She studied him for a moment, then reached up and patted his cheek. “I must look like a disaster, to have an Iron worry about me. No, the Underlord told me to think about it, didn’t he? Well, I did. I've lived my life among the Fishers, and it’s been a long life. It's about time I see the wider world, perhaps bring something back, hm? A little knowledge, perhaps.”
One of the spider legs reached up to poke Lindon in the stomach. “And I can't leave a half-grown cub to stumble around in the wild on its own, can I? No, I can't.”
Lindon’s throat tightened, and he blinked rapidly. She had stayed with him. He bowed as deeply as he could without going to his knees. “Thank you, Fisher Gesha.”
She stayed silent.
When he finally raised his head, she was gone.
One of the tall windows had swung open on its hinges, and Gesha dangled half-out with her head in the rushing wind. She retched, the spider legs stretched out as far as they would go to keep her tall enough to reach the window.
Eithan was sipping something from a shallow bowl. “It can take a few days to adjust, if you have a tender stomach,” he said. “But we'll have plenty of time together. It will take a month to reach our destination, which we will put to good use.”
Yerin woke from her cycling meditation again, cracking her eyes. “You finally bothering to teach us?”
Eithan hopped up to sit on the bar, taking another drink from his bowl. “The question is, are you ready for me to teach you?” He let that hang for a second as he took another sip, then added, “And the answer is no, you're not ready, so I'm going to spend this month trying to prepare you.”
He nodded to Yerin. “First, I'd like you to take turns on the training course. Yerin, you will try to beat your previous time...”
She rose from her seat, ready to try immediately.
“...using only your Goldsign.”
The bladed metal arm hanging over her shoulder twitched. She turned to stare at him in disbelief. “I'd have a better chance of clearing it with my bright smile and winning personality.”
Eithan turned to Lindon. “And Lindon—”
“Oy. Hey. Don't ignore me.”
“I at least expect you to clear all eighteen dummies after a month. Don't worry about your time, for now. While you’re working on that, you can bring your second core up to Iron, and brush up on your Soulsmithing. Fisher?”
Gesha leaned back inside, shutting the window with one hand and dabbing at her mouth with a cloth in the other. When she spoke, her voice had an extra rasp. “You should be able to identify all the properties of the seven basic aspects of Forged madra, as well as their combinations. I have the books with me.”
Yerin slapped the flat edge of her bladed Goldsign against the wooden bar. “You want me to fight with this thing? Why don't I just tie a knife to the end of a string and use that?”
Eithan studied her over the rim of his bowl. “You think, perhaps, that I don't know what it takes to reach Highgold?”
“No, that's not...” Yerin’s ears started turning red. “I'm the last one who would...”
“You think you know better than I do which exercises will allow you to integrate your Remnant's skills and abilities into your own? If your master left you a more complete training regimen for you to follow after Lowgold, then by all means use that.”
Yerin's ears had turned bright red. “I didn't aim to say that, Underlord.”
“Hmm.” He smiled. “You're young, and I'm unaccustomed to explaining myself. I'll try to be clearer in the future, but do as I tell you.”
She kept her eyes on the floor, tilted away from Lindon, but she nodded. “It's not so far apart from what my master used to have me do.”
“The only difference,” Eithan said, “is that you trusted him. Trust comes with time. And during that time, you will clear that course with your Goldsign or I’ll tie you to a string and drag you behind the house like a kite.”
She straightened and marched for the door.
Lindon started to follow her, but Eithan stopped him. “Before you do your morning cycling, take...” –he reached behind the bar with one hand, balancing his bowl in the other, and rummaged around in a drawer— “Aha! Take this.” Eithan tossed Lindon a pill the size of his knuckle. It was smooth, with swirls of blue and white mingled together. “Behold, the Four Corners Rotation Pill.”
Yerin stopped with her hand on the door.
“It's a pill to make your madra easier to cycle, and it should help you raise your second core to Iron fairly quickly.”
Lindon itched to write the name of the pill down in his notes. He had to record every step of his advancement in The Path of Twin Stars manual. Which brought him a moment of panic, as he realized he didn’t have his pack with him.
He let out a breath of relief as he spotted his pack—with the manual inside—leaning up against the wall. A polished wood-and-jade chest leaked wisps of red from the closed lid, so he assumed his Thousand-Mile Cloud was inside.
“Use the pill together with your parasite ring,” Eithan said, pouring himself another drink. “The effects should complement one another, so that it feels like cycling normally, but you'll see twice the benefit. By the time we land, I hope to be able to take you straight to Jade.”
Lindon cradled the pill in both hands as though it was his key into the heavens. It smelled like honey and rainy days, and the only thing stopping Lindon from popping it into his mouth was his desire not to waste a single second of its effect.
Yerin had already turned from the door to look at Eithan. “How far did that lighten your wallet, would you say?”
Eithan shrugged, but Cassias called back, “About five thousand scales, the way they measure them out here.”
Fisher Gesha's eyes bulged.
“Well, that's a gem and a half,” Yerin said. “You got one for me?”
Eithan waved that away. “It's just a fundamental training pill. Lindon will be taking one of these every day, but I have some more interesting supplements for you. Right now, your best advancement material is your master's Remnant.”
Yerin grimaced, but accepted it. She would have preferred a pill of her own, Lindon knew, but at least Eithan’s reasons were good ones.
Lindon could barely pry his eyes away from the Four Corners Rotation Pill. This was worth more than every year's end gift he'd ever gotten from his parents, and he was supposed to take one every day. Eithan was like an endless treasure box.
Cassias stepped away from his controls, walking out of the glass room and toward the Underlord. “I would urge you to remember what happened when you took over the training of our family Coppers.”
“Oh, that's nothing to worry about.”
Cassias turned to Lindon. “I personally rescued a girl who ran from his training into a place called the Thousand Beast Forest. She survived by hiding from two-headed bears. I found her crouched in a cave, dirty and bleeding, but she begged me to leave her rather than take her back to train.”