Kyoshi drank its light, feeling its push and pull as Kirima had taught her, her muscles loosening from the rigidity of earthbending into the relaxed, flowing state of water. She took a stance and beckoned at the pond.
She knew little of advanced waterbending forms, but that wasn’t necessary right now. Nor did s
he require her fans yet. For this feat, Kyoshi would provide the power, like a draft beast, and Kirima would apply control. As Waterbenders, the two of them would be greatly enhanced by the full moon, like tides rising in a bay.
The sleeping turtle ducks quacked awake in panic and fled as the surface of the water bulged upward. Kyoshi lifted the blob of liquid higher and higher. Where it threatened to protrude too far and spill, Kirima gently nudged it back into place with the skill of a surgeon. The mass of water looked like a jellynemone, pulsating and floating along the current.
Kyoshi felt an impact against her ribs and nearly let the water out of her grip. She looked down to see a tear in the fabric of her jacket and a small metal point broken off in the links of the chainmail underneath. She’d taken a glancing blow from an arrow.
A few guardsmen poured out of the opposite end of the courtyard. “We’ll cover you!” Rangi said. “Go!” Everyone who couldn’t waterbend leaped off the roof.
“All right, Kyoshi!” Kirima shouted. “Drop the hammer!”
Kyoshi relaxed and lowered her center of gravity with such vigor that it felt like her skeleton outraced her muscles. The heavy formation of water punched through the interior wall of the southern portion of the compound, rushing in through the breach. There was so much that it would flood every corridor from wall to wall, floor to ceiling. Little windows and vents dotting the interior walls gave them the line of sight they needed, though with this amount of water, it was hard not to feel the element’s presence intuitively.
The locations of the screams told them it was working. The guardsmen who’d been focusing on the daofei assault, concentrated in the southern fortifications, were being violently scrubbed from their posts.
Kyoshi and Kirima swept the tidal wave from left to right, then around the corner to the west for good measure, before releasing the pressure. They wanted to knock the soldiers out, not drown them. With a synchronized pull, they burst a portion of the west wall, letting the water flow into the other courtyard. Piles of groaning, coughing bodies spilled through the gap.
In the brief moment Kyoshi spent checking that the men were alive, a battle cry caught her off guard. She turned to see a lone soldier who’d entered the roof from some sally port they’d overlooked charging her with a spear, his feet clattering over the tiles. Her hands went for her fans, but she fumbled the draw.
Right before she was impaled, she heard a familiar zipping noise. The spearman took a stone bullet to the hip and fell off the roof with a scream. Kyoshi glanced back into the night. Somewhere in the distance, Lek was grinning smugly at her.
“What are you doing?” Kirima snapped. “Get moving!”
On to the last phase, the one Kyoshi was truly dreading.
Kirima and Kyoshi hurried down the steps of the service tunnels. Their objective was underground. They came to a fork where Lao Ge was waiting for them.
“They need you to bounce the cell door lock,” he said to Kirima, motioning down the right branch. “Kyoshi and I will check the other side for any lurking guardsmen.”
The others had explained to Kyoshi that “bouncing a lock” meant shooting water into the keyhole with enough pressure to force the pins higher, releasing the locking mechanism. It was considered faster and more elegant than trying to freeze the metal to its shattering point. It was also beyond Kyoshi’s waterbending skill, fans or no fans.
Kyoshi bit her lip as Kirima went down the right tunnel without hesitation, leaving her alone with Lao Ge. The old man watched the Waterbender depart with casual interest. He’d taken a slouching position against the wall as if he didn’t have a care in the world.
“Come,” he said to Kyoshi, any sense of urgency gone from his voice.
She followed him down the hall. It was more finished than the tunnels under Jianzhu’s mansion, lit with glowing crystal and painted clean white. Though her headdress added to her height, she didn’t have to stoop.
The dizziness she sometimes felt in Lao Ge’s presence when they were alone came back with a vengeance. Each of her footfalls seemed to carry her miles over the endless stretch of tunnel. She lost her sense of up and down.
She had no idea how far they’d gone when they reached the end of the hall. At first Kyoshi thought that it was strewn with bodies, that the violence had leapfrogged them somehow. But the dozen or so people who lay on the floor or pressed themselves against the walls were alive and trembling. They weren’t guards. They wore the decorative patterns of ladies-in-waiting, or the plain, neat robes of butlers. Beyond them was a solid iron door, barred by a thick bolt that had no visible opening mechanism.
Lao Ge took a step forward. The entire assembly cowered and hid their faces.
“Your master saved himself and locked you out,” he said with wicked humor. The tight corridors caused his voice to echo at a lower timbre, or perhaps it had always been that deep. “You’ve been left to your fate.”
The maid nearest him sobbed. Lao Ge had painted his face in a twisted, horrific jester’s leer. And many people considered Kyoshi a tower of menace on her best days. She remembered the effect she had on the staff in Jianzhu’s mansion that rainy day she left them, and they’d known her for years. To Te’s servants, who’d heard the throes of battle outside, she and Lao Ge must have looked like walking incarnations of death.
An acrid smell wrinkled her nose. She looked down to see a chamberlain, rocking and mumbling to himself with his eyes rolled back in dread. “Yangchen protect me. The spirits and Yangchen protect me. The spirits . . .”
Lao Ge laughed, and the servants shrieked. “Get out,” he said. “Today you live.”
The staff members scrambled past them on their hands and knees, taking the turn that would lead them to the surface of the palace. Kyoshi watched the unfortunate men and women leave. She said nothing that would relieve their fear or allow them to sleep better tonight.
“The lock,” Lao Ge reminded her.
The greater portion of it was on the other side of the door, as he’d explained earlier. But there was a flaw in the design that left part of the thick iron bar exposed. Defeat that, and they could get in.