“Stop this!” Kyoshi said. “Stop this right now!”
“Aiyaaa,” Li lamented without a speck of sincerity. “I’m sorry, Avatar, but I’m acting within the confines of my duty. Rightfully, I can vacate these premises of criminals as necessary.”
“Mama!” It was the little girl’s sobbing that set Kyoshi over the edge. “Papa!”
Kyoshi drew her fans and snapped them open. She raised clumps of earth from below the dusty top layer, where the clay was still moist and malleable. Fist-sized clods shot forth, slamming over the mouths and noses of Li and his officers, clamping over their skin like muzzles.
The guards let go of the family and clawed at their faces, but Kyoshi’s earthbending was too strong to be resisted. Li sank to his knees, his eyes goggling out.
They had time before they would suffocate to death. Kyoshi put back her fans and slowly went to each guard in turn, yanking off their headbands one by one, checking the square metal seals of the Earth King fastened to the cloth.
The badges of every official in Ba Sing Se had identification numbers engraved on them, a testament to the city’s massive bureaucracy. These men, despite the shrinking supply of air to their brains, could understand the gesture of her taking their headbands and tucking them into her robes for safekeeping. One visit to an administration hall, and she could learn their identities. She could find them later. Most residents of Ba Sing Se had heard the rumors. They’d heard stories of what Avatar Kyoshi was, and what she did to people.
Kyoshi saved Li for last. He’d turned purple in the time she’d taken to make the rounds. After snatching his headband from under his cap, she let the clay fall from his mouth, and the others’ at the same time. Li’s squad dropped to the ground, gasping for breath. The captain landed on his side and his inhalation rattled like di
ce in a cup.
She leaned over, but before she could say anything, Li threw a name at her, hoping to buy clemency. He really had no backbone. “His name is Wo! The man paying me is Minister Wo!”
Kyoshi needed to shut her eyes so her frustration wouldn’t leak out. There were probably a dozen Minister Wo’s in Ba Sing Se. The name alone was meaningless to her. The city was too big. The Earth Kingdom was too big. She couldn’t keep up with the corruption leaking from its holes.
She gathered her breath. “Here is what’s going to happen, Captain,” she said as calmly as she could. “You are going to clear the block of the Triads and no one else. Then you are going to find paper and brush. You will write me a full confession, detailing this Wo person and every bribe you took from him. Every stroke of it the truth. Do you hear me, Captain Li? I will check. I want you to pour your very spirit into this confession.”
He nodded. Kyoshi straightened up to see the woman and her daughter looking at her with wide, frightened eyes. She started to approach them, wanting to ask if they were hurt.
“Don’t touch them!” The man who’d lost his glasses threw himself between Kyoshi and his family. With his near blindness, he wouldn’t have seen her trying to help. Or maybe he had, and decided she was a danger to his wife and child anyway.
Farther away, around the edges of the cordon, more bystanders had gathered. They whispered to each other, the seeds of fresh rumors taking root in the soil. The Avatar had not only ripped apart the occupants of Loongkau, but she’d turned her insatiable wrath upon the officers of the Earth King’s justice as well.
The stares of the ordinary citizens and the terrified family made Kyoshi’s skin prickle with a feeling that corrupt men like Li or Mok could never force on her. Shame. Shame for what she’d done, shame for what she was.
Her makeup covered the flush in her cheeks and camouflaged the furrow in her brow. She gave Li one last meaningful tap and then walked away from Loongkau as slowly as she’d arrived, an impassive statue heading back to the altar that gave it life. But really, underneath her paint, she was fleeing the scene of her crime, her heart threatening to pound her chest into dust.
THE INVITATION
People who complained about how long it took to travel across Ba Sing Se were usually factoring in the congestion. That wasn’t a problem for Kyoshi. Crowds tended to part out of her way like grass before the breeze.
She had another shortcut to exploit as well. It was possible to waterbend a makeshift raft upstream along the drainage canals running from the Upper Ring all the way out to the Agrarian Zone for irrigation. It was extremely fast, if you could stand the smell.
She reached the Middle Ring by the evening. Despite the orderly layout and numbered addresses, she struggled to find her direction in the uniformity of the white-painted houses and green-tiled roofs. She took paths leading her over peaceful bridges that spanned gently flowing canals, and along tea shops redolent with jasmine blossoms and trees shedding their pale pink petals over the sidewalks. As a child living in the gutters of Yokoya, Kyoshi used to imagine a paradise much like the Middle Ring. Clean, quiet, and food at hand anywhere you looked.
Store owners sweeping their floors would look up in surprise at her, but soon returned to their business. She passed a gaggle of dark-robed students that stared and elbowed each other to get a glimpse but didn’t flee her gaze. People who were comfortable with their station in life tended to have less fear. They couldn’t imagine danger in any form visiting their doorstep.
Kyoshi slipped out of sight into a darkened side street. She opened an unmarked door with a key she kept in her sash. The hallway she entered was as full of twists and stairs as Loongkau, but much cleaner. It ended with a passageway into a plain second-story apartment, furnished only with a bed and a desk. This room was one of several properties around the Four Nations that Jianzhu had bequeathed her, and it served as a safe room where she could sleep overnight when she didn’t want to announce her official presence with the Earth King’s staff. She unbuckled her bracers and peeled them off, tossing them on the bed as she crossed the floor.
She sank into the chair and dumped the pilfered headbands on the desk, the badges clattering over the surface like gambling winnings. She was more careful removing her headdress. A breeze rustled her freed hair, coming from the window that gave her an expansive sunset view of the Lower Ring in all its vastness and poverty, the brown shacks and shanties stretching over the land like leather drying in the sun.
It was an unusual layout for the apartment. Many Middle Ring houses did not have views that faced the Lower Ring. The merchants and financiers who lived in this district paid so they didn’t have to look at unpleasantness.
Her fingers moved on their own, organizing the badges into neat stacks. A dull ache of exhaustion settled into her head. Today had added another complication to the pile. She would need to plan another visit to Loongkau to make sure the residents were safe within their homes. And she’d have to follow up on Li’s information, or else the captain and his backers would know they could simply wait until the Avatar had passed like a cloud overhead for them to resume their corrupt activities.
She knew it was a losing battle. In the grand scheme of things, singling out one dirty lawman in Ba Sing Se would have as much effect as pulling a raindrop out of the ocean. Unless . . .
Unless she made an example of Li and whoever bribed him. She could hurt them so badly that word would spread about what happens when the Avatar catches you exploiting the defenseless for your own gain.
It would be quick. It would be efficient. It would be brutal.
Jianzhu would have approved.