Ken died.

No, Ken was murdered. Cold-blood Ieyasu fucking murdered him, shattered him into a thousand frozen pieces. He'd died, but his battle with the bastard had bought us precious seconds. He'd died and saved the three of us, buying enough time for the imperial inspector to arrive and arrest Ieyasu and his men.

He'd even clamped a nifty brass bracelet over Ieyasu's wrist, apparently some sort of magical qi-disturber for restricting a cultivator's ability to shape external qi. Neat.

Then the inspector's men began the bloody business of executing Ieyasu's men - all except for two with tenuous noble lineage as well as the big man himself, Cold-blood Tankano Ieyasu… the cousin of Ichika's father, who was some kind of big deal, apparently. A daimyo, whatever that meant…

"The daimyo serve under the shogun, the noble prince who serves the emperor's interests in the empire's southeast."

"A d-daimyo?"

"It's… in my homeland, a daimyo is the equivalent of a marquis… I don't suppose you know what that means."

"I know what a marquis is," I sniffled. "I know a lot about royalty. Well… British royalty. It's in the tabloids a lot."

"I… I don't know what a tabloid is, or what British is," Ichika sniffled - she did a better job of hiding her grief than me. I'm pretty sure I was straight-up ugly crying.

"I know," I sniffled back. I couldn't even wipe my tears properly because my hands were bloody stumps… which, strangely enough, hurt a lot less than you'd expect. It still hurt, though.

The three of us sniffled along as we were led back to the inspector's temporary office on the ground floor of Emerald Vale's bureaucratic palace, one of the biggest buildings in the city. We weren't under arrest - not yet - but we might be in some amount of trouble, depending on how favorably inclined the inspector was. "Why didn't they kill Ieyasu? He's the only one who actually killed anybody!"

"As my father's cousin and third in line for the Tankano clan seat, he holds the nominal rank of baron. A noble cannot be executed short of imperial decree or a trial of his fellow nobles…"

"So that means you're a noble and also can't get executed?"

Ichika shot me a side-eye. "Correct."

"But I can?"

"Correct. Only nobles and high cultivators enjoy imperial privilege."

"Ah," I said. "Hope I don't die."

"They're not going to execute us," Monkey Yang said without much confidence. "Probably."

It was the middle of the night, but the city's bureaucratic palace was hopping. Frightened-looking city bureaucrats shuffled about anxiously beneath the gaze of a pair of imperial bureaucrats employed by the inspector. Only one of the inspector's cultivators was around - the rest of the guards present were nervous town guards who'd been roused from their sleep and drubbed into midnight duty.

I remembered Ichika mentioning to me once that imperial bureaucrats were given the same pills given to the soldiers to artificially advance their cultivation. I guess that let them work longer hours and prevent carpal tunnel syndrome and so on. Fortunately, these guys just looked bored and slightly annoyed, not borderline to full-bore psychotic, which was my experience with fake cultivators so far.

"Please wait here," our escort said. "A healer is on her way."

That healer turned out to be Granny P - surprise! We waited perhaps an hour before she arrived along with two more of the inspector's guards and a tired-looking Big Shilei. Granny P fussed over the big guy, chastising the guards whenever they got too close to disturbing her patient and warning them to be careful with her big crate of medical supplies. I wiped my tears on my bloody sleeves, grimacing at the sight of torn flesh and exposed bone as I did so.

"Okay, let's see these patients of yours," Granny P huffed.

"They are not 'ours'. They are persons of interest," the guard stated. With a sweep of his red cape and brassy armor, he gestured toward us.

Granny P's eyes went wide. "Lynn? Oh heavens, girl! What… what happened to your hands? Does it hurt? Of course it hurts… you're crying…"

"Frozen and then shattered," I said, wincing from the pressure upon a dozen cuts and bruises as Granny P embraced me. "I'm not crying because of my hands. I'm crying because my… my friend died… also frozen and shattered."

Big Shilei's eyes went wide and Granny P immediately shot him a stinkeye, telling him to keep his qi calm if he didn't want another deviation. His eyes flitted over to Ichika and he let out a visible sigh of relief upon seeing that it wasn't her who was the casualty. He quickly spotted Monkey Yang, and then kept looking… and kept looking… "Ken?"

"He died saving us - he almost defeated Cold-blood Ieyasu, but the realm difference was simply too much," Ichika said sadly. "I will see that whatever family he has gets death benefits…"

"He's got no family beyond us - he was an orphan taken in by the Mountain's Fury sect, a natural with fire qi if ever there was one…"

"He burned the bastard up pretty good," Monkey Yang said, the admiration clear on his voice. "But then… then it was too much. I wish I'd known him better…"

Tears streamed down Big Shilei's cheeks. "He… was not an easy man to know. But he was a good man."

"I think we all know that," I said. "A grumpus with a heart of gold. He gave me a knife… no idea where it is now…"

"I kept it for you," Monkey Yang said quietly. "It'll need repairs."

"Not like I can hold it now, anyway," I said with a shrug.

We waited in silence for a bit, all of us still a bit shocked. Big Shilei badly attempted to hide his weeping, but every time I looked at him, his eyes were red and streaking tears. Meanwhile, Granny P got to tending our wounds, starting with my missing hands, which she fretted over like a little kid who scraped her knee on the sidewalk.

"Really, Lynn, you've got to be more careful," she said, and then slathered my stubs and a dozen assorted spots of frostbite with some foul-smelling green goop. "Be sure to focus on your injuries while cultivating, and that will speed the healing and don't worry your Granny P with so much needless fighting…"

"It's not like I ever wanted to fight, granny. The problem is that the kind of people who really want to fight won't let you not fight them, and this guy was a noble or something."

Granny P clicked her tongue. "Nobles are no good, either. You stay away from them…"

I glanced toward Ichika. "Some of them are okay-"

"You promise you'll stay away from them."

"I'm not promising that," I stated, pulling my hand stumps away from her care. "I know who my friends are, and I'm smart enough to know who to trust. That'll have to be good enough."

"Fine. Worry your Granny Phuong," she huffed. "You're done, my dear. Now let's see to Mister Yang's arm…"

--------

It was a full hour before the imperial inspector arrived with several people in tow, including a fully-shackled Cold-blood Ieyasu and one of his men - I guess the inspector determined that the other guy's connection to nobility was too tenuous to deserve imperial privilege. As those two were hauled off to, I hope, some sort of horrible torture cell, the inspector stopped by to see us.

I'd managed to cultivate, but only a little - I wasn't in the right state of mind at all, and my qi gathering came in little fits and spurts. As I did, I felt a slight tingling on my wrists, but it was hard to say whether that was cultivation healing or Granny P's herbal salve. In any case, it didn't make much difference. Even if I cultivated all day, it would probably take days to heal my stumps back into proper hands…

It was kind of cool having salamander powers, though. No wonder kids saw cultivators as superheroes in this world. We kinda were.

Lord Inspector Fung Chiang Fun was an imposing man. He wasn't large like Big Shilei, or even tall like Ieyasu. He wasn't much taller or broader than Monkey Yang, who was small for a cultivator, but the inspector had a gravitas about him. The same gravitas as Ieyasu, only somehow cleaner. It felt like the world's qi didn't so much bend around him as it did flow through with his permission.

His eyes were neither kind nor malicious - no, they were dark and intense yet somehow exuded a smoky gray. His robes were of fine silk, sky blue with darker blue brocade, probably denoting his noble family or something. His purple sash with indigo patterning denoted that he had indirect ties to the imperial family. The whole deal with nobility here was very confusing, and I was still getting used to the notion that Ichika was a noble…

Though I guess that did explain why she was kinda bossy and why everybody just put up with it. Part of me really didn't like the idea of nobility… and part of me really wanted to be nobility. If anything, just to avoid being executed by some douche on a power trip. Speaking of which…

We all had to bow to the imperial inspector when he came to us, like it was a big deal just being in the same room as him! I followed Ichika's lead, and then had to bow further, because apparently commoners have to bow more than other nobles, which was total bullshit.

"You may rise," he stated in a smooth, deceptively soft voice. He'd sure yelled loud enough when announcing himself to Ieyasu. "Am I to understand it that you are the same cultivators who defeated the pill cultivators in Rushing Rivers?" he asked.

We didn't bother to deny it. "That was us, Lord Fun - though we did not instigate any of the battles," Ichika said, her voice much calmer than I felt. I was still reeling from my injuries and Ken's death, and Ichika had known him a lot better than me. I guess he'd been her sworn protector or something. "We fought only when given no other option - but finished them as needed."

The inspector took a seat near us and unfurled a scroll. "Yes… well, fortunately, Lady Ichika, there were no nobles among their number. Common trash through and through, so there is no issue with it - other than the fact that you and your retainers saw it fit to evade my investigation…"

"Oh, I'm not her retainer," I butted in. "We're just friends."

The inspector shot me a dirty look, and Ichika had to lean over and whisper into my ear: "You must always address the inspector as Lord Fun unless he states that casual speech is okay… which I doubt he will."

Well that wasn't very fun at all.

"We're just friends, Lord Fun. I didn't even know Lady Ichika was a lady… I mean a proper lady. I guessed at her gender, uh, your lordship. She's pretty feminine, you know? My lord? But… yeah. I was just there helping and traveling with them after I got in trouble with Black-blade Feng, Lord Fun."

"She has not had training on courtly manners, Lord Fun," Ichika said softly.

"I wouldn't have guessed, Lady Ichika," he smirked. "I do not begrudge a hayseed their ignorance - but I cannot permit unaligned cultivators to wander about my lord's territories. Therefore, I will give each of you a choice, and out of respect to your clan and your standing, I shall be merciful. My usual verdict would be to sentence you each to a decade of service in our emperor's righteous army before joining and swearing fealty to a sect or clan that will take you…"

I'd been annoyed ever since his lordship called me a hayseed - rude! - but I just about had a panic attack when he mentioned a decade in the army. Ten years? In the army? Now, I'm not a wimp, but me and military regulations are like oil and water and killing people is a no-go unless they've made it abundantly clear that they want to kill me first. And now he was going on about how we'd need to be trained to be lieutenants first since we were all already cultivators. It was only through sheer force of will that I didn't panic and returned my attention to Lord Fun.

"…can either return to your father's clan with your retainers… and friend… or you can join whatever sect will have you."

Ichika glanced toward Big Shilei. "You've still got connections within Mountain's Fury, haven't you?"

"I have," the big man said with a sad nod. "But I am a crippled cultivator, my lady, and the sect does not accept women…"

"Sexist bullshit," I muttered and, thankfully, I was mostly ignored.

The inspector's eyes flitted over toward me for a moment, more out of amusement than annoyance. "I would be willing to put in a good word with the Starry Waters sect, which I attended for a time in my boyhood. They're one of the several sects that accept women, and their celestial focus might work well with your own style - though I do not know what qi your friends prefer to cultivate…"

"Why don't sects accept women?" I blurted.

"Another time, Lynn," Ichika hissed. She offered the inspector a small bow. "Apologies, Lord Fun… I can only speak for myself, but I would be most appreciative of an opportunity to learn with the Starry Waters. What do you say, Mister Yang?"

"I guess we're going to Lake Lhim," he said, though he didn't sound too pleased about it.

"Lynn?"

How could I possibly decide? A decade in the army or going heavens-knew where to join up with a bunch of religious nuts? Or maybe they were just fighting nuts, which was even worse in some ways. Why couldn't I just stay in Emerald Vale and help make dumplings or help heal people and not bother anybody? Was that really so much to ask?

"I really can't stay here, Lord Fun?"

He shook his head. "After a decade in the army, if you avail yourself well, you would be able to request a posting with Legate Jen's group, and possibly get assigned here within a handful of years…"

I furrowed my brow in thought - I was starting to understand why the Dark Riders went nutso and wandered off to wherever to become criminals. The empire wouldn't even let you live where you wanted to live.

"The other option is to utterly destroy your cultivation and swear not to practice it again… and, if you then defy that oath, the punishment would be severe."

If I destroyed my cultivation, I would just be a regular mortal, which would be a bitter pill to swallow after being a superwoman. But… well… I could always sneak off into the wilderness and cultivate again, and really, who would stop me? The empire clearly didn't care that much about the frontier, even if the inspector cared when he was in town, which didn't sound like it happened all that often…

Would it be worth it? It would mean leaving my cultivator friends, but I also had friends in Emerald Vale…

"Would it hurt?" I asked. "Uh… would destroying my cultivation hurt, Lord Fun…"

The inspector looked at me like I was an idiot. "I'm told the pain is indescribable, Miss Lynn… but you would recover in a fashion, over days or weeks… it is an extreme measure."

Would it be worth it? None of my options were very good…

"Uh, Lord Fun? We found another one," one of the guards said. There was a minor commotion at the front of the office, but soon thereafter things settled down and a cultivator guard ushered Hana into the room.

Hana spotted the inspector and, having been trained in proper decorum, she bowed the appropriate amount and paid her respects.

"She was hiding in the house… the one we found three bodies in…" the guard said.

"I wasn't hiding, I was cultivating, my lord," Hana said, defiance in her eyes.

The inspector stroked his beard in thought. "She says she's the daughter of the mayor in Rushing Rivers - the one who left a note saying she was running away to become a cultivator?"

Hana nodded, her dark eyes focused, her chin set. "And I did!" she said.

"Child," the inspector chuckled. "I will help you release these feeble motes of qi and you will go back to live with your parents…"

Motes of qi? My eyes went wide, and then I felt it - a tiny but unmistakable presence from where Hana was, like the feeling of being around a cultivator, only far, far weaker. A presence that hadn't ever been around her before. "You did it?" I shrieked. "You found it?"

"I did, Miss L- Mistress Lynn!" Hanna said, she went to jump into my arms, only stopping when both of us realized my hand stubs were still heavily bandaged with Granny P's green medicinal goop. "When you guys were fighting outside, there was qi going everywhere, and I found it! I found my inner light, and there was so much qi flying everywhere that I could see that, too, and even though it was really hard to vibrate my light the way you taught me, I got two pieces to stay around it! That means I'm a cultivator, right?"

"Only in the most technical of terms," Ichika said flatly.

"Technically yes means yes," I stated. "She'll be able to do it again and again. My disciple is a First. Realm. Cultivator! And, uh, I guess we're both going to the Starry Waters sect, Lord Fun."

--------

Ichika paced away from the wagon, the inspector's guards close behind her - their journey south so far was stifling. Almost as stifling as being back in her father's castle, with Legate Jen's provincial guard watching her every move, just as her father's guard had once done. Their orders were to stop her if she attempted to go on the lam once again.

They were in some small town, a town even smaller than Emerald Vale about a day to the southwest of the Hermitage of the Woods, home of the famous Winding Path sect. A sect whose preference for nature-aligned qi would have been a perfect fit for Shilei. Now, the big man insisted on accompanying her to Lake Lhim City and Ichika didn't have the heart to deny him.

She wandered over to a trinket-seller, her deft fingers idly tracing along the little brass and silver bangles in the woman's shop. The palms of her hands still bore weeping sores from the frostbite she'd suffered, as did another dozen patches across her body - but at least she still had hands, unlike poor Lynn. She offered the stall-keeper two yao for one of the small silver bangles on display.

"Three yao," the woman replied.

Ichika knew she could have haggled the woman down to two yao and three or four wu, but she didn't bother - life was hard enough for the common people, especially in small towns, especially for women. If a few wu would make her life a bit easier, Ichika didn't begrudge the merchant one bit. She didn't even want the bangle - only an excuse to step away for some air, Big Shilei pacing after her like a loyal hound.

"The sect will not take you, and I cannot pay you," she said quietly.

"I know," he said simply. "I have nowhere to go, and you are still my friends. I'll have no trouble finding work in the city with my cultivator's physique…"

"Or you could submit to the heavens and begin your defiance anew…"

They both looked back toward the big transport wagon, beside which Lynn and her 'disciple' were quietly meditating, quietly drawing in the qi of the placid village - Lynn like a great golden carp gobbling up weeds and Hana like a tiny tadpole, just as hungry but small enough to be ignored next to the big, greedy koi.

If Hana had begun her defiance of the heavens with anything approaching Lynn's virtuosity, Ichika would be tempted to reject her own cultivation base, to destroy the secret Tankano clan techniques she was never supposed to have learned to begin with and follow a superior path. But it wasn't clear how superior Lynn's path was, if at all. If Hana was uncommonly talented - not even a genius, 'merely' in the top tenth of a percent - then her cultivation speed wasn't audacious. Merely unusual - gradual and constant instead of proceeding in fits and starts.

"Perhaps," Big Shilei said eventually. The two of them proceeded down the small town's avenue, the townspeople skittishly avoiding their wake. The pair of guards trailing after them made Ichika and Shilei appear to be important people rather than rogue cultivators being forced to submit to the empire's order. Of course, Shilei was only along for the ride - he could go wherever he wanted now that his base was crippled. "Perhaps," he repeated, "but I'm not ready for that yet. This may be my only chance at a normal life."

"You would submit to the heavens?"

"I would leave well enough alone. You hardly need a protector as it is - you fought a man in the middle fourth realm close to a stalemate, Ichika. Yes, with Lynn and two second-realm allies, but let's not pretend it wasn't mostly you…"

Ichika frowned at the pronouncement - had it been mostly her? She'd been responsible for winnowing Ieyasu's powerful tempest with Red Harvest and a generous application of lunar qi, and the natural alliance between lunar qi and frost qi had prevented her from being frozen outright, as the others had to some extent - poor Ken had frozen all the way through. But Ichika couldn't think of a single person whose contributions hadn't been vital. Without any one of the combatants, the other three would have surely died.

Even Lynn had been a help. A large help. She'd stunned Ieyasu with a blast of her all-aspect (or was it no-aspect?) qi. She'd distracted him by stabbing the man at a critical moment. And, perhaps most importantly, she'd sacrificed her hands and very nearly her life in shattering the ice spear and halting the tempest, which gave poor Ken his opening to put fire to frost. Lynn couldn't trade blows with a fourth-realm expert as Ichika had, but she'd used the tools at her disposal well and hadn't panicked as Ichika had feared she might - she'd seen trained soldiers and experienced cultivators shocked to inaction in less dire circumstances.

"The fight was a group effort," Ichika said at last. "I will not denigrate the performances of my allies. Suffice it to say, I am not prepared to fight another fourth realm expert, but the Two Dragons do not seem quite so lofty. But I digress - Shilei, I encourage you to continue your journey…"

"I will consider it," the big man replied quickly - Ichika had hoped for a firm commitment but hadn't expected it.

Soon, they reached the end of the paltry avenue that served as the town's marketplace and made their way back to the great wagon, which was almost ready to continue its rumbling, creaking journey to Lake Lhim City and beyond.

It was one of the massive military wagons used to transport new recruits - and, indeed, that's exactly what most of the wagons in their convoy were doing. It's what most of their wagon was doing. A dozen cargo wagons, each pulled by four tortoise steeds, which looked exactly like regular if unusually-large horses, though some had tough scales and vestigial plates along their back. Said to be descended from spirit beasts, the draft animals could pull far more than even the hardiest work horses and were slow to tire, provided they were given enough feed and water. It was said they could even plod along while asleep.

They were not, however, particularly fast. Ichika could have made it to Lake Lhim City in the same amount of time at a brisk walk. She supposed this indignity was part of her punishment.

She and Shilei returned to the wagon, their guards breaking off to rejoin their comrades.

"That's everybody," the guard lieutenant said. "Five minutes until we board and roll out."

All about them, military conscripts shuffled about. These men were all fake cultivators, artificially advanced to the end of the first realm over a period of days by the emperor's Divine Awakening pills. They were stronger, faster, and more resilient than normal mortals, but they had only recently come into their power and they still held real cultivators with awe and esteem - if they were sensible, they would continue to do so. They whispered to one another as Lynn and Hana meditated in a pool of golden sunlight… Ichika almost wanted to join them, but five minutes just wasn't enough time.

When Lynn's eyes fluttered open, she took a deep, slow breath, her contented expression shifting to a curious smile when she spotted Ichika staring at her. Slightly flustered, Ichika held out the little bangle she'd purchased in the market - a rounded triangle of beaten silver with a slightly-irregular turquoise mounted at its center.

"I thought you might want this," she said. Really, all she'd been thinking when she bought the bangle was that it was the prettiest item in the stall in her price range - all Ichika had to her name was her share of the money taken from the Dark Riders they'd killed, forty yao, all things told, after you included the twenty from Lee Dan's stash. But Lynn liked nice things and Ichika didn't mind sharing what little wealth she had.

Lynn's smile turned sunny - enough so that there was a distinct mote of what had to be solar qi in it, enough to warm Ichika's gloomy heart. "For me? Aww." Lynn reached to take it, only to realize she still had stumps for hands, the limbs ending with the nubs of small, gooey palms. "Uh…"

Ichika quickly clipped the jewel to Lynn's collar as one might a sect badge. Lynn turned back and forth, flashing the bangle in the sunlight as she cooed over it. "It's very pretty! Thanks!" The damnable woman still wore a trollop's clothes - another fresh-ish set requisitioned from Lee Dan's significant collection - but had the good sense to add leg wrappings to avoid a complete descent into scandalous indecency. Ichika was afraid to ask who had helped to wrap the garment. "I didn't get anything for you…" She craned her neck to look down the market way.

"We haven't got time," Ichika stated. "Shall we board?"

Lynn nodded and nudged Hana, who stretched and yawned lazily, a slight glimmer of sunshine seeming to rest upon her as she rose. And, behind them, was a barely-noticeable phantom of pure light, also seated in the lotus position.

"Time to go, Lin," Lynn said.

The spirit girl opened her eyes, nodded, and disappeared into motes of golden light, which gradually faded.

"I seen a ghost," one of the conscripts nearby whispered.

"Nah, that's just cultivator stuff," another said, before awkwardly glancing toward Ichika and Lynn. "Begging your pardon, miss…"

"It's fine," Ichika waved dismissively - she appreciated the attempt at proper respect.

With that, they boarded the wagon - large enough to carry two dozen men, with space partitioned for eight junior officers and sixteen conscripts. Despite being quasi-prisoners, the five of them got to ride in the officer's area along with three of their guards - the other two, who'd lost at some game of chance, had to ride with the common conscripts.

Really, the only difference was that the padding on their seats was nicer and there was a little central table for meals or reading, which only Lynn and Hana made use of for Lynn's literacy lessons.

And the wagon creaked along, carrying Ichika and her friends toward Lake Lhim City and a new life…

Provided, of course, that nobody told her father.