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“How can you stand there like that?” she hissed, her bronze eyes darkening with fury. “How can you just stand there!?”
Jianzhu worked his jaw, making sure it wasn’t broken. “Would you rather I sit?”
A less-controlled person than Hei-Ran would have been tempted to scream her disbelief to the skies, letting the secret out. You had the wrong Avatar? You introduced a boy to the world as its savior and then got him killed? You let the real Avatar run off to who knows where? Our oldest and closest friend is dead because of you?
He was grateful for Hei-Ran’s iron character. She thought those things at him instead of saying them, fuming strategically. “How are you not going to lose face over this?” she whispered. “All of your credibility? What are you going to do?”
“I don’t know.” He leaned against the gallery wall, as surprised at his own response as she was. Out of Kuruk’s companions, he had been the planner. Normally Jianzhu had every contingency, every fork in the road mapped out to its logical end. He found the change of pace rather liberating.
Hei-Ran couldn’t believe he was drifting like this. She pulled her lips back over her teeth.
“We can minimize the damage if we get her back quickly,” she said. “She can’t have gone far on her own—she’s a maid, for crying out loud. I’ll send Rangi to hunt her down. The two of them are friends; she’ll know where Kyoshi would run to.”
Hei-Ran found the nearest summoning rope and gave it a yank. The soft yellow cables ran throughout the house, held by eyelets across certain walls. The bells at the other ends let the staff know where help was needed.
Given that his employees were busy avoiding him like the plague, it was a minute or two before someone answered. Rin or Lin or whatever. The girl was out of breath, and she limped slightly, like she’d stubbed her toe in her hurry to arrive.
“Rin, please fetch my daughter,” Hei-Ran said kindly. “Tell her it’s very important.”
“I’m so sorry!” Rin shrieked. She was trying so hard not to mince her words in fright that she erred on the side of earsplitting volume. “Miss Rangi’s disappeared! One of the stablehands said he saw her leave with Kyoshi last night!”
“Rin, please leave my sight immediately,” Hei-Ran said with warmth of a different kind this time.
The girl bowed and backed away, eyes lowered, her socked feet thumping a pattern down the hallway that was almost as fast and loud as her heartbeat. Jianzhu waited until she vanished around the corner.
“Before you hit me again,” he said to Hei-Ran. “I believe whatever Rangi does is your fault, not mine.”
Her face contorted like she was living a thousand lifetimes right then and there, in most of which she melted his eyeballs using his skull as a cauldron.
“This is a positive,” Jianzhu said. “Your daughter will keep her safe until we find them.”
“Until we find them?” Hei-Ran screamed in whisper. “My daughter is an elite warrior trained in escape and evasion! We can already forget about an easy chase!”
She thrashed in place, the waves of bad news buffeting her around, challenging her equilibrium. When she came to a stop, her face was lined with deep sorrow.
“Jianzhu, Kelsang is dead,” she said. “Our friend is dead. And instead of mourning him, we’re standing here, plotting how to maintain our grip on the Avatar. What has happened to us? What have we become?”
“We’ve grown old and become responsible, is what,” Jianzhu said. “Kelsang made the same promise to Kuruk that we did. We can honor his memory, both of their memories, by continuing on our path.”
He found his usual energy coming back, his dalliance with helplessness finished. There had been too many futures to consider before. The individual degrees of catastrophe were overwhelming. But really he only needed to focus on one solution. The piece that was critical to every scenario.
“We’ll get the Avatar back,” he said. “Finding her ourselves would be ideal, obviously, but it’ll be fine if she turns up on the doorstep of another sage to seek refuge. I’ll find out and respond quick enough to smother the news from traveling further.”
He wasn’t worried about the Avatar hiding in the other nations either. His personal networks extended further than the Earth King’s diplomacy. If anything, his foreign contacts would inform him faster and with more discretion, hoping to avoid an international incident.
“And what if she falls in with one of Hui’s allies?” Hei-Ran asked.
Jianzhu grimaced at the mention of the chamberlain’s name. “I suppose that’s always a risk. But I’m fairly certain she wouldn’t know who he is or which masters he’s got his hooks into. I don’t even know who’s sided with him yet.”
Jianzhu got off the wall. “My reputation will certainly take an unavoidable hit once we have to reveal her identity to the world, but that won’t matter in the end,” he said. “As long as the girl is back here when we do it, under my roof, following my orders, it will all work out. I have capital to burn within the Earth Kingdom. Time to put it to good use.”
Hei-Ran grudgingly appreciated her friend’s return to his usual self. “It doesn’t sound like the girl wants to be here.”
“We’ll worry about that later. Besides, she’s still a child. She’ll learn what’s in her best interests.”
He dusted himself off, the first attempt he’d made to get rid of the filth of the mining town so far. The plan molded itself together in his head, like clay under the guidance of an invisible tool. “I need you to write a letter for me.”
Hei-Ran looked at him sideways.
