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Despite Kelsang’s protests, Kyoshi had long since decided that she wouldn’t bother formally training in bending. It hadn’t seemed like a problem worth solving at the time. Earthbending was mostly useless indoors, especially so without precision.
“You didn’t tell me the reverse applied,” Jianzhu said. “That you could move mountains. And you were separated from the ocean bed by two hundred paces. Not even I can summon earth from across that distance. Or across water.”
The empty gourd trembled as she put it on the bedside table. “I swear I didn’t know,” Kyoshi said. “I didn’t think I could do what I did, but Yun was in danger and I stopped thinking and I—where is Yun? Is he okay? Where’s Kelsang?”
“You don’t need to worry about them.” He slumped forward in his chair with his elbows on his knees, his fingers knotted together. His clothes draped from his joints in a way that made him look thin and weary. He stared at the floor in silence for an uncomfortably long time.
“The Earth Kingdom,” Jianzhu said. “It’s kind of a mess, don’t you think?”
Kyoshi was more surprised by his tone than his random change of subject. He’d never relaxed this much around her before. She didn’t imagine he spoke this informally with Yun.
“I mean, look at us,” he said. “We have more than one king. Northern and southern dialects are so different they’re starting to become separate languages. Village
rs in Yokoya wear as much blue as green, and the Si Wong people barely share any customs with the rest of the continent.”
Kyoshi had heard Kelsang express admiration for the diversity of the Earth Kingdom on several occasions. But perhaps he was speaking from the perspective of a visitor. Jianzhu made the Earth Kingdom sound like different pieces of flesh stitched together to close a wound.
“Did you know that the word for daofei doesn’t really exist in the other nations?” he said. “Across the seas, they’re just called criminals. They have petty goals, never reaching far beyond personal enrichment.
“But here in the Earth Kingdom, daofei find a level of success that goes to their heads and makes them believe they’re a society apart, entitled to their own codes and traditions. They can gain control over territory and get a taste of what it’s like to rule. Some of them turn into spiritual fanatics, believing that their looting and pillaging is in service of a higher cause.”
Jianzhu sighed. “It’s all because Ba Sing Se is not a truly effective authority,” he said. “The Earth King’s power waxes and wanes. It never reaches completely across the land as it should. Do you know what’s holding the Earth Kingdom together right now, in its stead?”
She knew the answer but shook her head anyway.
“Me.” He didn’t sound proud to say it. “I am what’s keeping this giant, ramshackle nation of ours from crumbling into dust. Because we’ve been without an Avatar for so long, the duty has fallen on me. And because I have no claim on leadership from noble blood, I have to do it solely by creating ties of personal loyalty.”
He glanced up at her with sadness in his eyes. “Every local governor and magistrate from here to the Northern Air Temple owes me. I give them grain in times of famine; I help them gather the taxes that pay the police salaries. I help them deal with rebels.
“My reach has to extend beyond the Earth Kingdom as well,” Jianzhu said. “I know every bender who might accurately call themselves a teacher of the elements in each of the Four Nations, and who their most promising pupils are. I’ve funded bending schools, organized tournaments, and settled disputes between styles before they ended in blood. Any master in the world would answer my summons.”
She didn’t doubt it. He wasn’t a man given to boasting. More than once around the house she’d heard the expression that Jianzhu’s word, his friendship, was worth more than Beifong gold.
Another person might have swelled with happiness while looking back over the power they wielded. Jianzhu simply sounded tired. “You wouldn’t know any of this,” he said. “Other than the disaster on the iceberg, you’ve never really been outside the shelter of Yokoya.”
Kyoshi swallowed the urge to tell him that wasn’t true, that she still remembered the brief glimpses she’d seen of the greater world, long ago. But that would have meant talking about her parents. Opening a different box of vipers altogether. Just the notion of exposing that part of her to Jianzhu caused her pulse to quicken.
He picked up on her distress and narrowed his eyes. “So you see, Kyoshi,” he said. “Without personal loyalty, it all falls apart!”
He made a sudden bending motion toward the ceiling as if to bring it crashing down onto their heads. Kyoshi flinched before remembering the room was made of wood. A trickle of dust leaked through the roof beams and lay suspended in the air, a cloud above them.
“Given what I’ve told you,” he said. “Is there anything you want to tell me? About what you did on the ice?”
Was there anything she wanted to tell the man who had taken her in off the street? That there was a chance he’d made a blunder that could destroy everything he’d worked for, and that her very existence might spell untold chaos for their nation?
No. She and Kelsang had to wait it out. Find evidence that she wasn’t the Avatar, give Yun the time he needed to prove himself conclusively.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I truly wasn’t aware of my own limits. I just panicked and lashed out as hard as I could. Rangi told me she often firebends stronger when she’s angry; maybe it was like that.”
Jianzhu smiled again, the expression calcifying on his face. He clapped his hands to his knees and pushed himself up to standing.
“You know,” he said. “I’ve fought daofei like Tagaka across the length and breadth of this continent for so long that the one thing I’ve learned is that they’re not the true problem. They’re a symptom of what happens when people think they can defy the Avatar’s authority. When they think the Avatar lacks legitimacy.”
He peered down at Kyoshi. “I’m glad there’s at least one more powerful Earthbender who can fight on my side. Despite what I said earlier, I’m only a stopgap measure. A substitute. The responsibility of keeping the Earth Kingdom stable and in balance with the other nations rightfully belongs to the Avatar.”
The unrelenting pressure of his statements became so great that Kyoshi instinctively tried to shift the weight onto someone else. “It should have been Kuruk dealing with the daofei,” she blurted out. “Shouldn’t it?”
Jianzhu nodded in agreement. “If Kuruk were alive today, he’d be at the peak of his powers. I blame myself for his demise. His poor choices were my fault.”
