The Last Daughter; Dragon-Blooded Sorcery School Quest

Note: This update is much larger than intended; anticipate things getting more to the usual size again when Year 4 starts, if nothing else just so I can actually sustain writing these.


"I'm just pleased that there are no hard feelings."

You give your companion a small smile. "Of course. It would be petulant of me to hold onto a grudge all this time over a friendly practice match."

Tepet Kedus shakes his head. He's very much like the first time you saw him: slender, red-haired, and red-skinned. "I would never say that — pride can be a tricky thing, and my fiancée is sadly only capable of restraining herself so much once she has a sword in her hand. Still, it gladdens my heart to hear."

Even if you had felt unkindly toward V'neef S'thera, it would be difficult to dislike Kedus. Having run into him at the palace training grounds on several different occasions, he's been quick to renew your acquaintance. While he doesn't have S'thera's reputation with a sword, he's an entirely competent fighter and a politely good-natured companion. He may be the most easy-going Fire Aspect you've ever met. So, you had no reason to turn down this invitation.

You and Kedus are sharing a carriage rolling down the streets of the Imperial City. You're accompanied in dutiful silence by both Peony and the serious-faced young man who is her counterpart in Kedus's service. Through the window, you watch as you pass by shops catering to the wealthy — a parade of silk and jewels and fine porcelain, the air heavy with the scent of good food and exotic perfumes from the eight corners of Creation. Up ahead is the vast shape of Six-Centuries-in-Glory Temple, a building of pristine white marble, its entranceway guarded by a massive sleeping dragon statue. The temple had been designed by Mnemon herself, gifted to the Immaculate Order in dedication to your mother's sextennial.

"Where exactly are we going?" you ask.

"The Sapphire Poppy District," he says. At your expression, he laughs. "It's not even evening yet, and I promise you that the establishment we're going to has a wholly different focus than the ones you're thinking of."

"Of course," you say. It would have struck you as quite out of character, otherwise.

The part of the city you're headed to is an infamous high class blue lantern district, but as Kedus says, it's a little early in the day for the pleasure houses to be in full operation. Under daylight, it's quite a charming sight, the streets well kept and lined with the blue flowers that the district takes its name from. Your destination proves to be stuck in between a teahouse and a theatre — a wedge-shaped building of austere stone construction, softened by the flowering vines that climb its exterior walls.

You step out of the carriage and into the light of day, accepting your sword from Peony and hanging it onto your belt.

Kedus follows you, trailed by his manservant. "The Honed-Blade Society," he says. "It seemed relevant to your interests, with the way you've been spending your time."

The physical exertion of sword training, and the challenge of finding new opponents, has been a distraction from troubled thoughts of late. You try not to linger on it, or let it put a damper on your good mood. "I'm sure it will be worth the trip," you say.

You let Kedus approach the door first. When he knocks, an attendant appears, and asks him for a password — you can't quite catch what he tells her, but it's enough to get you all through. You step through into a large, open space, the walls and floors stone. Dueling circles are laid out around the centre of the room, a few occupied, most currently empty. The edges of the chamber are more lavishly adorned — comfortable places to sit and socialise and watch fights while servants bring you pleasant drinks. The place has been described to you as part dueling society, part social club, catering specifically to martially inclined Dynasts.

The very centre of the room is taken up by a wide, shallow pit sunken into the floor, lined with sturdy looking tile. Directly above it is a large hole in the ceiling, letting the daylight filter down into the chamber. It only takes you a moment to realise that this is there to facilitate serious fights between Dragon-Blooded. Anima control is, of course, a virtue that's drilled into every Exalted child of the Realm, from you down to the humblest outcaste — you're expected to control your power in situations where it would cause wanton destruction or injury of innocent parties, outside of emergencies. However, while duels cannot legally be fought to the death, ones fought on serious points of honour can still require a Dynast's full capabilities.

It's also useful for demonstration purposes, you'd imagine.

Several pairs of eyes look up to take note of your group as you enter, the bulk of the attention falling in you. You're a new face here and easily the youngest in the room, but you're already sure that more than one person has noticed you.

"Kedus," a disinterested voice says. A tall, gangly Water Aspect passes by on her way out the door. She offers Kedus a lazy wave, and you a nod of acknowledgement. She has what looks like a reaper daiklave on her belt, and she's trailed by a somewhat fussy looking young woman who is currently busy scrawling furiously in a notebook as she walks.

"Magistrate," Kedus says, unbothered by the breeziness of the greeting.

You follow his lead and return the nod.

"Ragara Lurica," Kedus says. "I don't think I've ever heard her string together more than three words at a time."

"She brings her scribe with her to a place like this?" you ask, glancing after the pair of them.

Kedus laughs. "S'thera asked Gull about that once — the scribe, I mean. She used to just leave Lurica to it... until Lurica fought three duels in one night a few years back, and now Gull insists on tagging along to avoid 'unacceptable gaps in the official record'."

The Empress famously selects many of her Imperial Magistrates from among the ranks of criminals and troublemakers, so you suppose that sort of thing is why they have an officially appointed scribe in the first place. "How does someone get into three duels in one night?" you ask.

Kedus gives a light shrug. "Something involving a man, I think. Like I said, she's not exactly talkative at the best of times."

"I suppose that would make things difficult," you say.

There is a respectable collection of others around the room — some in the dueling circles, others watching, or sitting back in the more comfortable portions of the hall to relax or socialise. Several people seem to recognise Kedus, but you assume that your presence puts a slight damper on things. You prepare yourself for a few stiltedly awkward conversations, but that's not what you get, in the end:

Among the well-shaded seats in the back is a man with a naval officer's jacket draped over his shoulders. He's young, his skin faintly blue-tinged in a way that reminds you of clear, shallow water, and is attempting to grow a full beard with more valour than success. A pair of sheathed short daiklaves lean against his chair on one side. On the other, a second young man, with dark hair and a sly smile, perches on the arm of his chair, clothed to emphasise the slight, fine-boned delicacy of his body. He has one hand on the naval officer's shoulder, the other holding a crystalline cup of clear liquor to the officer's lips.

The officer's good mood seems to darken when he spies you and Kedus entering the room. Sensing the shift in the Dynast's emotional state, the young man moves deftly out of the way, letting the Water Aspect sweep up out of his chair in dramatic fashion and approach you both.

"Tepet Kedus!" He exclaims, his smile a baring of teeth. "Here without your fiancée's skirts to hide behind, for once."

Kedus laughs as if this is all in good fun, and not at all appallingly rude. "Asher! Lovely to see you." He pauses — reaching out to his Hearth bond with S'thera, you realise. "Yes, S'thera is still in Eagle Prefecture, I'm sorry to tell you. But this will give you more time to prepare: I'm sure it will take her longer than three moves to beat you one day, if you keep practicing." Asher's smile grows more forced, but his eyes move to you, skipping over Peony entirely. "This is Ambraea," Kedus says. "Ambraea, Peleps Asher, a first officer with the Earth Fleet."

"Captain," Asher says, voice tight.

Kedus doesn't miss a beat. "Well, congratulations are in order, then!" For some reason, this fails to improve Asher's mood.

Asher eyes you warily. "An honour to meet you," he says, in a way that tells you he knows who you are. "I'm surprised you find time for such... concrete matters as we concern ourselves with here, among your studies." His companion has come up to stand a little ways behind him. The slender young man's eyes are the purest blue you've ever seen from a mortal — you're not precisely a connoisseur of the masculine form, but even you can recognise a work of art when you see one.

"I've found that my studies actually contain a great deal of 'concrete' elements," you say. On cue, Verdigris slithers up from beneath the collar of your jacket, and you reach up a hand to let her twine around your wrist. "There are worse ways to greet some of them than with a sword in hand."

"I've seen lady Ambraea training every day since I arrived at the palace," Kedus says. "I'd hardly say that she's neglecting the physical world."

"And what have you been doing at the palace?" Asher asks him.

"Attending my matriarch, of course," Kedus says. You've seen Tepet Usala in passing, although you haven't had a chance to talk to her, and likely won't get one this summer — Sola's mother is a busy woman.

Asher shrugs this off, clearly miffed by Kedus's continued unflappability but unable to actually complain about it. Asher's companion looks increasingly apprehensive, although he's relatively good at hiding it, for a mortal. "You're the daughter of Nazat of Prasad," he says to you.

"I am," you acknowledge, raising your eyebrows as if inviting him to continue. You can guess what he's driving at, but he can go ahead and ask you himself.

"I would have liked to fight him in his prime," Asher says. "I've heard he was quite the warrior, before he became just another gossipping courtier."

Your face hardens infinitesimally. "I don't care for your tone, Captain Asher. My father is still every bit the fighter he ever was." This is possibly an exaggeration: You wouldn't be surprised if the younger Nazat, who had cut a bloody swathe through the armies of Prasad's enemies many decades ago, had been in somewhat better fighting trim than he is now. But he's still a Prince of the Earth and a master swordsman in his own right. The fact that he'd been surprised and pleased by your own progress the first time he'd beaten you this summer is a genuine mark of pride.

"Well, would you like to prove that?" Asher asks, leaning forward. There's an eagerness to him now. "Assuming he trained you, rather than leaving it to your childhood tutors."

You're aware that the room in general has started looking on with considerable interest, and so you remain stoutly composed. "If this is the way you make a request of a lady, I pity your future wife," you say. There's at least one stifled laugh from the onlookers, and he glares in response. He's older than you, undoubtedly more experienced, and this is not a good idea — you're being baited. Some things simply cannot be borne, however. "I will fight you, though, and if you lose, you will apologise for your disrespect."

"Agreed," Asher says, with the tone of someone who doesn't expect to have to make good on his end of a bargain.

As he goes to prepare, you lean closer to Kedus. "Should I be concerned?" you ask.

Kedus shrugs lightly. "He's not all talk," he admits. "He's a serving naval officer and I'm sure he uses those swords sometimes."

"A junior captain in the Earth Fleet," you note. The Earth Fleet is an honourable posting, the Realm's last line of defence at sea. But their job is to patrol the Blessed Isle's coastal waters, in practice catching smugglers and hunting down pirates. Not exactly enemies you'd expect to pose a challenge to the fighting men and women of the Realm in general, let alone to a Dragon-Blood from a house famed for its naval prowess.

"His mother is an admiral," Kedus says, somehow conveying a great deal more than you could have in that single phrase. A male officer without the talent or the temperament to overcome that distinction, given a quiet posting through the influence of a powerful mother, and willing to make this everyone else's problem in any setting where he can get away with it.

Or so you're able to surmise. It's not exactly unheard of.

"Well, we'll see whether or not I regret this," you say.

"Now you sound like S'thera. Although, she'd make it an eyesight joke," Kedus says. You try your best to take this as a compliment. You wonder at the two of them, briefly. For all V'neef S'thera's much whispered about womanising, she and Kedus are Hearthmates — sworn kin able to rely on one another completely, never entirely apart.

Whenever you've thought of the husband that your future must necessarily contain, it has been in the form of some tractable young man who would come with ties to his house, administer your household in your absence, provide you with daughters, and look handsome at parties. There's nothing particularly unpleasant about the thought, just another item ticked off the long list of things you need to do to establish yourself within the Dynasty. You wouldn't want to be a bad wife, but it isn't something you've put a great deal of thought into. You've never really considered looking there for actual companionship.

Maia's dagger feels abruptly conspicuous where it hangs around your neck. As little as you know what you're going to say to her the next time you meet, in this moment you miss her keenly.

Fortunately, you don't have too long to fret over it. Soon, you're standing at the edge of a ring across from Peleps Asher. You've removed your jacket, handing it off to Peony. After a moment's hesitation, you offer her Verdigris. You watch Peony steel herself, but in the end she allows the snake to move over to her. Verdigris is sulky in the way she always is when you tell her not to defend you in a situation like this — perhaps a little more, given the obvious tension involved. It's not strictly proper for Peony to be too comfortable handling a spirit, but you can't help but find it encouraging.

You re-fasten your swordbelt around your waist and step forward into the ring. A keen-eyed woman is explaining the rules of engagement; nothing nonstandard. To the touch or the disarm, no strikes to the face or neck, no use of weapons other than your swords, no hazardous displays of magic — the last is directed a little pointedly at you, you feel. You try not to resent it too much.

"Agreed," you say.

"Agreed," Asher says. He's similarly done away with his jacket entirely, although you notice he's not wearing the daiklaves you saw earlier. When he catches you studying the curved blades he wears at either hip, he smiles. "My steel to match yours. It only seems fair — I wouldn't want to damage such an ornamental blade."

"Thank you for your consideration," you say, not rising to the bait. You draw your sabre in one smooth motion. Let everyone here see exactly how functional it is soon enough.

"I've studied Steel Devil Style, Fire Dragon Style, and Jiaran sword dancing," Asher says. "Have you faced any of those before?"

"Not directly," you admit. "Have you mastered any of them?"

He doesn't like that much. "Enough for this," he says.

He draws both swords at once, leaping at you in a whirl of metal. You catch one blow on your sabre, stepping back out of the way of the other. Frustrated, he follows through with a cut that radiates a shocking heat — you parry it out of the way and move into the attack, your whole body flowing with your slash. Asher's eyes widen, and he whirls away.

These opening moments set the tone. Asher's technique is well-taught and practiced, his motions disorienting and dancer-like. They're rote, though, and it quickly becomes apparent when he's simply trying to execute on a series of movements that have been drilled into him. He's fast, and elegant, and most crucially, not as good as Sola.

You don't doubt this would be somewhat harder in a real fight, with no rules of engagement to keep you from killing each other. But under these circumstances, he's having trouble addressing your defence, and you nearly catch him several times when he overcommits. You stand firm, the mountain weathering his rainstorm. You're satisfied when he begins to glow first, a faint, dark blue that limbs his body.

"You're barely fighting back because you know you can't win!" He taunts, frustration clear in this body language as he circles toward you, forcing you to keep turning to face him. He wanted this to make him look good — it hasn't.

In point of fact, you're doing it to wear him out, conserving your Essence and relying on your endurance to outlast him — something you're succeeding in, so far. That's not what you say, though. You spy Asher's mortal boy among the onlookers, clearly torn between not wanting to be seen looking away and half-concealed mortification. "Please. Your behaviour is unseemly. There are mortals watching."

Anger flashes behind Asher's eyes, and he moves at you again. It was foolish of you, perhaps, but you'd internalised the rules of the duel a little too much — you'd stopped thinking about needing to defend anything above your collarbone. His blade cuts your cheek, still burning hot, and you can't suppress a hiss of pain. Behind you, you hear Peony's gasp of alarm, and Verdigris's own hiss of fury.

"Peleps Asher, you immediately forfeit," the woman playing judge says, giving him a hard glare.

Asher smiles at her. "I suppose my hand sl—"

Your fist hits him square in the face with every bit of strength you have. He reels back drunkenly, looking as though he's just run headlong into a rock wall. Then he collapses awkwardly to the floor, swords falling out of his hands.

"I suppose it's a draw, then," you say, expression cool as you look at the judge, a thin line of blood still trickling down your cheek.

In the end, you don't think there's anyone present who blames you.

---

Chanos Prefecture

Keening-Blade Sai picks her way calmly past orchard workers and household staff, taking in the fine day and the charming sight of the distant mountains. Most barely notice her — those that do won't recall her once she's gone.

In full summer, the trees are months away from bearing plums, but there's still plenty of work to do to prepare for the autumn. Workers are busy weeding and doing maintenance on the trees — everywhere but in one conspicuous place.

A shockingly pale girl sits at the base of the largest tree, her back braced against its trunk, utterly engrossed in the book she has open in her lap. Several bored looking guards wearing Sesus colours stand a ways away, ostensibly keeping an eye on their charge. In practice, they're mostly just standing around, trying to look impressive and intimidating for the benefit of the more attractive farm workers. Sai has little trouble slipping past them as well.

As she approaches the girl, one hand begins to casually sketch the Lesser Sign of the Mask in the air. Even if they're looking directly at the tree now, onlookers will be simply unable to perceive anything going on near it. "Good book?" Sai asks.

The girl looks up in surprise. Sai has been doing this too long to allow herself to expect recognition. So when it comes anyway, it's always a nice surprise. "Instructor Sai!" Sesus Amiti smiles in genuine delight, letting the soulsteel pendant she'd had between her teeth fall in the process.

It would be hard to imagine a pair that contrasts more. Beside Amiti's small frame and supernatural pallor, Sai is tall, broad-shouldered, and dark-skinned. She keeps her head almost completely shaved, and has a face that is inclined toward smiling, despite many reasons not to. "Looks like it," she says, leaning against the trunk of the tree.

"Always lovely to see you!" Amiti says, as if having one-time Heptagram guest instructors drop in on her completely unannounced in this way is normal. In her defence, it gradually is becoming normal for them. Sai is busy, but not so busy she can't take a day or two to check in on a student every now and then. "I think you keep expecting me to forget you."

Sai blinks pale lavender eyes. "What makes you say that?" she asks.

Amiti looks around for a bookmark, one hand in between the pages of her book to mark her place in the meantime. "Everytime you show up, before I say hello, you have this look like you're trying to not get your hopes up. And everyone else who's met you or who I've told about you forgets and treats me like I'm making up nonsense, which is very vexing! I tried writing about it in a letter to my sister once. Her reply said it arrived half-burned."

"Yes, that will happen. Have you been experimenting?" Sai asks, a little amused.

"Yes!" Amiti says. She locates her bookmark, which she'd been half sitting on, sticks it in between the pages of her romance novel, and puts it safely in the basket beside her with the others. "I have a good idea for why it's not working on me."

"And why is that?" This isn't precisely a happy subject for Sai or most of the others who share her particular nature. It's rarely a happy subject with Amiti, though, and yet the girl's enthusiasm is always infectious.

"I think it was my initiation," Amiti says. She holds up her pendant, dangling it back and forth by its chain. "The wound in my soul isn't completely healed yet. It twinges now and then — when I'm using necromancy or too much Essence or just feeling a lot of things, usually. It always reminds me of you."

That might actually help keep Sai from falling out of her head. It's unlikely to work forever, obviously, but nothing does. There's always an ending. "... Sure, kid," Sai says, fingering her own soulsteel token. Hers hangs from her wrist in easy reach, intricately shaped into a representation of the Crow, a constellation of acceptance and gradual death. Her own teacher had guided her through carving it it from her soul two-hundred years prior. The spiritual wound had long since healed over. "It'll heal more in a year or two."

Amiti, sighs, almost comically exasperated. "You're not going to tell me how any of this works, are you?"

"Tell you what — if you know who I am the next time we see each other, I'll tell you all kinds of things," Sai says. She slides down the tree to sit cross-legged beside Amiti, arranging the sheathed knives on her belt to get comfortable — they range in size from a hunting knife to very nearly a short sword, one of starmetal, one of adamant, and one of soulsteel. No one she's met has given them a second glance, or found her rough and practical manner of dress anything less than appropriate, no matter the circumstances. "You never did answer my first question, though."

"I didn't?" Amiti frowns for a moment, as if trying to recall. "Oh. Oh! Yes, it's very good, one of my favourite books, actually! It's about a young man from a poor household, but he has a kind heart and a gift for numbers, so he gets swept off his feet by a very charming Cathak general who marries him and takes him to live in her ancestral home, and I like it because they get together almost right away instead of only at the end, but there are still all kinds of troubles they go through, like this villain who is obviously supposed to be a Sesus but the author didn't want to say that and make someone angry at her, and she — the villain, not the author! — is out to destroy their happiness and is in league with an Anathema, and I'm at the part where the Anathema has kidnapped the hero and stolen his face, and now he's watching helplessly as it tries to use his face to seduce his wife, but their bonds of love are already too strong and she sees through the trick right away, and then there's a very exciting sword fight."

"I thought it might be something like that," Sai says, smile spreading into a wry grin.

"This is the third time I've read it," Amiti admits, a little self consciously. "I suppose you wouldn't have Dynastic romances in Uluiru."

"Not exactly," Sai says, shrugging. She has a brief flash of her elder sisters sneaking out to coffee shops every chance they got, hanging onto the storytellers' every word as they recounted selections from the Exodus of Queen Ulu, with its many twists and turns and perils. All long dead, of course — her sisters and the storytellers — not something she'd had reason to think about in many years. It's a good reminder of why she does this; there can't only be work, an endless succession of death and bureaucratic minutia. She needs to be reminded what life on Creation is really like, now and then. Even if Amiti is not exactly a typical eighteen-year-old herself. "Everywhere has stories, though."

Sai's gaze drifts over to the rest of the basket of books, and she tilts her head to read a particular spine. "Queen's blood, where did you find that?" she asks.

Amiti follows her gaze, already knowing which book Sai means. She pulls it out; a thick, leather-bound tome, frequently mended, the sad remnants of gilt lettering embossed on the cover. "Oh," Amiti says, "I finally convinced Huwen — one of the younger sons of House Daha-Ai, I mean — to trade me something worthwhile. You pointed me in that direction, remember? Incredibly prickly boy in our letters, I have no idea how I won him over. But it's a fascinating read! Please don't mention me having it to anyone important; I'm fairly certain it's proscribed."

It most certainly is. The outcaste necromancer Early Frost had only written one compiled treatise before his actions had become extreme enough to see him declared Anathema — in light of that, the Immaculate Order had done its level best to collect and destroy every copy on the Blessed Isle. Sai suspects they'd succeeded, until now. House Daha-Ai is a rare lineage of Dragon-Blooded necromancers with deep stores of knowledge compiled over the centuries, but they're also a poor and troubled cadet house. The book is such an extravagant and dangerous gift on Huwen's part that Sai is forced to imagine that Amiti is not the only one whose mind has been lingering on thoughts of young men from impoverished lineages swept off to a better life by women of powerful military houses.

Sai will leave that to Amiti to figure out, or not, however. She's not a matchmaker. "You're having difficulties with part of it?"

Amiti glances up and around, at the guards and farmhands in the near distance. "They won't be able to hear any of this?" she asks. "You did that..." she waves a hand idly in an endearingly terrible imitation of one of Sai's signs.

"No one can see or hear what we're doing," Sai assures her.

Amiti breathes a sigh of relief. "Right. Right! So!" She flips through the treatise, past arcane diagrams and notations in cramped, unfriendly High Realm. She comes to an uncomfortably graphic depiction of a deeply unsavoury ritual, seeming far less self-conscious about this than she had been about the romance novel. "This ritual. Horrible, obviously, but also deeply intriguing? I don't understand how this part works. Why would you need so much... material for that part, but not the final steps? I ask this purely in the interests of coming to a greater understanding, of course!"

Sai believes her. Amiti absolutely is the type to pursue such things exclusively out of academic curiosity, every step of the way. And that means that at some point, she'll stop paying close attention to where it leads. Sai has seen it before, and dealt with the consequences more than once. It doesn't have to end that way this time, of course. As much as she feels a genuine affection for Amiti and enjoys mentoring her and watching her grow, that's half of why Sai is here doing this — someone needs to keep an eye on what exactly this kid is doing, and it certainly won't be her house.

"I can explain the theory," Sai agrees. "Honestly, though, Frost had a bit of a bias toward mass sacrifice as a means of necromantic working. He got into the habit when he was with the Imperial Legions — his general got a little too permissive with him, as long as it was captured enemy soldiers and they kept on winning. There are more efficient ways to do what he's describing." And considerably less morally abhorrent.

"You... knew him?" Amiti has her pendant in her hand, running her fingers over the soulsteel, the surface of the metal shifting visibly under her touch. Sai can see her adjusting just how old Sai is based on the answer.

"For my part," Sai admits.

"He died a century and a half ago."

"A hundred thirty three years," Sai agrees. She shrugs, as if it doesn't matter. "I meet a lot of necromancers."

This seems to satisfy Amiti, at least for now, and they settle back into a far more technical discussion of Underworld Essence and the various means by which one can harness and power it. As Sai explains his work to her latest pupil, she tries not to think too hard about Early Frost the man — what he'd been like when Sai knew him best, and what he'd been like at the end.

What is the point of living this long if you can't inspire a few young minds? Not everything needs to end the same way.

---

The Port of Chalan, the Near-Southern Threshold

"I'm going to have to be awake for this?"

Simendor Leresh doesn't look up from his array of wicked-looking tools. They shine dully in Malfean brass, just barely catching the light on their tarnished surfaces. "Ideally, no," he says. "But, I doubt I have anything that will keep you under through it all — the Blood of the Dragons does have some disadvantages, one supposes."

Few enough, of course. Leresh is mortal, or close enough to it — he's been a sorcerer for most of his life, and a powerful enough one to have managed to imperfectly halt or slow his own aging this past decade. Within the hierarchy of his strange and insular house, this makes him a sorcerer-prince in his own right, very nearly a peer to his scant dozen Exalted cousins. Sadly, this doesn't stop his joints from aching at night.

The room this workspace occupies is on the upper floor of his personal town estate, a squat tower that nonetheless boasts a very fetching view of the harbour via a large balcony. The crystalline mass of the Agate Throne, House Simendor's ancestral stronghold, utterly dominates the skyline, making the satrap's palace look small and plain by comparison. Chalan is a beautiful city from a distance, where you can't see the fear and resentment in the peoples' eyes or the various horrors — spiritual, living, or construct — that patrol its ancient walls. Simendor has never been loved, but it has certainly always been feared and respected. That's been enough to have let them cling to this place since the heady days of the Realm Before.

The outer walls of the room are taken up by shelves of instruments, carefully organised reagents, mundane medical supplies, and shelves of anatomical texts. Closer toward the centre, the floor is painted with layer upon layer of incantations in archaic Flametongue, the beautiful calligraphy broken up by ritual candles of dubious origin, the last of which was currently being lit by one of his silent assistants. The second assistant closes the doors to the balcony, plunging the space abruptly into candle-lit gloom. Both of them are humanoid demons of the same variety: hairless, purple-skinned, with large, solid black eyes without visible whites or pupils. Neomah have many uses, particularly for Leresh's speciality.

"Right," mutters his young cousin. They're perched on the edge of table at the centre of the sorcerous array, the place where all the room's magic of fluidity and change is focused. An Earth Aspect, like the majority of Simendor Dragon-Blood, metallic crystal shining within the stands of their hair. Still eighteen, newly returned from the Blessed Isle. Leresh had not expected them to call on him so soon after arriving, or at all.

"There are safer, slower ways of getting what you want," Leresh says, turning to look at them directly. "As much as I have confidence in my work, I hope you've considered this carefully." The modification of living beings is far from unknown among their family; most are nonetheless little better than butchers, as far as Leresh is concerned. Twisting animals into chimerical monstrosities, or soldiers into superhuman warriors. Terrifying, but crude. Leresh, by contrast, is an artist. He won't say that everything he's turned his skills to has been kind, but it's always been worthwhile.

Here and now, there is always value in being owed a favour by a young Prince of the Earth, and to being remembered as competent and considerate toward them at their most vulnerable. He'll be able to use that good will for his own purposes later on, or so Leresh hopes.

"No," his cousin says. "This can't wait. If I'm going to make enemies for stupid reasons, it's going to be because of me, not because of my head being a mess."

"I'm sorry?" Leresh asks.

"It's not important. We're not backing out. I'm as ready as I'm going to be."

"Good," Leresh says. "Lay down, then, and we'll get underway." He pauses, considering. "Have you thought about a new name?"

"Deizil." They, he, says it without a moment's hesitation. "I always liked the first part, after all. It was just how it ended."

"Deizil," Leresh agrees, and he smiles. "Very well, cousin. You're in the best of hands."

---

The Imperial Palace

Demure Peony sorts the papers in front of her without much conscious thought, separating them out into different piles for her mother to go through. She sits on the far side of a battered old writing desk from her mother, in a work space roughly the size of a large closet. It's filled with paper and ink and supplies, a little too warm in the summer heat.

But the space is Lohna's, and she seems pleased enough with it, and oblivious enough to the warmth that she'd still pressed a chipped cup of green tea into Peony's hands when she'd first arrived. Now in her forties, Lohna is a trusted and reliable servant of the Imperial Household, and with her service in raising Ambraea no longer required, she'd been given other work. She is now assistant to one of the clerks responsible for managing the day to day expenses of the Imperial Household, which are many, and generate a staggering amount of paperwork.

It makes quite a lot of sense; Lohna had ended up in her original role through a combination of her education — fluent in written and spoken Realm, Riverspeak, and several other useful languages — and having just given birth to Peony. She was essentially now doing the sort of work she'd been trained to in her youth after nearly two decades of disruption.

"I hope you're coping with everything a little better?" Lohna asks, her brush strokes careful as she copies out a document by hand.

"Yes, honestly," Peony says. "It's taken me a couple years, but I've even grown accustomed to that snake." Verdigris was almost sweet, in a way that Ambraea doesn't really let herself outwardly be anymore. Peony was glad to have forced herself to face the fear. Despite Ambraea's unflappable affect, seeing the small ways that her distance had hurt Ambraea had been one of the things to bridge the gap — as much as they have both grown and changed, Peony is still serving the same lady she'd always been.

Lohna laughs. "Well, I'm glad someone is. She doesn't seem particularly mindful of whether or not it makes others uncomfortable."

"I don't think she entirely notices how strange it all is, anymore," Peony says. She has begun to suspect that this is the largest reason for sorcerers having such a well-earned reputation for strangeness. Just sheer exposure to spirits and other oddities until they forget how alarming it all is. She thinks of Diamond-Cut Perfection, with their insufferable over-familiarity, and their dangerous capacity to make one forget what exactly they are.

Realising that she'd let herself go silent, Peony follows that thought to a reasonable complaint. "A dragon, landing in the middle of a perfectly respectable neighbourhood!" She shakes her head. "I am getting used to it all, though, I think. But what else can I do?"

"Good," Lohna says, putting her brush down to look Peony in the eye. And with a sinking feeling, Peony instantly knows where the conversation is headed. "I have nothing in the world to give you but my love, my Flower. You have a good place, and a lady who cares for your welfare. That's the best I could arrange."

"I know I have a good place," Peony says. "I'm happy enough, day to day. And the servants in the Chanos residence are still treating me very well, during the school year. I do my best to help out with what I can, but there's not much work to do. I've never had anything much to complain about other than the strangeness."

Lohna nods, willing as always to be reassured.

Peony almost doesn't ask the question nagging at the back of her mind, but in the end, it slips out: "Are you happy here, mother?" she asks.

Lohna looks surprised. She glances around the tiny study and its stacks of well-ordered papers. "I get a little lonely," she says, "but the work isn't too physical, these days. There are far worse places for an aging slave in the Realm -- I'm still very fortunate."

It's more or less what she's always said to this question. Peony doesn't let herself look at Lohna's brand. Instead, she gives voice to a tentative thought that's been playing through her head for years. "Lady Ambraea might give you better, you know. She'll have a household of her own to set up in a few years. She could... Ask."

The Empress would have little reason to deny such a small request, if it were responsibly made; gifting a daughter her childhood nanny so that she might give her a comfortable retirement was hardly unusual, if a little sentimental. Ambraea had implied thoughts in this direction once, years ago. "I could free her, give her a home," a much younger Ambraea had said. Would it be safe to remind her of that?

Lohna sighs, a little fond, a little wistful. "When you were first born," she says, "I'd been in the Realm proper for all of three days. When the midwife handed you to me, I asked her if you'd be a slave too. She told me: 'From here on out, you'll live and die at the whims of some Dragon-Blood or another. This little one, though, she might do a bit better.'"

"I know," Peony says, suppressing a sigh. It's far from the first time she's been told this.

"Well, I try to have that be enough," Lohna says. "Lady Ambraea is a fine young woman." The words as Dynasts go linger in the air between them, silent and obvious. Then her bearing softens slightly, and Lohna adds: "... Assuming she's the same girl I helped to raise. I've simply learned not to hope for more than my lot." After all, when had it ever paid off? Clearly wanting to change the subject, she asks: "How has she been, by the way? She seemed very grim the last time I saw her."

Whatever the Empress had told Ambraea had obviously rattled her. It was fortunately not Peony's place to ask. She'd never been quite so glad to be able to tell herself to not pry into the business of her betters. It's only natural to be wary around the Dragon-Blooded in general — the Empress, though, is terrifying. "She's well enough," Peony lies. "She's been spending time in study, and a lot of time practicing with that sword of hers. A woman showed her up in a practice duel very badly two years ago, and I don't think she wants that to happen again."

Lohna laughs. "Good. It was very far to send you both, at your age. I wasn't just worried about the food."

"She's happy," Peony says. "She's enjoying her studies, and she has close friends among her classmates. And a lover." It's not exactly a secret, at this point; Peony would be very surprised if some sort of news of Ambraea's involvement with an Exalted patrician hadn't made it to the palace; she'd gone out of her way to make enough of a spectacle of herself with that entrance that she's become a popular figure of gossip, for the moment.

Lohna smiles, genuinely pleased. "That's healthy for a girl her age. You might consider the same, Flower."

"I don't have time for relationships, mother," Peony says. Or the interest, in practice — romance seems as though it could be nice, in its way, but the more physical things that go along with it have always failed to excite her or hold her interest.

Lohna tuts softly, returning to her work as she speaks. "Well, you should put some thought to it sometime, while you're still young. I know I've always regretted that I never got the chance to introduce my parents to my child."

The attempt at guilt is almost comforting in its mundane familiarity. "I don't think that schoolgirl romances have much to do with marriage or children," Peony says.

"Well, not for her, obviously, she's a lady," Lohna says, waving that off. "Things are allowed to be simpler for you. There are some perfectly nice young men near your age in service around the palace who I might introduce you to."

Absolutely not. "I don't want to worry about that sort of thing until after we're settled," Peony says. "It doesn't make a lot of sense, when Lady Ambraea is still a student."

"I raised you to be entirely too sensible," Lohna says, relenting. "Pass me that pot of ink, my love? I hope your tea isn't cold. I can fetch some more."

"No," Peony says, giving her a small smile. "It's fine like this." For now, she means it.

---

You open the door and step out into a rooftop garden like something out of a dream. Flowering vines hang from every vertical surface. A path underfoot winds it's way through manicured shrubbery, gaps in the plants only periodically revealing the manse's commanding view of the Imperial City's most affluent neighbourhoods. Exotic butterflies in impossible colours fill the air, compelled to stay within the confines of this one garden by the same magics that make the air taste like you're standing in a verdant meadow of wildflowers.

You slow your pace as you walk down the path — truth be told, it's nice to have an excuse to dawdle. It's not as though you were exactly enjoying the gathering, so you appreciate that the manse it was held in is at least pleasant. Subsequently, you're a little distracted at first, rounding the bend, and it takes you a split second to recognise that you're not alone on the rooftop.

An elderly woman sits alone on an ornamental bench surrounded by well-kept bamboo, alongside a small ornamental pond. She's plainly Exalted: Her hair is a dark blue like a storm-tossed sea, the streaks of white only adding to the impression of waves. One of her hands has been replaced by a prosthetic of flawless black jadesteel, its surface crawling with blue symbols. She's using her one good eye to stare into this hand's metal palm intently, as if there's something there to listen to.

Frowning, you move your foot to the very edge of the pond. As with the vase by the courtyard when you'd first arrived at the palace, you let a thread of revealing Air whirl into the surface. It doesn't disturb the water, but it does reveal something in the woman's reflection: Perched on her hand is an ash-grey spider the size of a tarantula, gesticulating rapidly with its two forelimbs. It's a demon-spider, you're sure, although you can't quite identify the breed.

Before you can put much more thought into the matter, or introduce yourself, the woman whispers something to the spider, and it abruptly vanishes into a cloud of ash, whirling up and out of sight. "Is it no longer the polite custom to introduce yourself to an elder? I can't quite keep up, these days," the Water Aspect says. You don't jump, despite the fact that you'd been certain that you were in her blindspot, but it does admittedly startle you a little.

"My apologies," you say, stepping around the pond toward her. "I didn't wish to disturb you."

"Oh, I'm sure you didn't," the Water Aspect says, turning to look at you with the eye not covered by an eyepatch — it's vibrant blue, and more amused than angry. She looks you over briefly. "Ambraea. This is a surprise."

You two have not been formally introduced, but you suppose your Aspect Markings are reasonably distinctive, as is the snake draped over your shoulders. You don't have to pretend not to know who she is either, this way. Your second-eldest living sister is not particularly easy to mistake for anyone else, as much as it's a surprise to run into her here, in a manse belonging to a Cynis household. "Mnemon Rulinsei," you say, turning it into an actual greeting. You're maintaining a respectful distance between the two of you, her still sitting, you standing several paces away on the path.

Rulinsei glances around at the scenic and secluded surroundings. "I hope you weren't meeting someone up here," she says.

Maia would have liked this garden — even if she's got no immediate need for secrecy, she always seems a little more at ease when she can identify something she slip behind or hide in. Things might have been different if you'd been in another mindset, but so far you haven't actually followed Maia's prompting to have a few encounters like the one you'd enjoyed the summer before. "No. I came here for a poetry reading one of the family's younger sons was hosting — it's really not that kind of gathering."

Rulinsei examines your expression — adequately stoic, you hope. "I gather you weren't the life of the party?"

"Is it that obvious?" you ask.

She gives a laugh, rough but genuine. "Please. I've been the sorcerer in the room for most of my life, I know how these things go. Did that V'neef girl I saw arrive earlier drag you here?"

You blink. She had, assuming Rulinsei is talking about V'neef Evona. She is one of L'nessa's adoptive great nieces, a third generation patrician elevated to Dynast after her household had been folded into House V'neef. It was her invitation that you'd accepted in your troubled fugue after your meeting with your mother, barely registering the details at the time. "You guessed that very quickly."

"You visiting V'neef two years ago isn't a secret," Rulinsei says. "Neither is you sticking close to her youngest daughter. I'm sure you're keeping your options open, so along comes this girl, using the mutual connection to magnanimously invite you along to a social event. Something casual that someone else is putting on. You arrive and no one else really wants you there, so she's the one who'll pretend you don't make her nervous enough to actually give you the time of day. And hopefully when it's over, all you really take away from things is that."

You consider that, and can't honestly disagree with her assessment, for all that she's going off pure conjecture. "I also enjoyed some of the poems." Others had been a little overwrought — you can't say you care for the contemporary Pangu flowing river form half as much as your host apparently does. "Are you trying to warn me off of her?"

Rulinsei shrugs. "Of course not. Whether or not the girl's a grasping social climber and just wants partial credit for tying you down barely matters — you could do a lot worse than attaching yourself to an up-and-coming Great House, if you're going to hitch your wagon somewhere. I'd hope you're old enough by this point to know that the Empress's protection is not to be relied upon indefinitely."

You're a little proud of yourself for not glancing at either her missing hand or her missing eye — that Mnemon Rulinsei was maimed by assassins as a girl is not exactly a secret. Nor is who was responsible for sending them precisely a secret, although throwing around the accusation where anyone from House Ragara might hear of it is not wise.

"And you see nothing objectionable for me going to V'neef for such protection, hypothetically?" you ask, too curious not to.

"No," she says, almost disinterested by the question. "Is there a reason I should? Sit down, girl, you're making me feel tired just looking at you."

You step forward and perch on the edge of a bench near to hers, the movement giving you an excuse to hesitate over your answer. The strange circumstances of this conversation and unexpected candor are infectious, however. "Your matriarch does not seem to particularly care for theirs," you say, delicacy making the understatement a little absurd.

Rulinsei raises her eyebrows archly -- it's the first time you've noticed any particular resemblance between her and your mother. "Do you like V'neef? Our sister, I mean, not her house." You open your mouth to reply, then pause. You hesitate for long enough for it to be an answer in its own right. Rulinsei laughs. "That's about what I thought. It's not that I don't understand the why of it, and my loyalties are where they are. I'm just too old to have the energy for that sort of family grudge at this point."

Pointing out that she's younger than Mnemon by a decade barely occurs to you. Whatever the span of years, the woman sitting across from you is visibly near the end of her life in a way that neither your eldest sister nor your mother is. Compared against nearly anyone else, making it the better part of a century past three hundred would be impressive on its own. "I understand," you say, because you have to say something to that.

She actually snorts at that. "No, you don't," she says, "but being eighteen is hardly your fault. It isn't really my concern whether you attach yourself to V'neef or Sesus or Tepet or anywhere else — you're not my daughter. But accepting shelter where it was offered was the best decision I've ever made, and I could hardly begrudge you for doing the same."

You nod, struggling against feeling indignant at the condescension inherent in this sentiment. There isn't really any way to make 'you'll understand when you're older' easy to swallow. "What brings you here, anyway?" you ask, the change of subject obvious, but sorely needed.

"Marriage negotiations," Rulinsei says. "One of my grandsons is of the age, and his mother, my youngest, is busy running a satrapy in the North. We have ties to the household — my late first husband's sister owns this manse. The sort of connection that requires maintenance, every generation or so. I also designed and built the place for her mother, so that helps."

"Oh. It's very beautiful," you say honestly, looking around at your surroundings.

"The garden was Mnemon's idea," Rulinsei says, waving off the compliment. "Over three hundred years I've been making them, and I still haven't shown her a geomantic design that she hasn't immediately changed in some way. And it's always an obvious improvement somehow — the garden perfectly balances out the flows of Wood Essence. It's a little infuriating." Despite this ostensibly being a complaint, she's smiling as she says it.

The relationship this implies between the two of them is a little surprising, and you're not immediately certain how to respond. Before you have to, though, a new voice carries through the air, feminine and trying not to sound openly exasperated: "Great Grandmother?"

Rulinsei gives you a wry sort of smile. "That would be me," she says. Pitched more loudly, she calls: "Over here, Sulim."

A moment later, a young Water Aspect woman several years your elder appears, a look of relief on her face, and the mon of House Mnemon stitched subtly into the fabric of her dress. The look freezes as she rounds the corner and fully registers your presence. "My apologies," she says, "I didn't realise you had... company."

Rulinsei sighs slightly. "Relax — I think I'm entitled to taking a moment to catch up with my youngest sister, when we stumble into each other like this. Ambraea, this is my great granddaughter, Mnemon Rulinsei Sulim." The pair of you exchange polite nods, although the atmosphere does little to thaw. Fortunately, Rulinsei doesn't seem to expect it to. "Is our host looking for me?" she asks.

"Yes, Great Grandmother," Sulim says, moving closer to Rulinsei's side, and offering her an arm. "They're waiting for you downstairs."

"Well, it wouldn't do to keep them waiting, then," Rulinsei says. She accepts the younger woman's help getting up, although you're not entirely sure how much she genuinely needs it the physical support, and how much she's just playing to appearances. It can be difficult to tell, with elder Dragon-Blooded.

"I wish you good luck, sister," Rulinsei says, glancing back at you. "We tend to need it more than most would assume."

You try to take that in the spirit you hope it was given. "Thank you. May your negotiations go well."

You take a few minutes alone in the garden before you leave, lost in your thoughts. Maia really would like it here.

---

"Why do you need this so badly?" you think at Perfection, thoughts peevish.

"For a scholar, you have no appreciation for history," Perfection says, voice infuriatingly amused in your head. "Suffice to say, the seas are large and hold many wonderful things, and it becomes easier to find them if one has the proper information."

You're in a large, dreary building illuminated by soft, magical lighting, filled with shelf upon narrow shelf of records and volumes dating back to the founding of the Realm. And before it, more to the point. You'd been both suspicious and relieved when Perfection had called in your latest favour by requesting you help them locate frustratingly specific surviving shogunate era naval records. What could they possibly want with such a thing? You still don't entirely know the answer to that, but you do know several things: That this particular part of the Imperial Archives uses a vastly different organisational scheme than the Heptagram's libraries, that the older records barely seem to follow that or any organisational scheme, and that this is not a particularly pleasant way to spend a summer's day.

"And for a dragon, you are as insufferably pleased with yourself as ever. Do not laugh at me, it's intolerably rude."

"Ah, my apologies, then! As I've told you before, you have my utmost faith in your abilities to find what I'm looking for."

You fight the urge to sigh audibly. "Your confidence is truly touching."

"Well, I shall let you concentrate on your search, then," Perfection says. "Please tell Demure Peony I said hello. You really don't deserve her."

"No," you say. And they have the nerve to laugh at you again.

From her usual place trailing behind you, Peony holds the several volumes you've already found, watching you with her usual quiet solemnity. After a long moment's consideration, she ventures: "I hope that your... teacher is being more helpful, my lady?"

It's your turn to laugh. Which is much more excusable, considering that it's not being done effectively right in Perfection's face. "You can tell when I'm conversing with them," you say.

"It... often makes you look slightly vexed," Peony admits. "I don't think most would notice."

That's slightly reassuring, on one or two levels.

You're on the second level of a large chamber, a railing letting you look down into the first. You briefly take notice of a young man dressed like a servant, struggling under a large stack of books. Then you return to Peony's question. "No, they're being quite unhelpful at the moment. We'll give this another hour, then see about going to find some food."

"I'm sure that would be wise, my lady," Peony says, with a grateful undertone beneath the platitude. She holds up well, but mortal frailties weigh on her a great deal more than you, understandably.

"... Well, you'd better go find him, then, shouldn't you?"

The new voice becomes abruptly audible as you round a corner, having previously been swallowed by stone shelves filled with paper. You look up from the characters labelling the shelves to see a young woman hurrying past, dressed similarly to the young man you'd spotted. As she stops to drop a hasty bow to you as she passes, you take in the colours of House Sesus on the hem of her collar.

Continuing down the hall, you glance into the first reading room you pass, expecting to see a Dynast, to perhaps exchange a polite nod and be on your mutually silent way. When you catch sight of the girl seated at the table inside, however, you freeze up short.

The girl is your age, blonde, pale in an unremarkable sort of way, going over a ledger with a serious enough expression. When she catches you standing in the doorway, staring, she raises intensely red eyes to give you a quizzical look. She's small, pretty in a wide-eyed, delicate sort of way. Her clothes are fashionable and well-suited to her narrow frame, though her hair is pinned back with an elaborate hair ornament. Carefully shaped metal feathers form a flame pattern in red and black jade. To your eye, the piece isn't merely jade lacquered, instead bearing the deeper luster and surface translucence of solid jadesteel — you strongly suspect it isn't just ornamental. "May I help you?" she asks, and even her voice is familiar, if inflected all wrong.

Your first, absurd impression is that, if Amiti is a girl who has had all the colour drained out of her, this is where it went — a perfect copy in every other way. It's such a startling mix of contrast and similarity that it takes you an embarrassing moment to realise who this must be. "Are you Sesus Kasi?" you ask her, the name coming back to you.

The girl quirks a questioning smile. "That is me." she says. There's an air of summer around her, somehow, of vitality and warmth.

"My name is Ambraea," you say, "My apologies — but I've been attending the Heptagram with your sister for the past several years, and you look very much alike."

"Oh!" Recognition passes over Kasi's face, and she stands up. "Yes, we do hear that sometimes," she says more than a little dryly — when Amiti had told you she had a twin, you somehow hadn't made the connection to their being identical twins Exalted with different Aspects. She inclines her head respectfully, still smiling. "Very pleased to meet you — I've read a great deal about you in my sister's letters."

This faintly surprises you, although perhaps it shouldn't. Amiti is usually too busy reading or running experiments or talking about something 'fascinating' to find the time to talk a great deal about her family. She'd said that she'd missed Kasi, and you'd known they were the same age. You suppose it follows, then, that Amiti and her sister must be close.

You wonder what that's like.

"Good things, I hope," you say.

"Glowingly. But my sister rarely spends letter space talking about people she doesn't care for," Kasi says. "Will you sit down?"

You take the chair across from Kasi. As you do, you glance from Peony to a nearby cabinet — she understands, and sets her pile of books temporarily down on top of it. She has an obscurely surreal look on her face, past her usual mask of servile humility. You recall that Amiti once cornered her for a well-meant but traumatic conversation. This must be strange for her as well.

The thought of Amiti writing nice things about you to close family members is a pleasant one for you, however. She's the only one of your classmates where you can imagine that the practical benefits of touting a connection would have scarcely entered her mind. "She's a good woman to have as a friend," you say. "She helped to get me out of a bad situation, last year."

"Yeah, I think she mentioned that, but partway through the account she got distracted by discussing the anatomy of a 'cliff guardian'. There were diagrams. Hopefully, you can forgive me if I skimmed those parts." There's a note of exasperated affection in Kasi's voice. You assume this is a common occurrence. "It's good no one was hurt, but I'm glad we don't have to worry about any of the help trying to eat us at the Spiral Academy." She says this a little like she can't entirely imagine why someone would feel otherwise, but is being polite.

"I'm not sure if I'd call the cliff guardians the help exactly, but surviving the dangers of the Isle of Voices is part of our education," you say. Verdigris is asking to be allowed out onto the table, so you let her. To Kasi's credit, she only stiffens slightly at the sight of the snake.

"I suppose so," she says, watching the small elemental exploring the space. "It's good that my sister has found capable friends, at least."

You raise your eyebrows. "Was it a surprise that she did?"

Kasi gives you a brief, assessing look, calibrating the degree of candour this situation calls for. "Amiti did not have... An easy time in primary school."

You can imagine not. Her eccentricities wouldn't have started with her Exaltation, and with Kasi Exalted so early in their primary school career, Amiti would have been quickly identified as a leftover child. "She didn't have an easy one at the Heptagram at first, either," you admit.

"But she made friends eventually," Kasi says. "Well-situated friends! You and the daughters of two Great House matriarchs, even if one of them is a Tepet. Mother is so pleased that I don't think she quite knows what to do with it — I'm actually glad I didn't manage to convince Amiti to come to the Academy with me. I suppose she just fits in better with other sorcerers."

It's not hard to read a protective impulse into the words, and imagine the relationship this alludes to. Kasi, Exalted, comparatively well behaved, looking out for her strange, bookish mortal twin. One can well imagine it continuing this way into adulthood, even with Amiti's late Exaltation. It's also interesting how differently the two sisters perceive Sesus Cerec's feelings on the matter.

"I'm not sure if 'fits in' is quite the word I'd use," you say. When Kasi's expression loses just a touch of its warmth, you say, "Well, she's a necromancer." You don't ordinarily try to make the distinction to unconcerned laypeople, but you somehow feel that Amiti would want it to be stressed. Dragons know, she does it often enough herself.

"I'm sure that there's a very technical and fascinating distinction there, and I have had it explained to me at length at least three times in two different letters," Kasi says, relaxing a little again when this is all you meant by the comment. "I don't think I'm exactly the audience for it."

For a moment, you consider trying anyway. The different sources and natures of sorcery and necromancy aren't so very hard to understand, after all. It's a rather rudimentary subject, of the sort that any second year Heptagram student should have been able to sum up out of hand. Then there are the unique worries that come along with such a practice, the dark powers that can be unleashed by it and that can alter a practitioner in poorly documented ways. But then, you suppose that for most people, it's the sort of thing one is doing with their otherworldly magic that they care about, rather than how a scholar would strictly classify it.

You think better of it. "Perhaps not," you say. "I hope you don't mind me asking, but do you often spend your summers looking through archives?"

"Shockingly, no," Kasi says. "I'm here running an errand for a... family friend in the Thousand Scales. It's not exactly fun, but if it were, I suppose he'd be here himself. And yourself?"

With the focus the Spiral Academy already has on interfacing with the Imperial bureaucracy, this strikes you as a little like what has happened to you, with the materials your mother provided. Although you have to imagine that rare works on the nature of various obscure elementals makes for considerably more interesting reading than dry, centuries old records. You've spent more than one late night in a mix of study and mental conference with Perfection, the Dragon's perspective always a little different from that of any human scholar.

"I am also here running an errand," you say, "although it's for my teacher. There was a particular Shogunate era naval battle that they have requested I find information on."

Kasi glances over to the small stack of materials that Peony has collected. "That is a terrible thing to get you to do. The Shogunate records are a bit of a mess," she says. "Different calendars, you know. And hardly anyone even needs that sort of thing. I think you might need some help."

"I wouldn't turn it down," you admit. "But aren't you busy?"

"Right now, I'm mostly waiting on my servants to get back here with some of what I need. I could use an excuse to kill some time until then. And it can't hurt to show you a bit of gratitude for looking out for Amiti." Or to do a favour for an Imperial daughter, she doesn't have to add. You don't know Sesus Kasi very well, but you already get the feeling that her motivations in such matters are about as complex as any Dynast's.

"Thank you," you say, scooping up Verdigris as you rise from your seat.

"Like I said, the pleasure is all mine," Kasi says, getting up herself. She moves with a confidence and purpose somewhat at odds with her size, but befitting the daughter of a legionary officer. "I can think of far worse ways to spend the time." Then she flashes you a hard to read smile, and leads the way back out of the reading room.

---

Article:

Near the end of the summer, Ambraea returns to Chanos, and then to the Heptagram for her fourth year, unaware that the period of normalcy that she's been living in is rapidly nearing its end. Foremost on her mind is what the Empress told her about Erona Maia, but this is hardly the only thing that will happen to her over the course of the school year.

When you see Maia again, do you come clean to her about knowing her family's secret, or do you withhold it, and just try to carry on as you were? As your mother said, the knowledge was a gift, and you are free to do with it what you will.

[ ] [Maia] Tell Maia what you know

[ ] [Maia] Pretend nothing has changed

---

Continuity note: I will be renaming the character "Peleps Nazri" to "Peleps Nalri", due to having belatedly realised that Nazri is the name of a canon Exalted character. It would drive me crazy otherwise.

What storyline would you like to follow in your fourth year? The characters named as central will appear very prominently within this storyline, but this doesn't mean you won't see other characters as well. You may vote for as many as you like, but only the top vote will be picked. This vote is separate from the first:

[ ] [Storyline] Flame and Frost

Amiti's early friendship with Ledaal Anay Idelle seems to have grown particularly strained this year. Amiti comes to Ambraea and her other friends with a problem that she's trying to conceal. Why is Idelle so suspicious and intent on discovering it?

Availability: Year 4
Central character(s): Ledaal Anay Idelle, Sesus Amiti
Themes: Ghosts, family ties


[ ] [Storyline] Names and Nightmares

Certain students begin to get strange, unexplained dreams, and they're not just from stress, for once. What could be causing them, and why?

Availability: Year 4
Central character(s): ???
Themes: Dream magic, demons


[ ] [Storyline] Best Served Cold

In Ambraea's third year, her life and that of her friends' was put in danger by the actions of Peleps Nalri. While Ambraea wasn't the primary target, this is still not something that can be let stand. Ambraea and L'nessa find a way to get back at her before she graduates.

Availability: Year 4, year 5
Central character(s): Peleps Nalri, V'neef L'essa
Themes: Familial rivalry, House V'neef and House Peleps


[ ] [Storyline] Hard Lessons

Sola once stepped in when tensions between Ambraea and another student reached an unwise breaking point. Ambraea will have ample opportunity to return the favour, or to decline to.

Availability: Year 4, year 5
Central character(s): Cathak Garel Hylo, Tepet Usala Sola,
Themes: Familial rivalry, House Tepet and House Cathak


[ ] [Storyline] The Serpent Thief

An old annoyance has reemerged to trouble Diamond-Cut Perfection, slipping into their court to steal information and Essence. They would like to send a message that they are not to be trifled with in this way, asking Ambraea to kill or bind the thief. The thief's unique nature makes this no trivial task, however.

Availability: Year 4, year 5
Central character(s): ???, Diamond-Cut Perfection
Themes: Strange spirits, ruins