When Marmocha left, it was long past the time Defi usually went to work. There was a delivery today, so he locked up and went to the docks. He waved at the workers as he poled upriver.

The frequent rain had swollen the river, making Defi hug the riverbank more closely than usual. The waters near the bank were shallower, gentled by some trick of nature. Often, the sand and gravel of the bottom could be seen. The river was wider here, about thrice wider than what he could remember of the turbulent waters of the Treachery.

As he poled futher away from the lake, the river narrowed and the calm of the earlier waters stirred into more life, like a riding ox prodded from a calm walk to a lazy trot.

It was more difficult to go against the current, but he still reached his destination in an hour. Months ago, he'd have gotten to Sarel's homestead in more than two hours.

He tied off the scow and jogged up the path. Sarel appeared to be elsewhere so he took several baskets and entered the orchard.

Picking zaziphos didn't need much brain to do. It allowed him to sort out the roil of emotions that the conversation with Marmocha had imparted.

Marmocha had sought him out to warn him that people who looked to stand above others thought little of those who would fall because of their climb to the heights.

In the process, Defi was reminded forcibly once again of the differences between the home that had raised him and the land he hoped would one day become home.

First the werefolk, and now this?

He placed a handful of zaziphos in the baskets and stretched, bending his body this way and that, as if his slightly tortured mind would stretch the same way.

Why was he feeling so conflicted about this, he asked himself grumpily.

He had already known that the castes in Ascharon were haphazard, and that it was possible to move between them. Buying nobility was just as unconventional, wasn't it?

A noble of Ontrea cannot just become. One had to demonstrate ten generations of nobility and adherence to the Teachings before the king gave a family the right to speak in the great court.

How can one be proud of their name, when it was bought for mere gold?

He straightened from his stretching, a frown on his face.

He was thinking as a noble of Ontrea, who had the heritage of millennia behind him and the Teachings in his heart.

He reminded himself that he was no longer a noble.

He pulled down a whip-thin branch, carefully twisted off the fruits that weighed its length.

Was he resentful that he lost his nobility?

He filled three baskets before he could face the answer.

Because he was.

There were three foundations that made an Ontrean: one was their lineage, one was their caste, one was the Teachings. Desislaf was a son of Rimet, Desislaf was a warrior-priest, Desislaf had passed the tests of the learning halls and the Trials.

Of the three, two were inherent in the identity Defi had as a noble.

He was resentful.

He was full of resentment.

He trembled in the strength of it as it bubbled up from the dark depths of himself, as if the acknowledgement had removed the stopper keeping it inside.

Not even the Current could wash it away.

He dropped the fruit in his hands, walked out of the orchard. He took the fishing gaff from the shed and jogged to the clearing beyond the orchard, where he had once buried the skeleton of a sea monster.

He took a deep breath, and stepped into the first stance of first formal set of the Spear of the Falling Star.

It was not an art he had mastered.

He was not even rated to high proficiency in it.

The Falling Star was a spear art inclined toward speed and power. The spearmaster said he was not suited for it. He had the speed, but the power had eluded him.

After two years on a farm, after months on this river, his muscles had hardened, his bones had grown denser. In the months of not practicing, he had lost some of his speed and grace, but the power was more than enough.

Most of all, the Falling Star was an art that needed passion.

Of all the combat arts he'd practiced, it was the one most suited to rage.

His boots thudded hard on the ground, his body and limbs bent in short, sharp movements, the gaff struck air again and again.

It was not enough.

He snarled and stepped into the second set of forms.

The Current spiked inside him, its calm swirling disturbed. Defi's anger rippled through it, causing high waves. He ignored its attempt to return to its usual soothing flow, forcibly ripped the calm away and pushed the raging Current into the art.

His boots crushed the grass under him. His body twisted powerfully. His limbs caused ripples in the air as they moved. Shadows of enemies died to the striking gaff.

The last set of forms, he only ever succeeded in making his spearmaster shake a head in exasperation.

His breath was already shortened, sweat was running down his face and back. He dropped into the Sixth Circle of the Current to regulate his breathing.

He moved into the third set of forms anyway, welcoming the strain in his muscles, the pain in his chest.

First form, second, third, perfectly executed. Fourth, fifth, to eighth, to sixteenth, done.

His muscles cramped.

He gasped and faltered. He growled at himself, started determinedly on the seventeenth form. But some semblance of reason came back to him with the shock of pain. He smoothed the Current from jagged bursts to a single long stream of power and started the Fourth Circle.

Eighteenth, twentieth, twenty-first, done.

The Falling Star Spear, it had never felt like this before.

Some small part of him detached and watched half-curiously, as face contorted and Current in a semi-tamed rage he moved in potent strikes he had never been able to do before.

If his spearmaster were here, he would likely have stopped Defi in concern at that deranged look. Then praised him. This was what the Falling Star was like?

It was true that it was unsuited to the bookish and passive noble he had been.

The thirty-sixth and last form of the third set loomed and Defi's vision tunnelled to the large boulder at the edge of the clearing.

The Current, incited by the spear art, thrummed, the speed of its movement directed, and the gaff in Defi's hand struck.

The essence of the Falling Star, a glowing spear from the heavens assailing the earth, raging bright in the sky, cannot be stopped, cannot be parried, inevitably striking.

The metal curve of the gaff hook touched the stone.

A crack resounded throughout the orchard, echoing against the mountainsides, carried far by the cliffs, startling birds and small animals near, quieting insects.

The boulder split into pieces, the rear of it crumbling nearly into dust.

Defi held the last form for a long moment, then retracted the gaff. His painful breathing sounded loud in the silence.

He relaxed, then swayed and had to plant the butt of the gaff in the earth to help him stand.

"Whoa.."

He whirled.

Sarel and three children stood in the trees at the edge of the clearing, baskets of zaziphos beside them.

Renne continued, with a grin. "If I wanted you to teach me, will you teach me that???

Defi stared at them, unblinking.

*

Sarel took in the dilated eyes, the trembling limbs. She caught the girl's shoulder before she could run toward the exhausted-looking warrior in the clearing. "Get the baskets back to the house. I need to talk to this one about re-ordering my scenery."

"But!"

She gave the three a quelling look, which had them ducking their heads and taking up the baskets with alacrity. Bree, comfortably unburdened, followed after his siblings but only after pouting cutely at Sarel.

She glared him away.

When the three of them were out of sight, Sarel turned back to the boy standing still in the middle of the clearing, holding himself up by her fishing gaff.

The large rock behind him was well and truly ruined. Only the two sides now stood tall, as if guardians to a gate, the middle and back in shards.

"Sarel," the boy said, sounding lost. "What is nobility?"

What was this now?

Sarel studied him. "What's this about?"

"Marmocha came this morning."

She??d wondered why the boy hadn't appeared like that story of the unlucky coin that could not be escaped. What in the Harmonium did Marmo say to induce this?

She listened as the boy talked. About Marmo's past, Calor Ducan, and the differences of two worlds.

She held in a sigh, took the gaff from trembling fingers and sat him down on one of the smaller rocks. He continued talking without stopping, as if he needed to get all of it out of him before he broke from the shivering.

She looked at him closely. The shivering was more likely him coming down from adrenaline of whatever rage-fueled technique he did to break stone.

He stopped, and sat there, limp and tired, eyes pained.

She contemplated her answer. Then exhaled audibly. "I'm not sure I'm the best to answer that. You've thought of yourself as a noble first, and all that entailed, before everything else. I think of myself as a cook first, before a noble or anything else."

He blinked. "Sarel, you're a noble?"

"Since I was twenty." She watched him process that. With everything he told her, she actually wouldn't blame him if he distanced himself.

But all she could see was conflicted curiosity. "Is there a difference? Between commoner and noble in Ascharon?"

She leaned back against the stone, thinking back. Complicated. "Some things got easier, some got harder."

He smiled faintly, huffed in brief laughter. "I should have expected that answer from you, I suppose."

"What's that mean?"

"Sarel is always Sarel, whatever you do." He sounded a little envious.

This kid. She was the same at his age, really. In fact, he was more collected and self-aware that she had been back then. She lifted a brow at him. "Isn't it the same of you?"

He just shook his head. Then redirected.

"How did you gain your title, may I ask?"

She'd been half-expecting the question.

"The Summer Glacier." Her lips twisted as the words left them.

He nodded in encouragement, eyes questioning, curious.

"It's an iced dessert, in the shape of a tower. I made it for the emperor's birth celebration." The second great milestone of her career, the spark for everything that had happened to bring her here.

His lips curled in amusement, sudden, a quick smile. "You were ennobled for a sweet treat?"

"You were ennobled for being born."

His smile widened into a grin. "Well, if you put it like that, it sounds ridiculous, you know."

"It is ridiculous," she snorted, stood. "We better get going. You still have to deliver those baskets."

He nodded, looking better than before.

She reached for the gaff she'd leaned against a tree. The wood of the haft crumbled in her hands. The metal head thunked against an exposed root. She glared at it, then the boy.

He looked surprised at it happening, staring at the destroyed gaff.

Damnably overpowered hot-headed brats.

He met her eyes and immediately lifted his hands in surrender. "I'll have it repaired!"

She bent to pick up the hook, tossed it to him.

He stepped away.

"Hey kid," she stopped him.

He looked back.

"Someone once told me that people are the same everywhere. That a person is a collection of thoughts and feelings, culture and learning, that precipitate action. That nobility is not found in title or even deed, but in here." She tapped her chest. "So don't worry about it too much."

He stared at her, eyes wide. Then his face blanked, reminding her of his first weeks here.

He nodded.

She watched as he disappeared into the trees, sighed. "Mother, I hope that was the right thing to say."

This was why she never wanted kids.