by F. C. Yee
“Are they all right?”
“I’ll check. But please, go. Now.” Kelsang hurried to the tent and ducked through the curtain. She could hear the commotion stop as soon as he re-entered, but the silence was more ominous than the noise.
Kyoshi paused there, wondering what to do, before deciding she’d better obey Kelsang. She didn’t want to overhear Yun and Jianzhu have it out.
As she fled, the moonlight cast long, flickering shadows, making Kyoshi feel like a puppeteer on a blank white stage. Her hurried exit took her too far in the wrong direction, and she found herself among the outskirts of the pirate camp, near the ice cliff.
She slammed against the frozen wall, trying to flatten herself out of sight. Tagaka’s crew was in the midst of retiring for the night, kicking snow over dying campfires and fastening their tents closed from the inside. They had guardsmen posted at regular intervals looking in different directions. Kyoshi had no idea how she’d come so close without being noticed.
She edged as quietly as she could back the way she came, around the corner, and bumped into the missing sentry. He was one of the two pirates who’d accompanied Tagaka to greet them. The man with the mustache. He peered up at her face like he was trying to get the best view of her nostrils.
“Say,” he said, a rank cloud of alcohol fumes wafting out of his mouth. “Do I know you?”
She shook her head and made to keep going, but he stuck his arm out, blocking her path as he leaned against the ice.
“It’s just that you look very familiar,” he said with a leer.
Kyoshi shuddered. There was always a certain kind of man who thought her particular dimensions made her a public good, an oddity they were free to gawk at, prod, or worse. Often they assumed she should be grateful for the attention. That they were special and powerful for giving it to her.
“I used to be a landlubber,” the man said, launching into a bout of drunken self-absorption. “Did business with a group called the Flying . . . Something Society. The Flying Something or others. The leader was a woman who looked a lot like you. Pretty face, just like yours. Legs . . . nearly as long. She could have been your sister. You ever been to Chameleon Bay, sweet thing? Stay under Madam Qiji’s roof?”
The man pulled the cork from a gourd and took a few more swigs of wine. “I had it bad for that girl,” he said, wiping his mouth on his sleeve. “She had the most fascinating serpent tattoos going around her arms, but she never let me see how far they went. What about you, honey tree? Got any ink on your body that you want to show meeeaggh!”
Kyoshi picked him up by the neck with one hand and slammed him into the cliffside.
His feet dangled off the ground. She squeezed until she saw his eyes bulge in different directions.
“You are mistaken,” she said without raising her voice. “Do you hear me? You are mistaken, and you have never seen me, or anyone else who looks like me before. Tell me so.”
She let him have enough air to speak. “You crazy piece of—I’ll kill—aaagh!”
Kyoshi pressed him harder into the wall. The ice cracked behind his skull. “That’s not what I asked you.”
Her fingers stifled his cry, preventing him from alerting the others. “I made a mistake!” he gasped. “I was wrong!”
She dropped him on the ground. The back of his coat snagged and tore on the ice. He keeled over to his side, trying to force air back into his lungs.
Kyoshi watched him writhe at her feet. After thinking it over, she yanked the gourd full of wine off his neck, snapping the string, and poured the contents out until it was empty. The liquid splashed the man’s face, and he flinched.
“I’m holding on to this in case you change your mind yet again,” she said, waggling the empty container. “I’ve heard about Tagaka’s disciplinary methods, and I don’t think she’d approve of drinking on guard duty.”
The man groaned and covered his head with his arms.
Kyoshi collapsed facedown outside her tent. Her forehead lay on the ice. It felt good, cooling. The encounter had sapped her of energy, left her unable to take the last few steps to her bunk. So close, and yet so far.
She didn’t know what had come over her. What she’d done was so stupid it boggled the mind. If word got back to Jianzhu somehow . . .
A bright light appeared over her head. She twisted her neck upward to see Rangi holding up a self-generated torch. A small flame danced above her long fingers.
Rangi looked down at her and then at the liquor gourd still in her hand. She sniffed the night air. “Kyoshi, have you been drinking?”
It seemed easier to lie. “Yes?”
With great difficulty, Rangi dragged her inside by the arms. It was warmer in the tent, the difference between a winter’s night and an afternoon in spring. Kyoshi could feel the stiffness leaving her limbs, her head losing the ponderous echo it seemed to have before.
Rangi yanked pieces of the battle outfit off her like she was stripping down a broken wagon. “You can’t sleep in that getup. Especially not the armor.”
She’d taken her own gear off and was only wearing a thin cotton shift that exposed her arms and legs. Her streamlined figure belied the solidness of her muscles. Kyoshi caught herself gawking, having never seen her friend out of uniform before. It was hard for her to comprehend that the spiky bits weren’t a natural part of Rangi’s body.
“Shouldn’t you be sleeping with Yun?” Kyoshi said.
Rangi’s head turned so fast she almost snapped her own neck. “You know what I mean,” Kyoshi said.
The redness faded from Rangi’s ears as quickly as it came. “The Avatar and Master Jianzhu are reviewing strategy. Master Amak only ever sleeps in ten-minute intervals throughout the day, so he and the most experienced guardsmen will keep watch. The order is that everyone else should be well-rested for tomorrow.”
They settled beneath their furs. Kyoshi already knew that she wouldn’t be able to sleep as she’d been told. Her former life on the street in conjunction with her privileged place in the mansion these days meant that, improbably, she’d never had a roommate before. She was acutely aware of Rangi’s little movements right next to her, the air rising in and out of the Firebender’s chest.
“I don’t think they did anything wrong,” Kyoshi said as she stared at the underside of their tent.
Rangi didn’t respond.
“I heard from Auntie Mui about what Xu and the Yellow Necks did to unarmed men, women, and children. If half of that is true, then Jianzhu went too easy on them. They deserved worse.”
The moonlight came through the seams of the tent, making stars out of stitch holes.
She should have stopped there, but Kyoshi’s certainty buoyed her along past the point where it was safe to venture. “And accidents are accidents,” she said. “I’m sure your mother never meant to harm anyone.”
Two strong hands grabbed the lapels of her robe. Rangi yanked her over onto her side so that they were facing each other.
“Kyoshi,” she said hoarsely, her eyes flaring with pain. “One of those opponents was her cousin. A rival candidate for headmistress.”
Rangi gave her a hard, jostling shake. “Not a pirate, or an outlaw,” she said. “Her cousin. The school cleared her honor, but the rumors followed me at school for years. People whispering around corners that my mother was—was an assassin.”
She spit the word out like it was the most vile curse imaginable. Given Rangi’s profession as a bodyguard, it likely was. She buried her face into Kyoshi’s chest, gripping her tightly, as if to scrub the memory away.
Kyoshi wanted to punch herself for being so careless. She cautiously draped an arm over Rangi’s shoulder. The Firebender nestled under it and relaxed, though she still made a series of sharp little inhalations through her nose. Kyoshi didn’t know if that was her way of crying or calming herself with a breathing exercise.
Rangi shifted, pressing closer to Kyoshi’s body, rubbing the soft bouquet of her hair against Kyoshi’s lips. The sta
rtling contact felt like a transgression, the mistake of a girl exhausted and drowsy. The more noble Fire Nation families, like the one Rangi descended from, would never let just anyone touch their hair like this.
The faint, flowery scent that filled Kyoshi’s lungs made her head swim and her pulse quicken. Kyoshi kept still like it was her life’s calling, unwilling to make any motion that might disturb her friend’s fitful slumber.
Eventually Rangi fell into a deep sleep, radiating warmth like a little glowing coal in the hearth. Kyoshi realized that comforting her throughout the night was both an honor and a torture she wouldn’t have traded for anything in the world.
Kyoshi closed her eyes. She did her best to ignore the pain of her arm losing circulation and her heart falling into a pile of ribbons.
They survived the night. There had been no sneak attack, no sudden chaos outside the tent, as she’d feared.
Kyoshi couldn’t have slept more than an hour or two, but she’d never felt more alert and on edge in her life. When they breakfasted in their own camp at the base of the iceberg, she declined the overbrewed tea. Her teeth were already knocking together as it was.
She looked for signs of trouble between Yun and Jianzhu, Rangi and Hei-Ran, but couldn’t find any. She never understood how they managed to wound each other and then forgive each other so quickly. Wrongs meant something, even if they were inflicted by your family. Especially if it was family.
Kelsang stayed close by her during the preparations. But his presence only created more turbulence in her heart. Any minute now they were going to walk up that hill and watch Yun sign a treaty backed by the power vested in the Avatar.
It’s not me, Kyoshi thought to herself. Kelsang admitted there was hardly a chance. A chance is not the same thing as the truth.
Jianzhu signaled it was time to go and spoke a few words, but Kyoshi didn’t hear them.
He’s jumping to conclusions because Jianzhu sidelined him. He wants to be a bigger part of the Avatar’s life. Any Avatar’s life. And I’m the closest thing to a daughter he has.
She had to admit the line of reasoning was a little self-important of her. But much less so than, say, being the Avatar. It made sense. Kelsang was human, prone to mistakes. The thought comforted her all the way to the top of the iceberg.
The peak came to a natural plateau large enough to hold the key members of both delegations. For Yun’s side, that meant Jianzhu, Hei-Ran, Kelsang, Rangi, Amak, and—despite the foolishness it implied—Kyoshi. Tagaka again deigned to come with only a pair of escorts. The mustached man was not part of her guard this time, thankfully. But one of the Earth Kingdom hostages, a young woman who had the sunburned mien of a fishwife, accompanied the pirates. She silently carried a baggage pack on her shoulders and stared at the ground like her past and future were written on it.
The two sides faced each other over the flat surface. They were high enough up to overlook the smaller icebergs that drifted near their frozen mountain.
“I figured we’d use the traditional setting for such matters,” Tagaka said. “So please bear with me for a moment.”
The pirate queen wedged her feet in the snow and took a shouting breath. Her arms moved fluidly in the form of waterbending, but nothing happened.
“Hold on,” she said.
She tried again, waving her limbs with more speed and more strain. A circle rose haltingly out of the ice, the size of a table. It was very slow going.
Kyoshi thought she heard a scoff come from Master Amak, but it could have been the creak of two smaller ice lumps sprouting on opposite sides of the table. Tagaka struggled mightily until they were tall enough to sit on.
“You’ll have to forgive me,” she said, out of breath. “I’m not exactly the bender my father and grandfather were.”
The Earth Kingdom woman opened her pack and quickly laid out a cloth over the table and cushions on the seats. With quick, delicate motions, she set up a slab inkstone, two brushes, and a tiny pitcher of water.
Kyoshi’s gut roiled as she watched the woman meticulously grind an inkstick against the stone. She was using the Pianhai method, a ceremonial calligraphy setup that took a great deal of formal training and commoners normally never learned. Kyoshi only knew what it was from her proximity to Yun. Did Tagaka beat the process into her? she thought. Or did she steal her away from a literature school in one of the larger cities?
Once she had made enough ink, the woman stepped back without a word. Tagaka and Yun sat down, each spreading a scroll across the ice table that contained the written terms that had been agreed upon so far. They spent an exhaustive amount of time checking that the copies matched, that phrasing was polite enough. Both Yun and the pirate queen had an eye for small details, and neither of them wanted to lose the first battle.
“I object to your description of yourself as the Waterborne Guardian of the South Pole,” Yun said during one of the more heated exchanges.
“Why?” Tagaka said. “It’s true. My warships are a buffer. I’m the only force keeping a hostile navy from sailing up to the shores of the Southern Water Tribe.”
“The Southern Water Tribe hates you,” Yun said, rather bluntly.
“Yes, well, politics are complicated,” Tagaka said. “I’ll edit that to ‘Self-Appointed Guardian of the South Pole.’ I haven’t abandoned my people, even if they’ve turned their backs on me.”
And on it went. After Tagaka’s guards had begun to yawn openly, they leaned back from the scrolls. “Everything seems to be in order,” Yun said. “If you don’t mind, I’d like to proceed straightaway to the next stage. Verbal amendments.”
Tagaka smirked. “Ooh, the real fun stuff.”
“On the matter of the hostages from the southern coast of Zeizhou Province as can be reasonably defined through proximity to Tu Zin, taken from their homes sometime between the vernal equinox and the summer solstice . . .” Yun said. He paused.
Kyoshi knew this was going to be hard on him. Rangi had explained the basics of how people were typically ransomed. At best Yun could free half of the captives by sacrificing the rest, letting Tagaka save face and retain leverage. He had to think of their lives in clinical terms. A higher percentage was better. His only goal. He would be a savior to some and doom the rest.
“I want them back,” Yun said. “All of them.”
“Avatar!” Jianzhu snapped. The Earthbender was furious. This was obviously not what they’d talked about beforehand.
Yun raised his hand, showing the back of it to his master. Kyoshi could have sworn Yun was enjoying himself right now.
“I want every single man, woman, and child back,” Yun said. “If you’ve sold them to other pirate crews, I want your dedicated assistance in finding them. If any have died under your care, I want their remains so their families can give them a proper burial. We can talk about the compensation you’ll pay later.”
The masters, save for Kelsang, looked displeased. To them, these were the actions of a petulant child who didn’t understand how the world worked.
But Kyoshi had never loved her Avatar more. This was what Yun had wanted her to see when he’d begged her to come along. Her friend, standing up for what was right. Her heart was ready to burst.
Tagaka leaned back on her ice stool. “Sure.”
Yun blinked, his moment of glory and defiance yanked out from under him prematurely. “You agree?”
“I agree,” Tagaka said. “You can have all of the captives back. They’re free. Every single one.”
A sob rang out in the air. It was the Earth Kingdom woman. Her stoic resolve broke, and she collapsed to her hands and knees, weeping loudly and openly. Neither Tagaka nor her men reprimanded her.
Yun didn’t look at the woman, out of fear he might ruin her salvation with the wrong move. He waited for Tagaka to make a demand in return. He wasn’t going to raise the price on her behalf.
“The captives are useless to me anyway,” she said. She stared out to sea at the smaller icebergs surroundi
ng them. Despite her earlier patience, she sounded incredibly bored all of a sudden. “Out of a thousand people or more, not one was a passable carpenter. I should have known better. I needed to go after people who live among tall trees, not driftwood.”
Yun frowned. “You want . . . carpenters?” he said cautiously.
She glanced at him, as if she were surprised he was still there. “Boy, let me teach you a little fact about the pirate trade. Our power is measured in ships. We need timber and craftsmen who know how to work it. Building a proper navy is a generational effort. My peaceable cousins in the South Pole have a few heirloom sailing cutters but otherwise have to make do with seal-skin canoes. They’ll never create a large, long-range war fleet because they simply don’t have the trees.”
Tagaka turned and loomed over the table. “So, yes,” she said, fixing him with her gaze. “I want carpenters and trees and a port of my own to dock in so I can increase the size of my forces. And I know just where to get those things.”
“Yokoya!” Yun shouted, a realization and an alert to the others, in a single word.
Tagaka raised her hand and made the slightest chopping motion with her fingers. Kyoshi heard a wet crunch and a gurgle of surprise. She looked around for the source of the strange noise.
It was Master Amak. He was bent backward over a stalagmite of ice, the bloody tip sprouting from his chest like a hideous stalk of grain. He stared at it, astonished, and slumped to the side.
“Come now,” Tagaka said. “You think I can’t recognize kinfolk under a disguise?”
The moments seemed to slowly stack up on each other like a tower of raw stones, each event in sequence piling higher and higher with no mortar to hold them together. A structure that was unstable, dreadful, headed toward a total and imminent collapse.
The sudden movement of Tagaka’s two escorts drew everyone’s attention. But the two men only grabbed the Earth Kingdom woman by the arms and jumped back down the slope the way they’d come, dodging the blast of fire that Rangi managed to get off. They were the distraction.
