Avatar, The Last Airbender: The Shadow of Kyoshi (The Kyoshi Novels #2)(6)
“I’ll get right on that,” Li replied in a dull tone that let Kyoshi know how seriously he took the suggestion. He put his fingers to his lips and whistled. “All right, boys! Get the vermin out of there!”
The guardsmen hustled into the City Block, free to move fast after Kyoshi had swept the twists and nooks of danger. She waited patiently to see the results of her work. The Triad of the Golden Wing needed to be counted and catalogued in the light of day. Being hauled away like dry goods would cause their mystique to blow away in the wind. Hopefully.
She heard loud voices and the sound of a struggle emerging from the darkness of Loongkau. Two officers dragged out a man who hadn’t been among the Triads who’d attacked her. He was dressed poorly, but a pair of glasses fell from his head. He had to have been a jeweler or a tailor to have invested in such an expensive device.
A boot crushed the glasses into the dust before she could say anything. With mounting horror, Kyoshi watched another set of officers come out, hustling a woman by the back of her neck. She held a wailing child in her arms. The man with bad vision heard the cries and began thrashing harder in the guards’ grasp.
These weren’t Triad members. They were one of the poor families who lived in the City Block. “What are your men doing?” Kyoshi shouted at Li.
He looked confused at her question. “Getting rid of the bad element. Certain folks have been waiting to demolish this eyesore for a long time.” He turned hesitant, a haggler afraid to part with too much of his money. “Do . . . you want a cut? If you do, you have to talk to my man in the Middle Ring.”
The Middle Ring. In a flash, she understood.
Someone with big, lucrative plans for Loongkau wanted the residents scrubbed from the city block but needed an excuse to do it. They’d let the Triads in first, to get the law and the Avatar involved, and then bribed Captain Li to clear out innocent and criminal folk alike.
“Stop this!” Kyoshi said. “Stop this right now!”
“Aiyaaa,” Li lamented without a speck of sincerity. “I’m sorry, Avatar, but I’m acting within the confines of my duty. Rightfully, I can vacate these premises of criminals as necessary.”
“Mama!” It was the little girl’s sobbing that set Kyoshi over the edge. “Papa!”
Kyoshi drew her fans and snapped them open. She raised clumps of earth from below the dusty top layer, where the clay was still moist and malleable. Fist-sized clods shot forth, slamming over the mouths and noses of Li and his officers, clamping over their skin like muzzles.
The guards let go of the family and clawed at their faces, but Kyoshi’s earthbending was too strong to be resisted. Li sank to his knees, his eyes goggling out.
They had time before they would suffocate to death. Kyoshi put back her fans and slowly went to each guard in turn, yanking off their headbands one by one, checking the square metal seals of the Earth King fastened to the cloth.
The badges of every official in Ba Sing Se had identification numbers engraved on them, a testament to the city’s massive bureaucracy. These men, despite the shrinking supply of air to their brains, could understand the gesture of her taking their headbands and tucking them into her robes for safekeeping. One visit to an administration hall, and she could learn their identities. She could find them later. Most residents of Ba Sing Se had heard the rumors. They’d heard stories of what Avatar Kyoshi was, and what she did to people.
Kyoshi saved Li for last. He’d turned purple in the time she’d taken to make the rounds. After snatching his headband from under his cap, she let the clay fall from his mouth, and the others’ at the same time. Li’s squad dropped to the ground, gasping for breath. The captain landed on his side and his inhalation rattled like dice in a cup.
She leaned over, but before she could say anything, Li threw a name at her, hoping to buy clemency. He really had no backbone. “His name is Wo! The man paying me is Minister Wo!”
Kyoshi needed to shut her eyes so her frustration wouldn’t leak out. There were probably a dozen Minister Wo’s in Ba Sing Se. The name alone was meaningless to her. The city was too big. The Earth Kingdom was too big. She couldn’t keep up with the corruption leaking from its holes.
She gathered her breath. “Here is what’s going to happen, Captain,” she said as calmly as she could. “You are going to clear the block of the Triads and no one else. Then you are going to find paper and brush. You will write me a full confession, detailing this Wo person and every bribe you took from him. Every stroke of it the truth. Do you hear me, Captain Li? I will check. I want you to pour your very spirit into this confession.”
He nodded. Kyoshi straightened up to see the woman and her daughter looking at her with wide, frightened eyes. She started to approach them, wanting to ask if they were hurt.
“Don’t touch them!” The man who’d lost his glasses threw himself between Kyoshi and his family. With his near blindness, he wouldn’t have seen her trying to help. Or maybe he had, and decided she was a danger to his wife and child anyway.
Farther away, around the edges of the cordon, more bystanders had gathered. They whispered to each other, the seeds of fresh rumors taking root in the soil. The Avatar had not only ripped apart the occupants of Loongkau, but she’d turned her insatiable wrath upon the officers of the Earth King’s justice as well.
The stares of the ordinary citizens and the terrified family made Kyoshi’s skin prickle with a feeling that corrupt men like Li or Mok could never force on her. Shame. Shame for what she’d done, shame for what she was.