The Dawn of Yangchen, page 26
“What did you do to us?” Henshe asked, grasping for anything to make sense of it all. “We just . . . collapsed where we stood. Was that you? Is Thapa dead?”
She made a hush gesture with her free hand and beckoned the Waterbender over to grab him under the arms. “Unfortunately, I don’t have time to chat,” she said as Henshe was dragged away. “You’re not the last stop on my list today.”
EXPOSURE
In the end, it came down to tailing. Simple, basic tailing.
Kavik had already started the hunt for Henshe and his assets before Jujinta knocked on his door, slipping out of his house when he could, doing his best not to worry his parents. Once he pooled information with the Avatar, progress came quickly.
He knew the faces of the Firebenders. Yangchen could narrow down which sections of the city they were most likely in based on the pattern of explosions and their range limits, information she’d discovered in Port Tuugaq. They enlisted help from terrified people hiding in their homes to try and pinpoint the directions the noises were coming from.
One night, acting on the hunch he might find luck in a stretch of street that had a handful of Fire Nation restaurants, Kavik spotted Thapa entering an establishment that was closed but still had smoke coming out of its chimney. He managed to follow the Firebender back to an apartment overlooking the outskirts of the city, where it became clear the man was holding off entire squadrons of the Earth Kingdom army by himself.
Upon returning to Boma’s inn, he conferred with Yangchen’s hastily gathered group. She’d brought Tayagum, Akuudan, and Jujinta with her from Jonduri to Bin-Er, for their own safety and for the extra help. Despite the continuing bombardment plaguing the city, they decided not to move immediately on Thapa.
Their patience paid off. Henshe himself made the next trip from the restaurant to Thapa’s station. From there, Kavik followed the Zongdu of Bin-Er to two other locations across the city. He waited outside one of the buildings, wedged behind debris in an alley, until he heard the pop-pop close up and saw with his own eyes, barely, a thin wisp of smoke jetting from a window, followed immediately by an explosion further away.
Confirmed. They’d found the Firebenders who made up Unanimity.
The bigger challenge was trying to take all three down as quickly as possible from start to finish. “I just need to get close to them,” Yangchen had said over a map of Bin-Er. She’d refused to explain the reason for her grim confidence. “The rest of you will be on lookout and cleanup duty.”
The first raid on Xiaoyun’s position had been executed smoothly. Kavik had stationed himself under the Firebender’s position to give the signal. Yangchen had gone in alone, and as she promised, dealt with Xiaoyun so efficiently that Akuudan and Tayagum only had to pick up the man’s unconscious form.
They repeated the process for Thapa. An even greater success since it netted them Henshe as well. Yangchen still wouldn’t allow anyone to witness how she defeated the Firebender without a fight.
Apprehending the third and last member of Unanimity, however, was not going so well.
The ground underneath Kavik shook with the impact of the Firebender’s explosion. He compressed himself behind a pile of rubble as dirt and rock rained down upon his head.
“Back!” He heard Yangchen yell from across the distance. “You have to get farther back! You’re still within range!”
He knew. The problem was that Yingsu seemed to be able to summon her technique much quicker than the other two, and he didn’t have an accurate count of the minimum time between detonations. If he broke cover and ran, he might get picked off in the open.
Yingsu had deduced something had happened her fellow benders by the lack of noise. Tipped off, she’d left her apartment and moved to a fallback secondary location—the Bin-Er gathering hall, a perfect defensive position. Kavik had been forced to follow her in a hurry. He’d been spotted and separated from the others in the ensuing chaos.
At least they didn’t have to worry about bystanders. The entire neighborhood had long since fled. But there was a large lawn surrounding the building and Yingsu had blown away any obstacles that would have impeded her lines of sight. She had multiple windows to aim out of, and they couldn’t pinpoint her inside, where she could shift around the large structure easily. It was impossible to make an approach.
Kavik watched the Avatar lob a huge chunk of the street at a section of the barracks wing where the last fireball might have come from. He guessed she was trying to provoke Yingsu into blasting it apart midair, which would have given him a chance to run. But the dug-in Firebender didn’t take the bait. The rock crashed through the wall and went unanswered. Even if it had been aimed well, she’d probably just moved out of its way and saved her return shot.
Which meant they were at a stalemate.
Kavik didn’t dare make a sound in case he gave away his exact location. He was pinned. But strangely enough, he was calm, unafraid, accepting of his circumstances. He didn’t need to panic. The Avatar’s blessing would protect him.
He’s going to die, Yangchen thought. Kavik was going to die just out of her reach, and she was going to watch it happen. She crumpled against the wall of the empty, half-ruined house she was hiding behind, covering her face, her breath loud in the hollow of her hands. His death would be on her shoulders. Her fault.
“It will be all right.” She looked up to see Jujinta staring at her.
On her return to Jonduri from Port Tuugaq. Nujian had diverted his flight path and beelined for an isolated meadow where a strange boy, not Kavik, was meditating and blowing on her bison whistle with every exhalation. Yangchen’s surprise was immense. So was the boy’s.
Nujian came roaring down from the sky into the empty field, thinking the whistle meant someone needed rescuing. The impact of the Avatar appearing during his prayers had resonated deep within Jujinta, who introduced himself as a friend of Kavik’s. After he relayed a simple message that Jonduri wasn’t safe and Yangchen had to get back to Bin-Er, his stony visage crumbled and he’d fallen to her feet, weeping.
She’d had to improvise quickly, figure out the intentions behind Kavik’s ploy. Yangchen played the part of the gentle, compassionate nun and took Jujinta with her, along with her safe house runners.
And now here they were, the oddest pair, their situations reversed. Jujinta comforting her. He took things in stride very well.
“We who serve you will not let you down,” Jujinta said. She hadn’t been able to refuse his declaration of undying loyalty in Jonduri. “Look. Your men return.”
From deeper within the city, Akuudan and Tayagum came running toward them, staying out of sight of the gathering hall, heads ducked low out of an abundance of caution. Tayagum had a long, thin wooden case in one hand and a sealskin bundle in the other. They crouched into position next to Yangchen and Jujinta.
“Did you bring what I asked for?” Jujinta said.
“It wasn’t easy on short notice.” Tayagum opened the box. He and Akuudan had also been forced to accept Jujinta quickly. With Bin-Er a smoking wreck, no one was going to decline a fresh ally.
Inside the case was an unstrung bow. Jujinta reached for it but hesitated, closing his eyes and flexing his fingers as if the grip would corrode him if he touched it.
“You’re violating an oath right now, aren’t you?” Yangchen said. “A taboo.” From the memories of one of her past lives, she understood the meaning of his scoured nose, his penitent rituals, his self-imposed exile.
“This is more important.” Jujinta overcame his reservations and picked up the bow. In his hands the weapon seemed to pour new life, or rather an old one, into the rest of his body like a withered plant receiving water after a drought.
He strung it deftly and drew on the string without releasing several times to test the weight, using his thumb despite not having a ring. “Ironspruce,” he muttered to himself. “Water Tribe make, cable-backed, about one and a quarter shi. Original owner taller than me. Give me the arrows.”
Tayagum presented the quiver. Jujinta immediately tossed aside most of the arrows for not meeting some unspoken standard. Down to two, he hefted them, rolled them between his fingers while sighting along their shafts, examined the feathered fletching.
“I can make the shot,” he declared, notching the winning arrow to the bowstring. “The problem is, there are too many spots she could be in, and I need enough time to acquire her. We have to get her to a window for a few seconds, but without her immediately blowing us to pieces.”
Yangchen thought it over. In a moment of clouds parting, she landed on the one act she had not done intentionally this whole time while she’d waged her battle of secrets with the shangs, Henshe, and Chaisee. She knew Akuudan and Tayagum would object if she told them her idea.
So she simply went for it.
Before anyone could react, Yangchen got up, took off her cloak, and walked into the middle of the empty street, revealing herself openly to her foe. She would end the deception. She would be herself.
She spread her arms wide as she walked toward the gathering hall, a bright orange and yellow target in the empty street. Yangchen ignored the screams of Tayagum and Akuudan and Kavik. She focused her lungs and bellowed in Yingsu’s direction, her natural loudness never so handy before now.
“YOU STAND BEFORE THE AVATAR!”
Her challenge boomed through the air. What else could a pacifist do but raise their voice and hope for the best?
Each step she took was on borrowed time. She didn’t want to enter the Avatar State; there was too great a chance she’d be killed inside it. The cycle of reincarnation would end, leaving the Four Nations without their protector.
Will you take the life of an Air Nomad? she thought. Would you destroy the bridge between humans and spirits? Do you have a line you won’t cross? In her mind, she was addressing more people than the one Firebender in the gathering hall. She saw Kavik start to rise from his cover and knocked him back down with a gust of air. This danger was hers alone.
“WE WILL TALK!” If anyone outside her team was watching, it would have looked like she was beseeching an angry spirit, hardly different from her dealings with the phoenix-eels or Old Iron. Yangchen was struck by the fact that she was putting almost as much trust in her enemy as she was her own people. “WE WILL COME TO TERMS!”
There was silence following her declaration. Maybe the last member of Unanimity had decided to relent.
And then Yangchen heard a faint pop-pop.
She should have known better. In her heart she did know better, because her burst of airbending-powered speed was quick enough to save herself. She sprinted forward, just clear of the blast, the shockwave adding more force to her back than she could handle. Yangchen tumbled along the ground, rolling like a clump of dried weeds in the desert, cradling her own head for protection. Through the din of the explosion, she thought she detected the airflow of an arrow in flight, a single note rising above a chorus, but she could have been imagining it.
Her momentum carried her back to her feet and she finished the run to the gathering hall, ramming an entrance for herself with a chunk of earth instead of bothering with the door. The assembly room looked the same as she remembered from her meeting with the shangs: empty benches, the dais where she’d sat. There was a small balcony higher up. If she’d been right about the arrow, the last Firebender was behind the door.
Yangchen leaped to the balcony, generating wind to twirl her higher, and she landed as quietly as she could. She steeled herself for what she was about to do, and she was glad she was alone. Henshe had the measure of it. She’d neutralized him and the other members of Unanimity by using a vile ability, one she could not let anyone know about.
She put her hands out, and for the third time today, prepared to remove the air from the room behind the door.
Anyone trapped inside the sphere of emptiness she created would become unable to breathe and lose consciousness in little more than ten seconds. Death would follow shortly after if she kept it going. And the most frightening part was they’d never see it happening.
There was only an unreliable sliver of time in which she could maintain the technique and remain true to Air Nomad principles of holding life sacred. One mistake and she’d be matching lethality with lethality. Paying back the destructiveness of Unanimity with bending just as insidious. A perfectly even transaction—
Yangchen paused.
No. She still had a choice. Retaliating with full force would be common sense in this situation, the wise thing to do. But her instincts, the silence from her foe, told her to take a step back. She lowered her hands and opened the door, exposing herself yet again to attack.
The room leading to the balcony was a small lounge with a changing screen and a desk that folded into the wall. Inside, a tall Fire Nation woman matching Kavik’s description of Yingsu sat slumped in the corner. Her long braids were gathered tightly back to keep them away from her forehead, her high hairline making her resemble an Air Nomad a little. She clutched the arrow stuck under her collarbone. Dark arterial blood spilled out from around the shaft.
Yingsu stared at her with a face growing paler by the second. Yangchen rushed to the window to gather snow from the sill, melted it between her hands, and then slid next to the Firebender, applying the liquid to her wound. The injury was serious. Had Yangchen taken the air from the room, it would have killed her instantly.
Removing the arrow would be tricky; stabilizing her patient came first. “Don’t move,” she said to Yingsu. “No one’s dying today.”
Yingsu’s head made small circles, round and round, as if she were contemplating the ridiculousness of being saved by the Avatar, whom she’d tried to vaporize moments ago. A futile exercise in Yangchen’s opinion, trying to make sense of the world and the people in it.
The woman gave up and closed her golden eyes. “Thank you,” she muttered.
RECONCILING
Kavik sat alone in his room and waited.
He shouldn’t have been as scared as he was for the Avatar’s safety. All three members of Unanimity had been picked up. The only force in the world that could have challenged her power on an individual level had been dealt with.
And yet, when the knock came at his door and Yangchen poked her head inside, he was as relieved as he’d ever been in his life. He was clearly not cut out for the management side of missions, where he had to fret and hope the action had gone cleanly. “Can I come in?” she asked.
He let her sit on the bed again. She was wearing the same outfit as she’d worn at the Golden Cloudberry teahouse. “I asked your parents to leave the house for a bit,” she said. “I had to come up with an excuse for why I was dressed like this.”
“No wig?” She was relying solely on her hood to hide her tattoos.
“No wig.”
Their patter was strained. Until now they’d been able to talk solely about the mission, locating the Firebenders, figuring out how to strike fast, take them down. But not anymore.
They could start with the easier, obvious topic. “Jujinta,” Yangchen said.
“Jujinta,” Kavik echoed, nodding.
Yangchen rubbed her face. “A risky recruitment,” she said. “But a successful one. You saw his potential. You appraised his state of mind, his vulnerabilities, and the probability he could be convinced to act against his previous loyalties.”
“I turned him.” There was no boast in Kavik’s statement. Manipulating Jujinta by taking advantage of his troubles was certainly up there on his list of horrible deeds. But at the time, his partner was the only means he could think of to deliver Yangchen a message without tipping Chaisee’s association off. They weren’t watching Jujinta and had no reason to suspect him of anything.
“Well, I have a new companion now,” Yangchen said. “Whether I wanted one or not.”
Jujinta’s presence, along with Akuudan and Tayagum, meant that Yangchen had gone back to Jonduri first. There, the only thing she would have been told was to get back to Bin-Er as fast as possible. She would have deduced the Unanimity shipment had slipped past them and Kavik would have looked like he was heroically doing the best he could for the Avatar under dire circumstances. “Where are the others?” he asked. “Where is everyone?”
“They’re safe,” was all she said.
He sensed the wheel turning to its inexorable final position. “I also sent a message to Port Tuugaq for you. I didn’t know which city you’d be in. I had to cover both possibilities.”
Yangchen reached into her robes and pulled out a small wooden cylinder. She held it between her thumb and finger, like an apothecary’s pill that would spread and bubble if dropped into water. The seal on it had been broken.
“I left Port Tuugaq before it arrived, thinking the two of us were simply wrong about the Sunbeam,” she said. Her finger tensed over the cylinder, her nail whitening under the strain. “The only reason I know what’s in this message right now is because the hawk you sent returned to Bin-Er after I wasn’t there to receive it in Port Tuugaq.”
“I’m glad it did,” Kavik said, a pain in his throat.
The message she held, the one he’d sent with Boma’s help, contained the additional information he’d learned after leaving Jonduri. It said Unanimity was three people, Firebenders, and gave their descriptions in case Kavik was unable to make contact again with Yangchen in person.
And it also contained Kavik’s admission that he had betrayed her.
He’d burned himself. He’d told Yangchen about his brother. He’d told her everything Kalyaan had told him.
He’d written very small.
“You didn’t need to send this message,” Yangchen said, her voice cracking. “You could have let the situation play out. I would never have discovered you turned on me, and we still would have taken down Unanimity in Bin-Er, together.”
She was wrong about that. More than anything, Kavik had to put his betrayal in writing and make sure he couldn’t take it back. He hadn’t trusted himself to confess in person. He’d wanted a clean conscience and had grasped at the first available means. “How long ago did you read it?”
