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It all added up. Yun and the Saowon were working together. They’d picked their “Avatar,” and Zoryu had his.
“What do we do now?” Jinpa asked.
“Take us back,” Kyoshi said. “I want to talk to everyone before I do something rash.”
I don’t think it’s enough, Hei-Ran wrote on her slate.
Upon Kyoshi’s return to the restaurant, the headmistress had joined the rest of the group downstairs. Rangi protested her moving about for fear of worsening her injuries. The screaming and scribbling match reached such proportions that Hei-Ran was forced to order Rangi to leave and cool off with a harshly written young lady. A chair lay shattered in splinters by the door as her daughter’s final retort.
It was Kyoshi alone wit
h Jinpa and the older folks. I think you’re right about Yun working with the Saowon, Hei-Ran clarified. But it won’t hold up with the rest of the clans.
Nyahitha concurred. “Your evidence relies on an earthbending technique no one else has ever heard of before now.”
“Then I only have one option left,” Kyoshi said. “I find the leaders of the Saowon and get a confession from them.” A statement from the guilty party was as valid in the Fire Nation as it was in the Earth Kingdom.
No one missed the implication. There was a chance Kyoshi was going to have to confront the Saowon with more than just facts. It was good that Rangi wasn’t here. She believed the Avatar had a duty to follow the path of righteousness. She had faith.
The rest of the group, less so. Kyoshi looked around the table at her new set of companions, gathered by chance instead of choice. They made a motley collection of representatives from every nation. She focused her attention on Jinpa.
Hei-Ran, Atuat, and Nyahitha had been weathered by life and its insults, but the Air Nomad was still young. His pacifistic beliefs should have prevented him from accompanying Kyoshi where she was headed. She waited for some kind of gentle counterargument for peace and neutrality from the monk. But it never came.
Jinpa ran a finger over the restaurant’s table, inspecting it for dust. The gesture aged him, made him look like he was an investor considering buying the whole establishment. “Just tell me where to take you, Avatar,” he said.
What a crew they made. A disgraced Firebender, a sage without sanctity, a doctor who let people die, and an Air Nomad involving himself with the dirty politics of the world. With Avatar Kyoshi at the center. None of them were what they were supposed to be. The Flying Opera Company might have gotten along better with this group than she thought.
Kyoshi beckoned everyone to listen close. “Here’s what’s going to happen,” she said.
The nearest viable port was south of the fairground beach, around a bend of the coast. The boardwalk had been optimistically filled with stalls for snack vendors and bauble sellers to ambush arriving tourists before they even got to North Chung-Ling. Reefcrabs scuttled freely over the jagged rocks. The birds that would have eaten them had too much refuse to gorge on.
Kyoshi and Atuat got there at the break of dawn to wait for Huazo on the damp wooden pier. Kyoshi had gotten the idea in her head that an extra Waterbender might be helpful backup so near the ocean, but Huazo arrived without her niece and only two guards. Her contingent had been left behind in town. It must have suited her to keep a force in Shuhon to meet the coming Keohso aggression, while she made a discreet exit.
“Leaving so soon?” Kyoshi said. A single island-hopping ferry boat drifted nearby in the water, ready to launch. “The Festival of Szeto’s not over yet.”
Huazo was surprised to see her but, as always, managed it well. “This town has given me what I need.”
Kyoshi did not have the patience to bandy in euphemisms anymore. “Where is Yun?” she snarled.
“Yun. Is this the boy the Earth Kingdom thought was the Avatar before you? The one who attacked the royal palace and humiliated Zoryu?”
Huazo’s polite front had turned from annoying to nauseating. Earlier, Kyoshi had gone over her plans with her group in a calm, rational manner, but coming face-to-face with one of the people keeping her from Yun was a fresh trial. She was too close to her end goal to remain composed. “I know he’s been working for you,” Kyoshi said. “Tell me where he is.”
Huazo craned her neck forward so Kyoshi could see the perfection of her lying face. “I have no idea who this person is. I’ve never met him.”
Kyoshi drew circles in the air with her wrists, flowing, summoning motions of energy. The crash of the surf hissed in her ears. Water was calmness and tranquility, but it was the rage of a storm as well.
She flung her energies at the ship. The ropes mooring it to the dock snapped like threads. A wave as wide as a river carried the boat out to sea, lifting it higher. Once it reached a hundred yards out, the riptide Kyoshi created froze in a snap, leaving the ferry held in the air by talons of ice. Huazo’s men jumped back and shouted in astonishment.
“La’s fins,” Atuat muttered upon seeing the Avatar’s full strength for the first time. “You’ve got enough raw power to freeze a polar orca solid.”
Huazo bade her retainers to stand down as Kyoshi came closer and loomed over her. She stared up in defiance. “You have nothing, Avatar. Try to intimidate me all you want; hurt me even. You’d only be strengthening my clan’s position in the coming war. There is nothing you can do to me to get what you want.”
In her own way, the woman was as fearless as Hei-Ran. “I had a feeling you might say that. You’re coming with me to Capital Island. Alone.”
The Saowon matriarch broke out into a smile, as if she’d been handed a gift. “That’s right,” she said to her guards before they leaped on Kyoshi with firebending. “The Avatar’s taking me hostage on behalf of Zoryu. I’m about to be falsely imprisoned.”
Her men looked unsure. “Send messages to the rest of the clan and our allies,” Huazo said. “Tell them what happened here. Don’t start anything with the Keohso until I’m freed from the injustice of Zoryu and his hired bandit, the Avatar.” She gave Kyoshi a wink that said This is how you craft the image of events as they happen, girl.
