...

Ayika walked down the narrow street in the dark. She was alone. She had always been warned against going outside by herself at night but there was something she had needed to do. Only now she was not sure that her thought had been a valid reason. A faint mist hung in the air and the cold damp seeped up from the cracked and weathered bricks below. Her shoes were so thin that she could feel every edge, every pice of paving that had settled down or been pushed up by its surrounding fellows. The buildings around her had no lighted lanterns outside and no gleam of candles from within. It was late at night but the city's streets were never this dark. All the people must have gone somewhere, she could hear the dull murmuring of many distant voices echoing from some nearby block. It sounded like a great crowd.

Something felt wrong here. There was a tightness behind the wavering air. Though Ayika's thoughts were slow and muddled, it suddenly occurred to her that the Masks could be out prowling on a night like this and a lone foreign-skinned girl would be a prime target for them to vent their rage. Ayika began to walk faster, cursing whatever absentmindedness had permitted her to get lost in the Lower Ring. If that was where she really was.

Suddenly up ahead she saw a man walking away from her in the clammy dark. Though he shared a path with her he was moving much slower and his shoulders were hunched as if under a great burden. She could catch with him easily. At least he didn't look like a threat and Ayika was ready to submit her pride before the shame of asking for directions. She picked up her pace and came up behind him. As she grew closer she realized the man was very tall, even hunched over he would have towered over Xiaobao. The moon was beginning to rise.

"Excuse me, sir. Can..."

The huge man turned and the first glimmer of moonlight she saw the stretched blank skin that took the place of his eyes, nose and mouth. The bones of his skull could be seen working beneath that taught surface. The disfigured man recoiled at being exposed. He expected Ayika to flee but she only smiled at him with sympathy. That would be cruel. It wasn't his fault someone had stolen his face.

Paper fluttered and fell out of the edges of his robe, looking like slips of money from a careless bank. Strings of holy beads clicked and jostled as they lay in heaps around his neck. On his pale and blue veined forehead sat the band of a black glass crown like that of ancient kings. It was so tight that a line of blood trickled down from where it bit in above his brow. Ayika felt great pity for this huge man.

"Oh, you poor thing. Here, let me help you."

She reached out to grab his massive hand and the heat within him nearly burnt her. As she clutched him tightly the fibers in her arm twitched and spasmed as if some great power was reaching out to grab her. Ayika looked up at his sightless desolation she suddenly knew what she had to do.

She let go and stepped back. The faceless wretch held still for a moment as his fingers felt out for her in the air. Then he turned and began to walk again, deeper into the city. With each step he took the man expanded, growing taller and taller until he had to duck down under the pointed eaves that reached out over the street as he shuffled blindly on his way. Ayika took position in the middle of the path behind him.

The sound she made whispered past her lips like a soft breeze formed from still air by a small knot in a wall. She said one word. It was a command and a mercy.

"Burn."

Fire began to lick across the man's lower robes. His clothes went up in racing branches of flame like he had been soaked in oil. Still he walked forward in his same slow pace and still he grew with each step. The conflagration grew and soon he was a standing pyre, towering above the street below. Heat and force burst out from him, catching the adjacent buildings aflame. Now the night was bright. His hands burned fiercely and he left footsteps of bubbling stone glowing orange and white.

Finally the burning giant stopped and turned. Ayika looked up at the looming shape rising like a mountain shrouded in flame. The fire swept across his featureless skull and she saw the blank smooth skin sprout blackened holes as the fire ate away like to a paper mask over a candle flame. Beneath one burnt gap, Ayika saw a gentle and grateful eye emerge from hiding. Then the giant smiled and Ayika awoke with a start.

Beside her, Oakas shifted on their bedroll in his sleep, disturbed by her motion but not enough to be woken up. In the other room she heard the sound of her mother's light snoring. The apartment was dark and the day had yet to begin.

...

The next morning, Ayika stood up on Kuang Harbor's elevated tram platform looking out over a market square under clouded skies. Below, between the tile roofs, a few tendrils of mist still clung to the hundred canals in the early light. However, this was only so much backdropping as Ayika was preoccupied with feeling guilty. She really should have gone to see Xinfei this morning. But after their argument and avoiding him all yesterday the thought of showing up now only to tell him he could not come with her to the funeral in the Middle Ring today seemed cruel. Or maybe she was just being a coward. Yes, Xinfei had been acting weird lately but she had not been treating him great either. He'd been her best friend for years. And now she just kept on feeling like someone was watching her!

Ayika looked back over her shoulder. Of course no one was. The raised station floor was crowded as always with people eager to get into the city but no one had any reason to pay attention to one dark-skinned girl from the Bed. Ayika stamped her foot in frustration and was rewarded with a suspicious glance from one of the station guards. Well, at least now she could be certain that someone was watching her. Crossing her arms, Ayika leaned against one of the stone pillars that supported the open-walled station's high canopy. However, she could not blame her entire mood on Xinfei or lack of restful sleep, her mother had contributed as well.

Yesterday, Atika had arrived back home after parting with Mizumi outside the Exclusion to find a young man named Yukip sitting in her apartment sipping a cup of hot water flavored with a few of the family's precious tea leaves. Before Ayika could ask any questions, her mother had materialized in a maternal flurry and swept her daughter past the boy to the only other room in their dwelling. There Maekayae had started fiercely brushing her daughter'a hair while chiding her for being late to this appointment that no one had thought to make Ayika aware of. Of course, it was true that if she had known of these plans there was no chance that she would have come anywhere near the apartment that afternoon. She hated these matchmaking exercises.

The problem was not usually the boys themselves. Yukip seemed perfectly nice, and was maybe even handsome in a conventionally broad-chested Water Tribe sort of way. He worked as a bricklayer but his uncle was foreman for the building crew so he was confident he was going to move up the hierarchy in a year or less. He even seemed interested in her life, asking about the school and sounding genuinely concerned when he heard about the reason for her leave of employment.

No, what Ayika detested was the entire operation in its very abstract. She didn't know what that first spark of love was supposed to feel like but she was pretty sure it would not arrive while her mother was hovering over her shoulder mentally scolding her for not showing more warmth to whatever man she had chosen today. So Ayika had to content herself with giving small, inoffensive answers to Yukip's questions and trying not to wrinkle her lip as she saw a bit of chest hair poking out of the low neck of his shirt.

At least she had been spared this for all those years when her family had been convinced she was going to marry one of the Bao brothers, no matter how uncomfortable that made Xiaobao or how flustered and blushing Xinfei became at every joking mention. Still, eventually even Ayika's mother had to admit that particular avenue to grandchildren did not seem likely to give fruit. Since then Ayika had to assume that her mother had dedicated every waking moment that was not concerned with doting over her brother Oakas to cracking the problem of "a man for Ayika".

Back in the present, that tram station guard was still giving Ayika a sour look. At another time she might have ignored him but her work-given passport was still valid for two rides a day so she was free to give him the look right back. That man was not responsible for all the difficulties his gender had placed on her but for now he could serve as an adequate substitute. The guard was clearly surprised by a poor immigrant girl giving him such a cruel and relentless glare, but her passport was hanging from her hand so he had no choice but to walk off and inspect some other corner for lawlessness.

Ayika yawned, still feeling the toll of the previous nights, but when she opened her eyes Mizumi was coming up the long stone steps from the streets below. Ayika burst into a smile which she found mirrored back. "Mizumi! You're here!"

"Well, I said that I would be, did I not?" Mizumi cheerfully replied. "I would have arrived earlier but Ambassador Naruhama's deification ceremonies are causing much disruptions in the Exclusion streets. Sage Huitzlan is making a very big to do of it. I have never seen a sage put so much effort as that man is putting into these ceremonies. I suppose that this is the mission's way of thumbing the nose at the kingdom government's treatment of us. Or rather the way which does not involve Trade Representative Tailang in the earth palace complaining about the conservatives' protests."

Ayika made an exaggerated show of wrinkling her nose. "Politics and priests, ugh. I suppose that's one thing our countries might have in common." She looked over at the tram and the crowded rear compartment. She took a significant pause. "So...we should get moving to meet Lili. We've got our own funeral to go to. Do you want to choose a compartment?" She asked innocently, masking what she hoped was the answer,

Not fooled for a second, Mizumi smiled in return and they both moved toward then noble's car. Ayika was starting to enjoy the perks of having a rich friend. The guards were very carefully not staring at her any more. However, as she settled down into the cushioned seat she still felt like she was being watched; like the rising smoke of the chimneys contained eyes behind the air.

...

After the long tram ride, the journey from where they disembarked at the second Middle Ring stop to the Gaoli mansion on the Fifth Hill was fun. When Mizumi said that she was paying, Ayika had wanted to take one of the new Islander style carriages that stood lined up for rent at the foot of the station. However, Mizumi pointed out that on the narrow and steep streets of the Hill wheels might be a bad idea. So instead they both squeezed into a palanquin with gauzy pale green curtains around it. Ayika looked at the men who would have to carry them and whispered to Mizumi if it was ok to make them bear two people at once. One of the porters could not help snorting a laugh at that. He politely assured her that even if Ayika managed to duplicate herself halfway through the journey she'd still weigh a fraction of some of the customers they serviced. As she bounced down the street on her lightly padded seat, Ayika's cheeks still lightly burned with embarrassment from that even after Mizumi put her hand on her knee to assure her that it was perfectly all right.

Ayika's discomfort did not ease once they reached the mansions of the merchant families on the Fifth Hill. The Impenetrable City had originally been founded around four hills near the old banks of the Kuang river. As the ancient seat of power, those hills were still held by some of the most venerable noble houses even though in the intervening centuries earthbender magic had expanded each hill until the four had merged into the beginnings of the elevated Inner Ring of the city. Money alone could not buy entry to those exhaled rolling parklands and man-made lakes ringed with gardens and whispering with willows. However, money could buy almost everything else so when new powerful families arose a few centuries later they chose another hill site within the even by then greatly expanded metropolis. This agglomeration of resplendent merchant houses was dubbed the Fifth Hill and its carved marble walls and gold capped roofs still reared high above the rest of the ring. It was here that their palanquin was set down before the gates of the Gaoli Palace.

Once they were safely set on the ground Mizumi easily hopped out, pleased with the journey. Ayika quietly held her own private opinion that being bounced up and down on a couple guys' shoulders was fun once but she preferred to trust her own feet. She drew back the thin curtain and put down one foot outside the conveyance. And then she froze.

Mizumi looked back at her puzzled, not seeing the reason for her sudden lack of motion. She raised a questioning eyebrow.

Ayika struggled to speak, managing to affect a casual tone. "So you've been up here before?"

"No, why?" Mizumi said, offering a hand to help Ayika out of the palanquin.

Ayika jumped up on her own, trying to sweep her embarrassing moment under the rug. To someone like Mizumi there was nothing special to see. To her this was just a house. Ayika was sure that there was some technical definition of a palace and Mizumi would gently correct her if she used that word here but she could think of nothing more fitting.

The gates to the Gaoli residence were massive, and held two pale blue doors taller than Ayika's apartment. They were flanked on each side by carved marble statues of maned beasts at greater than life scale. The door on the right was open and Mizumi led her through it, gesturing for her to be aware and step over a lintel taller than those in most of the temples Ayika had been to. She was rapidly readjusting her view of the ladder of civilization by adding quiet a few more rungs above her.

Once inside, Ayika could barely keep track of the opulence she beheld. Pale floored courtyards ringed with reflecting pools glistened beside stone lanterns. Walls painted with images of flowering trees and women reclining beneath them holding instruments. Endless servants moved about on errands which even an experienced employee like Ayika could not guess.

Fortunately, Lili Gaoli met with them nearly instantly as they entered the main building. Unfortunately, after that rare instance of emotional vulnerability yesterday the merchant's daughter was back up to full energy in the excitement of assuming command of a murder investigation. As soon as she saw them, Lili executed an excited hopping motion and began to chatter to Mizumi a long string of inane questions and seemingly random comments, all of which sounded very oddly worded to Ayika. However, despite fact that on the tram earlier today Mizumi had mistaken a city postal office for a brothel the Islander now seemed perfectly at ease and responded with her own precise yet inane blather. This must have been more of the etiquette that the rich were so obsessed with. In Ayika's experience etiquette mostly consisted of bowing to anyone who could fire you or pay to have you beaten.

She plastered a fixed smile on her face and focused on not goggling like a country bumpkin who'd never passed below the city wall before. That smile became considerably more difficult to hold when Lili swept them through mansion's towering halls into what she referred to as a closet but Ayika was pretty sure was actually a full tailor's shop. Lili had many opinions on how to dress for a funeral, and even more when it came to makeup. Then it was a haze of pulling forth robe after robe and discussing more shades of white than Ayika was of the belief existed in the world. Grandma Aka hadn't used that many words to describe snow!

There was a slight snag when Lili froze with her make brush raised to apply some paint to Ayika's face and realized that she was encountering a very different skin tone from what she was accustomed to dealing with. However, Mizumi defused the tension of the moment with a few blush-inducing overgenerous compliments for Ayika's complexion and the suggestion of a more subtle approach to the ablutions. The Fire Nation girl inspected the available supplies for a moment before leaning in close to apply a few careful touches of the brush to Ayika's face; touches Ayika knew she would never have been able to replicate in ten thousand years. It was all incredibly embarrassing and as Ayika's cheeks burned she tried to fix her eyes on something other than Mizumi who was incredibly close right now. Mizumi, for her part, failed at suppressing a smile.

However, soon enough Lili was pushing the two of them out of her quarters, all dressed in their pretty white funeral robes like matching henchmen. Lili hurriedly shepherded them back to the entry hall with a quickly spoken, "All right ladies, now we go go go go go."

There was enough anxiety and urgency in Lili's voice that Ayika expected to hit the courtyard and start running all the way to the funeral site. Instead, when they reached the front room of the mansion Lili came to a halt and stood in the middle of the floor nervously checking every part of her outfit and occasionally reaching over to fuss with Mizumi's as well. Ayika wondered what they were waiting for until the back doors swung open and Mister Aizhang Gaoli walked in, deep in conversation with some man of his employ. Lili clasped her hands before her and demurely bowed her head as her father neared. Ayika noted that apparently the funeral dress codes were less strict for men since Mister Gaoli had contented himself with replacing his customary wide green belly sash with a white one. She also noted that his eyes never once looked up to see his daughter's face.

"All right, Lili," he said. "Get in the second carriage. I need to discuss some things with Dao. It's important to make our statement by appearing at this ceremony but there are still important things to do today." He was still looking at a pad of numbers in his hand but something of his peripheral vision noticed an accounting discrepancy in his household. He looked up. "There are three of you?"

Lili bobbed further down in a bow. "Yes, father," she said meekly. Ayika and Mizumi shared a surreptitious look. Even another rich girl like Mizumi clearly thought that this display was unsettling. Lili continued to address the floor. "This is Mizumi, Mister Miohuito's daughter. She recently joined me at the school. She was in Professor Lizhen's class and wanted to pay her respects. And this is Ayika...I also know her from the school. I...I asked mother yesterday to tell you about inviting them." The lack of the confidence that usually permeated this hyper-animated girl was disconcerting.

Mister Gaoli gave his daughter's companions a quick interrogatory glance. "Ah, yes. Miss Miohuito. Oh, and a tribal girl? Good for you, Lili. Always good to show the political flag." That was apparently approval in the Gaoli house since he instantly returned to his figures and the discussion with his man Dao as they swept out while servants opened the main doors to the courtyard. On the street outside the gates two modern Islander-style carriages were waiting. The Gaoli's apparently had different views from Mizumi of the vehicles' practicality for city travel.

Then all three of the young women were bundled into the rear carriage heading to the funeral under a greying cloudy sky. Lili was now smiling as broadly as ever. She launched into her normal chattering rhythm. "See, I told you there would be no difficulty in you two attending. ai know how this works. Now that we have another chance to be alone you must tell me everything that you've learned so far! You said you discovered worrying clues about the poor professor's death. What did you find and what do I need to be looking for today?"

Ayika decided to let Mizumi carry this section of the conversation. After all, Lili still seemed uncomfortable addressing Ayika directly, although she at least tried to hide it. Mizumi adhered to their previous agreement and made little mention to Lili of what had happened at the warehouse. After all, even without the unsettling Masks there was still the touchy matter of her father hiding supposedly destroyed machines in those walls. Mizumi also glossed over how they even knew about the nationalist movement and the gardener Ma'er's ambiguous relationship to the whole conspiracy. Really, after all the quick censorship it was impressive that Lili managed to follow at all. However, the brief overview done Mizumi transferred topics to distract the other girl with reference to some entertainment they'd both attended or read about or something. Ayika could make neither heads nor tails of that conversation but Lili seemed interested.

From her seat Ayika plucked at the white outfit she was wearing. She had never worn white clothing through the streets before, or at least not any that had stayed white. Mizumi must have sensed how overwhelmed Ayika was because she now broke off from talking with Lili about whatever play or book they had been discussing and resumed asking Ayika questions about the city outside. As soon as Lili looked slightly distracted by butting in with a lecture on some passing sight outside the window Mizumi whispered into Ayika's ear, "Once we get to the site, you are going to need to take the charge. I barely knew Teacher Lizhen and I hardly know this city. Lili did not see what we saw at the warehouse, she does not understand the danger of this. I can only help distract people, you are the one who has a chance to find something out."

Lili suddenly spoke up from her side of the carriage, grumbling in an off hand way. "Oh, of course, the day I spend an extra bit of time doing my hair the weather does this. It is a shame that the poor professor couldn't receive better conditions than that. He deserved better."

Ayika turned away from Mizumi's face to look out the window at what weather had provoked this comment. There were hazing drifts of fog still hanging in the air here even this late in the morning. That was odd, fog did not usually hang around for so long this side of the wall from the rice paddies. As the two carriages ambled their way toward the foot of the Nobles Wall the world was slowly tinted grey and clammy.

In the classic contradictory style of the city, in order to reach the tomb-filled depths of the Under-King's pit they now needed to travel up a gentle slope. After winding through endless city streets and over carved stone bridges vaulting ornamental streams they went past one last row of well-apportioned houses. They passed up the low hill through a small thicket of trees on each side that in the space starved city were an amazing luxury afforded only to the dead. The graveyard was bounded by this narrow belt of a parklike slope that rose up above the level of the neighborhood in a gentle hill, mirroring the city's own girdle of farmland as here the trees separated the wilderness of the living from the city of the dead.

Then the carriages crested the small ridge and the girls looked out at the foundations of a civilization built as ruins. A large semicircle of land hugging the side of the Nobles Wall was filled with an endless tight and twining maze of walls and steps and platforms and standing monuments, all of carved and fitted stone engraved with the names of those long gone. This jumble was where the families of the dead could come to pay their respect to a personalized memorial. Providing of course that they could pay for the spot to be engraved; there was only so much space in those sprawling ruins of an unbuilt city. In the center of the necropolis, near the wall, stood a square two-tiered temple. Under its swooping tiled eaves it was painted in all the shades of precious jade across flat windowless walls. At the moment the only visitors visible within the necropolis were drifting clouds of mist.

Ayika looked out at the winding expanse of paths between carved pillars and unroofed walls passing by on each side of the narrow driveway. "The professor must have been pretty important to be buried here. I wonder what his monument is going to look like?"

Lili smiled unevenly with the motions of someone trying to delicately break bad news."The Lizhen name is an old and respected line. However, the teacher himself... Well, there might not be many people there at the ceremony. He did not really have a family."

"No family?" Ayika said. "I knew Lizhen'd never been married, but I never imagined he was that alone."

Striving to shift off that depressing line of discussion, Mizumi broke in with a question. "So, what are we to expect of funeral practices in the Kingdoms? I have never attended a ceremony of your culture."

Lili understood the impulse to change topics, even if funerals were hardly less depressing. "Oh, you know, it's not very interesting. He, er, the body will be put up somewhere where we have to see it. Of course they cover everything up with shrouds and there is a hood of stones over the head. The priest chants on for a while, swinging smoke everywhere, and then they take him down to the tomb below ground. Many people call it beautiful, but I find it all very unsettling."

"Well, we burn our dead, so that is different." Mizumi said. "Although in our practices there is also a mask. Wood, so it can burn with the body. I wonder why that is the same all the way across the ocean?"

Ayika was still looking out as the passing jumble of the necropolis. She spoke absently. "The stones contain the ghost within them so when they're linked to the body the ceremony can dissipate the ghost's destructive power and give the soul free rain to ascend into the cycle of reincarnation. That allows people to safely make offerings to the soul of the departed without empowering the ghost. That's why the ceremony's got be done quickly before the ghost grows too strong." It took a moment for Ayika to realize that both other women were looking at her with astonishment. Such matters had been part of her daily life since she was small, one of the many duties her grandmother conducted in the community. Until recently.

Mizumi blinked. "Wow. Ok. I suppose that the wooden death mask might serve the same purpose for us of the Nation. Masks...I wonder..."

Ayika shook her head. She knew that Mizumi was thinking of the secret organization. "The fact that it's a mask is coincidence. The Northern Tribe engraves charms onto weight stones before we sink the body and it does the same duty. The poor here in the City make do with a few clay tables over the eyes. It's just a ritual. All that matters is the intent with which it's crafted and the contracts with the spirit world, and that it's done when the body's put to rest, no matter how that's done." Her lip twisted into a smile. Her grandmother had always said that she could pacify a lost ghost with a stick and a single knuckle bone. She had also said she could pacify Ayika with just the stick. In both is was about making someone believe you could do it.

Lili's eyes were even bigger than usual as she stared in surprise. "How did you learn all this? I mean, I noticed that you were listening to the teachers in the back of our classes but none of the teachers covered any of that at the school."

Lili had payed attention to servants? "My Grandma Aka. She worked in the Bed as a..." From the shocked looks flashing across Lili and Mizumi's faces she assumed they were not well versed in the colloquial names of harbor town districts. That could cause misunderstandings. "No no no! Not in bed. She worked in our neighborhood as a...a priest for those who could not afford a priest. Someone to talk with the spirits on a more informal level. Healing minor sicknesses, yanking out bad dreams, dispelling curses and the like. She taught me in her own way; at the time it mostly sounded like complaining."

Lili nodded in a faintly approving way. "Well, she at least sounds better than most of the government priests I've seen, not that that's saying much. They just read out of the ministry approved spell book and perform everything according to a pricing chart. It's hardly a wonder that people hardly ever go to the temples anymore."

"Do not be so sure that you would be happy with the other extreme," Mizumi added. "Father says that Fire Sage Huitzlan who runs the Exclusion temple is passionate and an expert on spiritual matters, but he is far too patriotic for my tastes. Not to mention, that passion and knowledge means his ceremonies take forever to complete. Though it is a shame I did not meet you, Ayika, in time to sneak you into Ambassador Naruhama's burning. I did not know you were interested in these things."

Ayika felt a smile twisting at her lips as she turned to glance back out the carriage window. Sh knew that it was simple vanity now making her feel so good, but she did not care. Mizumi who could talk about books and plays for hours was impressed by her knowledge. And Lili had noticed things about her even as she was working in the school. That girl was more perceptive than Ayika had given her credit for even if she was still stuck up and self absorbed. The carriage continued to rumble down the gently sloping path through the necropolis.

...