"Do you think I should tell Mother about..." Kia Min trailed off, and she cringed in her seat.

Her father sighed. "Could you handle telling the story for a third time?"

Kia Min considered this for a moment, and then she shook her head. "No. The first time was hard enough. It didn't get easier the second time."

He nodded. "Then don't tell her. Jun or I will let her know when it's appropriate. She has a lot on her mind already. No need to worry her further by letting her know you almost died. You're still alive. That's all she needs to know."

She fidgeted with the hems of her tunic and bit her lip. So many secrets the Kia family hid from each other to protect one another, she realized. Was this such a good idea? Everything was interconnected. Eventually, her mother would have to know. Would it be better to tell her sooner rather than later? And there were so many other things Kia Min wasn't telling them...

"Father," she said, "I... I never did get those letters..."

He smiled wryly. "I figured."

"I just wanted to let you know that I really would have come home regardless of what you said. Master Li would have let me--"

"Min--"

"--and I'd have stayed for as long as I needed to have stayed. Whether it be for a few days, or a year, or longer."

"What you mean to say is, you would have stayed until after I died." Kia Min could not interpret his sad tone. "Min, you would have come home, and I would have let you stay for as long as some peace could be made, and I would have sent you back. Don't worry about an old man like me. You're young, and you have your whole future ahead of you."

"Yes, but--"

"And I would have requested that your mother and brother would not have sent for you again until after I had died. For the funeral. And then I would have made sure you went right back to school, one way or another, as soon as the ceremonies were done."

"But Father--"

"It's my time, Min. If the heavens demand it, who am I to argue? When it's time for me to go, it's time. It's only natural. Your friends, the people of Two Rivers, it was not their time. You were needed there. And also at Hehua. You were needed there. You are not needed here."

She flinched; how could he say that? But she could not argue with him. "... how much time do you have, Father?" asked Kia Min hesitantly.

He chuckled and shrugged. "I never asked. Your mother did. She'd know. But don't let that affect your decisions. You must go where you are needed. One Stone is not it. Not right now. But it's a good resting place, at least, while you figure it out."

This wasn't right. This just wasn't right. "And how am I supposed to do that?" Kia Min asked, barely trying to hide the indignation in her voice.

"Well, what did your masters teach you?"

That was how Kia Min wound up back in the clearing in the woods the very next morning. She stood there, staff in hand, and she scanned the green foliage of the shrubs and the brown bark of the trees.

How long had it been since she really, truly meditated? Sometime before the morning of the bandit attack, she gathered; everything after had been so hectic, so chaotic, that taking a moment to breathe had been the last thing on her mind. But she had been running late to meet with Ni Joh that morning the bandits attacked. Student Si Pat really did not want to get in trouble his first week, and it took everything in Kia Min's arsenal to convince him to let her out.

She had forgotten how she had done it. She wondered if Si Pat ever regretted it after she had been injured, and she wondered how things would have been different if she had not been on the outlook that morning, or if she had been on time, or if she had been later.

Would Two Rivers still be standing?

Kia Min sighed. There was no purpose dwelling in "what ifs." She did not come here to live in the past; she came here to meditate on her future, whatever that may be. She knelt down on the grassy floor, placed her palms upon her thighs, and closed her eyes. As she took in a deep breath, her thoughts began to race wilder.

She was not needed in One Stone? How could her father say that in the condition he was in? Without knowing where Wu and Dawn Star were, she had no idea where in the Jade Empire she was needed anyway, if not One Stone. So where better than home?

And it was not like she had done a perfectly splendid job at Hehua anyway. Yao Hong was dead, and he did not need to be. That was blood on her hands she could never wash clean. Then she wondered if she had only temporarily solved the problem, that perhaps the customer answered to a higher authority, and when that higher authority found out that he had died and why...

Wayfarer Wei and his family would be in great jeopardy. And, in turn, somehow, so would her family.

She had to stay home. To protect her family.

Or, perhaps, go back to Hehua?

Kia Min frowned. Neither of those options felt right; they felt like an easy excuse to avoid what she really needed to do. But how on earth could she ever figure it out? She had merely stumbled into Hehua. She had not chosen to go there. And she had done no good in Two Rivers to have been any use to anyone anyway. Jing Woo had not listened to her when she told him to go hide, he was too injured to fight any longer, and now he was dead; and she had arrived at the Ni home too late to save Joh from the fight he never stood any chance of winning.

Should she have stayed with Jing Woo and the other last couple of students? Gao's mercenaries were tough, but they were not that difficult to defeat. Surely she could have fended them off with the help of the others, and made absolutely certain that Jing Woo did as she asked. Then he would still be alive, and perhaps he and Wu would be together right now. Perhaps Kia Min herself would have been with the senior student, doing some good in the Jade Empire.

But then she would not have wound up in Hehua. She would have never learned of her father's illness, and she might not have arrived home in time, and the couriers with the letters bidding her to come home would have returned to her parents with the grim news that everyone was dead, including her. And she would have never lived with herself without knowing whether or not Joh would have lived if she had not ventured out into the village to look for him.

Was this for the better, then?

A leaf crunched, and Kia Min's eyes flew open. She caught her breath as she saw a bloodied Imperial Army uniform--this could not be a good sign--and she trailed her eyes up to the intruder's face. His eyes were startled, frightened maybe, and as he hurriedly apologized, Kia Min realized she knew this man.

"Chen Yi?"

He stopped his bumbling, and he tilted his head and smiled with recognition. "Kia Min!" he exclaimed. "You're back from school already?"

Kia Min climbed to her feet; this man was not a warrior in any sense of the word. He was the same age as her brother, and his work was that of a farmer. "Yi, why are you wearing... that?"

And with blood stains and holes ripped through it...

Chen Yi blushed and looked away. "This thing?" he asked, tugging at the uniform and squirming. "It's... it's kind of a long story... but it doesn't matter now. I'm home. Home."

He seemed to breathe a sigh of relief as he said this, but that answered none of Kia Min's questions or speculations. "Yi," she said, "what were you doing away from home to begin with? This isn't like you. Running off to go on an adventure..."

"I didn't!" Chen Yi exclaimed. "I... I didn't. Oh, Min, you weren't home yet when the Lotus Assassins marched through the village, were you?"

Kia Min widened her eyes. "The Lotus Assassins?" Again? Why didn't her father or brother say anything?

Chen Yi nodded sadly. "You say that with recognition. You know about them, now."

She bit her lip. "That's a long story, too," she said. She thought better about mentioning that she had no interest in telling it, not when she was trying to get Chen Yi to tell his.

"Stories dealing with Lotus Assassins often are," said Chen Yi. He took a deep breath, and he continued. "It was a couple weeks ago. They--the Lotus Assassins, and the army--were just marching through One Stone. They stopped for supplies, I think. They wanted nothing to do with the town otherwise. On their way out, one of the soldiers angered one of the Lotus Assassins with a clumsy stumble and was killed. That Assassin grabbed me from my work in the rice paddy and ordered me to put on the poor man's uniform. The next thing I knew, I was marching to Tien's Landing."

Chen Yi paused for a moment, and then he wailed, "I had to do it, you see? They would have killed me if I had protested. The Lotus Assassins are evil. They know no mercy, and they are dark, evil men. I knew it as soon as I saw them, and I knew it the moment they cut that man down, and I know it now."

"But," said Kia Min, "you escaped?"

Chen Yi smiled sheepishly. "Well, that's where the story gets incomplete, complicated, and... better. We were guarding a ruin somewhere. A dam, I think. The Lotus Assassins went in, and left some of us--the soldiers--outside the gate. We were to kill anybody who came by. I never wielded a sword, see, so when an intruder did come by, I stayed back and hid. I hid, and when that intruder fought and defeated the others, I begged and pleaded, and oh thank the heavens that she knew mercy... she and her friend. Very kind women, both of them, and very strong, too."

"Who were they?"

"I don't know," said Chen Yi. "I never caught their names. But they were strong warriors, but they did not bear the marks of Lotus Assassins, or wear the uniform of the Imperial Army. They were headed into the ruins, but I don't know why. Maybe they were going to fight the Lotus Assassins in there, or maybe they were going to join them, but I doubt it. I hoped they survived, regardless."

He chuckled nervously. "They were quite... exquisitely beautiful, if you ask me. Charming, especially one of them. Quite a confident lady, she was. Her outfit was unusual, but though I barely knew her, it seemed to fit her... but," he laughed outright, "that's something for me to share with your brother more than you."

Kia Min had no reason to believe she knew who this woman was, but she felt something deep in her chest that she needed to pry out more information from this man. "I'm interested, though," she said. "I... maybe I know her?"

"A graduate from your school, you think?" asked Chen Yi, amused. "I suppose it's possible. Plum. Bare midriff. She wore boots to her thighs, and white cloth wrapped around her arms--"

"Wu!" Kia Min breathed as Chen Yi continued. She knew it! "Yi, Yi," she hissed, and he stopped his starry-eyed memory and stared at her curiously. "Where did you say you met her? Where was she going?"

Chen Yi frowned. "Into the ruins of some sort. There's a dam in there. Lots of ghosts." Ghosts, of course! Dawn Star was with her, after all, that was the friend he spoke of. Wu would not go anywhere with ghosts without Dawn Star.

"But where? Which direction? How far away?"

"... you mean to go after her. You do know her."

Kia Min nodded. "She's a classmate of mine, from Two Rivers. Wu the Lotus Blossom is her name, and her friend was another classmate. Dawn Star."

Chen Yi smiled. "I knew they would have just as exquisitely beautiful names," he said to himself. "Tien's Landing. It was just outside Tien's Landing. A two or three day walk from here, I think." He paused. "You're going after them?"

Kia Min stopped to consider this for a moment. Her father asked her to go where she was needed. She was needed in Two Rivers, though she did little good out there; and she was needed in Hehua, and she fared better there. But her father was dying in One Stone; how could he say that she was not needed here?

But Wu and Dawn Star were in Tien's Landing. Fighting Lotus Assassins. Doing some good in the Jade Empire.

That was where she needed to go.

"Yes," she said. "It's where I'm needed."