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“You have to be stronger,” she said. She could have been talking into a mirror. “We have to be stronger. Our opponents in this game are playing for blood and they’re willing to break every rule. We have to break a few as well.”
“Kyoshi, if this doesn’t work, I’ll have only hastened my own demise.”
Zoryu might have had his political troubles, but he hadn’t lost everything yet. He was still a relative newcomer to a life on the brink. If one path of a fork promised you oblivion, it didn’t really matter what the other path held in store.
“There’s a saying among the destitute of the Ba Sing Se Lower Ring,” Kyoshi said. “The ones who are so poor that if they find a copper piece in the street, they take it straight to the gambling dens and the numbers rackets, because a single coin won’t make a difference in their survival. ‘You either accept the risk of winning, or the guarantee of losing.’”
She let the words sink in. “Now, can you get me Chaejin? Yes or no?”
Zoryu worked his jaw around nothing again, and she fought the urge to slap him. But, like a newborn turtle duck taking its first waddling steps to the water, he nodded. “I’ll have to bring in a few people, and I don’t think I can trust them all to keep their mouths shut, so you won’t have much time before word leaks out. But I’ll make it happen.”
“Be quick about it. I’ll wait in my quarters for your signal.” She turned to leave the war room without waiting to be dismissed.
“Avatar,” Zoryu said, calling her attention back.
His eyes burned with more light than she’d seen from him yet. If the royal portrait artists wanted to capture Zoryu’s likeness for the ages, they could do worse than choosing this moment. “I may not be the strongest ruler yet,” he said. He already sounded clearer and backed with purpose. “But I would do anything for the sake of the Fire Nation. Please understand that.”
She gave him a nod, the gesture of two people about to take a plunge into uncharted depths together.
“I really have to thank you, Avatar,” Chaejin said, his words slightly muffled by the burlap sack covering his head. He sat across from Kyoshi in the back of Yingyong’s saddle. “You’ve grown my legend in ways
I couldn’t dream of. Wrongfully accused, forced to bear the injustice of men while being blessed by the spirits? History will turn my reign into a song for the ages.”
Zoryu’s agents had found Chaejin so willing to comply with his own abduction that they hadn’t bothered to gag or restrain him. The nondescript men wearing the clothing of junior ministers told Kyoshi they’d simply asked him to leave the teahouse where they found him and get into their carriage. They passed through the winding streets of the capital like a noble and a few of his household retainers on a joyride to the isolated meadows surrounding the outskirts of the city.
Only once, when they’d opened the door to the carriage and let Chaejin step out, did they throw the bag over the top of his head as she’d requested. And they did it so clumsily that Chaejin had gotten a good long look at Kyoshi and Jinpa waiting with Yingyong. He’d given her a knowing grin before his face disappeared under the hood.
“I do have one complaint though,” Chaejin said, sniffing. “What is that abominable smell?”
“Seabird droppings,” Kyoshi said.
“Ah. I knew we were near the ocean. It’s hard to tell what direction we went in. I’ve never traveled by air before.”
Kyoshi yanked the hood off his head, which he could have done himself but chose not to in his desire to fully embrace the role of suffering captive. Jinpa pulled his bison down, level with the platform the hut stood on.
“Lovely,” Chaejin sneered. “Is this the Avatar’s private residence in the Fire Nation?”
“In a way,” Kyoshi said. “It used to belong to Master Jianzhu of the Earth Kingdom. Now I own it.” She leaned closer to his ear. “Your mother’s inside.”
To Chaejin, it was a sudden tangent and he laughed. “Very funny, Avatar. Do you and I have business here or not?”
Kyoshi violently ripped away the foundations of the hut with earthbending. Planks and splinters flew into the air like they’d been caught in a tornado. Huazo, suddenly revealed, screamed in surprise.
“Mother!?” Chaejin tried to reach for her, but Kyoshi hadn’t made a ramp this time. The gap between Yingyong’s saddle and the stone platform was too far for him to leap across. They were, however, close enough for everyone to hear each other.
“What is the meaning of this?” Huazo shouted. “I told you I don’t know where Yun is!”
“So now you remember his name,” Kyoshi said. She slashed one of her hands at the cliffside. Cracks ran around the rock Huazo stood on, puffing out thin lines of dust. The entire platform lurched, threatening to plunge into the sea.
Chaejin threw out his arms in a panic, as if he could control the earth himself. “No! Stop!”
“Kyoshi, what are you doing!?” Jinpa shouted. “I thought you were just going to scare them a little!” The Airbender’s shock was real, and not an act put on to convince the Saowon. She hadn’t told Jinpa how far she was truly willing to go. She didn’t quite know, herself.
“Where is Yun?” Kyoshi didn’t care whether Huazo or Chaejin told her. One of them had to know. “You’ve been working with him this whole time, in the palace and in North Chung-Ling. Admit it! Where is he?”
The stone supporting Huazo dropped another foot. “Kyoshi, that’s enough!” Jinpa said. He gathered the reins to fly them away.
“Don’t,” she ordered Jinpa. “I might lose control over the stone.” One wrong move would send Lady Huazo plummeting into the sea.
