...

Ayika walked along the main Harbor Town road that led to the City. Ahead, the city wall grew from a landmark looming above the rooftops into a vertical horizon. Ayika fought to keep her little patch of space on the elevated pedestrian-way to the Craftsmen's Gate as the wain-road rumbled below. However, as she walked she was jostled on every side by hundreds of people also pushing towards the entrance to the city. Their backs were piled high with overstuffed packs, they pushed overloaded barrows, and had poles slung across their shoulders that carried further loads of goods and products. Below and to her left, over the edge of the elevated path there was a constant groaning, grinding, creaking and bellowing as wagons and wains piled high with food slowly trundled in a close-packed stream. The huge mouth of the Craftsman's gate approached and the press of the crowd grew even greater and louder. Fortunately there was no required showing of passports at this gate. Residents of the enclosed land were allowed the privilege of the Lower Ring. That far but no further.

It would have been ridiculous to ride the tram to the first station inside the Inner Ring. She would have had to walk a third of the distance in the wrong direction just to reach the harbor station. Ayika muttered this rationalization to distract herself from the unpleasant realization that her Middle-Ring work-pass had expired. She did not work at the Legacy School now. Headmaster Gang was not going to issue a replacement that would allow her to use the tramway. Walking was her only choice to reach the location in the city Mama Mua had selected as the next meeting place for Ayika's 'apprenticeship'. Mua still blamed her from accidentally thwarting her attempt to capture Erliao but they were both drawn to each other, frightened by the growing spiritual turmoil only they could sense. Ayika had no choice, Mua was a hope against the Masks and her only chance to learn to stop the Nine-Step-Shadow spirit. If there was a way.

It was dark under the teeth of the gate. Voices from the crowd reverberated off stone walls until the constant complaints and exclamations and accusations of theft no longer resembled the sounds of humans but had merged into an inorganic cacophony. Elbows continually hit against Ayika's chest and upper arms and by what little light there was she could only see sweat-stained shirt backs and dirty packs.

On the other side of the wall the surging crowd was disgorged down a broad flight of stairs to a large paved square. This wide space clinging to the side of the gate-road was packed to the very edges with purveyors crouched on the ground beside their compact arrangement of wares for sale. Legally, these open spaces on each side of the wall were to be kept clear for reasons of city defense. However, since the government cared little about defending against people choosing to leave the city this side of the gate was left unregulated. A regular bribe to the guards meant that a small patch of dirty pavement was an unmolested address until someone was willing to exceed your payment.

Ayika managed to find her way through the confusing nexus of vendors and pushed free of the gate-square market without purchasing anything. The buildings here in the Lower Ring were three stories tall at their lowest and every one was festooned with hanging cloth signs stamped with huge block characters advertising the businesses on the first and sometimes second floors. The brick and plaster that made the walls was often chipped and battered but lively paint covered much if it in enthusiastic if unskilled patterns of brilliant colors. The merchants might live in the Middle Ring but here was the true center of commerce for the vast city.

After a few blocks of respite from the crowded press of the gate square the foot-traffic thickened again as Ayika approached the junction of the Lower Ring canals that ran nearest the gate. Here a chunk of buildings were missing from the roadside to be replaced with a broad array of steps leading down to the brown water that could sometimes be spotted below the many wooden boats that jostled for space like ducklings butting together. The low woven canopies the boats had for heads undulated like swaying waves of grass. Boatmen were unloading goods for the Craftsman's square and other places. Others were calling out to Ayika and other passersby, offering to sell her something or buy her in almost equal numbers. She ignored them.

This was where Mua had said they would be meeting but Ayika could not see other woman. However, after a moment she noticed a lone boat of a slightly different design floating some distance off down the building-shadowed canyon of a less trafficked intersecting canal. Standing the deck just above the waterline was a robed figure wearing a woven straw hat whose brim swayed with a screen of dangling ornaments. It was Mua and there were thirty meters of water between here and there.

Ayika waved and otherwise tried to attract the woman's attention. Either Mama Mua did not see her or Ayika was being deliberately ignored. But the waterbender was not leaving so she must had not abandoned all intention of teaching. This must be some kind of test. Ayika sighed and hitched up the flaps of her skirt over her under-trousers, folding the hems back behind her belt so they would not get in the way. She was really sick of being tested.

The boatmen in the canal yelled out as this strange tribal girl suddenly leaped out from the bank onto their decks and sent their boats rocking as she bounded from one craft to another in rapid leaping strides. But for the most part the drivers were self-imprisoned behind the stacks of merchandise they had arranged for transport and could not reach to where she skirted and vaulted across this constantly moving obstacle course. Then she landed on a boat on the outside of the press of the dock with enough force to send its nose spinning out into the traffic lanes of the canal. Ignoring the last batch of curses this incited Ayika casually stepped out over the water and onto a passing vessel that was making its steady way down the appropriate side canal.

This new boatman looked up from his oar at Ayika who was now standing on his prow and raised a single eyebrow. Ayika pointed over at Mua, still floating against the backs of the cannel-side houses and said:

"Just getting over to her."

The boatman shrugged and continued to slowly undulate his steering oar. Everyone knew that tribals were crazy.

Mama Mua met Ayika's eyes through the fringe of dangling beads along the rim of her round hat as Ayika hopped over onto Mua's boat.

"You're late, Ah believe."

She wore the same costume of black, blue and purple that she had worn when Ayika visited her house. It must have been her shaman uniform. The tiny disks of silver tinkled sometimes as she moved.

"I am sorry, mam," Ayika said, taking her place on the little craft. There was plenty of room as Mua's vessel lacked the central awning that most canalboats had and was thus wide open but for a low deck and planks to sit on. "Somehow I ended up on the wrong side of the canal. My mistake." When people played games with you, sometimes being viciously polite hurt more than any lash-back could.

Mua snorted in an unidentifiable emotion. "Well, we'd better be goin'. Poison creeps on them who sleep."

The shaman took hold of the oar on the rear of the boat and they began to slide froward across the dark water. It did not take Ayika long to notice that though in Mua's hand the oar swayed back and forth, the motion was far too little to propel them with this speed. The woman's free hand drifted and circled in the air to some unheard beat. A smile twitched at the corner of Ayika's lips. So, Mua was using bending to move them along through the water and hiding it. To most observers the effect would be unnoticeable save for a vague sense of unease as some corner of their mind felt the boat's motion gave some slight betrayal of expectation. Very appropriate for a witch.

Then Ayika noticed something else that should have jumped out at her earlier. This boat was pained along its edge in black, white, and purple with spots of blue; the same colors that Mua wore. That could not be a coincidence.

"You moor a boat in the Lower Ring?" Ayika asked. "Why? I mean, how did you get a registration permit to own property in the City? You are no Ring citizen and I know it!" She felt offense at someone managing to get more than was their right coupled with admiration of someone finding a hole in the system.

Mua laughed. "Why? A boat saves walkin'. As for registration, no guard'll ever find it docked here so there's no danger. Worry more 'bout yourself and what we're doin' today." Mua had failed to elaborate on what that business was. The leather flask appeared in her hand and she took a brief swig as her other hand kept up the swaying pretense on the oar.

...

The narrow urban channel they passed through could just as easily have been one of the winding waterways of the Harbor Town. The buildings on each side leaned out over the water and a web of hanging laundry formed a patchy roof in a familiar way. However, here there were three to four stories rising up on each side so that Ayika felt like the canal was slowly sinking down into the ground beneath them. They were rowing at the bottom of a well.

It was fifteen minutes before they reached their destination in a ramshackle quarter of the Lower Ring. Here the canal had grown so narrow that if another boat had come the opposite direction someone would have had to begin rowing backwards. Some of the buildings were old constructs of brick and stone that were dignified but ill-maintained while others looked like the most unstable houses from the Bed had been stacked and jumbled on top of each other. Stairs, ladders, and bamboo platforms clung to every outside surface of these buildings and Ayika was frankly astonished that she did not see anyone fall off those rickety structures in the scarce seconds she had been looking. Of course she was here in the company of a healer so perhaps someone had.

Mua managed to moor her boat by a little set of damp stone stairs that led down to the canal from a narrow and dirty alley. There were several young boys on the opposite side of the narrow waterway who were hanging off a wobbly staircase as they stared at the women disembarking. Ayika eyed them suspiciously. To her it seemed very likely that any property left under their gaze would not be there upon return. However, Mua spotted them as well. She did not say anything, she just slowly turned as the beaded fringe of her hat swayed from the motion. A thin stream of mist began to drift out of the deep sleeves of her robe like heavy smoke. The boys quickly decided they has somewhere they would rather be. Ayika followed Mua out onto the main street. This waterbender was dangerously obsessed with Minister Erliao and not very considerate about explaining but she had style.

Mua's port of call was revealed to a moderately sized apartment above a woven reed mat shop. It was one of the old buildings that had likely stood on this street for hundreds of years and was now more patchwork repairs than anything else. Of corse even buildings died sometimes. Ayika saw a gap down the block. There was a blackened pile of rubble, still smoking faintly in the noon light. Fires were a constant fact of city life but usually the fire brigades could prevent them from spreading far.

As they strode across the narrow street, crowded and noisy with the constant din of city commerce, it was clear that Mua was known here. An old woman in the middle of screaming incessant abuse at an equally red-cheeked vendor stopped in mid-sentence to give Mua a respectful nod. Ayika noted the exchange. People respected benders it was true, but that was a respect based on fear. This was a respect for knowledge. Those who offered a chance of understanding the spirits were valued for their authority, not just their strength.

Ayika followed Mua up the narrow stairs to the second level of this aged building. Inside, the apartment's small parlor was rather crowded by nine members of a family waiting in silence. Then Ayika studied the tense scene again and she detected two distinct groupings. There were two men standing close by a young woman who was sitting in a chair looking at the floor. Those two men were bestowing dark looks on the other inhabitants of the room, particularly the other two males who might have been father and son. An aged lady was sitting in the corner and quietly murmuring prayers to herself, So it was family tension, a young bride's family had come to defend her from something. The bruises on her face indicated a likely explanation.

Mua stepped over the threshold and instantly radiated command of the room. The beads hanging from her hat and the little metal disks on her shoulders made soft sounds. All the men regarded her uneasily. A few took the smallest fraction of a step back, likely an unconscious reaction. Respect and fear were not so distant after all. No one paid any attention to Ayika. A woman in her early forties bustled forward to meet Mua.

"Mama Mua, thank you so much for agreeing to come! I know it was quite a out here trip but we tried to go to the temple and our district priest was completely useless."

Mua nodded her head before removing her hat with a flourish of swishing beads. "Of course. I trust the son you sent to me got back through the Craftsman's Gate last night?"

"Oh, yes. Fong did. These new gate curfews are troublesome aren't they?" The mother was anxious. She was babbling, likely in avoidance of whatever had caused her to call for Mua in the first place. Despite Ayika's questions Mua had not been forthcoming as to why they were here. Suddenly the mother started, "Oh, forgive me. Second daughter! Go put some tea on! I am so sorry, it is very inconsiderate for me to not have offered you refreshment. Er," She paused. "You tribals do drink tea, right?"

Ayika frowned but Mua's expression remained smooth. "By custom, yes. But not now. Show me to your other son."

The mother fell silent, continuing to wring her hands together. After a moment a man of similar age, likely her husband, came forward to guide Mua instead. The assistance was hardly needed. This apartment was very large by Lower Ring standards with two rooms in addition to the parlor and kitchen Ayika had already seen. The family had three wooden beds for the seven people who lived there and only the youngest son had to sleep on a pallet on the floor. There was a small shrine set up in the kitchen with the name of the honored deceased written on a piece of framed paper above a few small offerings. It looked like a recent instillation. But though this household was better off than many an exhaustive search would have only taken seconds. They were unlikely to have missed the man tied to the bed.

The man was decently covered, although since someone had been loth to undo the bindings on each of his wrists and ankles the clothes had simply been arrayed on top of him like costumes on a paper doll to give the illusion of proper dress. His brow faintly shown with perspiration, as if he was feverish. He was also quite agitated. The man raised his head as Mua stepped into the small room.

"Who is this? Dad, why is there a tribal woman in the house? Mom? Jing? Someone out there talk to me!" He flopped his head back down against the thin mattress in frustration

Mua managed to regard the bound man with boredom. "All right, tell me the exact story once again."

The man raised his head up. "Look, it was just..."

Mua killed his voice with a flick of her hand and a glare. "I was not talkin' to you." Now her gaze traveled over to the father who was standing against the wall looking very embarrassed.

After several attempts to clear his throat the father began. "Er, it was last night. The whole neighborhood was out watching old Meng's place burn. You know it was the third place in this district for as many days. Something about the air this week..." He saw Mua had little patience for his digressions and cleared his throat. "Erm, right. Everyone was out watching it go up so no one really saw what..."

"Someone saw!" one of the two outsider men yelled out. "Jing sure saw and she is right here, you moth-eaten old fool! You..."

"Quiet!" screamed the bound man's mother. "Just quiet! Mama Mua needs to be able to hear so she can fix all this!"

The other man from the bride's family growled, "All that there's to fix is a little..."

"Ah agree with the call for quiet." Mua did not speak loudly but somehow she managed to cut right through to the heart of every listener. The arguing families fell back into an uneasy silence.

"Erm..." The father cleared his throat again. "Well, we were all outside watching the fire. Like I said. Only Deng had just gotten back from his work and Jing, his wife that is, was feeding him some supper. And we were watching the fire when Old Xing came up and told us that she had heard a great commotion coming from the apartment, like the hero Gong Wu was fighting his monsters between our walls. Well, we all rushed back and Jiang's people, they were there too, they came with us and we all came up to see the whole place tossed like a storm went through. Jiang was all cowering in the corner with her arms over her face and Deng, he was bright red. Flushed like a coal in the fire and all panting and he stood in the middle of the room like he couldn't see us."

The father at least had the decency to look embarrassed with whitewashing his son's culpability as he continued. "Well, his brother went up to Deng to see what was the matter and, well, he must have surprised him because Deng took a swing. And then Jing was screaming and we were all piling on Deng who was acting like he didn't know any of us. He was scared and angry and it took four to get him down on the ground and hold him long enough for him to calm down. Now as soon as he did and he wasn't panting no more his sense came back and he was asking what had happened. He was asking after Jing too, kept asking if she was ok."

One of Jing's brothers coughed in disbelieving anger. The bound man's mother mother interjected in a pleading voice, "He kept on apologizing, and then asking what happened, and then asking if she was ok! Over and over like that, like he didn't know what had happened. I figured that some dark spirit must have been clouding his mind. After he was on the floor it seemed to have left him but Jing's people insisted on tying him to the bed."

Mua looked over at young Jing who was still looking at the floor. The woman had not said a single thing throughout this. To Ayika her bruises spoke loud enough. She had heard this kind of story before. A man got drunk and all his evil came bubbling to the surface like scum in a pond. And of course his family was always ready to blame everything except their own kin. This woman was lucky to have had her own family close by or things could have turned out much worse.

Mua now stared down at the bound Deng who looked back with all the very little dignity one could muster while tied to a bed and clothed only in the most technical sense. The shaman did not care, she addressed the rest of the family while still locking gaze with the bound man. "So he has been tied since last evening? Has he relieved himself?"

The mother nodded and gave a dark look at Jing's brothers, "Well, they wouldn't let us untie him so we used a jar to allow him to make water. Um, I actually kept it, since I don't know what being possessed does in regard to polluting things like that. He wouldn't want to hurt anyone by accidentally spreading a curse in the sewers."

Jing's brother snorted in indication that it was a little late to worry about Deng accidentally hurting anyone. Deng's younger brother made a motion like he was going to leap up at the other man but his father laid his hand down on the boy's shoulder. Deng's grandmother continued to shake her head silently and rock slightly in her corner chair.

Mua gave the mother a single nod in satisfaction. "That was good sense. Hand it here." She stuck her open hand out to the side to receive it, not looking at the mother at all but rather continuing to inspect the space around Deng. When the unpleasant jar was finally presented Mua removed the lid and sniffed closely. "Hmm. He wasn't drunk yesterday." She held the jar out again. "You can toss this now. Dark spirits don't inhabit urine."

Ayika watched Mua's methods with curiosity. Her own grandmother had performed similar services as this house call in the Bed. However, Grandma Aka had always stressed the mundane personal explanations over everything else. If she thought that people were overly worried about spirits she would perform a quick cleansing ceremony to quite everyone's mind so she could sit them down and talk them through what was really going on. Grandma Aka had said that spirits were rare and spirits who cared enough about humans to cause any trouble were rarer than a fish jumping up the bank into your pot. But here Mua barely seemed to be paying the family members any mind. She had not asked Deng or Jing a single question. Instead she squinting her eyes and staring intently into blank corners of the room. Ayika herself kept twisting back to glare at whoever in the watching families kept faintly whispering whenever the space grew silent. She could never catch them in the act.

Ayika felt goosebumps rise up and down her spine. Treating a fighting family like a recipe of alchemy to decipher was unnerving. The tiny metal ornaments on Mua's costume made faint otherworldly noises as she shifted position. Her eyes passed over every person and object in the small apartment. That she could see from the bedroom doorway.

Mua nodded and grunted in answer to some silent question she had asked herself. She turned and walked back out into the parlor and Ayika hurriedly scooted out of the way. Mua glided over to sad Jing in her chair. The bride's two brothers began to protectively shift closer but a sharp look from Mua froze them in place. Mua reached out and used her fingers to slightly lift up the girl's chin. The Water Tribe woman's naturally dark fingers lay against the kingdom native's unavoidable working-girl tan. They smoothly moved around the bruises. Jing flinched at first but then met Mua's eyes.

Mua said, "Is this the first time this has happened?"

Deng's mother began to speak but her husband put a hand on her arm to forestal her. Jing looked warily at Mua for a moment but then nodded. She then sniffed and her breath caught in a building sob as if that simple action had unlocked some new reservoir of emotion. Ayika could not help but feel anger rising up deep with her. She could not understand Mua's detachment from the scenario. Ayika felt like the first thing she would do would be to lay a few choice blows down on Deng while he was tied to the bed. That would bring a small equality of experience to this house.

Ayika was so wrapped up in her own thoughts that Mua's next question caught her by complete surprise. Mua turned to the patriarch. "When did you bury your father?"

It took Ayika a moment to understand what Mua could possibly be talking about. Then she remembered the little shrine in the the kitchen. The father stumbled in his response. "What?" The family was similarly confused. Deng's father looked around for more insight and finding none scratched at his chin. "Why...um, the last ceremony was three days ago? Priest put the disks on his eyes and..."

"Now hold on!" Jing's brother interjected. "You are not going to try and tell us that that bastard is just morning his grandfather! Sorrow does not excuse anything like this!"

Mua's glaring eyes flicked to the side. "I said no such thing." She stepped away from Jing. "Deng is indeed ill. I was called here to discern if there was any spiritual influence at work and Ah have determined that there is. But spirits don't get involved without an outside power and here that motivation's the restless ghost of the man's grandfather."

The room exploded into noise as everyone began talking at once, many of them rather angrily. Jing's family were accusing the others of bribing Mua to make up some excuse for Deng, Deng's mother was pleading with the celling in an attempt to perform an exorcism herself, and the grandmother was wailing for the soul of her departed husband that was apparently trapped and suffering. From his confinement in the other room Deng had heard this explanation.

"See! Jing, I told you it wasn't me! I am so sorry, but we can fix this! They can get the spirit out of me and everything can go back how it was! Please!"

"Enough!" Mua roared suddenly and the apartment instantly fell into a dazed shock. She continued and there was a powerful anger in her voice, deep and cold. "There's a spirit at work here but that excuses nothing. Nothing! The spirits can influence the soul; they can't change it. No spirit can make ya do something that ya would never do. It's like being drunk. They can only influence emotions, enhance or dampen what we'd already be feeling." She turned back to the man tied on his bed. From her standing position she loomed above him. "Deng, ya wanted to hurt your wife. A drunkard's still responsible for his actions. Ya lost control, but that loss of control would've resulted in nothing if that seed of cruelty hadn't already been in your heart. You gave in to that desire. In all likelihood you'll do it again. Sprits are just one of many excuses."

Deng's younger brother seemed ready to say something angry but Mua waved her hand. Her eye's never left Deng's face. "I haven't interest in speaking to someone like him, or to ya 'bout him. First we'll deal with cleansing this place. Then Jing can decide what she wants done with him. Till then you all stay out of the way." The boy's mother put a hand on his shoulder as she turned to avert her face from the room where Deng was tied.

...