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Kirima spread her arm. “This is our one and only base of operations. This is the network. Us. Whatever assistance you thought you could personally demand outside the law ends here, within these walls.”
Kyoshi remembered the most tired she’d ever been in her life. It was not long after she’d been dropped in Yokoya, when she still saw the journal and chest as her birthright treasures and not as incriminating evidence her parents wanted to ditch alongside her.
She’d
been chased away from every door, forced to drag the heavy trunk with her. It was a lot for a child to carry back then, even one as outsized as her. As the day wore on, the exhaustion had seeped into her fingernails and teeth. Her thoughts had turned gray. There had been no room in her body for hunger and thirst. It was all given over to fatigue.
Kyoshi felt the same fragments of weariness threatening to undo her now. They drove into her joints like nails, beckoning her to give up. Looking at the daofei before her, she saw it clearly now. They weren’t the vanguard of some shadow army she could use to march upon Jianzhu. They were haggard, hunted people. Like her.
“We’ve fallen on hard times,” Wong said. She gathered he didn’t speak much, so when he did, it was likely true and to the point. “Crackdowns on smuggling across the Earth Kingdom have been pretty severe in recent years. We’ve been cut off from gangs in other cities without much news or any jobs to speak of.”
“Your journal must be at least a decade old, with entries that go back further,” Lek said. “In those days, groups like ours had real influence.” He stared at his hands like a deposed king longing for the grip of his scepter. “We had territory. The governors asked us for permission to do business.”
“Lek, you would have been three years old during our heyday,” Kirima said. “We hadn’t even picked you up yet.”
He wheeled on her furiously. “That means the rest of you should be more upset than me!”
“We understand,” Rangi interrupted. “It’s painful to know what should have been.”
Kyoshi detected a streak of satisfaction in her voice at the way things had turned out. The hole went no deeper than a dilapidated teahouse and a few cutpurses. As far as Rangi was concerned, they could still extricate themselves.
“Kyoshi, we tried,” she said. “You did what you could. But this isn’t what we came for.” She glanced at the room doors and their unusual placement. “We could stay here overnight, perhaps, but it’d be no safer than camping. We should get back to Pengpeng and fly to the nearest—”
Lek slammed his hands on the table. “Fly?” His voice broke with excitement. “You flew here?”
The rest of the group perked up. “Are you telling me you have a sky bison?” Kirima said. There was an interested gleam in her eye.
Rangi cursed at her slipup. “Why?” Kyoshi said. “What difference would it make?”
“Because now you have something we want,” Kirima said while Lek bounced off the walls. “Being Jesa and Hark’s kid means we’re obliged to keep you safe from harm. It doesn’t mean we’ll follow your orders or help you on some personal quest for vengeance. You want that level of commitment, then you make us an offer.”
“No,” Rangi snapped. “Forget it. We’re not giving you our bison. We’re not giving you anything of the sort.”
“Simmer down, Topknot,” Kirima said. “I’m merely suggesting a partnership. We need to get out of this dried-up town to where the prospects are better. Kyoshi wants training. We should travel together for a while. It’s her best shot at finding earthbending teachers of ill repute.”
Hearing her, Kyoshi suddenly realized she’d made a critical mistake. She’d shown her earthbending. While she greatly needed improvement in her native element, there wasn’t a straightforward way to get training in the others without revealing she was the Avatar.
Rangi was still opposed to the idea. “We didn’t come here to revive a two-bit smuggling operation,” she said to Kyoshi. “We’d just be taking on more risk than we need.”
“First of all, our operation was top-notch!” Lek said, full of umbrage. “And second, you two are the baggage here. You wouldn’t last a day moving in our circles without a guide. For crying out loud, we almost killed you.”
Rangi narrowed her eyes. “Is that your impression of what happened?” She sounded perfectly willing to test his theory.
Kyoshi buried her face in her hands while they argued. Ideas that had been so clear in her mind before were becoming trampled and muddy. Her singular path turned out to be full of brambles and false turns.
Lao Ge interrupted her wallowing by slamming an empty bottle on the table. He’d been forgotten until now, and his smile folded in on itself like he was bursting with the world’s best secret.
“I know it’s a tough decision, my dear girl,” he said, cocking his ear toward the door. “But don’t take too long. The police are coming.”
ESCAPE
The sound of marching boots hitting the road filled the air. “You stupid old man!” Lek shouted. “I’m never putting you on watch again!”
“Finally,” Lao Ge said. He winked at Kyoshi.
Officers wearing constabulary green hustled into the teahouse. They fanned out along the sides to accommodate their numbers, reaching to the corners. Twenty or so, wearing quilted armor with single dao broadswords on their backs.
At the head of their formation, still in plainclothes but now wearing the same headband adorned with the prefectural badge of the law as the others, were the same three men who’d been in the teahouse earlier.
