Lek hadn’t spoken a word on the way back. His sleeve was plastered to his palm with dried blood, a good sign as far as his wound was concerned. But he was possessed by a rigid coldness that had Kyoshi worried.
“Lek,” she said before he vanished too, inside his own head. “Thank you. For standing up for me.”
He blinked and looked at her, as if they’d only met a minute ago. “Why wouldn’t I?” he said, caught waking up from a dream.
“I have to take care of his hand,” Kirima said. She looked at Rangi. “I’m not the best healer, so it’ll be awhile before I can get to your face.”
“I don’t need it,” Rangi said. She turned and walked away in the opposite direction of Wong, down the slope the town was built on.
“Rangi!” Kyoshi snapped. The Firebender didn’t listen to her. She was Kyoshi’s bodyguard. She was obligated to listen to her. “Get back here! Rangi!”
“After tonight’s display, she’s the safest person in Hujiang,” Kirima said. There was a sly edge to her smile. “But I still think you should go after her.”
Having grown up in Yokoya, Kyoshi had walked enough hills for two lifetimes. Going down fast threatened to buckle her ankles, strained at her knees. She found Rangi sitting at the edge of the shallow lake, less by light and more by heat. The Firebender was a dark silhouette curled up against the lapping water. Kyoshi entertained the notion of shoving her straight in.
“You want to tell me what that was about?” she yelled.
Rangi sneered at the question. “Mok was treating us like dung, and now, slightly less so. I impressed a daofei. Hasn’t that been our goal?”
“My mother’s gang belonged to my mother! Mok is a rabid animal whom we have no leverage with! It was a stupid risk!”
Rangi got to her feet. She’d been letting her toes dangle in the water, and now she stood ankle-deep in it.
“Of course it was!” she said. She nearly rammed her finger into Kyoshi’s chest out of instinct but caught herself. She wrung her hands out and forced them to remain at her side. “I did exactly what you’ve been doing this whole time!
“Let me tell you something,” Rangi said. “I blacked out when I got hit. If I hadn’t woken up quickly, that man would have killed me.”
Kyoshi’s mind went white with fury. After the fight ended, she’d assumed that Rangi had been faking unconsciousness to lure her opponent in. She wanted to march back to the barn and break the rest of his limbs.
“You know what you felt, watching me lie on the canvas?” Rangi said. “That helplessness? That sensation of your anchor being cut loose? That’s what I’ve been feeling, watching you, every single minute since we left Yokoya! I got on that platform so you could see it from my perspective! I had no idea what else would get through to you!”
She kicked at the surface of the lake, slicing a wave between them. For an instant she looked like a Waterbender. “I watch you throw yourself headlong into danger, over and over again, and for what? Some misguided attempt to bring Jianzhu ‘to justice’? Do you know what that even means anymore?”
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“It means he’s gone for good,” Kyoshi snapped. “No longer walking this earth. That’s what it has to mean.”
“Why?” Rangi said, her eyes begging and combative at once. “Why do you need to do this so badly?”
“Because then I don’t have to be afraid of him, anymore!” Kyoshi screamed. “I’m scared, all right? I’m scared of him, and I don’t know what else will make it go away!”
Her words carried over the surface of the lake to any man and spirit who might be listening. Kyoshi’s obsession wasn’t the mark of a great hunter on a relentless stalk of her quarry. That was the lie that had sustained her. The truth was that she was a frightened child, running in different directions and hoping it would all work out for the best. She couldn’t feel safe with Jianzhu loose.
She heard it again. Those soft, sharp little breaths. Rangi was crying.
Kyoshi fought back her own tears. They wouldn’t have been as graceful. “Talk to me,” she said. “Please.”
“It wasn’t supposed to be like this,” Rangi said. She tried to smother herself with the palm of her hand. “It shouldn’t have gone this way.”
Kyoshi understood her friend’s disappointment. The shining new era the world was supposed to get after so many years of strife, the champion whom Rangi had trained to protect, had been stolen from them and replaced with . . . with Kyoshi.
“I know,” she said, her heart aching. “Yun would have been a much better—”
“No! Forget Yun, for once! Forget being the Avatar!” Rangi lost the battle to restrain herself and smacked Kyoshi hard across her collar. “It’s not supposed to be this way for you!”
Kyoshi went silent. Mostly because Rangi had hit her too hard, but also from surprise.
“You think you don’t deserve peace and happiness and good things, but you do!” Rangi yelled. “You, Kyoshi! Not the Avatar, but you!”