“I was standing guard, but then those two lovely young women gave me enough money to buy a drink or ten,” he said with a big, toothy grin. “They must have slipped by me while I stepped out to the wineshop. Quite the tricksters, those two.” He tilted a liquor bottle to his lips and drank deeply, his ragged sleeve falling down his arm to reveal sheaves of corded muscle under papery skin.
The boy ground the heel of his hand into one of his eyes. He stormed away to the kitchen, muttering expletives at the old man the whole way. Kyoshi could sympathize.
Rangi leaned on the table. Though her pose was relaxed, her eyes fluttered around the room, sizing the occupants up, including and especially Lao Ge, who was busy finding the bottom of his second bottle of drink.
“You know,” she whispered to Kyoshi. “You told me we were going to a daofei hideout; you told me you were going to get access to help through daofei code; here we are, I heard you speak it, and yet I still can’t believe this is happening.”
“It’s still not too late for you to get out of here and save your honor,” Kyoshi said.
“It’s not my honor I’m worried about,” Rangi hissed.
Before they could get further into the matter, the boy returned with a tray of steaming cups. He placed one in front of Kyoshi, Rangi, and then himself, taking a seat across from them. He was much calmer now. It may have had less to do with the tea than with the backup that slowly filed in behind him.
A huge man in his thirties, as tall as Kelsang and half again as thick, blotted out the lamplight coming from the kitchen. He had a smooth, clean-shaven face over a body that threatened to burst from expensive robes, his clothes having been chosen for flash over fit. Kyoshi saw Rangi’s eyes dart to the man’s feet instead of his scarred knuckles or protruding gut, and realized why. As big as he was, he hadn’t made the floorboards creak.
One of the doors suspended in the wall above the ground flew open. A young woman stepped out of the room, not caring about the drop that awaited her.
She was dressed in an Earth Kingdom tunic, but with a fur skirt over her trousers. Kyoshi had seen pelts like that worn by visitors from the poles. The stronger indication of the woman’s Water Tribe heritage was her piercing, sapphire-blue eyes that no amount of spidersnake formula could possibly hide.
She landed on the ground with her toes pointed like a dancer’s. Kyoshi could have sworn she’d fallen slower than normal, a feather’s descent. It was the only way to explain how she made the journey from the second story to the table without breaking stride or the bones in her foot. She stood behind the other shoulder of the boy, her wolflike features unreadable as she assessed Kyoshi and Rangi.
I’m not afraid, Kyoshi told herself, finding to her surprise that it was true. She’d tussled with the Lord of the Eastern Sea. A single street-level daofei crew wasn’t going to intimidate her.
The boy in the desert hat tented his fingers. “You come in here, total strangers, unannounced,” he said.
“I have the right,” Kyoshi said. “I gave the passwords. You are obligated to provide me and my partner succor, by the oaths of blood you have taken. Lest you suffer the punishments of many knives.”
“You see, that’s just it.” The boy slouched back in his chair. “You’re using these big, old-timey words like you’ve got these grand ideas of how this is supposed to work. You rattle off a senior code that we haven’t heard in years like you’re pulling rank on us. You did it like you were reading from an instruction manual.”
Kyoshi swallowed involuntarily. The boy noticed and smiled.
He tilted his head at Rangi. “Coupled with the fact that Gorgeous over here practically screams ‘army brat,’ it makes me think the two of you are lawmen.”
“We’re not,” Kyoshi said, swearing silently inside her head at how badly this was going. “We’re not abiders.”
There were three men scattered around the teahouse who were not part of their little confrontation. They all hastily plunked down coins and beat it out the door, eyes wide with fright.
The boy placed a small, hard object on the table with a click. Kyoshi thought it was a Pai Sho tile at first, but he withdrew his hand to reveal an oblong stone, polished smooth by a river or a grinder.
“I’m pretty good at spotting an undercover,” the boy said. “And I think this is your story. Your daddy bought you an officer’s commission from a crooked governor, and the first thing you decided to do with it is play detective and come knocking on our door.” He thumbed at Rangi. “She was assigned to watch your back, but she didn’t do a very good job, because you’re here now, and you’re going to die. The cause will be recorded as acute terminal stupidity.”
Kyoshi could almost hear Rangi’s thought process, counting the limbs of the three people across from them, calculating out the sequence of damage she’d inflict. “I’m telling you, we’re not lawmen.”
The boy angrily kneed the underside of the table hard, knocking over the teacups and spilling the liquid across the surface.
Kyoshi acted before she thought. But in retrospect, it was more about stopping Rangi than anything else. She kicked upward as well. The entire foundation of the teahouse, the patch of earth it was built on, jumped by half an inch.
The boy nearly fell out of his chair. His two bodyguards wobbled. The shocked looks on their faces said that didn’t happen very often, not with the large man’s stability and the Water Tribe girl’s impeccable balance.
Kyoshi spoke over the groans of resettling wood and the dust drifting in clouds around them. “You’re right,” she said. “I don’t belong here.”
They didn’t bum-rush her immediately, deciding that she needed to be attacked with caution. That bought her time to speak.
“The truth is that I despise daofei,” Kyoshi said. “I hate your kind. It makes me sick to be in your presence. You’re worse than animals.”
“Uh, Kyoshi?” Rangi said as the big guy and the woman sidled into better flanking positions. “Not sure where you’re going with this.”
The boy remained where he was. Kyoshi could tell he wanted to put up a brave front. So did she. “But that doesn’t matter right now,” Kyoshi said, staring through the hardening layer of rage in his eyes. “You are going to give me everything I demand, because you are bound by your outlaw code. You will do as I say because of your idiotic, clownish, make-believe traditions.”