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..."


    This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it


    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.