Chang-li and the Inquisitor exchanged blows, Min rapidly filling him in on what had happened. He could tell she was pushed to her limit, but doing her best to keep command all over their recruits and keep everyone safe. She was using them cautiously, keeping their distance and pulling them back whenever there was a sign of Pak focusing on them

  Inquisitor Pak acted like she had plenty of lux still remaining, but Chang-li hoped that wasn't truly the case.

  "This is yet another strike against your sect," she declared as Chang-li's blade caught hers and threw it back. "As if I didn't already have more than enough to have you all executed. Advancing to Lux Embodiment without first passing the official examination by a board of officials appointed by the Office of Cultivation is illegal."

  "Must have slipped my mind," Chang-li said cheerfully.

  "And your friend who has reached Lux Endowment without sealing a marriage to a Gem Noble..." Inquisitor Pak shook her head. "These are capital offenses. I shall bring your heads back to the Emperor, along with my report about your sect."

  "I'm sure that will make up for Prism Eri getting away," Chang-li said cheerfully.

  Her Intent shook. Chang-li studied that reaction. He didn't know what her Intent was. Noren had said many high-level cultivators used a variant on "become stronger." That didn't seem to be Inquisitor Pak's focus. If he could identify her Intent, he was certain he could use it against her.

  Fighting stronger cultivators over the last few weeks had taught him that such duels were not about pure strength, or at least they didn't have to be won by the stronger. He had defeated Lux Embodiment cultivators by overwhelming them, tricking them, and turning their own powers against them.

  This would just be more of the same, except that Inquisitor Pak was far superior to a mere Lux Embodiment cultivator. She was, at the very least, a Lux Dominator. Chang-li didn't really know what that meant or what she was capable of at this stage. He did know his core hummed with lux, and hers felt as though it was starting to run dry.

  A pair of constructs circled her head, then landed on her shoulders, most of their lux spent. What remained was mostly indigo lux. "What were these?" Chang-li asked Min quietly.

  "I don't know. They weren't a threat. They just marked us all.”

  A useful sort of technique for an Inquisitor to have. It didn't seem threatening. Still, he wasn't going to take his eyes away from them.

  Inquisitor Pak reached up and touched each of them in turn. She smiled. "I will be able to find your disciples anywhere they try to flee now," she told Chang-li. "I have marked them."

  Anger kindled in Chang-li. He was resolved to finish this fight and protect his friends. "We are not traitors. You have told yourself that we are because it's convenient for you."

  Pak smiled at him. "I call you traitors because that's my job," she said. "Now, perhaps a quick demonstration..."

  She raised her hands, and Chang-li could see the intricate weave. As strands of lux fanned out from her, she selected one and pulled on it, filling it with raw lux.

  From the palisade above them, where the Morning Mist disciples watched, there was a strangled cry and a shout of dismay. A moment later, a body fell from the palisade, landing in the dirt, a figure in Morning Mist robes. The person didn't stir.

  "You forget that I am an Inquisitor," Pak told him coldly. "I judge, and I enforce my judgments."

  Her Intent was strong, and Chang-li knew that was a key part of it. He leapt in, looking for his advantage, even as he readied Liar’s Blade.

  "So it's impossible for your judgments to be wrong?" he shot back at her.

  Inquisitor Pak recoiled as though bitten. Her lips were white, and her voice shook with anger.

  "How dare you suggest otherwise? You and your master together conspire to make me look foolish, but I will redeem myself when I bring him back to the capital with undeniable proof of his treason."

  She again selected a thread. This time, Chang-li didn’t wait. Liar’s Blade flashed as he slashed across the technique, severing the strands of lux.

  Inquisitor Pak looked at him in astonishment. "You can’t!”

  "Was I not supposed to see that?" he challenged, and realized that it was the Lens enhancing his senses that had allowed him to so easily see what she was doing.

  This new body was going to take some getting used to. "I deny your authority to judge my sect!”

  "Then you deny the Emperor himself!" Inquisitor shouted.

  "I think you are the one who is thwarted the Emperor’s will," Chang-li declared.

  Yoonji was absolutely astonished. How could this insect possibly be standing up to her? He'd been barely at the Peak of Spiritual Refinement the last time she'd seen him, and now, impossibly, he was clearly past Lux Embodiment. There was no other way he could have withstood her blows, undone her weaves.

  She flexed her will and found his meeting hers, hard, with an Intent as firm as she'd expect from a cultivator with ten times his lifespan. The rot ran deeper than she had expected. She had suspected Noren was teaching his disciples with forbidden techniques, but just what were they? She had to know.

  The more true reason she could prove here, the greater respect her fellow inquisitors would give her. But in the back of her mind, a still, quiet voice whispered. Something wasn't right. Why was she focusing so Intently on this sect? Granted, Noren was an annoying insect and had brought her wrath justly down upon him and all he possessed. But... there was a Prism War going on. She was a handful of miles away from a battleground in which the Emperor's most decorated general and a rebel Prism fought for stakes she still didn't understand.

  The oath that Eri had taken squeezed against her, making her heart skip a beat. She had had no option but to swear, but she had worded it carefully. She would take no action directly against the Emperor.

  But he had not told her anything about Eri. She was only supposed to follow Noren and witness his doings. Well, that's what she was doing here. She focused on the traitorous sect members in front of her and the soul oath.

  She could breathe and cycle again but her lux was running low. The weeks she had spent inside a violet cocoon had allowed scraps to escape from her core, and she was weakened. She should have entered the tower when they had first arrived and refilled her core, but it hadn't seemed necessary, and it might have degraded her standing in the eyes of the peasants to see her entering and cycling like a common cultivator. Yoonji had always believed in the importance of mystique to help her intimidate her foes.

  She focused on Cultivator Wu as he stood between her and the rest of his sect. Sweat dripped down his brow. She could sense his own cycling, and new rage struck her. He was full of lux. Fresh from that tower, and no doubt now in possession of the treasures that Eri had given her sect members.

  She knew the slippers on the barbarian cultivator’s feet were one of those and longed to take them from his corpse. This fellow had a blade that might be one of them. It cut through her techniques with a viciousness reserved for well-artefacted starsteel. She would confiscate anything they had and take it back, to show the Inquisition, of course. Yoonji cycled what lux she had and recited her Intent to stiffen her will. “I am the truth, and the truth shall make you fear.”

  A smile crept across her face. Her judgment was all the truth their sect would ever again get.

  She readied another technique. Cultivator Wu was watching her. He was tired, there was no question of that, great weariness showing in his face as he prepared for her next blow. “You know that you are wrong,” he said.

  His words hit her low in the body, and her core gave off an uncertain note. Her cycling slipped.

  How dare he? She was an Inquisitor. Her word was law. "Say whatever you like, criminal, or save your defense for your trial," she said coldly.

  "We're not traitors," he said. "The paperwork issues can be cleared up easily enough. You've been persecuting us for months and you just can't get it through your head that we weren't working with Eri. You must know by now. You've seen what's going on here." He spread his hands wide. "I just defeated half a dozen of Prism Eri's best disciples alongside my friends to prevent her from entering the tower."

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  "That doesn't seem to have worked," Yoonji pointed out.

  Chang-li's face sagged with weariness. "What the general does is up to him," he mumbled.

  She could tell it was getting to him, the effort of holding her will back, and she pushed a little harder, smiling. One slip from him and she'd be through. She wouldn't crush him, no. She’d take some of his lesser sect mates. That would break his spirit for certain.

  What was his Intent, anyway? It must be focused on his sect for him to be so very determined to protect them all. Such a foreign concept to Yoonji, who had abandoned her own sect without a second thought. They’d been weak, and she needed more than they could offer. Tying one’s Intent to a sect seemed utterly foolish. You were relying on others for the very heart of your own cultivation. She would never make such a mistake.

  "Kneel," she ordered, speaking with her will, Intent backing her up. Her technique hit them like a weighted net. Most of the Morning Mist disciples knelt. Most of the Darwur kept their feet. They were stubborn and less inclined to acknowledge her authority, seeing as they were barbarians and not used to acknowledging Imperial rule anyway.

  Cultivator Wu and his three companions remained where they were. She could feel all of them. The bald barbarian, was trying to decide how to best launch an attack to distract her so that the other could try one of those annoying combinations he was so fond of.

  The women on the wall were using crafty spiritual lux techniques. One had strings of blue lux running everywhere as she puppet-mastered the lesser members of the sect. That was a clever technique, not one she expected from a lower-tier cultivator. It had confused her at first, but now she realized the woman wasn't commanding them, just whispering suggestions. They acted of their own free will. Such loyalty and dedication. It was yet another sign that the story Noren had told about his sect was all lies. You couldn't get this kind of fanatic devotion in barely a year.

  Yoonji infused a technique into her blade, and it lengthened until it was twice as long as she was. Justicar’s Blade was a favorite technique. She could use it to pass judgment on a whole sect at once.

  Yoonji paused. Her web of ensnaring lux was holding everyone in place, and she did enjoy these moments. She let her voice boom out again.

  “I am Inquisitor Pak Yoonji,” she called, "chosen of the Emperor. And while I have the power to destroy all of you where you stand, I also can be merciful. So I offer a bargain: the first three Morning Mist acolytes ranked below the Spiritual Refinement tie, who come forward and throw themselves on my mercy and swear to give testimony in court about the misdoings of Morning Mist’s senior disciples and masters will be permitted to live. Their cultivation licenses will be taken from them, of course. But you may live. If you fear the justice of the law, you need only speak the truth.”

  She met their eyes, looking about, trying to guess which would take her offer. “I shall release my weave. The first three to stand will receive this pardon.” She let up on the weave and could see the bodies of the sect members slumping with relief.

  Yoonji waited.

  And waited.

  And waited.

  To her shock, no one moved. Maybe they didn’t realize they could move. “Stand up,” she ordered, “all of you.”

  One by one, the cultivators clamored to their feet. They looked at each other nervously. "I said, the first three to accept my offer will live. Step forward. Claim it," she invited.

  Once again the sect exchanged glances. Then one man, an older fellow with a workman’s build and tanned face, stepped forward. He folded his hands across his chest. "My name is Brother Stone," he said, "and I speak for all of us. We reject your offer. We are Morning Mist. We stand with our elder brothers and sisters."

  Behind him, the others raised their arms in salute and shouted the name of their sect. "Morning Mist! Morning Mist!"

  Cultivator Wu's eyes widened. Yoonji heard his intake of breath, saw how the weariness fell away from him, replaced with a grim determination. He cycled, his pattern shifting.

  Yoonji knew something was about to change. She had to put an end to this. Her previous demonstration had been a mistake. She knew now what she needed to do. She would decapitate the sect, and this young master in front of them. Then she would instill the proper fear.

  Yoonji raised the Justicar’s Blade. She slashed down, meaning to slice the young cultivator's body in two.

  Her blade struck, and held.

  She looked. He had caught it on a pair of blades of his own. But he’d only had one before. Yoonji blinked. The second blade was a lux copy. There was no way that a Lux Embodiment cultivator should have been able to stop her blow at all, certainly not with a mere copied blade.

  She pressed down, crushing through both of his blades, the forged one and the Lux Blade, but he held.

  His face was strained. He spoke aloud. “We know the truth and we’re not afraid of you.”

  Yoonji’s lux broke from her control. Her will shattered. She stepped backward. Her cycling was broken. She tried to force herself to cycle, sweeping up the remnants of lux in her body, but they would not answer.

  Her Intent shook. It took her an instant to realize what had happened. Her Intent was already strained by the weight of the soul oath Eri had forced on her. But as long as she'd been doing something she could justify as both her job and in line with the soul oath, she'd been fine.

  This boy telling her that he wasn’t afraid, was so counter to her oath that the tiny balance she had been holding broke.

  And so did she.

  Yoonji screamed. No, no, it wasn’t going to end this way!

  The Morning Mist seized the opportunity, hurling attacks at her. Her will, battered as it was, blocked most of it, but it ripped what remained of her lux shields from her, draining the last strands from her body.

  Cultivator Wu stepped forward. He only had a single blade now, a technique forming in his other hand. “Surrender,” he said. “We’ll explain everything to your Inquisition, if you give us your word not to attack us again.”

  Yoonji stared as hate flowed up through her. She would not be defeated by this gutter trash sect. And yet, without lux, what could she possibly do?

  Only one thing. The last resort.

  Her lux was gone, and there wasn’t enough in the area to support her, but there was Lumos streaming toward the tower nearby, to be broken down. She could feel it. She was a Lux Dominator at the Peak of her powers. She knew how to touch Lumos without being destroyed. She knew how to use it.

  She would wipe these peasants from the earth and pay the consequences later. Yoonji reached out. She touched the strands of Lumos.

  It flowed into her, overwhelmed her. This wasn’t at all like lux. If lux was rivers of power coursing through her veins, Lumos was the raging fire that burned everything in its way.

  She screamed as it washed over her, devouring her from the inside out. She struggled, trying to master it. But her Intent was shattered. Without it she had no control. She couldn’t make the Lumos obey her.

  And Yoonji knew she had made the last mistake she would ever make.

  Chang-li realized what was going to happen just a moment before it actually did. Inquisitor Pak’s Intent crumbled around her, and with it so did her control on the lumos she had been gathering in herself. He sensed her Intent collapse and he also felt, with fascinated horror as she reached for the Lumos she couldn’t possible hope to command. He knew her failure would have dire consequences for everyone in the area. He couldn't shield everyone.

  But he could make a shield big enough for himself and another.

  He threw himself forward. As he rushed forward, he grabbed, ripped the cape off of his neck. Chang-li crashed into the Inquisitor, driving her to the ground. He covered the both of them with the densest layer of lux possible. As Inquisitor Pak shook and convulsed under him, the lumos in her core ripped free, her will and Intent no longer able to hold it in place.

  She shattered. Lumos, lux, and bits of the Inquisitor's body pelted Chang-li. He closed his eyes, wrapping his head in a second layer of Lumos. The cape wrapped around his body.

  The world settled.

  Chang-li blinked, opening his eyes. His cape lay on the ground beneath him. It had turned completely black. There was no sign of the Inquisitor. He got to his feet. Joshi was there, offering him a hand. He took it. He reached out with his senses. No sign of the Inquisitor anywhere.

  "Is she dead, then?" Joshi asked.

  "She's dead," Chang-li said wearily.

  "What happened exactly?" Joshi asked.

  Behind him, the Darwur were gathering together around their khan, speaking in their own tongue. Chang-li could hear the Morning Mist disciples above giving a cheer.

  He looked about for Min and Hiroko, but forced himself to answer Joshi. "When she ran out of lux, she had only one choice. She started drawing on Lumos, but I guess she didn’t have much experience working with it. She was trying to hold it with her Intent and will. When I cracked her Intent, it destroyed her."

  Joshi nodded. "I thought it must have been something like that."

  A moment later, Min hurled herself at Chang-li, her arms going round his neck. He hugged her back tightly. "You’re all right," she breathed. "I was so worried. I thought…” She looked at him. "You’re taller," she said accusingly.

  Chang-li felt himself blush. Even with a body partially made from lux, it seemed there were still some reactions he couldn’t quite control. Definitely some reactions he couldn’t control, he amended as Min pressed closer to him. “Uh, maybe a little," he mumbled.

  “Then you reached Lux Embodiment," Min said. She was looking him over.

  "What’s it like?" Joshi asked curiously.

  "Hard to say," Chang-li said. "It let me go toe-to-toe with an Inquisitor, so I guess that's a good thing."

  Joshi clapped him on the shoulder as Hiroko emerged at the head of a huge squad of Morning Mist disciples. Chang-li hadn’t realized there were so many here. Noren seemed to have brought nearly the whole sect.

  That thought brought him back to himself. He turned to look at the tower. "Noren went in after them.”

  "Why?" Min asked, her brows drawing together in worry.

  "Something about a soul oath he'd made to the Emperor. He— " Chang-li broke off.

  The tongue of the tower flared with light. For a horrible moment, he thought the tower was going to explode the way they’d feared with Riceflower. Then the flare died down.

  He felt a pulse rippling outward, then a second, and then finally a third, like a heartbeat. The air felt different than it had before. He breathed in.

  Lux flowed in from outside. Not much, but more than it had been before.

  "I think whatever has happened in there is done," he said. "Look, the tower is emitting lux."

  Joshi looked concerned. "I know the general said that’s what would happen. But if this tower is going to work like other ones now, my people have a lot to prepare for. I need to speak with my brother."

  "Should we wait here or go find Noren?" Min asked.

  Chang-li considered. Either Noren, and presumably General Li, had won, in which case they would return to this place soon enough, or Prism Eri had won, in which case he didn’t want to attract any of her attention.

  "Let’s wait here," he said. There had been a lot of raw lux in that fight, as well as numerous hints of willpower from a Lux Dominator. "I need to check on the disciples. Make sure they are alright."

  He raised his voice. "I want everyone to sit and cycle Purification of Mind and Soul! I’ll be coming around to make sure you are all right in a minute."

  He looked down at Min and smiled.

  She shook her head. "I think you’re allowed a moment to rest yourself."

  "No need," he told her. "Not when there’s work to do."