...

Mama Mua began to prepare the exorcism ritual. She moved around the room, pulling small mystic items from within her sleeves and behind her cloth belt. Ayika looked over at the two families squeezed into this apartment. No one was happy with the explanation Mua had delivered. The grandmother was repeating her murmurs over and over that her dead husband would never do something like that to his grandson. Ayika didn't think that Mua was planning on calming them. From the force with which Mua was setting down her instruments of the job on those surfaces Ayika suspected anything Mua said was likely to make things even worse.

Ayika remembered the lines Grandma Aka had used during all those house calls around the immigrant families of the Bed. So Ayika moved over to the old woman sitting in the corner. She told the woman that she was sure her husband loved his family. A ghost was half of a trapped soul that was stuck between this world and the spirit world, unable to pass through on to reincarnation. She explained that they brought trouble but they couldn't help it. It wasn't their fault that something went wrong with the death rituals. If this man's ghost was powerful enough to cause these problems, especially if it had enabled a spirit to cross over, then he must have been a very strong and noble man in life. The grandmother looked up at Ayika and might have been comforted.

Then one of Jing's brothers growled that it was a pity strength of character wasn't inherited and any shreds of peace in the apartment dissolved again. Deng's father moved to catch hold of his younger son who made a lunging movement out of anger for these insults against his brother. Ayika turned to look out the open wooden slats of the window as the shouting returned. If this was the mood in the city then the Masks did not need to do much to rile up discontent. People feeling this tense would be anxious to blame anything. Spirits and Islanders were ranked as just as worrisome in most people's minds. She hoped Mizumi was staying safe.

Ayika suddenly heard new sounds from the kitchen. The families' shouting had redoubled and now the father had joined, barking at Mama Mua who merely narrowed her eyes and carried on with what she was doing in that semi-separated room. Ayika moved nearer and saw Mua was dismantling the little shrine to the late grandfather. She snatched down the offerings and supplications around the dead man's written name held in a frame.

"Hold now, tribal!" the husband yelled. "You can't desecrate my father's shrine, no matter what you say about spirits or ghosts! Get away from that! We already paid for the temple priest to say his spells to calm his ghost and all that. How do I know you aren't just wanting us to pay twice?"

Beside Ayika the grandmother started to wail again, letting out unfocused prayers to the King of Kings. In the kitchen, Mua stood up straight and set down the components of the dismantled shrine. For a moment it looked like she was complying with the husband's orders. Then she raised her empty palms and spun around with a flowing motion. Shimmering ropes of water shot forth from the kitchen jug and wrapped around her in wide arcs, hanging in invisible air. The family members jumped back. Mama Mua now stood alone, her hands moving in slow circles as her body undulated slightly in arcane techniques. The strands of levitating water fragmented before her and reformed as they bulged and reformed in their constant arial motion. Ayika's heart was pounding in her ears. Suddenly her mind was back in the dark and the fog while this woman formed slicing blades from the mist. The instinctive terror all normal people held of benders had returned. Nia Mua could kill everyone in this room with nothing but her hands and her power.

"Listen." When Mua spoke she spoke gently, ignoring the fear around her. "You people have not been comfortin' a departed soul with this shrine. You've been empowerin' a ghost. The ceremony to unite the aspects of the dead's essence and allow it to move on and await rebirth failed. The disks on his eyes didn't work. Now the hungry ghost is loose and is feastin' on your offerings, upsettin' the border with the spirit world. That fragment'll barely remember that it's your grandfather, but it maintains all his spiritual strength from life. So his love of his grandson merely opened up a path for some spirit to grasp at the boy. Them that come over can be nice and benign, but this one isn't. And the ghost'll continue to draw the spirit world closer as long as it's free and provided with power. So we must act now to stop it."

With a wave of her arm the menacing strands of water flowed back into one stream and raced through the air back into the kitchen jug. All at once she was a normal woman again. However, the families remained fearful. Ayika did not blame them. Mua flipped the grandfather's framed name from the shrine face down on the table with a click. Then she reached out to adjust the incense holders she had set out in perpetration for the exorcism.

Mama Mua moved to light the incense sticks. Ayika noticed that she drew forth one of those boxes of the new fire-starters, "matches". Xinfei had been right, they were catching on. It looked as though Ayika had told the fire spirit a good tip.

Then Mua struck the little stick against an oven stone and it burst in a sudden spurt of flame much stronger than should have been produced. Mua almost dropped the match in surprise but somehow managed to hold on and inspected the flame burning on the end of the stick. There was no breeze in the room but the flame was dancing like it was trying to escape from its source. Ayika had seen that kind of motion before. It reminded her of the lanterns in the school the night Lizhen was killed. And the beginning of the fire in the warehouse. But why here? Why now? Were the Masks around? But the flames had not been dancing the night of the riot on the Fifth Hill and there had certainly been masks there. Was it spirits? But no, both times Mua had summoned spirits the flames had behaved normally even around the little man in the fire. Ayika pressed her hand to her temple. None of this made sense.

Mua was worried by this strange behavior of the fire, but no answers seemed to be coming to her so she quickly lit the incense sticks and then extinguished the strange match with a flick of her wrist. Fortunately, the fire went easily and the smoldering sticks gave their scented smoke without incident.

The threads of smoke wound their way upwards through the still air of the apartment. Like flying serpents they lazily twisted towards the ceiling until they caught scent of a draft and angled off to dissipate into the shadowed corners. Mua bowed to the the small ritual display she had constructed and then sank down to her knees on the floor. The shaman settled back on her heels as she closed her eyes and slowed her breathing. This was one of the principle duties of a shaman; crossing over into the spirit world. She was going to meet the ghost in its new home on the border and to close the door it had opened through the veil.

Ayika tried to focus with her, though she had no training in such meditation. She tried to remember what it had felt like just before the spirit had appeared in Mua's fire but she thought that failed to capture the same sensation. How do you go about remembering a thought? The minutes passed and Mua's breathing remained slow and steady. Ayika knew Mua said that she herself could learn this talent, but no breakthroughs looked likely to happen today. Then she noticed something by its sudden absence. Something had changed and Ayika felt that there had been a faint presence all around that was now gone. Mua opened her eyes.

She breathed out and said, "Your father is at rest."

The younger brother began to mutter something to the nature of "That's it?" before his mother pinched him quiet. Jing's brothers began to nodded in annoyed agreement with the brother's sentiment until they caught themselves and remembered their quarrel. Mua rose to her feet.

"So... you're done?" the mother asked.

"No," said Mua. "I am not. Ayika, to me."

Ayika moved across the apartment to stand closer. Now that she was very near, Ayika could see Mua's face more clearly. The woman was shaken by something. Something she had seen in her meditation. But there was no time to ask because Ayika followed Mua the few paces into the bedroom where there was now a spirit perched on the bed-frame above Deng's head.

The strange transparent shape was the size of a young child but not of its shape. It had a sinuous body like an otter but the long limbs of a monkey and all up and down its pale translucent form were green stripes and blotches in seemingly random assortment. As Ayika watched it reached a few long fingers down from where it crouched sideways to gravity and gently stroked them through Deng's head. The man tied to the bed shivered slightly but otherwise showed no sign of noticing this and continued to look up at Mama Mua with confusion and frustration as she inspected him. At least he had learned the futility of talking back to her.

Mua spoke softly to Ayika. "Your grandmother knew the local formulas for confining a spirit? You remember them?"

"What? Um, yes?" She thought she did. Grandma Aka had been very sparse with her ceremonies but she had been consistent and this was a simple one. The intent was just to convince a spirit to stay along for long enough for a more complete ceremony to take place. Grandmother had used them like stalling tactics for when people needed time to cool off.

"Then go over into the next bedroom and get ready. Let's do this quickly."

For a moment Ayika stood there dumbly before her body caught up with what Mua had been saying. That pale green spirit was very distracting. Then Ayika nodded and quickly slid back out through the door way. She just had time to glimpse the spirit looking up in a careless way, as of it felt an impossible tickling which said the bumbling humans could now see it. The wife who had invited Mama Mua tried to stand in Ayika's way and ask her some question but Ayika managed to use the woman's own presence against her and slide by with a smooth deflection. As Ayika entered the other bedroom she wracked her memory for everything she had learned from her grandmother. For a containment ritual you needed to define an area. If you were not very familiar with the area then a line or circle was best. She hurriedly sent her mind back years to remember. For quick measures of reassurance Grandma Aka had usually splashed a line of salted water on the ground. That was the way she had learned back in the northern Tribes.

Ayika quickly grabbed a little clay cup from the kitchen counter and dipped it in the water jug before she ran back into the larger bedroom. She had just dipped her fingers in her sloshing cup when she remembered another instance. The times when Grandma Aka had actually looked serious as people complained of spirits. Things in the Earth Kingdom followed different traditions than the Water Tribes. The spirits of this city were used to the laws of earth. A line of brick got more attention than water. Aka had complained that the crumbled clay dust was a pain to clean up of the floorboards afterwards, even if little Ayika had been the one down on her knees. But how to...

She slipped a hand into the pocket of her cloth belt and grabbed a small smooth stone she had tucked there after picking it up on a whim. Old childhood habits did not always need to die. She dipped the stone in her cup of water and brought it down against the wooden floor. With spirits it was the ritual that mattered, not the inherit logic. And the wet stone could mark a damp line. A sheen of water placed down by a core of earth. That should be enough.

Ayika had just finished a scrawled circle when she heard Mua call out in the other room. The precise words were slightly obscured by the intervening wall but her force of personality resonated through. Up close her display must have been even more striking because a phantasmal green shape came hurtling out through that same intact wall. The spirit tumbled through the air, a mess of limbs and tails until it silently came to rest in the air above the middle of the circle. Ayika was breathing heavily as its squirming stopped and the spirit slowly unfolded its striped form to look up at her with dimly glowing eyes. Ayika did not really know what to say.

"Your friend is out of place." The spirit said with a sigh and more familiarity than was warranted. "And I will say that I expected a better welcome in your world, with all the trouble you have gone to."

"Welcome?" Ayika sputtered. She was starting to see why Grandma Aka had tried to avoid dealings with spirits. They were a presumptuous lot. "You were messing with that guy's head! You were making him crazy!"

"Crazy?" The spirit said this as if it did not understand the word. It was possible it did not. Grandma Aka had said that the spirit world operated under very different rules from the material. "There is one of his that wanted the boy looked after. I came over to keep him company. Really, if you don't want us to play here then why did you lot undermine your own allies?"

Ayika did not have time to answer before Mama Mua stormed in through the door and spat out "We humans still have spirit allies in this world. And you no longer have a place here. Be lucky I'm not sending you before Blind Dog Lord."

The green striped otter stretched its unnervingly thin monkey arms. Ayika thought it might be smiling. With that many sharp teeth it was hard to tell. "Some might rule this side. But they are going to be outnumbered. The lords and the golden are going to fall. Change is coming and a fever will always find its place. Remember, we are welcomed. After all, you sent us one of yours first."

Mua let out a curse and room echoed with a small sharp snap. The drying circle on the floor was now empty as two halves of a small clay tablet hit the floor where she dropped them. The spirit was gone. It was only the that Ayika realized she had failed her chance to interrogate this spirit about the Nine-Step-Shadow. If only Mua had given her a few more moments. The orange man in the fire had said that the shadow spirit was following someone. Ayika, Mizumi, and Mua had all been in the room. Mua hadn't recognized the name Nine-Step-Shadow and now Mua had prevented Ayika from asking this new spirit if it still sensed that shadow of death drawing nearer. If it had not then that would mean that both Ayika and Mua were safe. It would mean that Mizumi was the one who was going to...

Ayika could not bring herself to finish that thought.

Mua was breathing slightly heavily, although from exertion or excitement Ayika could not tell. "It is done." She gave the confused families a reassuring smile. However, Ayika could see a worried uncertainty behind those smooth lips. She addressed the husband. "You can resume offerings to your father in two days. Things should have died down a bit by then" Then she turned to look at bruised Jing with her brothers and Deng still tied to the bed. Mua made a pronouncement.

"Jing will return to her family for one week. Once they leave, Deng may be untied but will not contact her or any of her kind for that time. After that she may decide if she wants to see him and they can talk once more."

Deng's mother had tears in the corners of her eyes but she seemed content with the final result. After all, she had been the one to call on Mama Mua in the first place. She pressed a few coins into Mua's palm. To the shaman woman's credit she made no fake attempt to refuse payment, only quietly accepted them and slid the money to some hidden pocket within her clothes.

Ayika had an uncountable number of questions buzzing through her mind but she waited until they were outside on the street again to consider raising them.

"Something went wrong with the ghost ritual, didn't it? I could feel it."

Mua scowled and glared up and down the street, scrunching her smooth face into the expression that made her look much older. If she had been a Kingdoms native she would have spat on the stones. "Everything's wrong these days. Murderers are walkin' free and the sprits are coming far too close. The Shu are refusing to speak to me and instead all the lesser faint folk are crawling up through every drop and shadow. Even the fire's wrong." She saw Ayika's expression. "Yes, it is wrong. That was much harder than it should have been. The wall between worlds is damaged. And in the spirit world, when Ah found the old man's ghost there was...There was something else. Something much stronger out there. I think it's getting stronger."

Ayika followed behind the other woman as they made their way back down the alley to the boat waiting on the canal. Mua's theatrical display of bending magic when they first arrived must have worked since the craft looked unmolested by the local children. The battered apartments above with their sagging bamboo terraces and scaffolds pressed down above Ayika's head. At this moment she could feel on her heart the weighty hopelessness of the tasks she had set herself. The city was too big and now she had to contend with its spirit world reflection as well. She said, "At least you helped Jing get away from her husband."

Mua stopped as she was stepping onto the boat. She barked out a single harsh laugh, "Ha! She'll be back to him as soon as ya can blink."

"What?!"

"Didn't ya see in her eyes, girl? She's got love for him." Mua shook her head. "Love'll always bring ya back, even if ya know it'll hurt ya. It was in his eyes too, damn thing. Love and cruelty."

"But, but...After what you told her...After what he did how could she... What if he-?"

Mua shrugged. "He might. Probably will. But love's a stupid thing. It's painful and destructive and rarely makes the right decision. All ya can do is hope the love dies before they tear each other apart." There was a bitterness dripping off of every syllable she spoke. Bitterness and what sounded like experience.

"No." Ayika was sure of this one word even if she was confident about nothing else. "No, that's not what love is." She knew that she had no experience in love. No man had even caught her eye in the burning way her mother had promised they would. But she knew in her heart that what she had yet to find was not this dark and twisting force that Mua described. It just wasn't. It was trust and adventure and longing and comfort. It was someone who... she shook her head to settle her thoughts. It was something else.

Mua looked back at the apprentice she'd found herself with. She gave the slightest smile that for once was touched by something other than sardonic bitterness. Something that might have been wistfulness. "Maybe. But it's powerful and all power's easily darkened. Think of the unquiet ghosts. It's their love of life that brings them to linger and reach back into our world. The more powerful a personality the more disruptive spirits are drawn in. And that power twists people 'round them. As if this city needs more twisting. We're goin' to see a lot more of cases like this unless we stop Chen's killer and whatever their conspiracy's doing. May he forgive me."

It only took Ayika a moment to realize Mua was not praying for the murderer to forgive her. Whatever was disrupting the city's connection with spirit world had started around the time of Lizhen's death. The professor's soul and ghost might still be trapped and separated just like that family's grandfather. Ayika thought of the sensations she had felt at Lizhen's funeral, the feeling of incompletion. Mizumi and Lili hadn't been back to the school for days, but all the other students might still be affected by a tear in the spirit world. Even the other servant girls who'd been unkind to Ayika didn't deserve the kind of spirit possession that an unquiet ghost might bring on. Unfortunately, Ayika doubted Headmaster Gang would consent to allow someone like Mama Mua inside the grounds to check one way or the other.

Mua's canal boat slid across the dirty water between the uneven blocks of ancient apartments. Ayika didn't look back at the shaman. Down in Kuang Harbor she'd heard lately of people falling ill and acting strangely. There'd been even more stories about such things happening in the Lower Ring. Ayika had discounted the complaints of Mrs Anyakya's workers as just the effect of nerves and she had claimed to quiet the spirits that plagued them. She'd lied to them. That was before she had ever seen her first spirit but it was still unforgivable. She'd pretended to repel spirits when she had done nothing. She'd made up spells to appease her boss and earn herself some quick respite from a strange duty.

The spirit in the fire had said that the border between worlds was weakening around the city and all anyone could offer was empty ritual. They needed to find who was doing this and stop them. That might be the key to removing the Masks' power. And maybe that would also prevent that horror the Nine-Step-Shadow foretold. Because that spirit was still back there waiting to take its next step.

Ayika quickly twisted around to look behind the boat but no one was watching their passing through the artificial gorges of the city. All the shadows she saw were empty.

...