The Rise of Kyoshi

The Avatar’s Masters

Pengpeng graced the skies over the plains of Ba Sing Se. The Impenetrable City watched them pass like a silent sentry, the monolithic brown walls a blank face devoid of features.

Kyoshi watched the capital sail by. Somewhere in the center of those titanic fortifications was the Earth King, nominally the most powerful person on the continent, with armies to command and the wealth of the world at his disposal. Though she’d never dug deep into history lessons, she knew that the records were full of instances where Avatars and Earth Kings came to each other’s aid.

And yet she couldn’t go ask him for help. There were no means for a peasant to approach the Earth King that wouldn’t result in immediate refusal, or capture, or death. Moreover, courts and cities were Jianzhu’s realm. He’d spent decades cultivating influence among the bureaucrats of Ba Sing Se. Barging in there would be no better than surrendering to Governor Deng back in Chameleon Bay.

She looked at her parents’ gang. These were the only people she could trust, as sad as that was. Out there was a city that essentially belonged to her enemy. Her allies could fit on the back of a single bison.

And they weren’t happy with her right now.

“All right, spill it,” Kirima snapped. “Who is this man you’re feuding with? You said he was a rich and powerful sage. Which one, exactly? Tell us the truth!”

Kyoshi stared at the saddle floor. Before, she’d felt within her rights, keeping his name a secret. But the decision seemed completely foolish in retrospect.

“... Jianzhu,” Kyoshi said weakly. “Jianzhu, the companion of Kuruk.”

“The Architect?” Lao Ge said, rubbing his chin. “You aim high, my dear. I’m impressed.”

The rest of them were not as amused. Their jaws dropped in chorus. “Jianzhu the Gravedigger!?” Lek yelled. “You picked a fight with the Gravedigger!?”

“I didn’t pick the fight!” Kyoshi protested. “I wasn’t lying when I said he killed two people I loved!”

“Oh no, we believe that!” Kirima shouted. “We can believe that plenty! That man has a higher body count than septapox!”

“And you ticked him off so badly that he sent a beast out of myth to track you all the way into the Taihua Mountains,” Wong said with a sigh. “We might as well jump off Pengpeng right now and save ourselves the trouble.”

“Thanks a lot, you numbskull!” Lek said. “We had a chance of surviving Mok, but if the Butcher of Zhulu Pass wants you feeding the worms, then it’s only a matter of time before he puts you and us belowground!”

So Kyoshi wasn’t the only one terrified of him. It was a small comfort, but a comfort nonetheless, that made her feel like she was standing on firmer footing. Outlaws were perhaps the one group who would understand how brutal and dangerous Jianzhu really was.

She closed her eyes. She hadn’t known these people for very long. But to her own surprise more than anyone’s, she would have felt intolerably guilty if Jianzhu’s efforts to capture her caused them any grievous harm. They deserved ... not to be swindled, was the way she’d put it. They were owed the full story.

“He’s not trying to kill me,” Kyoshi said. “He doesn’t want me dead.”

“Well, that would be new for him!” Kirima said. “How are you so privy to his inner thoughts and goals?”

“Because.” She took a deep breath to steady herself. “I’m the Avatar.”

It was the first time she’d ever knowingly said the truth out loud. Somehow she’d managed to avoid speaking those three specific words in that specific order to Rangi the night they fled Yokoya in the drenching rain. Rangi had already known the Avatar was either her or Yun, so context had sufficed.

Kyoshi’s confession hung in the air, as visible as smoke. She waited for the rest of them to recover from the blow that had staggered Rangi, Kelsang, and everyone else who belonged to the small circle of knowledge at one point in time or another. They might have needed a moment to recalibrate their view of the world ...

“Ha!” Lek said. “Ha!”

... Or maybe they’d just laugh in her face?

Lek rolled back on the floor of the saddle, finding her moment of ultimate honesty a good joke, a relief from his jangled nerves. “You, the Avatar? Man, I have heard some whoppers, but that might be the best yet!”

“I know I let you gloss over a bunch of the oaths,” Kirima said to her. “But at least five of them are about never lying to your sworn family.”

“She is the Avatar!” Rangi said. “Why do you think she has a Fire Nation bodyguard?”

“Dunno,” Wong said with a shrug. He pointed his thumb at Kirima. “Why do you think we’ve got her?”

The Waterbender gave him a dirty look before continuing. “Look, you can believe in your weird little two-person cult all you want,” she said to Kyoshi. “Just tell us what you stole from the Gravedigger. You wouldn’t be the first servant who bungled a theft and had to flee from their angry boss.”

Kyoshi couldn’t believe it. She’d had it all wrong. She’d thought that her Avatarhood was the final secret, a gilded treasure that needed to be kept in a series of locked chests until the exact right moment. It turned out that without proof, the information was worth less than the paper it was written on. She squeezed one of the fans in her belt out of frustration.

“Do you even bend all four elements?” Wong said. “Do you?”

“I firebent once,” she said, realizing how stupid she sounded as she said it. “Under duress. It, uh, came out of my mouth. Like dragon’s breath.” She thought about trying to do a Fire Fist, but it felt like a bad idea, given the lack of space and how badly her last one went.

“Yeah, I once got food poisoning from dodgy fire flakes too,” Lek said. “Doesn’t mean I’m the reincarnation of Yangchen.”

“Well, I believe her,” Lao Ge said with a proud, upturned chin. Judging by the others’ expressions, his endorsement had the opposite effect.

“Okay, okay,” Kirima said. “Everyone calm down. Take a breather. Let’s consider this rationally for a minute. Assuming she is the—KYOSHI, THINK FAST!”

She’d uncorked her water skin with a sleight of hand. A pellet of liquid flew at Kyoshi’s face.

Kyoshi made an undignified squeal that should have disqualified her from holding any office whatsoever. She still couldn’t bend any piece of earth smaller than a house, and the water aimed at her eyes made her flinch like a prickle snake had wandered into her sleeping bag. She threw her arms over her face.

“Spirits above,” Lek whispered.

Her cheeks burned in shame. Sure, she looked bad, but that bad?

“Kyoshi,” Rangi said, breathless and thrilled. “Kyoshi!”

The fan she’d been holding had come out of her belt as she clenched up in surprise. She was gripping it the wrong way, like a dagger. The tip of the weapon pointed to the little blob of water hovering in midair.

“Is that you?” Rangi said to Kirima. The stunned Waterbender shook her head.

Rangi dove at Kyoshi. The water fell on her back, splashing them both. She squeezed Kyoshi in a ferocious embrace. “You did it!” she yelled. “You bent another element!”

As Kyoshi struggled to breathe with an ecstatic Firebender wrapped around her neck, she stared at the fan in her hand. Her mother’s weapon had made the difference somehow, in both the element and the amount. She was sure of it.

She looked up at the faces of the daofei. Lao Ge had a cool, knowing expression, but the rest were shocked into submission. They’d been smuggling valuable cargo the whole time.

They settled down in one of the innumerable abandoned quarries that supplied the middle and upper rings of Ba Sing Se. The marker of wealth for most Earth Kingdom citizens was whether your house was built with stone from the ground below it. The farther the rock had to travel, the fancier it was.

This quarry followed a seam of marble. The small canyon had been mined out in perfectly square blocks, leaving the edges protruding with right angles. They landed on a flat surface of swirled gray and white, resembling tiny figures on a giant fountain basin. The regularity of the stone fractures laid on top of the natural rock formations made Kyoshi’s vision blur.

The first sign that something was off was Wong. He dismounted first and then reached up to help Kyoshi down. She frowned, assuming he was more likely to pick her pocket than act as a footman. She jumped off the other side of the saddle.

Once they were all on solid ground, the original members of the Flying Opera Company backed away from her. “We need a moment to confer,” Kirima said.

Kyoshi and Rangi shared uncertain glances with each other while the daofei huddled on the far side of the marble cube, murmuring and whispering. Occasionally one of them would poke their head up like a singing groundhog and give Kyoshi a hard, assessing stare before returning to their debate.

“If they turn on us,” Rangi whispered sideways through a forced smile, “I want you to take Pengpeng and run. I’ll buy you time to escape.”

Kyoshi found that scenario too distressing to think about. The sudden end of the gang’s discussion forced her backbone straighter. They filed back over to Kyoshi and Rangi, as grim and wary and determined as the first night they’d met. Kyoshi sucked in her breath through her teeth as Lek stepped forward, a mirror of that night they’d almost come to blows.

“It’s been our honor to have traveled with the Avatar,” he said. “We regret that we have to part ways.” They bowed in unison. Not using the daofei salute, but with their hands formally at their sides.

Kyoshi blinked. “Huh?”

“It doesn’t have to be right now, if that’s not to your wishes,” Kirima said. “I suppose you might want the night to plan your next move and leave us in the morning.”

It was the politeness more than anything that threw her off. “Huh?”

They seemed as confused as she was. “You’re the Avatar,” Wong said. “You can’t stay with people like us. It’d be an offense to the spirits or something.”

“Not to mention too dangerous,” Lek said. He ran his fingers over his palm where a blotchy red line remained, the artifact of Kirima’s imperfect healing. “We’re still obligated to join the attack on Governor Te’s. If we bail, Mok would find us eventually. When he does, well ... being killed by a shirshu would be kinder.”

“You’ll be safer the farther away you are from us,” Kirima said.

Kyoshi’s mind reeled. Were they protecting her? She’d been so certain that the first people who discovered her identity would take her hostage or rat her out to Jianzhu. The Avatar was a tool. The Avatar was leverage. The master of all four elements lay somewhere between a bargaining chip to get what you wanted and a blunt-force hammer to be swung at the many imperfections riddling the world.

No. You just thought that way because of how Jianzhu treated Yun.

“Kyoshi, they have a point,” Rangi said. “If you fall deeper into Mok’s clutches, it will taint you forever.”

That was true. If she cared at all about being the Avatar, about someday holding the office and performing its duties as Yun had already begun to do, then she had to part ways with the Flying Opera Company and their debts. Otherwise the association with criminals would mark her indelibly.

She’d be unclean.

The history of the Avatars contained rebels, enemies of tyrants, those who stood alone against the armies of the Four Nations when necessary. But as far as Kyoshi knew, none had been self-serving outlaws. Time had always proven her predecessors in the right and shown them as champions of justice.

Yun had told her that most daofei respected the Avatar. She looked at her parents’ gang and saw their swagger gone, their cloak of daring and confidence torn wide open. They’d laid themselves bare in the presence of the living bridge between mankind and spirits.

She couldn’t explain what was so familiar about this situation, nor why she felt so compelled. The Flying Opera Company was not a bunch of innocent victims like the hostages kidnapped by Tagaka, needing a higher power to reach down and change their futures. They should have been capable enough without her, just like—

Yun. They reminded her of Yun, when he needed Kyoshi beside him on the iceberg. They were her friends, and they were in a bind.

Kyoshi didn’t turn her back on her friends. She swallowed her own misgivings and made up her mind.

“I’m not going anywhere,” she said. “I’m staying. And if I can help with the Autumn Bloom, I will. I haven’t gotten my end of the bargain yet.”

The gang perked up. Logically, her promise should have made no difference to them. She’d been deadweight since the beginning, only useful because of Pengpeng. But they glanced at her with wonder in their shifting eyes, the same nervousness she knew she felt when Kelsang had tracked her down for the first time and lifted her out of the dirt. You’d sully yourself with me?

“Kyoshi,” Rangi said. “Think about this to its end. The Avatar can’t be seen attacking the residence of an Earth Kingdom official.”

“As far as the abiders are concerned, I’m not the Avatar yet,” Kyoshi said. “I took the oaths of this group. I won’t abandon my sworn brothers and sisters.”

Her choice of words was not lost on them. Or Rangi. The Firebender was torn between being critical of Kyoshi’s judgment and being proud that she’d brought personal honor into the issue.

“You are not ready for anything resembling a real fight,” Rangi said. “Currently, you are this group’s biggest weakness. You’re too valuable to lose, and you don’t have the skills to defend yourself.”

“That’s a little harsh,” Lek said. Of all people.

“Hairpin’s right,” Kirima said to Kyoshi. “Currently. We have until the next full moon to link up with Mok’s forces for the assault. We can finally give you the training you were hoping for. That’s what we promised you, wasn’t it?”

“It takes years for the Avatar to master all four elements!” Rangi snapped. “And that’s with world-class teachers! I don’t get the impression that any of you have a bending lineage to speak of.”

Kirima grinned. “No, but I’ve always wanted to start one. I’m not going to pass up the chance to go down in history as the Avatar’s waterbending master.”

Kyoshi could practically hear Rangi’s blood boil. Through her mother’s side, her family belonged to an unbroken line of bending teachers who were considered some of the finest in the Fire Nation. They’d tutored members of the royal family. This plan required her to accept the shame they’d put off for so long. The most important bender in the world would have to bow to rabble.

The daofei watched the agony play out on Rangi’s face. They were highly amused. “Lighten up,” Lek said. “We’d be teaching Kyoshi to survive, not turning her into Yangchen. Consider the raid on Te’s a practical exam.”

Whatever worshipfulness Kyoshi detected earlier had completely vanished from their attitude. Kyoshi supposed she only had herself to blame, telling them to think of her as their sister instead of the Avatar.

“Speaking of Yangchen, we’re out of luck for airbending anyway,” Kirima added. “Either the two of you accept a few improvisations, or Kyoshi remains the way she is. Weak. Defenseless. A helpless, pitiable babe in the woods who can’t—”

Kyoshi aimed beyond Kirima’s shoulder and pulled a massive cube of stone out of the far side of the canyon. It went crashing down the cliff face, its corners shearing off, a die cast by a spirit the size of a city. The boulder hit the canyon floor and fractured into an army of slabs and shards that teetered on their ends before falling over flat.

Despite the noise, Kirima didn’t give the landslide a single glance. She stared at Kyoshi, impassive, unimpressed. “This is exactly what I’m talking about,” she said. “You need more than one trick in your bag.”

Kyoshi felt the evening wash by her like the wind passing through the branches of a tree. The gang was content to leave her be, for now. They chattered excitedly to themselves around the fire. The Avatar had volunteered to stay by their side. Their every move forward carried a tinge of spiritual righteousness.

Kyoshi gave it a day before the shine wore off.

Rangi was in a mood all her own. After camp chores were finished, she hopped to a different stone cutout entirely, to meditate. By herself, it was made pretty clear. They’d talked about the anguish of watching each other take risks, but neither of them had made any promises to stop.

They couldn’t. Not now.

Kyoshi watched the stars fade in and out of the sky, screened and unveiled in turn by the clouds that were as invisible in the darkness as black-clad stagehands moving the settings of a play. She was waiting for the others to fall asleep. She waited for a particular hour that belonged neither to this day nor the next, when time felt jellied and thick.

Kyoshi got up and moved to the next cubical platform of the quarry, and then the next. Without dust-stepping, it was slow going. She had to clamber up and down the height changes. She didn’t want to wake the others with noisy, orthodox earthbending.

The old man stood at the mouth of the marble seam with his back turned to her. Sometimes she wondered if Lao Ge wasn’t a shared hallucination. Or an imaginary friend exclusive to her. The others could have been humoring her, nodding and smiling every time she talked to a patch of empty space.

“I thought you would come to me in Hujiang,” he said. “I suppose you had other priorities on your mind.”

Kyoshi bowed, knowing he could tell if she did. “Apologies, Sifu.” But in her thoughts, the unease ballooned. If he had a problem with Rangi, then ...

Lao Ge turned around. There was a smile in his eyes. “You don’t have to forsake love,” he said. “Killing’s not some holy art form that requires worldly abstinence. If anything, that’s lesson two.”

She swallowed around the block in her throat. She’d been full of bluster the first night she went to him in secret. But she’d been so used to false starts and stymied progress that continuing their conversation felt like foreign territory. More doubt seeped into her cracks.

“Lesson two should scare you to the bone,” Lao Ge said. “You can take a life before the sun comes up, eat breakfast, and go about your day. How many people might you pass on the street who are capable of such callousness? Many more than you think.”

Jianzhu certainly was. He’d pulled her alone to safety, leaving Yun behind in the clutches of that unholy spirit. That was the moment he’d marked his once-prized pupil as having no further use, the way a dockworker might paint an X on a crate of cargo fouled by seawater. Total loss, not worth the recovery effort.

And then there was what he’d done to Kelsang.

“Fancy yourself different?” Lao Ge said, noticing her stillness.

She could still feel Jianzhu’s hands gripping her. “I won’t know until I try,” she said.

The old man laughed, a single bark that pierced the night. “I suppose you’ll get the chance soon. In the heat of battle, you can excuse the act away well enough. Fling an arrow here, hack away with a sword there. You and your victim are just two of many, acting in self-preservation. Is that how you want to deal with your man? With chaos as your shroud? Do you want to shut your eyes, hurl an overwhelming amount of death in his direction, and hope he’s disposed of when you open them?”

“No,” she said. Remembering what she’d been robbed of, what she’d never get back because of Jianzhu, brought a surge of conviction. “I want to look him in the eye as I end him.”

Lao Ge reacted as if she’d made a saucy quip, pursing his lips in amusement. “Well, then!” he said. “In that case, during the raid, you and I are going to split off from the others. We’ll head farther into the palace than anyone else. And we’re going to assassinate Governor Te.”

“Wait, what?” The certainty she had regarding Jianzhu caused her to mentally stumble at the mention of another target. It was as if she were the lei tai fighter throwing an all-or-nothing punch at Rangi, who’d deftly turned her momentum against her. “Why would we do that?”

“For you, it’s practice,” Lao Ge said. “For me, it’s because he’s my man. Listen. Governor Te is brutally incompetent and corrupt. His people go hungry, he skims from the Earth King’s taxes to enrich his own coffers, and in case you haven’t noticed, he doesn’t have a good policy for handling daofei.”

“Those aren’t excuses to murder him!”

“You’re right. They’re not excuses—they’re ample justifications. I guarantee you that many citizens have suffered immeasurably from his greed and negligence, and many more will die if he is allowed to keep breathing.”

Lao Ge spread his hands wide as if to embrace the world. “Te and his ilk are parasites leeching strength and vitality from the kingdom. Imagine yourself as the predator that keeps the land healthy by eliminating the sources of its weakness. It was said of Kuruk that he was the greatest hunter that ever walked the Four Nations, but from what I know, he never made man his quarry. I’m hoping you can be different.”

The idea of becoming a beast free of thought and culpability was supposed to help, but it made her shudder instead. “What gives you the right to decide?” she asked. “Are you part of another brotherhood? Are there more people like you? Is someone paying you?”

He shook his head, dodging her questions. “Doesn’t everyone have the right to decide?” he said. “Isn’t the Avatar a person like me? Someone who shapes the world with their choices?”

She was going to protest that no, the Avatar had the recognition of the spirits and Four Nations, but she found her tongue tied in the wake of his argument.

He gripped his forearms behind his back and gazed across the canyon. “I would declare the lowliest peasant is like the Avatar in this regard. All of our actions have an impact. Each decision we make ripples into the future. And we alter our landscapes according to our needs. To keep her crops alive, a farmer uproots the weeds that nature has placed in her fields, does she not?”

“People aren’t weeds,” Kyoshi said. It was the best she could manage.

He turned to face her. “I think it’s a bit late to claim the moral high ground, given what your aims are.”

She flushed hot in her cheeks. “Jianzhu murdered two of my friends with his own hands,” she spat. “He doesn’t deserve to get away with it. If you took him out for me, instead of targeting some random governor, I could reveal myself as the Avatar.” I would be safe.

Her resolve was wavering left and right. Not a minute ago she was yowling about doing the deed herself, feigning a hard soul, and now she was begging Grandfather to make the bad man go away.

Lao Ge smirked. “No one in this world is random. I don’t care to kill Jianzhu. He’s competent, and he surrounds himself with competent people. I wish the Earth Kingdom had a hundred Jianzhus. We’d enter a new golden age.”

“And yet you’re not trying to stop me from ending him.”

“For this case, I won’t intervene one way or the other. Besides, what kind of teacher would I be if I took my student’s examination for her?”

“A rich one,” Kyoshi muttered. Tutors swapping identities with the children of wealthy families so they could pass the government tests needed for prestigious administrative jobs was a common practice across the Earth Kingdom. Pulling off the con paid very well.

Lao Ge burst out laughing. “Oh, I do like our little chats. Here’s an assignment for you in the meantime.”

He jumped up to a higher level without the aid of bending and without much effort at all. The leap was higher than Kyoshi’s head.

“Many of Governor Te’s personal guard will die in Mok’s raid,” he said, disappearing past the edge of the stone, his voice already beginning to fade. “Soldiers who are simply doing their jobs. His servants will be caught in the violence as well. What will you do then, Avatar?”

Kyoshi hopped in place, her eye poking above the surface of the cube he’d landed on, trying to catch one last glimpse. It was empty. Lao Ge was already gone.

She slumped against the marble wall. The concept of collateral damage had lingered in the back of her mind, but Lao Ge had circled it in ink, made it ache, the same way Rangi pointed out flaws in her Horse stance. She had no idea how she was going to take part in this action, fulfill her promise to her newfound brotherhood, without getting her hands dirty.

The promise had been so easy to make at the time. She stared miserably at the opposite side of the mined-out gulf, sleep coming to her before a solution could.

She woke up, sprawled flat on the hard marble surface. She must have shifted during the night.

Four figures loomed over her, making an arc of their upside-down faces. “Oh, look,” Kirima said. “Our precious little student is trying to get away and shirk her training.”

Wong stomped the ground. The marble under Kyoshi tilted like a frying pan, dumping her to her feet. He proffered her fans, handles toward her. “I get you first,” he rumbled. “A warm-up before you start bending.”

“Topknot told us all about your little weakness,” Lek said, backing away with a look of superiority on his face. “That you can’t bend small pieces of earth.”

“I believe my words were ‘completely and utterly lacks precision,’” Rangi said, sniffing in contempt. She ignored Kyoshi’s glare.

“Don’t worry,” Lek said. “By the time we’re done with you, you’ll be able to bend the crud out of your own eye. Catch!”

He whipped the stone that appeared in his hand at Kyoshi’s face. Only the fact that Wong had her fans held out, right there, let her snatch one in time to protect herself. As the arms snapped open and she earthbent through the weapon, the stone stopped in midair. It reversed course at full speed and struck Lek in the forehead.

He doubled over. “Ow!” he screamed. “I was aiming above you!”

“Wait, so you can bend small things?” Kirima said, upset by the revelation. “Were you lying to us again? I have to tell you, I’m getting really fed up with the secrets.”

“I’m bleeding here! This is worse than Hujiang!”

“That’s not how you open the fan!” Wong roared indignantly. “You could have damaged the leaf!”

Amid the shouting, Rangi buried her face in her hands. She seemed to have a headache that rivaled Lek’s.

Kyoshi agreed with her. The official training of the Avatar was off to a great start.