The Rise of Kyoshi

The Agreement

Kyoshi slept poorly, fretting during the night over what the old man had said. Her secret. First Tagaka and now Lao Ge. If every old person could look into her eyes and deduce she had unusual power, or was the Avatar, then she’d be in trouble. The only benders she’d be able to learn from would be infants like Lek.

A toe in her ribs woke her. She clawed at the hard surface under her, dirt filling her fingers instead of her sheets. She found herself blearily missing her bed.

“Get up,” Rangi said. The sun hadn’t risen yet, and the fire still had a few red embers glowing in it. Lao Ge was nowhere to be seen, and the others were engrossed in a three-way snoring contest. Gray predawn light made the dusty riverbank appear like it had been treated with lye, leached of color and vitality.

Kyoshi staggered to her feet. Having moved in the night, the good blanket fell off her onto the ground. “Wha-what?”

Rangi shoved her along the bank, in the opposite direction she’d taken last night. “You wanted training? Well, you’re getting training. Starting today. Now.”

They walked, Kyoshi feeling like a prisoner as Rangi prodded her sharply every so often for not moving fast enough. They put some distance between themselves and the camp, but much less than Kyoshi thought they would by the time Rangi ordered her to stop.

A series of grassy mounds shielded them from view of the others, but the small hills weren’t very high. “Let’s see your Horse stance,” Rangi said. “You don’t get a pass on the basics that earthbending has in common with firebending.”

“We’re firebending? Here?” Anyone who came searching for them would certainly check this place. They’d left Pengpeng alone with criminals who coveted her.

“We’re reviewing basics, not making flame,” Rangi said. “I doubt you need a lot of nuanced, high-level instruction at this point. Can you even hold a deep bending stance for ten minutes?”

“Ten minutes!?” Kyoshi had heard five was an admirable goal, one that she’d never reach.

There was a hint of a smirk on Rangi’s lips. “Horse stance. Now. I don’t say things to my students twice.”

Three minutes in, and Kyoshi knew what this was. Punishment. The burning in her thighs and back, the ache in her knees, was retribution for not telling Rangi everything.

“Look, I’m sorry,” she said.

Rangi rested her elbow in her other hand and examined her nails. “You’re allowed to talk once your hips get to parallel.”

Kyoshi swore and readjusted her bones. This had to be an exercise meant for short people. “I should have told you my mother was an Airbender. I didn’t think it was relevant.”

Rangi seemed satisfied with the apology. Or the amount of pain she was inflicting on Kyoshi. “It is relevant!” she said. “Air Nomads aren’t outlaws! This is like finding out you had a second head hidden under your robes the whole while.”

Maybe satisfying Rangi’s curiosity would get her out of Horse stance early. “My mother was a nun born in the Eastern Air Temple,” Kyoshi said. “I don’t know much about her early life other than she became a master at a young age and was highly regarded.”

Talking provided a useful distraction from the acid eating her muscles. “Then, on a journey through the Earth Kingdom, she met my father in a small town somewhere. He was the daofei. An Earthbender and small-time thief.”

“Ugh, I can already see where this is going,” Rangi said.

“Yes. He dragged her into a scheme, and she fell in love with both him and the life of an outlaw. She must have been born into the wrong existence as an Air Nomad, because she tattooed over her arrows with serpents and dove into the underworld with her whole being, seeking out more ‘adventure.’”

Rangi shook her head, still not able to get over an Airbender going rogue. “That’s just ... so bizarre.”

“You heard the others talk about her. She became a relatively big figure among daofei, more so than my father. But her airbending suffered from a spiritual taint. Or so her journal says. Letting herself be absorbed by worldly concerns, and greedy ones at that, caused her power to dwindle. So she compensated.”

“With a set of fans,” Rangi said, snapping her fingers at a mystery solved. “For the life of me I couldn’t figure out why you had fans as an Earthbender. I didn’t ask because I thought it might have been a touchy subject.”

“It is.” The searing pain in her legs had been replaced by a duller, more manageable agony. “Why do you think I never told Kelsang? ‘Oh, by the way, I’m the product of one of the worst disgraces to your culture in recent memory?’ By the time I was old enough to consider bringing it up, there was no point. I had my job. I’d met you.”

“Five minutes,” Rangi said. “Not bad.”

Kyoshi pushed the hurt to the back of her mind. “I think I can keep going.”

Rangi took a lap around her, checking her posture from all angles. “It’s galling. A master Airbender abandoning her spirituality for a lowlife. No offense.”

“None taken. It doesn’t sit well with me either.”

Rangi poked her in the small of the back. “Promise me you’ll never throw your life away over a boy,” she said, her voice coated thickly with disdain.

Kyoshi laughed. “I won’t. Besides, who could possibly be worth—”

The full weight of what she was saying slammed down on her midsentence like a heavy gate. Her insides boiled with disgust at her own weakness.

She’d let herself laugh. She’d spoken Kelsang’s name out loud without cursing Jianzhu’s in the same breath. And worst of all, she’d forgotten Yun. It didn’t matter how long the lapse was. To release her grip on him, even for a second, was unforgivable.

Rangi knew it too. Her face crumpled, and she turned away. Kyoshi remembered what Lao Ge had said about her spirit making too much noise. Seeing Rangi stilled with grief in front of her drove the lesson home. The two of them held storms inside.

Kyoshi had to be stronger, in body and mind. Moments of happiness were like useful proofing, liquid testing the cracks in a jar. The less they occurred, the greater the chance she was on the right track for vengeance.

She was still in a low stance. She remembered the ineffectual Fire Fist she’d thrown in Jianzhu’s face. Perhaps if she’d embraced her firebending ability earlier, she could have ended him right then and there.

“Let me try producing flame,” Kyoshi said.

Rangi looked up and frowned.

Kyoshi’s rededication to her cause felt hot and bitter inside her, like steam in a plugged tea kettle. She was sure that if she let it out, she could firebend. “Fire Fists,” she said. “I think I can do them with real flame now. I feel like it’ll work.”

“No,” Rangi said.

“No?” Kyoshi was taken aback by her certainty. Firebending felt so real, so close. “What do you mean, no?”

“I mean no. You’re as tense as a rolled-up armadillo lion right now. You’re going to produce the wrong kind of flame and develop bad habits. Watch.”

Rangi stepped to the side. Without warning, she dropped into her stance and punched the air, snapping her sleeves with the force of her motion. Kyoshi could see her knuckles smolder like the tip of an incense stick.

“You need to work on relaxation and mental coordination first,” Rangi said. “Early lessons in firebending are all about suppressing flame and keeping it controlled. For a beginner, making visible fire means failure.”

Kyoshi scoffed to herself. Not producing flame had been the cause of her problems from the start. “Then let me try what you did.” She planted her feet in mimicry of Rangi and chambered her fists.

“Kyoshi, don’t.”

She imagined Jianzhu’s face, inhaled, and struck.

Her one experience at flamespitting had jiggled something loose, made it easy for her breath to spiral outward from her lungs and combust. Too easy. Energy raced down her arm and crashed into her fingers. It caused her nerves to light up with signals, as if she’d gripped a red-hot coal straight from the stove.

Instead of the crisp glow that Rangi produced, the heat that came out of Kyoshi’s fist was erratic, toggling, the popping of water added to hot oil. It went on for far too long and caused far too much pain. Kyoshi fell on her back and tried to get herself pointed away from any target. She managed to aim her hand at the sky in time. A tiny, contorted spout of black smoke belched upward from her fingers.

Kyoshi sat up. Rangi watched the pathetic yarnball of vapor climb into the air. Then she gave Kyoshi a stare that was hard enough to flatten iron.

They were saved from a difficult conversation by Lek. He crested the hill next to them and traced the path of the smoke with his finger.

“What kind of broke-down firebending was that?” he said with a snicker. He directed the question at Rangi, not having seen the source.

Rangi crossed her arms. “I had a momentary collapse of discipline,” she said, still glaring at Kyoshi. “It won’t happen again. Not if I ever want to firebend properly.”

Lek shrugged. “Lighten up; I was just asking. If the two of you are done collapsing, breakfast is ready.”

Breakfast was some manner of rodent, hunted, gutted, skinned, and burnt to the point of unrecognizability. Kyoshi and Rangi ate with big, angry bites as they sat with the daofei around the rebuilt fire, each trying to show the other how upset they were through aggressive gnawing.

Lek forgot his portion as he watched them, amazed. “I didn’t think an army princess and a servant girl from a fancy mansion would take to elephant rat.”

“Survival training at the academy,” Rangi said, breaking a bone with her fingers to get at the marrow. “We learned to accept whatever food we could find in the wild.”

“I used to eat garbage,” Kyoshi said.

That drew stares from the group.

“I thought Jesa and Hark left you in a farming village,” Kirima said.

“That doesn’t mean the farmers shared food with me.” Kyoshi worked her tongue around a stringy fiber of meat caught in her teeth. “They might not have known I was the child of outlaws, but I was still an outcast there. They treated me like I was unclean. And then I had to do things like this to survive, so you know. Self-fulfilling prophecy.”

“Reasons like that are why I can’t stand law-abiding, salt-of-the-earth folk,” Wong said. “It’s the holier-than-thou attitude. The hypocrisy.” He wiped his hands on a leaf. “If anything, they deserve to be knocked out and robbed on a regular basis.”

He noticed Kyoshi staring at him. “What?” he said. “I practice what I preach.”

“You must have hated their guts,” Kirima said.

“The villagers? Not really.” Kyoshi found she meant it. “Not as much as the people who left me with them.”

Lek threw the remnants of his meal into the fire and walked off, fuming silently. He disappeared behind the other side of Pengpeng, the only member of the party who seemed to make him happy.

“All right, what’s his problem?” Kyoshi snapped. “Every time I state a fact or an opinion about my parents he has a fit.”

“That’s because he idolized them,” Kirima said. “We picked him up in a town outside the Misty Palms Oasis. He’d just lost his brother, his last remaining family. Hark and Jesa took him in for a few days, and he proved useful on a job, so they taught him more and more of the trade until he grew into a stricter follower of the outlaw code than the rest of us. He worshiped the ground they walked on.”

Perhaps Kirima had meant to soothe the beast inside Kyoshi, but instead she’d smeared its nose with fresh blood.

“Oh, I’m sorry,” Kyoshi said, a lifetime’s worth of unused irony pouring forth. “I’ll remember to be nicer to the boy my mother and father decided to raise instead of me.”

Kirima made a gesture with her thumbs to indicate how little she cared about the issue. “What about you?” she said to Rangi. “What’s a sparky young noble like you doing with an Earth peasant?”

The mere reminder of her duty caused Rangi to sit up straighter. “I’m honor bound to follow and protect Kyoshi—”

“Nope!” Kirima said, regretting she’d asked. “Gonna cut you off right there. The last time I listened to a Firebender talk about ‘honor’ my ears nearly rotted off my skull. Had to kick him out of my bed with both feet.”

She and Wong got up. The two older daofei didn’t feel the need to reciprocate with their life stories. Wong pointed two fingers at the campfire and sunk it a few feet into the ground before covering it up. His size belied the dexterity of his earthbending. In fact, she’d confirmed last night that every member of her parents’ gang had finesse to spare. The exact quality she was lacking.

“We need to talk,” Kyoshi said, getting up as well. “Last night we were interrupted before I agreed to anything.”

“Oh, come on, really?” Kirima said. “After what we’ve been through, you want to take your bison and ditch us in the middle of nowhere?”

“We shared a meal,” Wong said, looking genuinely hurt. “We beat up lawmen together.”

“My demands haven’t changed,” Kyoshi said. “I want bending training, and the only benders around are you lot. You’ll teach me. Personally.”

“What are you lumping me in for, Earth girl?” Kirima said. “You want to learn waterbending forms to relax and improve your circulation?”

Kyoshi had prepared an answer overnight for this purpose. “‘Wisdom can be gleaned from every nation,’” she said, using a quote of Kelsang’s. “If learning about the other elements can make me stronger, then I’ll do it.”

“That desperate for revenge, huh?” Kirima said. “Who is this powerful man who’s wronged you? You never told us his name.”

“That’s because you don’t need to know.” Kyoshi didn’t want to talk about Jianzhu. He was too renowned throughout the Earth Kingdom. The same went for her identity as the Avatar. Information about their link could spread, giving him a trail to hunt her down before she was ready to fight him.

Every edge would count in this battle. Kyoshi recalled the way her parents’ gang had flown over the rooftops last night, unimpeded. They’d practically reached the same heights Jianzhu had with his stone bridges.

“I want to learn how to run across the sky,” she said. “Like you did in town.”

“Dust-stepping?” Wong said. His usually impassive face took on an edge of seriousness.

“It’s our group’s signature technique,” Kirima said. “Though for me it’s ‘mist-stepping.’ And it’s not something you get for free.”

The atmosphere had changed. Previously the daofei had treated Kyoshi’s demands as amusing, the barking of a puppy trying to look fierce. This was the first time they’d gotten truly cautious and guarded, as if they might be swindled in the trade.

Rangi noticed their reservations. “You’re acting pretty serious about a technique I cribbed after seeing it once,” she said.

Kirima fixed her with a stare. “Other groups probably would have killed you for that,” she said without a hint of jest. “You don’t last long in our world by letting everyone see your advantages. Secrets are how we survive.”

She turned back to Kyoshi. “We teach you, that means you’re in. For real, and for life. You’d have to swear our oaths and follow our codes. In the eyes of those who abide by the law, you’d be a daofei.”

I’d be like Tagaka,Kyoshi thought. I’d be like my parents. She stilled the revulsion inside her and nodded. “I understand.”

“Kyoshi, think about what you’re doing!” Rangi yelled.

“Topknot’s right, for once,” Wong said. “You don’t take these vows lightly. It means accepting us as your brothers and sisters.” He raised his brows, showing the whites of his eyes. “Since we’ve met you’ve been looking down your nose at us. Can your honor take the hit, associating with such unclean folk?”

The big man was more incisive than he looked. Kyoshi knew what it was like, being on the receiving end of disdain.

Her answer was yes. As far as she was concerned, her personal honor and reputation had no value. Trading them for more power was an easy choice. She would do it. For Kelsang and Yun.

She could practically feel Rangi’s disappointment vibrating through the ground. “What are these oaths?” Kyoshi asked.

According to Kirima, the swearing-in ceremony was supposed to take place in a grand hall, with the initiate standing under an arch of swords and spears. They’d have to improvise. Kyoshi took a spot by the riverbank while Wong stood behind her and held a pocketknife over her head.

Kirima had Kyoshi make the same odd salute the gang had used the night before in the teahouse. The flattened left hand represented the square folk, the law-abiding community, while the right fist hammering it down represented followers of the outlaw code. Just in case Kyoshi forgot she was joining the forces of darkness.

Rangi stalked some ways off to the side, making sure to stay within their field of vision so everyone could see how angry and disapproving she was the whole time. Kirima ignored her while conducting the ceremony. According to the Waterbender, there were normally fifty-four oaths that had to be taken, recited from memory by the new member of the gang. She had decided to let Kyoshi off easy with just the most important three.

“O spirits,” Kirima exclaimed, “a lost one comes to us, seeking the embrace of family. But how will we know her heart is true? How will we know that she follows the Code?”

“I shall swear these oaths,” Kyoshi said in response. “I swear to defend my brothers and sisters, and obey the commands of my elders. Their kin will be my kin, their blood my blood. Should I fail to uphold this vow, may I be hacked to death by many knives.”

The words were easy to say. They caused no tugs of conflict on her spirit. Yun and Kelsang had been her lifeblood. She should have defended them with every scrap of her being. They might have lived, had she embraced her power more fully.

“Next,” Kyoshi said, “I swear to follow no ruler and be beholden to no law. Should I become the lackey of any crown or country, may I be ripped apart by thunderbolts.”

As a good citizen of the Earth Kingdom, this line made her a little more nervous. Yun had always said the Avatar had to act independently of the Four Nations. But to disregard law and order entirely felt like an extreme for the sake of extremes. Did her parents walk down the street trying to flaunt every statute and custom they could think of?

“Stop drifting,” Kirima hissed.

Kyoshi coughed and straightened up. “Last, I swear never to make an honest living from those who abide the law. I will take no legitimate wage, and work for no legitimate man. Should I ever accept coin for my labors, may I be sliced to bits by a variety of knives.”

She didn’t see the difference between the first and third punishments. And the last oath was perhaps the one most inimical to her being. Back in Yokoya, a steady job had been the only barrier between her and death.

I’m not that person anymore, Kyoshi reminded herself. That girl is gone and will never come back.

With her third vow, she was done. “I see no stranger before me, but a sister,” Kirima said. “The spirits have borne witness. Let our family prosper in the days to come.” She saluted Kyoshi and stepped back.

A heavy weight slammed down on Kyoshi’s collarbones, and she momentarily panicked, fearing an attack from behind. The sensation was too similar to the rock that Jianzhu had locked around her wrists. But it was just Wong giving her a congratulatory pat on the shoulders.

“Welcome to the other side,” he said, unsmiling. He brushed past her like they’d finished rearranging furniture and joined Kirima in trudging back to the campsite.

Kyoshi blinked. “That’s it? What happens now?”

“What happens is we leave this place on your bison,” Kirima said without looking back at her. “As soon as we can.”

They left her alone with Rangi. Instead of scolding Kyoshi, the Firebender simply gave her a shrug that said, You get what you pay for.

Kirima and Wong were already cleaning up the remnants of camp once they caught up. The big man took special care to cover their footprints, sweeping dust over the signs of their presence with little pivots of earthbending.

“The deal was for lessons,” Kyoshi said.

“And you’ll get them, once we pick up a score,” Kirima said. She checked the level of her water pouch and made a face. “Even little baby vengeance seekers need food and money to survive. In case you haven’t noticed, we’re out of both. I’m not eating elephant rat for two days in a row.”

Kyoshi pulled her lips over her teeth in frustration. They’d touted the seriousness of the oaths so much that she’d thought they’d start treating her like an equal after she took them. Instead they were treating her like Lek.

She had to establish a better position in the hierarchy or else this would go on forever. As Wong reached down to pick up a blanket, she stepped on it, pinning it to the ground.

He stood up and gave her a stare that had probably heralded countless brawls in the past. Kyoshi crossed her arms and met his gaze. He wasn’t more dangerous than Tagaka or Jianzhu.

After trying to deal death through the power of his mind alone, Wong broke the silence. “Keep being a brat, and I’ll never teach you how to use your fans,” he said.

Kyoshi was going to retort out of instinct, but the implication made her pause and step back. She pulled out one of her fans. “You ... know how to use these?”

They’d been a puzzle so far. Rangi had taken a look at the weapons earlier, tested their balance, and concluded she couldn’t teach Kyoshi much about them, other than using them as short, heavy clubs in their folded state. “They’re not part of the Fire Academy curriculum,” she’d said with a shrug. “Maybe you can sneak them into places you couldn’t take a sword.”

Wong plucked the fan out of Kyoshi’s hand and snapped it open. He tossed it into the air and it spun perfectly around its pivot pin, the leaf tracing circles as it flew. He twirled around himself and caught the fan behind his back before lifting it coquettishly to his face.

“The peony sheds its beauty before the moon,” he sang in a deep, beautiful, vibrant voice, using the surface of the fan to reflect and amplify the sound. “Shamed by the light of a spirit so pure / I leap to catch its petals / and mourn for what I have left unsaid.”

He thrust the fan all around him in a series of flitting gestures, the leaf opening and closing rapidly like the beating of insect wings. It was an expertly performed dance. But Kyoshi knew it could also have been a sequence of attacks, defensive weaving, evasion and retaliation against multiple opponents.

With a flourish, Wong ended the performance in a traditional heroic pose, a deep stance with his arms spread wide, his head intentionally wobbling side to side with the leftover energy from his motions. It was a showcase of classic poetry, older than old school. Auntie Mui would have fainted with delight.

Kyoshi applauded, the only appropriate response to a display of skill that great. “Where did that come from?” she asked.

“Hark. We have a lineage through your father’s side that traces back to one of the Royal Theater schools in Ba Sing Se,” Kirima said. “And we stay sharp enough at performing to have plausible cover in the cities we visit. We’re the Flying Opera Company, after all.”

She raised a leg behind her, over her head, and kept it going until she completed a forward-facing, no-handed cartwheel, a move that elite dancers saved for the climax of their performances. Kirima looked like she could have done her market shopping, traveling that way.

Kyoshi was astonished. That would explain how they were so light on their feet. Royal Theater performers were known to be some of the most physically capable people in the Earth Kingdom, able to mimic dozens of martial styles on the stage and act out dangerous stunts without getting hurt. It made her feel better about the agreement they’d struck. She could get some extra value out of the bargain.

Wong folded the fan and handed it back to her. “I’ll teach you to use this,” he said. “For a fifth of your shares on any future jobs we do.”

“Deal,” Kyoshi said quickly. She didn’t know what shares were, but she would have paid nearly any price to better understand her weapons.

Rangi and Kirima both smacked their hands against their foreheads, but for different reasons. “You could have gotten at least half,” Kirima said to Wong.

Lek popped his head around the side of Pengpeng. “Do you want to get going, or do you want to sit here rubbing each other’s backs all day?” he said.

“Hey, Lek, guess who the newest member of the gang is,” Kirima said. “Official and everything.”

Lek’s eyebrows squeezed together in frustration. “You cannot be serious!” he yelled. He waved his arm at Kyoshi like she was a fake vase they’d brought home. “She doesn’t care about the Code! She’s abider chaff! She’s squarer than the hole in an Earth Kingdom coin!”

“And she has a bison,” Kyoshi snapped. “So unless you like walking, I suggest you deal with me being part of your stupid outlaw family.” If Kirima or Wong took offense to her regression in attitude toward daofei, they didn’t show it.

“I am never calling you kin,” Lek spat. He went back to making final adjustments on Pengpeng’s reins. He’d saddled the giant bison by himself—in impressive time too. Neither Kyoshi nor Rangi could find any fault with the work he’d done as they mounted Pengpeng.

Lek took offense at their examination. “I know what I’m doing,” he said. “I probably have more practice than you two.”

“If we’re being perfectly honest, our whole reputation was built on Jesa’s bison,” Kirima said. “We might talk a good game, but Longyan did all the work. Smuggling’s a cinch when you can just fly over checkpoints.”

She and Wong finished loading and climbed onto Pengpeng’s back. Rangi marked her territory in the driver’s seat, daring Lek to challenge her for it. He compensated for his downgrade in the pecking order by pulling a crude map out of his pocket. Real leaders navigated and scheduled.

“We’re going to a meeting post in the mountains outside Ba Sing Se,” he said, denting the paper with his finger. “We’ll get the latest news from other groups and find a few easy jobs to get our feet back into the water.”

Rangi lifted off. The late-morning sun had yet to turn oppressive. And with the prep work having been done by extra hands, Pengpeng’s unhurried climb into the cool air almost felt relaxing.

“How did the two of you get a bison?”

Lek’s sudden question was tinged with suspicion and jealousy. “Neither of you were raised Air Nomad,” he said. “And this girl would never let you fly her unless she’d already known you for a long time. Did you steal her from an Airbender friend?”

In her head, Kyoshi silently thanked Lek for reminding her of her duty. This was where she needed to stay. Down in the muck, painted in hatred for herself and her enemy, not flying in the wind with Kelsang. “Yes,” Kyoshi said. “I did.”

Rangi gave her a worried glance, not understanding why she’d lie. Lek shook his head in disgust. “Separating a monk from their bison?” he said. “That’s cold. Though I should have expected such low behavior from someone who doesn’t respect their mother and father.”

Kyoshi said nothing and stared into the distance, where the horizon broke into jagged formations against the sky. The empty feeling was good. It absolved her of choice, allowed her to think of herself as merely a vessel, an agent of balance.

But her tranquility was broken when she noticed something missing. “Wait,” she said, turning around in the saddle. “Where’s Lao Ge?”