“It’s better than being short and skinny,” Lek said morosely. “If I was your size, I’d be ruling my own nation by now.”
Rangi laughed and squeezed his arm. “Aw, cheer up, Lek,” she said. She prodded his bicep, working her way higher. “You’ll fill out soon. You have good bone structure.”
Lek turned a deeper red than the face paint they wore on the raid. “Cut it out,” he said. “It’s not funny when—agh!”
Rangi had suddenly yanked him downward by the arm. Her knees dragged in the dirt. It was as if her entire body had gone limp. “Wha—” she mumbled, her eyelids beating like insect wings.
Lek yelped again and swatted at the small of his back. As he spun in place, Kyoshi saw a tuft of down sticking out of him. The fletching of a dart. She instinctively brought her hands in front of her face and heard sharp metal plinks bouncing off her bracers. But the back of her neck was uncovered, and a stinging burn landed on her skin there.
The sensation of liquid spread over her body. Poison, her mind screamed as her muscles went slack. Lek tried to ready a stone to hurl at their attackers, but it fell out of his hands and rolled on the ground. He and Kyoshi collapsed on their faces like the daofei who’d been lashed by the shirshu.
It was different from the incense Jianzhu had drugged her with. She could still see and think. But the poison was having different reactions in her friends. Rangi seemed barely conscious. And Lek began to gag and choke.
Feet ran over to them. Pairs of hands quickly grabbed Rangi and dragged her away.
Just Rangi.
Kyoshi tried to shout and scream, but the poison had its strongest grip on her neck, where it had first entered her body. Her lungs forced air out, but her voicebox added no sound. She could see Lek. His face turned red and puffy. He clutched at his swelling throat. He was having some kind of reaction. He couldn’t breathe.
Tears streamed down Kyoshi’s face as she lay inches away, helpless, unable to save another boy from Jianzhu’s venoms. The dust turned muddy under her eyes.
It was nearly half an hour before she could crawl over to Lek and check for a heartbeat that wasn’t there.
She arrived at their building at the same time as Lao Ge, Wong, and Kirima. They saw Lek’s body in her arms and reeled like they’d been struck. Wong crumpled to the ground and began to sob, his low moans shaking the earth. Lao Ge closed his eyes and whispered a blessing over and over without stopping.
Kirima was as pale as the moon. She held something out to Kyoshi, her hand trembling uncontrollably.
“This was stuck on a post in the town square,” she said, her voice raw and bleeding.
It was a note. Avatar. Come find me in Qinchao Village, alone.
Pinned to the paper it was written on was a silky black topknot of hair, crudely severed from its owner’s head.
THE RETURN
Jianzhu sat by Hei-Ran’s bedside in the infirmary. She was alive, but she hadn’t woken up yet.
If he were ever to tell his story in the future, to document his journeys and his secrets, this part would stand out as the hardest road he’d traveled yet. Murdering Hui and the other sages in his own home was nothing. Drinking the poison himself to blunt suspicion, trusting in the training that the departed Master Amak had put him through as well as Yun, was nothing. A good number of servants were dead as well, the ones who’d used the leftover boiled water he’d dosed for their own cups.
Nothing. All nothing compared to seeing his last friend in the world laid low. This sacrifice had been the hardest.
There would be aftershocks, ones that altered the landscape of the Earth Kingdom. The western coast had been decimated of its leadership, especially by the Mo Ce Sea. Certainly, some of the sages who’d drank his poisoned tea were corrupt or incompetent, but many others were as invested in bringing strength and prosperity to the nation as he was. It would take time for the effects to be felt by the common populace, but the parts of the country farthest from Ba Sing Se had without a doubt been greatly weakened.
There would be an outcry from the capital. Investigations. Accusations. But Hui had inadvertently laid the foundation for Jianzhu to come out of this mess clean. He’d identified and rounded up the sages who were not fully on Jianzhu’s side, including some that were a complete surprise. That had been the whole point of telling Hui he’d lost the Avatar in the first place.
If Hui had felt the remaining sages in the other half of the kingdom were out of his reach for this gathering, even with the damning evidence of the Avatar running with daofei, that meant those particular officials were truly loyal to Jianzhu. When the time came to reveal the true Avatar, he’d would be in a better, more secure position, having tested their limits.
The chamberlain had done exactly what Jianzhu had wanted him to. Only, too fast and too aggressively. That miscalculation had forced him to turn his own home into a charnel house. It had cost him Hei-Ran. He would dig up Hui’s bones and feed them to bull pigs for it.
He got up, his knees still a little shaky from the lingering effects of the poison, and brushed a long strand of hair out of Hei-Ran’s sleeping face. Her constitution, her inner fire, had saved her life, but only just. Once he had the time, he’d devote every resource he possessed to healing her fully.
Though, if she’d been awake the past day or two, she certainly would have killed him for what he’d done to her daughter.
He’d revisit the matter later. Right now he had an important meeting to prepare for.
They buried Lek in a field outside Zigan’s cemetery instead of claiming one of the unused plots within its borders. He wouldn’t have wanted to rest too close to abiders, Kirima had explained.
The grid of headstones off to the side resembled an orchard, each gray, fruitless tree carved with the name and date of its owner. Kyoshi counted off the rows, burning into her memory the approximate distance so she could come back to this spot in the future. Following the Si Wong tradition, they’d eschewed any markers, taking care to cut the sod in strips that could be replaced and patted back down. The desert folk considered the simple embrace of the land the only honor worthy of the departed, silence the most fitting eulogy.