One of the elders raises an eyebrow, the other two bowing out to seniority and stepping back a bit.
“Quite a change in demeanor. I doubt our disciples are worthy of such flattering words from such a rousing individual as yourself.”
She laughs at that, the Mask working to ensure it’s the right mix of soft and relaxed to sit between friendly and confident. “Nonsense. What, I can’t have layers? I’m bored. I made this whole tournament to have a good fight, and so far I’ve yet to get even close. What is it if not my prerogative to find something else to entertain me?”
“And you seek such a thing… from one of our disciples.”
The Mask rolls her eyes. “Not interested in the kid. Keep him. Just looking to talk to… him.”
It takes a moment to identify the scent again, but it’s easy enough to point out the cultivator when she has it. Still stone beneath still waters, his scent carries through the others, with the smell of stone, rock, cracking force and ever-shifting tectonics so prevalent among them.
The elder raises his eyebrow again. “You claim to have no interest in the young Ka Lao, but ask to speak to his master? You must understand why this honored elder might find your claims a bit hard to believe, honorable one.”
She sighs. “Fair enough. Not what I want him for, though. If you want, I can swear an oath about keeping hands off your little prize racehorse. I just want to talk to him.”
She can see the conflict in his face. An oath is no minor thing (especially with how her voice seems to work nowadays), and he takes the offer of it seriously. It doesn’t harm the sect to gain the favor of someone they perceive as a powerful Imperial (even if this was all Kaena, and even then mostly through manipulating whatever nobility they could get their hands on), but it might be an issue of pride. To bow so easily to so brazen a request makes them look either weak or much too sympathetic to the Empire, and even in a city like Cragend- well, cultivators have their pride.
In the end, her luck wins out, and someone else steps in.
“Thank you for your consideration, Elder,” the cultivator she singled out says as he comes closer. He makes a show of it, confident and loud enough to be heard, but not enough to be ‘announcing’ things. “I am happy to indulge the Imperial honored one. I would hate to be labeled ungrateful in the face of such an opportunity.”
He bows to Raika, still a bit behind the barricade of the sect’s elders but putting himself in front of them politically, taking the blow on himself rather than making it a sect decision. The Mask, dimly, rather approves.
“This one is named Inner Disciple Jin Rou, Honorable Raika. How may I be of service?”
She smiles, faintly. The voice is the same. He was one of the three in the alley, alright, and that’s something that makes this, in many ways, easy.
“I merely found you strangely familiar, Disciple Jin Rou. I think we simply must have met before. Maybe we can reminisce, try and find our shared history somewhere more private? I would hate to further disrupt this little show, and I fear your elders seem to find me a bit… threatening.”
It’s a little thrilling to see someone so easily capable of turning her to pulp take on an expression like he’s tasted unpleasant tea. The idea that they’d be threatened by her is a mix of arrogance and insult, and it works wonders as Jin Rou pales a bit and nods.
“I assure you, honored one, I simply possess a rather average set of features. In spite of this unfortunate camouflage, I would be more than happy to help you feel more at ease about any potential history between us. Please, this way; our sect has rooms for guests of such wonderful prestige as yourself.”
She smiles, nice and wide, and follows him past the elders, who part for her with only the most cursory of civility. As an added bonus, she sees Pai Jin stop as, while the elders step back, multiple other disciples step forward to fill the gap.
“Pardon me, honored Soldier, but I’m afraid we couldn’t possibly let you pass without asking for some advice-”
She almost laughs.
Politics. Can’t let Imperial soldiers just walk all over them, and Pai Jin can’t barge through without making it clear he doesn’t trust her. And if he doesn’t trust her, then he’s letting a deranged and dangerous Imperial individual wander about and potentially attack an allied sect.
She won’t ever be as good as Kaena at the whole manipulation thing, but every now and then, there is a certain thrill in seeing a poorly-made plan fall into place flawlessly anyways.
The room Jin Rou guides her to is minor, and as certain as she is that there are certainly formations for listening spaced through the room, the hints about having met previously is enough for him to do something with his Qi that she assumes blocks them out. Not good to out yourself as some sort of traitor in the midst of the betrayed, if her suspicions are correct.
As soon as he is done, he rounds on her, growling, hands clenched. “Alright. What, pray tell, do you intend by walking up to me so brazenly? Have you never even heard of subtlety? What could you possibly want that could justify this behavior?”
She actually throws her head back and laughs. That comment, right after her trick with Pai Jin worked so surprisingly well, is just… kind of silly.
Jin Rou gives her the sort of look people give to the mad or the thoroughly annoying, and she smiles, perfectly content to let him think either. “Oh come now. It’s not like you were particularly subtle yourself. Besides, this tournament really is dragging on, and despite some successes, it’s hardly been as useful as I’d like. I managed to talk to a friend of yours, though. Tell me, is Rei Ji always so in love with the sound of his own voice?”
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He rocks back, looking at her in a mix of surprise and fear, and she just shrugs.
“It’s not just my ears that are sharp, junior brother. Not hard to sniff you out, in the open as you are. Tell me, if I ask you what you want, will you regale me with a bunch of old myths again? Or will you just tell me why disciples of the Stone Divers sect were masked and sneaking about the city alongside a member of your rival sect? Or why said sneaking involved stalking Imperial cultivators?”
There is a tense moment of silence. She can smell his Qi stirring, something deeper in it, and-
Oh! A surprise, but not an unwelcome one; the sense of Stillness grows, and he extends it out. It’s not quite a Dao, but it’s on the way to it, and as it passes over and through her to the edges of the room, she knows she has him.
“It’s not his voice he loves. If Rei Ji had his way, we’d all speak in parable and referencing ancient texts.”
Jin Rou collapses to a seat on one of the many pillows arranged around the guest room (which… does make her wonder if they think she came here to bang him. Not a bad cover, per se, but… still, she barely knows him!). “What is it you want to know? Is it just idle curiosity that drives you? Even if you weren’t Imperial, I don’t go about telling stories to every overlarge woman that threatens to blackmail me.”
She laughs again, falling onto the pillows on the opposite end of the room and almost automatically lounging there, the Mask puppeting her into the right movements. “Idle curiosity is a fine enough reason, but no, I take my blackmail seriously, I think. First time doing it, technically, but I hope to do it well. No, I have business with the Witch hiding in town, and you and your friends smell disturbingly like her brand of… flavors. So yes, I’m interested to know more, but mostly? I want to know how to find her. Tell me that, and you can keep whatever other mess you guys have going on, I don’t much care for the sexual habits of a couple of random sect disciples.”
Now it’s his turn to laugh, though there’s bitterness there. “The Witch? Hah! Fine, have her. All the better you two old beasts go and kill each other off, leave the rest of us well enough alone.”
“Firstly, I’m like, twenty eight years old, maybe. And last I checked, a year is still three-hundred and eighty days and four seasons, so I don’t know why people seem to keep assuming I’m some old granny. Secondly, fuck the Empire, fuck the Emperor, and fuck the whole plateau he put his little city on.”
At this, even Jin Rou looks taken aback, leaning away from her. It’s one thing to be a bit critical of Imperials, another to openly insult them. The Mask just raises an eyebrow at him, waiting.
Eventually, he snorts. “Well, I’ll admit, as a disguise for an Imperial spy goes, “Fuck the Emperor” is a pretty good cover. Like I said, though; don’t care. You can insult and bandy words about all you like, but neither of our land’s sects could call a tournament so quickly, not without getting permission from the same ones you so gleefully insult and suckle from at the same time.”
“See, that’s the second time you’ve mentioned your “land”. Rei Ji said something similar when we talked in the alley. I heard his little tale about the Witch and her part in the battle that made the Crag, but apparently she hates the Empire enough to have to hide out from them and sneak under their noses. Yet here you are, talking about her like she’s the enemy.”
Jin Rou shrugs. “She is. So are you.”
The Mask just raises an eyebrow again. Useful muscles, eyebrows, very communicative.
He shrugs again, like it shouldn’t need explaining. “I’m a cultivator of the Stone Divers sect. I was born in a village barely a day’s walk from the city, and that’s at mortal pace. I’ve lived my whole life watching the Crag expand, inch by inch, deeper and wider into the earth, as everything of worth in it is sent out on an Imperial train to cities the Empire likes more. Sure, there’s trade and work and money, but none of these are worth seeing my home carved away like a corpse for the scavengers, as the sects that have lived in and protected these lands for millenia bow and scrape before an Empire that cares nothing for us. And now, an old monster rears her head again, seeking to cast it out or deal some blow to it, but she doesn’t care about us. She’s like every old monster in the world; so far from the reality of the people, and their homes and food and work, that they think they can just do whatever they like. Well, this cultivator remembers what it’s like to live in a farm, remembers walking on mortal feet to the Qi-Gathering realm and treading on those same feet to this city. People deserve to be free, and if I can gain power from someone who I hope gets killed or kills her opponent for it, I am ready to take advantage, even if I’m not happy about it.”
The Mask smiles. “Quite a monologue, that. I-”
She pauses. The Mask is… hmm. The words aren’t there.
Something squirms behind her eyes, a smiling thing that scowls at what it is hearing, but it’s not that which interrupts her either.
Raika, whatever part of her is truly “her” inside a Flesh that is half-mad and a Mask that feels more true than truth, looks out at Jin Rou. He blinks, and then… leans back, away from her. She knows how her face must look, ironically mask-like, blank… but real.
“People deserve to be free,” she says, in a voice that rumbles and resonates and whispers of more. “I think I agree with that very much.”
She feels chains on her, metaphorical and metaphysical, the feeling of something squirming inside her out of sight, the feeling of pieces missing… and she is still her. She is still hers, in that moment.
She blinks, and the Mask looks back up at Jin Rou.
“Sorry about that,” it laughs. “You should be an orator, senior brother. Moving stuff.”
He nods hesitantly, and if he notices the switch from the more disrespectful ‘junior’ to ‘senior’ brother, he doesn’t mention it. The Mask laughs again, shaking its head.
“Well,” she says, “if you don’t care much about the witch, or about me… what better chance do you have than now to drive us against each other? Where is she?”
He frowns, then.
“This… this really isn’t a ploy, is it? You need her. You say you’re her enemy, but… there’s a need here. It’s why you’re pushing so hard.”
“...sure. Why not. Yeah, time is a factor I’m considering here. What’ll it take for you to spill, if not the thought of the trouble I’ll bring to her door and that she’ll lay at mine?”
He pauses, thinks for a moment… then shrugs. “In the honorable words of wiser men than I, ‘fuck it’. I don’t know exactly where, but she’s in the Crag. Far from the city, near where the Sea bleeds into it, past the mines. I’ve only met her there once, and the secrets she shared were useful, but any debt I owe her I consider null and void with how much power she has over this city and its lifeblood. You madwomen deserve each other.”
And, before she can say anything more, he just… gets up. And walks out.
She sits there a while longer. Pai Jin will come looking for her soon, but for a moment, she just… sits.
A lead. Not much, and hard to reach, but better than “somewhere by stagnant water”. It was brutish, and it revealed more than is “tactically advantageous” maybe, and might make more work for Kaena, but-
A lead.
She reaches for Dink on the chain around her neck, anchoring herself here, to this victory, to this moment of progress, and-
“Ah, ah, ah,” says a voice whose name has been cut from her. “None of that. We’re so close to perfect. Wouldn’t want the wound to close just yet.”
There is a snarl, and a burst of power and violence and biology made into a weapon and-
And-
And then the dead man wearing a smile and the scent of surgery has cut the thought from her, and lets her fall into herself.