The dawn of yangchen, p.8
The Dawn of Yangchen, page 8
The Master of Elements was still a person with needs, and he knew people and their needs. “The Avatar should have what she desires most,” Henshe said. “A pretty little place in history. A few paper victories and a nicely burnished image. She’ll be able to show the Four Nations she cared.”
He stared at the empty chair on the dais. “Do you know what former Zongdu Dooshim did after he left the job?”
“No,” Sidao said, despite being the one to bring up the man’s name earlier. “Why?”
Case in point. “I’ll tell you. Dooshim took his mountains of gold and bought an inn near Su Oku. Spent his days soaking in oils and perfume over a rushing waterfall. And then he died! Peacefully in his sleep. He got in and got out.”
Henshe sighed. “No one really keeps track of my predecessors. No one cares to remember them. They all got what they wanted, and then disappeared one way or another.”
A faint scream came from outside, and then a plummeting thud like a clump of snow sliding off the roof.
“How lucky they were, no?” Henshe said.
Yangchen reentered the inn where she was staying through the window. Boma was waiting in her room, nodding off in a chair. When he saw her, covered in soot and robes torn, he yelped in fright.
“WHAT—” He quickly caught himself and lowered his voice. “What happened?”
“Not now. Just . . . not now.”
Boma had seen her in every state and every mood, hurt and healthy. He knew when she needed space. He nodded and left. Yangchen sat on her bed without bothering to change and laid her face on her hands. She rolled her cheeks against her palms, up and down.
The zongdu’s viciousness, his complete lack of hesitation, had shaken her. His initial performance as the beleaguered administrator had been so convincing. Was she losing her touch? First Kavik had nearly tricked her with his poor little pious thief act, and now this.
The dirt pilled between her skin. Her escape had been a matter of waiting until Sidao and Henshe left, and then slowly, painstakingly earthbending herself a passage that led a safe distance away from the building. She’d emerged from the ground, covered the hole, and made a leap onto a nearby roof without anyone noticing her. Functionally, a clean getaway.
But then she’d spotted a disturbance back at the hall, the kind of crowd that formed around misery. She laid low and waited until the slow-moving hubbub passed underneath her. Peering over the edge, she saw an unconscious woman being carried away on a stretcher, her body limp and arm twisted.
It must have happened while Yangchen was still under the surface of the ground. She wanted more than anything to drop down and provide healing right then and there. But had she reappeared so quickly, Henshe would figure out she’d never left the gathering hall. A few leaps of logic and he might realize she’d listened in on his plans.
So she waited, her nails chiseling crescents into her palms, until the stretcher passed. Whoever the injured woman was, her pain was on Yangchen now. The Avatar who didn’t help.
She had to make amends. Both to the woman she’d ignored, and the people of this city as a whole. She would never be able to make things right if her opponents possessed a trick up their sleeves that made them untouchable.
Unanimity. What kind of project or asset or weapon could give Henshe and the shangs such confidence against the Earth King? Yes, Yangchen had brought the mercurial, rage-prone ruler into play in a clumsy manner. But His Majesty should have represented the boundary where the Avatar and the shangs, recognizing a mutual danger, agreed to back away and stay within certain limits.
Henshe had assured his masters that soon they would have no limits. “Unanimity” would make them answerable to no one. She couldn’t have that. She didn’t think the world could handle that. It fell upon her to deny the shangs their prize.
Sometimes Yangchen wondered if she was justified in racing out to meet problems instead of reacting. But she had dozens upon dozens of times observed passive Avatars, lived their overwhelming regret and shame. She would remember Tienhaishi in her own life and think about how differently things might have worked out had she been able to talk to Old Iron earlier, before he donned his armor and reached land.
Nowhere in any great library of the world did it say one had to let a mighty injustice occur before getting out of your chair. Better to parry the sword than heal the wound it made in the flesh.
Yangchen stood and flicked the rolled-up dirt from her hands. If you want a fight, I’ll give you one. She called Boma back in and gave him instructions to search every doctor near the gathering hall for an injured woman matching a certain description and pay for her treatment with the rest of the Bin-Er budget.
Once he returned, he could help her pack. “If you’re leaving the city, this may be a good chance to ditch Sidao,” Boma said. “Corrupt little elbow leech couldn’t even hide which side he was playing for very well.”
“No, not yet.” She’d play as dumb as she could about the minister’s loyalties. Henshe’s message to his fellow zongdu in Jonduri had to be delivered by a trusted courier, after all. “Sidao and I have travel plans to discuss.”
And she, alone, had a recruiting pitch to complete. One that had suddenly leaped in importance.
THE TRADE
New rule, Kavik thought. No more traveling through the square itself, no matter how big of a detour he had to make.
It was simply too risky. Since Teiin’s forceful exit from the Gidu Shrine, the square had become a regular meeting place for the people of Bin-Er to air their grievances. More men and women flocked to the crowd every day, and their chants against the shangs could be heard from blocks away, carried on the wind.
The ice was building. The waters were foaming. A time would come when the center of Bin-Er collapsed in on itself, and since Kavik didn’t know when that was, he would simply never be there, ever. To avoid the whirlpool, you avoided the boat.
He still managed to get to the teahouse on time. The Golden Cloudberry, unfamiliar to him. The interior was dark and full of corners created by partial walls and screens. The proprietor was busy in the back, judging by the sounds of clanking pots. Kavik kept his hood on and waited.
Qiu arrived, and to Kavik’s annoyance, chose to sit down in the booth behind him so they were back-to-back. He supposed the older boy wanted to mask their conversation, but the act didn’t help when they were the only two customers in the shop.
Whatever. After his disaster with the Avatar, Kavik no longer had any grounds to complain about someone else’s skill at legwork. “You cabbage slug,” Kavik muttered. “You knew whose room you were sending me into, didn’t you?”
“You were safer than you’ve ever been,” Qiu said. Replying to the empty air in front of him wasn’t suspicious at all, no. “What’s an Air Nomad going to do, kill you? Listen to you bellyache. You got in and out without a hitch.”
Kavik mulled over the blatantly false statement. So word on the street hadn’t linked him to the Avatar. Dinner with his folks had remained a secret, and whether it was out of lingering loyalty or a hefty exit payment, the fired guards hadn’t spread the news in Bin-Er about an intruder in the Blue Manse.
Which meant the market value of the letter he’d stolen from Yangchen was still perfect, as high as it got. “It wasn’t a perfect run. I was able to grab an envelope and that’s it.”
He heard the rustle of Qiu straightening up in excitement and then the slump of him trying to play it cool. “Could be nothing. You didn’t damage the seal, did you?”
“See for yourself.” He held the envelope out, low and behind him. Qiu groped around blindly until his fingers landed on the paper and snatched it away like a starving snowgull fighting over a dropped bun.
Kavik let his broker take his time examining the outside of the letter. Sad as it was, Qiu was the closest thing he had left to a friend these days. Once the residents of the Water Tribe Quarter stopped talking to him, his social circle had withered down to just his fellow miscreants in errand running. Mama Ayunerak didn’t count.
“Enough playing around,” Kavik said. “I just picked you over the Avatar, and she’s a lot prettier. Tell me what I want to know.” He ran the pad of his thumb over his fingers. He didn’t want to add up the price of this answer, not really. The going rate for an errand runner was easy enough to tally, but the discord with his parents wasn’t.
“All right, so my contact in the pass control office was able to get some time alone with the records. She doesn’t find Kalyaan’s name in the approved section, but she finds a description. Water Tribe man with eight fingers applying for exit out of Bin-Er. Destination to be decided, which is really rare. That’s got to be him, right? She says the pass was granted around the last time you or I or anyone else heard from him.”
Qiu shifted in his seat. “It’s like you suspected. Your brother’s gone.”
Kavik, twelve years old, had been nervous about stepping onto the soil of the continent. Though the gray climate was little different on this side of the strait, the journey across the water had boiled his fears into a heavy lump.
“We’ll make the leap together,” Kalyaan said to him. “If we do, the spirits will keep us safe no matter what.”
At his instruction, the entire family shed their mittens and made a chain. Kavik grasped his brother’s hand, his fist fitting neatly into the space left behind by Kalyaan’s missing ring and pinkie fingers. While Kalyaan counted down from ten, their parents playfully teased their younger son for being silly, and their eldest for humoring him with such a bad idea. The wind stung and chapped their exposed skin.
Kalyaan stayed on focus and winked at Kavik. “. . . three . . . two . . . one!”
The four of them stepped off their umiak in perfect unison and cheered, swinging their still-connected arms high in the air. The other families making their landings rolled their eyes and shook their heads, but Kavik felt more relief than he could describe. He hadn’t fallen through the gravel or been skewered with arrows. The charm of unity had protected them.
The great docks of Bin-Er lay off to the side where the water was deeper. Workers swarmed the fat-bellied cargo ships made of overlaid wood planks and broke down their contents with iron hooks and shovels. Barrels rolled down improvised ramps, sometimes falling into the water with a splash, but no pause was spared to recover them. A certain amount of lost goods were acceptable casualties.
The activity reminded Kavik of a polar bear–dog feeding on a carcass, scraps of wasted meat flying across the snow, and he shuddered. But his convoy from the North had made the trip without fuss in their own vessels, the shallow drafts allowing them to beach safely. Just like any other move between camps.
Maybe this new land wouldn’t be so bad, he thought as man in a heavy green uniform walked up to greet them.
Early on in his duties as a junior clerk at Nuqingaq’s, Kavik had marveled at how steady the wages were. You knew exactly how much coin you were going to make every week. And while you couldn’t chance upon a bounty on the level of a whale-walrus or a net bursting with a whole school of cuttle-perch, you’d never go wanting for too long either.
How lucky he was, he used to think as he rubbed his bleary eyes at his table. Many of his benchmates had come to Bin-Er on their own, leaving wives and husbands and parents and children behind, but Kavik was and always would be with the people he loved most under one roof.
Kalyaan stayed with Nuqingaq’s for less than six moons.
He hadn’t shown any signs of dissatisfaction. He just failed to show up for his shift one morning, and then again the next. There was no third time because he was fired and barred from ever setting foot on the shop floor again.
The silent ruckus that followed Kalyaan leaving his job and the way the family became pariahs inside their own place of employment taught Kavik a lot about how things really worked in Bin-Er. Through eavesdropping on upset exchanges between his coworkers, he learned the true asset of Nuqingaq and Partners wasn’t its low error rate but its highly limited involvement in the greater swirl of forces in the city.
Because its employees kept to themselves and had such little contact with anyone from the Fire Nation and Earth Kingdom, because the business wasn’t in the pocket of a particular shang, in principle they would be left alone. And it would be easier for them to get exit passes to leave Bin-Er when they wished. But Kalyaan suddenly going off by himself to whereabouts unknown threatened that privilege—assuming it had ever really existed.
For the incautious, Bin-Er was a fishing weir that drew them in and didn’t let them go. No one at the bookkeepers, Kavik included, wanted to live in the city forever. Putting the group at risk because of your own foolhardiness simply wasn’t done in the poles. You looked out for your own.
Kalyaan still came home in the evenings, though he deflected any questions about what he was doing. He had found different work, he told Kavik. Everything was fine.
Whatever new job he had, it paid better than bookkeeping by orders of magnitude. At Nuqingaq’s, Kavik heard the whispers about his brother, and they used words like runner. Lackey. Spy.
Kalyaan started coming home less and less often. That was fine too. Young men and women moved out of their parents’ houses; that was to be expected. Sure, it usually coincided with a marriage, but Kalyaan was as tight-lipped about his social life as he was his working hours.
He also gifted them an entire new house. Not forcibly but forcefully. It was better to live closer to the international district, he said. Sure, the wooden structure was harder to keep clean and warm, but it was better. Why? Kavik didn’t know, and neither did his parents. They listened to Kalyaan and moved their oil lamp and the rest of their belongings. He sounded very confident. The change in residence did not go unnoticed by their neighbors.
Then one morning, it happened. All the bookkeepers, clerks, and assistants were called to the shop floor. Someone with intimate knowledge of the client list and the timing of their contract renewals had poached their most critical customers, the boss explained. Many of the people gathered here were going to lose their jobs.
Kavik watched as his neighbors were culled. His first real lesson in how an agreement, a numerical projection, arcane words floating without a trace through the physical world, could lead to a person losing their livelihood. He and his father survived untouched. There didn’t seem to be any logic behind the decision.
The Water Tribe Quarter rallied around their members who weren’t as lucky. It was their way to support each other. But there was no doubt who was to blame for the incident, because Kalyaan never came home again after that.
Kavik and his parents waited for him while suffering their due. In the poles, those who committed unforgivable offenses against the community might wake up one day to find the camp had moved on without them. There was nowhere to move to in Bin-Er, except around corners when Kavik approached, away when he sat down at the workbench, off to the side when he tried to speak.
Was there a breaking point? A specific moment when he’d swallowed too much of Bin-Er, and his body reacted to purge itself? He couldn’t remember. Kavik could remember how brightly the obvious solution to his problems burned in his mind as he put on his parka and became the second person ever to voluntarily walk out of Nuqingaq’s.
Most kinds of quarry rewarded patience, but there were some exceptions. You didn’t wander off in a random direction when stalking a herd of finned caribou; nor did you sit down and freeze, waiting for them to return. You followed their tracks as closely as you could. To find his brother, he would have to walk in his brother’s footsteps.
Kavik would run errands just like Kalyaan had. He would play the game and hunt down leads until he caught up to the former golden child of Long Stretch. And then he would drag him back home, kicking and screaming if necessary, so their family could leave this spirits-forsaken city the same way they arrived.
Together.
The start of his quest. The hard knocks of learning the information game had been shiny and charming for a while, as much as picking through stolen meeting minutes and absorbing back-alley drubbings could be.
But that vow had taken place a long time ago. His self-imposed mission was dead now, Qiu its less-than-likely pallbearer. He didn’t know what to do.
Assuming Qiu was telling the truth, the timing lined up. It would explain why Kavik was having so much trouble finding a man in a city most people weren’t allowed to leave. And it would mean that his older brother, without so much as a word or a letter, had walked out on his family and left them behind for good.
Kavik felt very small and alone, sitting across from no one. He cleared his throat. He cleared his throat again.
“Hey,” Qiu said in a rare moment of sympathy. “I’m sorry. I know Water Tribe families are close.”
“Yeah, I . . .” He wanted to talk about something else. “What are you going to do with the letter?”
“Same as Kalyaan. Ditch this place.” Qiu wasn’t so sorry or so sensitive as to avoid treading on the fresh wound. He smacked the paper. “I know where I can get in touch with agents representing overseas buyers. They’ll bring me to them. I’m aiming for Taku. Getting out of the cold for good.”
Qiu didn’t have anyone to take with him. Kavik pushed the shapeless feeling inside him away, before it had the chance to become pity or envy.
Qiu got up and rearranged his heavy coat as he left. He paused by the door, giving Kavik a view of the undisguised glee on his round, pockmarked face. He was free. “Give Kalyaan my best if you ever see him again,” he said, and disappeared into the street.
And with that, Kavik’s chances of reuniting his family melted away. He slumped in his seat and pressed his skull against the booth wall until it hurt.
