Chang-li usually enjoyed visiting the senior cycling room in the Morning Mist Headquarters, though he used it infrequently. It was a wood-paneled room on the first floor of the building where the senior disciples were housed, with thick mats on the floor and enough room to spar or work through patterns. Lux concentrators had been set up in the room, though they were not currently active.

  Right now, however, he was barely aware of his surroundings as he focused inward, on the lux moving discordantly through his body, pooling in his core then spilling out, brushing past his Lens in unpredictable movements.

  The Cyclone cycling pattern was the strangest he’d ever tried to learn. It required him to take in lux and swirl it around his body in a circular pattern without letting him bleed off lux imbalances the way he would do with most of his other patterns. That meant whichever lux was the strongest dominated the technique.

  In a heavy red lux environment, the Cyclone swirled with the rage of a wildfire, while a heavily green lux Cyclone pressed against his channels as though trying to escape.

  What was Su Nian, the lux shade tutor who had assigned him this technique, trying to teach him? He focused. He would understand how this worked. He would master it. He focused his whole intent on the lux coming out of his core, seeking to understand the ratios of one color to another, to force it all into alignment.

  For one instant, he felt balanced, in command, as though the lux was going to obey him.

  Then a pulse of more heavily blue lux flowed out of his core, and his understanding crumbled. The whole pattern collapsed. Chang-li let out a strangled cry. He sat fuming until his raging lux forced him to start cycling again.

  This time he used the Swirling Mists technique. As part of his attempt to understand the path manual that Master Noren had given him, he was trying to spend some time every day using the basic cycling technique he had taught every Morning Mist recruit. It was like putting on a well-worn pair of slippers. This was one of the first patterns he had learned, as he began cultivation, reading it in old Scribe Wulan's journals. It felt good, even if Breath of the Heavens and Double Branching River were better for combat and practical situations.

  He looked up as the door slid open, and Min entered. She looked as annoyed as he felt. Her hair was falling down to her shoulders, framing her face and making her look a little vulnerable. Her expression of frustration and rage clashed with that look.

  He leapt up and strode across to her as she closed the door, putting his hands on her shoulders and leaning in for a kiss. She responded, but broke away, her eyes still furious. "Don't try to make me feel better. I'm going to kill Joshi just as soon as I figure out how to do it, without bringing the wrath of the Empire down on our sect."

  She strode across and turned on one of the lux concentrators. He watched her fill her core with lux, then dump the excess spiritual luxes back into the room using Swirling Mists. The pattern was extremely good at allowing a cultivator to hold on to the luxes she chose while disposing of the rest.

  Chang-li started to speak, then cleared his throat. Min had her eyes closed, but her temple still throbbed. Her jaw was set as she worked through a basic exercise. Then she switched to something he recognized as coming from the third page of the Morning Mist Manual. He studied her in surprise.

  She opened one eye. "What is it?"

  "I haven’t had much time to work with the manual. I’m glad you have."

  "Only when I can spare it. It helps calm me down," she admitted. "I was skeptical at first, but the way Noren speaks of combining different luxes into a greater whole by accepting them as they are.... The metaphor he uses of mist concealing the individual and making a whole struck me."

  Chang-li had no idea where in the manual she had gotten that from, but at least someone was making some progress with it. He certainly wasn't. "Why are you going to kill Joshi?" he asked, hoping it wasn't a mistake to bring back up.

  Her cycling dropped. He felt her lose control of her lux. She turned off the concentrator and leapt up. "He came back from the Imperial Palace this morning, and he brought an absolutely impossible request. He's given the go-ahead from Morning Mist to host the wedding."

  "Oh, good," Chang-li said. He’d been worried that the wedding would be held on Imperial Palace grounds and he would have to miss it. "I'll have to ask him if there's anything I need to do."

  "I could tell you there’s something you need to do," she snapped. "You need to come up with about four hundred and fifty thousand kwam in the next three weeks."

  Chang-li actually staggered back, his own lux draining from his channels like a puff of mist under strong sunlight. "What?" He blinked, remembering how just a few months ago a debt of thirty-eight thousand kwan had felt like an impossibility for the sect. They’d managed, but not by much.

  "It’s an Imperial wedding," Min said. "This isn't a little ceremony like you and I had. This is a sect fete. We are expected to invite the entire gem court."

  He held up a hand. "When you say 'entire gem court', you mean…”

  "Every unmarried gem noble in the capital, along with enough dowagers and officials to manage them. I don’t even know how many that is yet, but I expect Lady Nightingale will be happy to tell me," Min said savagely. "Then we have to invite at least the other charter sects. If we invite them, we need to invite every sect that's less powerful than they are, so we don’t insult anyone. And it’s not just having them stand and watch Joshi and Hiroko tie a string around their wrists and then eat a fancy meal. That would be bad enough. We also have to provide entertainment. This is going to be more like the centerpiece of a three-day-long festival. There’s multiple gem court ceremonies, each with their own accoutrements. Li Jiya hopefully included subtotals for all of that for me. Do you have any idea how expensive it will be to acquire a thousand different lux-infused orchids in the correct hues?"

  Chang-li shook his head. "I'm afraid that question never even crossed my mind."

  "Well, Li Jiya knows. And now I do."

  "Li Jiya..." Chang-li smiled at the mention of their old friend. "Is she doing well? Will she be able to attend?"

  Min threw up her hands and turned away in disgust. "Joshi says she seems fine. No, she won’t be allowed to attend. She’s a Bride of the Emperor. They don’t leave the Palace grounds until their tenure is finished, if then."

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  "Well, I’m glad she’s made a place for herself there, anyway," Chang-li remarked.

  He was not successful in distracting Min. "We’ll have to host competitions for various ranks of cultivators, too, and include appropriate prizes for each competition. We’re talking lux weaving, lux artificing, hand and fist fighting, and weapons competitions at the very least, and, and, "

  "Take a deep breath," Chang-li advised. "This is all doable. You just need to delegate."

  "Delegate?" Min turned back on him, her eyes wide, hands out at the side. "That's rich, coming from you. Haven’t I been saying for the past two weeks you needed to hire some scribes to assist us with the tasks you're killing yourself with?"

  "As soon as I find time, I'll—“

  "No," Min said. "You're just going to add that to your never-ending list. I'm going to have to ask Noren put you in the temporal training chamber until you’ve had time to finish them all without killing yourself."

  That actually wasn’t a terrible idea. Chang-li shook his head regretfully. "We haven’t had access to violet lux to recharge it."

  "I know!" Min exclaimed.

  She really was angry. Chang-li took a tentative step forward. She folded her hands across her chest. Light, but she was beautiful.

  He tried to focus on the problem at hand and allowed himself a wry smile, admitting that Min was right. He was perfectly willing to tell her to delegate when he had made no steps to do the same.

  “Four hundred and fifty thousand kwan," she said again.

  Chang-li inhaled. "That's a great deal of money. We'll have to tell Joshi—“

  "That the details have all been handled," Noren’s voice said.

  Min and Chang-li both jumped as Noren pushed the door open and entered the room. He looked between the two of them and raised an eyebrow.

  "Am I interrupting something?” He raised an eyebrow.

  Min looked away, blushing. Chang-li worked very hard at not understanding what his master was implying. “No, master. We were just discussing sect affairs.”

  "So, Joshi and Hiroko have decided to tie the knot in the most elaborate style possible," Noren said. "That is excellent. It will provide us the chance we need to demonstrate to the charter sects that we have fulfilled all of their requests as far as teams for the Four Continents Manifestation of Power.”

  It was a change of subject, but one Chang-li quickly latched on to. "You mean the event where we need two Lux Dominators, each with a team of cultivators backing them up?"

  "That one," Noren said cheerfully.

  "And we have only a single Lux Dominator in the sect?" Chang-li demanded. "Unless you're expecting me to reach that point within the next month?”

  "Are you saying you won't?"

  "Right now, not a chance," Chang-li said. "Not with everything else I'm working on."

  "But that will be taken care of with Min’s excellent suggestion of hiring staff for the both of you," Noren said. "Be sure to enroll whatever scribes and assistants you hire as outer disciples in the sect. That will allow our seniors to instruct them in basic cultivation. I don’t want anyone beneath Morning Mist’s roof who doesn’t at least understand the basics of cultivation."

  "Master, forgive me," Chang-li said, "but the more I look at the problem, the more I see that Morning Mist has overreached. We've brought in too many low-level cultivators and failed to handle the foundations."

  Noren cocked his head. "You think our training is lacking?"

  "Our training is fine. Our certificates, our licenses are missing. Half of them can't even read."

  Noren pointed. "Another problem, which will be handled merely by hiring adequate help."

  "With what money?" Min demanded. "Our purse is stretched thin."

  Chang-li had a sudden thought. "What about the vault?" he asked. There had been vast quantities of treasure buried in the vault of Morning Mist back at the sect headquarters. They could have someone return to the headquarters, raid the vault, and come back.

  "I'm afraid that actually won’t be a solution," Noren said. "The only ones able to enter the vault at this moment are you and Joshi, and you’re both needed here. I can’t spare you for the weeks it will take you to go there and come back."

  "What about you?" Chang-li asked.

  Noren merely smiled and shook his head. "No need. Not when the solution lies at hand. The banks of Taishin City are filled with vaults that make ours look like a peasant’s meager stash. Every important sect in the city will have huge quantities of treasures buried there. I will be arranging an appointment for you at the Cultivation Central Bank tomorrow to take out a loan in the amount of... hm, shall we say, six hundred thousand kwan? It wouldn’t do to run short when there’s a wedding to plan."

  Min was boggling. "How are we supposed to come up with collateral for a loan of that size? Morning Mist isn’t a creditworthy risk. I know exactly what our books say."

  Noren produced — seemingly out of thin air, but actually from his soul space — a tiny golden casket in one hand and a solid gold sword, nearly as tall as Min, from the other. From the lux vibrations the sword gave off, Chang-li could tell that it had multiple patterns woven into it. A flying enchantment at the very least, and something to cut through illusions, if he wasn't very much mistaken.

  He held them out to Min, who took them, looking bewildered. Then Noren produced a vial with about half an inch of crystal blue liquid shimmering within it, and an egg mottled black and gold. These he handed to Chang-li.

  "The bank will be able to appraise these treasures for what they are worth," Noren said. "Since any sect would be mad to give them up, they’ll know we will do our very best to redeem each of them."

  "Where did these come from?" Min asked, staggering a little under the weight of the sword.

  "Does it matter?" Noren asked. "Anyway. Chang-li, you’ll accompany Min. Let her do all the talking when it comes to financial matters. She’s got a head for it. You don’t. But you can keep these inside your soul space. Even if Min finishes opening hers, which, I think, my dear, with just a little more concentration, you’ll be able to do, the spiritual weight of these treasures inside of her would tear her apart. I think it probable you will be able to handle them for as long as this will take. Let’s see..." He gave a small smile as he looked between the two of them. "What else? Ah. Your cycling. Chang-li, I noticed you’re having difficulties with the Cyclone technique. I believe the problem is that you are trying to understand the balance between the colors of lux you are cycling. That works well with Swirling Mist and other patterns. But for Cyclone, you cannot understand any more than you can understand a storm. You must simply ride it, accepting the chaos."

  Chang-li frowned. “Forgive me, master, but I don’t see how that is consistent with my Intent. To master something means to understand it.”

  “Keep at it,” Noren advised. “Remember what I said though. Min, you’re coming along well. I want you to keep clarifying your own intent so you can advance to Spiritual Refinement. Anything else?” He paused by the door, clearly ready to leave. Chang-li was distracted thinking about the Cyclone pattern.

  Min said, “No.”

  Noren left.

  Min and Chang-li glanced at each other with mirrored looks of disbelief. After a moment Min held out the treasures Noren had handed her, the sword and cask. With some trepidation, Chang-li stored the vial and egg in his soul space. He felt a strange tremor in his channels after they disappeared. It was gone so quickly he wasn’t sure if he had imagined it. He took a few moments to sense his core and soulspace to see what, if anything had changed. He felt nothing.

  “Well?” Min asked, sword and cask still held out.

  Chang-li murmured an apology and quickly took them, then stored these treasures as well. This time he felt no tremor. He didn’t feel more heavy or anything, but the knowledge he was carrying treasures worth hundreds of thousands of kwam weighed on him.

  “I can’t concentrate on cycling anymore,” Min announced. “That’s a load off my back, but now I’ve got so much more to do…”

  “Delegate,” Chang-li told her.

  “Only if you do,” Min retorted.

  “I’ll consider whatever scribes you send my way. But anyone we let see our secrets is a security risk. What if one of the other sects bribes—”

  “That’s it!” Min announced suddenly. “I know who we can trust. Well, not exactly trust, but I know how to manage them. I’ll speak with the local Brotherhoods. They’ve already reached out to me inquiring about alliances. I think they want some members to become disciples here. I can trade knowledge for help.”

  Chang-li felt a sense of relief. “If you think we can trust them? Absolutely. We also need to hire some tutors to teach basic literacy to the disciples.”

  “Just a matter of money, and we’re about to solve that.” Min’s brisk smile returned. She leaned in and kissed him hard. It was the first time in weeks they’d been this relaxed together. “Can you spare an hour from your cultivation?” she whispered in his ear.

  “Actually, there’s a cycling technique I’ve been wanting to practice…” he lowered his voice before telling her the rest. Her eyebrows went up and he wasn’t finished before she’d dragged him from the practice room toward their own chambers.