3 Chapter 2 - Dramatic Entrance

Second Line of Nine: The dragon appearing in the field. It will be advantageous to meet with the great man.

---Book of Changes

In the name of the Imperial Court...I hereby order the Shaman Council to command imperial shamans, including the Order of the Flying Dragons and the Tiger Gods Division, to suppress these rebels, to intensify searching patrol, to arrest and execute immediately all criminals and foreign aggressors with weapons who advocate killing.

----Empress Dowager Xiaocheng, Imperial Decree on the 24th Day of the 5th Month, Year 412 of the Qing Dynasty.

///////

Jia Xu felt the start of a migraine as she pinched the bridge of her nose. After one of her paper birds had returned with a troubling message, the secretary had run in breathlessly half an hour ago to deliver the news that sent the meeting room into an uproar. The Council members hadn't stopped arguing since. The Flying Dragons being back and requesting to meet with her was news they were unprepared to accept. Most of them were surprised, and a few of them were suspicious. She was the only one to be pleased.

"The Order of the Flying Dragons has been gone for sixty years! How in heaven's name could they have returned?" the Council Elder next to her asked repeatedly, knocking his cane against the table. The snake spirit curled around his cane twitched in annoyance. Jia Xu sighed. The Elders had no vision, and a few of them were senile. That was probably the foremost reason the Shaman Council had fallen so far.

During the Imperial Era, the social order had been clear enough: Shamans, scholars, peasants, craftsmen, and merchants, in that order. Right beneath the imperial court, the Shaman Council had enjoyed unchallenged authority save the oversight of the Flying Dragons.

That was the problem, she supposed. The Shaman Council had been the authority for so long, most never suspected it would ever not be the case. Not even Jia Xu, despite her best efforts to stay on her toes.

During the ten years she spent wrangling power back from her uncle, shamans had lost their deference towards the Council. Somewhere along the line, the power struggle and the Council's history had earned it the label of being backwards and outdated, as weak as the last dynasty had been to counter the warlords and foreign powers.

Jia Xu had spent another five years rectifying that impression, but it still wasn't enough to win back the playing field. A small merchant association had sprung up and ballooned into the Hengshan Association under Taeyun, a young shaman who had ridden into Canton on a white tiger spirit from the sacred mountains.

Soon, Hengshan matched the Council in power and size. It still stung that all it had taken to halve the Council's influence was a promise from Taeyun to ignore birth and nationality. She too had promised such, but the Council's history of xenophobia and elitism had made that claim laughable.

But now things are different. Jia Xu smiled wanly at the pictures on her desk. The guileless face of a teenager stared back. If the Flying Dragons are back, the Shaman Council has a chance. She tapped her knuckle on the desk and the arguing Council members fell silent.

"It doesn't matter if the Flying Dragons have not returned," Jia Xu said. The room was quiet enough to hear a fly hit the wall. "What matters is what we can do with it."

"What do you mean by that, my lord?" one of them finally asked after a long period of silence. Jia Xu bared her teeth in a smile.

"Call for Feng Xia."

//////

Spade sighed again, exasperation bouncing off the insides of his chest like a rubber ball in a parking lot. Admittedly, it had been his idea, albeit a stupid one, to pose as the Flying Dragons. But if Joyce hadn't stirred up enough of a ruckus for half the nation to be watching them, they would have been able to drop the cover as soon as they crossed the Yangtze and no one would have been the wiser.

Despite the girl's promise to burn that bridge when she came to it, they had been so mired in the aftermath of several unnatural tropical storms, explosions, and flash floods that Spade gave up the original plan and determinedly stuck to the story. It hadn't been until he hit Canton that he realized how much trouble they were in.

Then Joyce had proposed a plan that would have called for a swordfight followed by slapping his opponent in the face for a minimum of fifteen times had it been anyone else. But since it was Joyce, it was actually possible. For him.

He glanced at the teen. She did not have a subtle bone in her body when it came to her abilities as a shaman, even less so given the unusually powerful nature of said abilities. It had taken some gentle reminding via half-hour lectures delivered an octave higher than his normal voice to get it through her head that no, normal shamans weren't capable of calling down storms at the snap of a finger, especially storms that featured rainbow-colored lightning, no matter what the internet said.

"Do you think they'll meet with us?" Joyce asked. She promptly continued without waiting for a reply. "Even if they don't, you just have to get in the building, right? Oh! You could ask to use the bathroom. They can't be petty enough to refuse that?"

"They'll meet with us," he said, mentally applauding himself for keeping his voice cool. "From what Luhan told me, they'll probably pounce on the chance." The pretty pole-dancer had told him a few other things too, but those would come in handy later. He needed to be patient.

People parted as they walked down the busy street, and as much as he wanted to believe it was for the insignia on his shirt, it was more likely to be his irritated glare and the very obvious sword on his belt.

"GPS says to turn right," Joyce said. He promptly swerved right, a middle-aged man nervously skirting out of the way. He stopped as the building came into sight, and Joker walked right into him.

"Those are some serious defenses," Spade said softly, scanning the impressive structure. The building itself was grand enough, but what really impressed him were the wards that covered every inch of it in a shimmering golden net.

Spells were usually pretty simple, using a spirit or spiritual energy to temporarily bend power to one's mechanisms. They required little to no subtlety or skill. Joyce had certainly benefited from that. But wards...wards required skill and technique, and a ward of this size would require the mind of an architect.

Spade squinted, identifying the spirits bound to it with a faint sense of awe. He found himself suddenly wishing that he knew more about shamanic powers.

Earth as foundation, wind as pillars, and water spirits to draw strength rain. Someone's serious.

"No way we're not getting caught." Not with something like this. Joyce blinked at the sight.

"You want to just take down all of the defenses?" she asked. He swiveled his head towards her.

"Are you crazy?!" he demanded, "You want to make an enemy of them your first day in town?"

"Then we'll take down Hengshan's defenses too," Joyce shot back, "Show them what we can do, play it off as some kind of an audition. Admittedly, it makes us look like jerks but it would be less suspicious, right?"

"Lower your voice!" Spade hissed. He paused. It was a bad move, but they were too deep in bad moves to cop out now. Not to mention that it was well within Joyce's power to destroy the wards with ease. But... "No."

"We'll be in bigger trouble at this point if they suspect the storms weren't Flying Dragon techniques! And didn't Confucius say that if a friend comes from far away you should forgive them if they damage your house? I'm pretty sure he said something like that." Joyce said. Spade narrowed his eyes.

"Confucius never said anything of the sort." He looked back towards the building and sharply tugged on their mental link.

'Stop talking, they're watching us,' he sent. Joyce blinked and had the sense not to nod.

'So are we doing it or not?' She sent back. Spade sighed slowly.

'Guess we are,' he shook his head and reached for the tendrils of power from Joyce's energy reserves.

/////////

"They're leaving," Feng Xia said with a frown. Jia Xu didn't even blink.

"So they are," she replied, pushing back the papers on her desk. "They probably came to scope us out."

Feng Xia directed her frown at her boss, much to Jia Xu's amusement. The younger woman was a veritable treasure mine of novel ideas, even if many of them weren't good ones, and Feng Xia never tried to hide her emotions. Jia Xu glanced out the window as the two disappeared from sight.

"Their appointment isn't for an hour anyway," she said, "I'd be happy if they could take a look at the other side before that."

Feng Xia rolled her eyes. "You want them to scope the Hengshan guys? Do it after they're hired! You'll lose them if Taeyun gets his grubby paws out."

Jia Xu scoffed. "As if. Taeyun doesn't want them as I do, they'll be lucky if he doesn't aim a spell at their face." She hummed softly, waiting out the hour with patience.

The Flying Dragons were more a legend than anything else by now, and legends drew power from history. Joyce and Spade would see soon enough where their interests aligned with hers, she was sure of it. Whatever they were planning, she was sure to be ready.

She was not.

The wards crashed down without so much as an alarm, as if they were made of rice paper and some toddler was ripping it apart with sticky fingers. Feng Xia let out a yelp of surprise and sprung to her feet, flinging a spell of protection over Jia Xu before scanning for danger.

"What the—" Feng Xia's words were lost in her rage. "I'll kill them!"

Screams of shock rang out throughout the building as shamans felt the wards disappear and stay gone. Heart pounding in her throat, Jia Xu pushed down her own surprise and immediately reached for her spirit-web.

If Taeyun had gotten through to them that easily...A golden grid shimmered under her fingers as she felt for the life-pulse of the city, reaching out to their counterpart—Aha.

"Why are you smiling?!" Feng Xia demanded, anger bright on her cheekbones. Jia Xu met her eyes with a calm smile.

"Taeyun's defenses are down," she said, unable to stop a smirk from spreading over her face. Turning away from Feng Xia's stunned expression, Jia Xu laughed as she surveyed the damage.

Some audition this was, as arrogant and rude as she had expected from a derelict fossil like the Order. Exactly what she had hoped for: An Order unprepared for the changing world, one that would have to turn to her to maintain its fragile dignity. Jia Xu looked down at Joyce's picture with amusement.

'Oh, little sister, you'll do just fine.'

//////////

"Did it work?" Joyce demanded, grabbing at Spade's arm. He squatted on the curb, reading through the files desperately. It had, evidently, thanks to the Council's refusal to store records electronically.

As soon as the wards came down, it only took seconds to reach out with a spell and grab what he needed. It was probably also the only thing that could save them. After acting so boldly against both the titans of Canton, it would take their best acting skills to persuade the organizations not to throttle them.

'Are their wards back up again?' Spade asked, mentally intonating as much reprove as he could. Don't talk out loud. Joyce glanced at the building they were squatting behind.

'Not yet, we have about...um...three minutes before they get them running again,' she said. She squinted slightly. 'I think some people are really mad though.'

Spade tossed her a quick glare before frantically taking pictures of the files with his shitty phone. He had committed as much to memory as possible, the rest he would leave to the wonders of modern technology. He shoved the papers back into the folder and tossed it to Joyce.

"Put it back," he hissed. It disappeared. Spade let out a sigh of relief, rubbing at his temples to ward off an approaching headache.

'What did it say?' Joyce asked, trying to read from the picture on his phone.

'I'll tell you later, just remember that if anyone asks, our leader is Mohan. We're the only ones in Canton.' Spade squeezed his eyes shut, brain spinning as he tried to weld together a believable story.

'Who's Mohan?' Joyce was frowning. She was probably picking apart the logic, not that it was a bad thing. The teen was either very careful or very not, with little in-between.

'The only leader they can't find. Can't prove he's alive, can't prove he's dead. They'll have to take our word for it. In either case...' he glanced up as the wards came alive, strumming with energy almost vengefully. 'I think they'll accept it whether they believe us or not.'

"Let's go," he offered, standing up and brushing off his clothes. He waited as Joyce stretched her legs. She met his eyes with a steady gaze.

'We've made it through worse.' She smiled, "Let's get this over with."