The problem is acting on that knowledge. First, you either need to be able to do something yourself, or convince someone else to do so. Which gets a lot easier with greater power, both because of the respectability, and because Exalted has a ton of social charms (though that doesn't appear to be her strength). Second, or maybe 1.5, you need to be able to adapt to changes. The fact that the Yozi and Neverborn want to conquer/destroy creation isn't super surprising. How is more useful, but thinking they cannot adapt is foolish, so you must be able to do it yourself..
Reincarnation: May Come with Teething Problems (Exalted)
- Thread starter drakensis
- Start date
- Novel Fantasy
The Froggy Ninja
The Blade Will Never Die
Highly undesirable side effects such as children spawned from a mortal female being less likely to Exalt?
- Pronouns
- Yes
Or there are political/religeous reasons for them not to use them, or they have some pretty difficult to acquire pre-requisites, etc.
More importantly for this story we have
So whatever the case in canon, in this story there are options to let Alina sire a bunch of children, which at least at the time she didn't consider to have any massive drawbacks.
Third, you need to be able to be certain that none of your actions have changed things. If Lyta is the Solar exalt Bookwyrm remembers that is definitely no longer the case. For that matter Alina would be having a significant effect on all the students and by extension their families, with ripples spreading out from there. Just as one example, in the original history, nothing like the events of the last chapter would have occured. That's a significant event in the development of all the children in that class.
- Location
- Probably at sea
I'd say a lot of the most vital information is of such scale that it would take a very, very large butterfly for your actions to have enough of an effect to matter. (Granted, altering the future actions of a Solar would probably count.)
Like, off the top of my head, and bearing in mind I know nothing about 3e so this might not be accurate, here are some things that would be very, very useful to know and very, very unlikely to change:
- The Ebon Dragon is going to kidnap the Scarlet Empress in order to marry her, and Regent Fokuf is put 'in charge'
- The Deathlords are going to break open the Jade Prison and release the Solars (and also make deathknights and Green Sun Princes possible)
- The Mask of Winters specifically is going to take over Thorns using Juggernaut
Critian Caceorte
Currently Suffering from Space-Time Narcolepsy
- Location
- Washington State
In 3e Exalted, they expressly exist, both because it's kind of difficult to be prejudiced against transgender Terrestrials when one of your saint-equivalents is transgendered, and also, Precedent of Rawar, pg. 98 of the DB book, stuff like that.
However, we're talking about 2nd Edition Exalted here, and while the first fact is still true, the second isn't I don't believe. So it's a toss-up at to whether that would be possible (at least, by social conventions, since it's definitely possible through in-setting elements), if Alina is even interested in becoming a man once more or siring children that way, etc.
Lyta, say.
- Pronouns
- Yes
Well either some massive butterfly, or hundreds of minor ones. Changing the alliances of a dozen households and affecting the development of several hundred upcoming DB, and a bunch or older ones amount to some massive butterflies when taken all together.
-The breaking of the Jade prison will probably stay the same, but it's soon enough she's not going to be able to do much about it, in the unlikely event she actually wanted to have the Realm better prepared to kill innocent Solars.
-Again, what put the various players into position for that to happen and how will the changing political landscape affect that?
No, you definitely could do so by accident. In fact I don't believe there's any way other than by accident to do so.
I don't know if magical sex change is possible for a DB, but in this story at least Alina magically siring children is very much possible, explicitly stated so in the first chapter.
- Location
- Space, the final frontier.
Understand you are joking. But a lot of floors are cleaner than that.
Even in houses with chairs sitting, laying down or doing pushups on a floor, will not make pants dirty.
Let alone houses or places with carpets and pillows to sit on.
Clean floors and chairs are matter of effort not function.
Antique chairs are a thing even in our society.
Ascending Earth
For the second summer in a row, I was to spend the school holidays in Lord's Crossing. Bear in mind that I'd just turned nine and this meant that I'd have spent more than a quarter of this life away from the home I'd grown up in. I was beginning to suspect that however auspicious my Exaltation might have seemed, that Tepet Demarol didn't want me around his household any more.
Thus, I was quite surprised to see him seated with the elders as they reviewed my class performance, but I curtsied towards him and sat obediently facing them all.
My lawful-father said little as Tepet Jita and Tepet Vergus took the lead. They were rather blatantly playing good magistrate-bad magistrate as they went from one subject to the next. For example, Jita seemed inclined to brush off the reports from my music class with "if she doesn't have talent, the girl is really doing all she can", while Vergus insisted that I sing the entirety of 'Little Soldier Boy' for them.
I don't think that it made her very popular with her siblings and even Demarol was giving her a sour look as I sat again, rather aware that torturing them with that might not have made me memorable in a good way. "Well, you can manage volume, at least," the head of my own household noted. "I gather that there was an incident with two other Exalted students over the winter?"
Vergus spoke rather than letting me do so. "Yes, one of my brood exalted during a spar with one of the Cathak. Unfortunately, the supervising teacher was a mortal and suffered considerable injury. The school hasn't asked for compensation."
Jita gave his sister a sidelong look. "Another earth-aspect, wasn't it? I'd have expected him to be more… level-headed."
"I still remember the first rush of Exaltation, even if you don't," she retorted and looked back to me. "You showed restraint in handling the situation, Alina." The admission seemed to pain her.
"Has it impacted on your relations with the two of them?" Demarol enquired thoughtfully. "They would have been moved to room in your dorm right afterwards, unless the school operates very differently from those I'm familiar with."
I gave Vergus a polite smile. "Tepet Vergus Udano is a good friend and we remain so. Indeed, his exaltation has removed the fear that I would be leaving him behind over time. I think highly of him."
"And the Cathak?" she asked sharply. "Our relations with that house have suffered of late, and Cathak Cainan will doubtless be meeting with the newest Exalt of his House this summer."
"Third newest." Demarol smiled thinly as he corrected the elder. "His house has been blessed with two further exaltations in the spring - but your main point is apt. Daughter, what do you expect him to hear of you?"
"Unless she has been deceiving me for months, I may count Cathak Erika as a friend," I assured him. "She was previously very much in the circle of a Sesus who has yet to exalt, but since Erika's exaltation, that bond has been greatly weakened by the other girl's resentment. I can't predict what may happen if Sesus Lyta exalts, but I made Erika welcome in my dorm and she has reciprocated my aid warmly."
My father turned a satisfied look upon the elders. "I forget which general it was who remarked that the most profound victory is to turn one's enemy into an ally… oh wait, it was Tepet himself."
"I believe that my point is proven," Jita observed calmly. "Does anyone else believe that Alina is unsuited to the role that I have nominated her for?"
The other Tepet elders exchanged looks, presumably able to judge each other's feelings simply by their expressions. They had known each other for centuries, I suppose. Then they turned back to their brother and Vergus nodded. "We accept your choice in this matter."
Uh, what role? I looked at Jita and my father. "May I ask what role you have in mind?" It can't possibly be a matter of public singing can it? I thought. Or do they want a mascot for one of the legions, a little girl to hold flowers to inspire them…? I doubt they think like that. Are legion mascots even a thing?
Jita smiled rather slyly. "I have become a father again in my dotage, it seems. And since you have done well in instructing the young Cathak girl, I hope that you can provide similar guidance to my own new daughter."
I blinked. I knew that Dragon-Blooded retained their vigour for a long time, but was that really something he felt the need to brag about? And what could I teach a baby? I wasn't really skilled in nappy changing, and… ah, it was more likely he was talking about adopting a girl who'd exalted? "I presume that we are not discussing a new-born, elder, as I can claim no special expertise in changing nappies."
The creased face developed several new folds as the smile deepened. "Quick," he noted. "Yes, I am adopting a child born to a family here in Lord's Crossing. She exalted quite recently and will need guidance in the ways of dynasts. Do you feel up to the role?"
I was dubious, to be honest. But… "I would be honoured to help a new member of our house find her feet, elder. Will she have tutors for any more academic subjects that I wouldn't necessarily have the grounding for?"
The old man shrugged. "Either that or I shall send her to school with you. It depends what she is ready for. If she cannot attend a school then her social circle will be rather small compared to her peers and that can be unfortunate."
I dropped into a curtsy. "I will be glad to do what I can for her."
"How very compliant you are," he noted. As if I'd had a choice. "You have raised a dutiful daughter, Demarol. I am proud of you."
"As I am, of her." He bowed to his ancestor before returning his attention to me. "I am sure you will rise to the occasion, Alina. As you have before."
"Thank you, father."
Jita pushed back his chair. "Unless anyone has further questions for Alina, I will introduce her to her new charge."
There were no objections voiced so he led me out of the tower and through the courtyards around the inner manse to another stair that led upwards through another tower.
"The only access between the towers internally is through the hearthroom," he explained when I glanced upwards at what seemed to be bridges connecting the towers well above us. "And for various reasons we try not to bring younger members of the family up there. Probably an unnecessary precaution these days, but arguing over changing that rule would take up time better used."
That made some degree of sense. I didn't know who held the hearthstone, but if it were ever damaged then it would reform in the hearthroom and anyone with access might pick it up. Given that the holder of the hearthstone could draw on the essence flows of the manse, it was a considerable advantage to have. Holding even one could be a decisive advantage both in the reserves of essence and whatever additional benefits the hearthstone was designed to confer.
As before, this tower was partly circled by a staircase until well above ground level where Jita opened a door and led me inside. Yet more stairs led higher up on the inside until he reached a door no different to me than several others I had passed. He knocked once and then pushed it open.
Inside was a simple chamber, little more than space for a desk and chair, with a small bookcase in the corner. A second door led into spartan living quarters. It wasn't quite a cell… the door wasn't locked at any rate.
"Exalted father." The girl sat at the desk pushed her chair back frantically and dropped to both knees before Jita.
He held up his hand. "I believe we have had this conversation before Emari. The respect is welcome but you forget that you are also Exalted now."
I surveyed her as she stood. Slender… perhaps even scrawny, with dark hair only as long as the nape of her neck at the back. She wore a simple blue tunic… and was taller than me quite a bit. I guessed she was perhaps Iyuki's age. Why would this be asked of me and not of her?
"Greetings, Tepet Emari." I bowed my head politely, the gesture of equal to equal. "I am Tepet Demarol Alina."
She started to grovel again and then caught herself. Reaching out, I took her hands and 'helped her up'. She seemed even taller against me now that I was standing right next to her.
"I'm pleased to greet you, ex… Alina," she managed with only a slight stumble.
"Elder Jita asked me to help you settle in," I confided and lowered my voice enough that the old man could pretend that he didn't hear me. "I'm guessing you haven't met many people here yet who are close to your own age."
Emari gestured towards the desk helplessly. "My tutors are working hard but there is a great deal I must learn."
Jita cleared his throat. "Not all the lessons you will need can be found inside the books, daughter. Many are, and I am pleased with your progress so far, but not all. I will leave the two of you to get acquainted. Feel free to show Emari around, Alina, if you think it best."
I bowed to him as he left and made a point of relaxing once he had closed the door behind him. "I'm guessing you're used to meeting Exalted, just not as one of them?"
The older girl flushed. "My family… my old family… are jewellers. We have many Exalted customers."
I wasn't too surprised. Repeated contacts with Dragon-Blooded then, likely her mother or one of her grandmothers had been seduced – or done the seducing, hoping for more or less this result. "My own birth-mother was Tepet Demarol's secretary."
That gave her pause. "You were also adopted?"
"I don't have exact numbers, but most years there are a dozen or so exaltations on the Blessed Isle outside the dynastic and patrician houses," I told her matter-of-factly. "The Thousand Scales try to make sure that no one house adopts more than the others, so it's a rare year that someone isn't adopted into House Tepet. If you were too old for adoption, you'd be given the choice between the Legions and the Immaculate Order, but this way you have more options."
Emari looked around, seeming embarrassed. "I should offer you a chair. And refreshments."
I saw that one of the books on her desk was an etiquette manual. Clearly, she'd read it – good on two fronts because that was useful to know and it strongly suggested she was decently literate. If she couldn't pass the exams to graduate from school in a few years she'd be shuffled aside and likely be little more than someone's wife even if she caught up later. Dynastic advancement was a rat-race, with little mercy for those who couldn't keep up.
Fortunately, air-aspects are almost always quick studies. She'd need that.
I gave her a grin. "You're not really set up to entertain, are you? Do you have a maid?"
"Uh, there are maids, but I don't… have one?" She indicated a bell pull. "I'm supposed to ring that if I need something…"
"Go ahead then. You could probably do with a maid, someone to advise you – not instruct, just advise – about little things like this." I stretched a little. "I don't mind sitting, but it's awkward to talk when one of us is and the other isn't. Perhaps we could go for a walk, get you some fresh air."
"I should study," Emari said guiltily as she tugged on the bell pull. "Was it this overwhelming for you?"
"My case was a little unusual. Lord Demarol thought there was a high chance of my exalting, so he adopted me shortly after my birth. In some ways that's probably easier… but I never met my mother again."
She nodded sympathetically. "At least mine are only in Lord's Crossing."
I raised my hand. "Don't."
The girl blinked. "Don't what?"
"Don't visit them. One of the standard terms of adoption is that they're not to contact you. And it'll be very awkward for them: they're used to being your parents and guiding you, but now that you're one of the Exalted it's assumed that you are the more enlightened." I softened my tone. "Don't forget them – treasure those memories because they're something that you won't have to share – but you have a new life now. I'm guessing that Emari wasn't your name before?"
It was normal for adoptees to be given entirely new names. For that matter, I wasn't sure if I hadn't had another name before my mother asked Demarol to let me take her name at the adoption. Had I already been called Alina or was there some other name I'd never recognised as my own, given how young I was at the time?
Emari shook her head, wide-eyed.
"Bury that girl, whatever her name was. You are Tepet Emari now and there is no going back." I gave her a sympathetic look as she gathered herself from that shock. "I'm sorry, I know it's not easy. I haven't seen the household I grew up in since I started school and even that is hard. But the best thing that you can do for them now is to make them proud of you. They'll know you, and if anyone talks in awe of you in the future, they'll know that their little girl grew up into that wonderful person."
There was a knock on the door and I swung it open, revealing one of the footmen.
"Ah, excellent. Emari will need a second chair in here for guests," I instructed, not letting him make a start. "I believe there's room, but if not then arrange larger quarters for her. And who has been appointed as her maid?"
The Tepet Emari who faced the elders two months later looked the same in many ways, but the details were different. It was like some forms of crafting – bringing out what was already there rather than adding embellishments.
There was elegance to the way she wore the long, but still comparatively simple tunic. Her lean frame wouldn't have favoured flourishes and she remained practical in how she prepared her hair and eschewed ornamentation. Perhaps she'd change her mind later or perhaps it would be her preferred style.
"The most recent of the Great Houses is that of Lady V'Neef, declared in 708," she concluded her quizzing on the Great Houses. "Her Scarlet Majesty recently awarded her control over several major trading fleets, previously under the control of House Peleps. Lady V'Neef married a scion of House Cynis, to maintain the elemental aspect of her house. She has six Exalted children, all of them sharing her aspect, and I understand that she has chosen only to adopt wood-aspected children, with most of them marrying out into the other Great Houses."
Jita nodded approvingly. "And if hypothetically, we were to receive an offer to marry you to one of V'Neef's children?"
Emari stiffened slightly and then relaxed. "I would be… surprised, elder. My understanding would be that she would wish her male children to provide her with children within House V'Neef by marrying among her adoptees, whereas my children will be Tepet. Besides which, she has shown a preference for wood-aspect and those with several generations of confirmed Exalted heritage."
I gave her a slight smile of approval for that answer.
"I'm pleased you can not only recite facts but also have some understanding of them," noted Vergus sourly. This was, I suspected, her default mood. "I understand Alina took charge of your household."
"I can hardly claim to be a household in my own right, elder." Emari looked abashed at the idea. "I moved into a lodging shared with her so that she could supervise my… introduction to House Tepet's customs."
Jita gave his sister a sidelong look at Emari dodging that hidden trap.
Vergus ignored him and leaned forwards. "I don't recall Alina being precisely an exemplar of the social graces. Not to mention that she's a girl only three-quarters your own age. Do you not feel ashamed to learn from a child you are senior to?"
Faced with that jab, Emari faltered. "I… I am a child in comparison to almost all in House Tepet," she managed after a moment. "Who else should I learn from, until I am worthy to learn from my elders?"
Vergus arched an eyebrow and no one commented until finally she relaxed just a little. "If you are only worth children and mortal teachers, then you are a poor Tepet," she grumbled. "But what is done is done."
"Take your seat," Jita told his adopted daughter, not unkindly and then turned to me. "Alina?"
"Exalted elder." I rose to my feet and bowed to the table of elders.
"We must decide today whether Emari will be enrolled in formal schooling or whether it would be better to keep her here for intensive tutoring until she is fifteen. What is your opinion?"
First and foremost, my opinion was that asking me this in front of Emari was a bit blunt. Perhaps I was being tested.
"I have no doubt that she would learn more from intensive tutoring, however the impression I have from the lessons I've sat in is that Emari is catching up quite quickly in core subjects. At most, the extra attention would bring her closer to the breadth of a complete education," I began.
Mokairo cleared his throat. He rarely spoke, sometimes so ethereal that it was hard to tell he was there. "And at a school?"
"Given her studies so far, I believe she'd manage the exams in two years and manage them well if she is allowed three years to study, which should be feasible. She would also meet many more of the mortal and Exalted that she'll encounter after school. I do not believe I need to elaborate on the importance of having connections across society and the Realm's government."
"You lean towards the school then?"
I gave Emari a glance and then sighed. "There is the possibility that the stress may be damaging to her confidence. While she would have the buffer of being Exalted, struggling in some classes where most students are years ahead of her could be challenging. Ultimately, I have confidence in her Exaltation."
I'd spent several evenings coaching the older girl on the most basic charms in some key areas. I wasn't well versed in all the fields usually associated with her aspect – for example, I'd never been more than minimally competent with their traditional weapon, the chakram – but I did know their techniques for using essence to bolster the retention and understanding of history and natural laws. In my past life I'd have gone so far as to claim that the charms came as naturally to me as one of those Exalted in that elemental aspect. I could no longer claim that honestly, but the basic knowledge was still there.
Of course, the reason we did that in the evenings was so that she could recover the motes spent that way as she slept. But her tutors had been most pleased with how well she'd done at her reading of their assigned texts after that.
"Hmm." Jita looked at Mokairo, who said nothing. Perhaps he had exceeded his word stipend for the day. Or the month. "Do you have an opinion, daughter?"
There was a silence and then Emari, red-faced, realised that she was the daughter in question. "I've never even seen a school, f-father. Much less whichever you have in mind. I have nothing useful to say."
"But you know yourself, yes?" snapped Vergus. "What do you want?"
The girl bit her lip briefly and then straightened. "I must leave the manse and face the rest of the Realm someday. Perhaps it would be better sooner rather than later."
"The finest steel from the hottest fire," murmured Jita approvingly.
"You've been spending too much time with Cainan," Vergus admonished him. "The finest steel comes from precise and calculated forging… and a carefully metered inclusion of jade."
Then she shook her head. "Though I see you have made up your mind and I have little enough time for other matters without arguing this further. She is your child, Jita. Have your way."
"My sincere thanks," he told her formally and then gestured for us both to take our seats. "I do not think it best to send you into an entirely unfamiliar school, daughter." He may have emphasised that word a little as a reminder.
"So, Root and Reed School?" I asked.
He nodded. "That, Emari, is the school Alina attends. Also, that of Tepet Iyuki, who I am sure Alina has introduced to you."
That had been quite an experience. Iyuki had reduced Emari to embarrassed stammering without even trying. The sophisticated and glamorous dynast was simply too much for the adopted jeweller's daughter. It had taken quite some time to get her past that, illustrating why I'd been chosen over my friend.
"It will also allow Alina to continue to guide you. Discreetly, I hope. It would not do for anyone to conclude that my daughter needs her hand held by another. The purpose of this is not to make you dependent upon any one of the House."
Emari nodded in understanding. "I will stand on my own feet as much as I can," she promised.
"See that you do." He paused and then grunted unhappily. "Understand that you will face provocations there. Students, many of them the unexalted, will resent that you were Chosen when they or their relatives have not been. You cannot bend to such sentiment, but nor may you lash out. We have withdrawn students before and if I must take you out of Root and Reed then I will send you to the Tamed Storm instead."
There seemed little to be said to that and so Emari elected not to respond with more than a nod of understanding.
We were dismissed after several further admonishments and descended the stairs together, Emari casually walking far closer to the edge than I would have.
"Alina," she asked. "What is the Tamed Storm?"
"It's a school for discipline cases," I answered, recalling what Elana had told me. "If a student doesn't behave well and refuses correction in an ordinary school, their parents would usually rather transfer them to a 'specialised school' than have them officially expelled. And by specialised, I mean specialised in beating the child into complying… or until they die."
"I really don't want to wind up there," Emari exclaimed, wide-eyed.
"It's been the making of some people," I mused. "If you can survive that or one of the other schools like it, you can survive practically anything. I don't think I'd enjoy it though."
Iyuki was waiting for us outside. "So, did they decide on a school?"
I nodded as my student faltered briefly and then fell in slightly behind me (she couldn't hide behind me as such, but she did shrink in a little). "Emari will be joining us."
"How wonderful!" Iyuki favoured us with a dazzling smile. "You know what that means though, she needs uniforms!"
"I could probably -"
"Shopping trip!" she declared before I could suggest that I just sew them myself. Oh well, it would probably be quicker and that would give me more time for martial arts practise. Tutoring Emari was cutting into my opportunities for that.
"Alina?" Emari entered the Exalted dorm with an air of confusion, something that wasn't all that unusual this year. She was getting much better but there were still any number of small things that caught her off guard.
Many of them had caught me off guard too, so I could understand. The 'I am bleeding down there' one had been a joke, fortunately. Her birth mother had prepared her for that whereas I was… theoretically familiar but in practical terms in no sense emotionally prepared.
I would have to deal with it sooner or later, but until then I was going to repress the very notion.
"Did you put my name down for the musical festival?" the slender air-aspect continued, more bemused than accusingly.
"What?" I sat up. "No, I wouldn't do that. You're not supposed to sign up other people and I told you that you had dispensation not to do anything this year if you wanted."
I'd only gone down to the festival board sign-ups once, to make sure I was down for the martial arts tournament section. I wouldn't have put it past Lyta to sneak my name down for the music festival for the amusement value of my having to perform and to get me out of the tournament. Not that she'd stand a chance against the other Exalted, but she could probably make it up as high as any of the other mortal students, even including those a few years older than her.
The girl had some actual talent buried under that smug-snake exterior. If she wasn't a shameless backstabbing snob and social climber, we might even have been friends. So… basically, if almost everything about her was different.
"Are you sure it's you?"
"I do know my own name, Alina."
"Sorry, I thought it might be nerves."
She shook her head. "Apparently I'm down to sing the Ballad of Culan's Hound. Whatever that is?"
"…what?" I climbed off the couch. "I swear, if this is Lyta then I'm going to… ugh, I'll think of something. Let's take a look."
We went down the stairs and entered the main building. The sign-up board was taking up a section of one wall. There was a chalkboard that usually had announcements on it, but it was covered over by several pinned sections of poor-quality paper (even in the dynasty there was no need to use the good stuff for everything) divided up into boxes for each event and sub-boxes for specific roles.
There were only a limited number of places for some events or roles, so we had to ink our names in - that ensured that there weren't any cases of people removing other's names to make room for them in popular events. At least unless someone figured out ink remover.
The musical part of the festival wasn't filled out for the most part. That was normal, Root and Reed School did specifically aim for a slightly martial crowd so as in both previous years the tournament was the first to fill up. But in the soloist's section, Emari's name had been written with the name of her proposed piece. Which was the Ballad of Culan's Hound.
"Well." I looked at it. "It could be your handwriting. I'm not saying that it is, but it could be."
Emari shook her head. "So, someone's done a competent job of faking it. That's not a good thing."
"Something my mother told me. My adoptive mother," I clarified. "The teachers won't care about accusations of someone setting you up. If whoever's behind this did it well enough to get away with it, in their view, they deserve to get away with it. They're preparing us for real life, after all. If we can't handle something like this, better to find out now."
"But I've never even heard of that ballad."
"Nor have I." I folded my arms. "But we either prove this is false – well enough that they are willing to take you off the list when the music festival is this sparsely populated - or we'll have to go with it as is."
Emari looked at the names around hers, or rather the relative paucity. "Is that really important to the school?"
"We're supposed to be cultured individuals. Beating each other up may be more fun for us, but perhaps not so much for any family members who attend."
Emari made a face. "So, you don't think I can get out of this?"
I looked around. "I don't see any obvious leads to follow up on. How nervous do you feel about singing?" I hadn't really touched on music in my advice to her, largely because there wasn't much that I could offer her in that regard.
"I… can sing?"
"That's a start." I sighed. "Alright, let's see if we can find a copy of this ballad and see what you've been set up with."
The school library had a copy and the song didn't seem too bad in terms of length or complexity. Emari ran her finger down the musical notation though and frowned. "Am I reading this correctly?"
"I don't know, what are you reading? I've no ear for music."
"I think this is scored for a male voice."
I looked at where she was indicating. "I… see. Well, perhaps we can change that? I think we need someone with more musical knowledge than I have."
Emari looked relieved. "Who do you have in mind?"
Ideally, Nalan. Unfortunately, he wasn't really in reach right now and I wasn't all that close with the more musically inclined students. "I'm not sure, but I'm sure Iyuki will know someone who can help."
"Uh, could we…" She looked uneasy. "Is it alright to bother her?"
"I haven't been counting favours owed, but I think she's still going to be feeling grateful after she broke through into the third plateau," I assured her.
Iyuki was in the Water Wing, working on a pan set on the stone. "Oh, I was hoping for some taste-testers," she greeted us. "Would you let me know what you think of this?"
I eyed the pan and nodded. "By all means."
"I… of course, if it would help," added Emari.
The older exalt took a spoon and offered it to Emari first. "Tell me honestly, is this too spicy?"
She might have been kinder to mention 'spicy' before Emari had sipped some of the sauce. I thought my charge's eyes were going to bulge out of her face, which was turning a brilliant crimson. "Just a… argh, water?"
I darted into the pantry and retrieved some milk instead, which served admirably.
As Emari gratefully washed the spicy sauce out of her mouth I examined the pot and took a spoonful to examine more carefully. "Oh, Iyuki. You've used the seeds."
"It didn't seem that hot when I tested earlier," she protested and took a very careful sip. "Oh my! No, this is far hotter than I thought!" She grabbed the milk and poured some for herself.
"Soaking the beans for the flavour is fine in theory," I told her. "But once they burst and let the seeds out, you got a much higher concentration of the spice. It's not really tolerable in that strength unless you've grown up with it. I'd recommend opening the beans up and removing the seeds." I sniffed. "And possibly feeding the seeds to your enemies, if you can find a way. Good grief."
Iyuki moved the pan off the stove and set it down somewhere it could cool. "Bother, I was hoping I was getting better at this."
"There are many many ingredients in Creation. It always takes some experimentation to get used to everything new." I leant against one of the cabinets. Just smelling the pot had given me an idea what had happened, but there was no point rubbing that in. "So, we - that is Emari and I - have a little problem..."
We explained as Iyuki cleaned up from her abortive cooking experiment. It was her last year before graduating, so I suspected that she was using the cooking to relax and let her mind rest from intensive efforts to memorise essentially everything in the sorcery section of the library. The Heptagram didn't have an official entrance exam but unofficially there was reading you were expected to have done before you arrived and knowing the applicable vocabulary was important.
"I see," she admitted. "Someone must have done some digging. It's an obscure ballad, but I happen to know that it was sung in my first year and Sifu Voish was very taken by it. I'm not saying that it would be one of my year behind this, but they may have given advice to someone."
That made sense to me – students who had entered with me were now moving across to the same dorm as the older students, with it mostly being the two younger years facing us across the entrance way. If Lyta – to name a non-random example – was responsible then she might have simply asked around.
"So, getting it wrong may upset Voish," I expanded in case that wasn't clear to Emari. "Do you know anyone who might be able to adjust the music for Emari to sing it? If not then we might as well go back and see if we can find any witnesses who saw her name added. I doubt we'll be lucky."
Iyuki paused as she checked that the stove was cooling. "I think Onoka is your best bet."
I had to think a moment to place the name. "Sort of purple-ish streaks in her hair? Itusi Onoka?"
"That's her. She's tried her hand at composition and reworked a song to fit her voice last year. Not male to female, but she's not a soprano and a lot of the high notes weren't quite in her… and this means nothing to you, does it?"
"I think I follow," Emari advised, sounding surprised. "We covered this in class earlier in the year. So, she might be able to adjust the music… I'll need that. I can at least try singing it but the music is another matter."
"That, at least, is covered. If a soloist needs it, then one of the staff will volunteer rather than risk having a solo performer undermined by a classmate whose heart isn't in it."
"So where might we find Onoka?" I asked.
"You need to get better at knowing this for yourself," warned Iyuki. "I won't be here to help you next year. Try the stables. She likes to practice in private and I think she mentioned something about the acoustics of the loft up above them."
I don't have any proof of who was behind the name substitution, but I'm morally certain that the look on Lyta's face when Emari (accompanied by an enthusiastic Onoka) was the star performer of the musical part of the festival was the expression of someone who's had a plan they were sure of blow up on them.
If so, revenge was had. Not only had Emari not embarrassed herself, but she had also made a new friend, found a talent she could explore and now had an activity I could politely bow out of to get extra practise in. I didn't resent helping Emari but there was definitely a trade-off.
And while I was at it, I'd better start keeping tabs on the rest of the student body better. Iyuki did have a point…
I had half expected to spend yet another summer at Lord's Crossing but instead I was instructed to expect to be collected directly from the school. No other details were provided so I packed my cases – I was up to two – and said goodbye to Emari, Udano and Iyuki as they departed for Lord's Crossing. He'd be staying there overnight before moving on to the Vergus manse while the two girls were going to be staying in the family manse together until Iyuki left for the north coast and the Heptagram.
"Aren't you going with them?" asked Erika as she waited with her own cases for the crowd of coaches waiting for students to sort themselves out to the point that one of the Cathak coaches would be accessible for her.
"Apparently not. Do you have plans for the summer?"
She nodded. "There's a family estate on the Caracal River. I had to visit Lord Cainan last summer but I should have a much more relaxed summer this year. Cathak from all over the southern Realm are gathering for a reunion."
"That sounds busy to me."
"It'll mean I get to meet any number of relatives I haven't seen in years." She paused and cupped one fist thoughtfully. "Including cousin Ujiri, who was quite the pain in my neck and somehow has not Exalted yet. I wonder if he'll try putting spiders down my collar again this year."
"Well, try not to break him," I warned. "You're more than strong enough to cause him serious injury."
"I know how to control myself," she promised confidently. "There won't be another case like Old Man Spider, and that was Udano rather than me."
"Fair," I conceded. I saw a Cathak coach pull forwards, the coachman almost forcing a pair of horses from House Nellens into a flowerbed, rather to the fury of the woman on that coach. "Here, this is for you."
I'd brought box lunches for the three Tepet, so it would be mean not to provide one for Erika. She'd not quite become one of our little cabal but she was decent company when she did spend time with us in the common room.
The fire-aspected girl brightened. "Are you sure? Won't you need it for your own journey."
"I don't know how or where I'll be travelling," I admitted. "That makes preparing provisions a little difficult."
With Erika climbing up into her coach, I backed away and almost collided with a familiar face heading for the next coach. It wasn't the Nellens, as that coachman had had to dismount so she could straighten out the horses, much to the embarrassment of the boy waiting for her. No, it was a familiar head of brunette hair that looked down on me as I skipped sideways at the last minute.
"Getting in my way again?" Lyta asked lightly. "But I thought all the Tepet coaches had left. Were you forgotten about?"
"Some other arrangement has been made," I told her lightly. "Probably not special treatment, but I may be going back to Juche. Have you ever been there?"
Her eyes flashed. "Once, yes. We took the scenic route to the Imperial City once. Have you ever been there?"
"I assume you mean the Imperial City?" I thought of my last sight of it. A wreck of a city, overrun by some dead leviathan that one of the Deathlords had found on the floor of the ocean and ridden up to the very doors of the Imperial Manse.
It had been killed by the defenders, as much as such a thing could be, but the city paid the price and the rest had been fortified further. What had happened after that… well, I hadn't been there to see what ultimately became of the Imperial Manse. I probably wouldn't have survived that.
"No," I said softly. "I have not yet seen the Imperial City. But as you speak so proudly of it, I shall look forward to doing so when I get the chance."
"If you ever do. More likely you'll be sent off to some garrison post in the Threshold to rot." Her voice held no obvious vitriol despite the words – anyone not close enough to hear would have thought we were having a civil conversation.
"There are worse fates. We'll see."
With a huff at her failure to get a rise from me, Lyta boarded her coach and I headed back away from the entrance. There was no use getting in the way, I thought the coaches were managing that fairly well without my contribution.
I would have appreciated having a slightly better idea of what to expect in travel arrangements.
And then, as I turned to enter the school again, there was a flicker of movement that I only caught out of the corner of my eye – something up in the sky.
Turning I held one hand up to shade my eyes. A cloud, far too low and moving far too fast. "That can't be a coincidence," I said to myself and headed inside for my cases.
When I returned a moment later, the cloud was only a few inches off the ground with Tepet Yrina standing on it, pretending that she wasn't the focus of attention. Mako was next to her and unlike my lawful-mother, he was eyeing the awestruck students back and smirking.
"Ah, Alina." Yrina saw me almost immediately. "I was expecting you to be waiting."
I set my cases down and curtseyed.
"It's good to see you again mother." I offered no excuse for whatever delay she might feel she had suffered.
Mako reached down and helped me to climb up onto the cloud. It felt a little more crowded than I remembered it, perhaps because I was hesitant to crowd Yrina. She placed one arm possessively around my shoulders though and pulled me closer as the cloud ascended, moving eastwards across the Blessed Isle.
"You've grown quite a bit," she observed once we were off the ground. "Is there any room left inside those clothes?"
I'd elected to get a new set of uniforms when we were getting them for Emari, which had proven a wise decision as my last set from the shop in Juche had been outgrown in the spring. "I could let them out a little further but there isn't much margin for error."
"Not quite so bad as I thought then." She looked me over. "I had been concerned that you'd be all exposed ankles and wrists. I told Demarol that you'd need new uniforms when he saw you last year but when I asked, he said that you seemed fine."
He hadn't mentioned it to me at all. "I arranged a new set just in case, this is them."
"Foresightful of you." Her tone was arch. "Though you should change out of it while we travel. It wouldn't do for you to reach the city in a school uniform."
I blinked. "Here?" I wasn't exactly one for body-modesty, but there were still some standards expected of dynasts in public.
"Nothing I'm interested in," Mako told me, although he didn't look back. "No offense, youngster."
I suppose no one was going to be looking at me, this high up. "What do you suggest I wear? Most of my tunics are a little on the small side." And I didn't have any pants that were a proper length except my uniform ones. I was glad it was summer right now or Lyta would have had more to taunt me for.
Yrina sighed heavily. "I see this visit is overdue," she mused. "The uniform tunic then, but put something else over it."
I removed the jacket and opened my first case, glad that I'd packed it carefully. It was a little troublesome to keep control of my white surcoat as I took it off, the wind almost swept it from my hands. As I made sure it was secure in the case, I noted the angle of the sun and the position of Meru. I didn't expect to go far north until we were past the foothills of the vast mountain, but even so we were slowly veering away from it.
"Which city are we going to?" I asked, going into the other case for the blue-on-blue dress I'd worn to the banquet two years ago. It would be too short on its own now, not indecent but obviously not cut for me anymore. However, over my school tunic it should look decorative.
"That's nice," Yrina said approvingly as she held me steady to pull it on over my head. "Where did you get it?"
"I stitched it together out of some dresses Tepet Iyuki donated when there was too much competition for the dressmakers in Lord's Crossing. Back before the banquet for Icole and the other students entering the House of Bells."
"Very talented, is that something they teach at school?"
"There are classes," I confirmed. "And I watched in Juche when Lotus Stem was putting my uniforms together. It seemed like a useful skill to have."
"You may enjoy this then. To answer your question, we're going to the Imperial City. It's time to extend your wardrobe a little for social events and they have the best shops for this. Juche is very good, but there's just that little bit better in the city. And new uniforms shouldn't be an issue."
"Thank you for taking the time to do this for me." The trip to Juche last time had been the longest time Yrina had specifically spent with me until now but it seemed that she would be spending even more time with me this summer.
She shook her head. "It's a mother's responsibility. And I am quite proud of your handling of Tepet Emari. I could wish that I'd received that level of support back when I was in her position."
I paused and looked up at her. It was hard to imagine her as nervously out of place as Emari in those early days… but if my mother had been adopted herself, it was likely that she had been. And it explained why father would have married another Tepet. By marrying an adoptee he'd have tied her into the family and ensured that his children would remain in the House. Given that he'd been planning to found his own household since shortly after he exalted, that must have been a calculated decision on his part.
Admittedly, his parents presumably had had a strong say as well, but I could see the political thinking behind it.
"I believe Serakan bent your ear about marriage previously." Yrina studiously ignored the gesture Mako made at that name – an old and storied gesture of warding off evil that was questionable in its usefulness. "I would have preferred to wait until you were older, and deliver that myself. She has hardly done very well with her own daughter in that respect… although I must say that Elana has been quite successful in her actual career."
"It wasn't too traumatising, mother."
"I'm glad to hear that. You needn't expect an actual marriage to be arranged until you're at least twenty, but you're old enough now that some people will want to meet you and see if you might be worth introducing to their sons once you're closer to the right age."
"Twenty." A decade away, double my current age. It seemed like it might fly by alarmingly quickly.
Yrina chuckled drily. "Don't worry about it, I'd be very surprised if we actually arranged anything that soon. If you have any thoughts of a career to begin or extended studies such as the Heptagram, it could easily be put off until your thirties. However, you're showing all the signs of having an unusually strong degree of breeding. That being the case, you can expect more offers than most girls your age – even among the Exalted. And a comparatively early marriage could lock in an alliance if we need one. It's hard to say what could develop politically so if you do find someone that you wish to marry, an understanding could move to a formal engagement or even the actual wedding ceremony faster than you might expect."
I paused and then shrugged. "Lady Serakan said I might find boys more interesting that way in time. So far it hasn't happened, but I don't have any particular issues getting along with them either, which is probably more important."
She gave me a rueful look. "If she instructed you to keep those two matters separated then she gave good advice. Unlike your father – or other men – we don't have the luxury of looking over a bastard before we decided to keep it. It's very difficult to hide a pregnancy, particularly with how eager vultures like Serakan are for gossip. And if you get yourself with a child in your belly before you're married, there will be hard choices to make."
"One of these things that I just have to accept even if it makes no sense to me?"
Mako laughed. "Well said, little one. The world is full of things like that."
"Mako." Yrina's tone was warning. "I am grateful for taking the time to bring me here and collect Alina, but please don't give her foolish ideas."
"But how can I tell what's a foolish idea or not?"
"If it makes you laugh, it's most assuredly foolish."
There was no real fire to the words and I wondered how long they had known each other.
"After you're married there can be more flexibility." Yrina turned away from the sorcerer and didn't meet my eyes either. "Your father and I have had an understanding for several years, thus his adoption of you. I felt it was better, given the chances of your exalting – as you did – to raise you within the household rather than potentially have to catch up as I did."
That made a considerable degree of sense. I had wondered why father had done that rather than simply pay child support if he recognised me. On the other hand, it raised the question of whether Demarol had informed Yrina that he hadn't actually sired me.
Then another thought hit me. She was speaking from personal experience about being adopted. Was she also speaking from experience about bastards… in that she might have had an illegitimate child herself?
I wondered if that meant that one of my living siblings wasn't Demarol's child… or perhaps the boy who'd joined the Immaculate Order had been the result of an affair.
I doubted Yrina would ever come out and say it. So, I might never know.
I personally felt that Yrina's view that the dressmakers of the Imperial City were better than Lotus Stem was a little bit severe. I couldn't claim that I had seen everything that the mortal woman could do in the relatively brief interlude there, but pressure can bring out the best in a craftsman and the fact she'd been able to provide me with sufficient uniforms to tide me over for the first month at Root and Reed School was actually quite impressive.
This wasn't to say that any of the shops we went to were bad – far from it – but there was a very relaxed feel to proceedings and we might spend a day or more in a single shop, drinking tea with the other customers and potentially not buying anything at all.
I'll admit to being a little slow on such matters: it wasn't until the third shop that I realised that these little chats with the other people visiting the shops was as important, if not more so, than the clothes.
The social network I'd experienced so far were the occasional grand galas arranged by my father, smaller and more intimate salons among the Tepet and occasional other dynasts in Lord's Crossing, and then visits that seemed almost random as people happened to find it convenient or easy to guest at the estate overnight or perhaps a little longer before continuing to or from Juche.
That shopping was also a social event surprised me more than it probably should. Then again, I was more used to being on the crafting side and once I left Nexus it was fairly rare for me to be making something that wasn't either for my immediate circle of companions or for some project we had undertaken.
Perhaps some of my earlier customers had visited my little workshop for much the same reason as this? I'd had to provide some hospitality for that – I recalled being irritated that it effectively added three additional members to my household staff.
The things you learn…
I was being measured (not for a uniform but for a formal gown that was to have plenty of room to adjust to fit me on formal occasions for the next few years) when Yrina stood swiftly from where she had been sat and curtseyed to the redheaded woman who entered the shop with her own cluster of servants.
For a moment I had the horrifying thought that I was facing Her Scarlet Majesty herself – or worse, her oldest living daughter. The hair was right but to my relief I then realised that the clothes were all wrong and there was an identifiable grapevine motif to the mon on the livery of the new arrival. The resemblance made sense all of a sudden. This was Mnemon's half-sister V'Neef, matriarch of the fledgling Great House of the same name.
Yrina's formal greetings were cut off as V'Neef swept into her personal space and kissed her on both cheeks. "Yrina, it's been so long. I thought I was going to have to send you some kind of bribe to get you out of Juche at last."
"Your invitations have been very welcome," the air-aspect replied, seeming slightly taken aback. "And it's been a wrench every time for me to send my regrets but our household has been growing rapidly and family politics reared its head."
V'Neef took her arm and seated herself on the couch next to my mother. "My own family has yet to catch up with yours, but I do have some idea of what you must be going through."
Still effectively pinned in place, I watched them as refreshments were served and the servants were edged backwards to provide some degree of apparent privacy and therefore intimacy between the two dynastic ladies, while still being close enough to serve them.
Yrina had never mentioned being close to V'Neef and the status of co-leading the Demarol household (or exactly what the balance of power was there, a matter that remained opaque to me) was quite a bit different from the sole head of an entire Great House. Even if there were fewer V'Neef by blood, they had quite a number of adopted members, and controlled enormously more wealth than Demarol did. And had senators on the upper Deliberative, while so far as I knew none of the household were among Tepet's representatives.
I wasn't surprised that they knew each other, but V'Neef was acting as if they were old friends.
Finally, the dress was pinned in place and I was released from being measured to the nth degree. More importantly, I was allowed to eat some of the food that was on offer. Growing takes fuel and I really hoped to get a good many inches over the next few years.
I wasn't sure if edging close enough to hear the conversation would be a transgression at this point, so I positioned myself in view and let them make the decision.
I wasn't particularly surprised that it was V'Neef making the decision. She feigned seeing me for the first time and beckoned me over. "So, you must be the daughter that I have heard so much of."
"I would not have thought there would be much to say. I'm only ten."
She covered her mouth and laughed politely. "The fact that you are only ten and have been exalted for three of those years is one thing that makes you remarkable. But I have heard that you are also doing well at school. Do you have plans for once you graduate?"
I didn't see any clue from Yrina if she expected me to say anything specific so all I could do was stick to the simple truth. "General Arada recommended spending some time broadening horizons before committing to anything. I have been discussing with the sifu at my school whether applying to the Cloister of Wisdom would be a possibility, but it awaits some discussion with my family."
V'Neef arched her eyebrows at that. "The Cloister… are you considering the Immaculate Order?"
I shook my head, noting that Yrina seemed relieved. "I'd like to study the martial arts, like mother." Hopefully I wasn't reading too much into her wearing a hearthstone that specifically benefited the martial arts. She had the right build and calluses.
"I can see that you've made a strong impression," the redhead assured my mother, who looked as if she wasn't sure if she should be proud or just surprised. Presumably at 'like mother' since it was hardly a secret that I had good reports from both the sifu at school, sifu Shoku at home and that Tepet Jita evaluated me every year. "Will you be joining the legions then?"
"I don't know. I might serve with them for a few years, but I don't know if I want it to be my life." I might not have much choice though. It was entirely possible that by the time I finished at the Cloister or wherever I went for my next school that the Tepet Legions would have been shattered. In that case, every Tepet fit to serve would be expected to.
Being under military discipline would severely hamper my freedom to act. Unfortunately, I was just too blasted young! Why couldn't I have been reborn five or ten years earlier?
The conversation veered away from me and before long the dressmaker requested my presence for a second fitting of the dress now that it was partly sewed.
More than an hour later, we were done and mother called a palanquin to carry us back to the Tepet wing of the Imperial Palace. (A necessary distinction. The palace at Lord's Crossing was the size of a small town but you could have fitted most of Juche inside the walls of the Imperial Palace. Political battles over a corridor, garden or favoured apartment were sometimes as fierce as those over entire satrapies.)
Yrina leant back against the cushions of the palanquin. "What do you make of V'Neef's interest in you?"
I thought back to how Emari had answered a similar question. "Given my age, she can only be investing for the future. Perhaps setting up one of her adopted children to marry me one day? I don't have the right aspect for her house and my children would be Tepet."
"Normally, yes." Yrina shook her head slightly. "Think longer term."
"A… multi-generational arrangement?"
She nodded. "Correct. I know she has sought an arrangement to have a promising wood-aspected girl in the Sesus Denerid household marry one of her sons on terms that their children would be V'Neef, rather than the girl's house. Sesus Denerid Gutar declined."
The Denerid household were in some ways Demarol's counterparts in House Sesus – the youngest of the households and with a less martial tradition than their cousins. However, they had also intermarried heavily with House Cynis to the point that the wood-aspect dominated rather than the more typical fire-aspects of their parent House.
It occurred to me that their example might be why the Tepet elders had been concerned to tie Demarol more closely to traditional Tepet values and bloodlines.
"If she's looking a generation or two down the road, I imagine that she's hitting limits in finding strong wood-aspected bloodlines without tying herself even more closely to House Cynis," I said at last. It was the only other House that had a wood-aspected majority. Wood and Water were the two least common aspects within the Scarlet Dynasty, with House Cynis and House Peleps as their predominant representatives while there were two well-established Houses for each of the other three elemental aspects.
In theory House Iselsi and House V'Neef balanced this, but the former was almost extinct and kept around as little more than an example of how low a treacherous House could fall, while House V'Neef was by far the smallest Great House.
Yrina patted me approvingly on the top of my head. "Indeed. She cannot afford to find herself reduced to little more than a tributary of the Cynis. If she marries you to a wood-aspected adoptee it's possible that the result may be one or more of your children inherited his aspect and the… precocious strength of your blood. I would expect any such arrangement to include a contract that gives her the option to bring resulting sons back into House V'Neef."
"It seems something of a gamble."
My mother smiled. "If you have no sons, or none she cares to bring into her family then all she is out is one adoptee's hand in marriage. And, in the meanwhile, she has your father's support in high society, a more distant claim on military support from our House… and we may lean upon her financially. While our household is on a sound financial footing there is no harm in further securing it."
She stretched out her legs and then smiled. "Of course, she would therefore want a marriage to someone who doesn't want to sink themselves entirely into a career at the expense of children. Your answers were… sufficient that I believe she'll remain interested. Now, what's this about wishing to attend the Cloister? I don't recall this being raised previously."
Thus, I was quite surprised to see him seated with the elders as they reviewed my class performance, but I curtsied towards him and sat obediently facing them all.
My lawful-father said little as Tepet Jita and Tepet Vergus took the lead. They were rather blatantly playing good magistrate-bad magistrate as they went from one subject to the next. For example, Jita seemed inclined to brush off the reports from my music class with "if she doesn't have talent, the girl is really doing all she can", while Vergus insisted that I sing the entirety of 'Little Soldier Boy' for them.
I don't think that it made her very popular with her siblings and even Demarol was giving her a sour look as I sat again, rather aware that torturing them with that might not have made me memorable in a good way. "Well, you can manage volume, at least," the head of my own household noted. "I gather that there was an incident with two other Exalted students over the winter?"
Vergus spoke rather than letting me do so. "Yes, one of my brood exalted during a spar with one of the Cathak. Unfortunately, the supervising teacher was a mortal and suffered considerable injury. The school hasn't asked for compensation."
Jita gave his sister a sidelong look. "Another earth-aspect, wasn't it? I'd have expected him to be more… level-headed."
"I still remember the first rush of Exaltation, even if you don't," she retorted and looked back to me. "You showed restraint in handling the situation, Alina." The admission seemed to pain her.
"Has it impacted on your relations with the two of them?" Demarol enquired thoughtfully. "They would have been moved to room in your dorm right afterwards, unless the school operates very differently from those I'm familiar with."
I gave Vergus a polite smile. "Tepet Vergus Udano is a good friend and we remain so. Indeed, his exaltation has removed the fear that I would be leaving him behind over time. I think highly of him."
"And the Cathak?" she asked sharply. "Our relations with that house have suffered of late, and Cathak Cainan will doubtless be meeting with the newest Exalt of his House this summer."
"Third newest." Demarol smiled thinly as he corrected the elder. "His house has been blessed with two further exaltations in the spring - but your main point is apt. Daughter, what do you expect him to hear of you?"
"Unless she has been deceiving me for months, I may count Cathak Erika as a friend," I assured him. "She was previously very much in the circle of a Sesus who has yet to exalt, but since Erika's exaltation, that bond has been greatly weakened by the other girl's resentment. I can't predict what may happen if Sesus Lyta exalts, but I made Erika welcome in my dorm and she has reciprocated my aid warmly."
My father turned a satisfied look upon the elders. "I forget which general it was who remarked that the most profound victory is to turn one's enemy into an ally… oh wait, it was Tepet himself."
"I believe that my point is proven," Jita observed calmly. "Does anyone else believe that Alina is unsuited to the role that I have nominated her for?"
The other Tepet elders exchanged looks, presumably able to judge each other's feelings simply by their expressions. They had known each other for centuries, I suppose. Then they turned back to their brother and Vergus nodded. "We accept your choice in this matter."
Uh, what role? I looked at Jita and my father. "May I ask what role you have in mind?" It can't possibly be a matter of public singing can it? I thought. Or do they want a mascot for one of the legions, a little girl to hold flowers to inspire them…? I doubt they think like that. Are legion mascots even a thing?
Jita smiled rather slyly. "I have become a father again in my dotage, it seems. And since you have done well in instructing the young Cathak girl, I hope that you can provide similar guidance to my own new daughter."
I blinked. I knew that Dragon-Blooded retained their vigour for a long time, but was that really something he felt the need to brag about? And what could I teach a baby? I wasn't really skilled in nappy changing, and… ah, it was more likely he was talking about adopting a girl who'd exalted? "I presume that we are not discussing a new-born, elder, as I can claim no special expertise in changing nappies."
The creased face developed several new folds as the smile deepened. "Quick," he noted. "Yes, I am adopting a child born to a family here in Lord's Crossing. She exalted quite recently and will need guidance in the ways of dynasts. Do you feel up to the role?"
I was dubious, to be honest. But… "I would be honoured to help a new member of our house find her feet, elder. Will she have tutors for any more academic subjects that I wouldn't necessarily have the grounding for?"
The old man shrugged. "Either that or I shall send her to school with you. It depends what she is ready for. If she cannot attend a school then her social circle will be rather small compared to her peers and that can be unfortunate."
I dropped into a curtsy. "I will be glad to do what I can for her."
"How very compliant you are," he noted. As if I'd had a choice. "You have raised a dutiful daughter, Demarol. I am proud of you."
"As I am, of her." He bowed to his ancestor before returning his attention to me. "I am sure you will rise to the occasion, Alina. As you have before."
"Thank you, father."
Jita pushed back his chair. "Unless anyone has further questions for Alina, I will introduce her to her new charge."
There were no objections voiced so he led me out of the tower and through the courtyards around the inner manse to another stair that led upwards through another tower.
"The only access between the towers internally is through the hearthroom," he explained when I glanced upwards at what seemed to be bridges connecting the towers well above us. "And for various reasons we try not to bring younger members of the family up there. Probably an unnecessary precaution these days, but arguing over changing that rule would take up time better used."
That made some degree of sense. I didn't know who held the hearthstone, but if it were ever damaged then it would reform in the hearthroom and anyone with access might pick it up. Given that the holder of the hearthstone could draw on the essence flows of the manse, it was a considerable advantage to have. Holding even one could be a decisive advantage both in the reserves of essence and whatever additional benefits the hearthstone was designed to confer.
As before, this tower was partly circled by a staircase until well above ground level where Jita opened a door and led me inside. Yet more stairs led higher up on the inside until he reached a door no different to me than several others I had passed. He knocked once and then pushed it open.
Inside was a simple chamber, little more than space for a desk and chair, with a small bookcase in the corner. A second door led into spartan living quarters. It wasn't quite a cell… the door wasn't locked at any rate.
"Exalted father." The girl sat at the desk pushed her chair back frantically and dropped to both knees before Jita.
He held up his hand. "I believe we have had this conversation before Emari. The respect is welcome but you forget that you are also Exalted now."
I surveyed her as she stood. Slender… perhaps even scrawny, with dark hair only as long as the nape of her neck at the back. She wore a simple blue tunic… and was taller than me quite a bit. I guessed she was perhaps Iyuki's age. Why would this be asked of me and not of her?
"Greetings, Tepet Emari." I bowed my head politely, the gesture of equal to equal. "I am Tepet Demarol Alina."
She started to grovel again and then caught herself. Reaching out, I took her hands and 'helped her up'. She seemed even taller against me now that I was standing right next to her.
"I'm pleased to greet you, ex… Alina," she managed with only a slight stumble.
"Elder Jita asked me to help you settle in," I confided and lowered my voice enough that the old man could pretend that he didn't hear me. "I'm guessing you haven't met many people here yet who are close to your own age."
Emari gestured towards the desk helplessly. "My tutors are working hard but there is a great deal I must learn."
Jita cleared his throat. "Not all the lessons you will need can be found inside the books, daughter. Many are, and I am pleased with your progress so far, but not all. I will leave the two of you to get acquainted. Feel free to show Emari around, Alina, if you think it best."
I bowed to him as he left and made a point of relaxing once he had closed the door behind him. "I'm guessing you're used to meeting Exalted, just not as one of them?"
The older girl flushed. "My family… my old family… are jewellers. We have many Exalted customers."
I wasn't too surprised. Repeated contacts with Dragon-Blooded then, likely her mother or one of her grandmothers had been seduced – or done the seducing, hoping for more or less this result. "My own birth-mother was Tepet Demarol's secretary."
That gave her pause. "You were also adopted?"
"I don't have exact numbers, but most years there are a dozen or so exaltations on the Blessed Isle outside the dynastic and patrician houses," I told her matter-of-factly. "The Thousand Scales try to make sure that no one house adopts more than the others, so it's a rare year that someone isn't adopted into House Tepet. If you were too old for adoption, you'd be given the choice between the Legions and the Immaculate Order, but this way you have more options."
Emari looked around, seeming embarrassed. "I should offer you a chair. And refreshments."
I saw that one of the books on her desk was an etiquette manual. Clearly, she'd read it – good on two fronts because that was useful to know and it strongly suggested she was decently literate. If she couldn't pass the exams to graduate from school in a few years she'd be shuffled aside and likely be little more than someone's wife even if she caught up later. Dynastic advancement was a rat-race, with little mercy for those who couldn't keep up.
Fortunately, air-aspects are almost always quick studies. She'd need that.
I gave her a grin. "You're not really set up to entertain, are you? Do you have a maid?"
"Uh, there are maids, but I don't… have one?" She indicated a bell pull. "I'm supposed to ring that if I need something…"
"Go ahead then. You could probably do with a maid, someone to advise you – not instruct, just advise – about little things like this." I stretched a little. "I don't mind sitting, but it's awkward to talk when one of us is and the other isn't. Perhaps we could go for a walk, get you some fresh air."
"I should study," Emari said guiltily as she tugged on the bell pull. "Was it this overwhelming for you?"
"My case was a little unusual. Lord Demarol thought there was a high chance of my exalting, so he adopted me shortly after my birth. In some ways that's probably easier… but I never met my mother again."
She nodded sympathetically. "At least mine are only in Lord's Crossing."
I raised my hand. "Don't."
The girl blinked. "Don't what?"
"Don't visit them. One of the standard terms of adoption is that they're not to contact you. And it'll be very awkward for them: they're used to being your parents and guiding you, but now that you're one of the Exalted it's assumed that you are the more enlightened." I softened my tone. "Don't forget them – treasure those memories because they're something that you won't have to share – but you have a new life now. I'm guessing that Emari wasn't your name before?"
It was normal for adoptees to be given entirely new names. For that matter, I wasn't sure if I hadn't had another name before my mother asked Demarol to let me take her name at the adoption. Had I already been called Alina or was there some other name I'd never recognised as my own, given how young I was at the time?
Emari shook her head, wide-eyed.
"Bury that girl, whatever her name was. You are Tepet Emari now and there is no going back." I gave her a sympathetic look as she gathered herself from that shock. "I'm sorry, I know it's not easy. I haven't seen the household I grew up in since I started school and even that is hard. But the best thing that you can do for them now is to make them proud of you. They'll know you, and if anyone talks in awe of you in the future, they'll know that their little girl grew up into that wonderful person."
There was a knock on the door and I swung it open, revealing one of the footmen.
"Ah, excellent. Emari will need a second chair in here for guests," I instructed, not letting him make a start. "I believe there's room, but if not then arrange larger quarters for her. And who has been appointed as her maid?"
The Tepet Emari who faced the elders two months later looked the same in many ways, but the details were different. It was like some forms of crafting – bringing out what was already there rather than adding embellishments.
There was elegance to the way she wore the long, but still comparatively simple tunic. Her lean frame wouldn't have favoured flourishes and she remained practical in how she prepared her hair and eschewed ornamentation. Perhaps she'd change her mind later or perhaps it would be her preferred style.
"The most recent of the Great Houses is that of Lady V'Neef, declared in 708," she concluded her quizzing on the Great Houses. "Her Scarlet Majesty recently awarded her control over several major trading fleets, previously under the control of House Peleps. Lady V'Neef married a scion of House Cynis, to maintain the elemental aspect of her house. She has six Exalted children, all of them sharing her aspect, and I understand that she has chosen only to adopt wood-aspected children, with most of them marrying out into the other Great Houses."
Jita nodded approvingly. "And if hypothetically, we were to receive an offer to marry you to one of V'Neef's children?"
Emari stiffened slightly and then relaxed. "I would be… surprised, elder. My understanding would be that she would wish her male children to provide her with children within House V'Neef by marrying among her adoptees, whereas my children will be Tepet. Besides which, she has shown a preference for wood-aspect and those with several generations of confirmed Exalted heritage."
I gave her a slight smile of approval for that answer.
"I'm pleased you can not only recite facts but also have some understanding of them," noted Vergus sourly. This was, I suspected, her default mood. "I understand Alina took charge of your household."
"I can hardly claim to be a household in my own right, elder." Emari looked abashed at the idea. "I moved into a lodging shared with her so that she could supervise my… introduction to House Tepet's customs."
Jita gave his sister a sidelong look at Emari dodging that hidden trap.
Vergus ignored him and leaned forwards. "I don't recall Alina being precisely an exemplar of the social graces. Not to mention that she's a girl only three-quarters your own age. Do you not feel ashamed to learn from a child you are senior to?"
Faced with that jab, Emari faltered. "I… I am a child in comparison to almost all in House Tepet," she managed after a moment. "Who else should I learn from, until I am worthy to learn from my elders?"
Vergus arched an eyebrow and no one commented until finally she relaxed just a little. "If you are only worth children and mortal teachers, then you are a poor Tepet," she grumbled. "But what is done is done."
"Take your seat," Jita told his adopted daughter, not unkindly and then turned to me. "Alina?"
"Exalted elder." I rose to my feet and bowed to the table of elders.
"We must decide today whether Emari will be enrolled in formal schooling or whether it would be better to keep her here for intensive tutoring until she is fifteen. What is your opinion?"
First and foremost, my opinion was that asking me this in front of Emari was a bit blunt. Perhaps I was being tested.
"I have no doubt that she would learn more from intensive tutoring, however the impression I have from the lessons I've sat in is that Emari is catching up quite quickly in core subjects. At most, the extra attention would bring her closer to the breadth of a complete education," I began.
Mokairo cleared his throat. He rarely spoke, sometimes so ethereal that it was hard to tell he was there. "And at a school?"
"Given her studies so far, I believe she'd manage the exams in two years and manage them well if she is allowed three years to study, which should be feasible. She would also meet many more of the mortal and Exalted that she'll encounter after school. I do not believe I need to elaborate on the importance of having connections across society and the Realm's government."
"You lean towards the school then?"
I gave Emari a glance and then sighed. "There is the possibility that the stress may be damaging to her confidence. While she would have the buffer of being Exalted, struggling in some classes where most students are years ahead of her could be challenging. Ultimately, I have confidence in her Exaltation."
I'd spent several evenings coaching the older girl on the most basic charms in some key areas. I wasn't well versed in all the fields usually associated with her aspect – for example, I'd never been more than minimally competent with their traditional weapon, the chakram – but I did know their techniques for using essence to bolster the retention and understanding of history and natural laws. In my past life I'd have gone so far as to claim that the charms came as naturally to me as one of those Exalted in that elemental aspect. I could no longer claim that honestly, but the basic knowledge was still there.
Of course, the reason we did that in the evenings was so that she could recover the motes spent that way as she slept. But her tutors had been most pleased with how well she'd done at her reading of their assigned texts after that.
"Hmm." Jita looked at Mokairo, who said nothing. Perhaps he had exceeded his word stipend for the day. Or the month. "Do you have an opinion, daughter?"
There was a silence and then Emari, red-faced, realised that she was the daughter in question. "I've never even seen a school, f-father. Much less whichever you have in mind. I have nothing useful to say."
"But you know yourself, yes?" snapped Vergus. "What do you want?"
The girl bit her lip briefly and then straightened. "I must leave the manse and face the rest of the Realm someday. Perhaps it would be better sooner rather than later."
"The finest steel from the hottest fire," murmured Jita approvingly.
"You've been spending too much time with Cainan," Vergus admonished him. "The finest steel comes from precise and calculated forging… and a carefully metered inclusion of jade."
Then she shook her head. "Though I see you have made up your mind and I have little enough time for other matters without arguing this further. She is your child, Jita. Have your way."
"My sincere thanks," he told her formally and then gestured for us both to take our seats. "I do not think it best to send you into an entirely unfamiliar school, daughter." He may have emphasised that word a little as a reminder.
"So, Root and Reed School?" I asked.
He nodded. "That, Emari, is the school Alina attends. Also, that of Tepet Iyuki, who I am sure Alina has introduced to you."
That had been quite an experience. Iyuki had reduced Emari to embarrassed stammering without even trying. The sophisticated and glamorous dynast was simply too much for the adopted jeweller's daughter. It had taken quite some time to get her past that, illustrating why I'd been chosen over my friend.
"It will also allow Alina to continue to guide you. Discreetly, I hope. It would not do for anyone to conclude that my daughter needs her hand held by another. The purpose of this is not to make you dependent upon any one of the House."
Emari nodded in understanding. "I will stand on my own feet as much as I can," she promised.
"See that you do." He paused and then grunted unhappily. "Understand that you will face provocations there. Students, many of them the unexalted, will resent that you were Chosen when they or their relatives have not been. You cannot bend to such sentiment, but nor may you lash out. We have withdrawn students before and if I must take you out of Root and Reed then I will send you to the Tamed Storm instead."
There seemed little to be said to that and so Emari elected not to respond with more than a nod of understanding.
We were dismissed after several further admonishments and descended the stairs together, Emari casually walking far closer to the edge than I would have.
"Alina," she asked. "What is the Tamed Storm?"
"It's a school for discipline cases," I answered, recalling what Elana had told me. "If a student doesn't behave well and refuses correction in an ordinary school, their parents would usually rather transfer them to a 'specialised school' than have them officially expelled. And by specialised, I mean specialised in beating the child into complying… or until they die."
"I really don't want to wind up there," Emari exclaimed, wide-eyed.
"It's been the making of some people," I mused. "If you can survive that or one of the other schools like it, you can survive practically anything. I don't think I'd enjoy it though."
Iyuki was waiting for us outside. "So, did they decide on a school?"
I nodded as my student faltered briefly and then fell in slightly behind me (she couldn't hide behind me as such, but she did shrink in a little). "Emari will be joining us."
"How wonderful!" Iyuki favoured us with a dazzling smile. "You know what that means though, she needs uniforms!"
"I could probably -"
"Shopping trip!" she declared before I could suggest that I just sew them myself. Oh well, it would probably be quicker and that would give me more time for martial arts practise. Tutoring Emari was cutting into my opportunities for that.
"Alina?" Emari entered the Exalted dorm with an air of confusion, something that wasn't all that unusual this year. She was getting much better but there were still any number of small things that caught her off guard.
Many of them had caught me off guard too, so I could understand. The 'I am bleeding down there' one had been a joke, fortunately. Her birth mother had prepared her for that whereas I was… theoretically familiar but in practical terms in no sense emotionally prepared.
I would have to deal with it sooner or later, but until then I was going to repress the very notion.
"Did you put my name down for the musical festival?" the slender air-aspect continued, more bemused than accusingly.
"What?" I sat up. "No, I wouldn't do that. You're not supposed to sign up other people and I told you that you had dispensation not to do anything this year if you wanted."
I'd only gone down to the festival board sign-ups once, to make sure I was down for the martial arts tournament section. I wouldn't have put it past Lyta to sneak my name down for the music festival for the amusement value of my having to perform and to get me out of the tournament. Not that she'd stand a chance against the other Exalted, but she could probably make it up as high as any of the other mortal students, even including those a few years older than her.
The girl had some actual talent buried under that smug-snake exterior. If she wasn't a shameless backstabbing snob and social climber, we might even have been friends. So… basically, if almost everything about her was different.
"Are you sure it's you?"
"I do know my own name, Alina."
"Sorry, I thought it might be nerves."
She shook her head. "Apparently I'm down to sing the Ballad of Culan's Hound. Whatever that is?"
"…what?" I climbed off the couch. "I swear, if this is Lyta then I'm going to… ugh, I'll think of something. Let's take a look."
We went down the stairs and entered the main building. The sign-up board was taking up a section of one wall. There was a chalkboard that usually had announcements on it, but it was covered over by several pinned sections of poor-quality paper (even in the dynasty there was no need to use the good stuff for everything) divided up into boxes for each event and sub-boxes for specific roles.
There were only a limited number of places for some events or roles, so we had to ink our names in - that ensured that there weren't any cases of people removing other's names to make room for them in popular events. At least unless someone figured out ink remover.
The musical part of the festival wasn't filled out for the most part. That was normal, Root and Reed School did specifically aim for a slightly martial crowd so as in both previous years the tournament was the first to fill up. But in the soloist's section, Emari's name had been written with the name of her proposed piece. Which was the Ballad of Culan's Hound.
"Well." I looked at it. "It could be your handwriting. I'm not saying that it is, but it could be."
Emari shook her head. "So, someone's done a competent job of faking it. That's not a good thing."
"Something my mother told me. My adoptive mother," I clarified. "The teachers won't care about accusations of someone setting you up. If whoever's behind this did it well enough to get away with it, in their view, they deserve to get away with it. They're preparing us for real life, after all. If we can't handle something like this, better to find out now."
"But I've never even heard of that ballad."
"Nor have I." I folded my arms. "But we either prove this is false – well enough that they are willing to take you off the list when the music festival is this sparsely populated - or we'll have to go with it as is."
Emari looked at the names around hers, or rather the relative paucity. "Is that really important to the school?"
"We're supposed to be cultured individuals. Beating each other up may be more fun for us, but perhaps not so much for any family members who attend."
Emari made a face. "So, you don't think I can get out of this?"
I looked around. "I don't see any obvious leads to follow up on. How nervous do you feel about singing?" I hadn't really touched on music in my advice to her, largely because there wasn't much that I could offer her in that regard.
"I… can sing?"
"That's a start." I sighed. "Alright, let's see if we can find a copy of this ballad and see what you've been set up with."
The school library had a copy and the song didn't seem too bad in terms of length or complexity. Emari ran her finger down the musical notation though and frowned. "Am I reading this correctly?"
"I don't know, what are you reading? I've no ear for music."
"I think this is scored for a male voice."
I looked at where she was indicating. "I… see. Well, perhaps we can change that? I think we need someone with more musical knowledge than I have."
Emari looked relieved. "Who do you have in mind?"
Ideally, Nalan. Unfortunately, he wasn't really in reach right now and I wasn't all that close with the more musically inclined students. "I'm not sure, but I'm sure Iyuki will know someone who can help."
"Uh, could we…" She looked uneasy. "Is it alright to bother her?"
"I haven't been counting favours owed, but I think she's still going to be feeling grateful after she broke through into the third plateau," I assured her.
Iyuki was in the Water Wing, working on a pan set on the stone. "Oh, I was hoping for some taste-testers," she greeted us. "Would you let me know what you think of this?"
I eyed the pan and nodded. "By all means."
"I… of course, if it would help," added Emari.
The older exalt took a spoon and offered it to Emari first. "Tell me honestly, is this too spicy?"
She might have been kinder to mention 'spicy' before Emari had sipped some of the sauce. I thought my charge's eyes were going to bulge out of her face, which was turning a brilliant crimson. "Just a… argh, water?"
I darted into the pantry and retrieved some milk instead, which served admirably.
As Emari gratefully washed the spicy sauce out of her mouth I examined the pot and took a spoonful to examine more carefully. "Oh, Iyuki. You've used the seeds."
"It didn't seem that hot when I tested earlier," she protested and took a very careful sip. "Oh my! No, this is far hotter than I thought!" She grabbed the milk and poured some for herself.
"Soaking the beans for the flavour is fine in theory," I told her. "But once they burst and let the seeds out, you got a much higher concentration of the spice. It's not really tolerable in that strength unless you've grown up with it. I'd recommend opening the beans up and removing the seeds." I sniffed. "And possibly feeding the seeds to your enemies, if you can find a way. Good grief."
Iyuki moved the pan off the stove and set it down somewhere it could cool. "Bother, I was hoping I was getting better at this."
"There are many many ingredients in Creation. It always takes some experimentation to get used to everything new." I leant against one of the cabinets. Just smelling the pot had given me an idea what had happened, but there was no point rubbing that in. "So, we - that is Emari and I - have a little problem..."
We explained as Iyuki cleaned up from her abortive cooking experiment. It was her last year before graduating, so I suspected that she was using the cooking to relax and let her mind rest from intensive efforts to memorise essentially everything in the sorcery section of the library. The Heptagram didn't have an official entrance exam but unofficially there was reading you were expected to have done before you arrived and knowing the applicable vocabulary was important.
"I see," she admitted. "Someone must have done some digging. It's an obscure ballad, but I happen to know that it was sung in my first year and Sifu Voish was very taken by it. I'm not saying that it would be one of my year behind this, but they may have given advice to someone."
That made sense to me – students who had entered with me were now moving across to the same dorm as the older students, with it mostly being the two younger years facing us across the entrance way. If Lyta – to name a non-random example – was responsible then she might have simply asked around.
"So, getting it wrong may upset Voish," I expanded in case that wasn't clear to Emari. "Do you know anyone who might be able to adjust the music for Emari to sing it? If not then we might as well go back and see if we can find any witnesses who saw her name added. I doubt we'll be lucky."
Iyuki paused as she checked that the stove was cooling. "I think Onoka is your best bet."
I had to think a moment to place the name. "Sort of purple-ish streaks in her hair? Itusi Onoka?"
"That's her. She's tried her hand at composition and reworked a song to fit her voice last year. Not male to female, but she's not a soprano and a lot of the high notes weren't quite in her… and this means nothing to you, does it?"
"I think I follow," Emari advised, sounding surprised. "We covered this in class earlier in the year. So, she might be able to adjust the music… I'll need that. I can at least try singing it but the music is another matter."
"That, at least, is covered. If a soloist needs it, then one of the staff will volunteer rather than risk having a solo performer undermined by a classmate whose heart isn't in it."
"So where might we find Onoka?" I asked.
"You need to get better at knowing this for yourself," warned Iyuki. "I won't be here to help you next year. Try the stables. She likes to practice in private and I think she mentioned something about the acoustics of the loft up above them."
I don't have any proof of who was behind the name substitution, but I'm morally certain that the look on Lyta's face when Emari (accompanied by an enthusiastic Onoka) was the star performer of the musical part of the festival was the expression of someone who's had a plan they were sure of blow up on them.
If so, revenge was had. Not only had Emari not embarrassed herself, but she had also made a new friend, found a talent she could explore and now had an activity I could politely bow out of to get extra practise in. I didn't resent helping Emari but there was definitely a trade-off.
And while I was at it, I'd better start keeping tabs on the rest of the student body better. Iyuki did have a point…
I had half expected to spend yet another summer at Lord's Crossing but instead I was instructed to expect to be collected directly from the school. No other details were provided so I packed my cases – I was up to two – and said goodbye to Emari, Udano and Iyuki as they departed for Lord's Crossing. He'd be staying there overnight before moving on to the Vergus manse while the two girls were going to be staying in the family manse together until Iyuki left for the north coast and the Heptagram.
"Aren't you going with them?" asked Erika as she waited with her own cases for the crowd of coaches waiting for students to sort themselves out to the point that one of the Cathak coaches would be accessible for her.
"Apparently not. Do you have plans for the summer?"
She nodded. "There's a family estate on the Caracal River. I had to visit Lord Cainan last summer but I should have a much more relaxed summer this year. Cathak from all over the southern Realm are gathering for a reunion."
"That sounds busy to me."
"It'll mean I get to meet any number of relatives I haven't seen in years." She paused and cupped one fist thoughtfully. "Including cousin Ujiri, who was quite the pain in my neck and somehow has not Exalted yet. I wonder if he'll try putting spiders down my collar again this year."
"Well, try not to break him," I warned. "You're more than strong enough to cause him serious injury."
"I know how to control myself," she promised confidently. "There won't be another case like Old Man Spider, and that was Udano rather than me."
"Fair," I conceded. I saw a Cathak coach pull forwards, the coachman almost forcing a pair of horses from House Nellens into a flowerbed, rather to the fury of the woman on that coach. "Here, this is for you."
I'd brought box lunches for the three Tepet, so it would be mean not to provide one for Erika. She'd not quite become one of our little cabal but she was decent company when she did spend time with us in the common room.
The fire-aspected girl brightened. "Are you sure? Won't you need it for your own journey."
"I don't know how or where I'll be travelling," I admitted. "That makes preparing provisions a little difficult."
With Erika climbing up into her coach, I backed away and almost collided with a familiar face heading for the next coach. It wasn't the Nellens, as that coachman had had to dismount so she could straighten out the horses, much to the embarrassment of the boy waiting for her. No, it was a familiar head of brunette hair that looked down on me as I skipped sideways at the last minute.
"Getting in my way again?" Lyta asked lightly. "But I thought all the Tepet coaches had left. Were you forgotten about?"
"Some other arrangement has been made," I told her lightly. "Probably not special treatment, but I may be going back to Juche. Have you ever been there?"
Her eyes flashed. "Once, yes. We took the scenic route to the Imperial City once. Have you ever been there?"
"I assume you mean the Imperial City?" I thought of my last sight of it. A wreck of a city, overrun by some dead leviathan that one of the Deathlords had found on the floor of the ocean and ridden up to the very doors of the Imperial Manse.
It had been killed by the defenders, as much as such a thing could be, but the city paid the price and the rest had been fortified further. What had happened after that… well, I hadn't been there to see what ultimately became of the Imperial Manse. I probably wouldn't have survived that.
"No," I said softly. "I have not yet seen the Imperial City. But as you speak so proudly of it, I shall look forward to doing so when I get the chance."
"If you ever do. More likely you'll be sent off to some garrison post in the Threshold to rot." Her voice held no obvious vitriol despite the words – anyone not close enough to hear would have thought we were having a civil conversation.
"There are worse fates. We'll see."
With a huff at her failure to get a rise from me, Lyta boarded her coach and I headed back away from the entrance. There was no use getting in the way, I thought the coaches were managing that fairly well without my contribution.
I would have appreciated having a slightly better idea of what to expect in travel arrangements.
And then, as I turned to enter the school again, there was a flicker of movement that I only caught out of the corner of my eye – something up in the sky.
Turning I held one hand up to shade my eyes. A cloud, far too low and moving far too fast. "That can't be a coincidence," I said to myself and headed inside for my cases.
When I returned a moment later, the cloud was only a few inches off the ground with Tepet Yrina standing on it, pretending that she wasn't the focus of attention. Mako was next to her and unlike my lawful-mother, he was eyeing the awestruck students back and smirking.
"Ah, Alina." Yrina saw me almost immediately. "I was expecting you to be waiting."
I set my cases down and curtseyed.
"It's good to see you again mother." I offered no excuse for whatever delay she might feel she had suffered.
Mako reached down and helped me to climb up onto the cloud. It felt a little more crowded than I remembered it, perhaps because I was hesitant to crowd Yrina. She placed one arm possessively around my shoulders though and pulled me closer as the cloud ascended, moving eastwards across the Blessed Isle.
"You've grown quite a bit," she observed once we were off the ground. "Is there any room left inside those clothes?"
I'd elected to get a new set of uniforms when we were getting them for Emari, which had proven a wise decision as my last set from the shop in Juche had been outgrown in the spring. "I could let them out a little further but there isn't much margin for error."
"Not quite so bad as I thought then." She looked me over. "I had been concerned that you'd be all exposed ankles and wrists. I told Demarol that you'd need new uniforms when he saw you last year but when I asked, he said that you seemed fine."
He hadn't mentioned it to me at all. "I arranged a new set just in case, this is them."
"Foresightful of you." Her tone was arch. "Though you should change out of it while we travel. It wouldn't do for you to reach the city in a school uniform."
I blinked. "Here?" I wasn't exactly one for body-modesty, but there were still some standards expected of dynasts in public.
"Nothing I'm interested in," Mako told me, although he didn't look back. "No offense, youngster."
I suppose no one was going to be looking at me, this high up. "What do you suggest I wear? Most of my tunics are a little on the small side." And I didn't have any pants that were a proper length except my uniform ones. I was glad it was summer right now or Lyta would have had more to taunt me for.
Yrina sighed heavily. "I see this visit is overdue," she mused. "The uniform tunic then, but put something else over it."
I removed the jacket and opened my first case, glad that I'd packed it carefully. It was a little troublesome to keep control of my white surcoat as I took it off, the wind almost swept it from my hands. As I made sure it was secure in the case, I noted the angle of the sun and the position of Meru. I didn't expect to go far north until we were past the foothills of the vast mountain, but even so we were slowly veering away from it.
"Which city are we going to?" I asked, going into the other case for the blue-on-blue dress I'd worn to the banquet two years ago. It would be too short on its own now, not indecent but obviously not cut for me anymore. However, over my school tunic it should look decorative.
"That's nice," Yrina said approvingly as she held me steady to pull it on over my head. "Where did you get it?"
"I stitched it together out of some dresses Tepet Iyuki donated when there was too much competition for the dressmakers in Lord's Crossing. Back before the banquet for Icole and the other students entering the House of Bells."
"Very talented, is that something they teach at school?"
"There are classes," I confirmed. "And I watched in Juche when Lotus Stem was putting my uniforms together. It seemed like a useful skill to have."
"You may enjoy this then. To answer your question, we're going to the Imperial City. It's time to extend your wardrobe a little for social events and they have the best shops for this. Juche is very good, but there's just that little bit better in the city. And new uniforms shouldn't be an issue."
"Thank you for taking the time to do this for me." The trip to Juche last time had been the longest time Yrina had specifically spent with me until now but it seemed that she would be spending even more time with me this summer.
She shook her head. "It's a mother's responsibility. And I am quite proud of your handling of Tepet Emari. I could wish that I'd received that level of support back when I was in her position."
I paused and looked up at her. It was hard to imagine her as nervously out of place as Emari in those early days… but if my mother had been adopted herself, it was likely that she had been. And it explained why father would have married another Tepet. By marrying an adoptee he'd have tied her into the family and ensured that his children would remain in the House. Given that he'd been planning to found his own household since shortly after he exalted, that must have been a calculated decision on his part.
Admittedly, his parents presumably had had a strong say as well, but I could see the political thinking behind it.
"I believe Serakan bent your ear about marriage previously." Yrina studiously ignored the gesture Mako made at that name – an old and storied gesture of warding off evil that was questionable in its usefulness. "I would have preferred to wait until you were older, and deliver that myself. She has hardly done very well with her own daughter in that respect… although I must say that Elana has been quite successful in her actual career."
"It wasn't too traumatising, mother."
"I'm glad to hear that. You needn't expect an actual marriage to be arranged until you're at least twenty, but you're old enough now that some people will want to meet you and see if you might be worth introducing to their sons once you're closer to the right age."
"Twenty." A decade away, double my current age. It seemed like it might fly by alarmingly quickly.
Yrina chuckled drily. "Don't worry about it, I'd be very surprised if we actually arranged anything that soon. If you have any thoughts of a career to begin or extended studies such as the Heptagram, it could easily be put off until your thirties. However, you're showing all the signs of having an unusually strong degree of breeding. That being the case, you can expect more offers than most girls your age – even among the Exalted. And a comparatively early marriage could lock in an alliance if we need one. It's hard to say what could develop politically so if you do find someone that you wish to marry, an understanding could move to a formal engagement or even the actual wedding ceremony faster than you might expect."
I paused and then shrugged. "Lady Serakan said I might find boys more interesting that way in time. So far it hasn't happened, but I don't have any particular issues getting along with them either, which is probably more important."
She gave me a rueful look. "If she instructed you to keep those two matters separated then she gave good advice. Unlike your father – or other men – we don't have the luxury of looking over a bastard before we decided to keep it. It's very difficult to hide a pregnancy, particularly with how eager vultures like Serakan are for gossip. And if you get yourself with a child in your belly before you're married, there will be hard choices to make."
"One of these things that I just have to accept even if it makes no sense to me?"
Mako laughed. "Well said, little one. The world is full of things like that."
"Mako." Yrina's tone was warning. "I am grateful for taking the time to bring me here and collect Alina, but please don't give her foolish ideas."
"But how can I tell what's a foolish idea or not?"
"If it makes you laugh, it's most assuredly foolish."
There was no real fire to the words and I wondered how long they had known each other.
"After you're married there can be more flexibility." Yrina turned away from the sorcerer and didn't meet my eyes either. "Your father and I have had an understanding for several years, thus his adoption of you. I felt it was better, given the chances of your exalting – as you did – to raise you within the household rather than potentially have to catch up as I did."
That made a considerable degree of sense. I had wondered why father had done that rather than simply pay child support if he recognised me. On the other hand, it raised the question of whether Demarol had informed Yrina that he hadn't actually sired me.
Then another thought hit me. She was speaking from personal experience about being adopted. Was she also speaking from experience about bastards… in that she might have had an illegitimate child herself?
I wondered if that meant that one of my living siblings wasn't Demarol's child… or perhaps the boy who'd joined the Immaculate Order had been the result of an affair.
I doubted Yrina would ever come out and say it. So, I might never know.
I personally felt that Yrina's view that the dressmakers of the Imperial City were better than Lotus Stem was a little bit severe. I couldn't claim that I had seen everything that the mortal woman could do in the relatively brief interlude there, but pressure can bring out the best in a craftsman and the fact she'd been able to provide me with sufficient uniforms to tide me over for the first month at Root and Reed School was actually quite impressive.
This wasn't to say that any of the shops we went to were bad – far from it – but there was a very relaxed feel to proceedings and we might spend a day or more in a single shop, drinking tea with the other customers and potentially not buying anything at all.
I'll admit to being a little slow on such matters: it wasn't until the third shop that I realised that these little chats with the other people visiting the shops was as important, if not more so, than the clothes.
The social network I'd experienced so far were the occasional grand galas arranged by my father, smaller and more intimate salons among the Tepet and occasional other dynasts in Lord's Crossing, and then visits that seemed almost random as people happened to find it convenient or easy to guest at the estate overnight or perhaps a little longer before continuing to or from Juche.
That shopping was also a social event surprised me more than it probably should. Then again, I was more used to being on the crafting side and once I left Nexus it was fairly rare for me to be making something that wasn't either for my immediate circle of companions or for some project we had undertaken.
Perhaps some of my earlier customers had visited my little workshop for much the same reason as this? I'd had to provide some hospitality for that – I recalled being irritated that it effectively added three additional members to my household staff.
The things you learn…
I was being measured (not for a uniform but for a formal gown that was to have plenty of room to adjust to fit me on formal occasions for the next few years) when Yrina stood swiftly from where she had been sat and curtseyed to the redheaded woman who entered the shop with her own cluster of servants.
For a moment I had the horrifying thought that I was facing Her Scarlet Majesty herself – or worse, her oldest living daughter. The hair was right but to my relief I then realised that the clothes were all wrong and there was an identifiable grapevine motif to the mon on the livery of the new arrival. The resemblance made sense all of a sudden. This was Mnemon's half-sister V'Neef, matriarch of the fledgling Great House of the same name.
Yrina's formal greetings were cut off as V'Neef swept into her personal space and kissed her on both cheeks. "Yrina, it's been so long. I thought I was going to have to send you some kind of bribe to get you out of Juche at last."
"Your invitations have been very welcome," the air-aspect replied, seeming slightly taken aback. "And it's been a wrench every time for me to send my regrets but our household has been growing rapidly and family politics reared its head."
V'Neef took her arm and seated herself on the couch next to my mother. "My own family has yet to catch up with yours, but I do have some idea of what you must be going through."
Still effectively pinned in place, I watched them as refreshments were served and the servants were edged backwards to provide some degree of apparent privacy and therefore intimacy between the two dynastic ladies, while still being close enough to serve them.
Yrina had never mentioned being close to V'Neef and the status of co-leading the Demarol household (or exactly what the balance of power was there, a matter that remained opaque to me) was quite a bit different from the sole head of an entire Great House. Even if there were fewer V'Neef by blood, they had quite a number of adopted members, and controlled enormously more wealth than Demarol did. And had senators on the upper Deliberative, while so far as I knew none of the household were among Tepet's representatives.
I wasn't surprised that they knew each other, but V'Neef was acting as if they were old friends.
Finally, the dress was pinned in place and I was released from being measured to the nth degree. More importantly, I was allowed to eat some of the food that was on offer. Growing takes fuel and I really hoped to get a good many inches over the next few years.
I wasn't sure if edging close enough to hear the conversation would be a transgression at this point, so I positioned myself in view and let them make the decision.
I wasn't particularly surprised that it was V'Neef making the decision. She feigned seeing me for the first time and beckoned me over. "So, you must be the daughter that I have heard so much of."
"I would not have thought there would be much to say. I'm only ten."
She covered her mouth and laughed politely. "The fact that you are only ten and have been exalted for three of those years is one thing that makes you remarkable. But I have heard that you are also doing well at school. Do you have plans for once you graduate?"
I didn't see any clue from Yrina if she expected me to say anything specific so all I could do was stick to the simple truth. "General Arada recommended spending some time broadening horizons before committing to anything. I have been discussing with the sifu at my school whether applying to the Cloister of Wisdom would be a possibility, but it awaits some discussion with my family."
V'Neef arched her eyebrows at that. "The Cloister… are you considering the Immaculate Order?"
I shook my head, noting that Yrina seemed relieved. "I'd like to study the martial arts, like mother." Hopefully I wasn't reading too much into her wearing a hearthstone that specifically benefited the martial arts. She had the right build and calluses.
"I can see that you've made a strong impression," the redhead assured my mother, who looked as if she wasn't sure if she should be proud or just surprised. Presumably at 'like mother' since it was hardly a secret that I had good reports from both the sifu at school, sifu Shoku at home and that Tepet Jita evaluated me every year. "Will you be joining the legions then?"
"I don't know. I might serve with them for a few years, but I don't know if I want it to be my life." I might not have much choice though. It was entirely possible that by the time I finished at the Cloister or wherever I went for my next school that the Tepet Legions would have been shattered. In that case, every Tepet fit to serve would be expected to.
Being under military discipline would severely hamper my freedom to act. Unfortunately, I was just too blasted young! Why couldn't I have been reborn five or ten years earlier?
The conversation veered away from me and before long the dressmaker requested my presence for a second fitting of the dress now that it was partly sewed.
More than an hour later, we were done and mother called a palanquin to carry us back to the Tepet wing of the Imperial Palace. (A necessary distinction. The palace at Lord's Crossing was the size of a small town but you could have fitted most of Juche inside the walls of the Imperial Palace. Political battles over a corridor, garden or favoured apartment were sometimes as fierce as those over entire satrapies.)
Yrina leant back against the cushions of the palanquin. "What do you make of V'Neef's interest in you?"
I thought back to how Emari had answered a similar question. "Given my age, she can only be investing for the future. Perhaps setting up one of her adopted children to marry me one day? I don't have the right aspect for her house and my children would be Tepet."
"Normally, yes." Yrina shook her head slightly. "Think longer term."
"A… multi-generational arrangement?"
She nodded. "Correct. I know she has sought an arrangement to have a promising wood-aspected girl in the Sesus Denerid household marry one of her sons on terms that their children would be V'Neef, rather than the girl's house. Sesus Denerid Gutar declined."
The Denerid household were in some ways Demarol's counterparts in House Sesus – the youngest of the households and with a less martial tradition than their cousins. However, they had also intermarried heavily with House Cynis to the point that the wood-aspect dominated rather than the more typical fire-aspects of their parent House.
It occurred to me that their example might be why the Tepet elders had been concerned to tie Demarol more closely to traditional Tepet values and bloodlines.
"If she's looking a generation or two down the road, I imagine that she's hitting limits in finding strong wood-aspected bloodlines without tying herself even more closely to House Cynis," I said at last. It was the only other House that had a wood-aspected majority. Wood and Water were the two least common aspects within the Scarlet Dynasty, with House Cynis and House Peleps as their predominant representatives while there were two well-established Houses for each of the other three elemental aspects.
In theory House Iselsi and House V'Neef balanced this, but the former was almost extinct and kept around as little more than an example of how low a treacherous House could fall, while House V'Neef was by far the smallest Great House.
Yrina patted me approvingly on the top of my head. "Indeed. She cannot afford to find herself reduced to little more than a tributary of the Cynis. If she marries you to a wood-aspected adoptee it's possible that the result may be one or more of your children inherited his aspect and the… precocious strength of your blood. I would expect any such arrangement to include a contract that gives her the option to bring resulting sons back into House V'Neef."
"It seems something of a gamble."
My mother smiled. "If you have no sons, or none she cares to bring into her family then all she is out is one adoptee's hand in marriage. And, in the meanwhile, she has your father's support in high society, a more distant claim on military support from our House… and we may lean upon her financially. While our household is on a sound financial footing there is no harm in further securing it."
She stretched out her legs and then smiled. "Of course, she would therefore want a marriage to someone who doesn't want to sink themselves entirely into a career at the expense of children. Your answers were… sufficient that I believe she'll remain interested. Now, what's this about wishing to attend the Cloister? I don't recall this being raised previously."
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I believe Iyuki was the one in the Water Wing, seeing as Emari was with Alina.
That said, greatly enjoying this story. Interested to see how Alina ends up intervening with the canonical destruction of the Tepet Legions. I doubt she'll manage to save them, but ensuring that the Tepets she's close to aren't around that region, or survive is a different matter.
Huh, I hadn't expected at all that Yrina was also an adoptee. Though, that may explain part of Serakan's attitude towards their household and trying to undercut Yrina's authority as a matriarch.
Quite?
Probably an excellent idea by the elders. Emari looks like she would have easily slid into being Iyuki's hanger-on, but Alina being younger forces her to find her own two feet. Clever stuff.
No, in this case Jita is complimenting Alina on being quick to grasp the situation
Ah, yeah that scans.
Interesting. Confirmation that Alina does not favor the same skills as Bookwyrm.
- Pronouns
- Yes
Is it? Or is that just proof she didn't get the skills that Bookwyrm developed over many decades.
In game, every exalted is favored for the skills associated with their caste (Earth, for her), plus a a number of abilities they're just personally good at. That doesn't mean they're good at those skills, but they have an easier time training, ie raising skills and buying charms costs less XP.
So all Air Castes will be good at studying, and the Bookwyrm was also good at it. Alina, meanwhile, seems to have a different set of favored skills, which indicates she's something different than just the Bookwyrm stuffed into a new body.
The Froggy Ninja
The Blade Will Never Die
Of note is that Oadenol's Codex implies that favored skills are dictated by the Pattern Weavers. Obviously being an Exalt and a time traveler fucks with fate a bit but even they can be affected.
EDIT: The Varangian Casting isn't of much use by this point but a higher degree procedure that sticks to favored abilities and maybe produces more than one per reading could be useful to research. She'd do well in the Heptagram but book learning can be easier to explain away than martial arts.
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Or she's rusty from almost a decade of not using them. For something that's mostly pure knowledge I doubt she would have a problem refreshing her memory, but she's so far taken the "Go with the flow" route and that's left her with little free time and ability to study what she wants.
Keep in mind that she's still significantly hampering/underselling her martial arts abilities, as it would raise questions.
The Froggy Ninja
The Blade Will Never Die
Okay but the quoted statement is an in universe reference to how Charms based on Favored abilities are as easy to learn as Aspect Charms. That should hold true from birth, or at least the moment of Exaltation. If that's not the case, she has new Favored Abilities. Which might suck considering that artifice requires Lore so if that's not favored then she has to hope she retained her previous rating.
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And I'm saying that this isn't proven by the statement i the story. What we know is that Boowyrm wasn't Air aspect, and that many decades after he Exalted he'd come to claim that he could use the charms to help study as easily as someone who had them as their favored skills. That does not mean he was that good when he just exalted, he could have been (in which case you're right) but it could also be that he worked hard over the decades to lean the charms and used them so much that they became that easy. I wouldn't jump to the conclusion he found those charms easy to learn just yet, although I'll grant it's a possible interpretation.
No, it's that the old Bookwyrm claimed he found these specific charms as easy to use as air aspect DB. Not that it was easy for him to learn them, just that by the end he found them incredibly easy to use.
That he found them as easy to use as an Air aspected DB implies things though. For one, given that Dragonblooded have an out of Aspect mote surcharge, that he found a way to align the Charms and his essence.
This sort of thing isn't unknown in the setting, but the Realm knows this as 'begging the Dragons' for a reason, because one way to do it is by studying an Immaculate Dragon Style to its conclusion, with the caveat that while you've started but not concluded your studies all Charms count as out of Aspect.
This sort of thing isn't unknown in the setting, but the Realm knows this as 'begging the Dragons' for a reason, because one way to do it is by studying an Immaculate Dragon Style to its conclusion, with the caveat that while you've started but not concluded your studies all Charms count as out of Aspect.
Resplendent Earth
Fortunately for my hastily improvised explanation, my lawful mother wasn't opposed to my attending the Cloister of Wisdom. In fact, Yrina had been a student there herself and had gradually worked her way up to a solid grasp of the Immaculate Air Dragon style. She wasn't a master, but it's a worthy accomplishment.
The martial styles I had practised, both openly and secretly, were what are considered to be the root of martial arts, sometimes referred to as Terrestrial styles – those that are primarily used by the Dragon-Blooded and the occasional enlightened mortals.
But just as a mortal can force themselves to the heights required to perform these styles, a Terrestrial Exalt can with great effort and the right teachers be initiated into greater arts. The stem, if you will, of the martial arts world. Intended for the use of Celestial Exalted, they are far more demanding and very rarely found these days outside of the Immaculate Order and their splinter sects.
For each elemental aspect, ancient martial artists crafted a specialised style that is fractionally easier for Terrestrial martial artists of the correct aspect to learn. These immaculate arts are one of the greatest advantages the Immaculate Order has, and how they were devised is a much-mythologised part of the Order's history.
Even when I was throwing light on some of the erroneous parts of their doctrine in my past life, I didn't tell them that they were originally a glorified courier service taught the arts by renegade Celestial Exalted. Sometimes you have to craft the message for your audience.
A full master of even one Immaculate style must be not only at or beyond the mortal peak of martial arts control but possess essence control of the fourth or fifth mortal plateau, putting them solidly in the top tenth or so of the Scarlet Dynasty and possibly the top twentieth of all Terrestrial Exalted. A tiny handful of Immaculate monks have even mastered multiple styles. They are acclaimed as grand masters and only a fool would need to ask why.
To have reached the upper levels of just one style, alongside all her other activities was worthy of great respect and I accorded it freely. Yrina, for her part, seemed pleased at the notion that I – adopted or not – wished to emulate her path. She even added a bar of jade to my stipend, leaving me at a stroke with more money on hand than I'd had a chance to spend since I was formally granted direct access to the stipend.
It wasn't an actual bar, unfortunately. That would have been an eighth of a talent – an entire eight and a half pounds of white jade. However, bars are more of a money of account, so what I actually received was one hundred and twenty-eight obols that weighed a bit more than five and a half pounds in total. The process of carving coins from a rectangular slab (the talent and bar both being standard measurements for such slabs) leaves quite a lot of fragments, after all, which would have been sold by the Imperial Treasury to various crafters for use in making jade-steel.
Why did this matter to me? Well, what about my story so far suggests I was going to spend those coins?
"I'm fairly sure this is sacrilegious, somehow," Udano observed dubiously as he worked the bellows for me in the school's forge.
I wiped my brow. This was damned hot work. "Udano, people still cut obols into bits when they need to spend less than a whole obol on something, and that's technically illegal."
He almost broke his pace with the bellows and I noticed the temperature inside the forge drop fractionally. "Illegal? Why – is it defacing the currency?"
"Rebels during the Unbroken Rushes Rebellion were using them as recognition tokens between cells," Aijou told him.
The patrician was in his final year and his exaltation had been a great surprise to everyone. I'd invited him along because his family controlled much of the weaving industry around Tuchara and he'd flatly claimed that what I was doing was impossible. When I proved him wrong – and I would - I'd have maintained a degree of dominance as the senior Exalted student even if I wasn't the oldest. Also, I'd have another obol to melt down.
Because that was what I was doing. A crucible inside the forge contained four of the coins, as well as layers of more mundane materials – mostly silver (guild-minted dinars I'd traded for) and iron in this case. I held the crucible in long tongs, relying on a sturdy apron, crystal goggles over my eyes and my (un)natural durability as an Earth-aspected Exalt to resist the heat.
The contents were melting nicely and mixing as a result. If I'd got the process right, then they'd give me a batch of incredibly tensile jadesteel – not really the ideal material for armour or weapons requiring hardness, but to spin into wire and then down to actual threads, it would be ideal.
"You're throwing away a fortune," Aijou warned me in a friendly fashion. "No one will even give you weight value for jade once you adulterate it like this. Remember to keep one obol back to pay me when you lose."
I extracted the crucible, letting Udano relax from his pumping and held the tongs with one hand. Then I channelled some essence into my hand and dipped a finger into the contents.
The wood-aspected patrician shrieked in alarm.
"…what the hell?" I asked him, stirring the molten metal with my finger. "You almost made me drop the crucible. I'm not paying if you sabotage me."
"…How do you even have fingers left?" he asked, white-faced as I took my finger out and watched the metal dripping off. It was almost viscous enough.
"It's a kind of magic." Look, give me a straight line like that…
I poured the metal into a carefully crafted clay mould that would render it into bars, then wiped my finger fastidiously on the edge of the crucible before wiping the final residue off with a rag I set aside to burn and reclaim the metal from later.
Even a few scrapings were valuable. This was jade!
"Jade thread isn't too bad," I told him. "It'd be easier with starmetal, admittedly. That's practically ideal, you barely have to alloy it for this."
Aijou shook his head in disbelief. "I've never even seen starmetal. I didn't even know it existed until I exalted and got access to the Exalted shelves in the library."
Udano rubbed the back of his head. "Starmetal?"
"It's another magical material," I explained. "It's not quite as… questionable as orichalcum and moonsilver in the eyes of the Immaculate Order, but it's very very rare and correspondingly expensive."
It shouldn't actually be quite as hard to come by as it was, although it was certainly the rarest of the five major magical metals. A certain group went out of their way to pick up every bit that entered circulation by hook, crook or – if absolutely necessary – by paying obscene prices for it. And I do mean obscene.
It was a great shame, because I'd… well, not kill for it.
…well, depending on the specific, I might be willing to kill for it actually. I mean, not just some random individual, but if someone wanted me to kill, say, Filial Wisdom, then sure. I'd done it before, after all.
(Okay, I hadn't been alone for that one and I'd been a lot older and stronger than I was. I still wouldn't have had any moral scruples. Filial Wisdom was a blight on Creation and freeing his exaltation for a more worthy host could only make the world a better place. Hopefully Lytek would ensure his memories were never passed to a future host.)
"If I had any, I'd be using it," I assured Aijou. "Alas, I doubt anyone bar Her Scarlet Majesty and a few of the Great Houses' top artisans have any."
The normal construction methods for what I was planning would have required twice as much jade and at least a few ounces of starmetal. I wasn't sure I could get the full effectiveness without the starmetal but it shouldn't be useless.
I lifted the mould and walked over to the rollers. "Right, if you'd be so good Udano, I'd rather start this before the metal's fully cooled."
The rollers had a series of grooves in them, each grove along them narrower than the next. One step at a time, I'd turn the metal into a longer and narrower bar, using rollers and draw plates until it had the flexibility of wire.
"Remember, the bet was for thread," Aijou told me as he followed. "Not just wire."
"I will have threads as fine as silk out of this," I assured him. "That obol is as good as mine."
There was no going home again.
Well, I could. I was back in the Demarol manse again. But part of that was the point. I was staying in the manse this summer, not the children's courtyard.
And Medra was dead.
Medra was dead and no one had told me.
I'd been away for almost four years and halfway through it, Medra had - according to Ishah – simply not woken up. It hadn't occurred to anyone that I might want to know that.
I wanted to scream. I wanted to rage.
Of course, she was mortal and of course mortals died. We Exalted could - and did - die too. It was how Creation worked and objectively I knew that somewhere her soul would be reborn. The endless cycle of life and death.
That no one really seemed to care was second only to the fact that… I hadn't written to her since my first year. She couldn't afford the cost to reply and Iyuki had told me that it was frowned on to show too much affection to servants, at least publicly.
I, of all people, had yielded to peer pressure.
I wanted time to think, to grieve. To meditate not on my essence, but on the shame I felt at letting myself fall into the sort of callousness that I had held others to account for.
So of course, father was hosting a gala. Because the pattern spiders have to have their drama.
"As hunting went so well for you last time, perhaps you can take Nalan and Doreg out with you," he proposed the morning before the first guests arrived. The Exalted of the household were gathered around a table in father's study, discussing the final arrangements. As an Exalt, my presence was required, as a child my contributions were not. "Maybe your luck will rub off on them."
That sounded awfully as if he'd decided that the two were overdue to exalt. Which was a bit harsh as they were only twelve. People had exalted as late as twenty, although that was almost as unusual as my own case.
"Thank you for the offer, father, but I was hoping to participate in the Gateway tournament," I offered. Spending most of two days with Doreg was not something I'd welcome, even without Hunt to stir him up. And Nalan was decidedly lukewarm on hunting.
"Are you sure?" asked Etune. I'd never met Icole's grandfather before this summer, as he'd spent a decade stationed in Greyfalls since the death of his mortal wife. I assumed he'd worked through the grief since he'd openly stated he was looking for a new bride now that he was back on the Blessed Isle. "We're hunting boar, so you might manage to kill one yourself this time."
"I wouldn't wish to harm your courting prospects by out-hunting you, elder brother."
Etune stared at me and then threw back his head and laughed. "I'd like to see that, little sister. But you're right, I should secure myself a new bride first."
And thus, as the hunting party set out; I got to spend time in the garden, where several tables had been set out with boards for Gateway, the preferred strategic game of the Scarlet Dynasty for the last three hundred or so years. Given that two infamous players (including Cathak Cacek who had invented the game!) were present, I had a sneaky feeling that I wasn't going to win. But it would be nice to at least make a strong showing.
The pairings were chosen at random, with my mother drawing names from a vase.
"Tepet Demarol Alina," she declared and I was drawn out of my thoughts as she reached into the vase again. "Will face… Ragara Nova."
The man who responded was a short and broad man with his blond hair washed back with some sort of pomade that I could smell from several yards away. It wasn't an unpleasant scent, just distinctive. He was dressed well and after a moment I placed him as the governor of Chanos, a major military port on the north coast.
He certainly didn't seem like a soldier, but that meant nothing. Any adult Dragon-Blood was expected to be able to pick up a weapon and perform as an officer whatever their daily life involved. It was possible for all I knew that he'd spent a century with the legions – or that he was a pledged shikari who had fought many Anathema.
His name didn't jump out at me for anything but Chanos, though.
Walking to one of the tables he drew back one of the chairs and then bowed graciously, offering it to me. "Permit me to offer you this courtesy, my fellow Child of Pasiap, before I destroy you on the game board."
I offered him a polite nod and accepted the seat. "Only a fool refuses courtesy, and only a greater fool counts a battle won before it is begun."
He laughed. "Well said. I look forward to a challenging game."
We set out the pieces and began the match with no further ceremony. We both knew the rules and there was no need to wait on observers since the majority of those who had stayed to watch were focusing on more famous players.
Nova's strategy was systematic and methodical, pinning down one corner of the board at a time, while refusing to be drawn into any expensive exchanges of pieces. It was the classic earth-aspect approach to strategy and one I knew well.
I was also aware of its weakness, the potential to crush it with a hasty attack before he had all his pieces in place to dominate. But the opening I saw for this was curiously obvious, either he was underestimating me considerably - not impossible when faced with a mere eleven-year-old – or he was baiting a trap.
After considering my options, I elected to instead give the appearance of similar caution while setting a few pieces in place to exploit what seemed likely to be the focus of his play if he was seriously going to play the long game.
He seemed almost disappointed by my caution and after an hour of play, his pieces advanced steadily into the centre. If he took that then he'd have a commanding position to pick apart my own forces.
Several games had ended already, including those of Cathak Cacek and the other well-known player, Ledaal Kes. Still, no one bothered us particularly, only a couple of defeated players coming to watch us while the two masters dissected their games in retrospect, offering polite advice to their defeated opponents. I assume that the chance for a master class was certainly more interesting than seeing a child be knocked out in the first round.
Or perhaps it was Nova they thought so little of.
In any case, I moved two pieces as if I had not yet realised that he was moving on the centre and with a disappointed sigh he made an unmistakable move of force directly into the centre. "And that decides the game, I believe."
I looked at the board and then gave him a smile. "I think it might, but indulge me and play it out?"
"I suppose." Nova leant back in his chair.
I moved my pieces and the man blinked. Then he leant forwards, calculating the pieces positions anew. I had ignored the centre and crushed one flank entirely.
And with that, his attack on the centre was transformed from a devastating advantage to a dire position, with my own pieces threatening him from every angle.
He snorted, and then laughed out loud. "I believe my words were right, even if I was wrong about the victor." Reaching out, he tipped his general over. "Your game, young general."
"Thank you, Lord Ragara."
"Please." He waved his hand dismissively. "I'm merely escaping my responsibilities here and we're both Exalted. But excuse me if I go find a lady more my own years to console me on that thrashing." He rose from his chair and then bowed deeply before departing.
I studied the board. I wouldn't have said that it was decided yet – he was at a disadvantage but I could see a couple of ways to extricate his key pieces, making me pay for the rest. It wouldn't be an equal exchange but he still had a strong base in one corner.
Then again, if these were real soldiers would it be justifiable to expend them in battle or better to seek a negotiated settlement using those potential losses as a bargaining chip? A moot point on the game board but…
Or perhaps he was just not that good. I could be overthinking it.
I tapped my lips. No, he'd seen exactly what I'd done. He was good enough… Which suggested that he didn't want to win in the first place.
Mmm.
I shrugged and reset the board for the next players and was about to see about some of the canapes when I saw a surprising face.
"Alina!" Tepet Elana exclaimed loudly. She wore the same armour as before but there was a new addition to her chest, a cloak brooch that marked a status very different from a Talonlord in the Imperial Army.
"Elana." I crossed the grass to her and she clasped my forearms with both hands in greeting. "My congratulations."
"On this?" the Realm's newest magistrate glanced down at her badge of office deprecatingly. "I'm still not sure why I have it."
"I was thinking more of surviving the cannibals and Her Scarlet Majesty."
She snorted at the mild irreverence. "I'm not sure which was more dangerous, but with the first I couldn't leave our wounded behind."
"That might be why you got the new job, but obviously I wasn't consulted." I looked around and saw the last matches wrapping up. Mother was already preparing the vase again with more names.
"So, what's going on here. You're not out hunting?"
"No, there's a Gateway tournament."
"You play competitively?"
I shook my head. "I wasn't keen about going hunting."
Rather than chide me, she gave me a rough pat on the shoulder. "I understand. I'm mainly here for an excuse to avoid my mother until she calms down about how much my appointment has improved my marriage prospects."
I blinked. "You're going to cruise the party circuit for the next forty years?"
She laughed. "Well, until I have a clear-cut reason to visit one of the satrapies on duty. And she's not wrong that I probably should marry now that I'm out of the legions. She can set up some meetings while I'm away. Go play your next match and I'll watch. Don't expect any advice though. I'm more of a dice player by preference."
I turned towards my mother and then paused. "Watch out for my brother Etune. He's looking for a second wife."
She shrugged. "Might be a little young for me."
Mother gave me a pleased look as I returned. Had she not expected me to beat Ragara Nova?
I was the sixth name drawn this time… and the fifth had been Ledaal Kes. The infamous player didn't draw my chair out for me, he just sat down with a drink beside him. I suspect he didn't expect to need longer than it would take to finish that to finish me off.
Elana moved up behind me. "I don't want to shake your confidence, but…"
"Yeah." I met Kes' confident gaze with a steady refusal to be shaken and he tilted his head to one side and then shrugged it off.
"So, you're the prodigy that exalted even younger than I did." He made his first move. "Did you get poked and prodded at much for the months afterwards?"
"Not so much as I recall." I set out a cautious offense to cover for a discreet defensive strategy.
"Ah, I am envious. They made my first months at school hell," he recalled. "Which didn't do much for fitting in after that."
"I think the elders of my house may have preferred a longer-term examination," I told him, recalling the lengthy grilling by the elders after my first two years.
"Ah well." And then he launched an offense that savaged my probing attack with little finesse and looked prone to smash right into the defences I was setting up.
Well, it was unlikely he'd waste some complex and incisive strategy on a child. I resisted the temptation to respond to the reckless attack and settled in to grind him down.
After four more moves, Kes picked up his glass and drained it. "You impressed her Redness," he told Elana. "Although I think as much with your denseness as anything. Did you really almost walk away from her propositioning you?"
There was an embarrassed silence and then Elana laughed. "Very nearly. I'm just an honest soldier."
"You'd better grow out of it," he advised her without rancour and then leaned forwards to examine the board. "Did you know I played her at gateway once, when I was about your age?"
I did, but I denied it.
"She beat me. She probably could have crushed me, but it dragged out a bit." He paused, "Not out of courtesy, you undersand, I think she just didn't care."
"And why show her hand?"
"Correct." And then he moved three pieces in rapid succession and I saw my defensive line was about to be torn in two.
Without hesitation I collapsed my defence and shifted every piece that I could across the board to attack his rear. There was something disorientating about playing with the bulk of his pieces on my side of the board and vice versa.
The game went to a conclusion by points and I have no doubt that he was holding back, but I like to think I made him work for the win.
The white jade used in obols was by far the most common colour of the material available from mines on and under the Blessed Isle, associated as it was with the Pole of Earth. This was fortuitous as this is the variety of jade that meshes best with the essence of Earth-aspected Terrestrials.
I had woven the jade thread I had spun into long strips, edging them with wire and wound them into cylinders measured to fit over my forearms. The way that these strips were interwoven was such that tugging one end tightened them enough to secure them around my arms while tugging the other end of that same strip (usually folded safely away) would loosen them enough to remove.
If I had been able to get my hands on the starmetal I wanted, I would have embroidered the strips with sutras, turning them into prayer strips praising the Maiden of Endings and the lesser deities concerned with the constellation of the Sword. In my past life I had possessed bracers of that kind, though forged of solid strips of jade almost an inch thick.
There was no way I could afford that much jade. And while I didn't have the strength of mastery of essence yet that I remembered, I at least remembered the lessons in crafting artifacts that I had picked up after making those bracers – including how to spin jade into thread and turn it into cloth.
"I've never seen someone work jade like this." The school had called in Ledaal Phaestis to examine the bracers. "I wouldn't have thought you had enough jade here to have any significant benefit."
"The quantity, in this case, should matter less than the proportion."
The older exalt nodded his greying head. "I see. The result of many seasons of work, I would assume. Who helped you with this?"
Udano and Emari straightened as the old crafter glanced at them, but then he looked past them.
"I couldn't have made them without Udano's strength and Emari's eye for detail," I told him diplomatically.
"Yes, but from whom did you learn this technique?"
"It's my idea."
Phaestis stared at me and then removed his spectacles from where he'd pushed them on his forehead after examining the bracers. (They weren't for correcting a deficiency in his vision unless you consider an inability to view things at a microscopic level to be a deficiency). Pulling a handkerchief out of his pocket, he began to polish the magnifying lenses absently. "You invented this yourself?"
"She really did," Emari confirmed.
Beside her, Udano nodded firmly. "Won some good money off people who were convinced it couldn't be done."
"I do not generally wager on such challenges," the Ledaal artificer observed, looking at me with keen eyes. "However, if someone had presented the proposition to me, I might have made an exception. If that someone was a child of… you are ten years old? Younger than that?"
I was not that small! "Twelve this summer."
"Humph. I would have wagered. And in this case, I would have lost my stakes. Root and Reed School is not generally renowned for producing artificers… not that your teachers are bad but it simply does not draw students with an aptitude for that, which is a self-reinforcing trend…" Phaestis grimaced.
"Generally speaking, exploring a road not travelled results in finding reasons why it is not used," I conceded. "Sometimes, though…"
"Quite." He turned the bracer over in his hand and then returned it to the workbench, next to the other of the pair. "I confess I am more intrigued by the process you have developed than the actual result. What were you aiming to create?"
"Something similar to the Perfected Kata Bracers I have heard that the Wyld Hunt sometimes employ." Such artifacts significantly enhanced the skill and strength of a martial artist using a supernatural form of martial arts.
He tilted his head. "That is quite ambitious and I trust you will not be offended if I say that I am not surprised that you fell short."
As a rule, the crafting of artifacts was constrained less by the complexity of the physical construction and more by the need to precisely lay artificial essence flows through the artifact. Jadesteel blades and armour were comparatively simple, but the only examples of Perfected Kata Bracers I was aware of had been crafted by masters who had reached the first immortal court of essence control.
It was no surprise that they were incredibly rare.
With all that said, if I could get some starmetal – or figure out how to obtain the same result with black jade, orichalcum or perhaps a combination of the two…
That was my current best theory, although that was all it was: a theory. Getting the orichalcum would raise eyebrows at a middling high level within the bureaucracy of the Realm. The Thousand Scales had many differing priorities, but monitoring anyone buying a metal closely associated with the golden Anathema – otherwise known as the Solar Exalted – was fairly high up the list.
I had no plans to try that, at least until I had managed to confirm on paper that I wasn't barking up the wrong tree.
"Mild protective benefits and a slight advantage to the essence flows of supernatural martial arts forms," Phaestis summarised my accomplishment, such as it was. "Worthy of my attention, but far from your goal. However, if this can be applied… hmm. Labour time would be impacted, but if we can cut the need for jade in our alloys… you used silver?"
I nodded.
"Hmm. Bolstering the value of silver would have economic effects," he concluded grudgingly. "I'd have trouble selling it as a mechanism for most items, but for precise mechanisms and those demanding large quantities of jade… this could shave entire talents of jade from the cost of constructing parts of a warstrider. Not to mention warbirds, which would see a weight-saving."
Udano wordlessly extended his fist towards me and I reached over and bumped my own knuckles against his, enjoying the brief moment of triumph at being recognised. And then I had to face the unfortunate side: if this had major military significance…
"I take it then that we must consider the process a secret of the Realm?"
The old man gave me a sympathetic look and then straightened, less the fellow crafter and more one of the Legions' most senior sorcerer-technicians. "Officially, yes. Since your schoolmates have seen them already, my formal report will cite your work as marginally acceptable within formal regulations, but as a dead-end with no larger applications and, indeed, markedly inferior to normal practise. I see no need to penalise you – for a school project it is exceptional."
"Thank you, sir."
He patted me on the head. "Informally, the Scarlet Empress will be informed and we may explore a trial of the technique on a larger scale. A public act of destroying your notes in a fit of anger at being told that your work is a novel toy at best would be advisable."
I sighed. "Out of character for me. However, a mysterious prank destroying them and my – unsupported – suspicions of a student with reasons to undercut me…?"
Phaestis smiled. "Clever girl. Yes. Complete your education and hone that mind carefully. Where do you plan to study next?"
"I have no definite plans."
"You obviously have the mind for the Heptagram but even if you decide otherwise, I would be happy to arrange an apprenticeship with one of my colleagues. The legions can never have enough sorcerer-technicians."
The old man left us to make his report to the teaching staff and I studied the bracers for a moment and then slipped them on. "Oops."
"I don't understand," Emari admitted. "If it's a good idea then why will he judge them a failure?"
"Imagine if Lookshy picked up on the technique and started using it for their own warstriders," explained Udano. "Or whatever other uses that Lord Phaestis ultimately applies it to. If the Realm's enemies know that Alina had invented something like this, she'd be a target to acquire those secrets."
"Oh."
I shrugged. "Well, at least he didn't insist that I destroy the bracers." I slipped them on and tightened them.
Emari put one arm around my shoulders and leaned down to kiss my cheek. "Well, I'm proud of you, even if no one but the three of us knows about what you've done."
It was nicer, I found, to have her somewhat unqualified approval even than the conditional praise offered by Ledaal Phaestis.
I was brought back to Juche again after my fifth year at school. Two years in a row, was this some sort of a record? Or perhaps relations with the main household had been sufficiently repaired. It was hard to be sure.
Rather than facing the five elders there, I was instead called to father's study on my first morning back. He and mother were sitting behind the table and I was directed to take one of the seats facing them.
"I won't require you to demonstrate your skills as the elders did in earlier years," Demarol assured me with a warm smile. "Your teachers have written glowing remarks about your performance and since their claims, for good and ill, have borne out in previous years I see no reason to doubt them now."
So, what was I here for? Also, I doubt all the teachers were happy with me. I'd scraped through some classes where I just wasn't invested. I think you can guess which.
The irony of only barely passing literature when I'm an avid reader was not lost on me.
"This leaves us with some decisions," Yrina told me, with a sidelong look at her husband. "Alina, you may not realise it but you've completed all the requirements to graduate from Root and Reed School. You could spend another year there with your classmates – and then another year given your age – but all that would do is polish your weaker areas and it would be disruptive to teach to your level when most of the other students are behind you."
I had to pause at that but now that I thought about it, there had been a few areas where I'd spent most of the year working on projects that hadn't been much like those of Udano or Erika. Had the teachers been sneaking class material from the next year into what they were teaching me?
"I see." I paused and then since they both looked at me in the expectation of more: "I assume that there are options you have in mind as alternatives?"
Mother leaned forwards. "I have written to the Cloister of Wisdom about admitting you as a student. With the endorsement of your school, they have advised that they are willing to let you take their entrance exam but only at the end of the next school year. Bringing you in one year early is as far as the teachers are willing to bend the usual requirements."
"I assume," Demarol added, "that your wishes have not changed?" I suspected it would go poorly for me if they had.
I pushed back my chair and bowed deeply. "Please accept my gratitude, father, mother. I am very glad to be given the chance to attend the Cloister of Wisdom and will do everything that I can not to let you down."
"Very good then. That leaves the coming year." He steepled his fingers. "General Arada does recommend a year of travel to broaden your horizons but I think that best left until you have completed your education. A twelve-year-old is rather young to be allowed to travel without guidance."
On the one hand, I could probably manage. On the other, it would be enormously easier if I wasn't so visibly a child. There was still too much baby fat in my cheeks to pass for even an unusually small adult. Dragon-Blooded tend not to age past their prime until they're well past the second century (and sometimes not even then) and I was beginning to wonder if my early exaltation might have trapped me in an extended adolescence.
"Before we discuss that," added Yrina, "There is the question of your future marriage plans. Have you considered your career options?"
"If you're considering the Immaculate Order then it would be best not to move forwards with any discussions until you've completed your training and the Cloister and made a firm decision," my father added.
I shook my head. "I don't feel a calling to the more spiritual aspects of the order," I admitted. "It's the finest martial arts school in Creation but that's all I'm looking for from it. I understand that I must accept their strictures while I'm there…"
"And they'll cut off that pretty hair," warned Demarol whimsically.
"More importantly there will be no making treats to eat." Mother seemed to find that a more compelling advantage from her tone. Did she disapprove of that hobby? "For that matter, your experiments in crafting with jade will be off limits while you are there."
"I understand." I'd probably taken that as far as I could without starmetal and I doubted the monks would accept my practising with my handiwork either. Immaculate styles – both their exclusive celestial styles and the lesser Terrestrial styles – had rather specific expectations of what weapons were considered proper.
Bracers woven of jade thread would probably not qualify.
"Given that you're planning to broaden your horizons after graduation, I don't expect you to commit to anything." Yrina folded her hands in satisfaction that I had accepted her warning. "But if you had to decide now, what would you wish to do?"
Travel to Nexus and kick the crap out of a very stupid sorcerer was probably not going to fly. "Given the traditions of our house, I think it would be wise to spend several years of service in the Legions. A decade perhaps." I looked at my lawful father. "I know that your years of service gave you a solid reputation before you found your own path in life."
He touched the short daiklave still buckled at his side. "They did indeed."
Yrina nodded. "That is also not something that I would feel comfortable with you exploring at your age. Even stationed in the Realm, a legion camp is no place for a child your age."
"That then leaves us a few possibilities." My father stopped fondling his sword. "You could stay here of course. The social life here in Juche would let you make valuable contacts for later in life but it must be said that it's unlikely that you'll encounter anyone close to your own age. There is also the possibility of putting your experience coaching elder Jita's daughter to work by tutoring our current crop of youngsters."
"Or she could travel to Lord's Crossing with Etune," added Yrina. "They would be happy to welcome you in that role and you could get some experience of marriage negotiations."
"Has he found someone already?" I asked in surprise. I hadn't heard anything about that and I'd been trying to keep in better touch with events here over the school year.
"No, which is one reason he's going there. The other reason is that Icole seems to have been writing to a reasonably distant cousin at the Heptagram so we're opening discussions with her immediate family in Lord's Crossing. She's Exalted, but as she's elected for the path of a sorcerer, they may be willing to accept an unexalted husband."
Yrina shook her head slightly. "Alina knows Tepet Iyuki."
He blinked. "Oh yes, of course."
I can only assume that he hadn't bothered to check which school Iyuki had attended before the Heptagram. Still, good for Icole!
"If you have any other suggestions," he continued. "Then this would be the right time to bring them up."
"May I have a moment to think?" I asked. The prospect of going to the Cloister of Wisdom before I was fourteen was such a surprise that I hadn't really considered this option. I'd go of course. The sooner I could get some more experience and go through the initiations to learn Earth Dragon style again, the better. But what to do in the meanwhile…
At their nods I closed my eyes in thought, walling everything out. Just my thoughts, the pulse of my blood and the distant pull of the Pole of Earth.
The pole of Earth. The Imperial Mountain, Meru. Site of the ancient ruined capital of the Solar Exalted and still full of dangers from their overthrow. The greatest city of all Creation had been thrown down and it was still not fully explored given the many ancient hazards. I'd visited it more than once in the ninth century and there had still been resources there for those who could penetrate the horrors unleashed there.
Today the mountain was closed save to the monks of the Immaculate Order and the pilgrims who walked the mountain trails between the monasteries that dotted Meru, the monks working to maintain secure routes and keep the dangers in check.
I opened my eyes. "I would like permission to spend the next year on martial pilgrimage," I told my parents. "Climbing the Imperial Mountain and preparing my soul for the process of studying at the Cloister."
It wasn't quite as easy as that, of course.
Even if I was an earth-aspect and following established trails (or at least, I piously pretended that I would be doing that rather than digging into the ruins), the Imperial Mountain would be dangerous terrain for a traveller. It was high and cold on the sides, except where the ancient climate controls that had made a city around the summit instead now left unpredictable pockets of almost any imaginable weather.
It was possible to go from a hurricane to the humid heat of a jungle in instants, or from that to raging torrents of water summoned from what remained of the immensely complicated plumbing that had once brought water to the inhabitants from the three rivers at the foot of the mountain and then drained their waste away.
As such, my parents had insisted that I should travel with companions.
Cathak Uzuki wasn't known to me, although as one of the other great martial houses, it wasn't a surprise that she intended to follow Cathak Cainan's example and study at the Cloister. The other girl was Tepet Berel Ayama, who I had thought was contemplating a career with her family's trading interests.
"I want to serve our House first," she told me quietly on our first night climbing the mountain. We had made a camp in a hollow of the foothills and set up a tent. Uzuki was gathering more firewood as I prepared our meal. "And the Immaculate Order may be the best place. My brother feels I should test my commitment at the Cloister first."
"Your brother?"
She shrugged. "My parents are more interested in the exchange of goods with Gem now that V'Neef is making gains in the firedust trade."
Neither was Exalted, so I had to set my pace accordingly. If I was on my own, I would have left the trail and gone straight up, probably climbing even sheer slopes since there was a better chance of finding some area that hadn't been looted already if I went somewhere hard to reach.
As it was, I'd needed to stay near to the trail and perhaps keep my exploring to night time hours. It left me catching up on my sleep at monasteries, which I explained as feeling more secure there and restless out on the mountain, close to the raw essence of the pole. Ayama and Uzuki had little choice but to believe me about that.
We were crossing the glass flats (by which I mean sheer sheets of glass, which were sharply angled, not what I'd call flat) when I called a halt early. "We're higher than we've ever been so far," I told them. "And you're both trying to hide the fact that it's tiring you more than you expected."
"I can keep going," insisted Uzuki but Ayama put her pack down.
"What do you suggest?" she asked me.
I nodded in gratitude for the support. "Let's camp here overnight so you can acclimatize more. Once you're both used to the thinner air here, it'll be easier to press on and we'll make up time tomorrow. Otherwise one of you might collapse and that'll slow us down massively."
Uzuki put her hands on her hips. "It's said that the dragons reward persistence."
"They also punish recklessness," I reminded her. "I'll be very glad if one of the dragons does bless you during this climb, but let's try to use our heads."
Then I produced my secret weapon. "I have sweet cocoa from the south. This seems like a good occasion to break it out."
Uzuki's resistance crumbled at that – she had something of a sweet tooth.
Once we had set up camp, I mixed the cocoa with warm milk and let it work its magic. They really were both tired and I had to help a yawning Ayama into the tent or she might have walked into the poles and knocked it down. By the time she was bedded down, Uzuki had also yielded to the inevitable and she was crawling inside to rest.
I sat on the side of the Imperial Mountain and looked eastwards. The shadow cast by the mountain was covering Juche and there were too few torches and other lights there for me to pick it out. Further away, the Imperial River flowed down to the sea and I imagined that I could see the Imperial City enjoying a late afternoon. Probably not though, air distortion would likely make it hard.
The comparative difficulty my companions were having was another reminder of how different Exaltation made me. I could understand how easy it was for the Exalted to take up the rule of Creation and think nothing of heeding mortals. The sad fact was that they were not equals, something that had endlessly frustrated one of my friends in her efforts to set up a democracy.
"Poor Bright Wing," I mused, with no one awake to hear me. "They'd nod and smile, then go back to worship their winged god-queen. It's your own damn fault though. If you didn't want them to worship you, you ought to have shut up."
That would have been the day. Would be, rather. She wouldn't exalt for a few years yet. Her exaltation was one of those entrapped in the Jade Prison that so many Solar Exaltations had been trapped in following the Usurpation.
I wasn't sure exactly where that was, somewhere under the Inland Sea but that covered a vast area for it surrounded the Blessed Isle on three sides, hundreds of miles across. If I had known then I might have broken it now just so the Realm could start to adjust to the increase in the number of active Solars while the Scarlet Empress was still around to give some leadership.
"Hah." I raised my hands and examined the bracers around my forearms. I'd spent essentially my every resource just making these. The sort of resources needed to reach something deep underwater would be orders of magnitude harder to find.
No, even if I had known where the Jade Prison was, I'd have no way to do anything about it.
I needed to get more resources. More tools, more options. Money wouldn't hurt. My stipend was very generous by rational standards. After all, like any dynast, I could live in great luxury for very little effort. I might have my stipend cut if I was literally doing nothing to support the Realm or my House, but that wouldn't be considered until I'd found my feet after completing my studies.
I stood, dusted off my hands and then the seat of my pants. I wasn't going to try coming up the Imperial Mountain wearing just a tunic. It was far too cold.
Going to the sloping glass I started climbing up it, digging my fingers into it. Fortunately, there was a charm for basically this situation and I could see indentations where other Exalted had climbed this slope before. It was likely that anything at the top had been found already.
I had something else in mind though. Unlike those previous explorers - well, I assumed unlike them – I'd once seen a detailed map of Meru. If my memory was correct then this was what was left of Little Chiaroscuro, a cluster of glass towers in emulation of the famous towers of the great metropolis on the shores of the South.
Meru had included many districts like this, almost like extensions of the great cities of Creation and they had generally been linked to their parent cities by a Gate of Auspicious Passage, a huge and expensive artifact that allowed immediate passage between the two locations… as long as you didn't mind the ruinous expense.
For the Celestial Exalted of the First Age, that expense had been more or less routine.
When I reached the point that more or less corresponded to where the gate should be, I secured myself with both feet and one hand, then drew back my fist.
Thump, thump, thump.
Eventually, the glass began to crack. I checked that I wasn't right above the camp and then let the fragments fall down the slope and kept hitting it.
And yes, I was basically hitting the Imperial Mountain in the expectation that it would reward me with magical materials, artifacts or some other treasure.
Look, I don't make the rules. I just know how Creation works and am willing to exploit those rules for my own benefit.
After a while the layer of glass broke open and I got to work widening the hole until I could get through it. There was basically zero chance of the Gate of Auspicious Passage still being functional but if it was there and just wrecked then it would be a fortune in magical materials. And if it wasn't…?
Well, I still had the rest of the mountain to shake down.
In theory it took about a month to climb from the Steady Foundation Pagoda in Juche Prefecture to Victorious Ascendance of Mankind Temple, as near to the summit as mortals were permitted to go. We hadn't been hurrying though, pausing to pray, meditate and study in the many temples along the way. As a result, it took us most of two seasons to reach the point.
Normally that was frowned upon as getting supplies up the mountain trails was a complex business but as we had voluntarily restricted ourselves to the simple diet of the monks (who fed themselves from the food they could grow around their stationed temples) it wasn't too much of a strain.
Also, I was making a healthy donation from the funds House Tepet had provided for my pilgrimage to the temples each time we passed. Money talks, even for monks.
Unexpectedly, when we reached the gates of the temple, two monks were awaiting us there. Both were Exalted and both wore the robes of abbots in the Immaculate Order.
We slowed respectfully as we approached and the party of pilgrims we'd been walking with as we covered this last stretch reached the gate first. Each was welcomed politely by the abbots, awestruck at this reception. While there were other Dragon-Blooded monks on the mountain, there was immense spiritual weight borne by the duo… and one of them showed the tell-tale signs of his Earth-aspect so strongly that I had no doubt that he was not just old, or powerful, but both.
I could sense a level of essence mastery higher than anything I'd encountered since my death and rebirth. Unquestionably he was in the immortal courts, most likely the second of them. And I only doubted he was higher than that because I had made the transition to the third immortal court in my past life.
Nothing since my exaltation had made such an impression upon me. Just making the step into the third immortal court had taken years of study and preparation. I was fairly sure that the Scarlet Empress was the only Terrestrial Exalt who had both made that step and still been alive in this era. And in my past life, I had only been able to trace a definitive record of one other before her - an ancient veteran of the Primordial War whose peaceful ascetic lifestyle and extreme mastery of his essence had somehow allowed him to endure for over three millennia.
The Terrestrial Exalted were intended to be lesser than the Celestial Exalted. Just living long enough to reach such levels of power wasn't something that we were expected to manage.
Our maker had failed to consider though, what the Exalted do to the notion of impossibility.
And for all the courtesy they showed the other pilgrims, it was clear that they were waiting for the three of us. I didn't think I was being self-important to think that that was because of me.
"Welcome to the Virtuous Ascendance of Mankind," the younger of the two abbots offered as we reached them. He reached out and took the hands of first Ayama and then Uzuki. "You have come a great distance to reach us. Please come inside and rest. We will talk of where your journey will take you from here."
We all knew that he was not speaking of a physical journey.
The second abbot simply inclined his head to me. "Blissful Insight will see to the needs of your companions, child. I have been waiting for you."
"I hope that my slow pace has not inconvenienced you," I apologised.
He shook his head. "The mountain has told me of your purpose here. My name is Vaicha and I will be your guide from here."
Ayama paused. "Honoured Abbot, we were charged with caring for Alina on this pilgrimage."
The Exalted monk shook his head again to dismiss her words, clearly immovable on this point. "To here, yes. And on the return. But the route that we must follow is not one for mortals, however enlightened they may be. You may entrust her to me."
Ayama still hesitated but I gestured for her to let it go. "If I am meant to follow Vaicha, then there is nothing either of us can do to change that Ayama. Our journeys diverge here but only briefly."
"I expect it to take perhaps three weeks," he offered. "You will be well cared for in her absence. There is much for you to learn."
Then he turned and began to walk a narrow path away from the temple. Clearly, I was not expected to remain at this temple even for a moment. I shrugged to make sure that my pack was secure and then followed him towards the peak of the Imperial Mountain, and the very Pole of Earth itself.
Vaicha seemed to have little need to speak and we exchanged few words as we climbed, pausing only when I needed to rest. He seemed to have no real need of that, standing watch over me through these brief respites, seeming not to have moved at all during them.
I tried to keep them to a minimum, eating and drinking as we travelled and restocking the outer pockets of my pack at our brief rests. When we were about halfway, I had to dig deeper into my pack and he sighed slightly as I tried to bring the food out without revealing the case at the bottom.
"I am aware of what you found beneath the glass, Ivory Dragon. Do not concern yourself."
Well now I just felt foolish. Or maybe just childish.
I hadn't been able to find any starmetal. Someone had removed the entire gate somehow, perhaps before Little Chiaroscuro was melted into a pane of glass. I had my suspicions about who might have done that.
But I was just about as satisfied with what I had found. Somebody – very possibly the same people who had removed the gate – had left a case containing an almost complete set of tools for fine artifact repair and maintenance. Oh, none of the heavier stuff, but with this I could make such tools given the time and materials.
In essence, the case was a small workshop in a box. My previous incarnation had paid a fortune for a rather less complete set in Nexus, with the dealer telling me that in this day and age there were perhaps twelve such sets not owned by the Realm or the great city of Lookshy, the Realm's one true military rival as far as most people were aware.
To be fair, if I'd found any significant amount of magical material, I wouldn't have been able to take it with me, so short of something as rare as starmetal, this was as good a find as I was likely to get.
By the time we reached the temple just outside the peak, I was almost out of food. And I'd been eating as sparingly as I could manage.
Given the remote nature of the temple, there were only a tiny handful of monks resident here. Three were Dragon-Blooded and the fourth was… I decided not to investigate too closely what he was. He was making a very good job of masquerading as another Terrestrial Exalt and just speculating on it was giving me a headache that suggested significant supernatural forces were trying to impose acceptance of that on me.
So, I ignored him instead. I really hoped that I could break through onto the fourth essence plateau. If I had that much control then I knew a technique that would probably let me shrug that off but right now… particularly after a long and difficult trek along a path that it was hard to dignify by that term, I really didn't have the energy.
The false-Dragon-Blood examined me, making it very hard to avoid paying attention to him. "This child is the pilgrim that you sought."
"If not then he's made a hell of a round trip for little return," I shot back.
Vaicha shook his head. "Rest, eat." He pushed me gently towards the temple's interior.
I was inclined to take that instruction, despite the complaint of "Disrespectful child," from a certain someone.
The abbot's voice answered with quiet certainty. "The Unfallen Temple trembles with anticipation. Its one-time masters have returned to Creation, in numbers not seen in fifteen centuries. And you waste your anger on one tired child?"
I swallowed and staggered inside. I needed to sit down.
The Unfallen Temple was the highest – literally and figuratively – temple raised to the glory of the Unconquered Sun during the First Age. They had called it the Eternal Temple and it looked down on everything save for the absolute peak and the palace from which the Solar Deliberative had ruled Creation (which said a lot about how they saw their stature compared to their patron Incarna). In the First Age only the Solar Exalted worshipped there, led in the later years by the Hierophant of the Solar Deliberative, a man whose legendary piety had somehow brought peace to the Solar Exalted after centuries of warfare.
How Vaicha could be so aware of it as to know the status of its former masters, I could only guess. But his words could only mean that the Jade Prison had been broken open. Solar Exaltations were returning to seek out new heroes to empower.
And as I knew from my foreknowledge, some of those Exaltations were in the hands of those who would manipulate them to seek out… those who were not quite heroes. And who might become deadly weapons aimed at Creation and those who claimed to rule it.
I slumped against a wall, shrugged out of my pack and curled up on the floor, thoughts chasing through my mind until, at last, I slept.
The martial styles I had practised, both openly and secretly, were what are considered to be the root of martial arts, sometimes referred to as Terrestrial styles – those that are primarily used by the Dragon-Blooded and the occasional enlightened mortals.
But just as a mortal can force themselves to the heights required to perform these styles, a Terrestrial Exalt can with great effort and the right teachers be initiated into greater arts. The stem, if you will, of the martial arts world. Intended for the use of Celestial Exalted, they are far more demanding and very rarely found these days outside of the Immaculate Order and their splinter sects.
For each elemental aspect, ancient martial artists crafted a specialised style that is fractionally easier for Terrestrial martial artists of the correct aspect to learn. These immaculate arts are one of the greatest advantages the Immaculate Order has, and how they were devised is a much-mythologised part of the Order's history.
Even when I was throwing light on some of the erroneous parts of their doctrine in my past life, I didn't tell them that they were originally a glorified courier service taught the arts by renegade Celestial Exalted. Sometimes you have to craft the message for your audience.
A full master of even one Immaculate style must be not only at or beyond the mortal peak of martial arts control but possess essence control of the fourth or fifth mortal plateau, putting them solidly in the top tenth or so of the Scarlet Dynasty and possibly the top twentieth of all Terrestrial Exalted. A tiny handful of Immaculate monks have even mastered multiple styles. They are acclaimed as grand masters and only a fool would need to ask why.
To have reached the upper levels of just one style, alongside all her other activities was worthy of great respect and I accorded it freely. Yrina, for her part, seemed pleased at the notion that I – adopted or not – wished to emulate her path. She even added a bar of jade to my stipend, leaving me at a stroke with more money on hand than I'd had a chance to spend since I was formally granted direct access to the stipend.
It wasn't an actual bar, unfortunately. That would have been an eighth of a talent – an entire eight and a half pounds of white jade. However, bars are more of a money of account, so what I actually received was one hundred and twenty-eight obols that weighed a bit more than five and a half pounds in total. The process of carving coins from a rectangular slab (the talent and bar both being standard measurements for such slabs) leaves quite a lot of fragments, after all, which would have been sold by the Imperial Treasury to various crafters for use in making jade-steel.
Why did this matter to me? Well, what about my story so far suggests I was going to spend those coins?
"I'm fairly sure this is sacrilegious, somehow," Udano observed dubiously as he worked the bellows for me in the school's forge.
I wiped my brow. This was damned hot work. "Udano, people still cut obols into bits when they need to spend less than a whole obol on something, and that's technically illegal."
He almost broke his pace with the bellows and I noticed the temperature inside the forge drop fractionally. "Illegal? Why – is it defacing the currency?"
"Rebels during the Unbroken Rushes Rebellion were using them as recognition tokens between cells," Aijou told him.
The patrician was in his final year and his exaltation had been a great surprise to everyone. I'd invited him along because his family controlled much of the weaving industry around Tuchara and he'd flatly claimed that what I was doing was impossible. When I proved him wrong – and I would - I'd have maintained a degree of dominance as the senior Exalted student even if I wasn't the oldest. Also, I'd have another obol to melt down.
Because that was what I was doing. A crucible inside the forge contained four of the coins, as well as layers of more mundane materials – mostly silver (guild-minted dinars I'd traded for) and iron in this case. I held the crucible in long tongs, relying on a sturdy apron, crystal goggles over my eyes and my (un)natural durability as an Earth-aspected Exalt to resist the heat.
The contents were melting nicely and mixing as a result. If I'd got the process right, then they'd give me a batch of incredibly tensile jadesteel – not really the ideal material for armour or weapons requiring hardness, but to spin into wire and then down to actual threads, it would be ideal.
"You're throwing away a fortune," Aijou warned me in a friendly fashion. "No one will even give you weight value for jade once you adulterate it like this. Remember to keep one obol back to pay me when you lose."
I extracted the crucible, letting Udano relax from his pumping and held the tongs with one hand. Then I channelled some essence into my hand and dipped a finger into the contents.
The wood-aspected patrician shrieked in alarm.
"…what the hell?" I asked him, stirring the molten metal with my finger. "You almost made me drop the crucible. I'm not paying if you sabotage me."
"…How do you even have fingers left?" he asked, white-faced as I took my finger out and watched the metal dripping off. It was almost viscous enough.
"It's a kind of magic." Look, give me a straight line like that…
I poured the metal into a carefully crafted clay mould that would render it into bars, then wiped my finger fastidiously on the edge of the crucible before wiping the final residue off with a rag I set aside to burn and reclaim the metal from later.
Even a few scrapings were valuable. This was jade!
"Jade thread isn't too bad," I told him. "It'd be easier with starmetal, admittedly. That's practically ideal, you barely have to alloy it for this."
Aijou shook his head in disbelief. "I've never even seen starmetal. I didn't even know it existed until I exalted and got access to the Exalted shelves in the library."
Udano rubbed the back of his head. "Starmetal?"
"It's another magical material," I explained. "It's not quite as… questionable as orichalcum and moonsilver in the eyes of the Immaculate Order, but it's very very rare and correspondingly expensive."
It shouldn't actually be quite as hard to come by as it was, although it was certainly the rarest of the five major magical metals. A certain group went out of their way to pick up every bit that entered circulation by hook, crook or – if absolutely necessary – by paying obscene prices for it. And I do mean obscene.
It was a great shame, because I'd… well, not kill for it.
…well, depending on the specific, I might be willing to kill for it actually. I mean, not just some random individual, but if someone wanted me to kill, say, Filial Wisdom, then sure. I'd done it before, after all.
(Okay, I hadn't been alone for that one and I'd been a lot older and stronger than I was. I still wouldn't have had any moral scruples. Filial Wisdom was a blight on Creation and freeing his exaltation for a more worthy host could only make the world a better place. Hopefully Lytek would ensure his memories were never passed to a future host.)
"If I had any, I'd be using it," I assured Aijou. "Alas, I doubt anyone bar Her Scarlet Majesty and a few of the Great Houses' top artisans have any."
The normal construction methods for what I was planning would have required twice as much jade and at least a few ounces of starmetal. I wasn't sure I could get the full effectiveness without the starmetal but it shouldn't be useless.
I lifted the mould and walked over to the rollers. "Right, if you'd be so good Udano, I'd rather start this before the metal's fully cooled."
The rollers had a series of grooves in them, each grove along them narrower than the next. One step at a time, I'd turn the metal into a longer and narrower bar, using rollers and draw plates until it had the flexibility of wire.
"Remember, the bet was for thread," Aijou told me as he followed. "Not just wire."
"I will have threads as fine as silk out of this," I assured him. "That obol is as good as mine."
There was no going home again.
Well, I could. I was back in the Demarol manse again. But part of that was the point. I was staying in the manse this summer, not the children's courtyard.
And Medra was dead.
Medra was dead and no one had told me.
I'd been away for almost four years and halfway through it, Medra had - according to Ishah – simply not woken up. It hadn't occurred to anyone that I might want to know that.
I wanted to scream. I wanted to rage.
Of course, she was mortal and of course mortals died. We Exalted could - and did - die too. It was how Creation worked and objectively I knew that somewhere her soul would be reborn. The endless cycle of life and death.
That no one really seemed to care was second only to the fact that… I hadn't written to her since my first year. She couldn't afford the cost to reply and Iyuki had told me that it was frowned on to show too much affection to servants, at least publicly.
I, of all people, had yielded to peer pressure.
I wanted time to think, to grieve. To meditate not on my essence, but on the shame I felt at letting myself fall into the sort of callousness that I had held others to account for.
So of course, father was hosting a gala. Because the pattern spiders have to have their drama.
"As hunting went so well for you last time, perhaps you can take Nalan and Doreg out with you," he proposed the morning before the first guests arrived. The Exalted of the household were gathered around a table in father's study, discussing the final arrangements. As an Exalt, my presence was required, as a child my contributions were not. "Maybe your luck will rub off on them."
That sounded awfully as if he'd decided that the two were overdue to exalt. Which was a bit harsh as they were only twelve. People had exalted as late as twenty, although that was almost as unusual as my own case.
"Thank you for the offer, father, but I was hoping to participate in the Gateway tournament," I offered. Spending most of two days with Doreg was not something I'd welcome, even without Hunt to stir him up. And Nalan was decidedly lukewarm on hunting.
"Are you sure?" asked Etune. I'd never met Icole's grandfather before this summer, as he'd spent a decade stationed in Greyfalls since the death of his mortal wife. I assumed he'd worked through the grief since he'd openly stated he was looking for a new bride now that he was back on the Blessed Isle. "We're hunting boar, so you might manage to kill one yourself this time."
"I wouldn't wish to harm your courting prospects by out-hunting you, elder brother."
Etune stared at me and then threw back his head and laughed. "I'd like to see that, little sister. But you're right, I should secure myself a new bride first."
And thus, as the hunting party set out; I got to spend time in the garden, where several tables had been set out with boards for Gateway, the preferred strategic game of the Scarlet Dynasty for the last three hundred or so years. Given that two infamous players (including Cathak Cacek who had invented the game!) were present, I had a sneaky feeling that I wasn't going to win. But it would be nice to at least make a strong showing.
The pairings were chosen at random, with my mother drawing names from a vase.
"Tepet Demarol Alina," she declared and I was drawn out of my thoughts as she reached into the vase again. "Will face… Ragara Nova."
The man who responded was a short and broad man with his blond hair washed back with some sort of pomade that I could smell from several yards away. It wasn't an unpleasant scent, just distinctive. He was dressed well and after a moment I placed him as the governor of Chanos, a major military port on the north coast.
He certainly didn't seem like a soldier, but that meant nothing. Any adult Dragon-Blood was expected to be able to pick up a weapon and perform as an officer whatever their daily life involved. It was possible for all I knew that he'd spent a century with the legions – or that he was a pledged shikari who had fought many Anathema.
His name didn't jump out at me for anything but Chanos, though.
Walking to one of the tables he drew back one of the chairs and then bowed graciously, offering it to me. "Permit me to offer you this courtesy, my fellow Child of Pasiap, before I destroy you on the game board."
I offered him a polite nod and accepted the seat. "Only a fool refuses courtesy, and only a greater fool counts a battle won before it is begun."
He laughed. "Well said. I look forward to a challenging game."
We set out the pieces and began the match with no further ceremony. We both knew the rules and there was no need to wait on observers since the majority of those who had stayed to watch were focusing on more famous players.
Nova's strategy was systematic and methodical, pinning down one corner of the board at a time, while refusing to be drawn into any expensive exchanges of pieces. It was the classic earth-aspect approach to strategy and one I knew well.
I was also aware of its weakness, the potential to crush it with a hasty attack before he had all his pieces in place to dominate. But the opening I saw for this was curiously obvious, either he was underestimating me considerably - not impossible when faced with a mere eleven-year-old – or he was baiting a trap.
After considering my options, I elected to instead give the appearance of similar caution while setting a few pieces in place to exploit what seemed likely to be the focus of his play if he was seriously going to play the long game.
He seemed almost disappointed by my caution and after an hour of play, his pieces advanced steadily into the centre. If he took that then he'd have a commanding position to pick apart my own forces.
Several games had ended already, including those of Cathak Cacek and the other well-known player, Ledaal Kes. Still, no one bothered us particularly, only a couple of defeated players coming to watch us while the two masters dissected their games in retrospect, offering polite advice to their defeated opponents. I assume that the chance for a master class was certainly more interesting than seeing a child be knocked out in the first round.
Or perhaps it was Nova they thought so little of.
In any case, I moved two pieces as if I had not yet realised that he was moving on the centre and with a disappointed sigh he made an unmistakable move of force directly into the centre. "And that decides the game, I believe."
I looked at the board and then gave him a smile. "I think it might, but indulge me and play it out?"
"I suppose." Nova leant back in his chair.
I moved my pieces and the man blinked. Then he leant forwards, calculating the pieces positions anew. I had ignored the centre and crushed one flank entirely.
And with that, his attack on the centre was transformed from a devastating advantage to a dire position, with my own pieces threatening him from every angle.
He snorted, and then laughed out loud. "I believe my words were right, even if I was wrong about the victor." Reaching out, he tipped his general over. "Your game, young general."
"Thank you, Lord Ragara."
"Please." He waved his hand dismissively. "I'm merely escaping my responsibilities here and we're both Exalted. But excuse me if I go find a lady more my own years to console me on that thrashing." He rose from his chair and then bowed deeply before departing.
I studied the board. I wouldn't have said that it was decided yet – he was at a disadvantage but I could see a couple of ways to extricate his key pieces, making me pay for the rest. It wouldn't be an equal exchange but he still had a strong base in one corner.
Then again, if these were real soldiers would it be justifiable to expend them in battle or better to seek a negotiated settlement using those potential losses as a bargaining chip? A moot point on the game board but…
Or perhaps he was just not that good. I could be overthinking it.
I tapped my lips. No, he'd seen exactly what I'd done. He was good enough… Which suggested that he didn't want to win in the first place.
Mmm.
I shrugged and reset the board for the next players and was about to see about some of the canapes when I saw a surprising face.
"Alina!" Tepet Elana exclaimed loudly. She wore the same armour as before but there was a new addition to her chest, a cloak brooch that marked a status very different from a Talonlord in the Imperial Army.
"Elana." I crossed the grass to her and she clasped my forearms with both hands in greeting. "My congratulations."
"On this?" the Realm's newest magistrate glanced down at her badge of office deprecatingly. "I'm still not sure why I have it."
"I was thinking more of surviving the cannibals and Her Scarlet Majesty."
She snorted at the mild irreverence. "I'm not sure which was more dangerous, but with the first I couldn't leave our wounded behind."
"That might be why you got the new job, but obviously I wasn't consulted." I looked around and saw the last matches wrapping up. Mother was already preparing the vase again with more names.
"So, what's going on here. You're not out hunting?"
"No, there's a Gateway tournament."
"You play competitively?"
I shook my head. "I wasn't keen about going hunting."
Rather than chide me, she gave me a rough pat on the shoulder. "I understand. I'm mainly here for an excuse to avoid my mother until she calms down about how much my appointment has improved my marriage prospects."
I blinked. "You're going to cruise the party circuit for the next forty years?"
She laughed. "Well, until I have a clear-cut reason to visit one of the satrapies on duty. And she's not wrong that I probably should marry now that I'm out of the legions. She can set up some meetings while I'm away. Go play your next match and I'll watch. Don't expect any advice though. I'm more of a dice player by preference."
I turned towards my mother and then paused. "Watch out for my brother Etune. He's looking for a second wife."
She shrugged. "Might be a little young for me."
Mother gave me a pleased look as I returned. Had she not expected me to beat Ragara Nova?
I was the sixth name drawn this time… and the fifth had been Ledaal Kes. The infamous player didn't draw my chair out for me, he just sat down with a drink beside him. I suspect he didn't expect to need longer than it would take to finish that to finish me off.
Elana moved up behind me. "I don't want to shake your confidence, but…"
"Yeah." I met Kes' confident gaze with a steady refusal to be shaken and he tilted his head to one side and then shrugged it off.
"So, you're the prodigy that exalted even younger than I did." He made his first move. "Did you get poked and prodded at much for the months afterwards?"
"Not so much as I recall." I set out a cautious offense to cover for a discreet defensive strategy.
"Ah, I am envious. They made my first months at school hell," he recalled. "Which didn't do much for fitting in after that."
"I think the elders of my house may have preferred a longer-term examination," I told him, recalling the lengthy grilling by the elders after my first two years.
"Ah well." And then he launched an offense that savaged my probing attack with little finesse and looked prone to smash right into the defences I was setting up.
Well, it was unlikely he'd waste some complex and incisive strategy on a child. I resisted the temptation to respond to the reckless attack and settled in to grind him down.
After four more moves, Kes picked up his glass and drained it. "You impressed her Redness," he told Elana. "Although I think as much with your denseness as anything. Did you really almost walk away from her propositioning you?"
There was an embarrassed silence and then Elana laughed. "Very nearly. I'm just an honest soldier."
"You'd better grow out of it," he advised her without rancour and then leaned forwards to examine the board. "Did you know I played her at gateway once, when I was about your age?"
I did, but I denied it.
"She beat me. She probably could have crushed me, but it dragged out a bit." He paused, "Not out of courtesy, you undersand, I think she just didn't care."
"And why show her hand?"
"Correct." And then he moved three pieces in rapid succession and I saw my defensive line was about to be torn in two.
Without hesitation I collapsed my defence and shifted every piece that I could across the board to attack his rear. There was something disorientating about playing with the bulk of his pieces on my side of the board and vice versa.
The game went to a conclusion by points and I have no doubt that he was holding back, but I like to think I made him work for the win.
The white jade used in obols was by far the most common colour of the material available from mines on and under the Blessed Isle, associated as it was with the Pole of Earth. This was fortuitous as this is the variety of jade that meshes best with the essence of Earth-aspected Terrestrials.
I had woven the jade thread I had spun into long strips, edging them with wire and wound them into cylinders measured to fit over my forearms. The way that these strips were interwoven was such that tugging one end tightened them enough to secure them around my arms while tugging the other end of that same strip (usually folded safely away) would loosen them enough to remove.
If I had been able to get my hands on the starmetal I wanted, I would have embroidered the strips with sutras, turning them into prayer strips praising the Maiden of Endings and the lesser deities concerned with the constellation of the Sword. In my past life I had possessed bracers of that kind, though forged of solid strips of jade almost an inch thick.
There was no way I could afford that much jade. And while I didn't have the strength of mastery of essence yet that I remembered, I at least remembered the lessons in crafting artifacts that I had picked up after making those bracers – including how to spin jade into thread and turn it into cloth.
"I've never seen someone work jade like this." The school had called in Ledaal Phaestis to examine the bracers. "I wouldn't have thought you had enough jade here to have any significant benefit."
"The quantity, in this case, should matter less than the proportion."
The older exalt nodded his greying head. "I see. The result of many seasons of work, I would assume. Who helped you with this?"
Udano and Emari straightened as the old crafter glanced at them, but then he looked past them.
"I couldn't have made them without Udano's strength and Emari's eye for detail," I told him diplomatically.
"Yes, but from whom did you learn this technique?"
"It's my idea."
Phaestis stared at me and then removed his spectacles from where he'd pushed them on his forehead after examining the bracers. (They weren't for correcting a deficiency in his vision unless you consider an inability to view things at a microscopic level to be a deficiency). Pulling a handkerchief out of his pocket, he began to polish the magnifying lenses absently. "You invented this yourself?"
"She really did," Emari confirmed.
Beside her, Udano nodded firmly. "Won some good money off people who were convinced it couldn't be done."
"I do not generally wager on such challenges," the Ledaal artificer observed, looking at me with keen eyes. "However, if someone had presented the proposition to me, I might have made an exception. If that someone was a child of… you are ten years old? Younger than that?"
I was not that small! "Twelve this summer."
"Humph. I would have wagered. And in this case, I would have lost my stakes. Root and Reed School is not generally renowned for producing artificers… not that your teachers are bad but it simply does not draw students with an aptitude for that, which is a self-reinforcing trend…" Phaestis grimaced.
"Generally speaking, exploring a road not travelled results in finding reasons why it is not used," I conceded. "Sometimes, though…"
"Quite." He turned the bracer over in his hand and then returned it to the workbench, next to the other of the pair. "I confess I am more intrigued by the process you have developed than the actual result. What were you aiming to create?"
"Something similar to the Perfected Kata Bracers I have heard that the Wyld Hunt sometimes employ." Such artifacts significantly enhanced the skill and strength of a martial artist using a supernatural form of martial arts.
He tilted his head. "That is quite ambitious and I trust you will not be offended if I say that I am not surprised that you fell short."
As a rule, the crafting of artifacts was constrained less by the complexity of the physical construction and more by the need to precisely lay artificial essence flows through the artifact. Jadesteel blades and armour were comparatively simple, but the only examples of Perfected Kata Bracers I was aware of had been crafted by masters who had reached the first immortal court of essence control.
It was no surprise that they were incredibly rare.
With all that said, if I could get some starmetal – or figure out how to obtain the same result with black jade, orichalcum or perhaps a combination of the two…
That was my current best theory, although that was all it was: a theory. Getting the orichalcum would raise eyebrows at a middling high level within the bureaucracy of the Realm. The Thousand Scales had many differing priorities, but monitoring anyone buying a metal closely associated with the golden Anathema – otherwise known as the Solar Exalted – was fairly high up the list.
I had no plans to try that, at least until I had managed to confirm on paper that I wasn't barking up the wrong tree.
"Mild protective benefits and a slight advantage to the essence flows of supernatural martial arts forms," Phaestis summarised my accomplishment, such as it was. "Worthy of my attention, but far from your goal. However, if this can be applied… hmm. Labour time would be impacted, but if we can cut the need for jade in our alloys… you used silver?"
I nodded.
"Hmm. Bolstering the value of silver would have economic effects," he concluded grudgingly. "I'd have trouble selling it as a mechanism for most items, but for precise mechanisms and those demanding large quantities of jade… this could shave entire talents of jade from the cost of constructing parts of a warstrider. Not to mention warbirds, which would see a weight-saving."
Udano wordlessly extended his fist towards me and I reached over and bumped my own knuckles against his, enjoying the brief moment of triumph at being recognised. And then I had to face the unfortunate side: if this had major military significance…
"I take it then that we must consider the process a secret of the Realm?"
The old man gave me a sympathetic look and then straightened, less the fellow crafter and more one of the Legions' most senior sorcerer-technicians. "Officially, yes. Since your schoolmates have seen them already, my formal report will cite your work as marginally acceptable within formal regulations, but as a dead-end with no larger applications and, indeed, markedly inferior to normal practise. I see no need to penalise you – for a school project it is exceptional."
"Thank you, sir."
He patted me on the head. "Informally, the Scarlet Empress will be informed and we may explore a trial of the technique on a larger scale. A public act of destroying your notes in a fit of anger at being told that your work is a novel toy at best would be advisable."
I sighed. "Out of character for me. However, a mysterious prank destroying them and my – unsupported – suspicions of a student with reasons to undercut me…?"
Phaestis smiled. "Clever girl. Yes. Complete your education and hone that mind carefully. Where do you plan to study next?"
"I have no definite plans."
"You obviously have the mind for the Heptagram but even if you decide otherwise, I would be happy to arrange an apprenticeship with one of my colleagues. The legions can never have enough sorcerer-technicians."
The old man left us to make his report to the teaching staff and I studied the bracers for a moment and then slipped them on. "Oops."
"I don't understand," Emari admitted. "If it's a good idea then why will he judge them a failure?"
"Imagine if Lookshy picked up on the technique and started using it for their own warstriders," explained Udano. "Or whatever other uses that Lord Phaestis ultimately applies it to. If the Realm's enemies know that Alina had invented something like this, she'd be a target to acquire those secrets."
"Oh."
I shrugged. "Well, at least he didn't insist that I destroy the bracers." I slipped them on and tightened them.
Emari put one arm around my shoulders and leaned down to kiss my cheek. "Well, I'm proud of you, even if no one but the three of us knows about what you've done."
It was nicer, I found, to have her somewhat unqualified approval even than the conditional praise offered by Ledaal Phaestis.
I was brought back to Juche again after my fifth year at school. Two years in a row, was this some sort of a record? Or perhaps relations with the main household had been sufficiently repaired. It was hard to be sure.
Rather than facing the five elders there, I was instead called to father's study on my first morning back. He and mother were sitting behind the table and I was directed to take one of the seats facing them.
"I won't require you to demonstrate your skills as the elders did in earlier years," Demarol assured me with a warm smile. "Your teachers have written glowing remarks about your performance and since their claims, for good and ill, have borne out in previous years I see no reason to doubt them now."
So, what was I here for? Also, I doubt all the teachers were happy with me. I'd scraped through some classes where I just wasn't invested. I think you can guess which.
The irony of only barely passing literature when I'm an avid reader was not lost on me.
"This leaves us with some decisions," Yrina told me, with a sidelong look at her husband. "Alina, you may not realise it but you've completed all the requirements to graduate from Root and Reed School. You could spend another year there with your classmates – and then another year given your age – but all that would do is polish your weaker areas and it would be disruptive to teach to your level when most of the other students are behind you."
I had to pause at that but now that I thought about it, there had been a few areas where I'd spent most of the year working on projects that hadn't been much like those of Udano or Erika. Had the teachers been sneaking class material from the next year into what they were teaching me?
"I see." I paused and then since they both looked at me in the expectation of more: "I assume that there are options you have in mind as alternatives?"
Mother leaned forwards. "I have written to the Cloister of Wisdom about admitting you as a student. With the endorsement of your school, they have advised that they are willing to let you take their entrance exam but only at the end of the next school year. Bringing you in one year early is as far as the teachers are willing to bend the usual requirements."
"I assume," Demarol added, "that your wishes have not changed?" I suspected it would go poorly for me if they had.
I pushed back my chair and bowed deeply. "Please accept my gratitude, father, mother. I am very glad to be given the chance to attend the Cloister of Wisdom and will do everything that I can not to let you down."
"Very good then. That leaves the coming year." He steepled his fingers. "General Arada does recommend a year of travel to broaden your horizons but I think that best left until you have completed your education. A twelve-year-old is rather young to be allowed to travel without guidance."
On the one hand, I could probably manage. On the other, it would be enormously easier if I wasn't so visibly a child. There was still too much baby fat in my cheeks to pass for even an unusually small adult. Dragon-Blooded tend not to age past their prime until they're well past the second century (and sometimes not even then) and I was beginning to wonder if my early exaltation might have trapped me in an extended adolescence.
"Before we discuss that," added Yrina, "There is the question of your future marriage plans. Have you considered your career options?"
"If you're considering the Immaculate Order then it would be best not to move forwards with any discussions until you've completed your training and the Cloister and made a firm decision," my father added.
I shook my head. "I don't feel a calling to the more spiritual aspects of the order," I admitted. "It's the finest martial arts school in Creation but that's all I'm looking for from it. I understand that I must accept their strictures while I'm there…"
"And they'll cut off that pretty hair," warned Demarol whimsically.
"More importantly there will be no making treats to eat." Mother seemed to find that a more compelling advantage from her tone. Did she disapprove of that hobby? "For that matter, your experiments in crafting with jade will be off limits while you are there."
"I understand." I'd probably taken that as far as I could without starmetal and I doubted the monks would accept my practising with my handiwork either. Immaculate styles – both their exclusive celestial styles and the lesser Terrestrial styles – had rather specific expectations of what weapons were considered proper.
Bracers woven of jade thread would probably not qualify.
"Given that you're planning to broaden your horizons after graduation, I don't expect you to commit to anything." Yrina folded her hands in satisfaction that I had accepted her warning. "But if you had to decide now, what would you wish to do?"
Travel to Nexus and kick the crap out of a very stupid sorcerer was probably not going to fly. "Given the traditions of our house, I think it would be wise to spend several years of service in the Legions. A decade perhaps." I looked at my lawful father. "I know that your years of service gave you a solid reputation before you found your own path in life."
He touched the short daiklave still buckled at his side. "They did indeed."
Yrina nodded. "That is also not something that I would feel comfortable with you exploring at your age. Even stationed in the Realm, a legion camp is no place for a child your age."
"That then leaves us a few possibilities." My father stopped fondling his sword. "You could stay here of course. The social life here in Juche would let you make valuable contacts for later in life but it must be said that it's unlikely that you'll encounter anyone close to your own age. There is also the possibility of putting your experience coaching elder Jita's daughter to work by tutoring our current crop of youngsters."
"Or she could travel to Lord's Crossing with Etune," added Yrina. "They would be happy to welcome you in that role and you could get some experience of marriage negotiations."
"Has he found someone already?" I asked in surprise. I hadn't heard anything about that and I'd been trying to keep in better touch with events here over the school year.
"No, which is one reason he's going there. The other reason is that Icole seems to have been writing to a reasonably distant cousin at the Heptagram so we're opening discussions with her immediate family in Lord's Crossing. She's Exalted, but as she's elected for the path of a sorcerer, they may be willing to accept an unexalted husband."
Yrina shook her head slightly. "Alina knows Tepet Iyuki."
He blinked. "Oh yes, of course."
I can only assume that he hadn't bothered to check which school Iyuki had attended before the Heptagram. Still, good for Icole!
"If you have any other suggestions," he continued. "Then this would be the right time to bring them up."
"May I have a moment to think?" I asked. The prospect of going to the Cloister of Wisdom before I was fourteen was such a surprise that I hadn't really considered this option. I'd go of course. The sooner I could get some more experience and go through the initiations to learn Earth Dragon style again, the better. But what to do in the meanwhile…
At their nods I closed my eyes in thought, walling everything out. Just my thoughts, the pulse of my blood and the distant pull of the Pole of Earth.
The pole of Earth. The Imperial Mountain, Meru. Site of the ancient ruined capital of the Solar Exalted and still full of dangers from their overthrow. The greatest city of all Creation had been thrown down and it was still not fully explored given the many ancient hazards. I'd visited it more than once in the ninth century and there had still been resources there for those who could penetrate the horrors unleashed there.
Today the mountain was closed save to the monks of the Immaculate Order and the pilgrims who walked the mountain trails between the monasteries that dotted Meru, the monks working to maintain secure routes and keep the dangers in check.
I opened my eyes. "I would like permission to spend the next year on martial pilgrimage," I told my parents. "Climbing the Imperial Mountain and preparing my soul for the process of studying at the Cloister."
It wasn't quite as easy as that, of course.
Even if I was an earth-aspect and following established trails (or at least, I piously pretended that I would be doing that rather than digging into the ruins), the Imperial Mountain would be dangerous terrain for a traveller. It was high and cold on the sides, except where the ancient climate controls that had made a city around the summit instead now left unpredictable pockets of almost any imaginable weather.
It was possible to go from a hurricane to the humid heat of a jungle in instants, or from that to raging torrents of water summoned from what remained of the immensely complicated plumbing that had once brought water to the inhabitants from the three rivers at the foot of the mountain and then drained their waste away.
As such, my parents had insisted that I should travel with companions.
Cathak Uzuki wasn't known to me, although as one of the other great martial houses, it wasn't a surprise that she intended to follow Cathak Cainan's example and study at the Cloister. The other girl was Tepet Berel Ayama, who I had thought was contemplating a career with her family's trading interests.
"I want to serve our House first," she told me quietly on our first night climbing the mountain. We had made a camp in a hollow of the foothills and set up a tent. Uzuki was gathering more firewood as I prepared our meal. "And the Immaculate Order may be the best place. My brother feels I should test my commitment at the Cloister first."
"Your brother?"
She shrugged. "My parents are more interested in the exchange of goods with Gem now that V'Neef is making gains in the firedust trade."
Neither was Exalted, so I had to set my pace accordingly. If I was on my own, I would have left the trail and gone straight up, probably climbing even sheer slopes since there was a better chance of finding some area that hadn't been looted already if I went somewhere hard to reach.
As it was, I'd needed to stay near to the trail and perhaps keep my exploring to night time hours. It left me catching up on my sleep at monasteries, which I explained as feeling more secure there and restless out on the mountain, close to the raw essence of the pole. Ayama and Uzuki had little choice but to believe me about that.
We were crossing the glass flats (by which I mean sheer sheets of glass, which were sharply angled, not what I'd call flat) when I called a halt early. "We're higher than we've ever been so far," I told them. "And you're both trying to hide the fact that it's tiring you more than you expected."
"I can keep going," insisted Uzuki but Ayama put her pack down.
"What do you suggest?" she asked me.
I nodded in gratitude for the support. "Let's camp here overnight so you can acclimatize more. Once you're both used to the thinner air here, it'll be easier to press on and we'll make up time tomorrow. Otherwise one of you might collapse and that'll slow us down massively."
Uzuki put her hands on her hips. "It's said that the dragons reward persistence."
"They also punish recklessness," I reminded her. "I'll be very glad if one of the dragons does bless you during this climb, but let's try to use our heads."
Then I produced my secret weapon. "I have sweet cocoa from the south. This seems like a good occasion to break it out."
Uzuki's resistance crumbled at that – she had something of a sweet tooth.
Once we had set up camp, I mixed the cocoa with warm milk and let it work its magic. They really were both tired and I had to help a yawning Ayama into the tent or she might have walked into the poles and knocked it down. By the time she was bedded down, Uzuki had also yielded to the inevitable and she was crawling inside to rest.
I sat on the side of the Imperial Mountain and looked eastwards. The shadow cast by the mountain was covering Juche and there were too few torches and other lights there for me to pick it out. Further away, the Imperial River flowed down to the sea and I imagined that I could see the Imperial City enjoying a late afternoon. Probably not though, air distortion would likely make it hard.
The comparative difficulty my companions were having was another reminder of how different Exaltation made me. I could understand how easy it was for the Exalted to take up the rule of Creation and think nothing of heeding mortals. The sad fact was that they were not equals, something that had endlessly frustrated one of my friends in her efforts to set up a democracy.
"Poor Bright Wing," I mused, with no one awake to hear me. "They'd nod and smile, then go back to worship their winged god-queen. It's your own damn fault though. If you didn't want them to worship you, you ought to have shut up."
That would have been the day. Would be, rather. She wouldn't exalt for a few years yet. Her exaltation was one of those entrapped in the Jade Prison that so many Solar Exaltations had been trapped in following the Usurpation.
I wasn't sure exactly where that was, somewhere under the Inland Sea but that covered a vast area for it surrounded the Blessed Isle on three sides, hundreds of miles across. If I had known then I might have broken it now just so the Realm could start to adjust to the increase in the number of active Solars while the Scarlet Empress was still around to give some leadership.
"Hah." I raised my hands and examined the bracers around my forearms. I'd spent essentially my every resource just making these. The sort of resources needed to reach something deep underwater would be orders of magnitude harder to find.
No, even if I had known where the Jade Prison was, I'd have no way to do anything about it.
I needed to get more resources. More tools, more options. Money wouldn't hurt. My stipend was very generous by rational standards. After all, like any dynast, I could live in great luxury for very little effort. I might have my stipend cut if I was literally doing nothing to support the Realm or my House, but that wouldn't be considered until I'd found my feet after completing my studies.
I stood, dusted off my hands and then the seat of my pants. I wasn't going to try coming up the Imperial Mountain wearing just a tunic. It was far too cold.
Going to the sloping glass I started climbing up it, digging my fingers into it. Fortunately, there was a charm for basically this situation and I could see indentations where other Exalted had climbed this slope before. It was likely that anything at the top had been found already.
I had something else in mind though. Unlike those previous explorers - well, I assumed unlike them – I'd once seen a detailed map of Meru. If my memory was correct then this was what was left of Little Chiaroscuro, a cluster of glass towers in emulation of the famous towers of the great metropolis on the shores of the South.
Meru had included many districts like this, almost like extensions of the great cities of Creation and they had generally been linked to their parent cities by a Gate of Auspicious Passage, a huge and expensive artifact that allowed immediate passage between the two locations… as long as you didn't mind the ruinous expense.
For the Celestial Exalted of the First Age, that expense had been more or less routine.
When I reached the point that more or less corresponded to where the gate should be, I secured myself with both feet and one hand, then drew back my fist.
Thump, thump, thump.
Eventually, the glass began to crack. I checked that I wasn't right above the camp and then let the fragments fall down the slope and kept hitting it.
And yes, I was basically hitting the Imperial Mountain in the expectation that it would reward me with magical materials, artifacts or some other treasure.
Look, I don't make the rules. I just know how Creation works and am willing to exploit those rules for my own benefit.
After a while the layer of glass broke open and I got to work widening the hole until I could get through it. There was basically zero chance of the Gate of Auspicious Passage still being functional but if it was there and just wrecked then it would be a fortune in magical materials. And if it wasn't…?
Well, I still had the rest of the mountain to shake down.
In theory it took about a month to climb from the Steady Foundation Pagoda in Juche Prefecture to Victorious Ascendance of Mankind Temple, as near to the summit as mortals were permitted to go. We hadn't been hurrying though, pausing to pray, meditate and study in the many temples along the way. As a result, it took us most of two seasons to reach the point.
Normally that was frowned upon as getting supplies up the mountain trails was a complex business but as we had voluntarily restricted ourselves to the simple diet of the monks (who fed themselves from the food they could grow around their stationed temples) it wasn't too much of a strain.
Also, I was making a healthy donation from the funds House Tepet had provided for my pilgrimage to the temples each time we passed. Money talks, even for monks.
Unexpectedly, when we reached the gates of the temple, two monks were awaiting us there. Both were Exalted and both wore the robes of abbots in the Immaculate Order.
We slowed respectfully as we approached and the party of pilgrims we'd been walking with as we covered this last stretch reached the gate first. Each was welcomed politely by the abbots, awestruck at this reception. While there were other Dragon-Blooded monks on the mountain, there was immense spiritual weight borne by the duo… and one of them showed the tell-tale signs of his Earth-aspect so strongly that I had no doubt that he was not just old, or powerful, but both.
I could sense a level of essence mastery higher than anything I'd encountered since my death and rebirth. Unquestionably he was in the immortal courts, most likely the second of them. And I only doubted he was higher than that because I had made the transition to the third immortal court in my past life.
Nothing since my exaltation had made such an impression upon me. Just making the step into the third immortal court had taken years of study and preparation. I was fairly sure that the Scarlet Empress was the only Terrestrial Exalt who had both made that step and still been alive in this era. And in my past life, I had only been able to trace a definitive record of one other before her - an ancient veteran of the Primordial War whose peaceful ascetic lifestyle and extreme mastery of his essence had somehow allowed him to endure for over three millennia.
The Terrestrial Exalted were intended to be lesser than the Celestial Exalted. Just living long enough to reach such levels of power wasn't something that we were expected to manage.
Our maker had failed to consider though, what the Exalted do to the notion of impossibility.
And for all the courtesy they showed the other pilgrims, it was clear that they were waiting for the three of us. I didn't think I was being self-important to think that that was because of me.
"Welcome to the Virtuous Ascendance of Mankind," the younger of the two abbots offered as we reached them. He reached out and took the hands of first Ayama and then Uzuki. "You have come a great distance to reach us. Please come inside and rest. We will talk of where your journey will take you from here."
We all knew that he was not speaking of a physical journey.
The second abbot simply inclined his head to me. "Blissful Insight will see to the needs of your companions, child. I have been waiting for you."
"I hope that my slow pace has not inconvenienced you," I apologised.
He shook his head. "The mountain has told me of your purpose here. My name is Vaicha and I will be your guide from here."
Ayama paused. "Honoured Abbot, we were charged with caring for Alina on this pilgrimage."
The Exalted monk shook his head again to dismiss her words, clearly immovable on this point. "To here, yes. And on the return. But the route that we must follow is not one for mortals, however enlightened they may be. You may entrust her to me."
Ayama still hesitated but I gestured for her to let it go. "If I am meant to follow Vaicha, then there is nothing either of us can do to change that Ayama. Our journeys diverge here but only briefly."
"I expect it to take perhaps three weeks," he offered. "You will be well cared for in her absence. There is much for you to learn."
Then he turned and began to walk a narrow path away from the temple. Clearly, I was not expected to remain at this temple even for a moment. I shrugged to make sure that my pack was secure and then followed him towards the peak of the Imperial Mountain, and the very Pole of Earth itself.
Vaicha seemed to have little need to speak and we exchanged few words as we climbed, pausing only when I needed to rest. He seemed to have no real need of that, standing watch over me through these brief respites, seeming not to have moved at all during them.
I tried to keep them to a minimum, eating and drinking as we travelled and restocking the outer pockets of my pack at our brief rests. When we were about halfway, I had to dig deeper into my pack and he sighed slightly as I tried to bring the food out without revealing the case at the bottom.
"I am aware of what you found beneath the glass, Ivory Dragon. Do not concern yourself."
Well now I just felt foolish. Or maybe just childish.
I hadn't been able to find any starmetal. Someone had removed the entire gate somehow, perhaps before Little Chiaroscuro was melted into a pane of glass. I had my suspicions about who might have done that.
But I was just about as satisfied with what I had found. Somebody – very possibly the same people who had removed the gate – had left a case containing an almost complete set of tools for fine artifact repair and maintenance. Oh, none of the heavier stuff, but with this I could make such tools given the time and materials.
In essence, the case was a small workshop in a box. My previous incarnation had paid a fortune for a rather less complete set in Nexus, with the dealer telling me that in this day and age there were perhaps twelve such sets not owned by the Realm or the great city of Lookshy, the Realm's one true military rival as far as most people were aware.
To be fair, if I'd found any significant amount of magical material, I wouldn't have been able to take it with me, so short of something as rare as starmetal, this was as good a find as I was likely to get.
By the time we reached the temple just outside the peak, I was almost out of food. And I'd been eating as sparingly as I could manage.
Given the remote nature of the temple, there were only a tiny handful of monks resident here. Three were Dragon-Blooded and the fourth was… I decided not to investigate too closely what he was. He was making a very good job of masquerading as another Terrestrial Exalt and just speculating on it was giving me a headache that suggested significant supernatural forces were trying to impose acceptance of that on me.
So, I ignored him instead. I really hoped that I could break through onto the fourth essence plateau. If I had that much control then I knew a technique that would probably let me shrug that off but right now… particularly after a long and difficult trek along a path that it was hard to dignify by that term, I really didn't have the energy.
The false-Dragon-Blood examined me, making it very hard to avoid paying attention to him. "This child is the pilgrim that you sought."
"If not then he's made a hell of a round trip for little return," I shot back.
Vaicha shook his head. "Rest, eat." He pushed me gently towards the temple's interior.
I was inclined to take that instruction, despite the complaint of "Disrespectful child," from a certain someone.
The abbot's voice answered with quiet certainty. "The Unfallen Temple trembles with anticipation. Its one-time masters have returned to Creation, in numbers not seen in fifteen centuries. And you waste your anger on one tired child?"
I swallowed and staggered inside. I needed to sit down.
The Unfallen Temple was the highest – literally and figuratively – temple raised to the glory of the Unconquered Sun during the First Age. They had called it the Eternal Temple and it looked down on everything save for the absolute peak and the palace from which the Solar Deliberative had ruled Creation (which said a lot about how they saw their stature compared to their patron Incarna). In the First Age only the Solar Exalted worshipped there, led in the later years by the Hierophant of the Solar Deliberative, a man whose legendary piety had somehow brought peace to the Solar Exalted after centuries of warfare.
How Vaicha could be so aware of it as to know the status of its former masters, I could only guess. But his words could only mean that the Jade Prison had been broken open. Solar Exaltations were returning to seek out new heroes to empower.
And as I knew from my foreknowledge, some of those Exaltations were in the hands of those who would manipulate them to seek out… those who were not quite heroes. And who might become deadly weapons aimed at Creation and those who claimed to rule it.
I slumped against a wall, shrugged out of my pack and curled up on the floor, thoughts chasing through my mind until, at last, I slept.
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Interesting to have this explicitly spelled out.
I wonder. That Alina would avoid the hunt could probably be predicted...
'Her propositioning you' maybe?
Perhaps 'on' or else 'into' something, like her sleeves or her bag?