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“I’ve never diagnosed
a case of possession in the flesh, but I suppose he could have a spirit’s essence inside him. It’s difficult to say.”
“Please,” Kyoshi said. She needed more than a cautious verdict from him. “There has to be something else you can give me. Father Glowworm has to have some kind of weakness. A way to break its hold on my friend.”
She wasn’t afraid of learning it would take a great battle for her to save Yun, or a quest through the worst places in the world. She was at home with such things. “I can fight it,” Kyoshi said. “Just tell me how.”
“I don’t have that knowledge,” Nyahitha said, deflating her hope. “Kuruk was the one who confronted wrathful spirits. I was just his handler on those missions.”
Kyoshi wanted to scream inside the tent, took the breath to do it, until she remembered they had one last option. “Then teach me how to ask him myself.”
Since he had no sleeves, Nyahitha wiped his nose on the cloth of his shoulder piece, crooking his neck. He stared at her as he did so, and Kyoshi could tell he was judging her worthiness, as if she were making the request for selfish reasons. She knew what it looked like when old folks decided a young person’s fate was a light, weightless thing.
“Come back to me an hour before twilight,” he said. “I can help you commune with Kuruk. Not through this noxious garbage though. Don’t inhale it; it’ll rot you from the inside.”
“Haven’t you been breathing it with every single one of your customers?” Rangi asked.
He smiled narrowly at her in response.
A commotion came from outside. It was an angry noise, the brewing of trouble to come. Nyahitha got up and peeked out the tent flap. Whatever he saw made him swear through his teeth. “What is it?” Kyoshi asked.
“Saowon,” he said. “They don’t normally come to North Chung-Ling.”
Rangi’s tongue-lashing about running into situations headlong was still fresh in Kyoshi’s mind. “Can we watch from here?”
Nyahitha ran his hand through a sticky seam between the roof and the wall of the tent, letting the four of them peer through the crack. It felt a bit childish, lining up in a row to peep, but it worked. Kyoshi could see the scrubby open area that surrounded Nyahitha’s stall.
Heading straight for them was a large procession of nobility. The column traveled by foot, bearing a giant palanquin swathed in red and gold silks. Surrounding it was a contingent of armored warriors.
These men and women looked ready for a battle, not a day at the beach. They held their jaws with an arrogance designed to provoke. And they were personally adorned with so many stone camellia designs that the great flapping banner of the Saowon clan they carried at the head of the procession was wholly unnecessary.
The stall vendors, who had been eager for customers earlier, were not happy to see them. Many of them left their booths and formed up a mob to meet the arriving Saowon. One middle-aged man with bushy sideburns stood at the front of the pack. He was very well-dressed compared to the rest of the fairground workers, but they seemed to rally around him rather than resent him for it.
“That’s Sanshur Keohso,” Nyahitha said. “He’s the town’s cotton merchant and the fair’s main sponsor.”
The palanquin came to a stop, its bearers carefully lowering the box to the ground. The occupant stepped out. She was a pretty woman with a thin, puckered face, wearing outrageously expensive robes. Kyoshi was certain she had not been at the royal palace reception. Such grandiose taste would have stood out.
“Lady Huazo,” Rangi said. “Chaejin’s mother. I’m not sure why she’s slumming it in North Chung-Ling.” Nyahitha gave her comment an angry squint but went back to watching.
Huazo and Sanshur Keohso approached each other like the principals in a duel. Speaking for the benefit of their respective contingents like stage players meant they were loud enough for Kyoshi’s group to hear from inside the tent. “Master Sanshur!” Huazo said. “How good to see you. I’ve written you so many letters with no response, I began to worry for your health.”
“My health is fine, Huazo,” the fairground leader said. “And I could have saved you the visit. The answer to your inquiries, as it remains since the first time I gave it, is no. The fair is not for sale, nor the croplands. My cousins have agreed. Not a single square inch of Shuhon Island will ever fall into the hands of the Saowon.”
Huazo licked her lips and grinned. “That’s funny,” she said. “Given how I recently purchased Master Linsu’s entire salt-making operation down the shore. And his vacation house right here in town. I suppose he’s not as loyal to his home as you are. He couldn’t wait to pack up and leave this place.”
Sanshur’s eyes turned muddy with rage. The crowd behind him grew heated. Huazo drank in their reactions like water in a desert. “After I signed the papers, it occurred to me I should celebrate the Festival of Szeto in the newest outpost of my clan,” she said. “And thus, here I am.”
“With so many of your household guards,” Sanshur said, staring at the Saowon force.
“For my own safety. Haven’t you heard? Last night an assassin, a madman, an Earthbender, of all people, infiltrated the royal palace.” Huazo had to cover her own mouth to keep her shock and distress from spilling out. “Members of the court were nearly killed. And it happened right under our dear Fire Lord Zoryu’s nose. I’m told it was humiliating. Absolutely humiliating!”
Hei-Ran grimaced inside the tent. “Chaejin must have gotten messenger hawks out to his clan immediately after the attack. The Saowon are like shark squids when they smell blood.”
“That doesn’t explain why Huazo’s tromping around in the middle of Keohso territory instead of seeing to her new business,” Rangi said.
Kyoshi watched the news of Yun’s attack ripple through the Keohso side. The fairground workers understood the implications for Zoryu’s honor as well as nobles would. She became keenly aware that many of Sanshur’s men were holding large hammers used to drive tent stakes into the ground, ice saws as big as swords, pieces of driftwood that served no purpose other than being heavy clubs.
“I know what she’s doing,” Kyoshi said. “She’s picking a fight.” Sometimes when a daofei gang wanted to go to war but cared about appearing in the right, they made themselves vulnerable by strolling through enemy streets, noses held high, hoping to provoke a small amount of violence upon themselves that could be answered with overwhelming force. Zoryu had told her this was part of the Saowon strategy. They preferred a Keohso to strike at them first.
