Min made an excuse not to join her grandfather at supper that night. She lay awake, wrestling with herself long into the night. The Inquisitor and Noren dueling in the air had been a reminder of that terrible evening when the prisms had fought in the sky over her home. How helpless she had felt as she waited for someone stronger than herself to rescue her. She had done her duty then, helping protect her people as best she could, but the feeling of helplessness would linger.

Min hated to feel helpless. All her life, she'd been raised to know her place and her duty. Her status meant she was obligated to aid those who had pledged their lives to the Brotherhood or put themselves under her family's governance. Now she had a duty to the sect as well, and she didn't know how to square them all. But as she lay there, Min was more and more convinced it had been a mistake to let Chang-li go off on his own. They were supposed to be a sect. That meant, like with the Brotherhood, many hands working together for the good of all. She had let him go because she didn't want to try to hold him back. He was wary of entanglements and ties. She needed him to find his own way to understand that what the Brotherhood was offering wasn't entanglement but support. And yet — and yet, the longer she worried the more sure she was she'd made a terrible mistake.

When she rose the next morning, she was determined to do something. She washed herself and let her attendants help her with her hair, then put on the robes of the cultivator spouse of Morning Mist and went to call on Grandmaster Noren.

She was intercepted in the corridor by Brother Stone. "Elder sister, the eldest brother wants to see you."

Min sighed. Brother Stone, like her, was torn between two overlapping sets of loyalty. "With Chang-li and Joshi gone, you are the senior disciple of Morning Mist," she told him. "You should have duties there, not with the Brotherhood."

Brother Stone looked uncomfortable. "Elder sister, of course, you are correct."

She looked into his worried face. "You told my grandfather about yesterday."

Brother Stone nodded. "We didn't want to disturb your rest, my lady."

Min knew she should have faced her grandfather herself, but how to make a man who wasn't a cultivator and didn't truly understand their strengths feel the terror that had gripped her? He hadn't seen the prisms dueling in the sky. He had been sheltering behind her and the disciples, cycling a pattern to dull his senses, so he wouldn't know just how overwhelming the lux had felt.

Min nodded. "All right." She went to her grandfather's chambers and knocked.

"Enter."

Her grandfather was waiting for her. With him was an unfamiliar woman who looked to be in her late 30s, wearing cultivator's robes in a pattern Min didn't recognize.

"Cultivator Kiao Wyn, this is my granddaughter Min, who is also senior spouse of the sect of Morning Mist."

Min exchanged greetings with Kiao Wyn as she settled herself down. "Are you applying to join our sect?" Min asked.

The woman smiled at her. "Perhaps. I am sectless, and it's always good to find a home, especially in unsettled times like these. That's not why I am here."

"No, indeed," Grandfather Jiang agreed. There was another rap at the door. "Enter."

The door slid open. Brother Stone stood there, and beside him was Grandmaster Noren, who looked annoyed. The Grandmaster stalked in. "What can I do for you, my esteemed host?" he asked Grandfather Jiang.

"Sit down," Jiang invited. Noren knelt at the table. Min started to rise to fetch the tea tray, but her grandfather motioned her to sit. "Well, Cultivator Kiao Wyn?"

The woman looked Noren over and nodded. "That's him. He's the one who challenged that drunk dumbass to a fight at the House of Fallen Leaves six weeks ago. I was there."

Noren stirred, turning to the woman with astonishment on his face. "Cultivator, this is Sectless Cultivator Kiao Wyn," Grandfather Jiang said. "She is here to bring me the news that the man I hired as Grandmaster of the Morning Mist sect met an unfortunate end at the hands of a rogue cultivator. Which means I must ask you, sir, who precisely are you?"

The room seemed to freeze. Min's heart was in her throat. She could feel Noren's cycling shift from his steady background pattern, like a heartbeat, to something more intense. He didn't move a muscle, but his eyes tightened as he looked from Jiang to Kiao Wyn, calculating something. "I do recall you," he said. "You're the woman that the drunk was harassing."

"I could have handled him myself," Kiao Wyn declared.

"I don't doubt it. He was a fool and a coward, both. When such a man offends another cultivator and accepts a duel, then death is one expected outcome."

Grandfather cleared his throat. "Cultivator Kiao, my thanks for your aid."

Cultivator Kiao Wyn rose. "I understand when I'm not wanted." She turned to Grandfather. "Your man said there'd be something in this for me."

"Yes. Please wait in the lower parlor. I will send Brother Stone to reward you. And thank you, Cultivator." Grandfather bowed as the woman went out.

Min's mind raced. If Noren was not Noren, then who was he? A cultivator of incredible power. She didn't know how powerful, but he'd gone toe to toe with an Inquisitor without blinking. That was certainly more powerful than anyone she'd ever known personally, powerful enough to wipe out everyone in this compound with the possible exception of Cultivator Kiao Wyn.

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"Well?" Grandfather Jiang demanded, and Min felt as though she'd been struck in the stomach. Her grandfather simply did not understand just how dangerous it might be to challenge Noren.

Min's mind raced. Noren wasn't really Noren, and he still had served as the Grandmaster. Why? He had some scheme of his own, and Min was horribly, terribly afraid of upsetting it right now. "Wait," she blurted out.

Both heads turned toward her. "Grandfather, stop. This is not your place to speak."

Her grandfather turned red with anger. She'd never seen him look like that, but Min plowed on because she knew she had the right of it. "Grandfather, listen to me," she said. "This is a matter for the sect of Morning Mist. You told me and you told Chang-li you weren't trying to take over the sect, just to help us. If that's true, then you have to let me handle this."

"You?" he breathed, his eyes on her.

Noren's eyebrows raised as he looked from Min to her grandfather and back. Min chose her words carefully, all the training she'd had in her not quite 20 years of life coming to the forefront. This was what she was born to do, to navigate the narrow passage between dangerous sides and keep things from utter ruin. She was terrified, and she was thrilled all at once. Her grandfather would listen to her today. She raised her chin.

"You hired this man to come and stand in as Grandmaster for the sect of Morning Mist."

"Not this man," her grandfather growled. "The man I hired was a drunk womanizer at the Peak of Spiritual Refinement, someone that my sources insisted we could control. This man… who knows?"

"May I speak?" Noren asked in a calm voice.

"Wait," Min told him. "Please, I respect your position, but right now I am the only one here who is honestly and honorably a member of the sect of Morning Mist."

Noren's eyes rose again. "By virtue of marrying a con man who claimed a name and honor he could not ever earn himself?"

"He filed the sect paperwork with his name on it at Golden Moon Tower and here as well," Min said. "The paperwork has been accepted and sealed by imperial magistrates. Therefore, they recognize him and Joshi as young masters of Morning Mist sect, a duly formed sect. You were added to the sect under the name of Noren after that. And apparently, it's not really your name, so yes," she raised her chin. "I do claim my status on that right. Grandfather, you hired someone you knew was not actually our Grandmaster to be our Grandmaster. The fact that his name wasn't what you thought it was has little to do with such agreements. You know that as well as anyone. How many handshake deals have we made with men and women operating behind masks and aliases?"

"Plenty," her grandfather allowed. "But Min, our sect—"

"I'm not done speaking," Min said. She was weaving a technique easily as elaborate as any made of lux. But her medium was words. And if she didn't finish this off properly, who knew what might happen. "It's not your sect," Min said, and her grandfather's apoplectic face turned toward hers once more. "It's not, Grandfather. And you need to understand that. Morning Mist could be good allies with the Brotherhood, but we cannot be owned by them. You do not understand the powers of cultivation. Grandfather, when you married your daughter to the son of the governor of Riceflower, did you think it meant you understood what it would take to govern an imperial province?"

Grandfather shook his head. "Of course not. I wouldn't give myself such airs."

"When you take over a business in a sector you do not understand, you appoint underlings who are knowledgable, don't you?"

He hesitated, then nodded. "I see your point."

"Then let us do our job," Min said. "You have seen what the power of cultivation can do. You were there when the sky hurtled open. You felt the Emperor's presence when he arrived."

Grandfather Jiang nodded. "I did. It's why I told your husband I was willing to commit the resources it took to gaining that kind of strength for ourselves."

"Then, Grandfather, with all due respect, step aside and let me speak for this."

He puffed up like a steamed bun for a long moment before seeming to deflate. Her grandfather looked older than he had before. "Very well, Min. And then what would you have us do?"

She turned to Noren. "Why did you join the sect of Morning Mist?"

Noren frowned. "It is not a matter I care to discuss with outsiders," he said.

"My grandfather may not be part of this sect, but his honor does touch on this matter. I hope you will favor us both with some explanation, Grandmaster."

Noren sat there considering. "I have dealt honorably by you and the disciples of Morning Mist," he said at length. "I have shared the techniques I know and set them firmly on the path of cultivation. I think you can have no complaint there."

"None," she assured him, "except to know this. You sent my husband and Young Master Joshi off on a cultivating journey. Was it for their own good or some secret plan of yours?"

Noren shifted. He looked uncomfortable as he spoke. "They came to me with a suggestion. It was not my doing. I have aided them as freely as I can."

Min sensed there was more that he wasn't saying, but she didn't want to push too far just yet. This man, she knew, could kill her and everyone in the Brotherhood compound and be gone before any cultivator of sufficient strength to counter him arrived. He wanted something from their sect. That was the only lever she had on him. And as a negotiator trained by Brotherhood and political advisors, both Min knew approaching too hard might snap it.

"Grandfather, you sent for a Grandmaster, and we received a Grandmaster. From what I hear, a better Grandmaster than you'd bargained for."

Grandfather shifted in his seat. "It seems that way."

"It is that way," Noren put in. "The one I supplanted was worse than useless. He would have drunk your coin, harassed your women, and brought the sect to ruin."

"But what is it you want?" Min pressed.

Noren met her eyes. There was a great depth behind his and a sense of vast age. "For one, not to put you in more danger than you already are."

Min shivered.

"Are you threatening us?" her grandfather demanded.

Noren raised a hand. "You put yourself in danger when you decided to resurrect a sect the Emperor ordered destroyed. Fortunately, it was several centuries ago, and even the memory of an immortal fades in time. He does not seem to recall why he ordered the sect destroyed."

He turned to Min, who forced herself not to flinch. "Of course, now your husband is walking into the past. What he uncovers there may well destroy us all. The Inquisitor was only asking if we worked with Prism Eri. I was able to convince her we did not because, as you know, that is the truth. She has not peered into areas where we're not so innocent. And so we have a choice here," he told Min. Her grandfather sat, fuming beside them, but he was a wise, clever man, and knew when not to get involved. "We could do as we had planned and take the sect to Arinat Point. The juniors will have plenty of time to train. Or we can advance my timeline and follow Chang-li into danger. I had not wished to risk it yet, but I'm now convinced we're running out of time."

"Time to do what?" Min asked.

Noren's eyes bored into her. "Within six months, I expect this tower is going to add another floor. At that point, if we haven't taken action, Vardin City will be destroyed. No reprieve from the emperor this time: he'll be the one wielding the sword. If we're to escape that fate, we need to make sure he's got other things on his mind before that happens."

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