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Kyoshi fell in behind Hei-Ran. To her surprise, so did the Fire Lord. There was apparently no limit to the people Hei-Ran could boss around.
She detected pitying smirks on the faces of the nobles as they passed, but they weren’t aimed at her, the ignorant foreigner who’d made a mess of things. They were directed at Zoryu, the man everyone here was supposed to owe absolute respect and fealty to. Whatever fluency she thought she had in court dynamics was being upended.
She took one last glance at Chaejin, who was already whispering enthusiastically to another guest. Emblazoned on the back of the Fire Lord’s brother’s robe was a large stone camellia, wrought in gold thread, meant to be seen like a beacon. The rendition was identical to the one she’d seen in the portrait gallery, only without its smaller peony rival. A single blossom growing strong, with no competition to worry about.
“Kyoshi, move!” Rangi whispered.
They left the mass of the crowd behind them, circling around the palace grounds. As large as the party was, there was still more empty garden where they could have some true privacy instead of counting on people not to snoop.
The sparseness of the flowering orchard was more attractive from ground level. The regular spacing between the zankan cherry and silver wisteria gave the impression of pink and white trees compressing into lines and then expanding again as their viewing angle changed.
The Fire Lord moved slowly, at Hei-Ran’s pace. The stoic, silent royal guards had been dismissed. But Atuat and Jinpa had been pulled away from the party. Kyoshi had ruined the privilege of remaining unchaperoned for everybody in her group.
“I . . . Wow,” Rangi muttered at Kyoshi. She pressed her fingers to her temples. “Huh.”
“If I insulted this Chaejin person, I’m sorry,” Kyoshi said under her breath. “But he was doing much worse, and no one called him out on it.”
“It wasn’t Chaejin you insulted; it was the Fire Lord!” Rangi could see Kyoshi didn’t get it. “You declared in front of a crowd that you would fix a national problem for him!”
“Isn’t that my job?”
“Yes, but you’re not supposed to express it like that! The smooth running of the Fire Nation stems from the strength of the Fire Lord, both real and perceived. When you help him, you have to frame it as a partnership among equals. Simply claiming you’re going to wave your hand and make it all better implies the Fire Lord is too weak to manage the country on his own!”
Kyoshi had the sinking feeling this information was buried somewhere in the libraries at Yokoya. She might have even read about this very aspect of Fire Nation culture, and simply forgotten. She could try and absorb the rules of diplomacy through text, but it wasn’t the same as practicing them until they were second nature.
One of her past lives could have helped her with the information too, had she not been so deficient at communing. She imagined Avatar Szeto watching her blunder and hurling his hat to the ground.
“And then to top it off, you dismissed someone in front of Lord Zoryu,” Rangi said. “Right of dismissal is the only custom more important than right of introduction.” She ran her hand down the line of her jaw. “This is Chameleon Bay all over again. You charge in face-first, wreck the place, and then have to flee with your tail between your legs. I told you minutes before to be careful, did I not?”
Getting chewed out by Rangi was always going to be part and parcel of their reunion. Kyoshi just thought it would have taken longer to get around to it. “I’m sorry,” she muttered.
They weren’t being as quiet as they thought. “It’s not the Avatar’s fault,” Zoryu said. “It’s mine.”
He’d come to a halt by a turtle-duck pond. The animals were napping quietly on water so clear they looked like they were hovering in midair. Under a willow tree was a stone bench, where Zoryu sat down, contemplating the peaceful scene. “A smaller reception would have avoided this, but at the last moment I thought I needed a bigger spectacle to enhance my image.”
In defense of Kyoshi’s first blunder, Chaejin and Zoryu were nearly identical in the face, down to the same prominent brow and jut of their chin. At a distance, it would have been impossible to tell them apart. But up close, she could see the Fire Lord was thinner, still a gangly boy underneath his voluminous robes. It was as if someone had sewn two copies of the departed Lord Chaeryu, one with less stuffing.
Zoryu’s attempt to still his features in a regal manner was only half successful. As he gazed into the water, he smiled graciously at his reflection like someone who would much rather be crying. “This whole disaster is entirely my mistake, not Kyoshi’s.”
“Permission to speak beyond my station, Lord Zoryu?” Hei-Ran said.
He waved halfheartedly. “Granted. To you and everyone here.”
“It is partially her fault!” she shouted. The sudden noise woke up the ducks and caused them to scatter to the other side of the pond, quacking as they fled. “Or at least you have to declare so! What kind of Fire Lord preemptively blames himself for everything?”
Permission or not, that seemed overly familiar of Hei-Ran. Unless Zoryu was a former private student of hers. The master-student relationship was one of the few to cut across all boundaries.
“You can’t be that mopey little boy I used to teach anymore!” Rangi’s mother snapped, confirming Kyoshi’s suspicion. “Act with the dignity of your position! You’ve let Chaejin walk over you for far too long without repercussions and now he thinks he can get away with anything!”
Kyoshi watched Zoryu wither under Hei-Ran’s scolding and felt a painful stab of recognition. “Was I like that, early on?” she asked Rangi in a low voice.
“Are you kidding me?” Rangi said with a snort.
“And what’s so funny to you, Lieutenant?” Hei-Ran turned upon her daughter. “You’re telling me you couldn’t think of a tactic to prevent the situation? Not even a basic diversion?”
Rangi suddenly blanched. She trembled with a fear that Kyoshi had never seen before, not when taking on a brutal leitai champion without her firebending or fighti
ng a monstrous shirshu.
