“I should have seen this coming,” Kyoshi said. “You traffic in hostages. You’re no better than a daofei.”
Jianzhu frowned at her. “The fact that you think so means you need proper training and education more than anything. It’s time to stop this nonsense, Kyoshi. Come home.”
“Where’s Rangi?”
“She’s . . . at . . . HOME!” Jianzhu yelled. “Where you should have been this entire time!”
His outburst didn’t draw much attention from their nearest neighbors. Father was obviously incensed at Daughter for dressing up and running away. Nothing they hadn’t seen a hundred times before.
Kyoshi doubted very much that Rangi was strolling the gardens of the mansion at her leisure, waiting for her. Jianzhu had grievously dishonored the Firebender by shearing her hair. To avoid retribution, he would have had to imprison Rangi. Or worse.
Kyoshi fought back against the anger that ran through her body. In a hostage situation she needed to remain as calm as she could. But her knee shook a little, contacting the table, causing the stone to wobble.
The rattling noise it made caught Jianzhu’s attention. He looked at the round rock. “What is this?” he said. “Another child’s toy you picked up while you were gone?”
Kyoshi shook her head. “It belonged to someone who should take part in bringing you down.”
“We’re wasting time here with your games,” Jianzhu snapped. “What are you going to do, if not what I say?”
She couldn’t speak her revenge out loud. Now that she was close enough to reach out and place her hands on Jianzhu’s neck, telling him to his face that she sought his death would have been a reverse incantation that sapped her will. She was afraid that if she gave voice to her hatred, it would turn to dust like medicine that had sat unused for too long.
“See?” Jianzhu said at her silence. “You came here without a plan. Whereas I’ll tell you exactly what I’m going to do if you don’t stand up, walk out of here, and follow me home.” He brought his face closer. “I’m going to collapse this building and kill everyone in it.”
Kyoshi’s eyes widened. Her mind skipped over debating whether he would and focused on how he might. She knew he wasn’t bluffing.
“That’s the trouble with these structures made completely of stone,” Jianzhu said. “They break instead of flexing. Which makes them horribly vulnerable to earthquakes.”
Kyoshi glanced around them. The restaurant was packed with oblivious townsfolk sitting on floors of stone, their backs to walls of stone, a roof of slate over their heads. In the hands of Jianzhu, it was a death trap. A mass grave in the waiting.
The threat was as real as could be. “You’d be living up to your daofei name,” Kyoshi said.
Jianzhu froze. Kyoshi thought perhaps she’d insulted him to the point where he’d forget he needed the Avatar, that he’d reach across the table and simply end her life. But he clapped his palm over his own mouth and started to shake.
Tears flowed out of his eyes. It took Kyoshi a while to understand he was laughing hysterically. She’d never seen his true laugh before, and it was a quiet, spasmodic attack that claimed his whole body. She flinched as he pounded his fist on the table.
With great difficulty, Jianzhu gathered himself. “You want to know how I earned that name all those years ago?” he whispered, leaning in with a co-conspirator’s trust. “It’s a funny story. First, I made an example out of the few Earthbenders among the Yellow Necks. I took my time with them. Then I told the rest that whoever dug the deepest trench to hide in by sundown would be spared, free to return to their homes. Only the ones who lagged behind would be killed.”
He chuckled in satisfaction. “You should have seen it. They dug as fast as their wretched hands could take them. Some of them killed each other over a shovel. They jumped into their holes and looked up with smug little smiles thinking they’d be the ones surviving, not their compatriots.”
Kyoshi wanted to throw up. There was no word for what Jianzhu was.
“And there you have it,” he said. “Five thousand fresh graves dug by their own occupants. I simply swept the earth over the top. Like I once explained to a former pupil, strength is bending people to your will, not the elements.”
He sighed as he shelved the good memory back with its neighbors. “You’re very hard to bend, Kyoshi. But if you give me no other option, after I kill everyone here, I may have to go home and cut Rangi’s throat—”
Lek’s last bullet zipped from the table toward Jianzhu’s temple. It stopped before making contact. Jianzhu rocked in his chair from the effort of counteracting her bending, one hand crooked in the air. With great effort he lowered the stone back to the table, pushing against her the whole way.
He
was greatly interested by this turn of events. “How?” he said as they fought over control of the rock. “When you left, you lacked the precision to bend a piece of earth this small.”
Kyoshi’s spread fan fluttered under the table, hidden from his sight. The strain was much greater for her. “I fell in with a different crowd,” she said.
“Hmph.” Jianzhu looked mildly impressed. “Well, I hope you’re happy with what you’ve learned. Because now you’ve doomed everyone here.” He reached up with his other hand and pulled the roof down.
Kyoshi matched him, bringing her second fan above the table. A tremor went through the building and died down before it could register as a problem with the patrons. Perhaps a very heavy wagon had passed by. The slab roof stayed where it was, though a trickle of dust drifted onto a few tables, causing annoyed shouts from the third floor.
By now a few people were looking at them, drawn by their bending poses. Run, she wanted to scream at the gawking bystanders. But she couldn’t. Her entire body was tensed to the breaking point, her throat frozen. It was taking every ounce of her effort to oppose Jianzhu’s strength.