The Dawn of Yangchen, page 6
What no one accounted for was the Earth King’s hidden boldness and surprising battlefield acumen. He found the moment he’d been waiting so long for, fell upon General Nong at Llamapaca’s Crossing, and wiped his enemy off the face of the map.
The Earth King knew what his fellow heads of state had done. In retribution, he closed his nation’s ports, cut off diplomatic communication, and expelled ambassadors from his land. And he’d kept the captured platinum, melting it down and using it to plate the giant badger-mole statue behind his throne. Relations would return to normal when the entire surface fully tarnished and appeared as stone, he declared. Which was to say not for a century or more.
The Water Tribes and Fire Nation struck back by announcing similar states of isolation and for a little while there was quiet, silent panic behind closed doors. Three out of four nations were now blind to each other’s actions, and that made them paranoid. Very few people other than Air Nomads were allowed to travel as they did before.
But despite the climate of political hostility, Earth King Feishan and his court still liked Fire Nation pepper and Water Tribe lamp oil. There was still money to be made exporting fine Omashu silk. So, in a face-saving handshake between king, chief, and lord, a few cities were chosen to handle controlled amounts of international trade under the strict purview of selected noble and merchant families. Those people became known as shangs.
“Each shang city has an elected officer called a zongdu who is responsible for solving problems and collecting customs revenue on behalf of our respective nations,” Henshe said, once he was done explaining the state of world affairs. “A zongdu serves for a few years at most, before we step down and are replaced by another.”
“In a way, they are Avatars,” Sidao said.
Yangchen snapped to attention. “They’re what now?”
“A zongdu is like a modern-day Avatar,” Sidao said. “They serve others in their time, in an endlessly repeating cycle. They hold one of the few important positions in this world granted by means other than bloodline. They negotiate between international parties and need not be born of the country they work in. Zongdu Dooshim was Henshe’s forebear, as Avatar Szeto was yours.”
Clever analogy. And another slight to her and her past lives. Yangchen raised her palm to quell the fury she knew was running through Boma and glanced at the zongdu himself. Henshe clutched his notes and gave her a wide-eyed little shake of his head. I didn’t tell him to say that.
“The shang cities are stable, balanced, and self-sufficient,” Sidao went on, as proudly as if he’d invented them himself. “Avatar Szeto would surely have approved of our great system.”
An unusual Avatar, Szeto had also managed to hold the position of Grand Advisor to the Fire Lord during his era. Many people weren’t shy about telling Yangchen the young Air Nomad what her venerable predecessor would have thought, would have done. She waited for others to cut in after Sidao, but no one did. They were keeping things simple for her.
Good. An opening. “Thank you for the enlightening glimpse into recent history,” she said. “Bin-Er and its sister cities are quite the marvel of human accord. A testament to the great feats that can be accomplished when the powers of the Four Nations are aligned in a single purpose.”
A few nods from the shangs. Everyone liked compliments. “But no system is perfect,” Yangchen said.
Sidao’s head turned so sharply that his beard generated its own breeze.
“A mountain is more than its peak,” Yangchen said. “We cannot declare true prosperity from looking at only a handful of accounts. No tower can stand on a mire of suffering.”
What is she doing? Yangchen was accustomed to the question flying around in her presence, usually silently, on occasion out loud. Glances darted across the room like volleys of arrows in a heated battle.
“There is a great deal of misery in this city that goes overlooked,” she said. “I would ask the people here, who have benefited so much from the arrangements made in the wake of the Platinum Affair, to listen harder to the spirit of generosity that I know lives in each and every one of your hearts.”
Henshe cleared his throat. “Are you asking my masters for alms, Avatar?”
She was glad for the direct question; it meant she could stop flowering her language. “No. I am asking you to help me create a place where alms aren’t necessary.”
A forest of frowns had sprouted. She had an example prepared thanks to Kavik, who was already providing value as an informant. “There was a riot in the square last night, was there not?” Yangchen asked.
Henshe’s grimace gave him away. Sweeping the incident under the rug would have fallen on him. “There was an incident, yes, but it was quickly resolved.”
You mean hidden from me. Based on Kavik’s description, Yangchen spotted an old man dressed in a strategic blend of muted colors sitting in the middle of the pack. That was the funny thing about the shangs. Unlike some glad-handing nobles and ministers who rushed her during meetings, hoping to impress their name in her memory, most of these merchants preferred to remain part of an indistinguishable mass.
Well, no longer. They would be named. “It was you, Master Teiin, who shortchanged your workers to the point of starting a riot, was it not?” Yangchen said, singling the man out with her finger. “It seems you canceled a construction project of your own volition before it was finished and then decided you didn’t have to pay for any of the work at all.”
A murmur went through the room. Not at Teiin’s sharp practice but at the fact that the Avatar knew about it. Teiin shifted in his seat and answered her with a watery hiss that she could barely hear. “Last night I was waylaid by violent ruffians whom I didn’t recognize. As for my dealings, they are entirely my own and no one else’s.”
You need at least two sides for a deal, Master. “My point is, we can ease the troubles of Bin-Er by treating its occupants with respect before they grow as desperate as they did last night,” Yangchen said. “That means paying them fairly, instead of abusing their lack of options due to the restrictions forced upon them by the Platinum Affair.”
She wrinkled her nose. “And despite what I said earlier, more alms are always good. The situation is dire enough that supplicants are sneaking out of the city without clearance and seeking refuge at the Northern Air Temple. Abbot Sonam has his hands full trying to take care of them. There is a direct chain of events between excessive desires in the present and widespread pain in the future.” She was trying so hard not to use the word greed to avoid offending her audience. Why? she wondered. Why was the obligation on her to dance?
“Avatar,” Sidao pleaded. “There are no such formalities in place for what you’re asking.”
“Then we can draft them,” Yangchen said. “I’m willing to hold the brush. My friends, every day the chance to make the Four Nations a better place pays us a visit. Every day, rain or shine or snow, the opportunity comes calling. Let us not turn away such an important guest.”
She paused and swallowed. It was a good speech. She thought it was a good speech. Perhaps not Szeto-worthy, but enough to make her point clear. Wasn’t it?
She wasn’t going to get an answer from her audience. The shangs were as unresponsive as corpses. She tried to fill the void. “I have plans, based off successful policies from the archives of Omashu, that I’d be more than happy to share. The cost would not be onerous to any of you in the least—”
“Avatar.” The woman who interrupted her was draped in pearls from shoulder to shoulder. “Is there a spirit in the room with us?”
Yangchen blinked. “I don’t understand the question, Mistress . . .”
“Noehi.” The name was delivered with a quick, practiced smile, eyes included in the squeeze. “Many of us have heard of your great prowess in spiritual matters. How you quelled the afflictions of the Saowon clan in the Fire Nation. The lives you saved in Tienhaishi from the great spirit.” She tilted her head. “Though I have heard from some it was actually a typhoon that leveled the city.”
Yangchen remained quiet, as she often did when it came to her battle with Old Iron.
Noehi took notice and smirked. “I asked because, well, unless we’re being haunted right now by a glowing presence demanding the silver from our purses, I don’t see the merit of your demands,” she said. “Bin-Er is a city of reason and commerce. We’re not superstitious bumpkins who rely on oracles like the court of Tienhaishi, nor are we petty Fire Nation lords cowering in our castles, praying for better harvests.”
This obviously wasn’t the first time the woman had delivered a gentle letting-down in a delicate social situation. Poor dear, best to be direct. “The fact of the matter is you don’t have any right to tell us what to do.”
Opening her mouth to retort would have only made Yangchen look foolish. Because there was nothing she could say in response. She thought she’d come to Bin-Er armed with the truth. But so had her opponents. And their weapons were sharper.
Noehi drove the point of the spear home. “You don’t have any power here, Avatar,” she said. “You simply don’t.”
KEEPING SCORE
Yangchen blinked and looked around, even though she knew to search for help would be a flaring signal of her defeat. Boma couldn’t meet her eyes. He’d been privy to all her business so far as the Avatar, but her guardian was out of his depth here. They both were. What Noehi said wasn’t a slight to her office; it was a simple fact.
Sidao probably should have said something to preserve the dignity of Avatarhood itself. Yangchen was nominally his employer, after all. But he was caught between his money and his duty.
It was Henshe the peacekeeper, her supposed counterpart, who took pity on her. “Avatar, your wisdom is much appreciated,” he said with the grace of a diplomat. One who was on the winning side. “We will meditate upon your advice and seek to incorporate it into our lives.”
Advice. Was there ever such a useless gift? Advice was like fanning the sky and claiming responsibility for the weather. Sitting in her grand chair, Yangchen saw the future as clearly as she saw the past. She would leave Bin-Er, to carry out the next of her never-ending list of duties. And the shangs would turn to each other and say, Well, wasn’t that interesting?
“Surely . . . surely you can see a long-term . . . long-run . . .” Yangchen took a deep breath. She needed to offer them something, but what? “Surely you can see the long-term benefit of investing in the people of this city. The spirits smile upon those who take care of their neighbors.”
The shangs in the room, not just Noehi, fought to hide emboldened smiles of their own. We’re trading blows with the Avatar and coming out ahead. What else can we do? Fly?
“If the spirits have a problem with Bin-Er, they haven’t shown it yet,” Noehi said. “Unless . . .” She made a droll performance of looking around her shoulders, above her head for the phantom she mentioned earlier.
Chuckles. They were laughing at the Avatar. That was fine. Yangchen would let them mock her, give them anything she could, equal status at whatever imaginary table they wanted. “Please,” she said, debasing the one asset she had left to give. “Whoever unites with me in this effort would be marked by history. I urge you, join me in companionhood and duty.”
Status as an Avatar’s companion was going cheap these days. But she could find no takers. “Our duty is to manage the flow of trade between the Four Nations,” Teiin said. “Not to throw bones at every barking animal in the street. As long as Earth King Feishan gets his portion of the revenues, he doesn’t care how we manage our business.”
Teiin sniffed and drew his thick cloak around him. How dare she waste his time. “Henshe put it sufficiently,” said the man who thought it cheaper to beat people than give them their due. “Your advice has been heard. I think we’re done here.”
Yangchen’s fingers dug into the armrests like claws. The only person who sensed the danger was Boma.
It would have been easy to blame another life, to pretend a bad memory of being scorned pushed her over the edge. But it was Avatar Yangchen alone who decided that she was no longer giving advice. And that they weren’t done.
She stood up before Teiin could. “The Earth King cares about being cheated,” she said. “He cares about treason.”
The silence that fell upon the room rolled back and forth, flattening the occupants under its belly, squeezing the air out of them. Yangchen’s words sucked the blood from faces, tugged jaws downward, turned the members of her audience to stone.
“What—Why would you say that?” Sidao asked, total shock stripping the high flourishes from his words.
Henshe wiped his mouth with his palm. “Avatar, you know as well as we do the ramifications of using such indelicate language in matters concerning His Majesty the Earth King. Can you explain yourself?”
She could. “According to your latest charters, the shangs of this city are allowed to move cargo with twenty-eight specific authorized grand junks. But I can personally attest to the fact that forty-four distinct ships docked last month.”
The lack of response told her the numbers were accurate enough. “They’re easier to count from above,” Yangchen explained, pointing upward. “I’ve been surveilling the city for weeks.”
Revealing to the shangs that her official arrival date had been false, and she’d been watching them in secret, tipped her hand a great deal. She told herself this was a strategic provocation. Not an attempt to assert herself in a group of older men and women who had shown her contempt.
Jump off a cliff and you might as well flap your arms. “Bribing enough harbormasters to run hidden traffic must be expensive,” Yangchen said. “Which means the returns must be significant. Could it be that Bin-Er is generating a large amount of revenue that the Earth King doesn’t know about? When we all know how sensitive His Majesty is about not getting his due, thanks to Zongdu Henshe’s wonderful lesson?”
Sensitive was an understatement. The man had carved bloody grooves into the world over money. “Even worse,” Yangchen continued. “Any ships unaccounted for could be holding spies and other security risks to His Majesty’s rule.”
No one was chuckling anymore, not even in defense. “If there is an excess of money in this city, perhaps it’s only a rounding error and can be reconciled by directing the funds to more charitable efforts,” she said. “Sometime before I next speak to the Earth King.”
Boma cleared his throat. “Avatar, I believe you are scheduled for an audience with His Majesty three months from now.”
“Is that so?” Yangchen said. “Well then.”
The shangs said nothing. Henshe looked to the side and made a face Yangchen couldn’t see. Another brawl he had to clean up. “Thank you, Avatar,” he said in a weary rasp, his voice already overused. “I’m sure a reconciliation can be achieved.”
FALLBACK PLANS
The rest of the meeting . . . went. Tongues formed words, words came out of mouths, but nothing of import was said. The Avatar’s challenge was an iron pillar in the middle of the road. Every piece of conversation had to go around it.
Toward the end, Yangchen realized how big of a mistake she’d made. She cursed herself over and over again. Strategic provocation, nothing. It was a reckless bet, spurred on by her wounded pride.
The session concluded with a second round of refreshments. Never before had tea been drunk so fast. Yangchen announced she would be returning to her lodgings for the rest of the day, pretending she was hiding a sore throat.
“Avatar, I beg your permission to stay behind a bit,” Sidao said. “The hall contains some minor historical artifacts of interest to me.”
The request came easily, and his excuse had already been prepared. Sidao collected many times his official salary in kickbacks from the women and men in this room, and he most certainly had to smooth an entire nest of ruffled feathers. She gave him her leave.
Henshe offered to see her out and she accepted. Yangchen walked down the long corridor side by side with the Zongdu of Bin-Er, Boma trailing behind like a chaperone to a couple weighing a political marriage.
“Avatar, I . . . ah . . .” Henshe tried to find his footing. “I wish you had brought the matter of the ships to me first, in private. I would have been in a better position to help you.”
She had been thinking the same thing. The zongdu could have negotiated with the shangs for better conditions behind closed doors. She and Henshe together could have let the merchants say no at first, and then chipped away at their stubbornness gradually until a new shape of the future was ready to be unveiled. They could have pretended it wasn’t blackmail.
“I regret the delivery,” Yangchen said. “But not the contents. Your masters are men and women so enamored with themselves that they justify squeezing commonfolk and cheating kings.”
Henshe sighed, as if that were rebuttal enough. You just don’t know how the world works. “It’s their right to look out for themselves and their families.”
Yangchen did know how the world worked; that was why she acted like she did. “Family isn’t an excuse to trample upon others, Master Henshe.”
“Well put. I will do what I can to convince them of your wisdom.” Henshe bowed slowly, deeply, the full gesture of respect for an Avatar.
His wince on the way down brought forth a surge of pity in Yangchen. She could believe in this moment Sidao’s claim of equivalence between an Avatar and a zongdu. “I’m sorry for causing you trouble.”
Henshe shrugged and smiled. “Problem-solving. It’s our job.”
Yangchen waited until he was gone before beckoning Boma closer. “I need you to do something for me.” She whispered instructions in his ear.
She had to salvage something useful from the pieces of the deadlock she’d so clumsily broken. The shangs would react. Confer with each other. If they were going to blow wind, she needed to know the direction.
Boma’s whiskers twitched as she explained her plan. “Please reconsider.”
“It’s just listening. Is that not my job as the Avatar? To listen?”
The Earth King knew what his fellow heads of state had done. In retribution, he closed his nation’s ports, cut off diplomatic communication, and expelled ambassadors from his land. And he’d kept the captured platinum, melting it down and using it to plate the giant badger-mole statue behind his throne. Relations would return to normal when the entire surface fully tarnished and appeared as stone, he declared. Which was to say not for a century or more.
The Water Tribes and Fire Nation struck back by announcing similar states of isolation and for a little while there was quiet, silent panic behind closed doors. Three out of four nations were now blind to each other’s actions, and that made them paranoid. Very few people other than Air Nomads were allowed to travel as they did before.
But despite the climate of political hostility, Earth King Feishan and his court still liked Fire Nation pepper and Water Tribe lamp oil. There was still money to be made exporting fine Omashu silk. So, in a face-saving handshake between king, chief, and lord, a few cities were chosen to handle controlled amounts of international trade under the strict purview of selected noble and merchant families. Those people became known as shangs.
“Each shang city has an elected officer called a zongdu who is responsible for solving problems and collecting customs revenue on behalf of our respective nations,” Henshe said, once he was done explaining the state of world affairs. “A zongdu serves for a few years at most, before we step down and are replaced by another.”
“In a way, they are Avatars,” Sidao said.
Yangchen snapped to attention. “They’re what now?”
“A zongdu is like a modern-day Avatar,” Sidao said. “They serve others in their time, in an endlessly repeating cycle. They hold one of the few important positions in this world granted by means other than bloodline. They negotiate between international parties and need not be born of the country they work in. Zongdu Dooshim was Henshe’s forebear, as Avatar Szeto was yours.”
Clever analogy. And another slight to her and her past lives. Yangchen raised her palm to quell the fury she knew was running through Boma and glanced at the zongdu himself. Henshe clutched his notes and gave her a wide-eyed little shake of his head. I didn’t tell him to say that.
“The shang cities are stable, balanced, and self-sufficient,” Sidao went on, as proudly as if he’d invented them himself. “Avatar Szeto would surely have approved of our great system.”
An unusual Avatar, Szeto had also managed to hold the position of Grand Advisor to the Fire Lord during his era. Many people weren’t shy about telling Yangchen the young Air Nomad what her venerable predecessor would have thought, would have done. She waited for others to cut in after Sidao, but no one did. They were keeping things simple for her.
Good. An opening. “Thank you for the enlightening glimpse into recent history,” she said. “Bin-Er and its sister cities are quite the marvel of human accord. A testament to the great feats that can be accomplished when the powers of the Four Nations are aligned in a single purpose.”
A few nods from the shangs. Everyone liked compliments. “But no system is perfect,” Yangchen said.
Sidao’s head turned so sharply that his beard generated its own breeze.
“A mountain is more than its peak,” Yangchen said. “We cannot declare true prosperity from looking at only a handful of accounts. No tower can stand on a mire of suffering.”
What is she doing? Yangchen was accustomed to the question flying around in her presence, usually silently, on occasion out loud. Glances darted across the room like volleys of arrows in a heated battle.
“There is a great deal of misery in this city that goes overlooked,” she said. “I would ask the people here, who have benefited so much from the arrangements made in the wake of the Platinum Affair, to listen harder to the spirit of generosity that I know lives in each and every one of your hearts.”
Henshe cleared his throat. “Are you asking my masters for alms, Avatar?”
She was glad for the direct question; it meant she could stop flowering her language. “No. I am asking you to help me create a place where alms aren’t necessary.”
A forest of frowns had sprouted. She had an example prepared thanks to Kavik, who was already providing value as an informant. “There was a riot in the square last night, was there not?” Yangchen asked.
Henshe’s grimace gave him away. Sweeping the incident under the rug would have fallen on him. “There was an incident, yes, but it was quickly resolved.”
You mean hidden from me. Based on Kavik’s description, Yangchen spotted an old man dressed in a strategic blend of muted colors sitting in the middle of the pack. That was the funny thing about the shangs. Unlike some glad-handing nobles and ministers who rushed her during meetings, hoping to impress their name in her memory, most of these merchants preferred to remain part of an indistinguishable mass.
Well, no longer. They would be named. “It was you, Master Teiin, who shortchanged your workers to the point of starting a riot, was it not?” Yangchen said, singling the man out with her finger. “It seems you canceled a construction project of your own volition before it was finished and then decided you didn’t have to pay for any of the work at all.”
A murmur went through the room. Not at Teiin’s sharp practice but at the fact that the Avatar knew about it. Teiin shifted in his seat and answered her with a watery hiss that she could barely hear. “Last night I was waylaid by violent ruffians whom I didn’t recognize. As for my dealings, they are entirely my own and no one else’s.”
You need at least two sides for a deal, Master. “My point is, we can ease the troubles of Bin-Er by treating its occupants with respect before they grow as desperate as they did last night,” Yangchen said. “That means paying them fairly, instead of abusing their lack of options due to the restrictions forced upon them by the Platinum Affair.”
She wrinkled her nose. “And despite what I said earlier, more alms are always good. The situation is dire enough that supplicants are sneaking out of the city without clearance and seeking refuge at the Northern Air Temple. Abbot Sonam has his hands full trying to take care of them. There is a direct chain of events between excessive desires in the present and widespread pain in the future.” She was trying so hard not to use the word greed to avoid offending her audience. Why? she wondered. Why was the obligation on her to dance?
“Avatar,” Sidao pleaded. “There are no such formalities in place for what you’re asking.”
“Then we can draft them,” Yangchen said. “I’m willing to hold the brush. My friends, every day the chance to make the Four Nations a better place pays us a visit. Every day, rain or shine or snow, the opportunity comes calling. Let us not turn away such an important guest.”
She paused and swallowed. It was a good speech. She thought it was a good speech. Perhaps not Szeto-worthy, but enough to make her point clear. Wasn’t it?
She wasn’t going to get an answer from her audience. The shangs were as unresponsive as corpses. She tried to fill the void. “I have plans, based off successful policies from the archives of Omashu, that I’d be more than happy to share. The cost would not be onerous to any of you in the least—”
“Avatar.” The woman who interrupted her was draped in pearls from shoulder to shoulder. “Is there a spirit in the room with us?”
Yangchen blinked. “I don’t understand the question, Mistress . . .”
“Noehi.” The name was delivered with a quick, practiced smile, eyes included in the squeeze. “Many of us have heard of your great prowess in spiritual matters. How you quelled the afflictions of the Saowon clan in the Fire Nation. The lives you saved in Tienhaishi from the great spirit.” She tilted her head. “Though I have heard from some it was actually a typhoon that leveled the city.”
Yangchen remained quiet, as she often did when it came to her battle with Old Iron.
Noehi took notice and smirked. “I asked because, well, unless we’re being haunted right now by a glowing presence demanding the silver from our purses, I don’t see the merit of your demands,” she said. “Bin-Er is a city of reason and commerce. We’re not superstitious bumpkins who rely on oracles like the court of Tienhaishi, nor are we petty Fire Nation lords cowering in our castles, praying for better harvests.”
This obviously wasn’t the first time the woman had delivered a gentle letting-down in a delicate social situation. Poor dear, best to be direct. “The fact of the matter is you don’t have any right to tell us what to do.”
Opening her mouth to retort would have only made Yangchen look foolish. Because there was nothing she could say in response. She thought she’d come to Bin-Er armed with the truth. But so had her opponents. And their weapons were sharper.
Noehi drove the point of the spear home. “You don’t have any power here, Avatar,” she said. “You simply don’t.”
KEEPING SCORE
Yangchen blinked and looked around, even though she knew to search for help would be a flaring signal of her defeat. Boma couldn’t meet her eyes. He’d been privy to all her business so far as the Avatar, but her guardian was out of his depth here. They both were. What Noehi said wasn’t a slight to her office; it was a simple fact.
Sidao probably should have said something to preserve the dignity of Avatarhood itself. Yangchen was nominally his employer, after all. But he was caught between his money and his duty.
It was Henshe the peacekeeper, her supposed counterpart, who took pity on her. “Avatar, your wisdom is much appreciated,” he said with the grace of a diplomat. One who was on the winning side. “We will meditate upon your advice and seek to incorporate it into our lives.”
Advice. Was there ever such a useless gift? Advice was like fanning the sky and claiming responsibility for the weather. Sitting in her grand chair, Yangchen saw the future as clearly as she saw the past. She would leave Bin-Er, to carry out the next of her never-ending list of duties. And the shangs would turn to each other and say, Well, wasn’t that interesting?
“Surely . . . surely you can see a long-term . . . long-run . . .” Yangchen took a deep breath. She needed to offer them something, but what? “Surely you can see the long-term benefit of investing in the people of this city. The spirits smile upon those who take care of their neighbors.”
The shangs in the room, not just Noehi, fought to hide emboldened smiles of their own. We’re trading blows with the Avatar and coming out ahead. What else can we do? Fly?
“If the spirits have a problem with Bin-Er, they haven’t shown it yet,” Noehi said. “Unless . . .” She made a droll performance of looking around her shoulders, above her head for the phantom she mentioned earlier.
Chuckles. They were laughing at the Avatar. That was fine. Yangchen would let them mock her, give them anything she could, equal status at whatever imaginary table they wanted. “Please,” she said, debasing the one asset she had left to give. “Whoever unites with me in this effort would be marked by history. I urge you, join me in companionhood and duty.”
Status as an Avatar’s companion was going cheap these days. But she could find no takers. “Our duty is to manage the flow of trade between the Four Nations,” Teiin said. “Not to throw bones at every barking animal in the street. As long as Earth King Feishan gets his portion of the revenues, he doesn’t care how we manage our business.”
Teiin sniffed and drew his thick cloak around him. How dare she waste his time. “Henshe put it sufficiently,” said the man who thought it cheaper to beat people than give them their due. “Your advice has been heard. I think we’re done here.”
Yangchen’s fingers dug into the armrests like claws. The only person who sensed the danger was Boma.
It would have been easy to blame another life, to pretend a bad memory of being scorned pushed her over the edge. But it was Avatar Yangchen alone who decided that she was no longer giving advice. And that they weren’t done.
She stood up before Teiin could. “The Earth King cares about being cheated,” she said. “He cares about treason.”
The silence that fell upon the room rolled back and forth, flattening the occupants under its belly, squeezing the air out of them. Yangchen’s words sucked the blood from faces, tugged jaws downward, turned the members of her audience to stone.
“What—Why would you say that?” Sidao asked, total shock stripping the high flourishes from his words.
Henshe wiped his mouth with his palm. “Avatar, you know as well as we do the ramifications of using such indelicate language in matters concerning His Majesty the Earth King. Can you explain yourself?”
She could. “According to your latest charters, the shangs of this city are allowed to move cargo with twenty-eight specific authorized grand junks. But I can personally attest to the fact that forty-four distinct ships docked last month.”
The lack of response told her the numbers were accurate enough. “They’re easier to count from above,” Yangchen explained, pointing upward. “I’ve been surveilling the city for weeks.”
Revealing to the shangs that her official arrival date had been false, and she’d been watching them in secret, tipped her hand a great deal. She told herself this was a strategic provocation. Not an attempt to assert herself in a group of older men and women who had shown her contempt.
Jump off a cliff and you might as well flap your arms. “Bribing enough harbormasters to run hidden traffic must be expensive,” Yangchen said. “Which means the returns must be significant. Could it be that Bin-Er is generating a large amount of revenue that the Earth King doesn’t know about? When we all know how sensitive His Majesty is about not getting his due, thanks to Zongdu Henshe’s wonderful lesson?”
Sensitive was an understatement. The man had carved bloody grooves into the world over money. “Even worse,” Yangchen continued. “Any ships unaccounted for could be holding spies and other security risks to His Majesty’s rule.”
No one was chuckling anymore, not even in defense. “If there is an excess of money in this city, perhaps it’s only a rounding error and can be reconciled by directing the funds to more charitable efforts,” she said. “Sometime before I next speak to the Earth King.”
Boma cleared his throat. “Avatar, I believe you are scheduled for an audience with His Majesty three months from now.”
“Is that so?” Yangchen said. “Well then.”
The shangs said nothing. Henshe looked to the side and made a face Yangchen couldn’t see. Another brawl he had to clean up. “Thank you, Avatar,” he said in a weary rasp, his voice already overused. “I’m sure a reconciliation can be achieved.”
FALLBACK PLANS
The rest of the meeting . . . went. Tongues formed words, words came out of mouths, but nothing of import was said. The Avatar’s challenge was an iron pillar in the middle of the road. Every piece of conversation had to go around it.
Toward the end, Yangchen realized how big of a mistake she’d made. She cursed herself over and over again. Strategic provocation, nothing. It was a reckless bet, spurred on by her wounded pride.
The session concluded with a second round of refreshments. Never before had tea been drunk so fast. Yangchen announced she would be returning to her lodgings for the rest of the day, pretending she was hiding a sore throat.
“Avatar, I beg your permission to stay behind a bit,” Sidao said. “The hall contains some minor historical artifacts of interest to me.”
The request came easily, and his excuse had already been prepared. Sidao collected many times his official salary in kickbacks from the women and men in this room, and he most certainly had to smooth an entire nest of ruffled feathers. She gave him her leave.
Henshe offered to see her out and she accepted. Yangchen walked down the long corridor side by side with the Zongdu of Bin-Er, Boma trailing behind like a chaperone to a couple weighing a political marriage.
“Avatar, I . . . ah . . .” Henshe tried to find his footing. “I wish you had brought the matter of the ships to me first, in private. I would have been in a better position to help you.”
She had been thinking the same thing. The zongdu could have negotiated with the shangs for better conditions behind closed doors. She and Henshe together could have let the merchants say no at first, and then chipped away at their stubbornness gradually until a new shape of the future was ready to be unveiled. They could have pretended it wasn’t blackmail.
“I regret the delivery,” Yangchen said. “But not the contents. Your masters are men and women so enamored with themselves that they justify squeezing commonfolk and cheating kings.”
Henshe sighed, as if that were rebuttal enough. You just don’t know how the world works. “It’s their right to look out for themselves and their families.”
Yangchen did know how the world worked; that was why she acted like she did. “Family isn’t an excuse to trample upon others, Master Henshe.”
“Well put. I will do what I can to convince them of your wisdom.” Henshe bowed slowly, deeply, the full gesture of respect for an Avatar.
His wince on the way down brought forth a surge of pity in Yangchen. She could believe in this moment Sidao’s claim of equivalence between an Avatar and a zongdu. “I’m sorry for causing you trouble.”
Henshe shrugged and smiled. “Problem-solving. It’s our job.”
Yangchen waited until he was gone before beckoning Boma closer. “I need you to do something for me.” She whispered instructions in his ear.
She had to salvage something useful from the pieces of the deadlock she’d so clumsily broken. The shangs would react. Confer with each other. If they were going to blow wind, she needed to know the direction.
Boma’s whiskers twitched as she explained her plan. “Please reconsider.”
“It’s just listening. Is that not my job as the Avatar? To listen?”
