“Oaths made on false pretenses will always punish those who lied, regardless of which party actually breaks the oath in the first place.”

-Excerpt from: “A Treatise on Soul Oaths Dictated by the Sage of Threefold Wisdoms at the Request of Elder Bou Tian of the Leaves at Sunset Sect During the Festival Held in the Sage’s Honor”

Rain.

Yi Cao never thought he would miss the rain.

Back home the rain meant many things. Whirling clouds and silver twilight, the stink of human waste around the pits, the smell of woodsmoke where it clung to the ground, floating like a specter between the houses and workshops of the outer sect. The quiet of a community that didn’t care to go out in the wet, and the grumbling of their master about old bones and damp.

The rain called back to other memories as well. Older memories, of water rattling in the leaves, of mud that rose to a six year old’s knees and the runnels that formed in the mud walls of the family’s homes, of lacy patterns drawn in rippling patterns on the surface of pools shadowed beneath dripping trees.

It meant something very different on Aarrppaa station.

Water beaded on Yi Cao’s synthetic leather shirt as he followed the Young Master through gardens cultivated to appear wild. Dwarf pines sighed as the wind whipped down the cobbled path to stir their branches and buffet the pair on their way along the paths. Thistles bobbed their heads at them above signs that asked patrons not to leave the paths while alien shrubbery heavy with unripened fruit shook and danced in the falling gusts of rain. Thin clouds scudded by overhead beneath glass that offered an otherwise uninterrupted view of a sky divided between the imposing wall of dust, and stone, and drifting machinery of the tangle, and the stars that shone beyond its distant horizon.

Feiruhn stood waiting for them in a plaza that shone with the rain, umbrella between him and the bottled elements of the garden. The woman who’d played music for them stood at one arm like a gem, or prize brought out to put on show. The ex-cultivator and Zihan bowed as they met each other, while Yi Cao hung back, eyeing the woman on the old man’s arm.

“How do you like the weather?” Feiruhn asked. “You’s probably don’t miss it yet, if what I’ve heard about you’s is true. Half a lifetime without a diurnal cycle and it becomes quite the novelty to return to one’s roots, feel the rain on skin again. Pretend I’s back home.”

Zihan shrugged. “I’ve enjoyed better storms, and more cheaply.”

Feiruhn smiled. “Of course.” He said. He nodded his umbrella down a path, then led the way, Zihan keeping pace by his side while Yi Cao followed. “Weather is art on this station. Performance art of the most expensive kind. Not easy to bottle a storm, technomancy has many wonders. Let me give you’s a tour of this one.”

“TC said you wanted to talk business.” Zihan replied.

“Patience, Young Master. Patience. Let us enjoy the storm while it lasts. Let me give you a tour of the habitat while the wind blows.”

Zihan shrugged, the metallic silk he’d replaced his red leather with snapping in the breeze. “I’ll need an umbrella.”

“Then we shall get you one.”

A booth waited just off the path. A small thing of angled wood and dark red paint, a pagoda in miniature with a mechanism inside ready to serve whatever the guests required. Zihan ordered one umbrella, one, while Yi Cao trailed along behind them getting damp from the rain.

“The parks were built for the first wave of exiles centuries ago.” Feiruhn told Zihan as the wind buffeted them and stirred up dead leaves from the shrubbery, whirling them across the path and plastering them to Yi Cao’s legs. “Those immortals were responsible for splitting a couple of the rocks. Kept their treasures here. Cultivation paradises on a dead world. They’ve been gone longer than they were here, but it still inspires the generations of descendents they’s left behind.” He gestured above them, to the wall of shifting planetary dust that defined the horizon above them. “They’s is just as responsible for the shape of this place as the Guild and the Technomancers. A testament to the power our homeworld has even among the other powers of the worlds.”

He pointed out features of the park as they walked. Artificial stars along tracks in the dome of glass, creatures imported from all over the homeworld, some exotic, some mundane, all of them small darting shadows in the undergrowth or birds sitting in the swaying trees while the wind and rain buffeted them.

He showed them a single oak tree tall as anything you’d find on the homeworld, arms heavy and huge, with gaping broken holes where age had begun to conspire against it. A lake with boats you could paddle out in, for a fee. An amphitheater that gave weekly performances of the great tragedies back home, and, near the end, the empty palace of the ancient immortal who’d once lived there, seen from a distance as the storm swirled and roared around them in the final throws of its crescendo.

They stood at the top of a small hill for the finale, amongst a few dozen others who’d come for the event. They stood in couples or alone. Beneath umbrellas or wrapped in shimmering fields. They looked like cultivators, or could be cultivators, some of them marred by technological scraps implanted where only flesh should have been, many of them old and bearded or young and hanging from the arms of a lover. Only one exception to the rule stood among them, a Talyaya whose fat ears shook in the wind while he looked pensively at the rising storm and the shaking trees that spread below their hill in tableau.

The storm ended with a single crash of thunder, a flash of lightning that shot down into the ground in front of them. The storm clouds rolled away. The wind slowed. The rain transformed into a slow drizzle, and the audience, who’d fallen silent for the final act of the storm began to come alive again, shifting and murmuring amongst themselves as the last of the rain fell in a mist.

“Come.” Feiruhn said. “One last thing, and we’ll return to business.”

Their last walk was their longest.

Feiruhn led them to the edge of the dome, down pathways clearly meant for carts and maintenance crews and not the casual stroll they’d undertaken to go there. A wall approached them at the park’s outer edge, near a spot where the rain simply stopped as they passed some invisible line. Stairs waited to either side of a wide set of double doors and Feiruhn led them up, onto a pathway that ran the length of the dome just beside the curving glass between them and the horizon that stared back at them from the void. It looked like a wall from this vantage, vast, and tall, and pitted by its own pools and chasms, filled by drifting dust stirred up by the shifting industry of machinery and constructs made indistinct by distance and the business of carving up the stone. A hundred thousand fireflies buzzing about the work of tearing a world into pieces for transport.

A ship passed, like a shark, beneath the ridge of the closest pit, showing in a flare of light and a flash of silver before it submerged back into the sea of stone, only to reappear moments later hundreds of yards away, powering out into the open void on the tip of a spear of blue fire.

Feiruhn collapsed his umbrella as he watched the panorama beyond the glass. Set it before him and leaned on it like a cane while the woman at his arm watched the passing ship. “Been a long time since the immortals were here. Our kind, their descendents, have become anathema to the same people that brought them here way back then. I can’t say that I’s blames them none. I’s had little to do with them in my previous life, but in what little I did I’s remember them as arrogant self righteous bastards, too defined by they’s own laws to make way for a world that don’t adhere to it. Powerful though. Very powerful. As powerful as any technomancer tool, or better, if you’s could manage them. Not sure I’d want them running around on my station either, I’s was running the place.”

Pops of light, ruddy in the dust that defined the horizon, drew a line along the ridge of one boulder floating in the abyss and a great shelf of rock separated from the larger stone. Other lights flared along its length as it fell, stabilizing it before more machines, small as ants at this distance, swarmed the rock. They crawled over it and flaring with little sparks as the shaving of stone joined the dance of orchestrated mass floating beyond the glass.

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“How far is you’s advancement, really?” Feiruhn asked.

Zihan fiddled with the technomancer’s umbrella in his hands, flicking beaded water from its surface with one finger. He looked out at the tangle in its vast planetary glory. “Let’s put it this way.” He said. “I’ll be facing a tribulation at my next break through, if I get what I came out here for.”

Feiruhn nodded thoughtfully. “I’s thought as much.” He regarded the sky for a moment in silence. “They’s don’t like cultivators out here.” He said. “I’s think I told you that already, but they’s don’t like us. They hire us. They’s use us. They’s regulate us, but they’s let us be, mostly, as long as we don’t accumulate too much power, but they’s don’t make it easy to advance. Don’t encourage it. Does terrible things to the generations born here. Cripples them. Turns them to other powers. Into freaks, or cultists, or worse. Denies they’s access to their birthright.” He shook his head. “It’s terrible.”

He turned to Zihan. “I’s lost my birthright, and that’s on me, but what happens to these kids is criminal.”

Zihan flicked his umbrella to rid it of the rain then settled it over his shoulder. He didn’t look at Feiruhn. “Fate favors a few.” He replied. “The rest it curses.”

“Yeah.” Feiruhn blew air through his nose and scrunched his face into a smirk. “You’s a cultivator all right.” He turned back to the view of the false sky and looked out at the distant sparks of light that could be ships or stars, or moving constructs deep in the void. “I’s remember thinking like that at one time. The technomancers got a similar outlook. Something to do with numbers and dice. I don’t fully understand it, but there’s something funny comes over a man once he’s cursed hisself. Come to a place like this intendin to throw away his life, and building, something, in the meantime.” He tapped his umbrella against the metal decking beneath his feet and studied the stars.

He turned abruptly to the girl at his shoulder, offered her the umbrella. “Take this back to the booth for me.” He said. He nodded to Zihan. “And the Young Master’s as well. I’ll collect you there.”

The woman took the umbrella. She looked up at him for a moment, met his eyes, then offered her hand to Zihan. He handed her the umbrella and all three of them watched her leave. A spot of color moving into a sea of green, elements that didn’t match, and didn’t belong anywhere beneath the broken sky beyond the glass.

Feiruhn caught Zihan’s eye as he turned back towards the dome. “You have a plan.” He said. Not a question.

Zihan reached into an inner pocket, removed a smoker and stuck it into his lips, offered one to Feiruhn who turned him down.

“What I have is an idea.” He said. He didn’t light the smoker with his thumb but summoned a swirling pool of fire in the palm of his hand, dipped the tobacco and puffed out smoke while the flames turned to rings, to darting humanoid figures on the back of his hand, to a dragon that snaked off his fingertips to curl and dance in the billowing smoke. “An idea, and the ability to deliver on one part of it.”

Dancing flames reflected in Feiruhn’s eyes as he watched the finger length dragon until it burst in a shower of sparks. He blinked and refocused on Zihan as the young master studied him through the smoke.

“I’s not working with someone who doesn’t tell me what they’s plannin.”

Zihan nodded. Sucked at his fumestick and looked through the glass.

He told him the plan, what there was of it, and Feiruhn fell still as he pondered while staring out at the void.

“I brought a testing stone with me.” Feiruhn said at last. “Not easy to get on station. Jade is a proscribed material, and the stuff they’s can harvest from this planet doesn’t carry Ki the way it does back home.” He reached into his robes, pulled out a pyramid of green, four sigils carved into each side, scripts of increasing complexity. The tip had been scooped out of the pyramid, leaving both ends flat above the four scripts.

Feiruhn tossed it to Zihan who held it, looking over the scripts.

“Southern scripts.” He said. “Realms instead of rings?”

“How I’s was trained.” Feiruhn replied. He gestured to it. “I’s tested it. Knows it works. All the way up to the second realm anyways.” He turned away, put his hands behind his back, but watched Zihan out of the corner of his eye. “Show me that you isn’t lying, and maybe we’s can say more.”

Zihan flicked the pyramid onto its tip. Balanced it on one finger and held it up to Feiruhn between them.

The scripts flared. Light spiraled through them from simplest to most complex, all four scripts. Then the whole stone flashed and the stone cracked with an audible snap. Red sparks flared from the stone as it crumbled to the floor.

Feiruhn looked away. Said nothing as Zihan wiped his hand on his shirt and dabbed ash from his smoker into the little pile of smoldering stone at his feet.

After a long silence Zihan puffed a smoke ring onto the glass that curled like some phantom ripple across the surface. “When would you like to begin?”

Feiruhn stirred. Hummed in thought. Looked sharply at Zihan. “You know that what you’s want to do is madness.” He said. “Utter insanity.” He looked back out the window. “You don’t know what the guild ships can do. Don’t know what all’s involved in brokering a deal with the only other technomancers in the universe while keeping it a secret from the very people who’s built this station in the first place. Don’t know what it takes to move between the worlds on someone else’s power.”

Zihan sucked at his fumestick, pulled it from his mouth and gestured to Feiruhn. “That’s why I have you.” He said.

“Of course.” Feiruhn nodded, and looked at Zihan again, studied him. “It’s possible.” He said. “Just, possible, with you’s as part of the plan, but only just, and there are problems, a lot of them, involved in getting onto the ship in the first place, then getting away, getting paid, getting you’s and every other member of the team off the station or out of the line of fire when the Guild loses its mind over the robbery. I’s can bring you a team that can solve those problems,” He gazed steadily at Zihan until their eyes met, “but I don’t want money.”

Zihan gestured with his tobacco stick. “We sell a couple of tons of living material and we’ll get more than a little money.”

Feiruhn waved his hand. “I’s got money.” He said. “More’n I’ll need in this lifetime. What I need, what I’s can’t get, not here, and not at home, is access to one of the immortals with an inner world.”

“Every immortal has an inner world.” Zihan replied.

“Don’t be stupid.” Feiruhn replied. “I knows that. I mean a useful inner world. One with more’n a door and a single room where their avatar waits for their next advancement. You said you knew one. Said they’d take money for cultivation resources.”

Zihan ashed his smoke stick and eyed the glaring ex-cultivator as the coal glowed at the smoker’s tip. “Some cultivators would consider it rude to refuse this Young Master’s help in earning a fortune.” He said.

“Knock that off.” Feiruhn snapped. “This one, that one, Inscrypti bullshit.” He waved a hand. “I told you’s I could I help, but in return, I don’t want money, I want in. I want’s an introduction, and I want’s cultivation resources. The kind you’s can’t get outside an immortal’s grotto. The kind you’s seem to have access to for a pile of silver.”

Zihan studied the tip of his smoke stick, picked at a bit of the paper the tobacco had been rolled in. “I thought you couldn’t cultivate.” He said.

“I can’t.” Feiruhn looked away.

Smoke curled against the glass and another ship drifted by close through the void beyond in the silence.

“I’ll get you’s your team, but, when I get you out, I send someone else along with you. They get the silver. All of it. You’re share and mine, and you introduce them to the immortal you said was ready to sponsor your breakthrough in return.”

“Whose to say I won’t kill them and take the silver?” Zihan asked.

“Whose to say I won’t put you in a ship headed towards the wrong portal?”

The two eyed one another.

“Fine then.” Zihan waved a hand. “Money goes to the girl, and I’ll get her what she needs to advance.”

Feiruhn snorted and looked away. After a moment he glanced back. “What gave it away?”

“The girl?” Zihan shrugged. He took a last hit from his smoker then tossed it away. It sizzled as it sailed through the air, vanished in a puff of smoke and a trail of ash that never hit the floor. “Just a guess.” He said. He tucked his hands into his pocket as he blew out the smoke.

“She won’t keep it you know.” He added after a moment. “There’s a reason sect’s don’t teach women how to cultivate.”

“I know.” Feiruhn replied. “And so does she.” He studied the stars. “Let’s just say that cultivation isn’t the only thing the heavens take from you when you break an oath. Not if you were at my level.”

For a long moment neither said anything.

“She’s a treasure.” The old man said quietly after a long time. “She was born here. Doesn’t realize what it means. What her gift could mean, back home.”

“I’m sure.” Zihan replied dryly.

Feiruhn sighed, long and slow, touched a pocket at his chest, then let his hand drop and glanced at Zihan. “I’s gonna to die.” He said. “Not soon, I know’s that, but eventually. That’s my fate. No immortality for me. I’s accepted that. My’s mortal reality. Doesn’t mean I has to accept that for those around me.”

He looked at Zihan.

“I want her out of it.” He said. “Out of danger, out of here. Somewhere’s she can grow without restrictions. See what immortality really means. Find the resources she needs without fear of the piss bots spotting something out of the ordinary and scooping her up for the labor camps, or executing her for not following they’s rules. I don’t need the money.” He looked away. “I need, what I can’t get out here. Promise to help me, and I’ll do what I can to get you what you want.”

Zihan studied the stars. “Not a soul oath?” He asked.

“Can’t.” Feiruhn replied. “And I wouldn’t, even if I could. Wouldn’t put that on the ones I know that could.” He studied Zihan, pointedly. “I has my own ways of making sure promises are kept.”

“Then I promise.” Zihan replied.

Feiruhn nodded. “Good.”

“Tell me when I can meet your team.”

Feiruhn cleared his throat and turned back to the view of the shifting continent sized stones outside. “It ain’t quite so simple.” He said. “I know’s what you are, but they’s gonna need a demonstration of they’s own.”