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.