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“The trail went cold in Taihua, and we lost a shirshu,” he said. He knifed a wax seal off a mail cylinder. “But that’s why we have the mated pair, isn’t it? Redundancy, the key to success.”
“Jianzhu,” Hei-Ran said. She seemed a little cold and withdrawn, sitting on his couch.
“Ba Sing Se is near Taihua.” The letter was from that brat Te. “I’ll bet they’re somewhere safe behind the wall
s. I’ll have to round up my contacts in all three rings.”
“Jianzhu!”
He looked up from the scroll.
“Stop,” she said. “It’s over.”
He looked at her carefully. There were several ways in which it could be over. It depended on what she knew. He waited for her to continue.
“I kept an eye on Hui’s movements while you were gone,” Hei-Ran said. “A little more than a week ago there was an explosion of activity coming from his offices. Letters, messengers, gold and silver being transferred.”
A little more than a week ago. That would have been Saiful’s message arriving in Hui’s hands. Hui’s understanding would be the partial truth, that the Avatar might have been taken by daofei. But he still thought Yun was the real deal. Hei-Ran knew the girl was the true Avatar but not the results of the tracking mission and the outlaw settlement in the mountains.
One had the latest news, the other more accurate news. He had to mind the asymmetry.
“Hui is acting on the information you gave him at the party,” Hei-Ran said. “He’s building a case with the other sages to take the Avatar away from you. If he’s made this much progress based solely on Yun having a falling-out with you, how do you think people will react to learning about Kyoshi?”
So far, that revelation had not gone well for anyone who’d heard it. “How do you think we should respond?”
Hei-Ran curled up on the couch, hugging her knees. She looked so young when she did that.
“I don’t want to respond,” she said. “I want to tell Hui and the sages the truth so they can help us extend the search. Jianzhu, I don’t care about the Avatar anymore. I want my daughter back.”
He was surprised at her lack of endurance. As far as she knew, her daughter and the Avatar weren’t in any particular danger. Of course, the reality was that they absolutely were, if they were in the hands of outlaws. But Hei-Ran didn’t know that.
Jianzhu sighed. Her daughter would never come back without the Avatar, the Avatar would never come back without . . . what, exactly? The wheels spun in his head. This was exhausting.
“Maybe you’re right,” Jianzhu said. “Maybe it is over. This farce has gone on for too long.”
Hei-Ran looked up hopefully.
“You said Hui started his moves a week ago.” Jianzhu scratched the underside of his chin. There was a scab there from where Saiful’s blade had nicked him. “It’ll take him at least another two weeks to send missives and get responses from all the sages who matter in the Earth Kingdom. They’ll gather in Gaoling or Omashu and then summon me to answer for my mistakes; that’s another week. That’s plenty of time to ready a statement of the truth.”
He shrugged. “We may even find Kyoshi before then. The facts will come out immediately in that case. I’d lose the Avatar, but you’d be reunited with your daughter.”
Hei-Ran was heartened. She got up and placed a hand on Jianzhu’s unshaven cheek, stroking him gently with her thumb.
“Thank you,” she whispered. “I know what you’re sacrificing. Thank you.”
He leaned into her hand, pressing it briefly to his face, and smiled at her. “I have a lot of unopened mail to get through.”
The smile vanished as the door to his study closed. Alone, he picked up Te’s letter again. He’d been right not to give Hei-Ran the full story. He’d always been by himself in this game.
The message from the boy governor was written in a sloppy, rushed hand, devoid of the flourishes that normally came with high-level correspondence. The only authentication was the personal seal, which officials kept on their person at all times. It was as if Te had written it from somewhere other than his palace and while in great distress.
At first, Jianzhu had been against installing such a young governor from a family with a history of corruption, but had eventually found it useful, the way the impressionable child looked up to him. He could pretty much get Te to do anything, including reporting threats to the Earth Kingdom to him first before warning the other sages. Like now.
The scroll crumpled in Jianzhu’s hands as he read about Xu Ping An’s jailbreak. His veins threatened to burst from his flesh and skitter away.
Against every inclination, Jianzhu had kept the leader of the Yellow Necks alive as a favor to his Fire Nation allies so they could study how the man was capable of bending lightning. It was a skill so rare that some thought it a folktale or a secret that had been lost to the ages. Either way, it made Xu a valuable, dangerous specimen. And Te, who owned one of the most defensible prisons in the region, had managed to let him escape.
Jianzhu furiously scanned Te’s account of the events, fully expecting to keel over and die from anger. Instead, farther down the page, he found salvation.
