“Auntie Mui told me,” Rangi said. “Kyoshi, you should never have been put through that experience. The thought of the other villagers ignoring you when you needed them, it makes me sick. That’s why I was always pushing you to fight back.”
Kyoshi laughed bitterly. She’d long laid the blame for those years on a different party than the Yokoyans. “What was I supposed to do, drop the mountain on them? Smack around a bunch of children half my size? Anything I did would have been completely disproportionate.”
She shook her head, wanting to change the subject. “Anyway, is the Fire Nation so perfect that prosperity gets shared with every citizen?”
“No,” Rangi said. Her lips scrunched to the side. “But maybe one day it could be.”
They entered the town proper, the edges marked by a change to brick and clay shanties, some of them earthbent into being and others laid by hand. The streets twisted and angled like they’d been set over animal paths instead of following human needs. If it hadn’t been for the landmark of the teahouse jutting above the roofline, Kyoshi would have been lost after a few steps.
The merchants who’d closed up shop for the night had done so with vigor, coating their storefronts in so many locks and iron bars that she wondered how some of them afforded the expense. A number of deer dogs, hidden behind walls and fences, set off barking as they passed.
No one bothered them. Thankfully. Reaching the teahouse felt like making it through a field of trip wires. Madam Qiji’s was an island in the haphazard layout of the town, ringed by the broadest avenue of open space they’d seen so far. It was as if someone had aggressively claimed the public square and plunked down the wooden building in the center.
Light flickered through the paper windows. They stepped onto the large, creaking porch, approaching cautiously. There was an old man sprawled across the doorway, wrapped in canvas blankets, blocking their entry. His loud snores caused his wispy white beard to flutter like cobwebs in the breeze.
Kyoshi was debating whether to prod him gently or try leaping over him when he woke up with a start, grumbling at the impact his shoulder made with the doorframe. He blinked at her and frowned.
“Who’re you?” he mumbled.
She noticed his hands shaking as they poked out from his cocoon. From hunger, no doubt. She hadn’t given enough thought to money as she made her getaway from the mansion, but there were a few coppers in the pockets she’d sewn into her dress long ago. She fished the coins out and placed them on the porch in front of him. If the instructions in her journal were correct, she and Rangi wouldn’t have any need for money once they were inside.
“Get yourself something to eat, Grandfather,” she said.
The old man smiled at her, his wrinkles clawing over his face. But his happy expression turned to outright shock when Rangi added a silver piece to the pile.
Kyoshi glanced back at her.
“What?” Rangi said. “Weren’t we just talking about this kind of thing?”
The inside of Madam Qiji’s was only halfway finished.
The ground level was dedicated to serving food and drink. Tables for visitors were arranged over a layer of straw and sand. But where there should have been a second floor with rooms for overnight guests and weary travelers, there was no floor. Doors floated in the walls twelve feet off the ground with no way to reach them. No mezzanine, no stairs.
The handful of hooded figures sitting in the corners didn’t seem to think that was unusual. Nor did they look up as Kyoshi and Rangi came in. If anything, they leaned farther into their cups of tea, trying to remain inconspicuous.
Kyoshi and Rangi took seats in the middle. Near them was an exquisite, heavily constructed Pai Sho table, by far the nicest object in the room. It sat on four sturdy legs, surrounded by ratty floor cushions, a jewel nestled in the petals of a wilted flower.
They were in the right place. And they were in the right chairs. It was supposed to be only a matter of time before someone came over and said the phrase she was waiting for.
For Kyoshi it was an eternity. The Pai Sho table was an agonizing reminder of Yun. And she didn’t need a visual aid to feel the raw wound of losing Kelsang. That pain was a bleeding trail leading back to Yokoya. It would never wash away.
Rangi kicked her chair. A man made his way over to them. A young man, really. A boy. Each step he took into the better-lit center of the room regressed how old he looked. His sleeves were bound with thin strands of leather, and he wore headwraps in the style of the Si Wong tribes. They hung loose around his face and neck, framing his barely contained fury. Kyoshi could sense Rangi getting ready for the worst, gathering and storing up violence to unleash if things went wrong.
“What would you like to drink?” the boy said through his teeth.
Here it was. The moment of truth. If the instructions in the journal were wrong, then her vaunted single path forward would be cut off at the first step.
“Jasmine picked in fall, scented at noon, and steeped at a boil,” Kyoshi said. Such a combination didn’t exist. Or if it did, it would have tasted like liquid disaster.
The reply came out of his mouth like it needed to be dragged by komodo rhinos, but it was the reply she was looking for. “We have every color blossom known to man and spirit,” he said.
“Red and white will suffice,” she replied.
He clearly had been hoping for any response but that one. “Lao Ge!” the boy
suddenly shouted toward the door. “You were supposed to keep watch, you useless piece of dung!”
The old man who’d been lying across the porch leaned halfway inside. He was suddenly much less infirm than when they’d first met.