The Rise of Kyoshi

The Raid

They crept to the staging point, a small promontory a few hundred feet from the walls of the palace. They huddled around Rangi and watched the timing incense die out in her fingers, the last embers lighting their painted faces. Kyoshi glanced at the group, their features muted or exaggerated by strokes of red on white. Even Rangi and Lao Ge had donned the colors. The markings tied them together.

The incense crumbled to where Rangi could no longer hold it. “Go,” she whispered.

Lek dust-stepped to the top of the boulder they were hiding behind. He grabbed his sleeve and pulled it up over his shoulder, exposing a long, wiry arm wrapped in more thin leather straps than Kyoshi had previously thought.

He shook his elbow forward, and the bindings released, revealing the pocket of a sling.

Rangi, Kirima, and Wong took off running for the palace.

Without slowing his motion, Lek kicked a stone bullet the size of a fist into the air and snatched it up in the sling pocket. The projectile whined with speed as it whirled around his head, accelerated with bending. As he stood astride the rock, legs bracing against the powerful momentum of the bullet, his face tranquil with concentration, he looked much older to Kyoshi. Less a boy, and more a young man in his element.

He let the stone fly. Kyoshi could barely see the guard on the roof he was aiming at and would have guessed that such a target was too impractical to hit, but Lek’s talents—physical, or bending, or both—created a tiny plink sound off in the distance. The blurry shape that was the guard dropped out of view.

Lek was already winding up his next shot before the first one landed. Rangi and the others closed the gap. They were within spotting distance of the guards. He loosed the second stone.

But right as he let go of the sling end, a horn blasted through the silence of the night. It came from the south. The daofei forces had decided to announce their presence.

The sudden noise fouled Lek’s throw. He swore and immediately threw his hands out in a bending stance. Kyoshi watched in disbelief as he applied some kind of invisible pressure to the flying stone. She couldn’t see any of the results, but from the way he let out a relieved breath when another plink went off, the shot landed. It had happened in an instant. His distance control had to be on par with Yun’s. Maybe better.

“Go!” Lek shouted at Kyoshi, not interested in her admiration. “Mok and those idiots have blown our cover! Go!”

Kyoshi and Lao Ge started carrying out their portion of the plan. They sprinted down the hillside toward the southern fields of the palace. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw three figures climbing into the air to vault atop the eastern wall, one of them with twinkling feet as if she were stepping on starlight.

The plain across from the main gate filled with swordsmen charging at the complex. As Rangi had predicted, the front ranks were nothing but fodder for Te’s unseen Earthbenders, who lacked Lek’s accuracy but didn’t need it. The first stones arced through the air from the direction of the palace, pulverizing the unprotected Kang Shen acolytes. The missiles bounced farther, carving swathes through the daofei behind them. Screams of pain and anger filled the air.

The outlaws ignored their casualties and picked up speed. Kyoshi and Lao Ge were headed right for the killing ground between them and the palace.

Lao Ge got behind Kyoshi and tapped her twice on the shoulder. “Go!” he shouted.

She took a deep breath, still on the run, and embraced the earth fully.

“We can’t let Mok anywhere near the palace,” Kyoshi said. “He’ll kill everyone inside.”

Rangi and Kirima looked up at her from their positions on the overlook. They needed a break from surveying the complex anyway. “There’s no way we can prevent him from taking it in the long run,” Rangi said. “Do you want to flip to Te’s side and try to fight them off?”

Kyoshi shook her head. “I don’t think slaughtering Mok’s forces is the answer.”

“But if Mok doesn’t launch his assault, then our team will be sitting turtle ducks,” Kirima said. “You’re telling us we need to think of a way to attack the palace with an army, save the lives of everyone inside the palace, keep the army from killing itself, and rescue a prisoner from inside the walls?”

Lao Ge never said that she wasn’t allowed to seek help in answering his riddles. It was the time-honored Earth Kingdom tradition. Cheating on a test with the help of your friends. “That’s exactly what I’m telling you.”

“We can’t make all sorts of fancy plans when we only have a handful of benders,” Rangi said.

Kyoshi grimaced. She had to get used to exercising her prerogative, and she might as well start now.

“What kind of plans would you make if you had the Avatar?” she asked.

Kyoshi ran into the ground, descending on a fifty-foot-wide ramp of her own making. The earth yawned to accept her, parting ways to create a titanic furrow that piled the spare dirt to the left and right. Aoma and Suzu could go jump off a pier. Kyoshi had grown up in Yokoya just as much as they had. She did know about farming matters. And now she was plowing the ground with more force than the entirety of the village’s Earthbenders.

Arrows and stones passed harmlessly overhead. She leveled out once she hit a depth of fifty feet—why not keep things square and tidy?—and kept running across the southern field with Lao Ge keeping pace, creating an impassable trench behind her.

It had become clear during their surveillance that Te’s palace had a critical security weakness. It lacked a moat. Kyoshi was providing one for him, free of charge.

“Would you be able to handle going faster?” Lao Ge shouted above the bone-crushing noise.

She nodded. There was no fatigue. No strain. Her bending had changed. To cut loose like this with her full power instead of trying to squeeze it through tiny holes was energizing. It was the difference between eating a bowl of rice one grain at a time versus taking huge, satisfying bites.

Lao Ge bent a section of the ground around them, and suddenly the two of them were surfing on a platform of earth while Kyoshi kept shoving the soil out of their way.

“No sense in traveling by foot when we don’t have to,” he said.

In this manner it took them no time at all to round the corners of Te’s palace and encapsulate it in the trench. She couldn’t see aboveground, but she imagined surprise on the faces of the guards and the daofei, sheer murder on Mok’s and Wai’s. She had to hope that phase two of the plan would appease them. The Flying Opera Company still had a promise to fulfill.

“Watch out now,” Lao Ge said. “I know you can’t dust-step yet.”

He raised his hands and the platform rose out of the trench. It soared past ground level and onto the eastern roof of the palace, where it crumbled underneath their feet, leaving them standing on the shingles in the exact spot where Kirima, Wong, and Rangi waited for them, bathed in the moonlight.

“Right on time,” Kirima said.

“Are the guards crowded in the southern wall?” Kyoshi asked. She’d created a standoff between them and the daofei, and she needed them staying in place.

“Enough of them,” Rangi said. “You have to move quickly though.”

This rally point left them temporarily exposed, but it had been chosen for a reason. It lay right above the overlarge, over-deep turtle-duck pond. And they had clear sight of the glowing full moon above.

Kyoshi drank its light, feeling its push and pull as Kirima had taught her, her muscles loosening from the rigidity of earthbending into the relaxed, flowing state of water. She took a stance and beckoned at the pond.

She knew little of advanced waterbending forms, but that wasn’t necessary right now. Nor did she require her fans yet. For this feat, Kyoshi would provide the power, like a draft beast, and Kirima would apply control. As Waterbenders, the two of them would be greatly enhanced by the full moon, like tides rising in a bay.

The sleeping turtle ducks quacked awake in panic and fled as the surface of the water bulged upward. Kyoshi lifted the blob of liquid higher and higher. Where it threatened to protrude too far and spill, Kirima gently nudged it back into place with the skill of a surgeon. The mass of water looked like a jellynemone, pulsating and floating along the current.

Kyoshi felt an impact against her ribs and nearly let the water out of her grip. She looked down to see a tear in the fabric of her jacket and a small metal point broken off in the links of the chainmail underneath. She’d taken a glancing blow from an arrow.

A few guardsmen poured out of the opposite end of the courtyard. “We’ll cover you!” Rangi said. “Go!” Everyone who couldn’t waterbend leaped off the roof.

“All right, Kyoshi!” Kirima shouted. “Drop the hammer!”

Kyoshi relaxed and lowered her center of gravity with such vigor that it felt like her skeleton outraced her muscles. The heavy formation of water punched through the interior wall of the southern portion of the compound, rushing in through the breach. There was so much that it would flood every corridor from wall to wall, floor to ceiling. Little windows and vents dotting the interior walls gave them the line of sight they needed, though with this amount of water, it was hard not to feel the element’s presence intuitively.

The locations of the screams told them it was working. The guardsmen who’d been focusing on the daofei assault, concentrated in the southern fortifications, were being violently scrubbed from their posts.

Kyoshi and Kirima swept the tidal wave from left to right, then around the corner to the west for good measure, before releasing the pressure. They wanted to knock the soldiers out, not drown them. With a synchronized pull, they burst a portion of the west wall, letting the water flow into the other courtyard. Piles of groaning, coughing bodies spilled through the gap.

In the brief moment Kyoshi spent checking that the men were alive, a battle cry caught her off guard. She turned to see a lone soldier who’d entered the roof from some sally port they’d overlooked charging her with a spear, his feet clattering over the tiles. Her hands went for her fans, but she fumbled the draw.

Right before she was impaled, she heard a familiar zipping noise. The spearman took a stone bullet to the hip and fell off the roof with a scream. Kyoshi glanced back into the night. Somewhere in the distance, Lek was grinning smugly at her.

“What are you doing?” Kirima snapped. “Get moving!”

On to the last phase, the one Kyoshi was truly dreading.

Kirima and Kyoshi hurried down the steps of the service tunnels. Their objective was underground. They came to a fork where Lao Ge was waiting for them.

“They need you to bounce the cell door lock,” he said to Kirima, motioning down the right branch. “Kyoshi and I will check the other side for any lurking guardsmen.”

The others had explained to Kyoshi that “bouncing a lock” meant shooting water into the keyhole with enough pressure to force the pins higher, releasing the locking mechanism. It was considered faster and more elegant than trying to freeze the metal to its shattering point. It was also beyond Kyoshi’s waterbending skill, fans or no fans.

Kyoshi bit her lip as Kirima went down the right tunnel without hesitation, leaving her alone with Lao Ge. The old man watched the Waterbender depart with casual interest. He’d taken a slouching position against the wall as if he didn’t have a care in the world.

“Come,” he said to Kyoshi, any sense of urgency gone from his voice.

She followed him down the hall. It was more finished than the tunnels under Jianzhu’s mansion, lit with glowing crystal and painted clean white. Though her headdress added to her height, she didn’t have to stoop.

The dizziness she sometimes felt in Lao Ge’s presence when they were alone came back with a vengeance. Each of her footfalls seemed to carry her miles over the endless stretch of tunnel. She lost her sense of up and down.

She had no idea how far they’d gone when they reached the end of the hall. At first Kyoshi thought that it was strewn with bodies, that the violence had leapfrogged them somehow. But the dozen or so people who lay on the floor or pressed themselves against the walls were alive and trembling. They weren’t guards. They wore the decorative patterns of ladies-in-waiting, or the plain, neat robes of butlers. Beyond them was a solid iron door, barred by a thick bolt that had no visible opening mechanism.

Lao Ge took a step forward. The entire assembly cowered and hid their faces.

“Your master saved himself and locked you out,” he said with wicked humor. The tight corridors caused his voice to echo at a lower timbre, or perhaps it had always been that deep. “You’ve been left to your fate.”

The maid nearest him sobbed. Lao Ge had painted his face in a twisted, horrific jester’s leer. And many people considered Kyoshi a tower of menace on her best days. She remembered the effect she had on the staff in Jianzhu’s mansion that rainy day she left them, and they’d known her for years. To Te’s servants, who’d heard the throes of battle outside, she and Lao Ge must have looked like walking incarnations of death.

An acrid smell wrinkled her nose. She looked down to see a chamberlain, rocking and mumbling to himself with his eyes rolled back in dread. “Yangchen protect me. The spirits and Yangchen protect me. The spirits ...”

Lao Ge laughed, and the servants shrieked. “Get out,” he said. “Today you live.”

The staff members scrambled past them on their hands and knees, taking the turn that would lead them to the surface of the palace. Kyoshi watched the unfortunate men and women leave. She said nothing that would relieve their fear or allow them to sleep better tonight.

“The lock,” Lao Ge reminded her.

The greater portion of it was on the other side of the door, as he’d explained earlier. But there was a flaw in the design that left part of the thick iron bar exposed. Defeat that, and they could get in.

She gripped the bolt with both hands. It began to glow beneath her firebending. She yanked back and forth rhythmically as the metal grew hotter and hotter. Between her and Lao Ge, they’d come up with the three parts needed for this to work. Sufficient heat to ruin the temper of the iron. Oscillating motions to create fatigue in the structure, weakening it. And last, sheer brute force. Her specialty.

With each successive tug, the metal gave way a little more. Once, Rangi had warned her that heating an object like this without injury took much, much more skill than preventing your own flames from singeing your skin, which was an act so instinctive to Firebenders it didn’t need to be taught. This trick with the iron was prolonged, dangerous contact with a hot surface. Kyoshi felt her hands start to burn.

“You’re almost there,” Lao Ge said with a hint of admiration. “Honestly, I wasn’t completely sure this was possible.”

The metal angled farther and farther off its bearings until, right before the pain became too much to bear, it snapped. The severed ends of the bolt jutted out like red-hot pokers. The heavy door groaned on its hinges.

Kyoshi wrung the heat from her fingers and shouldered the vault open. It was brighter inside than in the hallway. She blinked as she took in her surroundings.

The interior of the large room was not what she expected. Lao Ge had described it as an emergency survival measure. She expected water stores, preserved food, weapons.

It had been redecorated. Someone had removed the necessities for lasting out a siege and replaced them with luxurious carpets, silken pillows. One wall was racked with jugs of wine, not water. Any fool who locked himself inside would have died within a few days.

There was a single figure standing against the far wall. A boy in his nightclothes. Kyoshi made the deduction that Te’s son had converted this room, made for war, into a clubhouse.

“Where is your father?” she said, the words coming out a harsh growl. “Where is Governor Te?”

The boy stared at her with a round, soft face full of defiance. “I’m Te Sihung,” he said. “I’m the Governor.”

Kyoshi looked at Lao Ge. He smiled at her knowingly. This was the test. Whether she was cold-blooded enough to help him kill a boy who didn’t look old enough to shave. She cursed the old man, cursed the stupid youth in front of her, cursed the corruption and incompetence of her nation that allowed such a mistake of authority to occur.

“How old are you?” she asked Te.

“I don’t owe daofei an answer,” he sneered.

She rushed forward, grabbed him by the back of the neck and tossed him out the door of the vault. He bounced on the floor and skidded down the hall. Kyoshi walked around to his head and nudged his jaw with her boot. “How old are you?” she asked again.

“Fifteen, soon,” he whimpered. His attitude had changed dramatically midflight, and the painful landing sealed the deal. “Please don’t kill me!”

“He’s Lek’s age,” Lao Ge said to Kyoshi. “Old enough to know right and wrong. Old enough to shirk his responsibilities, to mismanage, to steal. You saw the state of Zigan. I can still guarantee that you’ll save many lives by taking his.” He noticed Te trying to crawl away and placed his foot on the boy’s ankle, not hard enough to break it, but enough to make it clear he could.

Te gave up on trying to move. “Please,” he said. “My father was governor before me. I just acted in accordance with what he taught me. Please!”

That was all anyone in this world did. What they saw their predecessors and teachers do. The Avatar was not the only being who was part of an unbroken chain.

“You’renot much older than him,” she heard Lao Ge say. “Are you immune to consequence?”

No. She wasn’t. She picked up Te by his lapels. He blubbered incoherently, tears streaming down his face. “Sorry,” she said. “But this is something I decided on, long before I laid eyes on you.”

Kyoshi thrust an arm behind her and blasted Lao Ge down the tunnel with a ball of wind.

“Rangi, I can’t airbend. You’re not an airbending teacher.”

It was the day before Kyoshi was scheduled to begin training with Kirima, to see if they could lift an entire pond’s worth of water together. Rangi and Kyoshi were off by themselves in a small clearing under a lonely, gnarled mountain tree that had sprinkled its dried leaves over the ground. The two of them walked around in circles, their arms extended, nearly meeting in the center. There was no way they were doing this right.

“I’m not trying to teach you airbending,” Rangi said. “I only want you to create wind, once, before you start waterbending in earnest. It doesn’t have to be perfect.” She spun around and traded the position of her hands. “I think you’re supposed to ... spiral? Feel your energy spiraling?”

Kyoshi had to pivot awkwardly to go the other way before Rangi collided with her. “How are you okay with amateur, self-taught airbending?”

“I’m not. I just—I just have this irrational fear that if you get too good at waterbending before ever airbending once, you’ll damage the elemental cycle. Back when you used your fans to waterbend, I was ecstatic at first, but then I panicked. I started having nightmares that you permanently locked out your firebending and airbending. I was afraid you’d become a broken Avatar.”

Rangi plunked down on the ground and put her head in her hands. “I know it doesn’t make sense,” she said. “Nothing makes sense anymore. We’re doing everything wrong. Up is down, left is right.”

Kyoshi knelt down and wrapped her arms around Rangi from behind. “But the center doesn’t change.”

Rangi made a little snort. “You know I miss him too?” she murmured. “Master Kelsang. He was so kind and funny. Sometimes when I find myself missing him, I feel guilty that I’m not thinking about my father instead. I wish they were both here. I wish everyone we’ve lost could be here with us, one last time.”

Kyoshi squeezed her tight. She imagined Rangi’s energy twining together in place with her own, forming a stronger thread from two strands.

There was a tickle against her brow. She and Rangi looked up to see a swirling dance of leaves, spinning around in a circle, the two of them caught in its eye. Kelsang used to make her laugh in the garden like this, by swirling the air, letting her touch the currents and feel the wind run between her fingers.

Kyoshi let the breeze play against her skin before giving it a gentle push with her hand. The wind spun faster at her request. She could feel Kelsang smiling warmly at her, a final gift of love.

“They’ll always be with us,” she said to Rangi. “Always.”

Lao Ge landed in the vault, which happened to be full of cushions. Which meant that Kyoshi had less of a head start than she’d counted on. She threw Te over her shoulder and ran down the hall.

“Girl!” she heard Lao Ge shout behind her, echoing through the tunnel. She had the distinct feeling he could catch up at a moment’s notice no matter how far she’d gone.

The fear lent her more speed. She took the stairs five at a time until she reached the surface.

Te gasped from her grip around his waist. “What are you—”

“Shut up.” They were hemmed in by the walls of the courtyard. The stables were on the opposite end of the complex. An immortal assassin was surely only a few paces behind.

Kyoshi ran at the far wall. And then she ran higher. And higher. The earth flicked at the soles of her feet, propelling her upward. She continued to dust-step until she landed on top of the roof.

She spared a glance back. Lao Ge stood by the stairs, choosing not to follow her into the air, for the moment.

“My!” he called out. “You’re just full of deceptions, aren’t you? To think you were faking so many failed attempts at dust-stepping.”

“They weren’t all fake!” Kyoshi shouted as she sped away.

She sprinted across the palace, tiles crunching under her feet. She went north until she found the stables abutting the wall. Dropping down to the ground with Te still in hand, she found a sleepy ostrich horse and roused it awake.

Lao Ge was still toying with her, or perhaps he couldn’t dust-step. She’d never seen him do it. Either way, they didn’t have much time. She dumped the boy astride the mount she’d stolen.

“Thank you,” Te said, wobbling from the lack of a saddle. “I’ll give you anything you want. Money, offices—”

Kyoshi backhanded him hard across the mouth.

“You should have died tonight,” she hissed. “I’ll give you one chance to unsully yourself as governor of these lands. You will open the doors of your storehouses and make sure your people are fed. You will give back what you stole, even if it means selling your family’s possessions. If you don’t by the time I return, I’ll make you wish you’d been captured by those daofei out there.”

She left an open end on that timeline, having no idea when she’d be free to make good on the threat. But she knew she would, if given the chance. She was letting Te know there would be consequences. Jianzhu would be proud, she thought darkly.

Te’s bleeding face roiled with confusion. “You—you earthbent and airbent. I saw it. How is that possible? Unless ... you can’t be. You’re the Avatar?”

She saw the images warring in his head. He must have known of Yun, maybe met him in person. Revealing her identity had always been a risk on this mission. But Te was a loose end, one that ran in the same circles as Jianzhu.

Kyoshi bit her lip. She’d chosen from the start to save this boy’s miserable life instead of keeping the secret that her own safety depended on. No sense in regretting it now.

“All the more reason for you to do as I say.” She slapped the ostrich horse’s flank, sending it careening toward the ditch. Te screamed as she bent a bridge into place at the last minute. He rode off into the darkness, clinging to the neck of his mount for dear life.

Once he was gone, Kyoshi lowered the bridge again. She didn’t want Mok’s men infiltrating the compound from the rear while so many helpless people were still inside. She dust-stepped over the gap and took her time walking farther north, to the rendezvous point where the others would be waiting.

At some point during the hike, Lao Ge fell in beside her.

“You’re not a very good apprentice,” he said tonelessly.

There were a dozen replies she could have given him. Te was too young to die and still had time to redeem himself. The whole exercise was flawed and had nothing to do with her desire to end Jianzhu.

“I haven’t failed to take my man in a long time,” Lao Ge went on. “My pride is in shambles.”

Kyoshi winced. She’d never seen Lao Ge truly angry, and it was a gamble as to what kind of person would emerge when things didn’t go his way.

“Te’s your responsibility now,” he said. “From this point onward, his crimes will be your crimes. More than anything, I’m upset that you’ve fettered yourself in such a way. It’s like you haven’t paid attention to my lessons.”

She supposed being treated like a disobedient child who’d adopted a stray animal was the best result she could have hoped for. “I’m sorry, Sifu,” Kyoshi said. “I’m willing to accept the results of my actions.”

“Easy for you to say that now.” Lao Ge’s upper lip curled with disdain. “Mercy has a higher price than most people think.”

She stayed silent. There was no need to further provoke a man who could likely start the Avatar cycle anew in the Fire Nation right now without breaking stride. Any hope she’d had that sparing Te was the true goal all along, or that Lao Ge, through the lens of age, would interpret her betrayal as one grand joke in the greater scheme of life, was stifled by his compressed, tangible annoyance with her. There was no deeper-level understanding to be had.

The standoff between them continued until they reached the others. The Flying Opera Company was flush with success. Wong and Kirima held a bound man between them, clothed in a plain, ragged tunic. He had the sweet-potato sack tied over his head.

“We did it!” Rangi said. She ran forward and embraced Kyoshi. “I can’t believe we did it! You bent like an—” She stopped herself from saying “Avatar” in the presence of a stranger. “Like a master of old!”

“Let’s go make our delivery,” Wong said. He picked up the prisoner and threw him over his shoulders, much as Kyoshi had done with Te. “Sorry for the rough treatment, brother. It won’t be too long before you’re breathing free air.”

“It’s no problem at all,” the hooded man said politely.

The daofei nearly filled them with arrows as they approached the southern camp.

“We have your man!” Kirima shouted. Wong dumped the prisoner to his feet. With the hood on, he couldn’t see how his rescuers crowded behind him like a human shield.

Mok strode up to them, apoplectic. “What do you think you were doing!? We discussed no such plan!”

Kirima held her hands up. “We got him out of the prison,” she said, reminding him again that the mission had technically been accomplished. “The trench was a necessary last-minute improvisation.”

That wasn’t true. Figuring out how to keep the daofei out of the palace had been the primary challenge Kyoshi had set to Rangi and Kirima. Seeing the Waterbender lie for her made Kyoshi feel worse about hiding the additional side mission with Lao Ge and Te from the others. She’d caused her friends undue risk.

“I should flay your skins and put them under my saddle!” Mok screamed. Wai stood behind him, though Kyoshi noticed he wasn’t so ready to draw a blade this time. The man stared at her warily, rubbing his bandaged hand.

“Mok, is that you?” the prisoner said, tilting his ear toward the noise. “If so, stop haranguing my saviors and get this bag off my head.”

Wong untied his hood while Kirima sliced the ropes off his wrists with a small blade of water. Rangi had recommended the bindings as a precaution since they didn’t want a confused captive resisting his own rescuers. The burlap mask fell off his head to reveal a pale, handsome face under shaggy dark hair.

“Big brother,” Mok said. The daofei leader’s mannerisms suddenly took on a reverential, submissive quality. “I can’t believe it’s you. After so long!”

“Come here,” the prisoner said, opening his arms wide. The two men embraced and pounded each other’s backs.

“Eight years,” the newly freed man said. “Eight years.”

“I know, brother,” Mok sobbed.

“Eight years,” the man repeated, squeezing harder. “Eight years! It took you eight stinking years to rescue me?”

Mok gasped, unable to breathe. “I’m sorry, brother!” he choked out with the air he had left. “We tried our best!”

“Your best!?” his elder brother screamed in his ear. “Your best took nearly a decade! What’s your second-best? Waiting for my prison to collapse from rust?”

Judging by Mok’s squeals of pain, prison hadn’t rendered the man physically weak. He tossed Mok aside and surveyed the daofei. Wai hadn’t made a single move. The surviving Kang Shen followers took a knee and lowered their heads, while the rank and file stood at attention. Kyoshi’s eyes fell on the moon peach blossoms, still placed with care on the men’s shirts. While it was now obvious that they’d sprung no ordinary outlaw from Te’s custody, there was something worse hanging in the air, a dark warning in her imagination.

“Uncles,” Kyoshi spoke up suddenly. “If the debt of the Flying Opera Company is repaid, we should be on our way.” Her instincts screamed that they needed to get out of here. Immediately.

“Repaid?” the man they’d rescued said. He beamed at them, not with the fake smiles of Mok, but with genuine warmth in his heart. “My friends, you have done more than repay a debt. You have made a new future possible. Forevermore, you shall have the friendship and sworn brotherhood of Xu Ping An. You must stay and celebrate with us!”

Alarms went off in Kyoshi’s head, the creeping hint of recognition just out of her sight. Before she and the others could decline, he turned to address his troops. Mok’s men had become his men, and there was no protest.

“Brothers!” he said, his pleasant voice ringing through the camp. “For many years you’ve kept the faith. You are true Followers of the Code! I would die happily this very instant, knowing that there is still honor and loyalty in this world!”

The assembled daofei roared and shook their weapons. The sun began to rise dramatically behind Xu, as if he were favored by the spirits themselves.

“But I think we’ve suffered enough losses, don’t you?” Xu said. “Five thousand. Five thousand of our compatriots snuffed out like vermin. I haven’t forgotten them, not over the eight years I spent rotting in an abider prison. I haven’t forgotten them! Have you?”

Over the frenzied screams of the daofei, Xu raised his arms to greet the morning light. “I say there’s a price to be paid! A debt that is owed! And collection starts today!”

Kyoshi’s head swam. They’d been duped. Distracted by small matters when the real danger that threatened the kingdom loomed within reach. She was so stupid.

“Now!” Xu said with theatrical casualness. “Where are my colors? I feel terribly naked without them.”

Mok hurried over and handed him a piece of fabric. In unison, the daofei reached into pockets and satchels or lifted their shirts to reveal lengths of cloth tied around their waists. They freed the wrappings from wherever they’d hid them and fastened them around their necks.

The sun rose fully, letting Kyoshi see the hues that adorned the bodies of every outlaw present. The moon peach blossoms had been a ruse, a cover story to avoid detection. The Autumn Bloom was a temporary name for an old organization. A behemoth had risen from the depths of the earth to feed once more.

“Much better,” Xu said as he patted the bright yellow scarf knotted around his neck. “I was getting a bit chilly there.”