Shuli Go Stories Vol. 1: Beyond the Mists

Part 1

In the final decades of the Shan dynasty, the Shuli Go - magic-infused lawmen and women who had kept the peace for two thousand years - were disbanded as a caste. Forced to wander the land in search of work, they were met with hostility wherever they travelled. Yet every Shuli Go also swore an oath to uphold the law above all else, even when that law no longer had a place for them.

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Aui 10, 3276 – Weiwei Kingdom

Gaunt with exhaustion, Zhao Lian entered the Three Paths inn to an assault on her weathered senses. The inn was filled with the usual combinations endemic to small town meeting places: sweat, shouting, amateur wine, and fatty meat cooked poorly. Here they were given the additional flavors of the town's remoteness. Lian had learned these particularities over her years: a local spice in the food and air, the accents of drunken boasts, the poverty of color in clothes and furnishings. Three Paths also boasted something else, the sound of an entirely different music in the air. Wamaian instruments, imperfectly tuned and imperfectly played.

The main hall was large and half-filled, and Lian had entered quietly, so only the innkeeper noticed her entrance. He was tall and had likely been imposing twenty years earlier, but at this point he was a balding, overweight, middle aged man whose workplace had worn him down. Despite his appearance, he latched on to her with his eyes and his sneer called her to the counter.

"Ah, to what do I owe the honor Madam meddler?"

Lian approached upright, hoping the fact that she had not eaten anything but hares and berries the last week did not show in her appearance. She stood in front of him and bowed in the formal fashion.

"Good sir," the formality drifted into her speech, "I am here to serve. I heard of discontent as I travelled nearby. Is there anything—"

"Stop that proper shit in my home. There's nothing for you here meddler. Been a quiet week here and you'd be wise to go on."

Lian heard the lie as clearly as his desire to be rid of her. The innkeeper's voice was stressed, and more importantly, the source of that stress was in his very tavern. Head still bowed, she rotated her neck to cast a glance over the entirety of the long hall. She spotted the cause of his concern at a nearby table and decided on a new tactic.

"Fine, I'll just have a room then," she lifted her head and stared the man in the eyes, "I assume you've got one available?"

At the prospect of money changing hands the innkeeper's tone changed slightly, though his agreeableness was unaltered. "Ten copper a night for your distinguished self," he said in a very undistinguished tone.

It was twice what anyone else visiting the town would have paid, but Lian was not in a position to haggle or decline. She was also not in a position to pay.

"I'll take it. But first I need to speak to my associate." Without waiting for a reply or even capturing the inn-keeper's reaction, she set off down the length of the hall trying to look as official as her weakened, tired body allowed.

Her associate was a man named Jiang whom she had spotted sitting amidst a contingent of Wamaian men. Jiang was a merchant who Lian had met several times in the past – usually under less than ideal circumstances. She could not remember if the last circumstance had been made un-ideal by her, or by Jiang himself. She suspected the fault last time was his, meaning she was due a favor this time.

Jiang and the Wamaians were speaking quietly at one of the long tables that filled the main hall of the inn. The other patrons, all locals, had left a buffer of empty tables in all directions around the Wamaians. Even the volume of the otherwise boisterous farmers, labourers, and tradespeople who made up the clientele of the inn began to fade as Lian approached, the crowd wary of the foreigners' presence. The Wamaians and Jiang sat at the center of that quiet, their voices low and their heads close together. Lian knew they would spot her before she could truly startle them, but she nonetheless approached and announced herself loudly.