "My re­sponse to threats in my life was of­ten to leave, or to fight. It is why I left my fam­i­ly, and why I took... a break from the mil­i­tary ser­vice. I of­ten thought of it as weak­ness, cow­ardice, which is also why I went to the mil­i­tary. Be­cause I am not a cow­ard, or weak." She sud­den­ly hopped to her feet. "What does that make me? Foot-fo­cused?"

"I would not know," Ki'el said. "If I have a chance to speak to Sobon, I will ask."

Xam nod­ded. "You be­lieve she--he is alive?"

Ki'el hes­i­tat­ed. "He is... not gone."

Xam stud­ied her, then af­ter a mo­ment, shook her head. "If you ever hear back about it, I'll lis­ten," she said. "I'll think about the idea on my own, but it's very vague with­out more de­tails."

"I know." Ki'el took a deep breath, and closed her eyes. "I will let you know."

Xam gave her a strange look, as Ki'el con­tin­ued to sim­ply sit. "You aren't slack­ing, are you? Do you have a task?"

"Sis­ter Futi told me I was ex­cused for a short while. I am mak­ing use of it." She paused, a de­sire to talk about her floor pro­ject war­ring with em­bar­rass­ment about how she'd be­haved, and about her prob­a­ble lack of suc­cess. "Per­haps... not the best use. But I am... ad­vanc­ing."

"Keep your mind on pass­ing the Gold­en Wall." Xam stood back up, half turn­ing to look at her. "Noth­ing be­gins un­til you can con­vince the Sect that you are wor­thy of fur­ther in­struc­tion. In some ways, spend­ing time in the Less­er House in­stead of free in the world be­low is a waste of time." She reached out and touched Ki'el's shoul­der, seem­ing firm but sup­port­ive. "I be­lieve you can do it. Mian as well. But do­ing it soon will re­quire fo­cus."

"I know." Ki'el smiled, and soon enough, Xam went in. Not long af­ter, she left again, with hur­ried steps.

Ki'el med­i­tat­ed with her sword again for only a short while be­fore some­thing in her stirred, and she looked up, see­ing a fa­mil­iar pair com­ing to­wards her. Broth­er Du was es­cort­ing Lai Shi Po, who looked... peace­ful, for a mo­ment, as she looked around at the woods, but the look hard­ened when she looked ahead and saw Ki'el.

Or, Ki'el hoped, when she saw the Less­er House. She could only imag­ine the woman had as much dis­dain for the place as she did. Ei­ther way, she took a deep breath and rose, de­ac­ti­vat­ing her sword as she did. "Po."

"Ki'el." Po locked her eyes on Ki'el and ges­tured with her head. "Let's stay away from the House. If I stay here too long I'll be tempt­ed to re­build the en­tire build­ing on prin­ci­ple."

"I wish you would," she said qui­et­ly, but no one en­gaged that thought as they stepped away into the woods.