...
Mizumi was the first to move forward in the direction Ayika was indicating, back into the concealing fog. The Fire Nation woman walked towards the wall of mist and swiftly faded from the pale moonlight. With that inertial barrier broken, the rest followed even if Lili did make a faint groaning noise of discomfort. At once they were plunged back into the black soup-like fog, following those other pedestrians Ayika had seen, people who hopefully had some insight in avoiding the city guards. In any case, they were hidden from the Masks.
The dimly echoing sounds of someone yelling that they had heard before drifted in the curiously deadened air and were now growing closer. Every once and a while Ayika caught a brief glimpse of other walkers up the street heading in the same general direction but no matter how leisurely they were walking her group could not seem to gain and distance on them. For Ayika's less keen-sighted friends they were alone on this dark street where they could only out the very nearest buildings on each side. Lili was by now all but clinging to Xiaobao's side, either for his muscles or his lantern. It was a creepy way to travel but least if they encountered the guards here some noise from the groups walking up ahead would give them warning. Ayika kept telling herself that as at her side Mizumi flexed her fist repeatedly and squinted in to the blackness. Soon enough there was a glow down the opaque distance. Someone else with a few lamps was stopped in the middle of the street and yelling. Strange shadows moved in front of the light, showing several shifting figures.
Mizumi leaned in close to Ayika's ear. "Actually, this mist is unsettling me as well. We should try to...Oh zamat! We know him!"
She had just caught sight of the loud men ahead through the fog. Or rather it was one man hefted up on a sedan chair, four employees carrying said chair, and four men on foot with thick wooden sticks hanging from their belts. The man was Sub-Minister of Poetry and Worthy Expression Chao Erliao and he was in a foul mood.
"Honestly! We saw these threads of fog in the streets from up at that fool Gaoli's place. How have you clods managed to lose your way out? I think we are getting much too close to the south canal, or else we wouldn't be stuck in this cursed fog bank. And watch the motion! You almost upset the lantern!"
The porters did not appear to be participants in this conversation but that did not stop the Sub-Minister. Under the surface of his complaining there was an unsettled wariness. The one servant who was also holding a lantern was focused very closely on it as if holding this light left no spare attention to get involved with his boss. Erliao was looking around frequently, but he did not seem to have seen Ayika and her friends yet. He continued to grumble, "If some hooligan had not managed to steal my rickshaw I wouldn't be in this situation. I would be back at the Inner Ring already. I suppose the hauler is out getting drunk somewhere and left it unattended. Damn this fog."
Now Lili was at Ayika's other shoulder. "Is that Erliao? Why is he still...you know, that doesn't matter. I can make this work. He can help us get past any guards without problem. We just might want to present the right..." She moved to the front of the group and gently pushed Ayika back behind Xiaobao. After a moment of thought she did the same for Mizumi. When met with skeptical stares she shrugged. "What? He hates foreigners and we want him to help us so we might want to control first impressions. You work with what you've got and he seemed to enjoy being kind to young women before." She posed with her hand in front of a coy smile.
Recognizing that they did not have much to lose from following Lili, and that being arrest was otherwise a very really possibility, the rest of their group let her take the front position as they moved up.
Lili suddenly sprang forward at a slow nervous trot and when she spoke next her voice was higher and softer than it was usually. She sounded like the breathy lady in a play who was about to be rescued by the hero. "Oh! Is somebody there? Blessed mercy of the spirits under heaven! Excuse me, could you please help me, sir. Oh, Minister Erliao! I am so grateful to see you!" She rushed forward past the minister's hired guards who were temporarily flabbergasted by well-dressed young ladies suddenly rushing out of dark alleys. That was not what they were trained to deal with.
Erliao blinked in openmouthed confusion at Lili's appearance out of the dark, followed as it was by four more young people behind her. This was not a crowd he expected to emerge from the fog. It took him a moment to recognize Lili but establishment of identity did not lessen his befuddlement. "Gaoli's daughter? What on earth is-"
Lili continued with her high pitched lamentation. "Oh, it was so terrifying! When those men with torches came at our gates I, I just had to run! I fear I must have temporarily lost my wits to fright. I am just so fortunate that a few of my family's people followed me and my friend. But when they caught up to me we could not get back! There were awful men all over the streets! It was dreadful. And then I heard the bells of the guards but I was so lost!" Tears appeared streaming down her cheeks. Ayika was impressed. Mizumi muttered something in the islander langue under her breath to which Ayika gave a hushing cluck of her tongue. This was not a performance to criticize, even if that criticism was unintelligible.
Lili was still building in her rhythm, the heat of her personal energy standing in contrast to the cold and clammy air. "And then, merciful heaven, I find someone like yourself, honorable minister! Of all the dreadful villains out at night I managed to find the one noble man walking these streets!" Despite Mizumi's faint grumbling Erliao seemed to be appreciating the performance. It hit the right chords of obsequiousness and pride. Erliao would choose to help them despite this unnerving setting.
Ayika felt a growing prickling on the back of her neck, as if she was being watched by a hundred hidden eyes. Was the fog getting thicker? She could now barely see the shop buildings on each side of the street and all the sounds were strange. This road, of normal width for the Middle Ring, now saw even the nearest shops and apartments fade away in the mist and leave them seemingly standing in a small puddle of light in a vast and claustrophobic plain. And yet some sense told her that there were shapes looming all around her. At her side Mizumi was nervous as well, her hands still clenching and unclenching. But all that girl's protective energy was focused at the party of men before them while Ayika had to fight instincts to frantically whip her head around searching for she knew not what. It felt like someone was approaching.
Whatever had been causing Erliao anxiety had eased now that he was in his element of polite discourse. He replied to Lili with great formality. "Of course I would be happy to escort you, Miss Gaoli. In fact, I will take you straight to to the tram station where you and your friends might obtain government assistance since normal operation has ceased for the night." He smiled. "And if I may-"
He was interrupted by a sudden cry that echoed across the veiled buildings and the deadening air. Words ricocheted between stone walls through the damp and heavy atmosphere. The noise was more like the harsh keen of a bow played across a string than a human voice. It shouted his name. "Chao Erliao!"
The minister jerked in is seat and spun around as his employed men moved in closer to his chair, their hands firmly on the clubs at their belt. The porters holding up the chair had expressions that said they were not paid nearly enough to deal with this night.
The voice rang out from the enveloping blankness. "Chao, you will answer for your crimes! Betrayer!"
Mizumi firmly grabbed Ayika's arm. "It's the Masks!" She might have meant for this to be a private message but her anxiety increased the volume and her voice echoed off brick walls as well. She whipped around, searching the mist for clues. "They must be doing something to control this fog!" After what she had seen tonight that sudden leap in their powers was perfectly reasonable, even if Ayika could not imagine how.
"Don't be ridiculous." Erliao said, loudly dismissing this girl's assumptions. "There is no way that..." here he stopped as some thought or memory occurred to him. A terrifying realization left him wide eyed with fear.
Sudden motion. A simultaneous rush in the mist on all sides. Ayika saw it in every direction at once; swirling action surrounded them with sudden and terrifying speed. The body-men yelled out along with Xinfei. Beside her, Mizumi threw up her fists as she jolted into a fighting stance but there was no target, only rushing confusion of dark and blinding shapes in the night. Then it was clear and there were stars twinkling above. The fog had been magically sucked back and their little group was now standing in a perfect ring of empty night air surrounded by solid walls of mist. The rising moon was perched on an adjacent roof peak and it gleamed down as the barriers of opaque vapor built up in density and height until the Ayika and the others were at the bottom of a vaporous cauldron.
There was the sound of footsteps on flagstones off to the side. A single human figure walked out of the misty delineation into their inexplicable oasis of clear air. The newcomer was wearing a plain, dark colored robe, and their face was hidden by a broad woven hat like a gently sloping cinder-cone. A curtain of beaded strings hung down around its rim. The figure stopped at the edge of the strange wall of mist fifteen paces away and stood with their head bowed. Ayika assumed this was not a gesture of respect but fear and confusion paralyzed her.
The faceless newcomer spoke again under the light of the moon, slow and strong, the tension of cold fury disguising their voice better than any deliberate effort. "I accuse you, Chao. Before the spirits of this land and any other I accuse you of murder." Some dam of emotion burst and now they were yelling as loudly as lungs could manage. "I name you the murderer of Chen Lizhen and there will be justice!" Silence reigned in response as distant echoes whispered back this accusation. The moment stretched in terrified confusion.
"He, he he, ha ha ha!" Erliao's peals of laughter rang out, dissonant in the tension of the unsettled night. Above, the growing fog slowly swallowed the moon as waves of mist built up walls above them to form a dome. Moonlight dimmed. The tension and anxiety that had been growing in Erliao as he wandered this insidious fog seemed to have all dissolved in a second. Ayika had no idea why, she was still terrified. Genuine tears were running down his cheeks as he calmed enough to reply to the flummoxed stranger. "Really? That's what this is? You are mistaken. I gave no order for the death of Chen Lizhen either by my own hand or by request to another. So I swear on all my past lives and those yet to come until the end of the cycle. Whatever you think you know, you are wrong. I gave no order." He wiped his eye clear of relieved tears, still with a strange smile on his lips that lay over a persistent fear. "Is that all?"
The strange figure at the edge of the fog had not expected this reaction. They rocked back a bit and though Ayika caught a glimpse under that hat their face was in too deep of shadow to make out more than a general human shape. But they regained their confidence quickly enough. "You lie," the accuser said and Ayika made note of the timbre of their voice. It was a young man or, perhaps, a woman? "Your villainy is witnessed. You'll come with me."
This display had witnesses now. Other people had come out into the street to observe this spectacle. Ayika saw their shadows lurking within the fog just behind whatever strange barrier kept it clear of the central hemisphere. She didn't blame those folks for not getting any closer. If she was not already within this magically created circle there was no amount of money under heaven that would have gotten her to cross that threshold. These silent spectators to their drama wisely hung back, hidden in the mist. Ayika felt Mizumi press up against her side just as she felt Xiaobao move close on the other side as a looming guardian. Xinfei almost instinctually arranged himself in front of the frozen Lili, although it was a mystery what defense he might be able to muster against this strange display. That mystery woman had power.
Erliao had now crossed another frontier of emotion. He was growing angry. He half stood in his sedan chair. "Who are you? Who dares stop me in the street to make such accusations?" His eyes narrowed. "You would want me to think you a sorcerer. And this spectacle with the fog is impressive. But I think I know these tricks, waterbender." This was said with a note of dark triumph. His men did not seem much comforted. An angry bender was only a step below unknown magic on a list of what a smart person should be afraid of.
The accuser was of the Tribes? The woman, and Ayika could now tell it was a woman, lowered her head as she breathed out heavily. This at least it seems she had expected, if now Erliao's initial reaction. The woman raised her palms up and the men with cudgels waved their weapons in sudden anxiety but her gesture was merely a prayer. "Spirits of this land," she intoned. "Stone ripped free and chiseled. Rivers chained in earth. I call out for justice. The signs've been read, yourselves consulted. Now I ask for confirmation and assistance. Let crimes committed in darkness be dragged into the light!"
Erliao did not like this display of piety. He frowned down at her. "I have had enough. You have no right to pretend to speak to the loyal spirits of this nation." But now he had a wicked smile. "You want me to fear you but I know that the northern tribals do not train their female benders in the arts of combat. Your pretty spectacles with the fog are useless. Men, go teach her some respect."
Two of the men with wicked looking clubs stepped forward. There were grins on their faces as there might be on many who were told they could lay hurt into a bender who had no ability to strike back. Ayika's heart thudded in her chest but the woman did not move, only maintained her pose with palms to the hidden sky which dimly held the distant glow of the moon. Ayika looked out at those citizen spectators hiding in the fog. As much as she wanted her countrywoman to run she feared that these observers would get to see the blood they'd stayed in anticipation of. One of the dark shadows outside the circle now nodded. The others took up that same motion.
The men neared their target. The first one held his club at the ready. He said, "Miss, you really ought to have run when you had the chance." His tone said that he was glad she had not. He drew back to strike.
The woman's palms flipped down and the walls of fog burst forward to envelop them.
Xiaobao rubbed at his eyes at this sudden cool blinding blast. He twisted his head this way and that. "What did she-?"
Someone screamed. Another man grunted in exertion and then gave a loud curse that transformed into a breathless gasp of pain. Then the opaque fog raced back apart like falling water and the woman was standing above two forms twitching on the ground. The collapsed men lay on dark seeping stains, their hands trying to keep those pooling lines from growing larger. Her palms were empty and raised to each side of her. Benders didn't need weapons. The light from Erliao's lanterns fell on her face and she was beautiful.
Erliao saw her face as well. "You!" he screamed in sudden recognition. He'd shown no fear about a waterbender pledging to bring him to justice but one clear sight of this woman and he was terrified once more. His hand whipped within his robes to draw forth a silver whistle on which he began to frantically blow. The piercing sound blasted past his companions' pained eardrums, over Ayika and her friends, to rise above the city's roofs and find the city guards wherever they may be. That was a noble's prerogative, law enforcement at beck and call. However, back in this street, the two remaining body-men knew that no matter how quickly the guards might arrive it may well be too late for them. A bender had just taken down two men in a handful of seconds. The lantern holder hung his light in a bracket on the master's chair. The arms-men tossed their clubs to the ground and drew hidden short-swords from the folds of their robes. Those deadly bladed weapons were very illegal in the city and yet at this moment seemed wildly inadequate for the task at hand. The waterbender stepped closer.
The chair-bearers saw their chance and moved to flee, abandoning the minister and his whistle as the chair dropped. The woman's laugh rose up behind them. "Ha ha! Your friends are leaving you, Chao! And mine remain with all their power!" She swirled one empty hand and the fog rushed like a giant living snake, more vast than an ox. The torch and lamp were extinguished with a hiss. Now the only light was the dim glow of the moon through the earth-hugging cloud above. The shadows of the bystanders in the street moved closer, drawn by this show of violence. One walked near the abandoned sub-minister. Erliao struggled with the impulse to flee but he seemed incapable of movement, his limbs fighting their own muscles in quivering tension. He didn't even look up at the dark figure looming behind him in the thick fog. Its arm reached towards his head as he was paralyzed in his chair.
"We've got to run!" Xinfei said as he grabbed Lili by the shoulders. The men with swords moved forward towards the bender, their blades making sharp swishes in the thick air. The woman waved her arms and fog was sucked down, compacting into hissing lines of pressurized water whose arcs laid open sharp gashes on the men's cheeks. More screams and curses filled the air.
"Ayika! Please! We go!" Mizumi called out, her terror causing her mastery of the kingdom's tongue to dissolve. Ayika had no arguments, but Xiaobao was moving in the opposite direction. It only took her a second to know why. He was moving to reach the two injured men who were lying behind the growing fight of blade and bending. Damn his concern. The spectators in the fog moved closer still. They watched from all angles. One stepped closer.
Xiaobao dashed across the paving stones and grabbed the first downed man. His fellow was further away and looked less able to be safely moved. Xiaobao turned back to the fighting as he moved to heft the injured man, "Guys, we..."
One of the remaining swordsmen dropped his blade with a clang, clutching at a spasming bleeding arm. His leg collapsed under him where woman's empty fingers had passed near, laying open his skin with a needlelike jet of water. He screamed. As the waterbender completed her sweeping turn she saw Xiaobao's shape rising beside her fallen enemies. Ayika ran forward. The woman faced Xiaobao and yelled out, "You should stay down!" Her arms swung in a huge arc as the fog in the air contracted down to a deadly rope that would cut like a knife. Ayika was almost at Xiaobao's side but there was nothing she could do to shield him. Ayika closed her eyes.
A hard punch impacted the waterbender's arm. The racing water whip halted in its contraction and Xiaobao was pelted with hard droplets instead of a slicing stream. Ayika skidded to a halt before him. The bender looked to her side in astonishment to see an Islander girl in her face already in the middle of another attack, fists clenched and eyes glaring. The woman thrust out a hand to block but Mizumi spun on her toes, carrying into her next strike, keeping as close to the woman as she could and out of the range of the deadly bending. Her next punch landed, but the kick was turned away by a sweeping motion of the woman's arm. Then Mizumi's foot came down wrong on damp stones and she was falling, crying out in pain from a water-slice across her forearm even as she hit the ground.
The waterbender jumped back, losing her beaded hat as Erliao's remaining swordsman attempted a stab while she was distracted. Her long hair clinked with small ornaments. A few meters away Erliao was still blowing on his piercing whistle and though he had not risen from the abandoned sedan chair it looked as if he greatly wished to. There was still a dark figure standing behind him, but as the air itself seemed to tremble Ayika no longer thought it was just a citizen spectator. Somehow this shape was holding the minister in place without ever touching him. Dim shadows were creeping closer in the fog from every direction. The waterbender danced away from Mizumi but was now counting the swordsman and Erliao along with Xiaobao, Mizumi, and the other three who had not yet joined. She saw enemies everywhere. She didn't know that Ayika's friends weren't allied with Erliao. She was breathing heavily as she raised her voice once more and yelled out into the night. "There are too many coming! I beseech you, for agreements made, seize them all now!"
Ayika's friends looked around in blind confusion but Ayika saw the circle of shadowy watchers move forward. Ayika's previous assumptions now seemed horrifyingly false. These were not bystanders, The figures which had gathered to watch this confrontation were not even human shaped any more. They were monsters.
Lili heard the waterbender's call and looked back behind her but her eyes stared right through the malformed figure moving her way. Tears were in Ayika's eyes and her visions shifted. A shape like a four armed man with great fangs was holding a purple veil over Erliao, pressing him down into the seat of his downed sedan chair. Mizumi rolled to her feet as she rose to fight the waterbender. Behind her thin figures with limbs like uncooked noodles took needle steps forward as they advanced. She did not hear them. Shadowy tentacles reached from the dark towards the swordsman. A mass like a spider made of brick with a hundred human hands silently emerged from the haze or out of it and raced to move on Xiaobao. A shape with darkly burning teeth headed for Xinfei and Lili, its claws against the stones. No one saw them.
These details flashed in of the corner of Ayika's eye: madness and power, glory and terror. She knew what they were. Spirits. Ayika staggered and trembled. She breathed out and they were gone, she breathed in and they were there again. They glowed in primal colors and wavered in shape and form but they were there, walking among them. The waterbender woman grinned as she panted. The fog swirled and compacted in her hands and she laughed. Mizumi and the swordsman were now paralyzed at her side. They looked around in frantic confusion but did not see the dark figures who held twisted limbs above their heads. They could not move despite their struggles. The spirits where holding their bodies still, ephemeral tentacles or fingers merging through their backs.
The waterbender prepared to strike down Mizumi and the man with the sword before moving on to Erliao. The spirits loomed silently in the mist, glowing with otherworldly power. It was too much. Ayika's head ached and she couldn't see. Fog compacted into a slicing whip, aimed at the girl and the man. The stick-like spirit held its transparent fingertips through Mizumi's shoulders, paralyzing her. Ayika's chest was tight, she couldn't breath. The ground was swimming, up and down were rushing around her. The water blade raced forward. Ayika screamed out at woman, at the shadows, and the world and the walls and the moon above. "STOP!"
And the spirits stopped. The strange and uncertain figures halted in their motion and removed their mystical holds as quickly as they had come. The waterbender gasped in surprise as her slicing attack missed the swordsman who stepped back easily, his face showing new confusion as he dodged away from her slow and careful aim. She'd expected him to be restrained by the spirits, but to him the street was still empty. In the bender's moment of confusion Mizumi's foot shot out to catch the back of her knee. She stumbled and a sword thrust sliced her sleeve, just barely missing her arm. Erliao was rising out of his chair. He ran off into the fog, past strange inhuman forms that now only regarded him silently as he dashed blindly by, his shoes slapping against he paving stones. His whistle screamed out its metal plea for help.
The waterbender yelled out, swirling her arms to create a halo of narrow knifelike arcs driving back Mizumi and the swordsman. "No! You let him go!" She breathed in. She prepared to run after the minister. "No, I can still-"
Drum beats echoed down the street, thin and pitched but numerous in their answer to the dimming sounds of Erliao's whistle. The guards were here. The Water Tribe woman threw her head back and screamed, a pure, throat-tearing sound of thwarted fury that made the swordsman step back by pure force. She whipped around and her eyes stared into Ayika's, dark with hate and confusion. Then the woman clapped her hands together and the fog rushed back in to blind them all.
Ayika was lost in a moonless dark that seemed deep and endless. In that first moment she didn't think she could see her hand in front of her nose and though she heard Xinfei and Mizumi call out for her she didn't move or answer. The physical world felt as thin and ephemeral as the mist around them. She had seen something. She'd seen spirits. No one else had reacted to them. Spirits had attacked them, obeying the waterbender's command. And then they had obeyed Ayika's. It was impossible. At least alone here in the dark she did not have to figure out what all that meant.
A hand touched her arm. "Ayika, are you harmed?" It was Mizumi's voice.
Ayika realized her eyes were closed tight. She opened them and found the mist in the street was already fading. Their attackers, both human and otherwise, were gone. The street was occupied only by the few humans standing in the moonlight. The lone standing swordsman was looking around as he panted, searching for the waterbender, before registering the beating of the guard drums and stashing his illegal short-sword in his robes again. Xiaobao lifted one of the injured men up to his feet, allowing him to lean off the dock-worker's broad shoulders and his unharmed companion rushed over to help once that man realized that he was not the only survivor of the bender's attack. No one seemed eager to chase after the woman wherever she had gone. Ayika heard rushing footsteps approaching and saw Xinfei and Lili approaching as she realized she'd still not answered Mizumi's question.
She shook her head. "No, I'm fine. Did you see..." Looking over she saw how Mizumi was pressing one forearm against her stomach as if she really did not want to move it. "You got hit! We've got to get you help!"
"No, it is just a shallow cut." Mizumi said, but even in the dim moonlight Ayika could see that her cheeks were abnormally pale and there was a slight tremor of shock to her motions. The adrenaline and its pain dampening property was draining away by the moment.
"What is it?" Lili said as she ran over to them. As she turned, her face caught the moonlight and twin streaks of tears glistened on her cheeks. They seemed to be an entirely automatic reaction to the stress void of all the other symptoms of sobbing. Xinfei was now at her side and he continually looked around, acting as reflexive safe-keeper for this group of women though his own hands were shaking from a noxious cocktail of terror, relief, and a preparation to both fight and flee.
Ayika forced Mizumi to hold her injured arm up and into the path of the moonlight. Luckily, there was more light arriving as guards carrying torches began to jog down their street. Erliao must have already been recovered. But Ayika couldn't focus on any of that right now.
"The cut went through your clothing so we'll have to be sure no cloth got caught up inside." She seized the sleeve and with deft fingers felt for the damp slice in the stained fabric. With no mind to the expensive material she seized hold of each side and ripped the hole thrice as big. Mizumi flinched, mostly from anticipated pain as Ayika was sure she had not touched the wound. And there it was, a shallow cut about three centimeters long set at an angle along her forearm in a area heavily darkened with smudged blood.
Ayika did not allow herself to dwell on the blood. She'd seen enough before. "Well, it looks clean and neat. It's not that bad. I'll have to wash it out and look at it better when I sew it but for now..." She drew forth a small pocket from her belt with a folded bit of clean fabric she kept out of long habit for occasions like this. After a moment of thought she also grabbed Mizumi's hair ribbon that she'd placed in her belt earlier. It was wide and though Ayika thought it might actually be silk and thus very expensive it seemed to be a good choice for maintaining pressure on the bandage. She supposed that this also qualified as returning it. Throughout this procedure Mizumi's tension had gradually relaxed and now met Ayika's eyes with trust and thanks.
Xinfei said, "Now I'm not being ungrateful here, but how are you all alive? That waterbender took down three guys in a few seconds and then she suddenly freaks out and runs? Was it the guards getting near? No wait, she still had plenty of time. And what was she doing with the fog? Was she making the droplets hold me somehow? Is that a thing?"
Ayika searched his face but he was being perfectly sincere. He'd seen none of it. Not the watchers, not the spirits, not their sudden attempt to hold them or the equally sudden release. No one else had seen what she had. If that was so then she decided not to mention her own differing account. She had too much to deal with right now. Ayika shrugged in answer to Xinfei and turned back to look at Mizumi's arm but now she noticed that she was being inspected rather closely. Those foreign eyes were watching her with the same searching intensity Ayika had just given Xinfei.
Lili was still having trouble controlling her breathing. "I don't know. And frankly, at this moment, I do not care. I have been in more attacks... in this last hour than in my life till now. I want to get off the streets. I want to tell my father I'm all right."
Mizumi spoke up in reassurance, peeling her gaze off of Ayika. "If Minister Erliao's offer of transportation still stands you can stay in my house tonight. Let us find him. The tram lines are safe and we are closer to the station than we are to your house. That will take us off these streets. We can ask a guard to send a message up to both our fathers informing them where we are." A motion she made set her wincing and she hissed through clenched teeth. "And my grandfather has wound treating supplies. Silver needles," she shuddered briefly. "...and such things."
Even Xinfei no longer had any objection to sticking with the city guards. This night had shaken a lot of convictions. Their little group moved together as a huddle but when Lili broke forward to speak with Erliao and the assembled guards around him, Xinfei whispered. "Just how many factions are there fighting tonight? I was just beginning to digest Ma'er's motivations. And who was that lady connected to? What'd she want? She accused Erliao of murdering Lizhen but the minister guy seemed honestly surprised."
Ayika's brain was finally starting to work again, and it had finally connected a few dots that had been waiting. She said, "I don't know. I mean I don't know everything but...I know how she's connected to the professor." She was met with two incredulous stares and one look of dawning comprehension. "Lizhen had her picture in his office. And I think I know her name."
...
Ma'er panted as he leaned against the cold stone wall. In this pitch black tunnel, the muffled sounds of combat above ground seemed amplified. He shifted his shoulder and bared his teeth to the unseeing dark. One of those Masks had managed to grab hold of him in mid jump and the resulting swing through the air must have damaged something. It had only taken a second to slip free of the hold but for that brief moment this old soldier had felt his death in that iron grip.
The Water Tribe girl was right, the Masks were stronger. These mask-wearers fought like nothing he had ever encountered before. In the past stealth had been his asset. Tonight he had crept along the rooftops hunting for his prey, the very bricks and tiles cooperating with his need for silence as in the distance he heard the city guards belatedly begin to close off the district. A lone member of the Initiated had been down on the street below, calling on his deluded minions to continue in their destruction of the urban order. Tian was not among them. Ma'er had leaned back out of view to collect himself and his stone gloves for the attack. Perhaps some interrogation would yield answers to this increasingly distressing mystery. And then in an instant the Mask had been beside him on the roof.
The Dai Li prided themselves on being able to utilize the bending arts in the city without causing a single yuan of damage. Tonight Ma'er had disgraced his training and it had barely been enough. The techniques he used had ripped apart the top floor of a building and brought the corner of another crashing down, but still the Mask fought back ferociously. Ma'er only hoped he had succeed in preventing collateral casualties but he had to admit that had not been his top priority as he tore apart brick walls and threw up slabs of the street. The Mask had danced around them or burst through with impossible strength.
Down in the dark tunnel, Ma'er rubbed his shoulder and then felt at the wooden mask hanging from his belt. In the end he had won and collected his trophy. But as he had prepared to ask his questions in a very point manner another Mask arrived. And then another.
Even in the tunnel he still heard the sound of distant earthbending from the city guard positions. Frantic earthbending. He didn't know how many Initiated were out tonight but it sounded like more than he had ever seen before and they were now openly fighting with the government forces. Long experience had convinced Ma'er to retreat from this newly improved power. There had been a merry chase and one close call but he had managed to reach a place where he could part the stones to drop down into an old tunnel beneath the city.
Reaching into his robe Ma'er drew forth a clump of crystals hanging from a loop. A touch of moist breath to them and a faint glow began to drift across their surface. A few drops of water and they cast a dim green light that gave the tunnel just enough illumination to discern vague shapes. It would be enough.
Tonight had been a mistake. He had underestimated his enemy again. In the past the nationalist had fled when he arrived, now they hunted him. How were they doing it? He did not know where they got this strength, but it had been getting worse since the political shakeup around the death of Ambassador Naruhama. What had that tribal girl said? Colored shadows clinging around them? He'd seen nothing like that while he fought, only painted wooden masks, but a lifetime in the world of secrets had taught him that no one person ever saw the whole truth. But Chen Lizhen had somehow understood. Lizhen had seen whatever was coming and so he had been killed.
Ma'er knew what he had to do so he began to walk, his footsteps reverberating softly in the dead dust of the abandoned tunnel. No matter how strong the soldiers, without a general any army is beatable. He would find the leader. He would find who was behind this and make them pay for destroying the peace of his city. But he had no leads. Several of the district barricade walls had been toppled by the Masks' attack and so most of the rioters had escaped to lie low in various dark corners of the Middle Ring until the gates reopened near dawn. From what little he had been able to gather listening in on common guards the City knew even less than he did.
He silently emerged back into the moonlit air in an alley that connected to a more populated district. Out on the street Ma'er heard people saying that this night would begin long awaited reprisals. Whether against the reformers or the conservatives, the public was undecided. It seemed that now everyone on every faction gleeful at the prospect of chaos. Earth Kingdom and Fire Nation. Rich and poor. They all were snapping at any hint of change, thinking it would be their opportunity. Ma'er knew better. He what a funeral pyre smelled like and by now the city was ready to be lit.
...