The building they had been using as sect headquarters during the bridal competition had been destroyed during the tower break, taken out by a wave of beasts that escaped from the sixth level. Chang-li himself had helped corner and clean up those beasts, but the damage was done.

  Since nearly a third of the city's structures had likewise been damaged or destroyed, the sect had been forced to move into the Brotherhood of the Oaken Band’s complex down on Petal 64. That had come through without a scratch thanks to the stout, armed, courageous Brotherhood members standing guard, even without any of the cultivators with them.

  In fact, the Brotherhood was in better shape than Vardin City's government as a whole. Everywhere Chang-li went, he found Brotherhood crews cleaning up debris, rebuilding homes, and handing out food to displaced people. Their rosettes were everywhere. He hadn't asked Min, but he suspected they had found fertile recruitment ground among the rubble and ruin of the Riceflower. He didn't like how tightly tied to the Brotherhood Morning Mist was becoming, but while he had been focused on trying to help hunt down the last of the tower beasts, he hadn't objected. Now, though, things would need to change.

  Min's grandfather had arranged for a two-story building in the Brotherhood compound to be turned over to the Sect of Morning Mist. Master Noren and the senior disciples had a series of tight sleeping cells on the top floor beside an open room they could use for training, while the acolytes slept in bunks three high on the bottom floor. Min had been given quarters in the family wing of the Brotherhood headquarters, and despite Chang-li's worries about her grandfather, he had spent his few sleeping hours there with her.

  Now he returned, exhausted, with Joshi. The compound bustled with activity. He was glad to be able to slip in amongst the workers coming and going and avoid attention. Perhaps he was just fooling himself. He and Joshi wore Morning Mist robes and were sweaty and covered in debris. They got plenty of sidelong glances, but Chang-li pretended not to notice. Joshi split off from him.

  "I'll talk to you soon." His friend said brusquely, heading for the kitchen.

  Chang-li detoured for the washroom. It wasn't as nice as the one they'd had at the sect headquarters. Here, jars of cold water and scrubbing cloths were set out on the marble counter that ran down the length of the small room. There were spare Brotherhood robes in all sizes hanging on pegs on the wall and a couple of bottles of scented oil, and a long gutter down the middle of the room to catch the outflow.

  Chang-li stripped down to his undergarments and washed his neck and face before dumping one whole pitcher over his head. Refreshed, he emerged from the washroom, then hesitated. Min was probably closeted with her grandfather, working to resolve one of the countless problems that had cropped up in the last week. While he was proud of the work Min was doing to rebuild the city, her tight connections with the Brotherhood left a bad taste in his mouth. He'd been ignoring it and focusing on the cleanup operation. Now it was rearing its head again.

  Like it or not, the sect and the Brotherhood were entwined and entangled. Min's grandfather thought he had a say in what they should do next, and while Chang-li disagreed, this was his city and his Brotherhood; Chang-li was just a visitor.

  Chang-li decided to distract himself in the most certain way he could. He headed for the sect building, slipping into the door, and then to the first-floor storage room that had been filled with all the records pulled from the debris of their previous quarters.

  Thankfully, all of the Morning Mist scrolls had been saved, though one or two of the ones he had copied fresh had taken some damage and he would need to recopy them when he had time. But his habit of keeping the original documents in hefty wooden chests had meant they'd all survived.

  The little storage room was cramped with the boxes of records piled on each other and barely a place to sit beside them. Chang-li sank down anyway and opened one of the top chests. He reached inside and pulled out a pen case and a scroll, ready to copy out the text.

  It was his favorite method of relaxing. As he copied texts, especially ones written in a secret character set, like the Morning Mist scrolls mostly were, he could focus on the characters and his pen, not on everything else that concerned him. While he was happy with his progression from humble scribe to cultivator and Young Master of a reputable sect, there were times when Chang-li missed the simplicity that pen and ink could bring him.

  He opened his pen case and immediately realized his mistake. This was not his actual pen case, but instead the one that had belonged to the ancient scribe, Wulan, the Morning Mist's former sect scribe, who had died hundreds of years ago inside the broken tower at Golden Moon City. And whose shade now rose quite irritated from the pen case.

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  "Where have you been?" Wulan snapped. "I can tell it's been weeks. And what's with the lux density here? Have you taken me back into a tower?" He looked around, sniffing. "No, I can see you haven't. What's happened?"

  Chang-li stared at the shade. “We nearly had a disaster. There was a tower breach and the emperor showed up."

  "The emperor?" Wulan's eyes widened. "Here? He didn't speak to you, did he?"

  Chang-li hesitated. "He sort of did."

  "And your head is still on your shoulders? You must not have revealed the name of our sect."

  Chang-li had, in fact, mentioned the name of Morning Mist, and worse yet, Li Jiya had won the bridal tournament as a candidate from their sect. It had raised their esteem higher in the eyes of all of the cultivation officials. Wulan seemed terrified by the idea, so Chang-li just shrugged. "He didn't ask me many questions."

  "Thank the heavens for that," Wulan said fervently. "Or have you forgotten that he wiped out our sect once already?"

  "That was hundreds of years ago," Chang-li pointed out, "and whatever it was they did, I'm not guilty of the same crime.” Curiosity overcame him, and he added, "What did they do to get wiped out? And how did you survive?"

  "We backed the wrong candidate in a Prism War," Wulan said promptly.

  Chang-li nearly choked. "A Prism War? Morning Mist was that old?" A previous Prism War had been nearly 300 years ago. The next, he thought grimly, might be less than three months from now.

  “It doesn't matter how long it's been," Wulan continued. "The emperor can hold a grudge. I'm not certain, though, if his judgment was pronounced against the sect as a whole or against the leadership it had at that time."

  “Is there a difference?” Chang-li asked.

  "Well, yes," Wulan said. "If the sect itself was declared anathema and destroyed by imperial decree, then resurrecting it would be a capital offense. If it was just the previous leadership..."

  "Shouldn't you know?" Chang-li asked.

  Wulan seemed to hesitate. He drifted about for a moment before sighing and speaking again. "You may have noticed that my memory is not entirely what it should be. All of those years spent inside the Golden Moon Tower at a fairly low level took their toll. The shades at the Cultivator Library stabilized me and raised my effective level higher, but it's hardly…. Why, just the other day..." He trailed off.

  "Yes?" Chang-li prompted.

  Wulan shook his head. "It was like I had a dream." He seemed to laugh at himself for that. "Can you imagine a shade having a dream? But I thought you had woken me. Then there was a gap, and then there you were again, waking me up. At any rate, I fear my memories are not all they should be, which is why you have my journal."

  Wulan's journal was not all that useful either. It spoke about his travels with a Young Master of the Morning Mist sect, Kang, who had avoided the slaughter and returned home to raise his sect back from the dead. Chang-li brightened up. "Right. If Kang was trying to resurrect the Morning Mist sect, then it must just have been the leadership that was condemned, not the sect itself."

  "Of course," Wulan said. "How could I have forgotten that? Yes, yes. I knew I approved of you for a reason. With a scribe's head on a cultivator's body, Chang-li, you'll go far, especially if you listen to me. Now, it sounds as though this tower has proven to be less beneficial to you than you had hoped."

  Chang-li hesitated. "I don't know if I'd go that far. I have not reached the Peak of Spiritual Refinement," he admitted, though he refrained from telling Wulan just how far off from that point he felt he was.

  There was something missing, something he didn't grasp. He felt as though he was standing on a plateau, looking up at the Peak of Spiritual Refinement, but that peak was swathed in thick clouds, and he could not see the path he needed to take.

  "We picked up some disciples and a grandmaster and some funding, so that's good. And Li Jiya won great honor for our sect. My license has three new commendations in it," he added proudly. One for being a member of a sect that had provided a bride for the emperor, one for helping stop Prism Eri’s designs against the Vardin City Tower, and one for assistance in restabilizing Riceflower Province. They were being added to his license even now by the Riceflower Province officials here in Vardin City.

  "Well, excellent," Wulan said with wry humor. "With a license full of commendations and a couple of copper, you can buy a loaf of bread to eat."

  "It matters," Chang-li protested. The more commendations in his license, the more real it became. Why, only a single page in the entire booklet now was faked. The very first license he'd forged for himself now folded in with a dozen other forms and pages, all legitimate, all sealed and signed with the appropriate authority. Chang-li was a cultivator, and no one would take that from him.

  Wulan studied him. "Your core is cloudy," the scribe said at last. "I can feel that across our connection. I don't like it. You remember what I warned you, don't you?"

  "That if it takes me too long to complete the bargain we made, we won't be able to separate ourselves?" Chang-li asked. He had spent some time thinking about that. On the other hand, Wulan hadn't intruded on his dreams recently. If worse came to worst, he could always just keep the pen case locked up in a chest somewhere and avoid thinking about the scribe, though that wouldn't be fair to the bargain they'd made.

  "I'll find a way to return you to the Morning Mist headquarters," he promised before standing up. Clearly, he wasn't going to be writing a relaxing scroll this afternoon. "I'll be back," he promised, and closed the shade's pen case. Wulan disappeared. He stowed the pen case back in the chest, closed it up, and left the room.

  He was just thinking about going to find some dinner when a voice from above floated down. It was Grandmaster Noren calling from the room above, which had been turned into a sparring chamber.

  "I thought I had heard you come in, Chang-li. Come upstairs. It's time we had a word."

  Chang-li collected himself. He really could do with some food, actual relaxation, a conversation with Min, anything but a confrontation with the so-called Grandmaster. But none of those seemed like good enough excuses, so he sighed and mounted the stairs.