7 Chapter 6 - A Challenger Appears

Sixth Line of Nine: The dragon exceeding the proper limits. There will be occasion for repentance.

—The Book of Changes

Every native of the Inner Land who sells opium, as are all who smoke it, are alike adjudged to death. By what principle of reason then, should these foreigners send in return a poisonous drug, which involves in destruction those very natives of China?

—Governor Lin, Year 408 of the Qing Dynasty

//////

Luco smiled, carefully stopping himself from wavering as he approached the building.

"It's my life, baby it's now or never, I ain't gonna live forever," Joyce sang as she hosed down dirt-encrusted carrots outside the apartment. Judging from their uncomfortable circling about, the water-spirits at the pump had probably never been abused by such off-tune singing before.

Luco was already regretting everything. Taeyun had sent him to thank them on their first successful collaboration, but between the barefoot teen singing badly in English and the blond man studiously ignoring her as he polished his sword, Luco only wanted to turn on his heel and walk away.

But Luco's job was clear enough: Befriend them or kill them.

Taeyun had felt the Ctrl+F sweep of energy across the city capable of rendering any privacy or disguising wards useless, and promptly gave his orders to kill the Flying Dragons if they sided with the Shaman Council. More likely than not, Jia Xu would make a similar decision.

It was probably a good choice. For the first time in sixty years, Mohan's students were taking to the field. Even if it was decades ago, people still remembered the whirlwind of fire that turned Guanyang Pass into a fiery graveyard, the last act the shaman had committed in the name of the Qing Dynasty. Reports had flowed in from across the country the last three days as intelligence agents applied new criteria to their search, and each report served to increase Luco's level of concern.

The most recent report from Hunan province had traced the pair to a battle three weeks ago, where between the tanks and the typhoon, Spade had evidently won a fight by back-flipping off a building to stab someone. Which was great for Spade, surely, but the last thing anyone needed was yet another powerful shaman who also knew kung-fu.

Joyce swiveled around without turning off the hose, and Luco barely blocked the spray of water from soaking his clothes. "Oh shit, sorry dude!" she cried out. She turned it off and pattered over the wet cement. "You okay?"

Luco smiled at her, ignoring the scrape of metal as Spade sheathed his sword. "No worries, I'm fine. Sorry to bother you at this hour, I've come on behalf of the Chairman of Hengshan Association to—"

"You're Luco."

Luco tried to not stiffen as he smiled in Spade's direction. The blonde man nodded at him impassively.

"Did Pania mention me?" Luco deliberately kept his voice light.

"You're her friend, right? Are you guys workout buddies? You're both hella buff," Joyce said. Spade ignored her.

"I hope the Hengshan Association was satisfied with the collaboration today," Spade said, voice flat despite the polite words. Luco winced internally. Pania had mentioned snapping at the two over something to do with drug dealing, and it would make things that much harder if they took it as an offense to their pride.

"Yeah, who doesn't want to spend a day with a hot muscular lady?" Joyce replied.

...They probably hadn't.

Spade shook his head. "What she means is that we very much enjoyed the mode of cooperation," Spade said, pointedly staring at her. Joyce unabashedly grinned back.

"That's wonderful to hear. Pania spoke highly of your abilities, I hope I'll get to see them in action myself," Luco pressed forward, determinedly pushing the formalities through to the very last word. Spade seemed inclined to agree and did his part in offering the proper responses at every turn, even if he never let go of his sword.

"Since you have been troubled to come all this way, at least have some tea," Spade offered, with no tea or intention of making tea. Luco felt a wave of relief that the exchange was over.

Short as it was, he couldn't help but feel something was about to go wrong, like an elusive hornet hovering at the back of his neck. Whether it was nerves or trusty gut-bacteria reactions, Luco didn't want to stick around and find out.

"No, not at all, I really couldn't trouble you. There are still some official matters I must take care of, but I thank you for the gracious offer," Luco finished with a slight bow. Spade returned it, whacking at Joyce's ankle with his sword until she followed suit.

Between the two of them, it was the foreigner who knew the proper manners, Luco noted with amusement. Europeans were plenty afoot in Canton, but the ones who didn't stick to go-betweens were few and far between. But the fact that Joyce barely seemed to know any of the common formalities was...interesting.

Luco turned to leave, giving pause as something flashed by the corner of his eye.

Fire spirit. Well, shit. His gut-bacteria was right.

"Get down!" he shouted, sweeping his hand in an arc to summon forth a ward. Flames burst against the shield, dissipating and taking the ward with them. Snapping into fight mode, Luco punched a fist downwards, calling forth his own flame spirits. They wreathed his hands, flickering with a steady rhythm.

The second fireball seemed to move in slow motion as it hurtled forward and Luco pulled it towards his own flames, splitting it into two rivers of heat around his bare hands. The air twisted as the flames tangled into ropes, sucking away the oxygen in the air as they blazed. Luco slammed them into wet ground. A wall of water vapor rose into the air with a hissing noise, promptly shattered by a spray of droplets.

"Damn, y'all need to calm down with the firebending," Joyce said, the cheerfulness in her voice jarringly out of place as she hosed down the firefight.

Two shamans in red robes glared imperiously back at her through the strands of vapor. Behind them, their driver shifted uncomfortably and pretended to look at his phone, trying to signal that he was a non-combatant.

"We of the White Cloud Association challenge the Order of the Flying Drag—Ack!" the shaman on the right coughed as Joyce aimed the hose in his face, spraying through the shimmering wards before him.

"Never heard of you guys," Joyce replied. "Won't turn down a fight though. Spade was getting antsy."

"Be quiet," Spade snapped, giving a brief nod of thanks in Luco's direction. Spade glared at the White Cloud shamans. "Why the hell are you in red?"

"Right, if you guys are White Cloud, shouldn't you be wearing white?" Joyce chimed in. The shamans gaped at her, enraged and sputtering, and the split-seconds of their reaction were all Spade needed.

The fight was over before they could reply.

Spade moved forward in a flash, unsheathing his sword to cut through the wards in one fluid motion. He promptly slammed the sheath of his sword into the head of one shaman, driving the hilt into the face of the other as he shifted to a backhand grip.

They hit the floor groaning as Spade sheathed his sword again. Luco stared, drowning out the sound of Joyce's half-hearted cheers. They weren't just dealing with a highly trained shaman, he realized in horror, they were also dealing with a highly trained swordsman. He tried not to groan. Pania was definitely dragging him to the boxing ring when she finds out.

He realized for a start that Spade was meeting his gaze. He stood there awkwardly as the driver helped the White Cloud shamans back into the car behind them. The engine started, Joyce waving as they left.

"Now, I'll really have to make you tea," Spade said, a wry smile tugging at his lips.

///////

Taeyun frowned slightly, playing back the recording a third time. They all watched intently as Joyce bypassed the White Cloud shamans' wards, followed by Spade destroying the wards all-together.

"He's just using brute force," Helang complained, "Both of them, actually. The White Cloud Shamans aren't good for much other than their wards and they're just punching through like that. I almost feel bad for them now."

"It's exactly what I wrote," Luco said, gesturing at the whiteboard. Taeyun looked at it, unimpressed.

1. Wards mean nothing

2. Fake salt.

"He's not wrong," Pania said. The corner of Taeyun's mouth went up despite himself.

"Maybe not," Taeyun said dryly, "but the problem remains of what that means for us. Luco, you're sure that what she handed you was just table salt?"

Luco nodded. "That's what she said when I asked her for some, she said they used the cheapest kind you can get at the supermarket and that I'd be better off choosing a better brand. There is absolutely nothing special about it." He flung a hand at the screen. "And it's not even a conduit or anything! Right, Pania?"

"Yeah, I confirmed it with the Analytics Department, there was no energy signature suggesting that they used the salt as anything other than a prop. They're not really using it to banish spirits or anything," Pania nodded at the whiteboard. "Like Luco said, fake salt."

"A placebo effect then?" Helang looked increasingly confused. "That doesn't make sense. They're Mohan's students, for god's sake."

"Could be a feint."

"No, Joyce seemed to really believe it, and Spade didn't even roll his eyes at her!"

Taeyun sighed. "Luco, our intelligence department would gladly tell you that between the two of them, the girl says nothing truthful and the man says nothing useful."

After they had asked around, tracing the Flying Dragons' footsteps, they found that Joyce gave her hometown differently at every stop and that Spade obscured the facts by hiding behind formalities. Between Joyce's blatant lies and Spade's jealous guarding of information, Taeyun supposed they would have a better chance of prying the truth from the duo's cold, dead hands.

"But even so, if they could just banish spirits they would've done so. Prideful as Mohan is, he would never let his students be undignified enough to fight a mantis-ray spirit with a traffic cone. I think they genuinely believe they need the salt," Pania said, deep in thought as she replayed the video again.

"That's an even bigger problem," Luco said. He gestured at the recording. "That means they have the power to banish spirits through brute force. Just like they do with the wards. And they don't even know it. It would make sense for Joyce, she's like fourteen,"

"I thought she was sixteen."

Luco waved aside the objection. "The problem is, Spade seems to agree. He's what, thirty? If he doesn't know better, that just means that Mohan didn't let him into the range of any shamans outside the Order. That sounds like part of a conspiracy plot, it really does."

"You know, the internet also says you can banish spirits with salt," Pania chimed in. "Maybe Mohan just encouraged them to believe it."

"No self-respecting shaman would ever say anything on the internet," Luco shot back. "No one would believe that drivel online, not even a toddler."

"Alright, enough!" Helang cut them off before the two could start a round of bickering. "The problem isn't about the salt or the internet. The problem is what Mohan's doing. He grabbed the most talented prodigies he could find, shamans who can banish spirits without any preparation or even spirit-contracts, and he didn't teach them any theory. He didn't teach them anything about how their powers work. He just gave them some salt and a sword, and let them loose in Canton. What the hell is he aiming for?"

The room promptly broke into a cacophony of argument.

Taeyun ignored them, rising to his feet and walking to the window. He opened the curtains.

The room fell quiet. Taeyun stood silently, taking in the city nightscape. The constellations dimmed above, outshone by the buildings beneath. Electric lights and the glow of spirits lined the streets in a dense mass that sprawled to the sea, where cargo ships bobbed in the waves.

"It doesn't matter." He said. The wind whispered its agreement, bringing him the muted bustle of the night-market and the harbor, the sound of people just beginning their shift and people heading home, the sounds of the city that would be his.

"There are many things I want," Taeyun said. He closed his eyes, mapping the country in his head. Each province with its warlords. Each city with its derelict shrines. How many years would it take to reach every one of them?

"The Northern Expedition to quell the warlords. The Great Temple to worship the gods. The trading ports open. The Japanese out of Manchuria and the Germans out of Liaodong. These, and so many other things...Everything I want, I will see done. But to do so I need Canton. As to whether or not the Flying Dragons become mine..." Taeyun paused and opened his eyes to the city.

"Whatever Mohan intended by sending them here...if someone gifts you a sword, it would certainly be rude not to use it on your enemies."

///////

Joyce nodded slowly. "Makes sense the Northern Expedition failed," she said, mulling it through in her head as she fanned herself with a newspaper. The face of a female star rumored to be pregnant with a soccer player's child crinkled and curled with the movement.

"If the Nationalists and Communists were more or less matched in military strength, of course they wouldn't have made it to Nanjing."

After all, if half your own army couldn't stop smacking the other half in the face, it was a foregone conclusion that the whole thing would fall apart like badly balanced Legos before they could crush even a single warlord.

Spade broke open the bottle cap and took a gulp of the beer, letting out a satisfied sigh. He drank more like a middle-aged man with three kids and a crushing mortgage instead of a man in his late twenties. Then again, her reference for that age group was skewed by her older cousin, who would chug his beer after ten shots of vodka, all while sobbing about his student loans.

"So what happened with your world?"

Joyce thought back to the Wikipedia pages from her history projects.

"The Nationalists had most of the military force, so General Kiang did succeed. The Communists ended up winning later though, talk about a plot twist. Either way, the country's been unified for almost 80 years." Joyce turned towards him. "Don't sweat it though, the Qing fell a few decades earlier in my history, so the whole timeline has to be moved back."

Spade shook his head, chuckling humorlessly. "The timeline is definitely different here. It's been sixty years, and after General Kang's failure, the warlords have only gotten stronger. This country won't shape up the same way yours did, that's for sure."

Joyce shook her head back at him. "They have more tanks and less foreign military here. There is a chance things could actually turn out better. Not to mention, the warlords have terrible aim for all the guns they've got. It's a fucking shame, the way they waste their bullets. Says a lot about their character...But hey, we'll see how it goes."

Spade ignored the more ridiculous parts of her statement. "Taeyun and Jia Xu would have to settle their score first, or it'll be a repeat of the first Northern Expedition," he said. "If we don't stay out of it we'll definitely lose our heads to one side or another."

It seemed to be a foregone conclusion that whoever won would have the honor of smiting the warlords, something that the two factions seemed particularly eager to fight over.

"More importantly, we definitely can't let anyone know you're a spirit-sent." Spade looked at her solemnly. "You know how dangerous that identity is."

Joyce did know. Her country had won its way to superpower status with nuclear arms, but in this world, there was no weapon more dangerous than a shaman. Hengshan and the Shaman Council had a near-monopoly over the supply, but she didn't want to know what they would do to get their hands on a spirit-sent. A weapon of mass destruction.

"Yeah, I definitely get it." Joyce cringed a little. They fell silent again, Spade contentedly making his way through his beer.

Joyce looked out the window at the glimmering lights that stretched into the night. Between the golden web of Jia Xu's wards and Taeyun's net of wind spirits, the city could become a deathtrap easily enough. She breathed in and let her energy flow out with the wind spirits.

Only with them, not over them, she reminded herself. Gotta be subtle sometimes to avoid a lecture.

Whispers of the city flowed back to her, and she ignored the sounds of a lover's spat, a driver shaking his customer down for a tip, the snarl of a cat as it knocked over a family heirloom, searching pointedly for the breeze that had followed Luco back.

'Mohan's...don't...salt...' Joyce frowned in confusion at the whispers. What? '...not using...banish.' Her connection crackled and fell apart.

"Luco was saying something about salt," Joyce said. Spade's eyes snapped to her face.

"What?"

"Couldn't hear it clearly, he said Mohan's name, and something about not using and banishing, couldn't catch the whole thing, he was too close to Taeyun's wind-spirits." Joyce shrugged.

Spade continued drinking, unconcerned. Then suddenly, he slammed his beer down, a look of horror dawning on his face. Joyce jumped a little. "Shit," Spade said, "He knows something."

Joyce's heart skipped a beat. "What do you mean?"

Spade's voice seemed to come from deep inside. "The salt. It must have been the salt." He looked in her direction, but he was seeing something far away. "Luco's reaction was off, Pania's too. It probably isn't normal to use salt for banishments after all." He cursed under his breath. "That would explain why they were so suspicious."

"Shit." Joyce felt her pulse pounding through her head like a drum. "Do you think they'd know?"

"They can't." Spade's voice had an unfamiliar harshness to it. "We won't let them." Joyce gulped, drawing her limbs closer as the air chilled.

Spade stood up abruptly, glaring into the distance. "From now on, we have to be more careful. No one can be allowed to know, or even to guess the truth. I may not know much about shamanic powers, but I know enough about human nature." He turned towards her with blazing eyes. "The shamans are no different from the warlords, and certainly no better than them!"

Joyce felt the blood drain from her face, a knot of horror scraping against her insides. Spade nodded, watching her face intently as the implications sunk in.

"If they find out, all the bloodshed we've seen so far will mean nothing compared to what's ahead," Spade said, emphasizing each word. Joyce tried to speak but only a shuddering gasp of air came out. After a desperate moment where she felt like she couldn't breathe, Joyce managed to find her words.

"What do we do?" she asked. She barely recognized the sound of her own voice, small and shaking as it was.

"We act more carefully," Spade's voice was fraught with determination. "If you can't prove something exists in this world, don't mention it. If you can't prove a shaman can do something, don't do it. After drawing so much attention, things are only going to get worse from here. We have to assume that every move is being watched. They'll probably playback the recordings until they get every word! Nothing but caution can save us now!"

'Shit.' Joyce felt her eyes water. 'Shit, of course. It's not like I was careful to begin with.' She bit the inside of her cheek until it stung. Spade sighed, sitting down to meet her gaze.

"I'm on your side and I always will be." Spade's eyes bore into hers. "And I will protect your identity at any cost. But I want to avoid killing any more people for this if I can, alright?"

Joyce tried to swallow past the cold knot in her throat.

"Alright?" Spade urged. Joyce nodded furiously at the harsh edge in his voice.

"Yeah. Yeah, of course," she choked out. Spade nodded, fingers twined together between his knees.

"Yeah," he echoed, "We'll make the best of this. You know we can." Joyce nodded.

Spade looked tired, a familiar crease in his brow as he downed his beer.

Joyce watched him for a moment, the panic in her chest ebbing into worry. "Pania's already going Big Brother on us," Joyce said, watching as Spade tossed the empty can into the trash. "Do you think...do you think she would notice?"

A breeze from the window pushed strands of hair into her eyes. "Not if we're careful," Spade said.

"I thought she knows what to watch for. Lin Bo was in the Flying Dragons, right?"

Spade frowned out the window. "Lin Bo wouldn't have told her anything useful."

"Really?"

Spade shook his head. "It's no surprise," Spade said, familiar bitterness seeping into his voice, "Lin Bo always wanted to make her own choices. No matter what or who it cost."

Joyce glanced at the floor uncomfortably, worry sapping away into the awkward feeling of watching her parents argue at a parent-teacher conference. This was too far outside of her arena for her to each scratch. She slowly drew in a deep breath.

"You know, it's like you said, right?" Joyce said, trying to steer away from his sore spot. "We have to play the hand we're dealt. But it's not as bad as that, you know, you have a good partner." She met his eyes, trying for a smirk. "For one, I play a mean hand of poker, not to mention I know a few card tricks that can get me a royal flush."

Spade's gaze softened and he let out a bark of laughter, dragging a hand over his face tiredly. "That's right," he said. "Just don't turn the whole deck into Aces like you did last time."

Joyce let her jaw drop in fake indignation. "That's what I have multiple decks for! It was an accident that I pulled six Aces instead of four."

Spade laughed again, earnestly this time. Joyce leaned back a little. There wasn't much she could do about their situation in the short run, but if she could keep Spade from fistfighting that particular skeleton in the closet and the bout of depression that was sure to follow, she would take that victory for now.