Miveirn denotes a person of any rank but with no particular authority, usually those whose occupation is in production or upkeep. Creation of utility power constructs, managing transit platforms, or crafting goods to be sold are common occupations of a miveirn.

Celeirn is sometimes considered a derivative title of miveirn, but a celeirn is a person contracted to perform a service directly for another noble, while miveirn serve as part of the overall structure of the city and not for any one individual. One who removes excess water from the streets would be a miveirn; one who removes it from your gardens would be celeirn.

Like the related title aveirn, miveirn and celeirn are almost never used as honorifics.

-Titles, Ranking, and Structure of the Noble Houses

I woke in a different unfamiliar bedroom. There was no one here now, and I wondered if I’d only imagined Aneeyha’s presence.

I got to my feet, a faint headache the only remaining aftereffect of the forceful extraction. Trying to remember it resulted in a jumble of non-sensation, mostly an overwhelming feeling of confused panic, followed by intense cold.

But everything seemed back to normal now. I could think, I could feel, my power hummed gently in my chest, warm and familiar.

Lately I’d spent far too much time doing stupidly dangerous things that resulted in my incapacitation. I really had to stop letting Pelys do horrifying things to me. But … at the same time, most of his horrifying things did end up helping in the long run.

I sighed and paced, feeling restless and uncertain. He’d said it worked. So we had Desten 4’s location. Would that be the same place as the rest of his family? Or did Retti stash him somewhere out of the way while she went on about her work?

Had they killed anyone else yet? Did Desten 5 retain any innocence, or had he been destroyed already? I didn’t want to learn that he’d bought fully into his mother’s madness, but I knew that every day they remained at large the chance only grew that she would corrupt him further.

I couldn’t accomplish anything from here.

A few brisk strides carried me to the door. It opened readily and I peered out at an unfamiliar hallway. I didn’t recognize anything, and let the door fall closed again. I crossed to the window instead and threw the curtains aside.

Blues dominated the view. I was somewhere in Sarosa. That seemed odd to me. Why would I be back in Sarosa? I could have just gone to Desten 3’s house to recover, since we were already in Varonhold. Why would anyone fly me all this way?

Hm. Pelys didn’t know where I was living, must be. Or he wanted me somewhere he could check on me readily. I pushed the window open, intending to step out, then realized I was only wearing a thin nightrobe. Nope. I pulled the curtains closed again, found a bundled Sarosa robe by the bed, and got dressed properly. I found I preferred the Sarosa robes to my usual Varon ones, from a strictly practical standpoint. All one piece, without the extra triangles to be buttoned on. The extra weight of the heavily ornamented collar was a reasonable tradeoff for the convenience.

I stepped out of the window and into the air, hovering long enough to get a feel for my surroundings, and quickly realized that I’d exited Pel’s tower two floors down from his entry balcony and around to the side. I flew up to the balcony, but the room inside was empty. Then I stopped, not sure what to do next.

The sun was setting. Was it evening of the same day, or had I been out for longer? I felt fine, fully recovered apart from the occasional mental glitch; brief flashes of confused panic, but they were nothing new. I’d spent half a year confused and having panicked flashbacks of Desten’s slaughter of Fylen, nightmares of Pelys’s training. This felt hardly worth mentioning, compared to all that.

I paced the balcony, feeling small and insignificant. Around me the city glowed with nobles going about their business, and I stood unmoored.

Pelys wanted me to fight. To go against the laws and conventions and hunt down Retti and her family before they could do any further harm.

It made sense, from his perspective. The reirns would take their time about it, and in the meantime Retti was free, desperate, and knew retribution wouldn’t be far behind. Our only advantage was, once again, information only I could provide. There was an odd sort of symmetry to it, but the thought only made me feel ill.

The middle of it? That was the last place I wanted to be. I’d much rather be studying with Desten 3 than fighting. But I still felt an obligation. To Fylen and Fyless, to Pelys, to Desten and Tali. I couldn’t back out. Couldn’t run away again. Hadn’t I decided that I was done running? That there was a time to be stubborn and do what mattered?

Perhaps at one point I’d truly had noble intentions. Right now, I just wanted it to be over.

I first set out on this path out of mixed desperation and curiosity, with no real purpose but to survive the chaos and try to understand why something so terrible had happened. I had survived, and I had discovered why. True, some questions remained, but the reason had been clarified. I understood Desten 5 now, I could empathize with him in more ways than one. In a way, that made this all so much harder. I’d learned what I set out to learn, and the understanding brought no peace. Only more questions.

How could anyone do this? How could Retti force her own son to become a killer? Even if I understood why, I couldn’t understand why. There was something broken in Retti, and I only hoped she hadn’t broken Desten irreparably. Tragic enough that she’d destroyed Fylen’s family; it would be so much worse if she’d also destroyed her own in the process.

Then Pelys arrived, finally distracting me from the downward spiral of my thoughts.

“Where are they?” I asked, as he landed on the balcony.

“A village between Metako and Raysh. I’ve ordered the locals to keep an eye on the place. So far, no one’s come in or out all day. They might be away, or they might be lying low for the moment. I didn’t dare go too close.” He frowned, then shook his head and turned to me. “Ready to begin?”

I suppose it was too much to hope he’d forgotten his threat to train me. “Alright,” I said reluctantly. “Ready when you are.”

He threw me off the balcony. I hadn’t been expecting it, and found myself falling backwards through the air before I quite realized what was happening. I spun up a shield, pulling my power into hasty motion, and almost managed to activate my flight before colliding with the ground.

Almost. My shield flashed and vanished, absorbing part of the momentum. I tumbled to the ground, gracelessly but unharmed. I groaned and got to my feet.

“I thought you said you’d be using different techniques now?” I spun a new shield as I spoke.

“I am.” Pel stepped out into the air, his own bubble sliding into place around him as he descended to the street beside me. “But you still need to remain situationally aware of your surroundings. It’s not exactly commonplace to be jumped by assassins from a rival house, but it’s not unheard-of. And without serious backing, you would be an easy target.”

“Why would anyone bother with a nobody like me?”

“Unknowns are a potential threat. Dead unknowns are not.”

I sighed. He had a point. Desten 5 was an unknown, and he’d definitely become a threat. “But I do have backing, I was adopted by Reirn Ushan. Kind of.” I hadn’t been back there since the start of touring, so I couldn’t be sure of my standing in Varon.

Pel shook his head. “That’s not going to be worth much if you can’t back it up. From what you told me, it sounds more like he wanted to exploit the free resource that showed up, without risking anything. He could disavow you at any time, and you were acting as a free agent. Basically all he said was ‘you can call yourself a Varon, and I won’t look too hard into where you came from. Go do your thing and let me know what happens. If you get out of line, I’ll have you dealt with.’”

“Well, yes. But he let me stay with his nephew.”

“One of your primary suspects, who you were able to rule out fairly quickly.”

“I didn’t ever completely rule him out. He could be scary.”

“You didn’t seriously suspect him. So Reirn Ushan got his family in the clear early, laid a claim on you if you turn out to be valuable, and has an easy out if you prove worthless. I wouldn’t put too much trust in him supporting you in future.”

“You’re probably right—”

Pel stepped forward, our bubble shields touching, and mine puffed away into nothing.

“Hey! Wait, how did you do that? I didn’t see any pulse.”

Pel smiled. “Exactly.”

I frowned at him.

“This is what I’m going to teach you. It’s a rare variation on the standard shield. It takes a lot of power compared to most shields, a lot of power compared to equivalent attacks, and is slow to fully form. In duels or unexpected fights it’s practically useless. But if you have a lot of untrained power and nothing to use it on, if you have time to prepare ahead of time, and your primary concern is survival, it’s the perfect shield to use. Come look at it closer, but don’t touch. It’s very dangerous.”

I stepped nearer. At first glance, it appeared no different than a standard basic shield: a bit thicker perhaps, a bit more solid.

Then I pulled my power up through me, slowing everything in my perception, and the texture of the shield became clear. Tiny barbs spread out across its entire surface, flickering in and out of nebulous formation as they vibrated asynchronously. It took me a moment to figure out what I was seeing.

“The whole shield is putting out dispelling attacks constantly?”

Pel smiled and nodded. “It’s not as impenetrable as flashmail, but it’s the next best thing. The main drawbacks are that it takes a lot of time to create, a lot of focus to maintain, and it’s very inflexible. You can’t use it while sending attacks out, for instance, as it dissipates both internal and external power. In a one on one fight, it’s the equivalent of hiding behind a locked door and hoping the other person can’t break it down. Which they always can, given enough time.” His grin widened. “But you won’t be alone. With you to hold attention and me to back you up, we can do this.”

“So, if the goal is a shield that can dispel attacks, I guess that means you’ll be attacking me a lot?” I asked, resigned.

Pel shrugged. “The best way to learn is by doing.”

“We doing this here? In the middle of the street?”

“This particular skill doesn’t require any particular props or obstacles. But, you’re probably right. We should return to my balcony.”

I guess expecting a reprieve of more than a few seconds would be too much to ask for. I followed him back up.

To my surprise, and immense relief, training this particular shield was the least horrifying and most relaxed practice time I’d ever experienced under Pel’s tutelage. He demonstrated the shape of a single ‘node’ of the shield, which was supposed to be duplicated all across its surface, and coaxed me through the creation process.

It was something like creating the first slash of power that would spin into a bubble shield, only instead of a curved line that spun it would be a tiny fuzzy barb that duplicated a thousand times. So, not much resemblance from a visual standpoint, or in the theory behind it either, but it did have a certain core similarity. Instead of duplicating it out into a single arc, it would need to be multiple rings going both directions at once.

But I could do it. It started the same way; energy pulled up through my body and into my hand, drawn into a shape. I could do that.

Just… not on day one.

By the time we stopped for the night, I’d managed a blobby hemisphere about the size of my head. Too large, immobile, and without any of the dissipating spikes, but it was a start. Pel didn’t try to drown me or crush me or even throw me off of tall places, so that was a welcome surprise. He did spend a lot of time dissipating my poor blob, and I never really got better at sustaining it against his attacks. But he said that it seemed a little more solid toward the end of the session than it had at the start, and seemed surprisingly optimistic about my progress.

I wasn’t going to complain.