And now they've gone through the mirror and landed... somewhere. But at least it's both of them.

They've landed on the side of a hill.  Visible below them is a wide river, the near side bristling with docks.  Boats of various kinds are tethered to the docks, and more are on the water beyond.  Many are hauling wood and other building materials which are getting offloaded onto carts and sent up a nearby hill.

On that hill is a settlement of some kind, heavily damaged by fire.  From the lack of smoke-scent in the air and the way the plants have overtaken the area, it must have happened a few years ago and been abandoned until recently.

"Theo. That's not Mexico."

"What on God's earth? ...Get your scope. I'll see to the horses."

Both of them fell badly, and unlike humans they can't usually recover from that. This will involve gunshots.

"Might as well see what they do before we get their attention..."

She lifts a saddlebag off her horse and opens the rifle case, lifting the gun up so she can get a better look at the town.

(The revolver chambers are popped out and unloaded, so she's obviously not attacking, if you recognize her style of guns.)

A few people glance over at the unfamiliar noise, peering curiously at the figures on the hill.  Among them is a guard stationed at the near entrance of the settlement.  Two strangers in strange clothing and dead horses is something that needs investigating.  The guard ducks inside just long enough to report and call another guard over to take the post, then begins walking towards them.  The path between is long, on foot, as the road switchbacks down the hill then detours towards a bridge to cross a lake between the hills at its narrowest point.  She watches them as she walks, but it will take a while to get there if nothing urgent prompts her to take the shortcut of leaping over with cultivation.  Through the scope it is clear that the weapon hanging on her belt is a sword.

"Place looks... poor, but cleaner than I'd expect, at least where it's not still burned-down. Guard at the town wall is coming this way, long switchbacks. A woman, with a sword. She looks... Chinese, probably?"

(Tisha has not met anyone of Asian descent who wasn't Chinese, or if she did they had long since stopped bothering to try to make the distinction to Westerners in 1880s California.)

The horses are dead, and he's taking off the saddlebags and laying them on the ground.

"Well, we're not criminals here, as far as we know. Play nice? And no need to light any cigars."

"Yeah. ...Glad you're here with me, my Mister Grave."

"Likewise, Missus Grave."

One the guard is on their side of the lake she leaves the road and cuts through the grass, stopping as soon as she's close enough to talk without shouting. 

"Hello!  Do you need assistance?"

In English? That's promising. And surprising.

She'll lower the gun around the time the guard leaves the road.

"Sure seems like it! We just fell here, our horses both broke legs, and we're completely lost. Where are we?"

The guard is likewise relieved they speak Mandarin, and continues to not recognize what a gun is.

"You are near Lotus Pier, home of the Yunmeng Jiang cultivation sect.  Do you mean that you fell from the top of the hill, or was there some form of teleportation involved?"

"Probably the second thing, if that's something possible enough for you to guess it. There was a mirror-faced snake monster and then instead of in northern Mexico we were here."

"I haven't heard of Mexico, or of monster snakes with mirror faces.  It's possible that the library might have records of them.  This empire is called China."

"...I have heard of a country called China, across the ocean from North America, where Mexico and our homeland are. Many of its people have taken steamships and immigrated to California, the western coast of America." But she really isn't sure if it's the same place.

"Neither steamships nor America sound familiar either."  She tries to determine whether its more likely that she missed the existence of these things, or that there are multiple places called China.  Her education stopped at the empire's borders, so not knowing what foreign places call themselves makes sense, but anything called a 'steamship' sounds interesting enough to be memorable.

"Either way, would you be interested in coming into town?  Proper rooms are hard to come by - many of us are still in tents - but it's better than camping out here and possibly someone will know more than I do."

"Please and thank you. Give us a moment to pack our saddlebags for carrying ourselves, though."

"Also, if you don't mind, what is a 'cultivation sect'?"

"I can help carry the bags, if you'd like.  The town is just on the other side of Lotus Pier."

"Cultivation sects are communities of cultivators."  The guard is vaguely aware that there are distant lands where cultivation is unknown, so elaborates, "Who are people who have cultivated the ability to manipulate spiritual energy.  Sects make their living fighting monsters, exorcising ghosts, and solving other supernatural problems, mostly."

"...And those are otherwise common problems?"

Shrug.  "Common enough?  I don't know how effective our usual burial rites are compared to yours."

"Are any of these cultivation sects near the ocean's shore? Southern or eastern?"

Why? - Oh. Yeah, that would confirm it.

"Gusu Lan and Lanling Jin are both reasonably near the ocean, but neither is right next to it.

"You mentioned you heard of many people leaving for California.  Was that prompted by some kind of disaster?  The cultivation world has been fighting, but the mundane people have been as safe as ever.  Well, in the east near the shore they are - some towns in the west were caught up in the fighting."

"No. Merely that America is rich, and China - the China we know of - is poor. But I think it's not the same place; America has no ghosts, or supernatural dangers, or cultivators, and yesterday morning I would have said no monsters either. Nor does it have rumors of those existing anywhere else. And if there were sects on the coast near the port cities where steamships dock, we would definitely have heard rumors."

"There are places where the supernatural is suppressed, but even if you'd been in one you'd have heard about magic from migrants.  Also, the snake monster wouldn't have been able to attack you."

She hums, still not quite understanding what happened.  It seems like a problem for scholars, not a guard.

"What is a steamship like?"

"A steam engine burns fuel, usually coal, to heat water, turn it to steam, and use that to spin a turbine, which turns to other motion by gears and pulleys. A steamship is a very large sailing ship, usually four masts, that propels itself with steam engines, through a pair of large underwater propellers at the rear. They make much better speed than wind power, and in any direction. Most still have sails as secondary power. I forget the time to cross the great ocean but I think it was about forty days by sail and twenty by steam."

"We only have sails, oars, and talismans to power ships.  I've never heard of anyone crossing the ocean without magic."

"It took careful charting of the winds based on latitude, and good clocks to calculate longitude when out of sight from shore, before anyone could made the crossing, and I think several attempts which failed and turned back with improved charts. It's a very, very large ocean. ...Also maybe yours has monsters in it? Ours only has whales and sharks which are too small to attack sailing ships."

"Ah.  I'd originally thought you meant that we were a second place named China on the same world, but you're implying more that the world you came from and this one are like... two woodcut prints which have since been separately written on?  Possibly printed onto two different materials - as far as I'm aware, monsters and such have been in the world as long or longer than people have."

"Yes. You look Chinese, the town looks like pictures I've seen of Chinese architecture, the main coasts are in the right place. And we know pretty much all of the globe, if not well; there's nowhere for a second one to hide, let alone one with bizarre similarities. Not that the alternative isn't bizarre too. ...Actually, come to think of it, the language is odd. You speak English?"

"Is that what you call the language we're speaking?  We call it Mandarin."

"I think that's what the other China calls what we call Chinese? I can't understand it but it didn't sound like this."

"An extremely polite mirror-faced snake monster, then. I'll take it, I guess, no need for tourist's charades."

"We do have translation talismans, but they'd be costly and inconvenient."

Incidentally, does it seem like the saddlebags are about ready to go?

Yeah, they got distracted talking but got them ready to carry.

"I think we'd manage to pay it back, but better not to need the debt up front. We can head down when you're ready."

"It wouldn't have been too bad five years ago but talisman ink has gone up in price quite a bit recently.  It's definitely best that the whole thing can be avoided."

They can start walking.

"Given that you're not from somewhere easily reached, what do you intend to do?  Will you try to find your way to the nearest geographical location, hire a cultivation sect to try to find a way to return you to your original world, or take up a new residence somewhere here?  The Jiang sect is currently recruiting - most of the recruits are either children or are already cultivators, but if you have skills that you think would earn you a spot you can petition Sect Leader Jiang to make an exception."

Either way, they'll have to go around Lotus Pier, since both the town and the main entrance to Lotus Pier are on the other side of it.  They get a closer look at the ships bringing in building materials, and then the series of docks attached to the place between Lotus Pier and the town which double as a market.  Spring is typically the quietest part of the year, but at the moment its as bustling as it ever gets.  Stalls sell food, interesting trinkets and charms, various curiosities.  Many sell directly from boats.

"I don't know. We have responsibilities there, so we at least ought to see how difficult it might be to return."

"We're both gleamfighters, which makes us among the most deadly of people in America at home. So we may have skills even apart from our knowledge."

"What is a gleamfighter?"

"Gunfighter who can use a particular smoked chemical to slow their perception of time and fire a whole volley in a couple seconds. Guns are... they hit much harder than crossbows, fire faster than longbows, even without gleamdust assistance, and fire much farther than either."

"That could be useful as a guard somewhere.  Possibly also for night hunting - for fighting monsters as a cultivator - though we would have to know more about guns to tell.  Do your abilities only work with that specific use or could you, say, paint a picture in those few seconds instead?"

"Perhaps a very small one. Theo can draw a knife-sized gun from specially-made chest holsters without straining his hands dangerously, but that's the largest movement anyone's ever managed. Slight adjustments of your eyes, or to your aim, and the small motion to pull the trigger? Easy. Turning your head? Nearly impossible."

"Ah, so it's perception but not movement?"

That sounds useful when combined with cultivation, particularly for crafting or medicine, but she doesn't want to come across as pushy by saying so.  Either that they ought to join or ought to sell them the secret of their... sect?

"How do gleamfighters organize themselves?  Are you part of a larger organization?"

You do it, Tish.

Yeah this's gotta be careful.

"Military lines, primarily. If they're organized at all. Shortly after it was discovered as a possibility, our part of the continent organized the Miner's Brigades, and Theo was commissioned as a captain in them. The other side of the war relies on the Federal Marshals, who are also military in practice though they're nominally a law enforcement organization."

"Government military?  I don't know much about those; cultivators tend to have little to do with ours.

"Cultivator sects are centered around a large extended family.  A majority of us are raised from birth in one, or are accepted to be disciples as children since cultivators tend not to have as many children as the mundane do."

"One group I know of was never government but patterned themselves off other units that were - paramilitary. And smaller groups that are basically just petty criminals happen all over. But yes, that's how they all formed."

(This is all true except by omission, if someone happens to be able to read lies or intent.)

"Cultivation is heritable? Our talent isn't, beyond any ordinary skill, as far as we know."

The guard doesn't pick up on her comment being anything but trivia.  "Trying to learn cultivation without a teacher typically either results in no effect at all or the would-be cultivator dying during the attempt.  Many people do break away from their sects to become rogue cultivators.  Most are decent enough, if no longer invited into wider cultivation society, but some join bandit groups and cause problems."

"No, it isn't heritable.  People choose to train their own children over those of strangers, is all."

"Ah, I see. ...The government wasn't involved in whatever violence damaged the town? Who was?"

"The Qishan Wen Sect.  They had been the most powerful cultivation sect for centuries, then their most recent leader Wen Ruohan decided that wasn't good enough and he was going to start killing off the other sects for total control of cultivation in the empire.  We've just come back from destroying them - Yunmeng Jiang and also most of the other sects, that is.  We all teamed up to fight.

"Though, the damage is mostly just to Lotus Pier.  The mundane town only had a few burned buildings.  There were a few distant Jiang relatives, and some townsfolk who'd tried to hide Jiang cultivators or who acted out after Lotus Pier was destroyed.  Not destroying too many unrelated mundane settlements is how Wen Ruohan kept from getting taken to task for his actions by the emperor.  Cultivation matters are usually left to cultivators to deal with, since cultivation and government don't mix."

That doesn't sound like any ruler Tisha's heard of. If he could rein them in, he would. They're not just useful monster-hunters. ...They also may care much less than she'd thought about the 'outlaw' thing.

"Why don't they mix?"

"Magic has no effect on the world within a few li of whoever holds the mandate of heaven.

"In some past ages, emperors attempted to manipulate the cultivation world, or cultivators attempted to manipulate the rulers.  Leaving each other alone except in extremity is the stable point that the world always seems to go back to and is therefore considered the will of the heavens."

"You can just tell who's the rightful ruler? Must not be many wars of succession. Or secession." Somehow that's even more bizarre than widespread magic.

"There have been wars of both kinds, though I wouldn't be surprised if they were much rarer here and less likely to succeed."

And speaking of the mundane people, though ones much closer by than the emperor, they have gotten far enough along the road to see the town.  It rises over the dock market much as Lotus Pier does, larger and intact.  The materials and architecture are much the same.

Huh, it's actually much less damaged.

"How often do sects fight?"

It sounded like this was unusual in degree, not in kind.

"If you count any fighting at all, there's usually something between a pair of minor sects every decade or so.  Accusations of theft, disagreements over who gets the right to what hunting ground or meditation spot, that sort of thing. 

"For larger sects, the Pingyang Yao sect had a violent fracturing around 200 years ago.  350 years ago was when the Langya Xiao sect was taken down for practicing forbidden cultivation techniques.  The last major war that had every sect fighting was around 650 years ago, during the formation of the Qishan Wen Sect."

The guard's tone when discussing the mundane government had been hesitant.  Here, she answers immediately and with confidence.  This is clearly where her education was focused.

"Remarkably peaceful. I suppose the hotheads have plenty of beasts to fight."

"Yes, and the beasts are far more impressive and worth fighting.  Though a list of wars is going to miss individuals picking fights.  There are plenty of those." 

"As with armed men anywhere. Or drunk ones."

"Or both," she agrees with a sigh. 

"Were you raised in the sect here?"

"No.  I was born in the Tingshan He Sect, then married into the Mianyang Hu Sect twelve years ago.  The last Sect Leader Hu was a close relative and ally of Yunmeng Jiang.  When Sect Leader Jiang began recruiting, he answered the call and we joined them in battle.  Everyone was impressed with Sect Leader Jiang's leadership despite his age, and were eager to join one of the great sects, so when the fighting was finished we packed the little that remained in Mianyang and formally joined the Jiang Sect."

"I'm guessing marriage ties are common, but the whole-sect incorporation part much less so?"

"We like marrying other cultivators, and we'd run out of unrelated sect-mates otherwise.  As for incorporation, it's less frequent but by no means rare.  Typically it happens in the opposite circumstance: a minor sect suffers some disaster and the survivors choose to find a sect to take them in rather than try to continue with only a few people."

"Hmm, there's nothing quite like that I've heard of. Noble families, countries, criminal gangs, small religions - none of them quite like sects. For the" crime "families who are closest, a small line which suffered disaster would be pounced on, not invited in."

"That can happen here, if the sect is unliked and lacks allies.  Another reason why marriage ties are smart."

"Oh, that makes a little more sense of it. I suppose the competition for resources is less steep if you're further apart. And that might do it."