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.