Ki'el did not ex­pect bound­less sym­pa­thy from Lai Shi Po, and would have been sur­prised if the woman had been im­me­di­ate­ly or lim­it­less­ly help­ful. That made it dif­fi­cult for her to sum­ma­rize the rea­son why she had called for the woman in only a few words, so she walked Po through the gen­er­al cir­cum­stances quick­ly first.

The in­sis­tence that there was no room in the Less­er House. Be­ing shown rooms with no floors. Be­ing giv­en a room with no floors. The at­tack by a man who seemed ma­nip­u­lat­ed by a bracelet--Ki'el, at­ten­tive to the ad­vice of Sis­ter Futi, hedged her word­ing there slight­ly--and who had been ma­nip­u­lat­ed to die at the hands of El­der Gol. Hav­ing time to her­self.

But then, Ki'el hes­i­tat­ed. She looked at Po, who was tak­ing all these events so far very sto­ical­ly, and if Ki'el were to guess based on the woman's dis­po­si­tion, she thought the woman was un­sur­prised and per­haps even bored. She could imag­ine that some, though like­ly not all, of this was fair­ly stan­dard for the Less­er House. But she also was not sure she want­ed to speak too much of Sobon's gift, not af­ter Futi had been so very cau­tious of it, and not when Sobon him­self had said lit­tle.

But there was no avoid­ing it, and it wasn't as though the top­ic was now com­plete­ly con­cealed. Al­though she phrased it to make sense to Po, she felt strange again, not­ing how in­con­sis­tent she might ap­pear to oth­ers. "You know that Alas­si spoke of leav­ing me with some wis­dom be­fore she left."

"Of course," Po said, sound­ing bored, or per­haps just guard­ed.

"It was... de­liv­ered. And now I have a... spir­i­tu­al helper, per­haps. A men­tal as­sis­tant."

"Men­tal and spir­i­tu­al..." Po nar­rowed her eyes slight­ly. "Com­ing on the heels of oth­er ma­nip­u­la­tions. I see."

"There was some... ac­cu­sa­tion, or per­haps just con­cern," she said, glanc­ing at Broth­er Du, who re­mained silent and did his best to ap­pear un­af­fect­ed. "But my mind was not on those things. I was think­ing about Alas­si's abil­i­ty to ma­nip­u­late sub­stances, be­cause I was think­ing about the room re­pairs."

Po, at least, looked sym­pa­thet­ic to the idea that Ki'el was distractible, but said noth­ing.

"So I came out here with... my as­sis­tant, at­tempt­ing to learn the ba­sics of in­scrip­tion," she said at last, feel­ing more em­bar­rassed as she talked. And she led Po to the crude scratch­es in the dirt where she'd been. "In the end, the full in­tent that I wish to per­form is noth­ing more than an ar­ti­fi­cial floor us­ing the planes of force that ...she uses. I was in­struct­ed that in­volves three or four sim­ple mark­ers to de­fine the re­gion, and then a sim­ple glyph to cre­ate the ef­fect be­tween them."

"In prin­ci­ple, a sim­ple script," agreed Po, glanc­ing down at the cir­cle marks. "To my eyes, this is a com­plete be­gin­ner's in­tent mark, but it is one. If your as­sis­tant taught you how to do that much, it is at least com­pe­tent."

Ki'el could feel her­self flush­ing and re­sist­ed the urge to squirm at the scruti­ny. "When I con­sid­ered try­ing to get tools to make a more... portable ver­sion... I ran afoul of Sis­ter Futi. Who was..."

"I am aware of Sis­ter Futi's ca­pa­bil­i­ties," Broth­er Du said qui­et­ly.

Ki'el nod­ded at him, grate­ful that she did not need to mince words. "Be­cause she sensed what I was do­ing, she for­bade me from bring­ing any such in­scrip­tions into the Less­er House."

"She's prob­a­bly not wrong," Po said, and Ki'el felt her heart drop. Po glanced at her af­ter a mo­ment. "Or rather, in this in­stance, she is. But there is a world of dif­fer­ence, Ki'el, be­tween an in­scrip­tion­ist with a mas­ter and some­one think­ing that the art will work re­li­ably and in the way they en­vi­sion. All mas­ters, in­clud­ing yours, have years--usu­al­ly decades, some­times cen­turies of fail­ures be­hind them. We learn to de­tect fail­ures as quick­ly as we can, from the small­est signs. Per­haps your spir­i­tu­al as­sis­tant can per­form that func­tion--but un­til Sis­ter Futi can con­firm this her­self, or have it con­firmed by an­oth­er, it would be fool­ish to trust too eas­i­ly."

Ki'el scowled and looked down at the dirt. "All I re­al­ly want is a floor to sleep on." She thought she sensed a small burst of emo­tion, turn­ing to see that it was Broth­er Du, not Po.

"In truth, when I ac­cept­ed the cur­rent state of the Less­er House, I did not think about that part of it," he said. "Though I would think the cor­rect an­swer, rather than a script--"

"Oh by all means," Po broke in sud­den­ly, and Ki'el could hear a cut­ting edge to her voice. "Sug­gest raw planks, Du. Sug­gest them." When Broth­er Du looked to her in sur­prise, Po moved to­ward him in a flash, and even Du seemed to feel threat­ened when she snagged the front of his uni­form. "You can't pos­si­bly have for­got­ten, can you?"

"Ah... in truth, Sis­ter..."

"Three times," Po snapped. "I went to the heal­ing house three times while stay­ing in the Less­er House, be­cause turn­ing in my sleep ripped my skin on raw wood of the floor or walls. Blood loss, par­a­sites, and dis­ease. I re­mem­ber the way the sect treats the Less­er House, 'Broth­er' Du," she said, with some ob­vi­ous scorn. "As do you. They are over­worked and un­der­ap­pre­ci­at­ed be­fore they have to deal with se­ri­ous prob­lems be­cause of the shit­ty con­di­tion of the hous­ing that the Sect it­self pro­vides. Hous­ing that the Sect even has the nerve to be proud of."

Ki'el watched Broth­er Du, whose pan­ic slow­ly gave way to a more com­posed ap­pear­ance. "You did not fix the bro­ken wood."

"Per­haps," Po said, with what she prob­a­bly thought was feigned sweet­ness, al­though she couldn't muster that kind of sar­casm in the mo­ment. "But you act as though it would be safe for any­one to do. That would be a step be­yond bad guid­ance, and into ac­tive ne­glect, Broth­er."

Du held up his hands in a sign of sur­ren­der, and Ki'el felt her­self start breath­ing again, though she had not no­ticed her­self stop. "You are right," he said af­ter a mo­ment. "I have for­got­ten since long ago what it is like to have mor­tal skin. It is reck­less of me to give ad­vice to some­one at Gold Qi, sim­ply be­cause I would have no prob­lem with it. As a penance, I would hap­pi­ly as­sist with pro­vid­ing an ap­pro­pri­ate sleep­ing sur­face."

Ki'el didn't like that an­swer, and she was pleased when Po im­me­di­ate­ly shook her head. "No," she said, "you can stay out of this for now. Ki'el. I can ver­i­fy you have a cor­rect in­tent mark, here. If you can demon­strate an ap­pro­pri­ate mark and in­tent for the floor field, I will per­son­al­ly en­grave the script onto..." she glanced around. "Oh, I don't know. Rocks or some­thing."

Ki'el felt re­lief, and moved to an­oth­er, un­touched patch of dirt. Kuli...

{ I be­lieve you un­der­stand the idea well enough, } Kuli an­swered quick­ly. { And see­ing you strug­gle and learn will show hon­esty in the eyes of the oth­ers. They will not ex­pect you to suc­ceed the first time. }

So Ki'el sat silent­ly for a mo­ment, try­ing to re­call the glyph she thought she un­der­stood, and though she didn't quite catch it hap­pen­ing, she was sure that Kuli ad­just­ed it slight­ly. And when she was sure, she drew out a sym­bol in the dirt, not quite cor­rect­ly get­ting the thread of qi as she sketched it in.

Two more quick tries af­ter that, Ki'el frowned at the qi thread in the dirt. This is not right, is it?

{ No, } Kuli agreed. { You have the cor­rect sym­bol, but it is not meant to be used like that. These three lines are sup­posed to con­nect to pieces that name a tar­get, the op­po­site end of the nam­ing mark. Call it an ar­row mark, with the nam­ing mark be­ing the tar­get. You can still at­tach ar­row marks to this, but you will need to be very care­ful. }

So Ki'el, as del­i­cate­ly as she could, sketched out from one of the three marks, her in­tent con­nect­ing it to the in­tent mark she had left be­hind. When she moved to join it to the full mark, how­ev­er, her fin­ger brushed the qi thread she had left be­hind, dis­rupt­ing it, and the larg­er mark dis­ap­peared.

"I think I've seen enough," Po said be­hind her, naked con­tempt in her voice, and Ki'el felt her heart jump into her lungs. She turned to find the two watch­ing her work. "Aside from be­ing a com­plete novice, Ki'el, it's clear that you do not un­der­stand in­scrip­tion at all. You have the cor­rect mark, but you have put no thought into it at all."

Ki'el fell back­wards, into the dirt, un­sure of what to say to that, but even as she opened her mouth to try to say any­thing in her own de­fense, Po con­tin­ued.

"I can see your mas­ter's style in the use of the script," she said, "but you made two se­ri­ous blun­ders with it. The first is a lack of a pow­er source, mean­ing you would need to pow­er it with your own qi all through the night. The oth­er is a lack of an off switch. If you carved the en­grav­ings here, they would be ac­tive as you car­ried them. If you dropped one and didn't know it, the plane of force might cut into any­thing that got in the mid­dle of it un­aware."

Ki'el, know­ing full well that the same ba­sic in­scrip­tion pow­ered a sword, felt sick and hu­mil­i­at­ed at that thought, and looked down. In the end... al­though she had been proud, it tru­ly was fool­ish of her to ex­per­i­ment with­out a mas­ter... was it not?

{ I would not have let you use it in this way, } Kuli said, qui­et­ly, as Ki'el sat there in the qui­et for a mo­ment. { I was aware of both is­sues. I did not ex­pect you to fin­ish by to­day, but used the floor to mo­ti­vate you to work hard­er. }

"Still," Po said into the still­ness, "You demon­strat­ed the cor­rect mark and in­tent. It would have func­tioned." And Ki'el watched as four small rocks in the vicin­i­ty seemed to zip at Po all by them­selves, and the woman got down in the dirt, pulling her in­tri­cate carv­ing sty­lus out of her space ring.

It was a mat­ter of thir­ty sec­onds, if that, be­fore Po hand­ed her four en­graved rocks. Ki'el had watched the woman en­grave for hours on end on the ride up to the Sect... and it only served as a les­son to her, now, just how sim­plis­tic what she was ac­tu­al­ly try­ing to ac­com­plish was. Sim­ple sym­bols with sim­ple in­tent, and even then, she all but failed.

"Pour your qi into the widest mark, here," Po said, in­di­cat­ing one. "The spi­ral mark trig­gers it on, or off. The qi stor­age will not last for more than a night--not if all three of you sleep on it. And it will not stand up to any at­tacks. Since there's only three marks, it will sup­port at most half a room, and the qi will stretch fur­ther if you use it less. Don't let any­one jos­tle or take the rocks." Po paused. "Make sure all the marks are fac­ing up. I don't think there's even an­oth­er thing to say about it. It's noth­ing more than a very crude tool."

"Thank you, Po," Ki'el said, qui­et­ly, test­ing the rocks only briefly be­fore hold­ing them in her hands and clutch­ing them tight­ly. She wasn't quite sure why this gift from the woman hurt her heart, some­what, but it did, mak­ing her re­gret how she had thought of the woman so far. She was... un­couth, and crude. But this help was not mean­ing­less.

Lai Shi Po sniffed at her, and Ki'el for a mo­ment thought that the woman was also sen­ti­men­tal, but af­ter a mo­ment, she talked again. "I en­cour­aged your mas­ter to give me a name as she pleased, and I'm not go­ing to scorn you for think­ing you are fa­mil­iar with me. But on this mat­ter, as on many oth­er mat­ters, I am your su­pe­ri­or, not your friend. Ki'el. You shall not ex­per­i­ment with in­scrip­tion with­out some­one pre­sent. Un­til the Sect deems you wor­thy to per­form in­scrip­tions with­out su­per­vi­sion, do not."

Ki'el wilt­ed un­der the woman's tongue, and she nod­ded. "I un­der­stand. Thank you, Lai Shi Po."

"Bet­ter." Po straight­ened, and her voice light­ened. "Aside from the liv­ing con­di­tions, how do you find the Sect so far?"

Ki'el looked up at her, sur­prised. Af­ter a mo­ment, she put the rocks in her pock­et and tried to match her sit­ting stance to Po's. "I... do not dis­like it. There are many won­der­ful things here. Al­though I am dis­ap­point­ed that the... qi here is not fresh."

"You no­ticed that?" Broth­er Du's voice sound­ed gen­uine­ly sur­prised.

Ki'el just looked up at him and nod­ded. "I asked... my as­sis­tant, and she said that there is a bar­ri­er di­rect­ing all the fresh qi to the top of the is­land, and what fil­ters down to us has al­ready passed the oth­ers."

"Oh, we know it's true," Po said, as though Ki'el were de­fen­sive or ex­plain­ing it to them. "It's just un­usu­al that you would be sen­si­tive enough to tell. Or maybe, strange that you know enough to put it into words."

"It be­came ob­vi­ous on my trip back from the heal­ing house," Ki'el said, "but more­so when I sat close to the edge and ex­pect­ed the breeze to be fresh. A wind blow­ing in from afar should not feel like the is­land be­hind me."

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

Broth­er Du chuck­led at that. "I sup­pose an Il­lan would know," he said. "Sea breeze is sea breeze, un­less it is blow­ing the smell of some­thing spe­cif­ic to you." Ki'el nod­ded at that, though she was a lit­tle sur­prised at the com­ment, which he seemed to no­tice. "I have stood on shores, and on moun­tain­tops," he said sud­den­ly, as though there was some need to ex­plain him­self, "and I have stood on the top of the is­land, though I am rarely al­lowed to stay there long. Every­where else here is sim­ply... down­wind. It was a strange sense, un­til I un­der­stood it prop­er­ly, but ever since then, I have sym­pa­thized with those who can tell."

"Ki'el's qi is un­usu­al­ly pure," Po said to him, con­ver­sa­tion­al­ly, "be­cause of the way her mas­ter taught her. I don't know how long that will last..." she turned and con­sid­ered Ki'el.

"I am aware that draw­ing in dirty qi is not ide­al," she said. "And I do not in­tend to use... my Mas­ter's meth­ods at all times. I spent some of my time to­day try­ing to find a way to pu­ri­fy the qi that comes in, slight­ly. It is not as ef­fec­tive as..." she nod­ded at Po, "...but I think it will help."

"Pu­ri­fy the qi?" Broth­er Du's voice was du­bi­ous, and Ki'el be­gan to wor­ry that she was do­ing some­thing sil­ly again.

But in­stead of get­ting de­fen­sive, Ki'el held her two hands in front of her, where the two could see, and though it took her a few mo­ments to fo­cus, she be­gan her qi turn­ing ex­er­cise again, try­ing to fo­cus on not only the left and right hand spins, but also the in and the out. When she was able to find the method again, with some dif­fi­cul­ty, she opened her eyes, see­ing the qi turn­ing and the flakes falling gen­tly away from it.

She could also see the se­ri­ous looks on the faces of both Lai Shi Po and Broth­er Du.

"It is a method un­like my mas­ter's," Ki'el ad­mit­ted, do­ing her best to sta­bi­lize the ef­fect as her heart raced and her guts squirmed at the scruti­ny, again. Al­though she knew she should not talk too flip­pant­ly... "The pow­er cy­cles that Sobon taught me were meant to..." she caught her­self, turn­ing the aether. "...well, they work on a dif­fer­ent process. But what Sobon taught me was to ma­nip­u­late with­out in­tent, and I un­der­stood that this was im­por­tant. As I was sit­ting, I be­gan to won­der what im­pu­ri­ty in qi even was, and so I wished to see what hap­pened when qi was used. This is... qi with­out added in­tent, but used. I think... in my mind, I think that if I used qi this dirty while it was with­in me... then..." she nod­ded at the flakes of qi na­ture and in­tent falling away from the turn­ing, white-ish qi.

"It is known that im­pu­ri­ties build up," Broth­er Du said, as he ex­am­ined the turn­ing qi, "but a method like this..."

"In its own way, it is pro­found," said Po, and Ki'el looked at her, sur­prised. Po re­turned her look, her face once again show­ing some amount of bore­dom or ar­ro­gance that Ki'el was not sure she un­der­stood. "It is a novice's tech­nique, built on sim­ple foun­da­tions. But it shows a grasp of the ba­sic prin­ci­ples that is im­por­tant."

Sur­pris­ing­ly, Broth­er Du open­ly scoffed at that. "It is in­ter­est­ing," he said, stand­ing back up. "But it is in­ter­est­ing in the way that many novice tech­niques are. It shows new thought while also dis­play­ing promi­nent­ly that you fun­da­men­tal­ly do not un­der­stand Qi."

Ki'el al­most lost her en­tire con­cen­tra­tion at that, and it was only a men­tal nudge from Kuli that... let Ki'el no­tice the ir­ri­tat­ed look on Po's face as the oth­er woman turned to Du.

"What do you mean?" Po asked, calm­ly enough that if Ki'el had not seen the look of ir­ri­ta­tion, she might have thought the woman was be­ing... aca­d­e­m­ic?

"Ma­nip­u­la­tion with­out in­tent, and pu­rifi­ca­tion of qi," Du said. "They are in­ter­est­ing con­cepts, but in the end, they mis­rep­re­sent the goal of pu­ri­fied qi. Ul­ti­mate­ly, the idea of us­ing pu­ri­fied qi strikes me as worse than sil­ly, as an ac­tive mis­step on the road of cul­ti­va­tion. The goal is to have qi that serves your pur­pos­es, that is ful­ly at­tuned to you, that rep­re­sents all your knowl­edge and all your ex­pe­ri­ence. Gath­er­ing qi and strip­ping it of all that which does not match your own spir­it is one thing--but strip­ping it of every­thing, of all the knowl­edge and will of the world? That is ridicu­lous."

{ False and wrong, } Kuli in­formed her qui­et­ly, even as Po con­sid­ered for only half a mo­ment be­fore speak­ing.

"I think you're wrong, Du," she said. "Much of what I do and study--in­scrip­tion, alche­my, spa­tial qi--in­volves cas­es where for­eign in­tent in your qi can be dead­ly."

"And it's fine to re­move in­tent that does not be­long," ar­gued Du, and some­how, Ki'el thought she was see­ing an­oth­er side to the man. He took a step back and be­gan to pace, his face far more an­i­mat­ed than she had seen be­fore. "But qi should al­ways be­long to its user, and what­ev­er re­mains in qi, from what­ev­er source... it is wis­dom from the world--" { False, again. } "--which can be care­ful­ly stud­ied and med­i­tat­ed upon. While I've ad­mit­ted­ly nev­er seen flakes of qi in­tent falling out in a pu­rifi­ca­tion tech­nique... it strikes me as wrong, and wrong-head­ed. Qi isn't sim­ply qi. It is the very will of the world it­self, con­tain­ing all of the pro­found wis­dom of cre­ation."

Ki'el lis­tened to the man talk, and al­though the top­ic was mak­ing her feel strange, she be­gan to un­der­stand even with­out Kuli in­ter­ject­ing that this was a top­ic that Broth­er Du only thought he un­der­stood. By the end, she had be­gun to flush her own spir­it out again with Right­eous Aether, feel­ing her var­i­ous ex­cit­ed feel­ings dim slight­ly so that she could sense the world clear­ly, again.

Po, too, seemed un­con­vinced. "I must ask, Broth­er Du, whether you're try­ing to con­vince the girl, me... or your­self?"

Broth­er Du round­ed on Po like he want­ed to say some­thing harsh, but he stopped him­self, con­sid­ered, and took a deep breath. "You might be right," he said, his voice sound­ing a lot more like the sto­ic, even-keeled man he'd been a few min­utes ago. "It was... a some­what vis­cer­al ex­pe­ri­ence to see in­tent flak­ing away from qi as though it was... ac­tu­al dirt. I..." he con­sid­ered, and looked up at the trees.

Ki'el looked around, too, re­al­iz­ing as she did that time was turn­ing to­wards evening, al­ready.

"Broth­er Du," Po said af­ter a mo­ment. "This is one of those con­ver­sa­tions that makes me want to spill se­crets, but I won't. Suf­fice it to say that pu­ri­fied qi, or bet­ter, [Pri­mor­dial Qi] is the prop­er base for all oth­er ef­fects. A per­son may gath­er in­tent and na­ture into their qi, but the qi should be built on top of pure qi."

"Sis­ter Shi Po," Du re­turned, his voice un­ex­pect­ed­ly harsh. "I have spent a cen­tu­ry of my life think­ing long and hard about what peo­ple are meant to do with their qi. Ki'el looked at him, reap­prais­ing the so-called 'Broth­er' as she did. "I will not ar­gue that pu­ri­fy­ing qi is not good, but..." He sud­den­ly shook his head, and looked away. "Apolo­gies. I'm not sure what I am ar­gu­ing."

Ki'el looked back down at the cy­cling qi be­fore her, watch­ing it turn, and as she did, she thought about what it meant--un­til the mo­ment when she un­der­stood what it ac­tu­al­ly was. "Is it be­cause it is the qi here, specif­i­cal­ly?"

The oth­er two turned to­wards her, say­ing noth­ing.

"Be­cause it is the sect's qi," she clar­i­fied, as she raised her hands, and the cy­cle be­tween them. "I am not turn­ing and cy­cling qi from my dant­ian, but from the en­vi­ron­ment. And it is that qi, the sect's qi, that sheds in­tent like it is dirt."

Broth­er Du flinched, and Ki'el could swear she felt a small qi spike from him. "That is... cer­tain­ly not the whole rea­son," he said, tak­ing a deep breath. "But now that you men­tion it... it does shed some light on my ir­ri­tabil­i­ty."

"I would ex­pect so," Po chuck­led, be­fore turn­ing to Ki'el. "Set­ting aside the rea­son why... can you do any­thing else to de­scribe what you're do­ing? The method?"

Ki'el con­sid­ered. "Sobon taught me to cre­ate a sin­gle thread of aether," she said, know­ing the word would be un­fa­mil­iar to Du, and most­ly un­fa­mil­iar to Po. She knew that Sobon had spo­ken to her a lit­tle bit about it, but not at length, not when Ki'el was lis­ten­ing, at least. "with­out in­tent, as part of a pat­tern that would pro­duce more of the same. Ob­vi­ous­ly if that aether sam­ple was taint­ed, so would every­thing it pro­duced. I only... sought to pro­duce a thread of qi with­out in­tent, qi that was be­ing 'used' with­out gain­ing or los­ing any­thing. And... I sup­pose I had the in­tent to see in front of me what would hap­pen when I 'used' qi in­ter­nal­ly."

"But also..." Ki'el took a mo­ment to stop and breathe, con­sid­er­ing her words. In truth, she didn't un­der­stand this part. "Sobon spoke of the... math of rings and turn­ing. The na­ture of this tech­nique was that the aether, when it is done turn­ing, be­comes a part of the thorn at the cen­ter, ready for use. In this case, the qi joins the thorn when it has no fur­ther need to be part of the turn­ing, when all the in­tent has been shed. It is... not Primordial Qi. But it seems to be pur­er."

"It looks like it's sup­posed to be self-suf­fi­cient," mused Po. "But it isn't."

"Mine is not," Ki'el agreed.

"Most peo­ple at Gold Qi aren't even con­sid­er­ing the pu­ri­ty of what goes in. And in truth, I'm not sure how much it mat­ters." Po's eyes re­fo­cused, di­rect­ly on Ki'el's. "You've tried it. Put pu­ri­fied qi in your dant­ian."

Ki'el hes­i­tat­ed only a mo­ment. "Yes. It felt..." What could she say? She had no ba­sis for com­par­i­son. "It was... a lot, at once."

"At once?" Broth­er Du's voice sound­ed strange. "You passed a large quan­ti­ty of qi di­rect­ly into your dant­ian? With what tech­nique?"

"Tech­nique?" Ki'el looked at him, feel­ing like it was an odd ques­tion. It was true, Kuli's ad­vice for breath­ing in the qi was strange­ly par­tic­u­lar. "I... my as­sis­tant told me that be­cause of the pu­rifi­ca­tion process, it was al­ready my own. I used a breath­ing tech­nique, but... ac­knowl­edged it as al­ready mine, al­ready pure. It seemed to pass through clean­ly."

Both of them frowned at that, and Ki'el sat there, look­ing from one face to the oth­er, watch­ing them both think through what had been said, un­til at last Broth­er Du broke the si­lence. "I see," he said. "I've of­ten found that the high­est-pu­ri­ty qi sources were eas­i­est to cul­ti­vate, but even those re­quired... tech­nique, to ab­sorb safe­ly. Your tech­nique oc­curred out­side of your body, and there­fore looks odd to our eyes, but it may end up be­ing no dif­fer­ent in the end." He stood up a lit­tle straighter. "You have tru­ly giv­en us much to think about. For my part, as a mem­ber of the sect, I will pay for your time in sect points. I imag­ine you are not yet too fa­mil­iar with them, but trust that they are a sym­bol of re­spect for your time and ex­per­tise." He looked at Lai Shi Po. "But I have oth­er tasks, and I be­lieve that Sis­ter Shi Po does as well. Un­less there is firm need to re­main...?"

Po just laughed, but shook her head. "You're still un­will­ing to be hon­est in front of your ju­niors, Du. Ki'el. Sobon con­tact­ed me with a cer­tain method re­cent­ly, one I was not aware of. I trust you are?"

Ki'el's eyes widened slight­ly, but she nod­ded.

"We'll most like­ly leave soon. I should have left ear­li­er, but..." she shrugged. "I get dis­tract­ed, and the sect en­joys teas­ing me. I need to get the oth­ers where they're go­ing. If you need my ex­per­tise, I will give it to you. But... try to be more than a com­plete novice be­fore you ask me for things." She straight­ened, not both­er­ing even to brush the dirt off of her knees, and she gave Ki'el a strange­ly lop­sided smirk that was more like the street urchin Ki'el had first seen her as than the well-dressed in­scrip­tion­ist that she had been mas­querad­ing as late­ly. "I do have some pride."

"Do you." Ki'el tried to keep the tone of her voice light, so that it would be ob­vi­ous she meant it as a joke, but she wasn't sure how well she was able to do that at the drop of a hat.

"Ah, your doubt wounds me," Lai Shi Po put a hand against her fore­head, feign­ing a faint, but when she start­ed to ac­tu­al­ly fall over back­wards she turned it into a tum­bling roll, and then af­ter a mo­ment, with some force of qi, popped her­self back to her feet, a ways away, and grin­ning. "Tru­ly, Ki'el, I hope that you en­joy this place. I think you will, when you es­cape the Less­er House. Places like this love and re­spect the truth, and find joy in learn­ing and shar­ing. The Less­er House..." she went qui­et.

Ki'el crossed her arms over her chest, un­sure of ex­act­ly how the oth­er woman would jus­ti­fy the ex­is­tence and na­ture of the aw­ful build­ing and its oc­cu­pants.

"I think," Po said af­ter a mo­ment, "that it's nec­es­sary in or­der to keep cer­tain types of peo­ple from suc­ceed­ing in places like this. I'm not sure that it works, and for cer­tain, not per­fect­ly. But I can see you, and per­haps Mian, do­ing far bet­ter here than most that can af­ford the tick­et. Be­cause you are not the kind of peo­ple that the Less­er House ex­ists to keep out."

"I have heard sim­i­lar be­fore," Ki'el said. "Still, it feels..."

"Dis­re­spect­ful?" Po laughed. "Ex­act­ly, Ki'el. It is painful, and dis­re­spect­ful. Just work, and sur­vive it. You'll do well." She turned. "We can es­cape now, Broth­er Du. I've dis­tract­ed her."

Du rolled his eyes, and rather than mov­ing away, moved clos­er and bowed to Ki'el. "Thank you for your in­sights, young sis­ter Xoi Doua Ki'el. Per­haps I will ask you to demon­strate your tech­niques for me an­oth­er day."

Ki'el re­turned the bow. "As long as you do not ex­pect too much of me, Se­nior Broth­er Du," she replied. "Be well."

"You as well."

Ki'el let the two of them leave, and then took her stones with some ea­ger­ness to the small bro­ken room where Mian had led her ear­li­er, hold­ing the ac­tu­al floor glyph stone and charg­ing it with her pu­ri­fied qi un­til it was full. As the evening was com­ing on, there were more peo­ple around, but Ki'el ig­nored them, and even man­aged to most­ly ig­nore the stairs as they shift­ed un­com­fort­ably be­neath her feet.

When she got to the room, Xam was there, look­ing tired.

"Xam." Ki'el paused. There was a wide, rough plank of wood next to her, one that had not been smoothed or cleaned. "That wood..."

"I'm sor­ry, Ki'el. I was try­ing to find the spare time to pre­pare some­thing more." She scowled at it, look­ing of­fend­ed. "I... sup­pose it's bet­ter than noth­ing."

Ki'el just raised her hand, though, show­ing the stone. "Be­fore you wor­ry too much, let me see if this works."

Xam raised an eye­brow at that, but Ki'el fetched the three mark­er stones, find­ing places on the wood­en sup­port­ing planks for each of them, and then trig­gered the main in­scrip­tion. As she'd hoped and dreamed, a faint out­line of a tri­an­gle ap­peared be­tween the three points, and when Ki'el moved to stand on it, it held her weight eas­i­ly.

She glanced down at the stone in her hand, sens­ing the qi use. It was... not triv­ial, but es­pe­cial­ly if she--if they could all con­tribute qi to it be­fore sleep­ing, it should last the night.

"That is..." Xam crawled to the edge of it, reach­ing to touch the edge.

"It's sharp," Ki'el warned, and Xam stopped be­fore touch­ing it. "Sharp­er than a blade."

"That sounds like an un­com­fort­able thing to sleep on."

Ki'el re­al­ized it was true in the same mo­ment, and she sat down and stared at it, re­al­iz­ing that if the de­sign had been square, if it had tak­en up the whole room, it would have been much eas­i­er. But... it also wasn't dif­fi­cult to imag­ine find­ing a way to put some­thing along the edge that would keep them from hit­ting it in the night, even if it was just a tree branch.

Come to think of it... Ki'el took the rough board and po­si­tioned a part of it near the edge, try­ing to scrape some of the rough­ness away. She could feel the stone pulling hard­er at its stored qi, but it did scrape the board a bit.

"Don't do that." Xam clicked her tongue and shook her head. "But... it will hold your weight? Our weight?"

"Po thought it might hold all three of us, if we will its stor­age with qi."

"Po? Lai Shi Po?" When Ki'el nod­ded, Xam threw her hands up. "What is she even still do­ing here? She was sup­posed to de­liv­er Un­cle and the oth­ers..."

"She said she was dis­tract­ed."

"Poor un­cle." Xam sat down. "Well... I sup­pose we'll find a way to make the edges safe, and we have to wor­ry about charg­ing it with qi. But with that and the floor that's left, we should have enough room to sleep."

"That's all I want­ed from it," Ki'el con­firmed, step­ping away and de­ac­ti­vat­ing the stones for now. "Din­nn­er?"

"It's not quite time," Xam hedged, but set the board aside as Ki'el picked up her stones. "Tell me about the stones, and Lai Shi Po. There's no way what­ev­er hap­pened is as sim­ple as you made it sound."

So Ki'el filled her in, as the two of them moved back down­stairs, know­ing that Mian would be help­ing cook din­ner for the Less­er House. And Ki'el... re­al­ized, as she moved, that she had not eat­en a lot late­ly, and she was look­ing for­ward to what­ev­er Mian and the Less­er House was go­ing to serve.