The Shadow of Kyoshi (Avatar, The Last Airbender)

Kyoshi took the water from the skin and worked on who she could. She mostly knew how to stop bleeding and pop joints back into their sockets, and there was call enough in the room for her simple skills. As she healed the superficial injuries and glanced at the ruined Fire Avatar wall, a single thought pounded through her head.

It wasn’t Yun who did this. It couldn’t be. If she wasn’t sure before, the heartlessness toward Rangi and Hei-Ran, the wanton vandalism, the offhanded slaughter of Lu and Chancellor Dairin made her certain now.

This was the work of the spirit. The foul, glowing apparition who’d identified her as the Avatar and dragged Yun into the darkness of a mountain had seized his mind. No one could go through that kind of experience unchanged. The Yun she knew would never be so cruel and destructive.

Atuat finished chilling the last of the victims she deemed savable. She swatted the leg of a nearby guard. “Take them to the hospital ward, but be careful,” she commanded. “They’re not actually healed yet, but your surgeons can start working on them now. I’ll be there to help soon.”

Kyoshi only had one question for the woman. “Can you teach me this technique?” Saving lives, pulling people back from the brink of death—there was no worthier use of bending in her opinion. Just the ability to keep someone stable until a real doctor arrived could have made such a difference in her past.

Atuat snorted in derision. At first Kyoshi thought she might have accidentally belittled how much study it took, but it turned out Atuat viewed it from a different angle. “When it comes to healing, I can teach anyone anything, in a fraction the time it normally takes,” she said. “Whether I have a student of the right qualities is a different matter.”

They got to their feet, only to see the leader of Zoryu’s personal security detail waiting for the Avatar. The armored man’s face roiled with bottled, silent anger, as if he’d been handpicked to represent the outrage of an entire nation. Only his duty kept him from bursting at the seams.

“We can talk about it later,” Atuat muttered to Kyoshi. “I think you have more pressing matters at the moment.”

Kyoshi followed the guard captain through the palace. They passed a torrent of furious nobles heading in the opposite direction, a crowd that had been recently dismissed from an unsatisfactory meeting. The courtiers, who had taken so much care in their order of speech during the party, muttered and hissed to themselves about “never having been so humiliated” and “the child being a disgrace to the crown.” Some of the most livid men and women wore the winged peony, which meant they were Keohso, the same clan as Zoryu’s mother.

The captain stopped at a set of massive bronze doors and indicated he wasn’t allowed to go any farther. “Where are my companions?” Kyoshi asked. “The lieutenant and the headmistress?” She had a feeling she’d need the guidance of Fire Nationals for what came next.

“Coordinating the palace lockdown,” came the gruff reply. Being useful, unlike you, was the additional silent commentary.

Kyoshi pushed the doors open herself, revealing the throne room, the same place where the Fire Lord received his war council. The ceiling of the great hall was supported by four towering red pillars with dragons of painted gold spiraling around them to the heavens. In the back, up a series of steps, lay the throne of the Fire Nation, a flat, blocky platform that would have given the sitter little comfort. A giant sculpted dragon weaving through the coils of its own body hung over it, threatening to burst from the wall. She guessed that if she peeked under the red silk carpet that covered the entire middle third of the floor, she might find yet more dragons staring back.

A straggling minister sidestepped his way past her, the last remnant of an audience she’d missed. It was the man she’d nearly struck with her fan. He glared at Kyoshi and stormed out, leaving her in the throne room with only two other people. The Fire Lord and his brother.

It was not a good moment for a stranger to walk in on. Zoryu was ashen and stooped, his eyes half shut as if the light were causing him pain. Chaejin stood tall by his side, regal and calm. An artist capturing the scene could easily have gotten their subjects mixed.

She waited for Zoryu to dismiss Chaejin, but the order never came. “He’s alive?” the Fire Lord said once the doors closed. “Yun was alive, and not a single member of your country thought to tell me? Did everyone in the Earth Kingdom decide to ignore this fact together?”

He didn’t know how right he was. And Kyoshi was to blame more than any Earth Sage. She couldn’t bring herself to answer.

“Why would he do this?!” Zoryu’s cry was directed at the skybound spirits as much as Kyoshi. “Why?!”

“He was attacking the people who wronged him,” she whispered. “Lu Beifong, Hei-Ran, the people who told him he was the Avatar.” Vengeance sounded so alien a reason, coming from her lips, even though she knew exactly the depth and shape it could take.

“I was briefed on what happened in the gallery,” Zoryu said. “How many are dead?”

Kyoshi forced herself to remember how many bodies Atuat pointedly ignored on the floor. “Lu. Chancellor Dairin. Two guards. Possibly more, depending if they make it through the night.”

Zoryu slumped in the corner of his throne. The act made him look like a child trying to hide from getting called on in a classroom. The mantle of being the Fire Lord was too heavy for him right now. “The chancellor didn’t deserve this,” he muttered. “None of them did.”

Chaejin reacted to the list of casualties much differently. “This is terrible,” he said, rubbing his chin with exaggerated strokes. “A high-ranking official of the Fire Nation killed in the palace? A foreign dignitary under the Fire Lord’s hospitality, murdered? Not to mention the destr

uction of our cultural heritage and the humiliation of the entire court in the garden. The disgraces to our country keep mounting. I can’t imagine what would happen if the intruder had successfully assassinated the headmistress of the Royal Academy.”

Kyoshi noticed he didn’t count the fallen guards. She’d had enough of trying to play by decorum. “What exactly are you doing here?” she snapped at Chaejin.

“Representing the voice of the Fire Sages in response to this heinous assault upon our nation,” he replied. “And if I can get a word in for the Saowon clan as well, then so be it.”

Chaejin stepped down from the stairs leading to the throne. He probably shouldn’t have been standing on them in the first place. “I’d be lying to my Fire Lord if I claimed to see a way out of this disaster. We’ve been gravely dishonored as a people. There are calls for retaliation against the Earth Kingdom.”

“The Earth Kingdom—” She was going to say the Earth Kingdom wasn’t responsible, but couldn’t finish the sentence. “The Earth Kingdom didn’t send Yun to harm your country.”

“I know.” Kindness oozed from Chaejin’s every word. “I spent the last twenty minutes assuring the court our friends across the sea are not to blame. It took some doing, but I’ve convinced them.”

He had no need to lie. If everything she heard tonight was true, it benefitted Chaejin to direct the court’s anger at the Fire Lord, not at a foreign power.

And it should have been Zoryu doing the diplomatic work. Kyoshi looked to the Fire Lord, but Chaejin’s presence had compressed him into a younger sibling and nothing but, unable to speak over his elder. The enraged Keohso were likely angry about Chaejin taking charge of the situation.