by F. C. Yee
“Bending or without?” Xu asked, perfectly at ease.
“Bending,” Kyoshi said. It was the only way she’d stand a chance. She remembered her fans in her belt. “Weapons. Anything goes.” She felt the flare and turmoil of Rangi’s emotions beside her but heard no protest.
“Very well, then.” The prospect of a duel registered on Xu about as much as a fly landing on his nose. Perhaps he’d already assessed her abilities and that was the amount of threat she represented. “Let’s get this over with.”
It was a lopsided arrangement. Six on one side of the rice field, hundreds on the other. In the middle, a team of Yellow Necks used shovels from the barn to pile dirt into a raised platform. With an earthbending lei tai, the fighting surface had to be shaped from the element, not made of wood like the one in Hujiang.
Kyoshi had declined to assist with construction in the hope that stalling would create more time for a governor’s militia, an Earth Kingdom army, for any help at all to arrive. At this point, she’d take Te and a couple of angry servants armed with brooms.
“This was your plan?” Kirima said as they watched the dirt flinging into the air.
“It wasn’t a plan so much as a thing that could have happened and did,” she said. “I noticed none of you tried to stop me.”
“There’s little else you can do,” Wong said. “Especially if you want to stop him from razing Zigan to the ground. It’s right next door, and the nearest Earth Kingdom army outpost is a five days’ march away.”
Kyoshi stepped behind Rangi and embraced her, feeling her warmth. None of the others commented on their closeness. “I’m sorry I keep doing this to you,” she muttered, her lips close to the Firebender’s ear.
Rangi leaned back into her. “Today you get a pass. As the Avatar you would have tangled with horrors like Xu on a regular basis. This might be the first time you’ve done your duty since we left Yokoya.”
It felt good to get a decision right, though it was uncertain how long she’d live to enjoy it.
“Kyoshi, can I speak to you for a moment?” Lao Ge said. “In private?”
The others frowned, slightly confused. As far as they knew, there was no particular relationship between Kyoshi and the old man that warranted a conversation prior to her imminent death. Lao Ge was more likely to give her a few shots of wine for courage than a pep talk.
Kyoshi followed him behind a curtain of rice stalks. “What do you think you’re doing?” he snapped once they were alone. He’d never taken such a tone with her, not even after she’d saved Te’s life.
“You think it’s wrong to fight Xu?” she said. If Lao Ge was going to argue that the Yellow Necks were good for the health of the Earth Kingdom, then he truly was as loopy as his outward persona.
“No, you fool! What I mean is that if you wanted Xu dead, you should have struck him down without notice! Blindsided him! That is the way of the predator!”
He seemed positively disgusted at the notion of an honorable duel. “Facing him on the lei tai and hoping for the best is the mentality of an herbivore braying and shaking its antlers to look good in front of the rest of the herd,” he said. “I wanted you to drink blood, not chew grass.”
Kyoshi took a step back. She bowed deeply before him, fully and formally, holding her angle at length. It wasn’t the deference of a student to a teacher, but rather the rarely used apology bow, only trotted out in the Earth Kingdom in moments of true sincerity, and she kept it going until she heard a snort of surprise from Lao Ge.
“I’m sorry, Sifu,” she said. “But I’m not doing this as a killer. I’m doing this as the Avatar. Even if the world won’t know it.”
Lao Ge sighed. “Stop that. You’re embarrassing both of us.” She straightened to see his wrinkled face arranged into an expression of scorn. It was ruined only by the genuine concern in his eyes. “Figures that the one time I find a pupil I like, she tries to be as mortal as possible,” he groused.
“Well . . . maybe Xu might suddenly pass away where he stands in the next five minutes?” Kyoshi said to any spirit or legendary creature of death nearby that might overhear and take pity on her.
“Death doesn’t work like that,” Lao Ge said. He reached up and patted her on the shoulder. “You’re on your own.”
The daofei finished stamping the platform flat. It was smaller than the one in Hujiang. There would be less room to run.
Xu hopped onto the lei tai first, swinging his arms to loosen his shoulders. He’d changed into a vest and a pair of pants cinched at the ankles. Mok and Wai stood in his corner, the elevation of the platform hiding them from the chest down.
“If anything happens, take Pengpeng and get out of here,” Kyoshi said in an ironic echo of what Rangi had once told her. “Find someone with the power to intervene before the Yellow Necks grow their numbers again.”
“What if it’s the Gravedigger?” Kirima asked.
Kyoshi paused. She wondered if her hatred would follow her into the afterlife, whether the purity of her revenge was so important that she’d turn away his help in saving lives.
She didn’t answer the question. Instead she gave Rangi one last squeeze and hopped onto the platform. She was still geared from last night’s battle. The face paint had started to flake off.
Kyoshi steadied her trembling fingers against the handles of her fans. The stagelike nature of the lei tai added the tension of a performance to the stakes of a duel. Had Rangi been this scared, elevating herself to fight? Facing Tagaka had been less nerve-wracking than this. The battle on the ice had happened too fast for her to think each step through.
You weren’t as afraid back then because Jianzhu was there, on your side. The thought held too much truth for her to swallow. She drew her weapons.
Xu grunted and sighed as he hugged one knee to his chest and then the other. “For the last time, Kyoshi,” he said. “Are you sure about this?”
You and your friendliness can go straight to the bottom of the ocean. “You should ask yourself that question,” she said. “I think your kind has a little too much certainty.”
An unnamed young daofei, rather than Mok or Wai, stood nervously in between them with his hand raised. Kyoshi spread her fans and settled into a Sixty-Forty stance that Wong had taught her, equally good for striking or bending. Xu bounced lightly on the balls of his feet, preferring not to signal his approach to earthbending.
“Ready!” the referee shouted.
Kyoshi licked a drop of sweat off her lip. It tasted like grease. She scuffed a little more weight into her front foot. Xu began to inhale through his nose.
“Begin!” the young man shouted, before diving off the platform to safety.
Kyoshi summoned her energy, starting with her connection to the ground and extending it through her weapons. She would overwhelm her opponent with a barrage of earth.
But she was too slow. And she was playing the wrong game entirely. Xu thrust his arms forward, two fingers extended from each hand, and struck her fans with a bolt of lightning.
DUES
Her spine nearly snapped itself in two. Each drop of her blood had been stung by a viper bat. Her hands felt numb and tacky. The skin had been burned off them.
There was a thump and a jolt through her body. An eternity later, she realized it was her knees hitting the ground as she collapsed. The rest of her torso followed. Her headdress went tumbling as her jaw impacted against the platform.
With the side of her face pressed against the dirt, sounds were amplified. She heard more than one person screaming. Rangi, for certain. Would the others be that saddened? It was hard to say. She caught a glimpse of them and saw only sheer bewildered horror on their faces, the inability to comprehend what kind of element she’d been struck with.
Xu walked over to the side her face was pointing, blocking her view. She had never heard of bending lightning, never been struck by it, but that was the only explanation for what she’d seen, cold-blue crackling zigzags running from his fingers into her b
ody. She tried to get to her hands and knees but collapsed, her chest flat against the ground.
“Remember,” Wong said from the distant past, a blur of hazy recollection. “It’s over when the winner says it’s over.”
Xu planted his feet and shot another bolt of lightning straight into her back.
“It didn’t have to be this way,” he shouted. He punctuated his sentence by sending a third and a fourth blast of lightning pulsing into her body. He intended to cook her corpse beyond recognition. “You had the greatest gift in the world. My respect. And you threw it away. For what?”
He kicked her in the shoulder, a meaningless act other than to show his disdain. “Don’t think I didn’t notice how you’ve looked at me since last night,” he said. “Staring at me with condemnation in your eyes. What you don’t understand is that men like me are beyond judgment! I do as I will, and the world must bear my discretions with submission and gratitude!” A fifth bolt, for emphasis.
What Xu didn’t seem to know was that none of the lightning strikes beyond the first had hurt to the same degree. Kyoshi played dead while she came to her senses. There was still a searing heat that enveloped her upper half, separated by a layer of fabric. Her survival could have had something to do with the chainmail in her jacket, exposed by the tears and scrapes from last night’s raid. Better to stay pressed against the ground until she saw an opening.
Xu breathed in again and shot a continuous stream of lightning at a target he thought was surely dead. Kyoshi smelled her clothes smoking as it washed over her body. He was desecrating her.
“Stop!” she heard Rangi cry from far away. “Please stop!”
It was the hopelessness in her voice that set Kyoshi over the edge, the complete surrender of a girl who would have been invincible if not for her love. Kyoshi had put that weakness in Rangi, and Xu had torn it open. He was torturing the person Kyoshi cared about most in the world.
And by every spirit of every star in the night sky, he would pay for that.
She reached out and grabbed Xu’s ankle. The sudden course of lightning into his own body made him squeal, an undignified, high-pitched noise that was music to her ears. He stopped the flow in time to be dumped on his back, Kyoshi completely upending him.
Her eyes felt like they were leaking. Not with tears but light. She thought briefly about swinging Xu overhead and dashing him against the ground or twisting him like a wet rag between her bare hands. He was surely more fragile than a solid iron bar.
No. He needed to be shown what a true force of nature looked like. His men had to see him beaten not by strength but by retribution from the elements themselves. She switched her grip on him from his foot to his collar.
She rose into the air, not with dust-stepping but a whirling vortex that sucked her higher into the sky. Xu screamed and dangled from her grip. The tornado she rode blew the daofei back. From this distance they were so tiny and pathetic and human.
Kyoshi extended her free hand, palm upward, and the stalks of rice around Xu’s men set ablaze. She curled her fingers closer together, and the flames, accelerated by her winds, hemmed them in. Many of the outlaws shrieked and threw themselves on the ground, rolling to put out the fires that had caught on their clothes.
Kyoshi looked down the length of her arm at Xu. He shielded his eyes from hers, her inner light too harsh to take in. His mouth gaped open and shut like a fish. The air was moving too fast for him to breathe.
“You forget, Xu,” she said, and a legion of voices synchronized in the eye of the storm. “There is always someone who stands above you in judgment.”
It was possible that other, more powerful people spoke through her in this moment. There was a chance she was simply a puppet beholden to their collective will. But an unassailable feeling of control told her that wasn’t true. The voices could lend her insight, eloquence, but they couldn’t take over. Many of them seemed to disapprove of what she was doing.
Let them, Kyoshi thought. She was in command. She brought Xu’s face closer to hers.
“What will you do now?” she said. “Knowing that your every step will have consequences?”
She needn’t have asked. Behind the terror in Xu’s eyes there was a stronger, deeper outrage. His soul lacked any porousness, and the chance she so generously provided had washed off like rain on lacquer. How dare she? was the only thought running through his head. How dare she? Consequences were for his victims! He was a man who did whatever his power let him!
Xu mistook her analyzing frown for a lapse in her guard and spat a gout of flame in her face.
So he’s a Firebender, she thought as she diverted the flames off to the side with a tilt of her head. A shame for him that he’d given away his intentions so clearly and that dragon’s breath was the first act of firebending Kyoshi had ever performed. She wasn’t as surprised as he’d expected her to be.
The lightning generation was unique though. A refinement of the art? A singular talent? She had so many questions for Xu about that. Too bad she would never get the chance to ask them.
Both Lao Ge and Jianzhu were right in some measure. Shortsighted men like Te and Xu were parasites who gnawed at the very structures they exploited for power and survival. They were blind to the fact that they existed not through their own merits but due to the warped form of charity the world had decided to give them.
And Xu had exhausted his. Kyoshi was the only thing holding him up. She opened her hand and watched him fall.
By the time she touched back down to the earth, the wall of fire that surrounded the daofei had burned itself out. Most of the swordsmen had taken the chance to scatter. Judging by the trails trampled through the crops, they’d fled in every direction, a routed army without a leader. Mok was gone. He and a few others had dragged off Xu’s body before disappearing into the rice stalks.
Surprisingly, Wai still remained. He stared at Kyoshi, transfixed, his jaw agape. Reverent. Kyoshi didn’t know what to make of the cruel, unusual man. He seemed to constantly need a powerful figure to tell him what to do.
“Begone,” she said with the last of the echoes in her throat.
Wai made the fist-over-hand gesture and bowed deeply to her. He and the remaining daofei, mostly survivors of the massacred Kang Shens, faded away into the fields.
Kyoshi looked around for her friends and couldn’t see them. “Are you, uh, still possessed?” she heard Lek say, his voice muffled as if speaking through a porthole. “Or are you you again?”
“Will you please just show yourselves?” she snapped.
There was a grinding noise as they rose into view. Wong had bent them a shelter to hide in below the surface, the same way Jianzhu had survived when she’d first lost control and entered the Avatar State. She wanted to tell them that this time, she hadn’t gone berserk. She’d been fully aware of her powers heightening with whatever vast reserves of energy the Avatar had access to.
She’d been fully aware of killing Xu.
If Rangi wanted to embrace her, she restrained herself well. She and the others stood before Kyoshi, stiff and hesitant. They’d known her, had gotten accustomed to the idea that their inexperienced friend could bend all four elements, but they hadn’t really seen the Avatar before, until now.
“Don’t do this,” Kyoshi said. “Please. If you act like this, I won’t be able to . . .” Her knees buckled.
Not this time, she thought to herself. Stay awake. Be present for what you have done. Look at your actions instead of turning away.
“Kyoshi, your hands,” Rangi said, aghast.
She held them in front of her face. They were riddled with burns from where the lightning had struck her fans.
“We have to get her to a healer!” Kirima shouted, her sharp face already losing its edges as Kyoshi’s vision blurred.
“Kyoshi!” Lek said, suddenly close to her, propping her up as best he could from underneath her arm, the last person among them who should have tried to hold her up physically. “Kyoshi!”
MEMORIES
They brought her back to Zigan. The other details were less clear.
At first Kyoshi had tried to refuse the medication thrust upon her while she writhed on a wooden bed in some dark building. She remembered the heady sweet state that Jianzhu had put her in before summoning a horror from the deep, before murdering Yun, and she resisted any attempts to cloud her awareness.
But then her hands betrayed her by sending waves of blanketing, enveloping agony into the rest of her body. Her resolve broke, and she gulped bitter concoctions from wooden bowls without questioning their source. The medicine split her mind from the pain like she’d cut off Te’s palace from the daofei. The injury was still there, gnashing its teeth, but she could watch it from a distance.
The images after that came in the acts of a play. Wong fussing over the sunlight and furniture in her room, unable to do anything else. Rangi curled up into a miserable ball. Many times there was an old Earth Kingdom woman Kyoshi didn’t recognize, her wrinkled head floating atop a cloud of voluminous skirts. She guided Kirima in her amateurish water healing by referring to medical charts, pointing out where over Kyoshi’s scorched hands the cooling water should be directed. The lack of confidence, the worry in Kirima’s face, during these sessions was endearing.
After some time had passed, she felt the most recent dose of medicine fade away without feeling the screaming need for more. Clarity infiltrated her skull again. Her thoughts were able to focus on the only person in the room now, the rest of the group taking a rest shift. The wheel had spun and landed on Lek.
“You’re here?” she said. Her tongue was fuzzy in her mouth.
“Good to see you too, you giant jerk.” He sat in a nice chair that didn’t belong. By her best guess, this room was in the abandoned part of town and had been set up as a makeshift hospital. An herbalist’s cabinet with many small drawers had been lugged in, drawing tracks of dust on the floor.