by F. C. Yee
“Closer still,” Mok said. They crowded around him. Kyoshi noticed Lek was on the flank, in the most danger. His head was low and still. She regretted not standing between him and the daofei leader.
“I didn’t get the chance to bid you farewell in Hujiang,” Mok said. “You missed the excitement.” He stared pointedly at Rangi and Kyoshi. There was no evidence to link them to the shirshu attack, but a man like him wouldn’t need it. They were the pieces that didn’t fit, and that was enough.
“A great beast came on the morning you left,” he continued. “It killed several of my best men. What do the two of you have to say about that?”
Wai drew his knife before Kyoshi could answer. It was Lek, brave, stupid Lek, who either never learned or was too selfless for his own good, who spoke up for her again. “We don’t know anything about that, Uncle. Kyoshi and Rangi aren’t to blame.”
Wai lunged.
Certainty lent Kyoshi a speed she never knew she had. In one swift motion she caught Wai’s knife hand before it reached Lek, pinned it to the desk by his wrist, and drew her fan with her other hand. She kept the heavy weapon closed as she smashed it like a hammer on Wai’s fingers, breaking them in a single blow.
The knife clattered to the ground. The eyes of the Flying Opera Company were as big and wide as the moon overhead. Everyone was shocked into silence, including Wai, who seemed numbed by sheer disbelief from the pain coursing up his arm.
“Forgive me, Uncles,” Kyoshi said, finding it supremely easy to speak now. “I saw a poisonous insect and thought to save your lives.”
Wai clutched his broken hand and bared his teeth at Kyoshi, a vine cobra about to spit.
She was still calm. “But if Uncle Wai believes my actions inappropriate, he can always teach me the meaning of discipline on the lei tai, after our mission is over.”
Mok leaned back in his chair and crowed with laughter. “So much progress in only a few weeks! This is the influence I have on people. Come, Kyoshi. Since your brothers and sisters have had their tongues stolen by a spirit, tell me what plans you’ve come up with since we last saw each other.”
She carried on as if nothing had happened, ignoring the surprise of her friends and the fury of Wai. She’d heard the strategizing between Rangi and Kirima enough times to be convincing. “We believe the prison where your—our—sworn brother is being held is below the northeast courtyard. Assuming it was constructed at the same time as the oldest part of the palace, we should be able to defeat the security.”
He noticed her pause. “But?”
“Provided we have enough time. If Te’s guards choose to defend the prison, our group alone may never be able to spring our man. There’s also a chance that if we show our hand too early, they realize what we’re doing and preemptively kill the hostage.”
“Then it’s as I anticipated,” Mok said, stroking his chin like a wise man. “We’ll need a direct attack in concert with your clandestine efforts.” Kyoshi had to give him some measure of credit. He did foresee this outcome back in Hujiang.
Mok reached inside the desk and pulled out two sticks of timing incense. Kyoshi watched him pluck Wai’s knife off the ground and carefully cut them to the same length before handing them to Rangi. “If you would, my lovely.”
She lit both tips with one finger and handed one back to Mok.
“Get to your positions,” he said. “We attack in one hour.”
The Flying Opera Company bowed and got out of there as fast as they could. Step one had been passed. Rangi cradled the timing incense as they left the camp, trying to shield it from breezes that might accelerate the burn and throw them off schedule.
One hour, Kyoshi thought. In the distance a few bright lights from the palace could be seen, the fires lit by servants like her for cooking and warmth, lanterns carried by guards like the watchmen who always greeted her kindly at the gates of Jianzhu’s mansion. She looked at the Kang Shen acolytes working themselves into a frenzy, vulnerable and naked but for their faith. One hour until blood was spilled.
“Steady on,” Lao Ge whispered to her.
His words, meant to be comfort, only reminded her. One hour until she became the killer she was trying to be.
Lek, Kirima, and Wong hustled them back to camp. “What’s the rush?” Rangi said, covering the dwindling stick of incense. “There’s no reason to be hasty at this point.” She and Kyoshi were already wearing their armor.
“We have to put on our faces,” Kirima said. She rummaged around her limited belongings. “It’s tradition before a job.”
Lek failed to find what he was looking for and grunted. “I forgot we left Chameleon Bay in a hurry,” he said. “I’m out. Does anyone else have some makeup they can spare?”
Kyoshi blinked, having difficulty comprehending. “I . . . do? I think there was some in my mother’s trunk, along with the fans?”
Wong helped himself to Kyoshi’s rucksack until he found the large kit of makeup that had been completely neglected until now. “It would be a disgrace for an opera troupe to perform barefaced. And stupid for thieves not to hide their identities.”
Kyoshi remembered. Classical opera was performed by actors wearing certain patterns of makeup that corresponded with stock characters. The tiger-monkey spirit, a popular trickster hero, always had a black cleft of paint running down his orange face. Purple meant sophistication and culture, and often appeared on wise-mentor types. Her mother’s journal had mentioned the makeup, but she’d overlooked it in favor of the more practical fans. And the headdress. Didn’t she have a headdress too?
Wong brought the kit to her and opened it. “It looks like the good stuff, from Ba Sing Se, so it hasn’t dried out,” he said. “I’ll do yours first. It takes practice to put on your own face correctly.”
Kyoshi shuddered at the thought of the oily paste on her skin but decided not to complain. “Wait a second,” she said. “There’s nothing in here but red and white.” The indentations that should have held an assortment of colors had been filled multiple times over with deep crimson and an eggshell-colored pigment. There was a small amount of black kohl as well, but not enough to cover the whole face.
“Those are our colors,” Wong said as he dipped his thumb and began to gently apply the paint to her cheeks. “White symbolizes treachery, a sinister nature, suspicion of others, and the willingness to visit evil deeds upon them.”
Kyoshi could hear Rangi snort so loudly Te might have heard it in his palace.
“But,” Wong said, scooping into the other side of the case with his forefinger. “Red symbolizes honor. Loyalty. Heroism. This is the face that we show our sworn brothers and sisters. The red is the trust we have for each other, buried in the field of white but always showing through in our gaze.”
Kyoshi closed her eyes and let him put more paint on.
“Done,” Wong said. He smoothed the last of the black eyeliner on her brow and stepped back to examine his handiwork. “I can’t promise it’ll stop a sharp rock or an arrow, but I can guarantee you’ll feel braver. It always does that for me.”
“Lean down,” Kirima said. She’d pilfered the headdress out of Kyoshi’s bag while her eyes were closed. “You’re wearing your mother’s face, so you should wear her crown as well.”
Kyoshi lowered her head so that Kirima could place the band around it. She’d never tried on the headdress before. It fit like it had been made for her.
She rose to her full height. “How do I look?” she asked.
Wong held up a tiny mirror that had been nestled in the lid of the makeup kit while Rangi angled the glow of the incense so she could see. The glass wasn’t wide enough to display her entire face, just a slash of reflection running down the arc of gold atop her brow, across her flaring eye, and over the corner of her reddened mouth.
The narrow mirror resembled a tear in the veil of the universe, and from the land that lay beyond the other side, a powerful, imperturbable, eternal being stared back at Kyoshi. A being that could pass
as an Avatar someday. “I’m not thrilled you’re wearing daofei colors,” Rangi said, biting her lip as she smiled. “But you look beautiful.”
“You look terrifying,” Lek added.
A lifetime ago, Kyoshi had never thought she would be either of those things. “Then it’s perfect.”
THE RAID
They crept to the staging point, a small promontory a few hundred feet from the walls of the palace. They huddled around Rangi and watched the timing incense die out in her fingers, the last embers lighting their painted faces. Kyoshi glanced at the group, their features muted or exaggerated by strokes of red on white. Even Rangi and Lao Ge had donned the colors. The markings tied them together.
The incense crumbled to where Rangi could no longer hold it. “Go,” she whispered.
Lek dust-stepped to the top of the boulder they were hiding behind. He grabbed his sleeve and pulled it up over his shoulder, exposing a long, wiry arm wrapped in more thin leather straps than Kyoshi had previously thought.
He shook his elbow forward, and the bindings released, revealing the pocket of a sling.
Rangi, Kirima, and Wong took off running for the palace.
Without slowing his motion, Lek kicked a stone bullet the size of a fist into the air and snatched it up in the sling pocket. The projectile whined with speed as it whirled around his head, accelerated with bending. As he stood astride the rock, legs bracing against the powerful momentum of the bullet, his face tranquil with concentration, he looked much older to Kyoshi. Less a boy, and more a young man in his element.
He let the stone fly. Kyoshi could barely see the guard on the roof he was aiming at and would have guessed that such a target was too impractical to hit, but Lek’s talents—physical, or bending, or both—created a tiny plink sound off in the distance. The blurry shape that was the guard dropped out of view.
Lek was already winding up his next shot before the first one landed. Rangi and the others closed the gap. They were within spotting distance of the guards. He loosed the second stone.
But right as he let go of the sling end, a horn blasted through the silence of the night. It came from the south. The daofei forces had decided to announce their presence.
The sudden noise fouled Lek’s throw. He swore and immediately threw his hands out in a bending stance. Kyoshi watched in disbelief as he applied some kind of invisible pressure to the flying stone. She couldn’t see any of the results, but from the way he let out a relieved breath when another plink went off, the shot landed. It had happened in an instant. His distance control had to be on par with Yun’s. Maybe better.
“Go!” Lek shouted at Kyoshi, not interested in her admiration. “Mok and those idiots have blown our cover! Go!”
Kyoshi and Lao Ge started carrying out their portion of the plan. They sprinted down the hillside toward the southern fields of the palace. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw three figures climbing into the air to vault atop the eastern wall, one of them with twinkling feet as if she were stepping on starlight.
The plain across from the main gate filled with swordsmen charging at the complex. As Rangi had predicted, the front ranks were nothing but fodder for Te’s unseen Earthbenders, who lacked Lek’s accuracy but didn’t need it. The first stones arced through the air from the direction of the palace, pulverizing the unprotected Kang Shen acolytes. The missiles bounced farther, carving swathes through the daofei behind them. Screams of pain and anger filled the air.
The outlaws ignored their casualties and picked up speed. Kyoshi and Lao Ge were headed right for the killing ground between them and the palace.
Lao Ge got behind Kyoshi and tapped her twice on the shoulder. “Go!” he shouted.
She took a deep breath, still on the run, and embraced the earth fully.
“We can’t let Mok anywhere near the palace,” Kyoshi said. “He’ll kill everyone inside.”
Rangi and Kirima looked up at her from their positions on the overlook. They needed a break from surveying the complex anyway. “There’s no way we can prevent him from taking it in the long run,” Rangi said. “Do you want to flip to Te’s side and try to fight them off?”
Kyoshi shook her head. “I don’t think slaughtering Mok’s forces is the answer.”
“But if Mok doesn’t launch his assault, then our team will be sitting turtle ducks,” Kirima said. “You’re telling us we need to think of a way to attack the palace with an army, save the lives of everyone inside the palace, keep the army from killing itself, and rescue a prisoner from inside the walls?”
Lao Ge never said that she wasn’t allowed to seek help in answering his riddles. It was the time-honored Earth Kingdom tradition. Cheating on a test with the help of your friends. “That’s exactly what I’m telling you.”
“We can’t make all sorts of fancy plans when we only have a handful of benders,” Rangi said.
Kyoshi grimaced. She had to get used to exercising her prerogative, and she might as well start now.
“What kind of plans would you make if you had the Avatar?” she asked.
Kyoshi ran into the ground, descending on a fifty-foot-wide ramp of her own making. The earth yawned to accept her, parting ways to create a titanic furrow that piled the spare dirt to the left and right. Aoma and Suzu could go jump off a pier. Kyoshi had grown up in Yokoya just as much as they had. She did know about farming matters. And now she was plowing the ground with more force than the entirety of the village’s Earthbenders.
Arrows and stones passed harmlessly overhead. She leveled out once she hit a depth of fifty feet—why not keep things square and tidy?—and kept running across the southern field with Lao Ge keeping pace, creating an impassable trench behind her.
It had become clear during their surveillance that Te’s palace had a critical security weakness. It lacked a moat. Kyoshi was providing one for him, free of charge.
“Would you be able to handle going faster?” Lao Ge shouted above the bone-crushing noise.
She nodded. There was no fatigue. No strain. Her bending had changed. To cut loose like this with her full power instead of trying to squeeze it through tiny holes was energizing. It was the difference between eating a bowl of rice one grain at a time versus taking huge, satisfying bites.
Lao Ge bent a section of the ground around them, and suddenly the two of them were surfing on a platform of earth while Kyoshi kept shoving the soil out of their way.
“No sense in traveling by foot when we don’t have to,” he said.
In this manner it took them no time at all to round the corners of Te’s palace and encapsulate it in the trench. She couldn’t see aboveground, but she imagined surprise on the faces of the guards and the daofei, sheer murder on Mok’s and Wai’s. She had to hope that phase two of the plan would appease them. The Flying Opera Company still had a promise to fulfill.
“Watch out now,” Lao Ge said. “I know you can’t dust-step yet.”
He raised his hands and the platform rose out of the trench. It soared past ground level and onto the eastern roof of the palace, where it crumbled underneath their feet, leaving them standing on the shingles in the exact spot where Kirima, Wong, and Rangi waited for them, bathed in the moonlight.
“Right on time,” Kirima said.
“Are the guards crowded in the southern wall?” Kyoshi asked. She’d created a standoff between them and the daofei, and she needed them staying in place.
“Enough of them,” Rangi said. “You have to move quickly though.”
This rally point left them temporarily exposed, but it had been chosen for a reason. It lay right above the overlarge, over-deep turtle-duck pond. And they had clear sight of the glowing full moon above.
Kyoshi drank its light, feeling its push and pull as Kirima had taught her, her muscles loosening from the rigidity of earthbending into the relaxed, flowing state of water. She took a stance and beckoned at the pond.
She knew little of advanced waterbending forms, but that wasn’t necessary right now. Nor did s
he require her fans yet. For this feat, Kyoshi would provide the power, like a draft beast, and Kirima would apply control. As Waterbenders, the two of them would be greatly enhanced by the full moon, like tides rising in a bay.
The sleeping turtle ducks quacked awake in panic and fled as the surface of the water bulged upward. Kyoshi lifted the blob of liquid higher and higher. Where it threatened to protrude too far and spill, Kirima gently nudged it back into place with the skill of a surgeon. The mass of water looked like a jellynemone, pulsating and floating along the current.
Kyoshi felt an impact against her ribs and nearly let the water out of her grip. She looked down to see a tear in the fabric of her jacket and a small metal point broken off in the links of the chainmail underneath. She’d taken a glancing blow from an arrow.
A few guardsmen poured out of the opposite end of the courtyard. “We’ll cover you!” Rangi said. “Go!” Everyone who couldn’t waterbend leaped off the roof.
“All right, Kyoshi!” Kirima shouted. “Drop the hammer!”
Kyoshi relaxed and lowered her center of gravity with such vigor that it felt like her skeleton outraced her muscles. The heavy formation of water punched through the interior wall of the southern portion of the compound, rushing in through the breach. There was so much that it would flood every corridor from wall to wall, floor to ceiling. Little windows and vents dotting the interior walls gave them the line of sight they needed, though with this amount of water, it was hard not to feel the element’s presence intuitively.
The locations of the screams told them it was working. The guardsmen who’d been focusing on the daofei assault, concentrated in the southern fortifications, were being violently scrubbed from their posts.
Kyoshi and Kirima swept the tidal wave from left to right, then around the corner to the west for good measure, before releasing the pressure. They wanted to knock the soldiers out, not drown them. With a synchronized pull, they burst a portion of the west wall, letting the water flow into the other courtyard. Piles of groaning, coughing bodies spilled through the gap.
