Evening was falling across Vardin City as Joshi strode along the Crown ring, avoiding making eye contact with any passers-by. Nevertheless, they seemed to notice him, pointing and whispering as he passed. That wasn't a surprise. By now, the Morning Mist colors were recognized throughout the city, and his bald head and foreign features made him stand out. That was all right. No one came up to him as he walked past the shattered buildings, taking it all in, Magen at his side.

The little lux creature was a comfort. It was twice the size of Joshi's own head now, bobbing along beside him, radiating contented feelings back.

Joshi smiled at Magen. "Yes, it was a good day's work," he agreed. He was getting more adept at seeing through Magen's eyes. In the constant fighting he'd taken part in over the last week, Magen's point of view had been invaluable for locating hiding tower beasts.

Walking along with his friend now was the closest Joshi could come to relaxation, yet something was bothering him. It took time to determine what. His heart was unsettled. He needed to face up to what he had forced himself to admit in the temporal training chamber. His instincts were telling him to run, but he was not a prey animal to be hounded by his instincts. He was a lord of the steppes, a cultivator well along his climb. He would make up his own mind. First, he needed to decide what he wanted.

They were approaching the Governor's Palace, the walls of the complex almost untouched by the recent conflict. Joshi slowed his steps. In there was Hiroko, his fiancée. Ending an engagement with an indigo princess was not just impossible; it was unthinkable. It would gain him exactly the attention he wanted to avoid. The marriage to her meant buying into the emperor and all his systems, didn't it? He needed to decide what it was he himself wanted.

Joshi turned. Magen gave a little whistling noise of curiosity. "I don't want to go there," he said, and strode off. Magen whistled again, lurking behind him. Joshi ignored the lux creature and set off back along the ring. He had needed to clear his head, but it was obvious there was nowhere in this city he would find comfort. No. It was time to leave, but he would not run. He would find a goal and pursue it. What did he want?

Joshi allowed himself to think about his past: the quarrel with his father, leaving home, the incident that had led to his enslavement, and then the long weary months wearing a collar, forced to do as he was told by Imperial taskmasters.

The time since had been utterly remarkable. He was at last growing into what the monks of Harupa had shaped him to be, a cultivator with a future bound only by his own imagination.

Yet his past remained with him. His father… he forced himself to look at his sorrow and regret honestly. His father was dead, killed in the war with the emperor, as Joshi had long feared would happen. He would never be able to prove to his father that he had made something of himself.

But even with his father dead, his people remained, still fighting against imperial aggression. A losing battle, of course. The imperial army had many times their number, as well as cultivators, while Joshi's people had no cultivators of their own. That was why his father had sent him to the monks of Harupa for education. Joshi was supposed to have reached a high enough point of his own cultivation to return and teach others. He couldn't help a grim smile, reflecting that Chang-li would make a better choice for that than he would. Chang-li enjoyed teaching, had a gift for it. Under his tutelage, the Brotherhood members who had joined the sect of Morning Mist were excelling, becoming true cultivators.

Joshi's smile faded as he had a thought. What if he did return home? Not to embark on some futile crusade against the Empire. He'd seen enough of it now to know that fighting was a hopeless task. Even if Joshi returned and trained dozens or hundreds of his clan to his level, one prism from the empire would be enough to defeat them. That his people had not already been subjugated with due to his father's strategies: stealth, evasion, and avoiding battle on the empire's terms.

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Victory would be impossible but with a strong cultivator or two backing his clan up, they might be able to negotiate a better end to the war. Then, if he could persuade Chang-li to help him, maybe he could achieve his father's dream after all. But merely returning wasn't enough. Without the means to train cultivators, his return would serve no purpose. The timing had to be right. The omens had been imprecise, but sooner or later the Heart of Ice would emerge. As far as he knew, no one in the empire suspected it was his clan's secret to protect, though his people had stories of foreign cultivators coming to plunder its treasures.

Joshi felt a brief determination settle over himself. Yes, that was a fine goal, a reason to return home besides just to prove to his brothers that he had made something of himself. He could accomplish his father's goals once and for all and help his friend as well. He would need to tell Chang-li the truth. There was no hiding it from a friend, after all.

Joshi's vision swam. He stretched out a hand and leaned against a nearby doorframe of an undamaged building. Suddenly, he was seeing through Magen's vision as well as his own.

He blinked, focusing. It wasn't a particularly difficult trick, but he hadn't been expecting it. Magen was looking in through a window, seemed to be two floors up. Inside, Princess Hiroko sat at her dressing table. She wore a robe hanging loose off her shoulders over silken undergarments, like the ones she'd worn in the broken moon tower when they'd been trapped there together for weeks. Her hair was down around her face, softening her expression.

She was staring into a polished silver mirror. There were tears in her eyes. She held up a pair of indigo earrings to her ears. Joshi was overcome with the urge to reach out and touch her. She was as vulnerable as… his mind reached back, remembering just before he'd entered this tower to try to summon the emperor when they had kissed. No, even before that, a memory of her in the broken tower came to his mind. What had they been saying together? They had spoken, but the memory refused to coalesce.

Instead, he stared at her, forgetting that it was Magen, and not him. He spoke. "Hiroko."

She jumped and looked about wildly. Her eyes fastened on his, and she must have spotted Magen. "Is that... Joshi?" Her arm went up to cover her chest, even though her robe hid almost everything.

"I'm sorry, I didn't mean to intrude," he said. "Magen went off on its own. I, that is, I'm sorry."

"Where are you? You haven't spoken to me since you returned from summoning the emperor."

"I've been busy," he said. He was aware just how pathetic an excuse that sounded. He'd been avoiding her, and she was quite right to call him on it. "I..." He took a deep breath. This was going to be the easiest he could ever say this, and she deserved to hear it, if not face to face, at least from his own lips. "I need to go away."

She raised her hand to her lips. "Why?"

"For training," he said.

Hiroko's shoulders slumped. "Yes, of course. Young Masters always need training journeys. It's expected of them." Her chin went up. "I understand."

Joshi could tell he had upset her, but he wasn't sure what else to say. "Hiroko, I..."

"It's fine," she said, staring straight at Magen. "I understand. You have important work to do. And I'm holding you back. Very well." But she said, and light blazed in her eyes, "I will not break our engagement. I am willing to wait until you decide you want this marriage yourself. However long that takes."

What could he possibly say? "You know, I esteem you highly."

"Exactly what a woman wants to hear from her fiancé," she said acerbically. She turned sharply away from the lux spirit, her hands clenched at her sides.

Joshi was surprised by her bite. Every now and then, Hiroko showed hints of the spirit that lay underneath her layers of duty and training, and it was almost, almost enough to make him want to pry more of it out of her.

"There is the small matter of the fact that your father killed mine," Joshi pointed out.

"Which has precisely nothing to do with either you or me," Hiroko said. She spun back to glare at Magen. "Unless there's some strange custom your people have that says otherwise. But we are both bound in the service of the emperor by the laws and customs of his divine empire."

And that was the reason why Joshi couldn't stay here any longer. "You understand duty well. I do, as well."

She frowned at his words and lifted her chin defiantly, as if to demand what of it?

He longed to say more but held back. His duty was to his people and he couldn't tell her that. Not and risk who she might tell, or risk seeing the look of betrayal in her eyes.

He blinked, pushing away the lux creature's senses from his own, and set off with determination for the nearest ramp down off of the Crown ring.

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