“I’m done for,” whispered Kaya, biting her lip. She sagged like all the air had been let out of her. Then she snorted, a rueful hint of a smile tinging her face. “To think—it’s not a three-ton spiked wrecking ball that foils me but damned reading comprehension.”

“You’re very much not done for,” said Dorian gravely. He made sure to catch her gaze. “Listen to me. You’re not allowed to give up now, alright?”

She studied him. “Why not?”

“‘Cause I’ve already put two hundred Lira worth of elixirs into you!” said Dorian. “We can’t let it go to waste, can we?”

She snorted, a little color coming into her cheeks. He said it like a joke, topping it off with a wry grin, but inside he was dead serious. It’s not just the Lira. It’s the training, the Bloodline bone, the life-saving…if she didn’t at least advance to the Tournament, he ached at the thought of the lost returns on investment.

“Well, if you put it like that I guess I’ll have to pass,” said Kaya, rolling her eyes.

“Yup!” said Dorian. “Now listen to me very carefully…”

***

To the outside observer it would look like the Rust Tribe siblings were huddled together in deep discussion. Then the girl broke out, stalking away with her arms folded, her body rigid with rage. The boy shook his head, dejected, and wandered off to the edge of the Trial range. He shot off a passable Arrow of Almidas, which struck the edge of the target—enough to pass.

“Io of Rust Tribe qualifies,” said Zhang.

He then glanced to his sister, who was still mired in fervent concentration. She tried to muster up an Arrow, a sputtering effort which barely moved the winds. It dispersed in mere seconds. She tried again; her next effort was more solid, forming a discernible, translucent shape in the air, but it flagged soon too. All the while, competitors around her qualified one after another. “Saenchai of the Narong,” said Zhang. “Misu of Clan Riun.” The names rolled on. Twenty, twenty-five, twenty-eight…the girl’s brow beaded with sweat, her face scrunched up.

Then, at the twenty-ninth qualifier, she loosed a feral shout—as though she’d put her all into this one last-ditch try—and a flickering of air materialized before her. She clasped at it with a trembling hand; it was soft, almost insubstantial, but it held at her touch.

Without any hesitation she sprinted up and threw.

It flew in a wide arc. Up high, then curving, flickering in the wind like a flame on a thin candle-wick, clinging onto coherence.

Then it fell, still flickering, and struck the target. A pass. Very close to a fail, but the criteria were met. The girl let out a breath of relief, wiping off her drenched face, as Zhang’s words rang out—“Kaya of Rust Tribe qualifies.”

Grinning brighter than the mid-morning sun, she pranced off to tackle her brother in celebration.

But all was not as it seemed. If a certain branch of cultivator—those obscure branches which specialize in techniques of the mind—were to inspect the scene closely, they might’ve noticed a peculiarity. Each time the girl formed an arrow, a minuscule thread, almost imperceptible, connected it to a tent in the distance. A tent belonging to Rust Tribe.

It was all an act. She didn’t know how to form the arrow, nor how to hold its form in flight. She’d never known. Instead someone else had done it for her from afar. All she’d had to do was to act it out.

There might still remain one mystery. To create the Arrow of Almidas from a distance was a different technique from constructing it up-close—in fact such a technique did not exist. To forge it, it might take the best of the Oases’ martial theoreticians months to work out the kinks. This technique was pulled from the vaults of the Nori Oasis a mere week before the Festival. Prior to then it’d been gathering dust. It should’ve been impossible. It was much easier to believe that it was a mere trick of the mind; perhaps the girl had done it herself after all. Perhaps it was a false positive of qi detection. Even among students of mind magics who might’ve been present to witness the affair, they would’ve likely brushed it off.

In all the Azcan Oasis, there were a handful of cultivators who were privy to such esoteric branches of qi. As it happened, there was one present that day. One who had caught all of it with an air of faint interest and a cocked head. A boy with dark rings under his eyes who looked to the girl, then to the tent, and blinked very slowly.

***

That day’s sales roared to even greater heights than the day before. Dorian spent the best of four hours in full-on salesman mode; his inventory left the shelves almost faster than he and Hu could restock them. Word of mouth struck the Festivalgoers like a flint-spark on a dry hay-bale. A frenetic aura, a buzz, appeared around the small but flashy shop of Rust Tribe: they’d captured that intangible yet critical quality—hype. By the end of the day, he and Hu had made a cool 3,192 Lira. It soundly beat out even Dorian’s own optimistic estimates.

He and Hu were in excellent spirits as they cleaned off the shelves and hauled back inventory for the night. They’d closed with a small crowd of Festivalgoers still in line; momentum was on their side. It gave Dorian no pause to shoo them off and to announce their closing for the day. Tomorrow they’d come back in even greater droves. In the meantime they’d have the night to spread the word even further, make plans, perhaps reel in some Tribal bigwigs to check out this elixir shop curiosity. A Festival official had even stopped by today, but Dorian hadn’t managed to hook him on a sample. Next time.

“I left the Oasis penniless!” crowed Hu as he gingerly lowered a vial of purplish liquid into a stone container. “I was booted out with only the clothes on my back. Err—not even that! They threw me out in my loincloths!”

He laughed, a sound which jiggled the whole of his belly about, fat rolling atop fat like waves crashing at low tide. “Ever since, I’ve had to muck around in this dreadful backwater tribe, grinding out a meager simulacrum of a life… Bah!” His eyes sparkled as he stared at the hefty bags they’d made. “No longer! A few more days and I’m free!”

Dorian smiled back. Oh, I feel the same way.

“If only I didn’t need to pay that—ah!” Hu jerked his head around a full revolution, scanning his surroundings. Then, leaning in with a conspiratorial whisper—“If only we didn’t need to pay that blasted tax!”

His jowls jiggled with righteous indignation. “It’s theft, I tell you!” Then he paled a bit. “This, ah, stays between us, of course.”

“Of course.” Dorian’s voice also dropped to a whisper. “You know, perhaps we don’t need to pay it in full.”

Hu scratched his chin. “Apprentice, are—are you suggesting insurrection?” By the look on his face he didn’t like the sound of it. Hu was balding, middle-aged, and more blubber than man; this was no spry revolutionary. Besides, Dorian could imagine no use for him in a fight other than perhaps rolling him down from the top of a dune and watching him squish all those unfortunate enough to fall in his path.

“Of course not,” said Dorian, injecting a soft, soothing coo into his tone, the sort a hunter might use to try to coax a frightened rabbit into his trap. “Nothing so drastic. Rather—what if we fudged the numbers some? We’ve overshot even my optimistic sales estimates. Say we report we made only two thousand Lira. The rest is ours to keep.” He tapped his lip in thought. “Done across the rest of our days here, we’d jack up our earnings. Perhaps double them, even.”

“T-Tax evasion?” Hu went even paler. He paused. “In the Oases that is the most heinous crime—the penalties are harsher than for murder!”

“We’re not in the Oases. And how will Tuketu and the Chief know? We’ve told nobody our earnings and I make up prices on a per-customer basis. Even if they audited our stocks of elixirs, they’d find no definitive proof.”

Hu was an an impasse, torn between his strong instincts of greed and fear. He worked his impressive jaw slowly as he thought, but Dorian had a feeling which would win out.

“Alright,” he hedged. “But I’d be careful not to fudge the numbers too much. Something about that Tuketu fellow spells trouble… he’s always sniffing around. He’s got strange eyes, that one. Feels like he sees right through you.”

He shuddered.

“Leave it to me,” said Dorian with a smile. “Neither Tuketu nor the Chief will be any the wiser.”

***

Sure enough, Tuketu and Rust greeted them as soon as they returned to camp. “Congratulations on your victory at the Trial,” said Tuketu as soon as he spotted Dorian. He was a picture of confidence, relaxed, poised, warm. “You’ve done the tribe proud once more.”

“It’s my honor,” said Dorian with a low bow.

Rust cleared his throat as Dorian bent back up, and an apologetic grimace came over Tuketu’s face. “Ah. Yes. There is the matter of the tithes…”

Dorian unclipped four sacks of coins, evenly proportioned. He handed two over. “Of course! Here they are.”

Tuketu held the two offered, feeling their weight. “I hear you two have had quite the day in sales. The Chief and I heard the clamor from all the way back at camp!”

“The Depths and the Heavens have smiled on us,” said Hu, affecting a humble blush. He shuffled his feet, his eyes drawn to the ground. “Well, it was a good time meeting you both, but I’ve some choice bone soup dinner brewing at the ol’ stove. I’ll be off—“

“Wait.” Rust stepped up with sharp, precise moves. He snatched the bag from Tuketu’s hand, broke it open, inspected the coins within, felt its weight. Then he held out a hand, nodding to Dorian.

“The other half of your earnings.”

“Err—“ said Hu, frowning, opening his mouth to protest.

“The rate is still half,” said Rust smoothly. “I am simply conducting a verification. Hand it over.”

He wants to make certain we’ve not imbalanced our own bags for our benefit. Even as Hu looked around, unsure, Dorian didn’t hesitate. He passed over the rest.

“Please, inspect to your satisfaction, Chief.”

Inspect the Chief did. He weighed them, poked around within, glanced at them from all angles, and finally ended up selecting two of the four bags for the tax—one that Dorian had given and one that he’d withheld.

“Strange,” said Rust. “Given the clamor I’d have expected more…”

“We did too,” said Dorian amiably. “As it turned out, lots came only to look, not to buy. The sum still surpassed yesterday’s, thank the Dweller! Is that all?”

Rust looked to Tuketu; an embarrassed wince crept onto Tuketu’s face. “Ah. Just one more thing.” He pointed to Dorian’s right hand. “Your interspatial ring. I’ll need it for inspection.”

Dorian froze—as would anyone when asked such a question. So it’s come to this? The Tribe just signaled exactly how much trust they had in him. They were right to distrust him, but still! He smiled weakly. “Sir… isn’t that a bit—“

“Are you accusing me of theft, Tuketu?” squawked Hu. He managed a look of righteous indignation despite the fact that he was indeed currently in the act of thieving.

“Not at all,” said Tuketu, injecting a soft, soothing coo into his tone, the sort a hunter might use on an angry warthog. He put up a placating smile. “It’s merely an insurance measure; we don’t expect to find anything of note. It’ll only be a minute.”

The air grew tight. Nobody summoned their qi but Rust’s glower seemed to carry its own weight. Dorian looked to Hu for a long few seconds. Then he slid off the ring and placed it gently in Tuketu’s palm.

Who closed his eyes, puzzled over it, inspected its contents… and found nothing out of the ordinary. Because this wasn’t the first time Dorian had evaded taxes; it wasn’t even his hundredth. He hadn’t actually thought Tuketu would demand his ring, but in matters of such grave consequence he had contingencies upon contingencies.

“My thanks!” said Tuketu, handing back the ring with a wan smile and a nod. “That is all. Good day.”

Tuketu turned to leave, but Rust wasn’t finished. His hard gaze lingered on Dorian. “Chosen Io,” he said, his voice clipped in his trademark precision. He spoke even slower than usual, drawing out the syllables. “It’s been but two weeks since I’ve given you your title. In that time, the Tribe has supported your rise wholly. It is the Tribe that sponsors your entry to the Festival. You are, above all, a Rust Tribesman first. Remember that always.”

***

If his relationship with Rust Tribe’s leadership were rapidly deteriorating, his following among the people hadn’t waned. If anything it’d ballooned since he and Kaya had passed the second Trial. He was bombarded with dozens of cheers the instant he set foot in the Tribe’s living quarters. At this moment, Kaya was busy entertaining a growing legion of fans, many starry-eyed Rust Tribe children, around a campfire.

Dorian had better things to do with his night. He rubbed his hands as he settled into a lotus position, closed his eyes, and pulled out the description of the neat little arrow-aiming surveillance technique which the Festival had so graciously disseminated. He’d spend an hour or two modifying this to meet his specifications.

Then he’d drop by on his old friend Pearl’s war-camp, and find out once and for all what in nine hells the man was hiding.