Thresholder

The next day, Luo Yanhua was impressed with his progress, and whatever Perry’s reservations about her, he still felt good about that.

“Did you spend the entire time we were apart in meditation?” she asked.

“I slept,” said Perry. “I had dinner, and breakfast. I bathed. But I was doing meditation most of the time I wasn’t sleeping, yes.”

“You were meditating … while you ate?” asked Luo Yanhua.

“Sorry if that was impermissible,” said Perry, bowing slightly. “I should have asked.”

“No, it’s completely fine,” said Luo Yanhua. “But meditation of the sort I taught to you yesterday takes focus and concentration, and to be productive while engaged in other activities is something we don’t often see on someone’s sixth day.”

“I guess no one told me that I couldn’t do it,” said Perry. “But I’ve always been good at multitasking, or at least at tuning things out while I got to work.”

He’d had noisy roommates for much of his time at university, and even when he didn’t, he would write papers while watching a TV show or grade tests while jamming out to whatever was on Spotify. With technology and digital media, Perry had become accustomed to processing vast quantities of information, sometimes from disparate sources, often simultaneously. He had more practice in rapidly shifting his attention from one subject to another than anyone here could possibly have ever had.

The more he thought about it, the more he was coming around to the conclusion that watching streamers on Twitch had made him a better martial artist. It might have been that looking down at his reddit feed while watching a movie was one of the things that would propel him to the heights of the second sphere.

Luo Yanhua added more exercises to his repertoire, many of these focused on bodily processes. There was little overlap between them, and they covered all the meridians and vessels, allowing them to be enlarged over time, holding more energy. She showed him a simple ‘meditative punch’, one that could be performed swiftly in a combat situation but was normally done with exaggerated slowness to focus on the flow of energy. It was the first concretely useful thing he learned that day, but not the last.

“I don’t really understand this,” said Perry. “So … there’s energy, I’ve got that, and it comes in different flavors, but during the breathing exercise I’m releasing stale energy. So it goes stale inside my body. That’s … got something to do with the imbalances?”

Luo Yanhua nodded. “Your body is, to be blunt, a wreck.”

“I’ve taken pretty good care of myself,” said Perry. “I used to put in time at the gym, I was a knight, I was diligent about my body during my time in the last world — but okay, tell me how it’s a wreck.”

“We are at our most vulnerable when we are babies,” said Luo Yanhua. “Unless the environment is pristine, the caretakers are wise and diligent, the pathways of the body are ravaged by time. Once you are an adult, it feels natural, but it is not. You have been living, all this time, in a body that is akin to the most derelict building you can imagine, a place of such profound disrepair and neglect that you might pass it by, thinking that it was only some old ruins, never imagining that someone might live there.”

Perry arched an eyebrow. “I’ve fought against second sphere,” he said. “I don’t think there’s that much of a gap, especially now.”

“No?” asked Luo Yanhua. “Is a demonstration in order?”

“A sparring match?” asked Perry. “You’re looking to put me in my place, like Zhang Lingxiu?”

Her face darkened at the name, and Perry quickly realized that had been a misstep. Master Shan Yin had been willing to call his former student a stain on Moon Gate, but Luo Yanhua had been his research partner, and apparently her feelings on his death were more complicated. Perry shouldn’t have assumed that she’d be emotionless about it.

“I am looking to instruct you,” said Luo Yanhua. “Your reaction to being informed of the state of your physical body is to doubt me. That is not a good dynamic between teacher and student. Come, let us find a place to fight.” She turned and walked from their spot beside the lake, and he followed.

“I’m worried you’re going to kick my shit in,” said Perry. “I didn’t mean anything by it, I just don’t think that the gap is that big, that’s all. Maybe it’s me being part wolf now, but —”

“I will not seriously hurt you,” said Luo Yanhua. “I am not insulted, nor do I think you’ve spoken ill against Moon Gate. I wish only for you to have a bone-deep understanding of the work to be done.”

They went to a clearing in the bamboo, a place where stones had been laid down centuries ago. They had been worn down with time, and moss was growing between them, the bamboo growing tall around the area, reaching up to make a canopy.

“We can keep this casual,” said Luo Yanhua. She held her hands loosely in front of her, as though she would bat away his fists. “You have never fought someone of the second sphere, but you must not overestimate your abilities.”

“You think the other fights don’t count,” said Perry. He got into his own stance, the one that Moon Gate had taught him rather than his amateurish boxing stance.

“You have fought people who were weak, or who were not actually trying to hurt you, or who were mortally injured,” said Luo Yanhua. “You have also fought against people who have trained themselves to fight with graceful minimalism. It may have felt like you got close to landing a hit, but that is only because there was no need to move further away from your strikes.” She let out a breath. “You may proceed to attack me with full force, when you are ready.”

Perry frowned at her, then moved closer. He waited until she was just within reach, and drew back his fist slightly. Still, she didn’t move. When he finally started the punch, muscles twitching forward, she stepped to his left so quickly that she was a blur. He turned to meet her, and she moved again, another step to his left, circling him. She was spinning around him faster than he could move, always positioned so that she was on his left, just behind where he could offer any defense.

“Ugh,” said Perry after a full revolution. “Are you trying to get me dizzy, or —”

“Put more effort into it,” said Luo Yanhua. “Attempt to kill me.”

Perry paused for a moment. She was too fast, too prepared. If he was trying to kill her, he would stop obeying the rules of the match, not that they had set rules. He could fight dirty, throw sand in her eyes or somehow fake her out. He didn’t think those things would actually work though, and besides, he didn’t really care about winning here, only proving that he was right, that the gap between them wasn’t really so large as she was saying.

He tried faking her out, but she wasn’t just fast, she could read him too well, and didn’t move an inch until he had actually committed to something. He tried committing late, making his attacks ambiguous, and tried to strike out with his legs rather than his arms, but she was making wide movements. Most of the time he wasn’t even facing her direction.

Perry paused, squaring up with her and trying to think. She was right. He should have known she was. She could have defended with a different style, one where his fists and feet would miss by inches, and he might have thought that he was doing well. There was no way to salvage his ego, so Perry decided that he would do something different: use the tools that he’d been given.

It took time to build up energy, focused breathing to force more of it down through the channels, and an internal resolve to keep everything where it was so it wouldn’t dissipate out his pores. She was giving him a curious look, but he tried to ignore that and not give anything away.

When he punched, he put the full energy of his body behind it. There were losses, splashes of vital energy that went down the wrong pathways, but it was still movement with blinding speed, his fist traveling so quickly that he could barely see and certainly couldn’t control it.

Luo Yanhua moved, a swift side-step, but his knuckles had grazed her cheek.

He turned to look at her, breathing hard, his body still recovering.

Her hand went to her cheek, and she looked at him, a frown slowly etching there. “That was well done, for where you are in your training.”

“Thanks,” said Perry. He was still catching his breath. The energy that hadn’t found its way to the punch was still rattling around inside his body, settling down. “Definitely can’t do that again.”

“No,” said Luo Yanhua. “It is a good strategy, if you find yourself fighting someone like me. Put everything into a single strike, hoping to catch them unaware.”

“Was that a legitimate hit?” asked Perry.

“Yes,” said Luo Yanhua. “Of course, in a real fight, I would not have given you the time to draw in so much energy. I would have killed you, or forced you to submit.”

“I know,” said Perry. “I’m not under some delusion that I could beat you. I’m just saying that I’m … tough, you know? Not some insect to be swept aside.”

“Are you ready to experience an attack?” asked Luo Yanhua.

Perry got into position. He was still reeling from the punch he’d thrown, and not quite back to normal, but he didn’t think that it would matter much. She was going to hit him like a freight train. It was important to take it mostly because she was right, he did need to know how large the gap was. Plus, it seemed like there was some honor in it.

She punched him in the chest, hand moving past his guard as though it wasn’t even there. He staggered back from it, going to one knee, and took deep gasps for breath as his heart beat arhythmically in his chest. He tried to stand, but staggered. He was dizzy, vision blurring, and the radiant pain was exploding through his ribs.

“Ow,” said Perry. He was on the verge of passing out.

“You must understand how much you rely on your armor,” said Luo Yanhua. “You must understand that during your first altercation, Zhang Lingxiu was toying with you, through and through. You are a blade of grass against the ancient ginkgo. You will get there, in time, assuming you don’t run afoul of the wrong people, but you are not there yet.”

Perry’s skin felt like it was on fire, though numb where her knuckles had hit him. He was slowly getting his sense of self back, the blurred vision only temporary.

“So I get to learn the lesson twice,” said Perry, once a few minutes had passed. He slowly climbed to his feet. “I’m like nothing compared to the second sphere, not unless I have my armor on, or I’m a wolf.”

“As a wolf, you are formidable,” said Luo Yanhua. “But you have no experience with it, no true control over it. You are an animal, not a thinking man. The armor … it is also formidable, as you showed with Zhang Lingxiu. The technique you used to propel metal at him would be enough to kill me, if I was careless enough to put myself in front of the device.”

Perry flexed his fingers, making sure that they still worked. His heart was racing, but it was at least beating normally again.

“Lesson learned,” said Perry.

“No, I think not,” said Luo Yanhua. She had been watching him recover. “I’m not sure that you’re capable of learning this lesson. Bury your pride. Hold a funeral, if you must.”

Perry didn’t reply. He didn’t know if she was right, but he knew it would take more than a punch to the chest to change his mind. They were more powerful than him, but he had the armor, and he could still master the wolf. Besides, he was second sphere now, and while they spoke of it as though getting to the top of the pile took decades, he was just going to have to speedrun it, figure out their magic system better than they had, have some insights into how it worked, exploit whatever being a werewolf had done to him, and find a way to steal his armor back.

They meditated together in the clearing, this time with a focus on the healing process. Perry had been injured, that was true, but it was only a serious bruise, and that was, apparently, the sort of thing that was most easy to deal with. Luo Yanhua didn’t expect that he would be able to hurry along the process, but he could feel the body’s energy as the healing took place, and that would lay the groundwork for faster healing in the future.

Perry put his full focus into it. It took an hour for him to untangle the healing process, to separate out the flow of energy through his body, but once he had the pathways traced, it seemed like simplicity itself to push more energy in that direction, taking advantage of everything else he’d already learned. That came with a significant problem though, which was that he didn’t actually have the energy available. He could breathe deeper, or spend from the vessels, but it was all so inefficient and lossy that it was hardly worth the effort.

“How do I get more vital energy?” asked Perry. “You suck it from the air?”

“There are many methods,” said Luo Yanhua. “Air, water, and food all contain their own energy, with air and water being more pure. There is energy in light, whether the sun or the moon, energy in heat but also in cold, energy in shadows and nature. We absorb from all around us, though anyone with any skill will pick a speciality. But those pale in comparison to a good, sturdy tether.”

Perry rubbed his chest, which was feeling tender. He had peeked beneath his training outfit to look at it, and the area was all puffy and red, showing the imprint of her knuckles.

“How long does a person normally wait to tether?” asked Perry.

“It is a process, to tether,” said Luo Yanhua. “Most start from the moment they transition. It takes a few days, and much longer if you want the tether to be strong. But you did not go through the training that others would have gone through, and have not prepared yourself to harness the ethereal energies.” She furrowed her brows. “It is time for more fundamentals.”

“Bring it on, I guess,” said Perry.

“We must move, so you can see the temple in action,” said Luo Yanhua. “Come.”

Perry followed behind her. He was still aching from the punch, but he tried to shrug it off. She had been trying to deliver a lesson, and hadn’t hit him out of anger. He was getting better at sparring with people and not having hard feelings about it, but the frustration of how fast she moved had started to get to him, like a fly that seemed to buzz away the moment before being slapped.

When they returned to the temple, they went up to one of the larger buildings, one perched on tall rock with a far better view of the lake. Perry hadn’t been there before, but he was given to understand that it was the place where all the most powerful disciples lived.

“Here,” said Luo Yanhua from a position on the balcony. “Look out on Crystal Lake Temple.”

Perry did. The people looked small, though they were close enough to call to. The seemingly-constant training in the courtyard was proceeding as usual, and the children were at what Perry might generously have called a school, though he doubted the quality of their education. The large dining room sat squat by the lake, a storeroom on one side of it like a growth of stone and tile.

“Do you feel the energy?” asked Luo Yanhua.

“No,” said Perry, after a moment.

“Imagine the temple as a body,” said Luo Yanhua. “It, too, has its meridians and vessels. It has its energy that flows through it, its imbalances we try to correct. You are not a member of this temple, but while you are here, you are a piece of it. The energy flows through you, even now, though its character is not that of the vital energy of your body.”

Perry tried to feel it, yet still failed. The pathways within his own body were quite clear now, very distinct, and he had worked on widening them, trying not to do the equivalent of skipping leg day. Whatever the hell she was talking about, it eluded him.

“Mmm,” said Luo Yanhua. “You’re having difficulties.”

“You’re telling me to feel the energy,” said Perry. “It’s not terribly helpful.”

“Look down at the courtyard,” said Luo Yanhua. “It is one of the vital places of the temple, where students are taught. Can you see, in your mind’s eye, where those people will go when their training is done for the day? You’ve trained yourself, though not with them.”

Perry pictured it, the way that they would drop their formation and then filter out, most of them going to lunch in the dining hall, but some of them returning to their dorms, others finding a quiet place to rest. He tried his best to imagine them as red blood cells floating down through the veins. His eyes went to the paths between buildings, and the layout of the structures. They must have been designed with the flow of people in mind, which had to be associated with the flow of energy.

“Okay,” said Perry, raising a hand to point. “It’s geography, urban development, a bit of architecture, this fractal study of energy flows, except there’s some separation between the material reality and whatever is happening with the energy, just like there’s some separation from breathing and guiding fresh energy down the Lung Meridian.” Perry frowned. “Okay, got it.”

“You have it?” asked Luo Yanhua. “Just like that?”

“Well, I didn’t feel the energy, no,” said Perry. “But you brought us up here, where the energy should be weaker, harder to feel. I was going to go down there,” he pointed, “and wait for the students to be done, which should be one of the largest flows of energy during the day.” He looked at her. “Right?” From her face, he didn’t think he was right.

“Those students,” said Luo Yanhua. “What can you tell me about them?”

Didactic mode, activate. “They’re … the lifeblood of the temple, right?”

“They are, in some respects,” said Luo Yanhua. “But we might say that they are the fertile soil from which towering trees might grow.”

“Most of these students are born here, right?” asked Perry. “Wouldn’t the mothers be the, er, fertile soil? Man, that’s a horrible metaphor.”

“Many at Crystal Lake Temple are born to the families here, this is true,” said Luo Yanhua. “But Silver Fish Temple had no families, and still I believe the metaphor of fertile soil would apply. You are right that the students are the lifeblood of the temple, but there is a very obvious point that you are missing.”

“They’re first sphere,” said Perry. “Which means that they’re less important, or important in different ways, not fountains of energy. The fountains of energy would be the second sphere, and usually it’s only one or two of them with a class of students.” He was nodding along. “The largest source of energy within the temple would then be,” he looked behind him. “This building, built in a place of prominence, housing almost everyone at the second sphere while they work on their own energy, some of it tethered to this very place.”

“I did not bring you here as a test,” said Luo Yanhua. “I brought you here because it is the place you should be more capable of sensing the temple’s energy.”

“Alright,” said Perry. “One second.” He closed his eyes and held out his hand, focusing his attention on his fingertips, and after half a minute, when he could still feel nothing, he focused on the flow of energy there, the meridians. There were five of them, one for each finger, and he tested them in turn, trying to force outside energy through them. He opened his eyes, looking up at the building behind him, and adjusted his stance and the position of his fingertips, hoping to catch something.

To his surprise, it worked, and once he had a fingerhold, he could feel it more closely, like the gentlest of breezes. He dropped his hand and felt the energy wash over his skin. If it were radio, it would have been tinny and static-filled, but it was there — and there were other things below it.

“There’s something else,” said Perry.

“You can feel it?” asked Luo Yanhua.

“Yeah,” said Perry. He frowned and held out his hand again. The meridians circulated energy throughout the body, they weren’t intakes per se, but being at the extremities, they were more easily influenced by the outside world. His fingertips had always been one of the things to get cold first. That revelation helped him somewhat, and he found it easier to feel out the energy. “There are … five or six?”

“Impressive,” said Luo Yanhua. Her face was impassive, but the words were soft.

“I don’t think this is the sort of thing I can actually figure out on my own,” said Perry. “It’s so faint, and even if I could figure out the directions, I don’t think I know the area well enough to do anything more than make a guess.”

“Make a guess then,” said Luo Yanhua. She folded her arms in front of her chest.

“Alright,” said Perry. “From what you’ve told me, there are lots of things to tether to, and it’s somewhat fractal. Crystal Lake Temple is the big, obvious, dominant one, but we’re in the Kingdom of Seven Valleys, so that must be another one, probably the biggest of them. And then the valley is in contention between Moon Gate and Worm Gate, so I would guess that Green Snake Valley is one of them, though … there’s a flow of energy through the landscape, so I guess I don’t know. But if I count those up, that’s only three.”

“In truth, I cannot say what you can sense and what you cannot,” said Luo Yanhua. “There are more than you can sense, more than I can sense. Your guesses are good, your senses keen. I’ve been impressed with your progress in these things, though progress often comes quickly in the first days after transition. It will slow, with time.”

“Sure,” said Perry. “I still need to learn the language bending trick.”

“That, at least, is simple,” said Luo Yanhua. “Speech brings its own special energy, and so long as you are receptive to it, or in tune with those you speak with, it is only a matter of connection. Like a tether, in some respects, but without the import or the lasting impacts.”

Perry frowned. “Using a concept I’m sketchy on to explain a different concept is —”

Luo Yanhua waved her hand. “You always learn best by doing.” She let loose a stream of incomprehensible syllables, in the cadence of a language that was almost familiar. “Did you feel that?”

“No?” asked Perry. “I mean, I don’t know what it’s supposed to feel like.”

“Like connection,” said Luo Yanhua. “Like intent.” She tried again, speaking loudly and slowly, like some clueless American tourist trying to overcome the language barrier by volume and enunciation. She looked at him expectantly.

“Nope,” said Perry. “Nothing.”

“It is the basest connection with others,” said Luo Yanhua. “Given your aptitude, I doubt that it will take you long. But I have other duties for today, and our time has come to a close. Practice on your own. Do not attempt to tether on your own.”

“I wouldn’t,” said Perry. “Not just because I don’t know where to begin.”

“I can see in your character that you would be tempted,” said Luo Yanhua. “Tethering is the surest path to power, but it cannot be revoked, and it can come at terrible cost.”

“Like having to write research papers,” said Perry.

“Yes,” nodded Luo Yanhua. She didn’t see the humor in it, and Perry did his best to keep the absurd humor from reaching his face.

“Let me know if you need to run more tests,” said Perry. “I’m going to be doing nothing but training.”

She nodded, and they said their goodbyes.

There was still the issue of Marchand, of course, and if it came to blows … he hoped that it didn’t, especially not after that punch.

The room he’d been moved to was small, but not quite so small as the one he’d woken up in. It had a bed, a large pillow to sit on, a bedside table, and a wardrobe, but very little else. A small plant sat near the window, which had shutters but no glass. On the wall was a painting, done on silk, of the temple and its environs as seen from the sky, a point of view that puzzled Perry given that flight wasn’t something that he’d seen from these people.

He sat on the pillow and meditated on the pathways. Luo Yanhua hadn’t gotten to blockages yet, but Perry was at the point where he could feel them. They weren’t blocking the energy per se, just slowing it down, like a clogged artery putting him one cheeseburger away from a heart attack. Once he’d figured out how to remove them, he’d be more powerful still, and while being second sphere was slow to pay dividends, anything that put him above a baseline human would be beneficial in future worlds.

The translation superpower was going to be good, and would certainly be necessary to let him actually talk to ninety percent of the people around him, but he was leery of it. Firstly, it wasn’t ‘true’ translation, it was a reading of something in the air, a distillation of meaning and intent. He hadn’t felt what it was like from the inside, but he’d had enough conversations with Luo Yanhua to know that there were gaps. Secondly, thresholders were selected for worlds in some unknown way, but language seemed to be one of the constants. Maya had mentioned a world where she spoke both native languages, and Cosme had said that he was bilingual, sometimes getting English worlds and other times getting worlds with his second tongue. They didn’t speak English on the Great Arc, but they did have easy translation capabilities. If Perry became a polyglot, it seemed likely that he’d be opening up the number of worlds available to him. He wasn’t sure whether that would make it more or less likely to get ‘good’ worlds, ones which would be helpful to his long-term goals, and it did seem like some sense of alienation was inevitable if he was constantly jumping into cultures that he didn’t know or understand.

Still, after more flexing of his meridians, he went and found Lu Xiyan, his personal assistant. He spoke to her, and could feel nothing in the air, but through pantomime showed that he wanted her to follow him. They walked together until they were beneath a tree that kept a patch of soft grass shaded, then Perry sat down and indicated that she should do the same.

“So,” he said, knowing that she couldn’t understand a single thing he said. “I’m not sure what ultimately led you here, but it seems like the people who came out of the Grouse Kingdom mostly escaped from some hard times. You’re a stranger in a strange land, I guess, and that makes us similar in the most basic of ways.”

She had been avoiding his eyes, but now looked up, staring at him. She spoke in her own language, a brief sentence, but seemed hopeful that he would understand.

“Sorry, still working on it,” said Perry. “That’s kind of what this is about. I just want us to have a conversation so I can feel it in the air or whatever. Um, what else, testing, testing, this is just a test, words in the air, communication between people, talkin’ about talkin’, shootin’ the breeze.”

Lu Xiyan cocked her head to the side and spoke again, longer this time, laced with curiosity.

“Maya got it in a day or so,” said Perry. “She didn’t say whether it was a matter of a lot of practice, if it was natural, or if she thought that being bilingual — wait, trilingual — had helped her. I had some Spanish in high school and French in undergrad, but language learning has never really been my thing. It’s hard and unrewarding, and unless I moved, I probably wouldn’t have gotten much use from it. Spanish would have made the most sense, but in undergrad I had the hots for this girl that was really into French Linguistics. There are probably stupider reasons to take a college course.”

Lu Xiyan smiled at him and replied at length, which was more or less what Perry had wanted, but was slightly frustrating given that he didn’t understand a word of it.

“Right,” said Perry. “I’ve been getting a poor view of this place, the Great Arc, because the only people I can speak to are second sphere, and they’re … you know. Calm, reserved, overly concerned with their tethers. And because they don’t really like to talk, Luo Yanhua has ended up as my lifeline, which hasn’t been ideal.”

He was listening closely to her, trying to turn the conversation into a flow of energy rather than sounds in the air. To his surprise, something snapped into place mid-sentence, and it was as though she was speaking to him twice, once as sounds through the air, the second time dubbed into his skull on a few seconds delay.

“— for powerful men,” said Lu Xiyan. It was the same voice, and a similar cadence, just in English. With some effort, he could tune out her real voice. The lips didn’t match, naturally, but it was a better effect than he had expected it to be. “I jumped at the chance to be your servant.”

“Can you hear me now?” asked Perry. He was talking into the connection between them, like speaking into a metaphorical tunnel, and his mouth was making unfamiliar shapes, the sounds foreign to him.

“Ah,” she said. She turned away from him. “I am sorry, Mister Holzmann. I had not realized.”

“It’s fine,” said Perry. “Look, I just want to talk, to hone this power. You’re the first person who’s not second sphere I’ve had any opportunity to speak with, and if you’re my assistant, we’ll be spending at least a little time together.”

“Yes, Mister Holzmann,” she said, bowing from her seated position.

“I don’t need the deference, unless that will cause problems for you,” said Perry. When March did it, it felt different, almost snide in a way that Perry enjoyed, but she was a young woman who seemed earnest and vulnerable. Piling formality on top of her, making her carry that burden, wasn’t something that he wanted to do, not unless it would somehow ease her mind.

“Yes, Mister Holzmann,” she replied. She looked up at him. “Peregrin?”

“Perry,” he said.

“Xiyan,” she replied.

He felt the need to shake her hand, but didn’t, because he hadn’t seen people doing that here. There was a separation between the first sphere and the second, one that was particularly wide.

“I’m still feeling out this language thing,” said Perry. “And everything that I’ve been told about this world has been told to me by a very small number of second sphere people. I trust that they’ve been telling the truth, but you’re the first person that I can actually ask.”

“I’ll answer what I can,” said Xiyan. “I come from low birth. I don’t know much about the Great Arc.”

Perry looked up at the serrated leaves of the tree that was shading them. There was more training for him to do, but this was a chance for a reality check, a way to see whether there was more to the first sphere than he’d thought there was. He’d killed bandits who were first sphere, helped bury a villager, trained with students, but had never exchanged a single word with any of them. As far as amateur anthropology went, he hadn’t even been able to do the basics.

“Tell me about your life,” said Perry.

“My life has been unimportant,” said Xiyan. “In the Grouse Kingdom, I was a lowly servant, and here I feel fortunate to be elevated to that position once again.”

“You’re a refugee,” said Perry. “You fled across the mountains. I just want … context, I guess. You don’t have to answer, I won’t take offense, but I want to know what being a servant is like in the Great Arc. I want to hear stories about encounters with the higher spheres, what it’s like to work in the fields, how you feel about it.” He had to imagine that Maya was asking the same questions, unless she was a hypocrite.

Xiyan was silent for a long time, and didn’t meet Perry’s gaze. “Then I shall tell you the story of my life in the Grouse Kingdom,” she finally said. “I must protest that you will find it boring.”

Perry sat and listened, his full attention on her translated words.