The training chamber was much as Chang-li had described: a blue-tinted crystal room in which Joshi could see his face reflected, but larger than Chang-li had said, at least 20 paces on a side. Instead of merely a featureless blue crystal room, Joshi found one side occupied by a pair of featureless dummies similar to the ones he'd punched with alacrity at the sect headquarters, with veins of gold light streaking through the wall and ceiling. The place had a rhythm to it, subtly beating.

  He stared at his own face for a moment. Chang-li had said his reflection had spoken to him and emerged, faced as an opponent. Would that happen to him? No matter. He had been given time. He would make use of it.

  Joshi sat in the exact center of the chamber, legs crossed, arms extended, and cycled the Way of Boulders. It was his favorite of the cycling techniques the monks of Hapiru had taught him, suitable for someone focused on refining their own body into a weapon.

  And he had a trick up his own sleeve. Joshi reached into his robes and withdrew the pale pink fruit that had been their reward after a fight on the fifth floor, weeks ago. He’d been keeping it to sell, but now he needed the power it offered. It was a bolus fruit, a divine treasure that should purify and strengthen his lux channels, letting him shape more lux at a time.

  He and Chang-li had both consumed several spiritual treasures so far during this bridal tournament, thanks to the deal they'd made with Li Jiya. While he was saving a few of the more valuable treasures in case he needed ready funds, he had consumed an ancient tortoise essence, which had helped further harden his skin, and the core of an enormous flower creature, which Chang-li’s notes had suggested would give him better insight into the spiritual luxes. He wasn’t sure it had helped, but he’d had no trouble consuming either of the treasures.

  Joshi put the whole fruit in his mouth and chewed, feeling the flesh melt away into liquid that ran down his throat, burning its way down into his stomach.

  He cycled quickly, moving the pulsing energy from his stomach to his core, and there it sat, like a burning coal. When he tried to cycle lux into his core, it resisted. He had to force it in, and when it touch the energy, the lux fled through whichever of his channels was the most convenient.

  Joshi switched to cycling Purification of Mind and Soul. The lux flowed a little more easily into his core now, and he studied himself as though watching from a distance. What was the fruit trying to do to him? He gritted his teeth and focused.

  What if, instead of trying to force lux into his core, he let the fruit’s energy out? Joshi centered his will around his core, enveloping it in a veil. Then, very carefully, he poked at his own core with his will, urging some of the energy out. It flowed outward, but not into his channels as he’d expected. It merged with his will, shifting his attention just a little, urging him to act. Joshi closed his eyes and concentrated. It felt as though the energy wanted him to change his core. Yes. This fruit was supposed to speed up his core’s rotation a bit, wasn’t it? That would, in turn, help him purify lux faster. His core didn’t feel as though it were rotating faster than it had before.

  Experimentally, he imagined his will twisting around his core, urging it to spin just a little more. The energy flowed out of him, pushing his core along, and it did spin a little faster. Fascinating. That’s what the energy wanted to do, was meant to do, so why was it stuck inside his core until he himself pulled it out and applied it manually?

  Joshi pulled more energy and spun his core faster. After that, he stopped and cycled Way of Boulders again, feeling the changes it had made. His lux slid into his core, filling the space he’d made by removing some of the energy. The rest still sat at the bottom of his core, pulsing like a hot ember.

  Joshi summoned Magen, and to his relief, the lux creature appeared. He had hoped that would be so since the creature was bound to him and to his core. It made the training chamber feel a little less desolate. Joshi opened his eyes and looked up at Magen, who was hovering over him, fading in purple and blue colors.

  “What am I missing?” he said aloud.

  The lux creature gave a little chirp. It came and settled on Joshi’s outstretched hand. He felt comforted by its presence. He focused on his will power and applied it to the core, making it spin. That helped, a little, and he felt a trick of the lux in the bottom of his core flowing out. It would work if he kept it up.

  Now, all he had to do was master his new technique. As soon as he emerged, they would be facing a terrifying opponent, one who was an entire peak higher than Chang-li and Joshi, who had been trained by a prism and sent here on a suicide mission. Mai Wen would have nothing to lose, so he had to be ready to face her.

  Even with Chang-li’s assurance that he would fight with everything in him, Joshi was worried. His friend’s good nature might get the best of him. Or perhaps Joshi could arrange it so that he, not Chang-li, struck the killing blow. Protecting Chang-li from having to make that sort of hard decision would be worthwhile and a way to repay him for the gift of the training chamber.

  Which meant Joshi had to be strong enough to go up against Mai Wen and succeed. It was time he mastered his most recent technique.

  In his recent fights, it had become apparent that he needed to keep his enemies close to him. As soon as they were out of his reach, he was limited to sprinting after them or perhaps employing Meteor Fist. While the lux-powered leap was effective, it was also costly and not always the right choice for a situation.

  He and Chang-li had been experimenting with techniques drawn from the Morning Mist Scrolls, looking at combined orange and blue techniques. While Chang-li was trying to find a way to use the orange and blue for a weapon, Joshi thought there was a chance he could use it to keep his enemies close.

  It was important in such to visualize what you had in mind, and Joshi had struggled with that. Now, thanks to his recent pondering, he had an idea. He wove the basic pattern that he and Chang-li had spent time practicing, starting with the orange that he felt comfortable with, then adding in green before coaxing a thin strand of blue into the weave.

  With the potential weave growing between his hands, he concentrated. Right now, it looked to him like an unruly tangle of threads, not the neat firepot or blindfold weaves Chang-li was always throwing about.

  This was the first time Joshi had tried to use a weave outside his own body. Enforcing his limbs with red lux was easy; it came naturally to him. Forming a gauntlet felt like an extension of that. Even Meteor Punch and Thousand Fists were focused on amplifying his body’s natural abilities. While their effect was outside his body, he was able to picture his natural abilities and anchor the techniques to himself. This, though, needed the lux to answer his mind, not his body. Joshi tried to toss the weave out in front of him while retaining one end like a whip, but it all slid through his fingers and vanished. Frustrated, he pulled the lux back in and began weaving it again.

  A silvery laugh came from behind him. "Look, the ox is trying to dance."

  Joshi stiffened. He knew that voice. It sounded in his dreams most nights, and he'd heard it just minutes before entering the tower, but it couldn't be. He forced himself to stand, allowing the weave to dissolve in his hands and deliberately turned.

  Hiroko stood before him, dressed in her finest indigo robes. Her hair was exquisite, topped with tiny jewels. Her face was touched with a hint of cosmetics, deepening the red of her lips and highlighting the dark brown of her eyes. She looked confident and at ease, not like he'd last seen her at all. She looked taller somehow too.

  "What are you thinking?" she mocked. "You're going to just master a technique with no help at all? Everything you've got so far, you've learned from those more skilled at cultivation than you—the monks of Hapiru, Chang-li. You might as well admit, Joshi, you'll never reach the Peak of Spiritual Refinement because you don't have what it takes to become a cultivator."

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  Her voice bit deep into him, hitting his deepest and most insecure places. Joshi focused on her face. "You are not Hiroko," he growled.

  She spun on one delicate, slippered foot. "Of course I'm not.”

  “You're the same creature Chang-li saw. He said it was a reflection of himself, that this chamber somehow brought his deepest feelings to life.”

  Hiroko rolled her eyes in a gesture he had never seen on the real princess. "Really? Chang-li thinks that well of himself to believe he has such deep and intense desires as I. You must have guessed what I really am."

  "You are the training chamber," Joshi asked, "or — are you a guardian?"

  Hiroko clapped her little hands together, beaming up at him in a way that made his stomach twist. "Very good, Joshi! I am. Not like those dull, stodgy tower guardians, though. I am much more interesting.” She trailed off, staring at him with a smile. "So, what are you going to do now?"

  “Ignore you,” he said, and turned back to his weave. It failed before it even formed. So did his next three tries.

  "You'll never get that working properly, not without help,” Hiroko told Joshi after thirty attempts at getting the chains technique to work.

  "Feng did it," Joshi said, wiping sweat from his brow. He wanted to ignore her, but her tone needled him. The real Hiroko had never sounded so mocking, even when he probably deserved it.

  "Oh, yes. Model yourself on Feng,” she scoffed. "Feng, who was so far-seeing and resourceful that he threw away this chamber in an attempt to trap Chang-li in it. Yes, I definitely think you should take advice from him." She began humming to herself, staring down at her nails.

  As Joshi tried the weave yet again, it collapsed. Frustrated to the breaking point, he turned on her. "What would you do?" He snarled.

  "Me? I'm just a spirit," she said, smiling. "Until I gain a body, it's all pretty much moot what I would do or wouldn't."

  “That’s your goal then?" Joshi demanded. "Chang-li told me you threatened to take his."

  "Yes," she sighed, "but he was stronger than I am. And despite the lux he's added to this prism, I don't think I'm strong enough to take yours. Yet." Joshi didn't trust her at all, but he refrained from saying so. "Sooner or later I'll acquire enough lux to form a body," she said. "It may take a few hundred years, but I'm patient, not like you humans."

  "Really?" he asked skeptically. "Gain lux and you can form a body?”

  “Isn't that what cultivators do?" She shrugged. "I mean, there's a stage of cultivation called lux embodiment. What do you think that means? Hmm?"

  "I haven't spent time thinking about it," Joshi admitted.

  "Maybe you should. Because it's exactly what it sounds like. You remake your body entirely out of lux. You've seen prisms. Do they look like they're walking around made of lux?"

  He shook his head. "No."

  "Then that should give you an idea just how real the lux body can be, and how far off either of us is from it. You aren't even going to reach the Peak of Spiritual Refinement like this."

  What little patience he had snapped. "What do you know of it?"

  "I know that it's clear you have no idea how to reach the next peak.”

  "And I suppose you do."

  "Of course not," she said, smirking at him. That was definitely not an expression he'd ever seen on Hiroko's face. It made it easier for him to remember that this wasn't really Hiroko, but her words still cut deep. "How could I know that? I'm not a cultivator. I don't care about human things. And none of you who've entered my prism so far have known about it. I suppose that prism who fed me lux knows, but he didn't share that secret with me.”

  “Then shut up,” Joshi growled, and tried again. And again.

  "Maybe your technique's not working right because you don't have a target," the false Hiroko said. She was standing still in the center of the room and staring at Joshi.

  In answer, he turned and focused on the training dummies across the room. He wove together a chain and lashed out. This time, it held together in his hand until the other end touched the training dummy. Then it unraveled quickly, starting from that side and backing quickly up into his retained end of the technique.

  In frustration, he turned on the false Hiroko. "It doesn't work. I've misunderstood how to use this technique. If Chang-li were here, he could tell me how it's done."

  "Chang-li, Chang-li, Chang-li," Hiroko mocked, putting her hands on her hips. "Is that why you're refusing our betrothal? Is it that you prefer Chang-li over me?"

  "You are not the real Hiroko," Joshi said, not bothering to dignify the rest of it with a denial. He sat down and tried to cycle.

  “You’re the one who forced her form on me.” She snorted and looked down at herself. "When I take a form of my own, it will be considerably taller than this. More like yours, perhaps less bulky. Maybe I should imagine myself with those muscles." She flexed an arm.

  Joshi's frustration was rising. "Will you just shut up?" he asked.

  "Unfortunately, I'm trapped here with you just as you're trapped here with me," the spirit said.

  Joshi paused in his meditations. Why had the spirit appeared to him? What did it want? It claimed to want more lux. Well, the training chamber was full of that. It had threatened to take Chang-li's body and now claimed it would not try to do the same to him. Not that he trusted its word, but it hadn't had to appear. Or had it?

  "You are bound to this training chamber," he said, "just as tower guardians are bound to their towers."

  "For now," the spirit agreed. “Someday, that will change."

  "But for now," he said, ignoring the second suggestion, "for now, you are bound. Bound to what exactly?"

  Hiroko's features froze. She gave a little pout. "Oh, we were just having such an interesting conversation."

  "You are bound to assist whoever comes here to train, aren't you? With what exactly?”

  “That's just it. You don't even know what you want. You..."

  He crossed the room, catching her by her shoulders and pushing her backward against the wall. To his surprise and relief, she didn't feel quite human. It was like moving a carved statue. Her body was cold and still under the outer layer of her robe, and the robe itself gave under his touch. He was holding an illusion wrapped around who knew what. It helped him remember this was not Hiroko.

  Looking into the spirit's face, he said, "I want to learn this technique and I need to process the lux in my core to return to my friend stronger, ready to aid him in his fight."

  "It looks like it's going to be shaping up to be quite a dangerous one," she said, cocking her head.

  Joshi's heart pounded. "Have they started already?" He looked about wildly, letting go of the spirit's shoulders. "Then let me out and..."

  "No, they haven't," the spirit interrupted. "But it's going to be... I can feel the pressures outside. Oh, and you are in an interesting place, aren't you?" Her expression changed to one of dismay. "What's wrong with this tower?"

  "One prism murdered another, and the tower itself is going to destroy itself, with us in it, in a matter of hours if we can't summon the emperor to put things right," Joshi explained.

  Hiroko's expression flitted from horror to a business-like frown in a heartbeat. She rubbed her hands together. “You should have said that to begin with. All right. No more fooling around. Except when I need you to be honest with yourself. Why are you so insistent on this technique?"

  "I need to be able to hold an enemy in place in a fight and to keep him from fleeing," Joshi said.

  The spirit frowned. "The reason why you're having trouble with the connection is because deep down you don't want yourself to be bound to a fight, and the only way to get this spell to work is to visualize binding yourself to your target, committing to the fight, understanding that neither of you will escape until one of you surrenders or is dead."

  "I can do that," Joshi growled.

  "Can you?" Hiroko challenged. "When was the last time you were willing to commit, to close off all your options to escape?"

  Joshi hesitated, thinking. "When I entered the second floor of the broken tower alone."

  The spirit's expression softened. "So you did. Very well. But since then, you've been leaving escape routes for yourself, to keep from being fully bound. That's your weakness. It's preventing you from taking the next step toward the Peak of Spiritual Refinement. Until you commit, until you choose where you stand, you will not be able to fully control your will, not while your heart is divided. So, what is it?" She leaned in toward him, leering. "Pick something you want, Joshi, and go after it. Stop trapping yourself by insisting on keeping free of entanglements. Who are you going to be? Son of the Khan of the Darwur? An escaped slave trying not to be noticed? The false young master of a sect that doesn't exist? A man fleeing from the woman he wants because he's afraid of her changing him? Are these really who you are?"

  With every word she said, memories flooded in on Joshi. Of how he had raged against the collar in his slavery days, of his desperate need to stay ahead of young master Feng, of his helplessness on hearing about his father's death. And most of all, how he had been acting. He turned his back on the spirit, stalked off across the length of the chamber, and put his hands together and began weaving the binding chain's technique, carefully layering the orange with green and then adding the blue.

  He whirled and lashed out with his right hand, sending the technique across the room. The far end wrapped itself around Hiroko's shoulders, and it held. He grabbed onto the other end of the technique with his left hand and began pulling it in. Hiroko resisted but was drawn inexorably toward him, hand over hand, fist over fist. When she was a foot from him, the bonds dissolved. She smiled up at him.

  "A good first attempt," she said. "Let's try again."

  Then, all at once, he thought of something and laughed. The tower boon, the first one he'd gotten before meeting Magen, where the guardian had told him he could not be bound by anything unless he chose to be. What if that was working against him in his core? He had been forced to use his willpower to agree to let the bolus fruit alter his core. Joshi couldn't be certain that was the cause, but it felt right to him.

  So, he'd done this to himself by refusing to accept limits. Refusing to let something else control him. He was grateful for the boon and pleased it was working, but the training guardian was right. He was letting that fear of being bound hold him back..

  Joshi focused and applied the rest of his willpower. His core thrummed with new energy. He cycled lux through and was pleased with how well it refined the lux, much faster than before.

  He turned to face the guardian. “Now I am ready.”