by F. C. Yee
If that wasn’t ancient wisdom, it should have been. They followed him briskly back toward the inn. Hopefully Lek and Lao Ge were both there, ready to fly. Judging by how fast the ruckus was catching up, they wouldn’t have time to search the town on Pengpeng.
A horrendous snorting, choking sound rolled through the streets. Back in her mansion days, Kyoshi had once seen an ambassador bring a pet poodle monkey that was so inbred in the name of “cuteness” that it had trouble breathing through its miniaturized snout. That was what she heard now, on a scale a thousand times larger. The exhortations of a creature that would never get its fill of air.
Two men ran screaming out of a longhouse, right on their heels. An instant later, the building front exploded, planks and beams torn to shreds by a dark, wiry mass that writhed with fury. A rope or a whip flung out with the speed of a cable under tension and lashed the men across the back. They fell to the ground, skidding on their faces, momentum making their legs scorpion over their heads.
“Tui’s gills!” Kirima shouted. “What is that thing!?”
Behind them was a beast that Kyoshi had never seen the likes of before, a black-and-brown four-legged monstrosity that stood higher at the shoulder than some of the huts. It managed to be hulking with muscle and yet lissome as a serpent at the same time. Claws as long and sharp as sickle blades reaped at the ground, opening damp wounds under the dusty surface.
But the most hideous part of the creature was its dark void of a face. The furry, elongated skull had no eyes, only a flowering pink snout that wriggled with its own fleshy protuberances. It was as if a parasite from another world had attached itself to the nose of an earthly beast and taken control over the entire animal. Two large dark holes, nostrils, sucked air in all directions until they pointed straight at Kyoshi.
She backed away slowly, ineffectually, surprised she could manage that. The nausea of terror chained her, robbed her of survival instinct. Her skin felt wet and cold.
Again, was the only thought running through her mind. Again, Jianzhu had loosed a nightmare on her, an inhuman specter that would drag her away into the darkness, screaming. It had to be him. There was no one else who could have scraped the depths of her fear like this. Somehow, she knew in her bones it was he who taunted her with this living aberration.
A wall of earth shot up between her and the animal. She hadn’t bent it.
“What are you doing?” Wong roared as he followed through on his attack. “Either fight or run! Don’t stand there where we can’t help you!”
The monster clambered over the wall he made with ease, its claws letting it climb as fast as it ran. Kirima pulled more water from a nearby trough and smashed at the beast’s shoulders, trying to knock it off-balance. Rangi kicked low sheets of flame at the places it tried to land its forepaws, reasoning that it was as effective to break an animal’s root as it was a normal opponent.
That’s right, Kyoshi thought. I’m not alone this time.
The street was wide enough to accommodate her earthbending weakness. She knifed at the air in front of her, and the entire surface of the road began to grind and shift. A fissure opened, and one of the animal’s paws fell in. If she could close the gap fast enough, she could pin it by the—
The monster, rather than avoid the jaws of her trap, dove headfirst into the rift. Its entire body disappeared belowground, leaving a pile of castings behind.
“This thing can burrow!?” Kirima sounded more aggrieved than afraid, like an experienced gambler discovering the table they’d joined was blatantly rigged against them.
Kyoshi felt vibrations beneath her. It was impossible not to, with a creature that size, but they were indistinct and directionless. Not a help in this situation.
“Spread out,” Rangi said, eying the ground.
“Shouldn’t we stay close?” Kyoshi said.
“No,” Rangi said. “Then it’ll get more than one of us in a single bite.”
Kyoshi may have been feeling warm with newfound camaraderie for her gang, but no one had told Wong and Kirima. After hearing Rangi, they immediately leaped onto the roof of the nearest house, elements trailing below the soles of their feet, leaving her and Kyoshi down below.
The soil loosened around them, a perfect circle caving in. Rangi tackled Kyoshi out of the center of the formation, boosting herself sideways with flame jets from her feet. They landed hard on their sides, shoulders bruising. The creature burst through the surface, rearing toward the sky, the ground giving birth to a shape of death that blacked out the sun above.
There was a zipping sound, and then a thud. The animal screamed, and its claws came down short of Kyoshi and Rangi’s bodies. It shook its head furiously.
Another impact, and this time Kyoshi saw it. A smooth, fist-sized stone had struck the beast hard on the tip of its sensitive nose, sending it reeling. She looked up and made out Lek’s silhouette on the roof of their inn, the sun behind him shrouding his face.
“Move, maybe?” he shouted.
A hail of perfectly aimed stones gave them cover, each missile landing uncannily on the one spot that the animal seemed to feel pain, no matter how much it thrashed about. It backed away, trying to hide its nose. As Kyoshi and Rangi fled toward Lek, several arrows struck it in the hindquarters. It turned to face the new threat.
The daofei had gotten over their surprise and were now mobbing the beast, thrusting spears at it and pricking its fur with shortbows. They sought the glory of bringing it down. The animal lashed out with its tongue, sending a row of men falling to the ground, but more swordsmen-turned-hunters stepped over their limp bodies to replace them.
Kyoshi didn’t care to understand the bizarre scene playing out before her. She and the rest of the group ran for the hills.
They arrived at Pengpeng’s cave in the mountainside winded, their legs and lungs burning, to find Lao Ge feeding the bison a pile of cabbages. He tossed them one at a time high in the air for Pengpeng to catch between her broad, flat teeth. There was probably no use asking him how he’d acquired the produce.
“A lot of help you were!” Lek shouted. He was assuming, like Kyoshi was at this point, that Lao Ge was completely aware of what had transpired.
The old man gave him a pitying look. “Fighting a shirshu? That’s just a bad investment of effort. I left as soon as I felt it coming.”
“You knew what that abomination was?” Kirima said.
“It’s a legendary subterranean beast that hunts by scent,” he explained dismissively, like they would have known this if they’d paid better attention to his ramblings. “Supposedly it can track its quarry across stone, water, dirt, thin air. In the old days, Earth Kings would use them to execute their political enemies. For the traitor, let them be hounded by shirshu until they drop where they stand, far from their homes and the bones of their ancestors.”
Lao Ge fed Pengpeng another cabbage. “Or at least that’s how the saying went. Shirshu haven’t been seen in the wild for at least a generation, so I assume this one was being used to hunt a fugitive too. Same as in the days of yore.”
Kyoshi felt Lek’s gaze boring into her. “It was going for you,” he said. “I could see it from the roof of the inn. It was sniffing out your scent. You brought it here.”
She hesitated. Had she been as smooth as Yun, she could have come up with a convincing denial on the spot.
Before she could say anything, she was preempted by the metallic clanking of blades rattling in their scabbards. They leaned over the cave ledge to see a party of swordsmen down below. At the back of the group, exhorting them onward, was Brother Wai. Mok’s inquisitor looked like he wished to speak with whomever he was searching for, very much.
“I can explain,” Kyoshi said quickly. “But maybe once we’re in the air?”
There was silent and unanimous agreement as they scrambled onto Pengpeng. The truth took a back seat to survival.
THE AVATAR’S MASTERS
Pengpeng graced the skies over the plains of Ba Sing Se.
The Impenetrable City watched them pass like a silent sentry, the monolithic brown walls a blank face devoid of features.
Kyoshi watched the capital sail by. Somewhere in the center of those titanic fortifications was the Earth King, nominally the most powerful person on the continent, with armies to command and the wealth of the world at his disposal. Though she’d never dug deep into history lessons, she knew that the records were full of instances where Avatars and Earth Kings came to each other’s aid.
And yet she couldn’t go ask him for help. There were no means for a peasant to approach the Earth King that wouldn’t result in immediate refusal, or capture, or death. Moreover, courts and cities were Jianzhu’s realm. He’d spent decades cultivating influence among the bureaucrats of Ba Sing Se. Barging in there would be no better than surrendering to Governor Deng back in Chameleon Bay.
She looked at her parents’ gang. These were the only people she could trust, as sad as that was. Out there was a city that essentially belonged to her enemy. Her allies could fit on the back of a single bison.
And they weren’t happy with her right now.
“All right, spill it,” Kirima snapped. “Who is this man you’re feuding with? You said he was a rich and powerful sage. Which one, exactly? Tell us the truth!”
Kyoshi stared at the saddle floor. Before, she’d felt within her rights, keeping his name a secret. But the decision seemed completely foolish in retrospect.
“. . . Jianzhu,” Kyoshi said weakly. “Jianzhu, the companion of Kuruk.”
“The Architect?” Lao Ge said, rubbing his chin. “You aim high, my dear. I’m impressed.”
The rest of them were not as amused. Their jaws dropped in chorus. “Jianzhu the Gravedigger!?” Lek yelled. “You picked a fight with the Gravedigger!?”
“I didn’t pick the fight!” Kyoshi protested. “I wasn’t lying when I said he killed two people I loved!”
“Oh no, we believe that!” Kirima shouted. “We can believe that plenty! That man has a higher body count than septapox!”
“And you ticked him off so badly that he sent a beast out of myth to track you all the way into the Taihua Mountains,” Wong said with a sigh. “We might as well jump off Pengpeng right now and save ourselves the trouble.”
“Thanks a lot, you numbskull!” Lek said. “We had a chance of surviving Mok, but if the Butcher of Zhulu Pass wants you feeding the worms, then it’s only a matter of time before he puts you and us belowground!”
So Kyoshi wasn’t the only one terrified of him. It was a small comfort, but a comfort nonetheless, that made her feel like she was standing on firmer footing. Outlaws were perhaps the one group who would understand how brutal and dangerous Jianzhu really was.
She closed her eyes. She hadn’t known these people for very long. But to her own surprise more than anyone’s, she would have felt intolerably guilty if Jianzhu’s efforts to capture her caused them any grievous harm. They deserved . . . not to be swindled, was the way she’d put it. They were owed the full story.
“He’s not trying to kill me,” Kyoshi said. “He doesn’t want me dead.”
“Well, that would be new for him!” Kirima said. “How are you so privy to his inner thoughts and goals?”
“Because.” She took a deep breath to steady herself. “I’m the Avatar.”
It was the first time she’d ever knowingly said the truth out loud. Somehow she’d managed to avoid speaking those three specific words in that specific order to Rangi the night they fled Yokoya in the drenching rain. Rangi had already known the Avatar was either her or Yun, so context had sufficed.
Kyoshi’s confession hung in the air, as visible as smoke. She waited for the rest of them to recover from the blow that had staggered Rangi, Kelsang, and everyone else who belonged to the small circle of knowledge at one point in time or another. They might have needed a moment to recalibrate their view of the world . . .
“Ha!” Lek said. “Ha!”
. . . Or maybe they’d just laugh in her face?
Lek rolled back on the floor of the saddle, finding her moment of ultimate honesty a good joke, a relief from his jangled nerves. “You, the Avatar? Man, I have heard some whoppers, but that might be the best yet!”
“I know I let you gloss over a bunch of the oaths,” Kirima said to her. “But at least five of them are about never lying to your sworn family.”
“She is the Avatar!” Rangi said. “Why do you think she has a Fire Nation bodyguard?”
“Dunno,” Wong said with a shrug. He pointed his thumb at Kirima. “Why do you think we’ve got her?”
The Waterbender gave him a dirty look before continuing. “Look, you can believe in your weird little two-person cult all you want,” she said to Kyoshi. “Just tell us what you stole from the Gravedigger. You wouldn’t be the first servant who bungled a theft and had to flee from their angry boss.”
Kyoshi couldn’t believe it. She’d had it all wrong. She’d thought that her Avatarhood was the final secret, a gilded treasure that needed to be kept in a series of locked chests until the exact right moment. It turned out that without proof, the information was worth less than the paper it was written on. She squeezed one of the fans in her belt out of frustration.
“Do you even bend all four elements?” Wong said. “Do you?”
“I firebent once,” she said, realizing how stupid she sounded as she said it. “Under duress. It, uh, came out of my mouth. Like dragon’s breath.” She thought about trying to do a Fire Fist, but it felt like a bad idea, given the lack of space and how badly her last one went.
“Yeah, I once got food poisoning from dodgy fire flakes too,” Lek said. “Doesn’t mean I’m the reincarnation of Yangchen.”
“Well, I believe her,” Lao Ge said with a proud, upturned chin. Judging by the others’ expressions, his endorsement had the opposite effect.
“Okay, okay,” Kirima said. “Everyone calm down. Take a breather. Let’s consider this rationally for a minute. Assuming she is the—KYOSHI, THINK FAST!”
She’d uncorked her water skin with a sleight of hand. A pellet of liquid flew at Kyoshi’s face.
Kyoshi made an undignified squeal that should have disqualified her from holding any office whatsoever. She still couldn’t bend any piece of earth smaller than a house, and the water aimed at her eyes made her flinch like a prickle snake had wandered into her sleeping bag. She threw her arms over her face.
“Spirits above,” Lek whispered.
Her cheeks burned in shame. Sure, she looked bad, but that bad?
“Kyoshi,” Rangi said, breathless and thrilled. “Kyoshi!”
The fan she’d been holding had come out of her belt as she clenched up in surprise. She was gripping it the wrong way, like a dagger. The tip of the weapon pointed to the little blob of water hovering in midair.
“Is that you?” Rangi said to Kirima. The stunned Waterbender shook her head.
Rangi dove at Kyoshi. The water fell on her back, splashing them both. She squeezed Kyoshi in a ferocious embrace. “You did it!” she yelled. “You bent another element!”
As Kyoshi struggled to breathe with an ecstatic Firebender wrapped around her neck, she stared at the fan in her hand. Her mother’s weapon had made the difference somehow, in both the element and the amount. She was sure of it.
She looked up at the faces of the daofei. Lao Ge had a cool, knowing expression, but the rest were shocked into submission. They’d been smuggling valuable cargo the whole time.
They settled down in one of the innumerable abandoned quarries that supplied the middle and upper rings of Ba Sing Se. The marker of wealth for most Earth Kingdom citizens was whether your house was built with stone from the ground below it. The farther the rock had to travel, the fancier it was.
This quarry followed a seam of marble. The small canyon had been mined out in perfectly square blocks, leaving the edges protruding with right angles. They landed on a flat surface of swirled gray and white, resembling tiny figures on a giant fou
ntain basin. The regularity of the stone fractures laid on top of the natural rock formations made Kyoshi’s vision blur.
The first sign that something was off was Wong. He dismounted first and then reached up to help Kyoshi down. She frowned, assuming he was more likely to pick her pocket than act as a footman. She jumped off the other side of the saddle.
Once they were all on solid ground, the original members of the Flying Opera Company backed away from her. “We need a moment to confer,” Kirima said.
Kyoshi and Rangi shared uncertain glances with each other while the daofei huddled on the far side of the marble cube, murmuring and whispering. Occasionally one of them would poke their head up like a singing groundhog and give Kyoshi a hard, assessing stare before returning to their debate.
“If they turn on us,” Rangi whispered sideways through a forced smile, “I want you to take Pengpeng and run. I’ll buy you time to escape.”
Kyoshi found that scenario too distressing to think about. The sudden end of the gang’s discussion forced her backbone straighter. They filed back over to Kyoshi and Rangi, as grim and wary and determined as the first night they’d met. Kyoshi sucked in her breath through her teeth as Lek stepped forward, a mirror of that night they’d almost come to blows.
“It’s been our honor to have traveled with the Avatar,” he said. “We regret that we have to part ways.” They bowed in unison. Not using the daofei salute, but with their hands formally at their sides.
Kyoshi blinked. “Huh?”
“It doesn’t have to be right now, if that’s not to your wishes,” Kirima said. “I suppose you might want the night to plan your next move and leave us in the morning.”
It was the politeness more than anything that threw her off. “Huh?”
They seemed as confused as she was. “You’re the Avatar,” Wong said. “You can’t stay with people like us. It’d be an offense to the spirits or something.”
