by F. C. Yee
She didn’t doubt it. He wasn’t a man given to boasting. More than once around the house she’d heard the expression that Jianzhu’s word, his friendship, was worth more than Beifong gold.
Another person might have swelled with happiness while looking back over the power they wielded. Jianzhu simply sounded tired. “You wouldn’t know any of this,” he said. “Other than the disaster on the iceberg, you’ve never really been outside the shelter of Yokoya.”
Kyoshi swallowed the urge to tell him that wasn’t true, that she still remembered the brief glimpses she’d seen of the greater world, long ago. But that would have meant talking about her parents. Opening a different box of vipers altogether. Just the notion of exposing that part of her to Jianzhu caused her pulse to quicken.
He picked up on her distress and narrowed his eyes. “So you see, Kyoshi,” he said. “Without personal loyalty, it all falls apart!”
He made a sudden bending motion toward the ceiling as if to bring it crashing down onto their heads. Kyoshi flinched before remembering the room was made of wood. A trickle of dust leaked through the roof beams and lay suspended in the air, a cloud above them.
“Given what I’ve told you,” he said. “Is there anything you want to tell me? About what you did on the ice?”
Was there anything she wanted to tell the man who had taken her in off the street? That there was a chance he’d made a blunder that could destroy everything he’d worked for, and that her very existence might spell untold chaos for their nation?
No. She and Kelsang had to wait it out. Find evidence that she wasn’t the Avatar, give Yun the time he needed to prove himself conclusively.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I truly wasn’t aware of my own limits. I just panicked and lashed out as hard as I could. Rangi told me she often firebends stronger when she’s angry; maybe it was like that.”
Jianzhu smiled again, the expression calcifying on his face. He clapped his hands to his knees and pushed himself up to standing.
“You know,” he said. “I’ve fought daofei like Tagaka across the length and breadth of this continent for so long that the one thing I’ve learned is that they’re not the true problem. They’re a symptom of what happens when people think they can defy the Avatar’s authority. When they think the Avatar lacks legitimacy.”
He peered down at Kyoshi. “I’m glad there’s at least one more powerful Earthbender who can fight on my side. Despite what I said earlier, I’m only a stopgap measure. A substitute. The responsibility of keeping the Earth Kingdom stable and in balance with the other nations rightfully belongs to the Avatar.”
The unrelenting pressure of his statements became so great that Kyoshi instinctively tried to shift the weight onto someone else. “It should have been Kuruk dealing with the daofei,” she blurted out. “Shouldn’t it?”
Jianzhu nodded in agreement. “If Kuruk were alive today, he’d be at the peak of his powers. I blame myself for his demise. His poor choices were my fault.”
“How could that be?”
“Because the person who has the greatest responsibility to the world, after the Avatar, is the person who influences the way the Avatar thinks. I taught Kuruk earthbending, but I didn’t teach him wisdom. I believe the world is still paying for my mistake in that regard.”
Jianzhu paused by the door as he left. “Yun is down the hall. Kelsang across from him. You should rest more though. I would hate to see you not well.”
Kyoshi waited until he was gone, enough time for him to exit the infirmary completely. Then she burst out of bed. She pounded down the hallway, rattling the planked floor, and after a frantic moment of hesitation, entered the Avatar’s room first.
Yun sat in a chair next to a copper bathtub with his right sleeve rolled up to his shoulder. His arm rested in the steaming water. Rangi stood behind him, leaning on the windowsill, staring at the far corner.
“I keep telling the healers I don’t have frostbite,” Yun said. “This must have scared them.” He raised his dripping hand. It was still stained with black ink, giving it a pallid, necrotic look. Yun picked up a teapot of hot water from the floor and poured it carefully into the bath to maintain the temperature. He dunked his hand back under the surface and swirled it around.
Kyoshi’s first instinct was to run over to them and embrace them joyfully, to thank the spirits that they were alive. To see a bit of that happiness reflected back in their eyes. The three of them had made it home, safe, together.
But Yun and Rangi looked like their minds were still floating somewhere in the Southern Ocean. Vacant and distracted.
“What happened?” Kyoshi asked. “Is everyone okay? Is Kelsang hurt badly?”
Yun waved at her with his dry hand to be quiet. “Master Kelsang is sleeping, so we should keep it down.”
As if she were the biggest detriment to Kelsang’s health right now. “Fine,” she hissed. “Now will you tell me what happened?”
“We lost a lot of the guardsmen,” Yun said, his face shifting with pain. “Tagaka’s hidden Waterbenders dropped an avalanche on them. Rangi and Hei-Ran managed to save those they could by burning through the side of the iceberg after it thinned.”
Rangi didn’t budge at the mention of her name. She refused to lift her head, let alone speak.
“They freed me, and between us, we managed to knock Tagaka out,” Yun went on. “Losing their ships and seeing their leader defeated was too much for the rest of the Fifth Nation forces, and they fled. You should have seen it. Pirates clinging to wreckage while Waterbenders propelled them away. The loss of dignity probably hurt more than the falling rocks.”
“What happened to Tagaka?” Kyoshi asked.
“She’s in the brig of an Earth Kingdom caravan heading for the capital, where she’ll be taken to the prisons at Lake Laogai,” he said. “I don’t know what they’re going to do about the lake part of it if she can waterbend like that, but I have to assume at least someone in the Earth King’s administration has a plan. In the meantime, the Fifth Nation is no more.”
At her look of confusion, Yun gave her the exact same wan, forced smile that his master did a few minutes ago. “Their ships have been damaged beyond repair,” he explained. “Tagaka said it herself—her power lies in her fleet. After what you did, it’ll be nearly impossible for her successors to rebuild. They won’t pose a threat to the Earth Kingdom anymore.”
Kyoshi supposed that was true. And that she should be happy to hear it. But the victory rang hollow. “What about the captives?”
“Jianzhu caught one of her lieutenants and interrogated their location out of him,” Yun said. “Hei-Ran pulled a few strings—well, maybe more like the whole rope—and now the Fire Navy is mounting a rescue operation in an act of goodwill. It’ll be the first time they’ve been allowed to fly military colors in the Eastern Sea since the reign of the twenty-second Earth King.”
He was giving her answers but nothing else. No emotion she could hook her fingers around. Hadn’t he wanted her there as a confidant? Someone who would be awed by his successes?
“Yun, you did it,” she said, hoping to remind him. “You saved them.”
In her desperation she borrowed a line from the imaginary voice that had spoken to her on the ice. “People will talk about this for ages to come!” she said. “Avatar Yun, who saved whole villages! Avatar Yun, who went toe to toe with the Pirate Queen of the Southern Ocean! Avatar Yun—”
“Kyoshi, stop it!” Rangi cried out. “Just stop!”
“Stop what?” Kyoshi yelled, feeling nearly sick with frustration.
“Stop pretending like everything’s the same as it was!” Rangi said. “We know what you and Kelsang were hiding from us!”
The floor spiraled away from Kyoshi’s feet. Her foundations turned to liquid. She was grateful when Rangi marched up to her and planted an accusing finger in her chest. It gave her a point to stabilize on.
“How could you keep that from us?” the Firebender shouted in her face. “W
as it funny to you? Making us look like fools? Knowing there’s a chance that all of our lives are a gigantic lie?”
Kyoshi couldn’t think. She was enfeebled. “I didn’t . . . It wasn’t . . .”
Rangi’s finger began to heat up and smoke. “What was your angle, huh? Were you trying to discredit Yun? Jianzhu, maybe? Do you have some kind of twisted secret desire to see the world fall apart at the seams?”
The burn reached her skin. She didn’t pull away. Maybe she deserved to be punched straight through, a red-hot hole in her chest.
“Answer me!” Rangi screamed. “Answer me, you—you—”
Kyoshi closed her eyes, squeezing out tears, and readied herself for the blow.
It never came. Rangi stepped back, aghast, hands covering her mouth, realizing what she was doing, and then barreled past Kyoshi out the door.
The room swayed back and forth, threatening to force Kyoshi down on all fours. Yun stood up, navigating the thrashing floor with ease. He came closer, his lips parting slightly. She thought he was going to whisper something reassuring in her ear.
And then he sidestepped her. Slid right by, with a layer of empty space between them as impenetrable as steel.
She had one more stop to make.
Kelsang was waiting for her, propped up to a sitting position in his bed. There was a half-eaten bowl of seaweed soup on his bedside table, a remedy for blood loss. His skin was paler than the bandages swaddling his torso. Even the blue of his arrows seemed faded.
“We woke you up.” Kyoshi was surprised at how hard her voice was. She should have been relieved to pieces that he wasn’t dead, and instead she was on the verge of snarling at him. “You need to be resting.”
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I had to tell them.”
“Did you?”
“What I said about Yun having the greater chance of being the Avatar isn’t true anymore. Not after what you accomplished on the iceberg.” Kelsang ran his hand over his shaved head, feeling for the ghost of his hair. “You were asleep for three days, Kyoshi. I thought your spirit had left your body. There was no more pretending.”
Something delicate inside her snapped at hearing “pretend.” The people closest to her were suddenly calling the years they’d spent together fake, imaginary. A made-up prelude to a different, more important reality.
“You mean you couldn’t wait any longer to make your move,” she said, unable to control her bile. “You wanted to teach an Avatar who depended on you more than Jianzhu, and you lost your chance with Yun. That’s what I am to you. A do-over.”
Kelsang looked away. He leaned back against his pillow.
“The time when any of us could have what we wanted passed years ago,” he said.
DESPERATE MEASURES
If she needed evidence things were different now, the food was enough.
On days when Kyoshi had time to eat breakfast, she usually helped herself to a bowl of jook from the communal pot bubbling away in the kitchen, garnished with whatever dried-out scraps from the upstairs tables Auntie Mui deemed fit to save from the previous night. Today, another servant surprised her outside her door and led her to one of the dining halls reserved for guests.
The room she sat in by herself was so big and empty that drinking her tea made an echo. The grand zitan table held such an array of boiled, salted, and fried delicacies that she thought the place setting for one had to be a mistake.
It was not. Without knowing which of the children under his roof was the Avatar, Jianzhu seemed to have decreed that Kyoshi was to be fed like a noble until he figured it out. She tried to accommodate his generosity, but a small bite of each artfully arranged dish was all she could manage with her rice. Including, she noted with chagrin, the spicy pickled kelp she’d carried to the house herself, now nestled in a lacquered saucer.
Her waiter checked back in. “Is Mistress finished?” she asked with a bowed head.
“Rin, I went to your birthday party,” Kyoshi said. “I chipped in for that comb you’re wearing.”
The girl shrugged. “You’re not to show up for work anymore. Master Jianzhu wants you by the training grounds in an hour.”
“But what am I supposed to do until then?”
“Whatever Mistress wishes.”
Kyoshi staggered out of the dining room like she’d taken a blow to the head. Leisure? What kind of animal was that?
She didn’t want anyone to see her up and about the house. Oh, there’s Kyoshi, taking in the flowers. There she goes now, pondering the new calligraphy from the Air Temple. The prospect of being on display horrified her. In lieu of a better option, she ran to the small library where she’d spoken to Kelsang and latched the door behind her. She hid there, alone with her dread, until the appointed time came.
Kyoshi was as unfamiliar with the flat stone expanse of the training ground as she would have been with the caldera of a Fire Nation volcano. Her duties never brought her here. Jianzhu waited in the middle of the courtyard for her, a scarecrow monitoring a field.
“Don’t bother with that anymore,” he said when she bowed deeply like a servant. “Come with me.”
He led her into one of the side rooms, a supply closet that had been hastily emptied of its contents. Straw dummies and earthbending discs had been tossed without care outside, irking her sense of organization. Inside, Hei-Ran waited for them.
“Kyoshi,” she said with a warm smile. “Thank you for humoring us. I know it’s been a trying past couple of days for you.”
Kyoshi felt like there would be no end to the awkwardness. Despite her friendship with Rangi, she and the headmistress were more distant than she and Jianzhu. Hei-Ran was acting much friendlier than she’d expected. But Kyoshi looked down and noticed that the woman had been pacing trails in the dusty floor. Rangi often did that when she was upset.
“I’ll help in any way I can,” Kyoshi said, her throat feeling suddenly parched. Her tonsils stuck to the back of her tongue, causing her words to catch in her mouth.
“Sorry, that’s my doing,” Hei-Ran said with a gentle laugh. “I dried the air out in this room for an exercise. Please, sit.”
There were two silk cushions borrowed from the meditation chamber on the floor. Kyoshi was horrified at the finery thrown on the dirty ground, but she took a position across from Hei-Ran anyway. She was keenly aware of Jianzhu standing behind her, watching like a bird of prey.
“We perform this test on newborns in the Fire Nation to see if they’re capable of firebending,” Hei-Ran said. “We have to know about our children quick, as you can imagine, or else they risk burning the neighborhood down.”
It was a joke, but it made Kyoshi more nervous. “What do I have to do?”
“Very little.” Hei-Ran reached into a pouch and pulled out what appeared to be a ball of tinder. “This is shredded birch bark and cotton mixed with some special oils.” She fluffed the material with her fingers until it was wispy and cloudlike. “You just need to breathe and feel your inner heat. If the tinder lights, you’re a Firebender.”
And therefore the Avatar. “You’re certain this will work?”
Hei-Ran raised an eyebrow. “Newborns, Kyoshi. It’s essentially impossible for a true Firebender not to make some indication with this method. Now hush. I need to get a little closer to you.”
She held the tinder puff under Kyoshi’s nose as if she was trying to revive her with smelling salts. “Relax and breathe, Kyoshi. Don’t put effort into it. Your natural fire, your source of life, is enough. Breathe.”
Kyoshi tried to do as she was told. She could feel strands of cotton tickling her lips. She took in deep lungfuls of air, over and over.
“I’ll help you along,” Hei-Ran said after two minutes without results. The air around them grew hotter, much hotter. Trickles of sweat ran down Kyoshi’s face, drying out before they reached her chin. She was desperately thirsty again.
“Just a tiny spark.” Hei-Ran sounded like she was pleading now. “I’ve done most of the work. L
et loose. The slightest push. That’s all I’m asking for. Your thumb on the scale.”
Kyoshi tried for ten more minutes straight before she collapsed forward, coughing and hacking. Hei-Ran crumpled the tinder in her fist. A puff of smoke drifted from between her fingers.
“It takes children, babies, a few seconds at most under these conditions,” she said to Jianzhu. Her voice was unreadable.
Kyoshi looked up at the two masters. “I don’t understand,” she said. “Didn’t Yun already pass this test?”
Jianzhu didn’t answer. He turned around and stormed out of the room, slamming his fist into the frame as he left. The earthbending discs stacked by the door exploded into dust.
Someone had seen Kyoshi coming and going from her new hiding place in the secondary library and ratted her out. There was no other way Yun would have found her, curled up beside a medicine chest that had over a hundred little drawers, each carved with the name of a different herb or tincture.
Yun sat down on the floor across from her, leaning his back against the wall. He scanned over the labels next to her head. “It feels like way too many of these are cures for baldness,” he said.
Despite herself, Kyoshi snorted.
Yun tugged on a strand of his own brown hair, perhaps thinking ahead to the day he’d have to join the Air Nomads for airbending training at the Northern or Southern Temple. They wouldn’t force him to shave it off, but Kyoshi knew he liked to honor other people’s traditions. And he’d still be good-looking anyway.
But then, maybe he would never get the chance, Kyoshi thought miserably. Maybe it would be stolen from him by a petty thief who’d burrowed into his house under the guise of being his friend.
