Sobon had no in-ten-tion of forc-ing Ki'el to wait un-til they got back home be-fore tak-ing treat-ment. In truth, Sobon could have erect-ed a tem-po-rary struc-ture in the mid-dle of the sea, or some-thing sim-i-lar-ly dras-tic, but all of her in-stincts were to get to safe ground, ei-ther back to civ-i-liza-tion or some-thing less ex-posed.

  In the end, al-though it took a lit-tle while to get back to sol-id ground, Sobon found a shel-tered sec-tion of coast a ways away from all else. When she set Ki'el down, the girl flinched, and im-me-di-ate-ly re-sumed flood-ing her in-jured knee with right-hand aether.

  "Let me see it," Sobon said, gen-tly touch-ing the girl's wound-ed knee. From what she could tell, sev-er-al of the joint tis-sues were torn, and there was some dan-ger of them heal-ing wrong, al-though if any-thing, pure right-hand aether with-out any kind of in-tent would be un-like-ly to cause the body to make hasty re-pairs. And Ki'el, whether on pur-pose or by lack of train-ing, was still us-ing aether with al-most no in-tent, feed-ing her body and trust-ing it blind-ly in-stead of try-ing to con-trol it. What was most im-por-tant, though, was that the bone hadn't bro-ken--giv-en how the girl had moved on it so far, even a small break would have made every-thing much worse.

  As she set up the more com-plex aether heal-ing pat-tern and a di-ag-nos-tic to mon-i-tor it, she be-came aware that Ki'el was star-ing. By the time that she looked up at the girl's face, Ki'el just looked over-whelmed. Sobon gave her a small smile as she sat back against a rock. "You'll be al-right. It will be use-able in a cou-ple hours, and we can wait on more un-til lat-er."

  Ki'el just nod-ded, her face try-ing to blank back into a sto-ic look, though she didn't quite man-age it. "You changed," was the first thing she de-cid-ed to say.

  Sobon looked away. "Not for the first time. I didn't get to choose. The woman who used to have this body... wasn't do-ing any-thing with her life. She's still in here; you can speak to her lat-er, if you like. But there are im-por-tant things that must be done." She looked back at the girl, but Ki'el just looked back, as plain as she could. "I'm glad you're okay."

  That flus-tered her, a lit-tle, but she kept her calm af-ter some ef-fort. "At first... it was... dif-fi-cult. Very dif-fi-cult." She looked down at her hands. "I spent too long in the shat-tered ship, where you... where you had..."

  "I know," Sobon said. "I could see a lit-tle bit of it, from the oth-er side."

  Sobon could see that Ki'el want-ed to ask about that, but she plowed through in-stead. "The sense that you were there lin-gered, but not long. And yet... I was so sure. So sure that some-thing was wrong. That you were not gone. Af-ter liv-ing among the dead for so long, af-ter hav-ing buried my past once be-fore, I thought I would not be so weak. And I hat-ed my-self for even briefly think-ing that you would come back. Un-til that voice told me that you would."

  Sobon nod-ded. "It passed the mes-sages from me. And it passed your mes-sage back." She paused. The aether near-by was shift-ing, most like-ly some-one draw-ing near-er. She stood, look-ing around, be-fore adopt-ing a semi-for-mal stance. "Just a mo-ment."

  There was no sur-prise from any-one, ex-cept per-haps Ki'el, when three pow-er-ful qi war-riors land-ed near-by, all of their eyes on Sobon, and her match-ing their own in re-turn. They didn't quite share what Sobon would call a uni-form, al-though they had sim-i-lar pos-tures and col-ors, and their qi were all aligned well enough to show that they worked to-geth-er fre-quent-ly. All of them felt above Sobon in pow-er, al-though their qi col-ors were un-fa-mil-iar; two of them shared the mul-ti-col-ored qi that Mofu's hench-man had, while an-oth-er was at least a rank above that, with dark and light band-ings.

  With prac-ticed ease, the one in charge stepped for-ward, his aura in-tense and threat-en-ing, but his fea-tures serene. It was a mea-sure Sobon rec-og-nized eas-i-ly as in-tim-i-da-tion be-hind a civ-il mask. "Good evening," he said, po-lite-ly, his thin mous-tache twitch-ing only slight-ly. "I trust you un-der-stand that you are tres-pass-ing."

  "Only so long as it takes my com-pan-ion to heal." Sobon's choice of a pow-er move, against the aura that was like-ly at least two col-ors above her own, was be-ing com-plete-ly re-laxed. It wasn't triv-ial, though it would have been if Sobon had his cy-borg body back. As it was, with her in-creas-ing at-tune-ment, her body re-mained most-ly keyed to her will even when the threat-en-ing qi waves passed through her. "I re-ceived no-tice that she was in dan-ger, and I re-trieved her. When she can be moved with-out dan-ger, I will leave."

  The man and his two lieu-tenants con-sid-ered this, the pair be-hind him trad-ing looks. The one in front, af-ter a time, spoke up.

  "You un-der-stand that as a non-Djang in our ter-ri-to-ry, we have every right to de-tain you, and your com-pan-ion. Es-pe-cial-ly should you fail to pro-vide the cor-rect... doc-u-ments."

  "You could in-sist, if you chose," Sobon re-turned, feign-ing ease. While she sus-pect-ed that the ri-fle rods she had left would suf-fice to hold the three of them off, and maybe kill one or two of the less-er ones, she had no in-ter-est in be-com-ing a want-ed woman. And the rods, now al-ready de-cay-ing, prob-a-bly wouldn't last long enough, not in a pitched bat-tle. "It would be a shame-ful waste of your re-sources, but you could in-sist."

  The two low-er-ranked war-riors tensed, but in-stead of an-swer-ing, the leader just glanced out to sea. Sobon imag-ined he was trac-ing back the path she took, or per-haps re-call-ing some sense of the bat-tle that had oc-curred. Af-ter a time, he looked back. "You don't show any signs of cor-rup-tion or evil in-tent. And the in-juries to your com-pan-ion are ev-i-dence enough that your in-ten-tions are as you say. In-stead of... in-sist-ing, I would in-vite you to speak to my com-man-der, Lady Rai Su Anin. I am sure that she would be in-ter-est-ed in an ac-count-ing of why you are here." He held up a hand be-fore Sobon could say any-thing to ob-ject. "She is a rea-son-able woman. If she agrees that your cause is no-ble, any oth-er mat-ters will be con-sid-ered in-signif-i-cant in com-par-i-son."

  Men-tal-ly, Sobon con-sult-ed Alas-si, but the woman wasn't fa-mil-iar with the woman, or how the mil-i-tary func-tioned in this sec-tion of the coun-try. So Sobon just shrugged. "If it's nec-es-sary."

  When that put the oth-ers at ease, Sobon fi-nal-ly re-lent-ed, tak-ing Ki'el and al-low-ing her-self to be es-cort-ed to a rather large naval base--or per-haps, a matched pair of army and naval bases, with lit-tle dis-tinc-tion be-tween the two. Sobon had no idea how the lo-cals would draw dis-tinc-tions in their mil-i-tary, al-though she thought that per-haps there were two or more ma-jor pat-terns across the sprawl-ing com-plex. That only meant mul-ti-ple com-man-ders, each with their own rules, but there were plen-ty of dif-fer-ent things it might have meant.

  Al-though the pa-trol-men, or what-ev-er they were, did com-mu-ni-cate some things with qi puls-es, they most-ly seemed to do things the frus-trat-ing and slow, old fash-ioned way. They land-ed out-side the base's de-fens-es, in a set-off area for re-ceiv-ing fliers, and moved into a con-trolled check-point, where the guards iden-ti-fied them-selves and stat-ed their busi-ness. Pre-dictably, then, the non-com-bat-ant in charge of the pa-per-work turned to Sobon with a kind of dull-eyed stare that felt dis-tinct-ly of stale, rigid aether.

  "Do you have iden-ti-fi-ca-tion pa-pers?"

  Alas-si in-sist-ed on some-thing, and Sobon let her come for-ward and speak. "I do not. How-ev-er, you should have records for Shi-va Alas-si, now re-tired."

  The man at the desk didn't bat an eye-lash, in-stead turn-ing to a crys-tal globe in the back of his squat of-fice. When Sobon ex-am-ined it clos-er, she dis-cov-ered it was a mas-ter-work of tight qi in-scrip-tions, one that linked some-how into what Sobon imag-ined was a wide-spread bu-reau-crat-ic net-work. When he ac-cessed the crys-tal, it pulsed, send-ing a qi wave straight down, though that ap-peared to be a mis-di-rec-tion; Sobon just bare-ly could track it turn-ing a cor-ner and shoot-ing away. Some minute or two lat-er, a re-turn pulse came from a dif-fer-ent di-rec-tion, and the globe lit up.

  "Shi-va Alas-si, alias the Blood Witch, re-tired due to in-jury. Out-rid-er, for-eign. Grant-ed cit-i-zen-ship for ser-vice. Last known to be stuck in Iron Qi." The man turned back, look-ing Sobon up and down. "You could cer-tain-ly be her, af-ter two break-throughs." He brought for-ward a met-al plate, putting it on an emp-ty spot of desk for her. "Body and core check, then."

  Sobon let Alas-si place her hand on it and cy-cle her--re-al-ly, Sobon's--qi through the plate. The man be-hind the desk frowned, but only for a mo-ment. The plate flashed sev-er-al char-ac-ters across it, al-most too fast for ei-ther Sobon or Alas-si to parse, al-though they thought they were var-i-ous facts about her body and aether's com-po-si-tion.

  "Match," the man said, and with-drew the plate. "You should get new iden-ti-fi-ca-tion pa-pers be-fore you leave. Saves us the trou-ble." He looked over at Ki'el. "And her?"

  "Un-der my pro-tec-tion," Alas-si said im-me-di-ate-ly. [ Where the hell is she from, did you say? ]

  [ Some-where in the isles, ] Sobon gave a dis-mis-sive men-tal ges-ture. [ I don't know that she ever said. ]

  The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

  "I am from an Il-lan vil-lage that was de-stroyed by pi-rates," Ki'el said. "My name is Doua Ki'el."

  The bu-reau-crat looked to the head of the pa-trol-men, who just shrugged. He sighed. "If you aren't need-ed in the base, you should wait here."

  "She is in-jured," Alas-si in-ter-ject-ed. "If you can give me a mo-ment--"

  "If you want her treat-ed at the hos-pi-tal, she'll be un-der guard. And you'll pay the fee." The bu-reau-crat's eyes locked on Sobon, or now Alas-si, with the flat, unim-pressed look of some-one whose sole job in an or-ga-ni-za-tion was con-stant-ly re-mind-ing every-one of the rules. "Sev-en sil-vra per hour. For an out-lander."

  "I can set up--"

  "I will wait here," Ki'el forced her way into the ar-gu-ment, catch-ing Alas-si's eyes. "As long as I have a place to sit. It is far less painful now than it was on board the ship."

  [ Most like-ly, they won't like us set-ting up a heal-ing pat-tern with-out their ap-proval, ] Sobon ad-mit-ted men-tal-ly to Alas-si. [ It would be a se-cu-ri-ty risk. ]

  [ As though you couldn't sneak some-thing in, ] Alas-si grumped in re-turn, but closed her eyes and breathed out to re-lease a lit-tle stress. "As long as you are al-right, Ki'el."

  "I will be fine. Go." The girl's pos-ture was very ob-vi-ous-ly that of a girl try-ing to brave her pain, as she turned and limped to a near-by bench, but they could all also clear-ly see that she was cy-cling en-er-gy through her knee, keep-ing it from get-ting any worse while def-i-nite-ly not do-ing any-thing to fix it.

  In-stead of ar-gu-ing, Alas-si looked to the pa-trol-man, who shrugged. "If the com-man-der isn't busy, you will be done quick-ly. And then you should be free to go. I will leave one of my men here to guard her, if you like."

  Alas-si di-gest-ed that, then nod-ded, and then, with Sobon's per-mis-sion, de-tached the quartz frame from her back, set-ting it next to Ki'el. To the pa-trol-man who had been cho-sen to stay be-hind, she glared im-pe-ri-ous-ly, and said, "Both she and that will be un-touched on my re-turn." And while every-one had looked at the frame when she drew at-ten-tion to it, the man just nod-ded, and Alas-si fol-lowed the lead pa-troller in-side.

  [ I wish I had just thought to bring mon-ey, ] Sobon grumped. [ Ki'el would do bet-ter with prop-er at-ten-tion. ]

  [ Don't over-val-ue the army's med-ical corps, ] Alas-si re-turned, do-ing an ad-mirable job of keep-ing her-self straight and at at-ten-tion. [ While they could have healed the dam-age to my hip, it would have tak-en months to do what you did in a week. ]

  Sobon con-sid-ered that, but it didn't line up with what she--what Jom had seen. Or did it? Sobon had no idea how long Jom had been un-con-scious be-fore be-ing awok-en for the ex-e-cu-tion of the Bilg sol-diers. Giv-en every-thing else, Sobon had as-sumed it had come quick-ly--but Jom had also re-cov-ered from an as-tound-ing amount of in-jury, fa-tigue, and mal-nour-ish-ment. And it wouldn't sur-prise Sobon at all if the mil-i-tary pro-ce-dures in-volved in ques-tion-ing sol-diers, de-ter-min-ing fault, and lin-ing up an ex-e-cu-tion could take weeks. It also wouldn't have sur-prised him if that had been done overnight, if they were run tight-ly enough.

  By that time, Alas-si was stand-ing in a wait-ing room with the spare wing-man, while the pa-trol-man had gone ahead. The room had a stench to it, a stench most-ly in its aether. It wasn't stale, un-like most of the bad aether Sobon had run into; it sim-ply car-ried an un-be-liev-able amount of re-sent-ment, all from dif-fer-ent sources, and con-stant-ly re-freshed. The feel, Sobon judged as she sensed just a taste of it, of a great many man and women who thought they were bet-ter, and de-served bet-ter, than to be sit-ting in a room wait-ing to be yelled at.

  There was a rip-ple, but just that, from ahead, and Sobon con-cen-trat-ed, try-ing to tease out which source of qi ahead was the source. When the pa-trol-man re-turned to fetch her, Sobon fig-ured she had locked on to the strongest source of qi in the im-me-di-ate area, and de-cid-ed that was prob-a-bly both the source of the rip-ple, and the per-son they were go-ing to meet. By the time the door opened and Alas-si was faced with the base com-man-der, Sobon was no longer shocked, al-though Alas-si was.

  The base com-man-der was a Djang woman who, if Sobon didn't know bet-ter, would have passed for un-der-age, with shock-ing blue hair that per-fect-ly matched her vivid blue qi. Her qi, if Sobon were to put a word to it, was crys-talline; dense and rigid, with deep pat-terns to the en-er-gy it-self, ex-act-ly the col-or of a per-fect blue sap-phire. Her qi core had also de-tached from its usu-al place; Sobon re-called that reach-ing Gem phas-es of qi re-quired us-ing one or more Star-beast cores, so she sup-posed that this was how they were be-ing used, to let the core reach greater den-si-ties with-out poi-son-ing the body.

  Still, Sobon thought as she mea-sured the den-si-ty of the woman's aether, this is in-ef-fi-cient. Com-plete-ly at-tuned flesh could reach that aether den-si-ty safe-ly, if it were flaw-less. Not that Sobon had any il-lu-sion that any-one na-tive to this plan-et could un-der-stand aether well enough to flaw-less-ly at-tune them-selves that deeply.

  Re-turn-ing her at-ten-tion to the com-man-der, Sobon not-ed that her at-tire was plain and mil-i-tary, and her face was set in a hard ex-pres-sion. Her fea-tures them-selves were soft and beau-ti-ful, the very pic-ture of health and youth; if her face had split into a wide smile and she had bound-ed up to Sobon and talked about what hap-pened at school, Sobon wouldn't have found it odd, at least on the sur-face. But her aether was full of sharp edges and dead-ly por-tent, and there was a world of depth be-hind her eyes. Sobon, with-out know-ing the woman's his-to-ry at all, would have eas-i-ly gam-bled that she was at least a hun-dred years old.

  "Shi-va Alas-si, for-eign out-rid-er, re-tired." Her voice, too, sound-ed too child-ish for Sobon's tastes. While Sobon had af-fec-tion for Ki'el and Lui--who were ac-tu-al-ly chil-dren--this mask of youth just chafed at her. It took her only a mo-ment to put a fin-ger on why. Cy-borgs can ap-pear any age. I don't know if she chose to look this young, but if a cy-borg did it, it would be... a sign of ill in-tent. In-tent to de-ceive and ma-nip-u-late. In-ward-ly, Sobon nod-ded, dis-miss-ing the thought for now. "You know, be-fore I was ap-point-ed to this post, I don't know that I would have read be-tween the lines of your record. But I have over-seen more than enough dirty busi-ness to know ex-act-ly why you were 're-tired'." The girl-ish woman ges-tured to a chair across from her, but didn't sit her-self. Alas-si chose to. "Still, that won't gain you any-thing, not with me. I am Base Com-man-der Rai Su Anin. I want to know why you passed through my ter-ri-to-ry, and then why you stopped on your way back."

  The men-tal back and forth be-tween Sobon and Alas-si was quick, most-ly just Alas-si mak-ing sure she didn't step on any-thing Sobon would have cho-sen not to say. "I re-ceived word from an ally that my dis-ci-ple had been kid-napped. I flew out with all haste and re-claimed her. We paused to let her heal in-juries. There is lit-tle else to it."

  "A dis-ci-ple, now." The woman--Alas-si in-formed Sobon that her giv-en name was the last two words, and so she was Com-man-der Rai or Su Anin to her friends--glanced over her, her ad-vanced qi flick-er-ing out and pierc-ing through any shad-ows that Sobon might have tried to con-ceal. Sobon, for the most part, hadn't been deeply scanned by peo-ple since she was Jom, and it was un-com-fort-able to re-mem-ber that her aether dynamos would be eas-i-ly vis-i-ble, even when con-cealed. "You have de-vel-oped an un-usu-al tech-nique in your re-tire-ment. In-ter-est-ing. But it seems a bit ear-ly for you to claim your-self wor-thy of be-ing any-one's mas-ter, when you haven't even passed the Gold-en Wall."

  "I do not choose to re-veal all my ca-pa-bil-i-ties," Alas-si said, some-what ner-vous. "And I have fo-cused much of my at-ten-tion on in-scrip-tions since then." That, from Alas-si's per-spec-tive, was en-tire-ly a bluff, but a brief back and forth sug-gest-ed that Sobon would hap-pi-ly back her up if chal-lenged on it.

  Which proved to be nec-es-sary. Com-man-der Rai scoffed at the proclamation, and ap-peared a sword out of what Sobon mo-men-tar-i-ly thought was thin air--al-though she and Alas-si both quick-ly no-ticed the in-tense aether around her ring, which Sobon rec-og-nized as a com-pli-cat-ed spa-tial con-struct. "By all means, then. Tell me what's wrong with this blast-ed thing, if you can claim to be a mas-ter. Don't wor-ry, it's only a Bis-muth-ranked in-scrip-tion.

  The term, once spo-ken, locked into Alas-si's mind as Bright Met-al qi lev-el above Ti-ta-ni-um, with the hid-den col-ors to it. She frowned, but tried to keep a straight face, ac-cept-ing the sword and un-sheath-ing it, lay-ing bare a rel-a-tive-ly com-plex set of runes up and down the blade. At Sobon's in-sis-tence, and with Com-man-der Rai's ap-proval, she also re-moved the hilt, lay-ing bare an-oth-er set of runes down the tang.

  Sobon, for her part, spent most of those few mo-ments try-ing to fo-cus on the com-man-der's spa-tial ring. Al-though she couldn't get a very close look at it, she mem-o-rized as many of the scripts and con-structs as she could see be-fore shift-ing her at-ten-tion to the blade. When she did, though, she al-most re-gret-ted be-ing dis-tract-ed; the blade it-self was a high-ly con-vo-lut-ed mess that played with qi na-tures and had a num-ber of spir-i-tu-al locks and seals on it to con-ceal the spe-cif-ic spir-i-tu-al in-tent that went into its con-struc-tion.

  Com-man-der Rai gave them sev-er-al mo-ments to study the blade, busy-ing her-self by star-ing at some of the pa-per-work on her desk, al-though she didn't move to pick it up or ri-fle through it.

  "If that's too much be-yond your abil-i-ty--"

  "No," Alas-si said, stay-ing in front of Sobon but re-peat-ing what he said. "There are flaws in its struc-ture, but the largest prob-lem seems to be that the blade's chan-nels for steel qi and blade qi are re-versed." She took one fin-ger and touched it, gen-tly, on a pair of en-grav-ings. "The cut-ting edge can be en-hanced by sword qi, but the in-scrip-tion is try-ing to en-hance the en-tire width of the blade with cut-ting pow-er."

  There was only a mo-ment's pause, and then the Com-man-der gave a sin-gle, sharp laugh. "Full marks! Im-pres-sive. Al-though my un-der-stand-ing is that the er-ror is the oth-er way around--that the glyphs for steel and blade qi were placed in the wrong or-der, rather than that the chan-nels were re-versed."

  Alas-si shook her head at that, even with-out need-ing Sobon to cue her. She had, in part, fol-lowed Sobon's log-ic as she ex-am-ined the scripts. "No," she said, "There are a num-ber of sup-port-ing char-ac-ters nec-es-sary to en-hance and fil-ter the spe-cif-ic qi na-tures, and the sets of script for steel and blade qi are dif-fer-ent. I think, giv-en how tight the writ-ing is, the qi glyphs were set be-fore the chan-nels were put in."

  Com-man-der Rai hummed, and then, with-out ob-vi-ous ef-fort, the blade lift-ed from Alas-si's hands, along with the hilt and pom-mel that she had set aside. The blade was put back to-geth-er in midair, and then van-ished back into the Com-man-der's spa-tial ring. "Very well. I ad-mit you have learned enough to at least take on a dis-ci-ple. And I will freely grant that res-cu-ing your dis-ci-ple is a wor-thy use of a mas-ter's time."

  "I would even be will-ing to for-give your at-tack on one of our pri-va-teer ships, if you are will-ing to do us a few fa-vors. I'll even throw in med-ical at-ten-tion for your dis-ci-ple at no cost."

  Sobon and Alas-si both shared an im-me-di-ate and in-tense headache, but Alas-si just put on a po-lite mask, one that showed in no un-cer-tain terms that she was dis-pleased, and said, "What ex-act-ly do you want me to do?"