by F. C. Yee
Te Sihung. Governor Te. Kyoshi had never seen him in person at the mansion, but the last gifts she remembered him sending to Yun were an original, unabridged copy of Poems of Laghima, and a single precious white dragon seed.
“Governor in the Eastern Provinces,” she said. “Likes to read and drink tea. Certainly isn’t hurting for money.”
“Very good,” Mok said, impressed, even though she could have been describing half of the rich old men in the Earth Kingdom. “Te’s a little unique among prefectural leaders. He’s not so quick with the axe when it comes to sentencing crimes.” He made a hacking motion to the back of his own neck. How lighthearted they were being.
Mok took a sip of wine and smiled when Kyoshi refilled his cup without being told. “He keeps prisoners instead,” he went on. “His family inherited an old mansion dating back to the Thirty-Somethingth Earth King, complete with a courthouse and a jail where criminals could serve out their sentences instead of facing swift modern justice. I believe the romantic notion of mercy went to his head.”
“Sounds nice of him,” Rangi said, a bit insouciantly. Her face had begun to swell, her words slurring as her lip grew puffy. The other members of their company had willingly retreated into the background, letting her and Kyoshi do the talking. They were playing the tiles they’d been dealt.
“Don’t go putting up statues just yet,” Mok said. “He’s had one of our own locked up for eight years.”
Behind him, Wai positively vibrated, his body thrumming with rage. “We need to get our man out of Te’s cells,” Mok said. “That’s what this job is about. A jailbreak on a fortified position is going to take a lot of bodies, more than the Autumn Bloom has sworn members. So we’re calling in our associates. Every favor will be repaid in one night.”
“This prisoner—is he important?” Rangi asked. “Does he have information you don’t want leaking?”
For the first time tonight Mok looked displeased with her. “This mission is about brotherhood,” he said. “First and foremost. My sworn brother has been rotting in the hands of the law for almost a decade. It’s taken that long for the Autumn Bloom to grow strong enough to attempt a rescue mission, but Wai and I have never forgotten him.”
His passion was real, carved into his spirit with deep grooves. He resembled Lek when the boy talked about Kyoshi’s parents. Propped up by an iron framework larger than himself. Kyoshi wondered if she’d appear the same if she ever spoke about Kelsang at length to anyone. She hoped so.
“Apologies, Uncle,” Rangi said. “I thought knowing the facts would be helpful to our cause.”
“The only facts I need you concentrating on concern how your group is going to help spring my man out of Governor Te’s prison,” Mok said.
“Our group?” Kyoshi preemptively tilted in apology for not understanding. “It sounded like we were to band together with the Autumn Bloom in this mission.”
“Originally, yes. But after giving it some thought, that would be a waste of an elite team of benders such as yourselves. A two-pronged assault should double our chances. I have numbers at my disposal but not stealth or bending prowess. While my men beat down the doors in a frontal assault, I want the Flying Opera Company to take the quiet route. Whoever succeeds first, it doesn’t matter to me.”
Rangi was still in professional, intelligence-gathering mode. “Are there plans to Te’s palace? Layouts? Staff schedules? Any inside people we can count on?”
Mok’s face darkened. He kicked the table away, sending dishes clattering to the floor. “What do you think this is, a robbery?” he snapped. “Figure out your approach on your own!”
Kyoshi realized why he was so angry. Rangi’s questions had exposed him as not much of a tactician. He knew nothing of leadership besides making demands and doling out cruelties when they weren’t met.
Control by tantrum, Kyoshi thought. She had a label for the way Mok wielded power.
He stood up and dusted himself off. “I plan on being at Governor Te’s palace thirty days from now with my forces. I know how swift the Flying Opera Company tends to be, so if you arrive early, you should have all the time you need to prepare yourselves. But! I don’t want you acting on your own before we arrive. Do you hear me?”
I hear many things about you. “Of course, Uncle,” Kyoshi said. The clash of steel and a scream filled the air as she bowed.
The five of them stood outside their inn, not knowing what to say to each other. Fresh distance had come between them. Self-consciousness reigned supreme.
Kyoshi broke the silence. “Can we agree to leave this forsaken town first thing in the morning?”
“Yes,” Wong said. “I’m going to drink myself stupid until then. If I run into any of you, I’m going to pretend I don’t know you. Even if you challenge me.” He frowned. “Especially if you challenge me.” Wong stomped off into the darkness, disappearing beyond the glow of the nearest lantern.
Lek hadn’t spoken a word on the way back. His sleeve was plastered to his palm with dried blood, a good sign as far as his wound was concerned. But he was possessed by a rigid coldness that had Kyoshi worried.
“Lek,” she said before he vanished too, inside his own head. “Thank you. For standing up for me.”
He blinked and looked at her, as if they’d only met a minute ago. “Why wouldn’t I?” he said, caught waking up from a dream.
“I have to take care of his hand,” Kirima said. She looked at Rangi. “I’m not the best healer, so it’ll be awhile before I can get to your face.”
“I don’t need it,” Rangi said. She turned and walked away in the opposite direction of Wong, down the slope the town was built on.
“Rangi!” Kyoshi snapped. The Firebender didn’t listen to her. She was Kyoshi’s bodyguard. She was obligated to listen to her. “Get back here! Rangi!”
“After tonight’s display, she’s the safest person in Hujiang,” Kirima said. There was a sly edge to her smile. “But I still think you should go after her.”
Having grown up in Yokoya, Kyoshi had walked enough hills for two lifetimes. Going down fast threatened to buckle her ankles, strained at her knees. She found Rangi sitting at the edge of the shallow lake, less by light and more by heat. The Firebender was a dark silhouette curled up against the lapping water. Kyoshi entertained the notion of shoving her straight in.
“You want to tell me what that was about?” she yelled.
Rangi sneered at the question. “Mok was treating us like dung, and now, slightly less so. I impressed a daofei. Hasn’t that been our goal?”
“My mother’s gang belonged to my mother! Mok is a rabid animal whom we have no leverage with! It was a stupid risk!”
Rangi got to her feet. She’d been letting her toes dangle in the water, and now she stood ankle-deep in it.
“Of course it was!” she said. She nearly rammed her finger into Kyoshi’s chest out of instinct but caught herself. She wrung her hands out and forced them to remain at her side. “I did exactly what you’ve been doing this whole time!
“Let me tell you something,” Rangi said. “I blacked out when I got hit. If I hadn’t woken up quickly, that man would have killed me.”
Kyoshi’s mind went white with fury. After the fight ended, she’d assumed that Rangi had been faking unconsciousness to lure her opponent in. She wanted to march back to the barn and break the rest of his limbs.
“You know what you felt, watching me lie on the canvas?” Rangi said. “That helplessness? That sensation of your anchor being cut loose? That’s what I’ve been feeling, watching you, every single minute since we left Yokoya! I got on that platform so you could see it from my perspective! I had no idea what else would get through to you!”
She kicked at the surface of the lake, slicing a wave between them. For an instant she looked like a Waterbender. “I watch you throw yourself headlong into danger, over and over again, and for what? Some misguided attempt to bring Jianzhu ‘to justice’? Do you know what that even means anymore?”
“It means he’s gone for good,” Kyoshi snapped. “No longer walking this earth. That’s what it has to mean.”
“Why?” Rangi said, her eyes begging and combative at once. “Why do you need to do this so badly?”
“Because then I don’t have to be afraid of him, anymore!” Kyoshi screamed. “I’m scared, all right? I’m scared of him, and I don’t know what else will make it go away!”
Her words carried over the surface of the lake to any man and spirit who might be listening. Kyoshi’s obsession wasn’t the mark of a great hunter on a relentless stalk of her quarry. That was the lie that had sustained her. The truth was that she was a frightened child, running in different directions and hoping it would all work out for the best. She couldn’t feel safe with Jianzhu loose.
She heard it again. Those soft, sharp little breaths. Rangi was crying.
Kyoshi fought back her own tears. They wouldn’t have been as graceful. “Talk to me,” she said. “Please.”
“It wasn’t supposed to be like this,” Rangi said. She tried to smother herself with the palm of her hand. “It shouldn’t have gone this way.”
Kyoshi understood her friend’s disappointment. The shining new era the world was supposed to get after so many years of strife, the champion whom Rangi had trained to protect, had been stolen from them and replaced with . . . with Kyoshi.
“I know,” she said, her heart aching. “Yun would have been a much better—”
“No! Forget Yun, for once! Forget being the Avatar!” Rangi lost the battle to restrain herself and smacked Kyoshi hard across her collar. “It’s not supposed to be this way for you!”
Kyoshi went silent. Mostly because Rangi had hit her too hard, but also from surprise.
“You think you don’t deserve peace and happiness and good things, but you do!” Rangi yelled. “You, Kyoshi! Not the Avatar, but you!”
She closed the distance and wrapped her arms around Kyoshi’s waist. The embrace was a clever way to hide her face.
“Do you have any idea how painful it’s been for me to follow you on this journey where you’re so determined to punish yourself?” she said. “Watching you treat yourself like an empty vessel for revenge, when I’ve known you since you were a servant girl who couldn’t bend a pebble? The Avatar can be reborn. But you can’t, Kyoshi. I don’t want to give you up to the next generation. I couldn’t bear to lose you.”
Kyoshi realized she’d had it all wrong. Rangi was a true believer. But her greatest faith had been for her friends, not her assignment. She pulled Rangi in closer. She thought she heard a slight, contented sigh come from the other girl.
“I wish I could give you your due,” Rangi muttered after some time had passed. “The wisest teachers. Armies to defend you. A palace to live in.”
Kyoshi raised an eyebrow. “The Avatar gets a palace?”
“No, but you deserve one.”
“I don’t need it,” Kyoshi said. She smiled into Rangi’s hair, the soft strands caressing her lips. “And I don’t need an army. I have you.”
“Psh,” Rangi scoffed. “A lot of good I’ve been so far. If I were better at my job you would never feel scared. Only loved. Adored by all.”
Kyoshi gently nudged Rangi’s chin upward. She could no more prevent herself from doing this than she could keep from breathing, living, fearing.
“I do feel loved,” she declared.
Rangi’s beautiful face shone in reflection. Kyoshi leaned in and kissed her.
A warm glow mapped Kyoshi’s veins. Eternity distilled in a single brush of skin. She thought she would never be more alive than now.
And then—
The shock of hands pushing her away. Kyoshi snapped out of her trance, aghast.
Rangi had flinched at the contact. Repelled her. Viscerally, reflexively.
Oh no. Oh no.
This couldn’t—not after everything they’d been through—this couldn’t be how it—
Kyoshi shut her eyes until they hurt. She wanted to shrink until she vanished within the cracks of the earth. She wanted to become dust and blow away in the wind.
But the sound of laughter pulled her back. Rangi was coughing, drowning herself with her own tears and mirth. She caught her breath and retook Kyoshi by the hips, turning to the side, offering up the smooth, unblemished skin of her throat.
“That side of my face is busted up, stupid,” she whispered in the darkness. “Kiss me where I’m not hurt.”
THE BEAST
The morning sunrise had never been so warm. Kyoshi had slept better on the hard-packed shore of the lake, without a bedroll, than she had any of the nights spent camping between Chameleon Bay and Hujiang. Perhaps that was because she had her own fire now. She didn’t have to share it with anyone else.
Rangi murmured into the base of her neck, a soft thrumming sensation. A shadow loomed over them both. Kyoshi blinked until she saw a pair of leather boots next to her head. Kirima squatted down closer to their level, her hands on her knees and her chin in her hands.
“Have a nice night?” the Waterbender said, batting her eyelashes. She grinned wider than the open sky.
Kyoshi rose to her elbows. Rangi slid off her chest and thumped her head on the ground, startling awake. The leg she’d thrown across Kyoshi’s body reluctantly unwound itself.
“Must have been nice,” Kirima said, barely able to contain her laughter. “Sleeping under the stars. Just two friends. Having a close, private moment of friendship.”
Kyoshi rubbed the drowsiness out of her face. She could leap to her feet and deny everything. She had no idea what would happen if she and Rangi kept pulling on this thread together. Few people in the Earth Kingdom would react anywhere near as well as Kirima.
But ever since that day in Yokoya, when she’d learned her fate while her hands were still dusted in white flour, her life had been an endless refusal, full of secrets unhappily kept to their destructive ends. She was sick of denying herself.
Not this time. This time would be different. A steady thought. The drumbeat in her head and heart let her know the truth. She would never back down from how she felt about Rangi.
Rangi caught her gaze and smiled, making a slight, barely there nod. A ready if you are signal.
She was. And they were.
“It’s exactly what it looks like,” Kyoshi said. “You have a problem?”
Kirima shrugged and waved her fingers, dipping into a moment of quiet seriousness. “I’m not the type to give you grief over whom you love,” she said. Her mirth returned immediately. “I am, however, going to give you tremendous amounts of grief about romancing within your own brotherhood. That’s like doing laundry in the outhouse. It never ends clean.”
Kyoshi got up. “First off, we knew each other before we met you. Second, my parents founded this stupid gang, and they were obviously a pair!”
“Good to see you carrying on the family tradition,” Kirima said. “Jesa and Hark were mad about each other.”
Nothing could douse the moment for Kyoshi like a reminder of her parents. She wondered if they still kissed, made eyes, whispered jokes after they’d dropped her in Yokoya. Perhaps unburdening themselves had made their relationship all the sweeter. She didn’t want to ask.
The darkness of her abandonment must have boiled to her surface as the three of them trudged uphill back toward town, because Rangi ran the back of her nails down Kyoshi’s hand, a playful and teasing distraction that held more meaning now than a hundred volumes of history. Kyoshi nearly tripped and fell on her face.
If this was what being true to herself felt like, she could never go back. Her heart was nestled somewhere above her in the nearest cloud. She wanted to scoop up Rangi in her arms and run, stepping higher and higher using that technique she still had to learn, until they found it.
Kyoshi was so happy that Hujiang itself looked prettier in the new light of day. Splotches of color caught her eye that weren’t visible in the torchlight of the previous evening, blues
and reds from beyond the Earth Kingdom. The longhouses, she could see now, had individual touches like carved shrine alcoves and Fire Nation rugs hung over doors. It reminded her of the way ships would get personalities imprinted on them by their sailors. Dust had yet to be kicked up by the day’s business, and the air was cleaner, easier to breathe without the dingy haze.
They strolled through town—when was the last time Kyoshi had a stroll? Had she ever?—and sidestepped the strewn bodies of men who slept off hangovers, or beatings, or both. Kirima led them to one of the larger establishments, where she ducked through a door with one of its posts destroyed, like someone had been thrown out but not very accurately. She returned moments later, bending a large blob of water that she had to have found inside. It rolled down the steps like a slug.
Wong floated inside the reverse bubble, his head poking out the top. He snored comfortably.
“Wake up!” Kirima shouted. With a flick of her arms, the water froze. The big man jolted awake from the cold. He resembled a small iceberg with his face poking out of the summit.
“Ugh, leave me in this for a while,” he said, bleary-eyed.
Kirima liquified the water again, dropping him to his feet, and bent it away from his body, leaving him dry as a bone. She hurled the water back inside the building, where it landed with a giant splash. Someone inside screamed and sputtered.
“We’ve had enough of this town,” she said. Then she grinned at Kyoshi and Rangi, without any attempt to hide the meaning in her stare. “Or at least I have.”
Wong didn’t get the chance to interpret her stage gestures. A loud crashing noise from somewhere near the bazaar punctured the silence of the morning. It sounded like a house might have collapsed. Birds rose into the sky, fluttering in distress.
Rangi frowned and leaned her ear toward the disturbance. “Was that a landslide?”
“I don’t know,” Kirima said cautiously. “But the birds have the right idea.”
Now the clamor of men shouting in horror could be heard over the rooflines. “Never wait to find out what the trouble is,” Wong said, already jogging away from the source. “By then, you’re already too close.”
