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“Which one?”
“Both.” Atuat motioned with her thumb up the stairs, where mother and daughter waited. “I would not want to be you right now.”
There was nowhere left to show any courage but here, her reckoning. Kyoshi accepted the pitying looks of Jinpa and Nyahitha and went to go see Rangi and Hei-Ran.
She
could tell the room was hotter before she entered it. Kyoshi ducked inside the restaurant’s sleeping quarters and saw Hei-Ran propped up on a small bed, a thick layer of bandages swaddling her neck. She was pale from blood loss, which only offset the anger shooting from her eyes. On a table beside her was a piece of slate and several lumps of chalk, taken from the order boards from the restaurant downstairs. She must have been using it to communicate with Atuat and Rangi, unable to talk from her injury.
Rangi stood at the foot of the bed, so stock-still Kyoshi wondered how much Hei-Ran had revealed to her about the conversation they’d had by themselves in the palace stables, about the tactic of luring Yun out in the open.
“You used my mother as bait,” Rangi hissed.
Apparently, everything. “I didn’t agree to the plan,” Kyoshi said weakly.
“Right. You just went along. Neutral jing, huh? You kept quiet and you didn’t tell me she meant to sacrifice herself. Would you have mentioned it over her corpse? Would you have told me then?”
She wasn’t describing the truth of Kyoshi’s thoughts. But thoughts didn’t matter. Only actions and their outcomes. “Rangi, please! I’m sorry!”
“Don’t apologize to me,” Rangi said. “There’s no need. Because from this point on, I am nothing to you. Do you hear me, Avatar Kyoshi? Nothing.” She brushed past Kyoshi and ran down the stairs.
Kyoshi barely saw her leave. She was too stuck on what Rangi had called her. She couldn’t remember Rangi addressing her as “Avatar Kyoshi” during the entire time they’d known each other. Not in Yokoya, not in Chameleon Bay, not in Hujiang or Zigan. Hearing those words from her lips was like a blade coming down between them, cold and sharp and final.
Kyoshi’s body began to heave. She took great dry gulps, her insides twisting. Ever since Jianzhu had taken Rangi, she’d been so fixated on what outside dangers might separate them. She’d never thought about losing her by saying the wrong thing or being silent at the wrong time.
She couldn’t breathe. She didn’t want to. This wasn’t a future she could face. She was imprisoned again, like she’d been in Kuruk’s memories, forced to watch proceedings that she couldn’t bear to witness.
There was a precise little flick against Kyoshi’s forehead. Something white and powdery fell to the floor. Hei-Ran had thrown a piece of chalk at her.
The headmistress held up her slate and tapped its surface, showing Kyoshi what she’d written. Stop panicking, it said. She’s not leaving you.
“Bu-but she said—” Kyoshi was a blubbering mess, a wreck threatening to spill its contents into the sea.
Hei-Ran rolled her eyes, rubbed the slate clean, and wrote more on it with a fresh piece of chalk. Her strokes were so fast and efficient she could have outpaced some speakers. She was a career teacher, after all.
She says a lot of things. Yes, she’s angry with you. It doesn’t mean she’ll walk away forever.
Rangi had just walked away while making it sound like forever. “How do you know?”
Rub. Scrape. She’s my daughter. You think you know her so well. I’ve known her since she was born.
Hei-Ran turned the board over to use the back. Eventually she’ll come back with some sign she still cares. It usually takes her a week to forgive me. Give it time.
Kyoshi wiped her face, sniffling like a child. It wasn’t easy to recover from such a blow. What if Hei-Ran was wrong?
The headmistress wasn’t going to give her time to ponder the issue. Yun?
“I searched the town with the help of some of the more reasonable locals. He’s gone. He could be anywhere on Shuhon Island. Or he may have escaped by sea.”
You missed your opportunity. Hei-Ran was less angry and judgmental this time. She was simply stating the facts.
“I couldn’t leave you to die. For Rangi’s sake, I couldn’t.” Hei-Ran sighed, wheezing through her nose. The exhalation aggravated her wound and she coughed pink spittle. Kyoshi moved toward her, but she put her hand up to say she was fine. She resumed writing, the chalk dust thick on the slate by now.
He’s not the only thing driving us to war anymore. The Saowon and the Keohso will use today as a just cause to fight. They’ll both say they were defending their honor.
Kyoshi stared at the strokes of chalk. Not out of a lack of understanding, but because the characters spurred a recollection in her. She had to dig for it, feel it brush against her fingers before she could grasp the idea.
To help the process along, she reached out with her earth-bending, applying the gentlest of force against Hei-Ran’s board. At the touch of her bending, the mineral chalk swept clean off the slate. With Kyoshi’s level of control, that was the best she could manage. Even with her fans she’d never had the fine-tuning to be able to create words in earth.
