The training yard behind the estate was a flat stretch of packed earth with a wooden post at one end that Brynn had apparently been punching for so long it had a permanent dent shaped like her fist.
Katarina stood in the middle of it, barefoot, with her arms at her sides and her knees bent in what Brynn called a "rooting stance." It was sort of like squatting over an invisible chair.
"Wider," Brynn said.
Katarina widened her stance. Her thighs burned.
"Wider."
"If I go any wider I'm going to split in half."
"That's the spirit! Now breathe."
[Okay, calm down. This is a corporate wellness seminar. That's it. I am at a corporate wellness seminar and I can't leave because my boss is also my mother. Breathe.]
Brynn demonstrated the breathing pattern. In through the nose, hold for three counts, out through the mouth. She made it look effortless. Unless valdari and human physiology were the same, this woman probably had lungs the size of throw pillows.
"You're pulling the qi in with your breath," Brynn said. "It's everywhere. In the air, in the ground, in your body. You just have to learn to feel it."
[Right. Qi is everywhere. It's a resource that permeates the entire system and needs to be channeled to specific areas for maximum effect.]
That sounded familiar.
[She's kinda describing supply chain logistics.]
Katarina breathed in, held it, and breathed out.
"Good! Again."
She did it again. And again.
The breathing part was easy. Thirty years of sitting across from men who wanted to watch her flinch had given Vivienne Ross the lung control of a free diver. She could regulate her breath the way other people regulated their temper.
Brynn noticed.
"Your breathing is perfect," she said, and she sounded surprised. She crouched down in front of Katarina and put a big, warm hand on her stomach. "Here. Can you feel that? When you breathe in, there's a little pull right here. That's qi moving."
Katarina focused. There was a faint tug below her navel, like a muscle she didn't know she had was flexing on its own.
[What am I feeling?]
The Ledger flickered.
Qi detected: Trace amounts. Circulating along primary meridian.
Cultivation status: Pre-Foundation. Normal for age.
Note: Breathing efficiency is abnormally high for a five-year-old.
[A decade of quarterly earnings calls will do that to your diaphragm.]
"Now," Brynn said, standing back up and putting her fists on her hips, "try the punch."
Katarina punched.
It was the same sad little punch from last year, except now she was five instead of four, so it traveled maybe ten inches instead of eight. Her form was terrible, her weight transfer was nonexistent, and the sound it made when it hit Brynn's open palm was less "impact" and more "polite suggestion."
"That's great, dumpling!"
[Do not patronize me, woman. It is not great. That punch would not bruise a grape!]
"The power comes from here." Brynn tapped her own hip. "You're punching with your arm. Punch with your whole body."
Katarina tried again. The sound upgraded from "polite suggestion" to "firm request."
"Better! See? You're a natural!"
[... Meh.]
She went back to the breathing exercise while Brynn moved through a series of stances that made her look like a very large, very dangerous yoga instructor. Katarina followed along where she could and focused on the breath where she couldn't.
In, hold, out.
The qi moved. She could feel it now, thin and faint, like a current of warm water running just under her skin. It pooled in her core and then spread outward when she exhaled, reaching toward her fingers and toes before fading.
[It's a circulation system. Input, storage, distribution. The breathing is intake, the core is the warehouse, and the meridians are the distribution network.]
She almost laughed.
[Come on. I've been optimizing distribution networks for fifteen years. If qi flows the way inventory flows, then the bottleneck isn't capacity, it's routing. I need to find the inefficiencies in the meridian system and redirect flow to where it's needed most.]
"Mother."
"Yeah, dumpling?"
"When you move the qi around, does it go the same way every time? Like, is there a set path?"
Brynn blinked. Then she grinned so wide her canines showed.
"You felt the pathways already? At five?!"
"..."
Katarina blinked.
[Was that not supposed to happen yet?]
"That's my girl!" Brynn scooped her up, and Katarina was airborne before she could protest. "Seris! SERIS!"
Seris was not present. Brynn was yelling at the estate in general.
[Please put me down. I was having a breakthrough in applied logistics!]
Brynn did not put her down. Brynn carried her on her shoulders for the next twenty minutes, telling every single person they passed that her daughter could feel qi pathways at five years old.
Nobody was as impressed as Brynn wanted them to be, but that didn't slow her down. Fausta, who was doing nothing on a bench, said "How lovely" without looking up from doing nothing.
[This woman is being paid fourteen silver marks a year to sit on that bench and say "how lovely" to passing mothers. I am going to fire her so hard her grandchildren will be unemployed!]
But under the indignation, somewhere Katarina refused to look directly at, there was the warm pressure of Brynn's hands on her ankles and the way Brynn's shoulders shook when she laughed. Vivienne Ross had never sat on anyone's shoulders. Vivienne Ross had never had anyone to sit on.
[Anyway. Qi pathways. Interesting stuff.]
---
Dinner was stew again. Ottavia had made it too salty again. Katarina ate it without complaint because picking battles was a skill that transferred across lifetimes and overcooked stew was not a hill worth dying on.
Seris was on her third glass of wine and telling a story about a merchant she'd met in the port town who had tried to sell her a "genuine pre-war artifact" that was obviously a painted rock.
"She kept saying it was blessed by a Formation master," Seris said, holding up the rock in question. She'd bought it. "Fifty copper for a rock, Brynn. Fifty copper."
"Why did you buy it?"
"She had a very honest face."
[She spent fifty copper on a painted rock because the woman had a nice face. She is the head of a merchant house. She is the HEAD of a MERCHANT HOUSE.]
Brynn was laughing so hard she kept choking on bread, and Seris was waving the rock around like it proved her point.
So, Kat sighed and decided to stop thinking about this rock and start thinking about the Torvano contract.
She'd found it two weeks ago during one of her nighttime study raids. The Montecardi estate bought grapes from a supplier named Torvano for wine production. The contract was old, the prices were above market rate, and the quality reports showed a spoilage rate that would have gotten any vendor in Katarina's old life fired on the spot.
[What's our spoilage rate on Torvano grapes versus the regional average?]
Torvano spoilage rate: 23%.
Regional average: 8-12%.
Torvano contract price: 14% above current market rate.
[We are paying MORE for grapes that rot TWICE AS OFTEN. This is not a vendor relationship. This is theft with a handshake!]
And she would address this, but the timing had to be right.
Katarina couldn't walk up to Seris with a spreadsheet and a vendor termination notice. She was five.
But she could ask a question. One question, placed at the right moment, the way you drop a single data point into a meeting and let the room do the rest.
She waited for a lull. Seris finished her story. Brynn wiped her eyes and reached for more bread. The table went comfortable and quiet for a few seconds, the way it does when everyone's chewing and no one's started the next topic yet.
Katarina looked up from her bowl.
"Mother, why do we pay Mrs. Torvano for grapes if her grapes are the yuckiest?"
Brynn stopped chewing. She looked at Seris.
Seris looked at Katarina. Her wine glass paused halfway to her mouth.
"W-What do you mean, piccola?"
"Ottavia said last week that she had to throw out a whole crate because they were mushy. And then the week before that she said the same thing. And she always says it's the Torvano ones!"
That was true. Ottavia complained about the Torvano grapes on a regular basis, loud enough for the whole kitchen to hear, which was how Katarina had first picked up the thread. She'd just followed it back to the contract.
Seris set her wine glass down.
"She did say that," Seris said, and the words came out slowly.
"So why do we still buy from her?"
Katarina took a bite of stew, just a kid asking a kid question. Nothing more to see here, just a five-year-old who noticed that the cook kept complaining about the same grapes and wondered why.
Brynn was still looking at Seris. Seris was looking at the table, and there was that crease in her brow again. The same crease from when she'd found the dog-eared contracts on her desk.
"That's a good question," Seris said.
[Yes it is.]
"I'll look into it."
[PLEASE DO!!!]
The conversation moved on.
Brynn started talking about Katarina's qi progress and Seris's face brightened and the Torvano question dissolved into the noise of dinner the way a single dropped pebble disappears into a pond.
But it had landed. Katarina could tell because Seris reached for her wine glass twice in the next five minutes and didn't drink either time. She was thinking.
[Good.]
---
The next morning, Katarina woke up early and padded to the hallway outside Seris's study.
The door was closed, but she could hear papers rustling inside.
She pressed her ear to the wood. Seris was muttering a name. Torvano.
There was more rustling, then a drawer opening and closing. Then there was quiet, and then Seris said a word that Katarina recognized from Brynn's vocabulary. The kind of word that mothers weren't supposed to say.
Katarina grinned.
She walked back to her room before anyone saw her, climbed into bed, and pulled the blanket up to her chin.
The Ledger pulsed.
Torvano contract: Flagged for review by Seris Montecardi.
One liability identified.
One down. About forty to go.
[But we're moving.]