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But as the sun crept past noon and Lindon defeated his fifth opponent, he realized there was one scenario he’d never prepared for: easy victory. None of these children had a countermeasure for the Empty Palm, and once their sacred arts were disabled, superior size and strength made their loss trivial.

His hidden weapon, sealed in a jar and buried beneath the stage, would stay hidden.

He hoisted a Kazan boy by the red sash, tossing him out of bounds. The Kazan section rose up in a furious sea of red and gray, but he just waved at them as he walked away from the stage.

Joy burned in his chest like a torch.

* * *

Wei Shi Seisha stopped watching the exhibition matches as soon as it was clear her son would win. She had expected he would; he was older than all of his opponents, and had finally found a technique he could use in spite of his deficiency. She had every confidence that he would grow into a productive member of the clan now, though once she had doubted.

She began to pace the arena, checking scripts on the conductive pillars that held the illusory images of Elder Whisper. Sometimes visitors would deface scripts like this, but the mere presence of an inspector would reduce such occurrences significantly. She had almost an hour before Lindon would have to fight an opponent at the Copper level, which was plenty of time to make at least one lap around the arena.

The first anomaly appeared when she was passing the Li clan entrance. She happened to glance between the seating sections and noticed a Li clan elder—his jewelry all gold and jade, befitting his status as a Jade-stage practitioner—slipping out the door. She paused, curious, and another Li elder followed a moment later.

Seisha reached up and tapped the side of her drudge, carrying a drop from her spirit. The construct whistled an affirmative.

Drudges were all the tools a Soulsmith required rolled into one. They could measure madra output, determine its aspects, analyze the parts of a Remnant, and even help separate that Remnant into its components with minimal loss. Soulsmithing primarily revolved around deconstructing and reconstructing Remnants to take advantage of their unique properties, and without a drudge, it was almost impossible to do so accurately. Like a surgeon operating with her hands taped together and one eye shut.

In this case, Seisha had anticipated trouble from the Li clan, and so had gone to great lengths to acquire samples from Remnants similar to the ones they'd recently captured: the teleporting rabbit, vanishing bat, and space-warping mole. Her drudge could track a Remnant based on a sample like a hound taking a scent, and while trying to track three 'scents' at once would be complex, it was worth attempting.

With a specific pattern of madra pulses, she activated the drudge's tracking feature. It complied with a burble, unfolding tiny antennae as it executed the search. Those antennae were always the first thing to decay on any drudge, so she tried to use them sparingly, as they were expensive to replace. But this was a worthy cause. If the Li clan was attempting some kind of coup on the first day of the Seven-Year Festival, she had to clip this bud before it flowered.

Her drudge honked only seconds after the search had begun, startling her. The range on such detection was incredibly limited, and even more so when she'd packed three samples at once. There was always the chance of a false positive, but with such a quick response...

The Remnants, or something that reminded her construct of their power, was here. Possibly inside the arena.

She signaled the two closest of her assistants, young men with iron hammers on their badges. She had trained them for years, even if neither of them made promising Soulsmiths, and they had volunteered to help her secure the arena. Both came running.

“Li clan elders are slipping away,” she said. “One of you report to the First Elder, and the other can follow me.” She turned toward the Li entrance, leaving it to them to decide which would take on which task.

The arena had been constructed on the edge of Wei land, so it was enveloped on three sides by a forest: a sea of green dotted with the occasional purple island as an orus tree was mixed in with its more mundane counterparts. Aside from the gravel path leading away from the exit and back toward the main property, she saw nothing.

But her quarry was more advanced in the sacred arts, and she had to respect that. With a whisper of White Fox madra and an effort of focused will, she Forged a disguise.

The Wei clan Forgers trained in the Fox Mirror technique for years, learning to create illusionary copies with a dizzying degree of detail. Her peers specialized in creating copied faces, full-body duplicates, or even camouflaged walls that would render the user invisible. There were imperfections in each of these techniques, specifics that violated reality in ways that could be noticed.

She specialized in clothing. Layered robes of white and purple turned to green in an instant, jewelry glinting on each finger and both ears. Illusory necklaces hung down to her chest, and even her iron badge dangled from a gold chain. Her face would remain the same, but it wasn't as though the Li clan knew her on sight. Her hair could be a slight problem—brown hair was more common in the Kazan clan, but not the Li. She would have to risk it. In the shadow of the trees, her hair looked more black than brown anyway.

As her escort Forged his own disguise, a clumsy green cloak that he threw over himself, she followed the direction of her drudge into the forest. It clicked or whistled to her occasionally, changing her direction, but the chase took much less time than she'd expected.

Less than five minutes after leaving the arena, she spotted a flash of pink light through the trees, along with a man's raised voice. She silenced her drudge, cradling it in her arms like an infant, and signaled her guard to quiet. Carefully, she crept forward.

The Li clan disguise would stop them from attacking her outright, but it wouldn't save her from a thorough questioning...which she would prefer to avoid. Ideally, she wouldn't be caught at all.

Her skin tingled as she slid quietly closer, heart pounding, her well-practiced breathing technique strained by excitement. She hadn't worked against other clans since she reached Iron in her twenty-second year, but she'd missed it. She felt a rare pang of empathy for Jaran; he'd fought far more than she had, in his youth, and the lack of that thrill must add to his bitterness.

Seisha stopped when she was close enough to see the Li. They weren't all Jade, but a mix of Jades and Irons. The youngest was older than she was. Nine in total, though she was staring through a flowering cloudbell bush, so she could have missed one or two in the back. They were gathered around a circle in the forest floor, a circle made of tiles. A script.

They'd brought tiles the size of an open hand, each etched with a rune or sigil. When connected properly, they would function as well as a full-size script circle. It was a technique she’d seen before, mostly in cases where the circle might have to be redesigned quickly.

The three Remnants had been caged and placed at three distinct points around the circle. The blue rabbit chewed frantically at its prison, clutching at the bars with hands that looked almost human A pink series of swirls that might generously be called a bat flapped in place, fading in and out of existence but still unable to shift through the scripted cage. Finally, a brown-and-black mass with huge silver shovels for claws sat motionless, watching its captors with beady eyes.

All of the Remnants here, and all whole. No wonder her drudge had located their signatures so quickly; she hadn't expected them intact and so close.

The Jade man at the head of their party continued speaking, dictating to them as though repeating a lesson taught many times before. “...first the anchor, and then the call. If he doesn't answer, we have to be fresh enough to try again as soon as the next window opens. Shao, have you confirmed our location?”