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“I think it’s time I paid respects to my old sifu,” Yun said. He winked at Kyoshi and dove into the ground. The hard-packed soil swallowed him as easily as the surface of a lake. She threw herself after him, scrabbling at the hole he left behind. It was filled with loose and crumbly castings like a shirshu’s tunnel.
Yun’s disappearance was the signal for general chaos to erupt. The nobles burst into screams, flailing and yanking at their legs, trying to free themselves. Palace guards flooded in between the rows of trapped guests. Kyoshi squeezed her way toward the edge of the gathering, shaking off the forest of hands trying to clutch onto her like a life raft.
“Rangi!” In her panic she nearly elbowed an angry nobleman in the face before emerging into the clear once more. “Rangi!”
In the distance, she saw Rangi hustling Zoryu into the arms of an arriving squad. The dazed Fire Lord disappeared into a phalanx of spears and spikes. Only after Zoryu was safe inside the formation did she break away and run toward Kyoshi.
“Where is he?” Rangi scanned the roiling crowd for Yun. “Where did he go?”
A long list. Everyone who lied to him. During their time together in Yokoya, Jianzhu had filled Yun’s head with untruths about who he was, and what he could do.
So had someone else. Someone who demanded that he firebend.
Hei-Ran.
“He went inside the palace!” Kyoshi yelled. “Rangi, he’s going after your mother!”
Rangi was a blur. She nearly scorched several bystanders with the jets of flame that shot from her hands. She extended her arms behind her, using the force to boost the speed of her bounding steps.
Kyoshi followed as fast as she could. There was no use telling Rangi to wait. One of them had to reach Hei-Ran before Yun did.
They tore past startled and indignant nobles, many of whom wanted to accost the Avatar for the harrowing experience they’d been put through tonight. As they neared the palace entrance, she saw the exit of Yun’s tunnel. He’d already made it through the doors.
They barreled into the hallway, scraping paint off the walls and leaving smoke trails on the floors. Rangi led her to a section of the guest wing near the portrait gallery that Kyoshi hadn’t visited yet, plainer than the Avatar’s quarters but still lavishly decorated with baubles of Fire Nation history. When they came to the room at the end, Rangi brought her hands around and blasted the door open, nearly taking it off its hinges.
The force of their entrance scattered a tea set across the floor and sent Jinpa’s robes flying over his head. From the smell of roasted flour in the air, he had been in the middle of serving Atuat and Hei-Ran tea in the Air Nomad style, using borrowed ingredients from the palace kitchen.
Atuat was the first one to stop screaming in surprise. “What is wrong with you two?!” the doctor said. “You could have injured us!”
“Did you see him?” Rangi said. “Was he here?”
“See who?”
“Yun! Yun is here, in the palace!”
The name didn’t fall into place for the doctor. Jinpa, once he yanked the upturned layers of orange and yellow cloth off his face, looked to Kyoshi, confused that the man she’d been writing so many letters about in the Earth Kingdom was in the Fire Nation. And Hei-Ran simply closed her eyes to wait.
Kyoshi and Rangi both spun around to face the doorway. It smoked from their entrance. The clamor of bells could be heard, bouncing through the hallways, signaling an intrusion.
The seconds passed by like cricket snails. It occurred to Kyoshi that if Yun didn’t know the way to Hei-Ran’s room, they’d certainly left markers for him, a scorched, smashed path leading right to his target. But the assault never arrived. They heard a prolonged screech that sounded like a bird being clumsily slaughtered. Rangi cocked her ear at the sound. “That came from the portrait gallery.”
“Stay here,” Kyoshi said. She ventured carefully into the ruined hallway and stepped as quietly as she could through the maze of corridors, using what she could remember of the displayed antiques as her landmarks.
She arrived at the gallery and was greeted by the sight of Yun standing in the middle of the vast room, holding the limp body of Lu Beifong by his robes. “The old man’s got a set of lungs on him,” Yun said, digging a finger of his free hand into his ear.
He dropped Lu to the floor with a thud, the sound of a head bouncing against a hard surface wrenching a shudder from Kyoshi. “I took a wrong turn,” Yun said. “You beat me to Hei-Ran because I took a wrong turn. Can you believe it?”
Yun’s face distorted with a fury Kyoshi had never seen on him, as if losing his way in the palace was a worse experience than any he’d suffered. “I’ve been here before. Way more times than you. That awful red room used to be mine. Funny how fate works, isn’t it? But at least I got a consolation prize.”
He kicked Lu’s body, folding it across the floor. The leader of the Beifong family had been Jianzhu’s sifu, which meant he was considered Yun’s as well, by the rules of teaching lineage and deference.
“Did you know that without the old coot’s backing, Jianzhu would never have been able to declare me the Avatar?” Yun said, calmed by the act of disrespect. “Lu was partly responsible for what happened to us, in his way. Ending him was good, but Hei-Ran will be even better.”
This wasn’t him. This couldn’t be the same person. The cave he’d disappeared into had spit out a simulacrum, an inhuman spirit wrapped in Yun’s skin. “She’s Rangi’s mother!” Kyoshi cried.
“And Rangi’s our friend. There are costs to this, Kyoshi. I thought you knew that. After Jianzhu, I thought you understood the price of justice.”
He spoke with such concern, like he was comforting a victim of inevitability, a person trapped before the flood, the earthquake. “You should take Rangi away, so she doesn’t have to watch her mother die. I plan on finishing my business in the Fire Nation before the end of the festival. It’s your choice if the two of you are here for it.”
