Back in the city of Greycliff. Here's last time.
The characters head out to the banks of the Big Dog River to check the scene of the crime, and find a row of stables (the roads here are wide enough that carriages coming into the city can come up the riverbank and board their horses). The stable in question is mostly destroyed, and Gerde realizes that it wasn't washed out by a flood, or at least not a natural one. Khatun checks around, too, and notes that people are watching them, mostly her (probably because her garb is similar to the guy who was arrested for destroying the stable).
Ember approaches a hand from a nearby stable and asks what happened. He motions for her to follow him, and leads her to the street, away from the stable. He says he saw the accused, Thunas, standing on the edge of the river watershaping, but it looked like he was pulling the water towards him, rather than pushing it away. Ember thanks him and asks why he felt the need to talk in private; he says that her companion (Khatun) is dressed like the guy they arrested and he doesn't want trouble. He sods off, and a fellow across the street calls out for Ember, saying that he saw the incident!
She walks across the street and the guy bolts, revealing Miko, the mugger/fireshaper, and his two henchmen. Miko tells her that he heard they swore out a complaint against him, and warns her to drop it. Ember tells him that he should stop mugging people, and he is less than receptive to the request. She opines that he could do more for the community if he helped rather than hurt, and he doesn't much care. He repeats the warning: retract the complaint by dawn or next time he won't be so friendly.
Back at the bank, Gerde reaches out with vibration sense and feels the remains of the stable beneath her in the sand. She realizes that whoever destroyed the stable did it by pulling the ground out from under it, starting with the sand of the riverbed (she's heard of sandshaping, but can't do it herself). She does pull the stable wreckage up from the river, however.
Feng goes into the wreckage to look around, and an angry ghost, apparently one of the stable hands, accosts him. He calls for help and Khatun approaches, trying to talk the ghost (which no one but Feng can see) down. She apparently hits the right notes, though, because the ghost sees her and calms, and goes to her and puts its hand on her shoulder. But Feng feels more spiritual turmoil, and a bunch of horses and two more men, all ghosts, burst from the ground and start rampaging around.
One of the horses kicks Ember in the head and knocks her down. Feng calls upon his spiritshaping and makes the ghosts visible, and Gerde calms the horse and gives it an apple (it doesn't physically eat the apple, but goes through the motions and the apple gets withered and gross). Khatun calls up grass to appease the horses, and the characters manage to talk the human ghosts down. They ask what happened, and the men say that they felt the ground sliding out from under them. One of the horses then kicked Onil in the head, and she was washed out into the river, but then they saw Thunas bring her back with watershaping.
Ember makes a fire to warm the cold, wet ghosts, and they start to fade. Khatun asks if they know why Onil might have been targeted, and one ghost says something about a necklace before he vanishes.
Clearly, the next step is to talk to Onil, so the characters find out where she lives - a big, clearly earthshaped house. Gerde talks to the guards at her door and gains entrance, and a kind of majordomo named Nase, upon hearing that Khatun has some healing experience, allows them to see Onil.
Onil is still unconscious, her head bandaged from the wound. She is indeed wearing a necklace, a kind of half-moon made of quartz on a leather strap. Khatun lifts it up to examine it, but the walls shake and they quickly put it down. Nase tells them that she's had it since childhood, a gift from her uncle, and it apparently cannot be taken off her unless she agrees or dies.
Khatun summons her watershaping powers and heals Onil's head a bit, allowing her to regain consciousness. Onil tells them that someone pulled the ground out from under the stable, and then something hit her and everything went black. Gerde asks about a sandshaper, and her eyes get wide, but she passes out.
Nase doesn't know about sandshaping, but he does mention that Onil's cousin, Calri, is an earthshaper. They used to be very close as children, but they had a falling out some years back (before Nase came to work for her, so he doesn't know why). He does know, however, that someone tried to mug Onil for her necklace not too long ago - some street toughs.
The characters figure they might well know those "street toughs," and Ember relates the conversation she had with Miko earlier. The group heads back to the Honey Blossom, figuring they'll deal with Miko in the morning (since he's promised to find them).
As they're eating, though, they hear a commotion outside. Wae calls a boy in from the street and asks what's going on, and he replies that an angry mob is heading for the jail! They're planning on breaking in to exact some private justice on Thunas.
Naturally, the characters can't let that stand.
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