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“I can be convincing when I need to be.” He sat down next to her bed and gently applied the knife to the cotton wrappings on her left arm.
There was a rasp of the sharp edge on the cloth, of fibers giving way, that made her shiver. “You looked lost in thought when I came in,” Lao Ge said. “Are you regretting killing Xu?”
He pierced the first layer and she contemplated screaming for help. “No,” she said. “I feel bad about letting Te live.”
Lao Ge gave her an exasperated look and wagged the knife. “You know, we can rectify that pretty easily.”
“That’s not what I mean. I told you I accepted the responsibility of saving him, and I’m not turning back on my choice.” She rolled her lips between her teeth. “It’s more like I feel . . . inconsistent. Unfair. Like I should have either killed them both or let them both live.”
Lao Ge started rolling the severed end of the bandage into a round bale. “A general sends some troops to die in a siege and holds others back in reserve. A king taxes half his lands to support the other. A mother has one dose of medicine and two sick children. I wouldn’t call your situation a particularly exalted one.”
Her mentor had a way of cutting her down to size. “People of all walks, high and low, choose to hurt some and help others,” he said. “I can tell you it’ll only get worse the more you embrace your Avatarhood.”
“Worse?” she said. “Shouldn’t it become easier over time?”
“Oh no, my dear girl. It’ll never get easier. If you had a strict rule, maybe, to always show mercy or always punish, you could use it as a shield to protect your spirit. But that would be distancing yourself from your duty. Determining the fates of others on a case-by-case basis, considering the infinite combinations of cir
cumstance, will wear on you like rain on the mountain. Give it enough time, and you’ll bear the scars.”
He spoke out of kindness and sorrow, perhaps not as immutable as he claimed to be. “You will never be perfectly fair, and you will never be truly correct,” Lao Ge said. “This is your burden.”
To keep deciding, over and over again. Kyoshi didn’t know if she could take the strain.
Lao Ge started on her other arm. “What I’m curious about is what you’ll do next,” he said. “Do you feel strong enough to take your man now?”
Kyoshi was distracted by the smell coming from her unwashed hand. “What?”
The old man tut-tutted. “Some seeker of vengeance you are. Your quest. Your ultimate goal. You defeated the same enemy Jianzhu did. Do you feel strong enough to take him down now?”
Kyoshi hadn’t thought about her fight with Xu in those terms, that the leader of the Yellow Necks might be a yardstick to measure herself against Jianzhu by. It seemed like an oversimplification.
And yet.
She didn’t give him an answer. Lao Ge finished unwinding her second arm. She flexed her pale and wrinkled fingers. The pain was gone, but her hands were mottled and shiny, missing their lines and prints in some areas.
“Go,” Lao Ge said. “See your friends. I have some business to take care of on my own.”
“Don’t kill Te,” Kyoshi said. She was pretty sure the boy had ridden to safety, out of the reach of Tieguai the Immortal, but it was worth mentioning anyway. “Not after I went through the trouble.”
Lao Ge made an innocent face and pocketed the knife he’d been using.
“I mean it!” she yelled.
Kyoshi washed her hands in a basin and went to the next room. The Flying Opera Company had been sleeping there, the bedrolls laid out on the empty floor. Rangi and Lek were the only two members present, playing a game of Pai Sho that Lek scrutinized with intense concentration and Rangi looked bored with. Judging from the layout of the pieces, she’d been toying with him, making blunders on purpose.
She glanced up and gave Kyoshi a smile that could melt the poles. “You’re on your feet again.”
“I’ve been off them too long,” Kyoshi said. She’d inherited the group’s need for safety in motion. “I don’t feel right staying in the same town for so many days straight.”
“The rest of us agreed we weren’t going anywhere until you were a hundred percent better,” Lek said. “Kyoshi, you took a lot of . . . lightning bolts? Honestly, I don’t know how you’re alive.”
He turned to Rangi like it was her fault for not knowing what Xu was. “I mean, I’ve never met a Firebender other than you. Is that some kind of dirty trick you people pull out to win Angi Kois or whatever?”
“No!” Rangi protested. “Bending lightning is a skill so rare that there are barely any living witnesses who can confirm it exists! And the reports don’t mention Xu was from the Fire Nation at all! Do you think I’d let Kyoshi walk into a fight without telling her everything I knew about her opponent?”
Kyoshi watched them argue over Xu’s secret technique. She hadn’t noticed his eye color, but then, not every Firebender had blatantly gold irises. If there was anything she’d learned recently, it was that daofei brotherhood didn’t require blood ties. Mok and Wai could have sworn to Xu without being related to him.
A Firebender had ended up the leader of a gang of Earth Kingdom outlaws. It was no different than a disgraced Air Nomad doing the same. Perhaps her mixed parentage made her understand such outcomes were less rare than people assumed.
