Sobon was em-bar-rassed, and chas-tened, to dis-cov-er that her own im-me-di-ate and tran-scen-den-tal as-cen-sion had been wit-nessed by the City Lord, who had him-self im-me-di-ate-ly bro-ken through to First Star Gold Qi. It's not as though it wasn't her fault; she was just... frus-trat-ed, as she had been con-stant-ly from her first ar-rival on this plan-et. Be-ing able to get out of the ir-ri-tat-ing and me-an-der-ing kitchen line that was pow-er ad-vance-ment and be-gin step-ping for-wards felt like a sig-nif-i-cant re-lease, even if this one step meant lit-tle to her.

  Of course, now there was this to deal with, and im-me-di-ate-ly on the heels of be-ing told not to do ex-act-ly this. Sobon gen-tly pushed Alas-si out of the way and frowned at the man as he stared at his own hands, which had lost some of the signs of age they had. Sobon didn't re-al-ly con-sid-er un-til she looked, but he showed signs of be-ing of sim-i-lar age to Alas-si--per-haps a bit old-er, but his body con-tained enough qi to look and be-have like a man decades younger.

  Sobon reg-is-tered her body's at-trac-tion to the man, aca-d-e-m-i-cal-ly, and set it aside. Alas-si... was not quite so aca-d-e-m-ic, but Sobon ig-nored her.

  "Lord Shi-da." She let au-thor-i-ty fill her voice, au-thor-i-ty that rang true de-spite their match-ing qi lev-els. "I trust you un-der-stand me when I say that this must re-main se-cret."

  Im-me-di-ate-ly, the city lord was on the floor, bow-ing in what was a tru-ly pa-thet-ic at-tempt at be-ing gra-cious. "Of course, my Lady Alas-si. Of course. You--and this great pow-er that you serve--I swear my feal-ty, an that of the City of Emer-ald Val-ley, to you, and will nev-er cross you. What-ev-er you need from me, it would be a small an-swer to this grand gift."

  Sobon looked down at him, an-noyed. It was an un-der-stand-able tra-di-tion on such a bru-tal plan-et, of ab-solute sub-mis-sion, es-pe-cial-ly when giv-en a gift by a greater pow-er. But it was also dis-taste-ful. It had the stink of in-her-ent cor-rup-tion all over it--the trust that a man, or woman, could do no wrong, or could not be ques-tioned, sim-ply be-cause they were pow-er-ful. It was the same dis-gust-ing, back-wards think-ing that made that no-ble brat think he could prove some-thing false with a duel.

  "I do not in-tend to in-trude too much on your hos-pi-tal-i-ty." Even as she spoke, though, Sobon con-sid-ered. There was a very real chance that her mis-sion would last be-yond this life once again, and she had a very real de-sire to see Lui, and Ki'el, again. "I will ask one thing of you, how-ev-er. That any-one else who is con-nect-ed with... my pa-tron be tak-en care of, as long as they are in this city."

  "Of course, my Lady Alas-si."

  Again, that left Sobon feel-ing un-com-fort-able. "The name you will need to rec-og-nize, but should not speak to oth-ers, is 'Sobon'. That is the name of the high-er pa-tron. Cur-rent-ly, there are few who know that name, but if any-one, es-pe-cial-ly a younger per-son, comes to the city look-ing for 'Sobon', I want you to make sure they are safe, and if fea-si-ble, let me know."

  "Of course, my Lady Alas-si."

  "It is also pos-si-ble that... that my mis-sion will fail, and an-oth-er... Cho-sen of Sobon will come here. They will be able to prove their iden-ti-ty. They will know you, and they should know any-one else who came here look-ing for Sobon."

  "Of course, my Lady Alas-si." There was a pause. "Ah, my lady... how is this 'Sobon' spelled? It would help if you would cre-ate a Mark for me."

  Sobon bare-ly thought about it, tear-ing off a piece of near-by wood with aether and en-grav-ing a copy of her cy-borg au-then-ti-ca-tion to-ken onto it. When de-pict-ed graph-i-cal-ly, it was usu-al-ly a square grid filled with a num-ber of high-ly spe-cif-ic hash marks, with one line through the cen-ter that in-di-cat-ed the start-ing and end-ing place, and a few ticks along the out-side that could be used to de-ci-pher the en-cod-ing. Af-ter star-ing at it for a long mo-ment, though, Sobon erased it with a flash of pow-er and then sim-pli-fied the mark fur-ther.

  A sim-ple cy-cle and thorn, with a starfield around the thorn that Sobon gen-er-at-ed from the to-ken, but which didn't ac-tu-al-ly con-tain all of the data. If the lo-cals want-ed to re-pro-duce or rec-og-nize the to-ken, the starfield would be sim-pler, but she would still be able to gen-er-ate one iden-ti-cal to the orig-i-nal. At the bot-tom of the to-ken, Sobon al-lowed Alas-si to spell his name in the lo-cal writ-ten script, dou-ble check-ing and mem-o-riz-ing it her-self af-ter-wards. Alas-si warned, how-ev-er, that most writ-ing in the lo-cal tongue was more nu-anced, us-ing ad-vanced char-ac-ters with mean-ing, and that a true lo-cal name would have at least a sec-ond mean-ing be-yond its pro-nun-ci-a-tion. That didn't help, be-cause while Sobon's name meant some-thing like 'Wa-verid-er' in Crestan, it would not eas-i-ly trans-late.

  "This will do," she said, and Lord Shi-da looked up with some-thing like awe on his face, ac-cept-ing the to-ken and study-ing it. Af-ter a mo-ment, he put the to-ken into his robe, and bowed again, as though await-ing any more in-struc-tions.

  "As for now," Sobon said, when the si-lence made it ob-vi-ous he was still wait-ing for or-ders, "I will need to get go-ing soon. What-ev-er else hap-pens here... please make sure that Lui, my grand daugh-ter, is looked af-ter. She is one of the peo-ple that Sobon is look-ing to pro-tect."

  "Of course, my Lady Alas-si. I will pre-pare a res-i-dence for her, and you, and oth-ers of this... Or-der of Sobon."

  "That will be all." Sobon was al-ready sick of be-ing bowed and scraped to, and only felt more dis-gust-ed when the city lord got up and backed away, only to bow again at the en-trance to the room. Sobon sat in the room alone for sev-er-al min-utes, be-fore us-ing one of her dy-namos to blow out the stench of fear-soaked loy-al-ty out of the air.

  Af-ter a minute of fresh-er air, Sobon threw to-geth-er an aether pat-tern to send a brief mes-sage to the AI. [ Re-lay to (Ki'el). If you trav-el to the city of Emer-ald Vale, Sobon will be able to find you there. ] She wait-ed for the AI's con-fir-ma-tion ping, then stepped out of the inn.

  Pre-dictably, many peo-ple were fuss-ing over many things. The res-cued civil-ians were wary around the city guard, and Mian was star-ing dag-gers at Lord Shi-da. Shi-da, him-self, had re-duced the ap-pear-ance of his core, a trick that Sobon was sure was in-clud-ed in the data pack-et K'val had pre-pared, but she had no time to study it at the mo-ment. Al-though she un-der-stood that there was a lot of pol-i-tics in-volved, both from the Ri'lef and the lo-cal no-bil-i-ty, in all hon-esty, she just didn't care.

  "I do apol-o-gize," Lord Shi-da was say-ing, both to-wards Mian and to the rest. "If Young Mas-ter Mofu was not al-ready in the city, this all would have gone much more eas-i-ly. As it is... I can-not op-posse House Mofu di-rect-ly, and Young Mas-ter Mofu chose to hang the rep-u-ta-tion of his House on this." He frowned, look-ing se-vere. "Be-cause of this, the pos-si-bil-i-ty of reprisal is high. We will seek to re-turn you to where you be-long, but if we can-not..."

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  Sobon was sure she could have pres-sured the Lord here, but in truth, she had no un-der-stand-ing at all of the lo-cal pol-i-tics, or where these peo-ple would have come from. She was also dim-ly aware that there were var-i-ous po-lit-i-cal tru-isms that ba-si-cal-ly boil down to, if you de-mand the im-pos-si-ble, you weak-en your own po-si-tion. So she turned her at-ten-tion in-stead to Mian, who looked up-set and unim-pressed.

  With a sub-tle pulse of aether, she turned his at-ten-tion to her, and he only glanced back at Lord Shi-da for a mo-ment be-fore turn-ing and walk-ing to-wards her. Al-though he stepped close, and kept his voice low, he re-fused to meet her eyes.

  "All this is bull-shit," Mian grum-bled. "I was jailed and beat-en. If he hopes that words alone will--"

  "Enough," Sobon said, tired-ly, keep-ing her own voice low. "If you want re-venge, it isn't on him, and you know it."

  Mian paused, but set-tled and gave her a strange look. "Do you have a plan?"

  Sobon re-al-ized that he meant to take care of the no-bles, and frowned, con-sid-er-ing. "What do you know of House Mofu?"

  "Not much. They rule this part of Ijia, but it is a nar-row re-gion through the moun-tains. They have hun-dreds of war-riors and thou-sands of ser-vants, but I don't know what the great-est of them are. Sap-phire, per-haps." He fi-nal-ly met Sobon's eyes, and Sobon not-ed that the man was scared, what-ev-er else he may be think-ing or feel-ing. "I don't be-lieve the cur-rent fam-i-ly head is even Amethyst ranked. Mithril was the last I re-mem-ber hear-ing, but that was long ago. I don't fol-low those things."

  Alas-si sort-ed the lev-els men-tal-ly for him, al-though she didn't know much. Mithril had to be the high-est rank of the next Met-al tier, and Amethyst the low-est of the less-er Gem rank. Sobon's Gold rank was a full tier be-hind Mithril, with... what, four? Four dif-fi-cult break-throughs that she was sup-posed to need to clear, plus time to adapt to her new lev-el of pow-er, and (Alas-si as-sumed) time to find teach-ers who would pro-vide her with new ranks of abil-i-ties that took full ad-van-tage of her new strength.

  It wasn't a bad as-sump-tion, though Sobon con-sid-ered it an un-der-whelm-ing ques-tion. Al-though her ba-sic can-non and grenade scripts could not, in fact, scale up to star-ship-grade pow-er, and while Qi as a con-cept was tan-gled enough that it was dif-fi-cult to in-tu-itive-ly scale the use of it up to high-er lev-els, Sobon was a Ma-rine, not a war-rior. On Crest, his pri-ma-ry train-ing was in cre-at-ing and us-ing aether-tech weapons that would ac-cept any amount of aether you could pos-si-bly in-ject into them. Grant-ed, it looked like the raw ma-te-ri-als to cre-ate those struc-tures were rel-a-tive-ly scarce--but they did ex-ist, and Sobon had just been told where to find them. In-deed, that the lo-cals were har-vest-ing them in large quan-ti-ties, for sale to the high-est bid-der.

  Still, Sobon shook her head. "Not in time to stop them if they re-turn for re-venge. I might be able..." she paused, al-low-ing Alas-si time to find an ad-e-quate phrase. "...As I am now, I doubt that a Ti-ta-ni-um-qi war-rior would be my match."

  Mian's head raised slight-ly, as in sur-prise. "Your trick with the blade was im-pres-sive, but even so..."

  Sobon scoffed. "A weapon made in an evening with an old broom han-dle." Left un-said was that the ma-te-ri-als them-selves didn't mat-ter much--Sobon could han-dle a bit more aether with-out prop-er ma-te-r-i-al, per-haps twice as much, but it wasn't so sim-ple. Sobon didn't need to do sim-ple... not un-less she was low on time.

  It would also help if Sobon had the time to com-pare qi in-scrip-tions to aether pat-terns, since the world aether was hos-tile to his own pat-terns, but none of that was a mat-ter for here and now.

  Mian gave her a strange look, seem-ing to mea-sure her words. "If you had prop-er spir-i-tu-al ma-te-ri-als..."

  "There is still much to do, and I can-not stay here." She not-ed his sur-prise, and frowned, re-al-iz-ing that she had hard-ly spo-ken with the tac-i-turn cook. "My des-tiny lies else-where, Mian."

  "Is that so." Mian stretched slight-ly, and lost some of the stiff-ness in his pos-ture. "When you lost your-self, I was be-gin-ning to think that there tru-ly was no hope in the world." He straight-ened, and looked at her. "Al-though you nev-er put me in your eyes, Alas-si, as long as you have any need of me, I will be at your side."

  Sobon held in her sur-prise, al-though Alas-si had a hard-er time of it. She stud-ied the slim Djang man, in body and in spir-it, and not-ed, again that he had been hold-ing back his own qi lev-els. Sud-den-ly, it sprung for-ward from the top of Cop-per Qi to four Iron stars--near-ly enough for him to pro-mote again to Sil-ver. Sobon raised an eye-brow at that, but the ear-ly tiers were much sim-pler, com-par-a-tive-ly. Still... did you even know he was chas-ing you, Alas-si?

  [ No, ] the old-er woman's spir-it said, tired-ly. [ He was young when he showed up here. I know that he said he saw our unit com-ing through, and he was chas-ing the war-rior he thought he'd seen, but... ]

  Sobon let the thoughts pass her by and just looked at Mian. He was no longer young, though Sobon knew that he would get younger as he pro-gressed, as every-one seemed to. To have chased af-ter a woman, a war-rior, that he only saw pass-ing by... Sobon shook her head. "I can-not promise you any-thing."

  "Promise?" Mian took the large sheath that held his blade and con-sid-ered it in his hand. "That is not how war works. The world broke you, and I thought that even that woman could be bro-ken by this world. But now, you stand tall, again. The world is one where you re-main as a war-rior. And that is enough for me."

  Some-thing in his voice sparked some-thing in Alas-si's spir-it, and Sobon, in-ter-nal-ly, just sighed. "Good. Be-cause my pur-pose is not so light that I can put it aside. It may be a fight that con-sumes my life."

  The oth-ers in the clear-ing shift-ed, and Sobon not-ed the shift-ing sub-tle notes in the aether, where the oth-ers watch-ing didn't want to get in the way. But Mian just nod-ded, his face mask-ing the dis-ap-point-ment that he felt. "Of course."

  "Then do as you wish." She turned to look at Tuli and Lui, who were stand-ing near the front of the inn, stand-ing back from all the rest. "Tuli."

  "Lui and I will be fine here," he said, stiffly. What-ev-er he thought about his cook leav-ing... well.

  "No."

  The man's face got in-tense, and quick-ly. "We had an agree-ment, Alas-si. The inn--"

  "The inn is yours. But I will not al-low you to harm my grand-daugh-ter any fur-ther."

  The man's face cleared, then con-fu-sion fell over him, and the ex-pres-sion gave way to shock. "What? But she--"

  "Is just a girl? You seem to val-ue her very lit-tle, my son-in-law. I will not make the same mis-takes with her as I did my own daugh-ter." That was a giv-en.

  For some rea-son that Sobon couldn't pin down, but which seemed in-tu-itive to Alas-si, the man didn't have any of the same fu-ri-ous in-dig-na-tion that he showed when he thought Alas-si was tak-ing the inn. Al-though now... he had no fam-i-ly and no friends to run the inn with, and al-though Sobon had ac-cused him di-rect-ly of be-ing a ter-ri-ble fa-ther, what he felt now seemed to be a be-lea-guered ac-cep-tance.

  [ It is a mat-ter of fam-i-ly, ] Alas-si in-ter-pret-ed for her. [ Es-pe-cial-ly un-der Djiang law. As the head of the fam-i-ly, I must hold to my agree-ments, but I have pow-er, es-pe-cial-ly to de-ter-mine the fam-i-ly's fu-ture. Lui is my heir, so the Djiang would say I have every right to take her. ]

  Lui her-self looked con-flict-ed, but hope-ful. Sobon raised a hand to her, and she looked first to her fa-ther, who did not meet the girl's eyes. Then she looked back at Alas-si, and Sobon knew that she was look-ing deep into her grand-moth-er's eyes, search-ing for an-swers. Sobon wasn't sure what the girl thought, but sim-ply al-lowed her aether to ex-press it-self on her be-half, pro-ject-ing an un-com-pli-cat-ed tan-gle of feel-ings, un-fil-tered.

  Lui swal-lowed, nod-ded, and moved to her side.

  Sobon looked next to Lord Shi-da, who met her eyes cau-tious-ly, and then bowed. "If you would like to stay in the city, Lady Alas-si, then we will pre-pare a place for you. It will not be much--"

  "We will speak on this lat-er," Sobon in-ter-rupt-ed, and the Lord qui-et-ed, and gave a def-er-en-tial half-bow. And soon, the group of war-riors and refugees left, leav-ing one man and a build-ing alone on the moun-tain-side.

  genuine Xianxia, I'll probably disappoint you. The flip side of that is that I won't be adhering closely to the tropes and stereotypes of the genre. The will definitely be close enough for you to recognize them as they pass by, and wave, maybe even shout something out the window. But the thing about deep cultures--really any culture at all, but especially deep ones--is that there is a very clear line between inside and outside. You can understand them from the outside, but if that isn't what you are, then it isn't what you are.