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“What do you think you’re doing?” a familiar voice snarled.
Kyoshi grimaced and opened her eyes.
Peace was no longer an option. Because now Rangi was here.
Rangi must have seen them from afar and stalked across the entire great lawn unnoticed. Or lain in ambush for them all night. Or dropped out of a tree like a webbed leopard. Kyoshi wouldn’t have put any of those feats past the military-trained Firebender.
Jae and Suzu backed away, trying to swallow their hostile intent like children stuffing stolen candy into their mouths. It occurred to Kyoshi that this might have been the first time they’d ever seen a member of the Fire Nation up close, let alone one as intimidating as Rangi. In her formfitting armor the color of onyx and dried blood, she could have been a vengeful spirit come to cleanse a battlefield of the living.
Aoma, rather impressively, held her ground. “The Avatar’s bodyguard,” she said with a faint smile. “I thought you weren’t supposed to leave his side. Aren’t you slacking off?”
She glanced to the left and right. “Or is he here somewhere?”
Rangi looked at Aoma like she was a wad of foulness the Firebender had stepped in during the walk over.
“You’re not authorized to be on these grounds,” she said in her charred rasp. She pointed upward at the jar of kelp. “Nor to lay your hands on the Avatar’s property. Or accost his household staff, for that matter.”
Kyoshi noticed she personally landed a distant third in that list of considerations.
Aoma tried to play it cool. “This container is enormous,” she said, shrugging to emphasize her still-ongoing feat of elemental control. “It would take two grown men to lift it without earthbending. Kyoshi asked us to help her bring it inside the house. Right?”
She gave Kyoshi a radiant smile. One that said Tell on me and I’ll kill you. Kyoshi had seen that expression before countless times when they were younger, whenever a hapless adult blundered into the two of them “playing” around town, Kyoshi badly scraped up and Aoma with a rock in her hand.
But today she was off her game. Her normally flawless acting had a plaintive, genuine tone to it. Kyoshi suddenly understood what was going on.
Aoma really did want to help her with her delivery. She wanted to be invited inside the mansion and to see the Avatar up close, like Kyoshi got to every day. She was jealous.
A feeling akin to pity settled in Kyoshi’s throat. It wasn’t strong enough to hold Rangi back from doing her thing, though.
The Firebender stepped forward. Her fine jawline hardened, and her dark bronze eyes danced with aggression. The air around her body rippled like a living mirage, making the strands of jet-black
hair that escaped her topknot float upward in the heat.
“Put the jar down, walk away, and don’t come back,” she said. “Unless you want to know what the ashes of your eyebrows smell like.”
Aoma’s expression crumbled. She’d blundered into a predator with much larger fangs. And unlike the adults of the village, no amount of charm or misdirection would work on Rangi.
But that didn’t mean a parting shot was out of the question.
“Sure,” she said. “Thought you’d never ask.” With a fling of her hands, the jar rocketed straight up into the air, past the treetops.
“You’d better find someone who’s authorized to catch that.” She bolted down the path with Suzu and Jae close behind.
“You little—” Rangi made to go after them, fist reflexively cocked to serve a helping of flaming pain, but she checked herself. Fiery vengeance would have to wait.
She shook her hand out and peered up at the rapidly shrinking jar. Aoma had thrown it really, really hard. No one could claim the girl wasn’t talented.
Rangi elbowed Kyoshi sharply in the side. “Catch it,” she said. “Use earthbending and catch it.”
“I—I can’t,” Kyoshi said, quavering with dismay. Her poor doomed charge reached the apex of its flight. Auntie Mui was going to be furious. A disaster of this magnitude might get back to Master Jianzhu. Her pay would get cut. Or she’d be fired outright.
Rangi hadn’t given up on her. “What do you mean you can’t? The staff ledgers have you listed as an Earthbender! Catch it!”
“It’s not that simple!” Yes, Kyoshi was technically a bender, but Rangi didn’t know about her little problem.
“Do the thing with your hands like she did!” Rangi formed the dual claws of Crowding Bridge as if the only missing component were a crude visual reminder by a bender who wielded a different element entirely.
“Look out!” Kyoshi screamed. She threw herself over Rangi, shielding the smaller girl with her body from the plummeting missile. They fell to the ground, entwined.
