Avatar: The Heir of Ban

Chapter 4: The Daughters of the Black Current

Part 2

Cai Fa knew the Avatar was in this town. The Ban clan was known to have a small presence in this town, ever since Louen "Fat" Yuh had moved here five years ago to take over the clan's dai zhiwu production at its source. Yuh was known to have a daughter of approximately the Avatar's age.

Fa knew all this from city guard reports, the likes of which she had been reading for as long as she knew how. Her father's friends in the Ba Sing Se city guard had given her access to them some eight years ago, after prolonged pestering on her part. Using the same tactic, she had succeeded at prying archery, infiltration, unarmed combat and detection lessons out of them. Before too long, however, Fa had become such an accepted presence at the guard station that her father's friend, Lt. Chang Ah Ping, had told her he was worried about her when she started showing up less frequently in the past few years. She'd been fourteen years old at that time, and had wanted to begin observing Hei Chaoliu operations. "Uncle" Ah Ping had objected, concerned about the danger such an activity posed, but Fa was not one to be dissuaded from something she had put her mind to. No, she certainly wasn't that type.

It was a matter of course that the Avatar and his friends would stop here eventually. They had been passing through several small villages southeast of Ba Sing Se, and Fa had kept hot on their trail, inquiring after them. Her detection skills were serving her well.

As she searched the town, Fa took note of everything even the slightest bit out of the ordinary. She had trained herself to observe her surroundings keenly, based on a methodology her father had developed and left for her in a series of note pages. Her mind had been sharpened by constant practice, to the point where now it would seize upon potential clues and traces of her goals like a hunter's snare.

The children of Chen Shi Wan were the first thing she noticed. She had seen poor farmholds in the Agrarian District, and moreover she had read enough about how agriculture functioned in the northeastern Earth Kingdom to know that at harvest times even very young children were expected to help. Yet she saw at least a dozen sets of children flying kites. There were adults in sight of the children, milling about in the town square and even stooped over, planting, in the nearby rice paddies, but there wasn't a word of disapproval from them towards the children. And all of the children seemed to be playing at kite battles, not just a portion of them. In most settings in which children were given free reign, they would not break into so many separate groups just to play the same game. This kite battle pastime was inordinately popular.

The whole thing was decidedly suspicious. Fa decided she would investigate. If it's suspicious it could lead to crime, if it leads to crime in Chen Shi Wan it will lead to the Ban clan, and the Ban clan will lead to the Avatar, she reasoned. Realizing she would need to make a prolonged observation in order to determine any sort of patterns related to this kite activity, she decided to get some tea at a stall and sat down to sip it as she watched.

The object of the game was to cut the other person's kite string with your own. Cai Fa was familiar with the basics of the game. Children played it in Ba Sing Se, particularly during festivals, but not in these proportions. During the second match she watched, between disheveled boy and a girl with mud on her shoes and dress hem, Fa thought she noticed a glinting on the boy's kite string. Their brightly-colored kites fluttered and dived overhead, but Fa watched the strings intently. The strings began to entwine in response the kites' movements. Fa watched them strain against each other for a few moments, then the girl's string snapped and her kite drifted off in the wind.

Fa observed eight matches, all within a few hours. Each time she looked for the telltale glimmer on one of the strings, and although it was sometimes faint, it was there on the winner's string each time. The kites also seemed to always drift off in one direction, towards a single escarpment in the western mountains that bordered the town, but Fa checked the wind and decided this fact could just be chalked up to the wind patterns in the area. There was indeed some kind of hidden pattern or system to this kite game.

The matches were frequent, and Fa noticed one set of girls, who looked about ten years old, left after one match and actually returned with new kites for a second. They couldn't have the disposable income to buy a new kite that quickly, and it would take much longer to build one, Fa noted. She let them finish their game—yes, the winning girl's string seemed to shine again—and with that in mind she walked over as the girls watched the loser's kite drift toward the nearby wooded cliffside.

"Wow, you guys are really good at kite flying," Fa said, putting on a veneer of relatably-childlike enthusiasm as she walked over. She might have been overdoing it a bit for girls this old, but she wasn't exactly used to dealing with children. "I like kite battles too, but I don't think I'm as good as you guys." The girls smiled. Fa returned it, realizing she was on the right track. "Can you give me any advice on how to win?"

"The kite game doesn't have winners. My parents just gave me the good kite this time 'cuz Wen-Wen got the good kite last time."

"So…you know who will lose her kite ahead of time?"

"Yeah. The one without the sand on the string is the bad kite." The sudden insight was like a flare going off in Fa's head. That's what the shine was, she realized. This was a huge break for her investigation. But the girl didn't pause, because of course she didn't find anything she did to be out of the ordinary. "Flying kites is part of our chores. We don't get our allowance if we don't fly the kites and make sure the bad ones get cut."

Fa needed to investigate where these kites came from, and it was clear the children of the town didn't know where their parents got the kites. But just bolting away would definitely tip the girls off. So she tried to end the conversation casually, saying the girls must think this was their most fun chore. She asked them a little more about their other chores—reminding herself that it never hurts to get more information—and concluded by buying them each a sweet. Fa didn't have a ton of money to travel with, but good guardsmen knew that informants were always good investments.

"Zhengyi, Chu, meet Mr. and Mrs. Ru," Heng said, ushering them into one of the brick masonwork buildings on the far side of the market square. These sorts of buildings were much less common in Chen Shi Wan than the thatched huts most families lived in, but there were several dozen bunched around a market square. This building was supposedly a tea house owned by the Rus, but there were very few customers or normal tea house accoutrements.

Zhengyi and Chu bowed to the friendly-but-haggard-looking middle-aged couple. "The Rus are some of my best processors," Heng explained. Heng pulled the lapel of Zhengyi's vest aside to reveal his tattoo. "My friends would like to see the cellar," she said.

Mr. and Mrs. Ru led them down a trap door behind the counter. A large cellar had been dug out underneath the tea house, perhaps twenty feet long by eight feet wide. In the center were several long tables placed end-to-end at which about a dozen village peasants were working to process the plant. The place was set up like a craft workshop, with different people working on different phases of a finished product. Several workers stripped the leaves off of recently harvested plants and put them into glass jars. "The plant is grown out in the marsh in small thickets hidden by other wild plants, so they can't be found by those Yumsoon-Han lackeys," Heng explained. "Each family in my organization is responsible for a few of these thickets, and only they know how to locate them. They bring them here after harvesting. We strip the leaves off and put them in jars for curing. Curing takes six or seven days."

Shelves with glass jars of curing leaves lined the walls, with leaves in various states of readiness. A few workers would remove those leaves that had been fully cured and measure them into even units on balance scales. Then they would tip the scale's contents on to a sheaf of rice paper for the next worker in line. This person would wrap the leaves securely in the paper with very precise and skillful folds, almost like origami. The packets were very small when finished; two or three could fit into a closed fist. Still, Zhengyi knew that each of them was worth several dozen gold pieces on the streets of Ba Sing Se. "We package the dai zhiwu into even units for uniform pricing, and because it allows us to smuggle them more easily," Heng continued. "Now wait until you see how we get the kites past the guard," she grinned. "That's the cool part."

Fa felt the vibration of the last tumbler clicking out of place. She applied torsion with the other chopstick she had obtained and the lock slid open. As expected, she thought. She entered the gate house. No guards. There was probably a barracks with sleeping guards somewhere in the gate structure, but this room was just an office. The confiscated weapons were just sitting around a storage room. Obviously, these Chen Shi Wan guards weren't as dedicated as they might be. Fa retrieved her bow and quiver and left, locking the door behind her.

It was dark, almost midnight before Fa had attempted to retrieve her weapon. She now had to make her way down to where the farmers lived, in the huts near the marsh, in order to find out where their children got the kites. Fa had become nearsighted from spending so much time reading while growing up, but with the spectacles another of her father's friends had made for her she had crystal-clear vision. She was an exceptional marksman, as long as she had the spectacles. She had been lucky to get them, too. Optics technology was new, and spectacles could be quite expensive. It was a good thing her father had been so well-liked.

She had also spent time purposely cultivating her night vision, so she could move in the dark with minimal chance of being detected. If a night was relatively clear, like this one was, with a good amount of moon and starlight, she could get around well enough. She was glad to have her weapons back too. She had felt vulnerable without them.

After about a half an hour she got down to the marsh. She moved more carefully now, as she could still hear a few voices and saw lights in some of the huts. She stole towards one of the darkened ones and listened for a sign of habitation, perhaps the breathing of a sleeping family, but no one was there. She grabbed a nearby reed stem and deftly stole inside. She lit the stem with spark rocks she carried, carefully shielding the flame with her opposite hand to obscure it further. The room contained all the raw materials for kites: bamboo tubes, silk squares, adhesive. Most curiously, there was a pile of small, marble-sized rocks on a table. The rocks seemed to become highlighted as Fa took notice of them, filing them into the space in her mind reserved for out-of-place things, things likely to be clues.

Fa reached out to touch one, but her fingers slipped off it. She felt the rock resist as she tried to pull it away from the others. With a slightly harder tug, she was able to get it away from the pile. She experimented with it, moving it farther and closer to its mates. She let it go an inch or so from the pile, and it flew back into place.

"Lodestones," she whispered. Why are they putting lodestones into kites?

Her thoughts were interrupted by the voices of three young men approaching the hut she was in. She blew out her makeshift torch and slipped out the door, moving around the hut in the opposite direction from which she had heard the voices.

"Hey, did you see something?" one of the voices said. Fa's muscles tensed. Adrenaline shot through her body. She might or might not have been able to take out these three, but it would completely ruin her plans if she were to be found out now.

"Was someone in the hut?" another said, and Fa heard them break out into a run. She searched for something she could use. Thinking quickly, she bent and scooped up a fist-sized rock on the ground. She tossed it into a nearby marsh pool, a few feet in front of the door to the hut.

"He's in the water!" one of the men cried, and all three went sloshing into the water. They cried out and roused other people in the proximate huts. "Heng! Tieh!" they called. Fa hurried up the road as silently as she could for several yards, then slid off it into the swampy, waterlogged paddies along its sides as more of the smugglers came out to search. A moment later, Fa heard a female voice say "Zhengyi! There's an intruder!"

"I got it!" the Avatar replied. Fa recognized his voice. She saw twin glows from small reddish lights bloom into life in the distance. The Avatar had produced flames to help search the marsh. Her target was only a few yards off…so close…her hand seemed to itch to draw one of her arrows. But it would be imprudent to strike now. The Avatar was formidable enough without a village full of criminal allies. She might get one shot at best, and if she missed, she'd be caught for sure, and then she might never get a chance to kill him.

But she had located him. That was definitely enough for the time being. What she had to do now was get him alone, get close to him. Even as she slogged through the marsh, back towards the main square of Chen Shi Wan, as silently as she was able, her mind went back to her observation of the kite battles the previous day. She saw the kites in mind, how she had noticed that they all drifted off to the same cliff face. The Avatar, the kites, the stones. They all had to be connected somehow…

That's it! she realized. That's what the lodestones are for!

So let me get this straight," Zhengyi said. "The lodestones get packed into the kite skeletons with the plant packets, and we're going to where they end up after the strings get cut and they float away?"

"And the guards don't suspect a thing," Heng added.

Zhengyi whistled. "Heng, you are one smart bean-puff. Wish we had found whoever was creepin' around last night though."

Heng sighed lightly, partly from disappointment, partly from the effort of climbing this hill with her brother in a baby sling on her back. They'd left the town a few hours ago, taking a boat through the coastal swamps and completely bypassing the checkpoint, so that Heng could show Zhengyi to her favorite spot to practice earthbending. It was on top of a cliff overlooking the town, and they had been hiking for a while, but they had almost made it to the top.

"It's okay," she said. "I got men on it."

"You think Tieh needs back up to go meet with the contact?" Zhengyi asked. Tieh and Fu An had left town with them, and in a few hours he would rendezvous with the Ban Clan contact to permanently cancel the order. As Heng's lead enforcer it was his job to handle things like that. "That intruder might have been one of Wu's men."

"How would Wu know we're planning to change buyers already?" Tieh said. "The five of us are the only ones who've even discussed it."

"They only ever send one old guy with a wagon to make the pick up from us anyway," Fu An added. "Usually we have to help him haul the plant halfway to Ba Sing Se."

"Yeah, these two can handle it," Heng said.

Zhengyi was assuaged. "So you're taking us to where the kites end up?" he asked.

"Yeah," Heng said. "When I came up with the idea to use the kites, I brought some of the local earthebenders that my dad had trained up here and we magnetized a fifty-yard radius of the earth on this cliff side.

"So when the kites are cut and float away, the magnetized stones in their bamboo skeletons make sure they end up here?" Chu asked.

"Almost always," Tieh said. "Once in a while we might lose one to a really strong wind or something, but it doesn't impact our profits. And we ain't had one found by the guards yet."

"I gotta hand it to you guys: that really is a clever idea," Chu said. "How'd you come up with that?"

"We had to do something different after my dad was caught," Heng said, grabbing a low branch to help lift herself up the slope. "He was caught smuggling on the water, and after that the Yumsoon-Hans beefed up their security and patrols. My dad's people turned to me to run the operation, but we couldn't keep smuggling the same way. My first idea was underground tunnels, but those have been the standard method for smuggling in the Earth Kingdom for centuries. It's too obvious. First thing the guards would think of. So we did the opposite of smuggling through the ground—we smuggle through the sky."

On the last word, Heng misstepped, causing some small rocks under her foot to slide downhill. Her body pitched backward. Zhengyi thrust his elbows back to create a solid platform of rock under his own feet. He placed a hand gently against the curve of Shen Kuo's body in the sling. His other hand found Heng's hip, and he carefully set her on right footing again.

Heng let out a deep breath. "Whew! Thanks," she said, looking over her shoulder and casting her brown eyes toward Zhengyi.

"I can't let you go bouncing down a mountain just when I was about to get a lesson out of you," Zhengyi joked, grinning. Perhaps there was a bit of bashfulness in it. Suddenly, they seemed to realize in unison that Zhengyi's hand had remained on her thigh. He jerked it away as though some force had been holding it there.

Tieh noticed this. His eyes narrowed.

"Let's get up there," Heng said, turning her gaze forward again.

When they arrived at the top, Heng showed off the view. It was certainly a scenic spot to practice earthbending. It was shaded by trees overhead, but butted up against the cliff overlooking Chen Shi Wan, offering a sort of window on the whole town and delta. "Nice up here," said Zhengyi, placing a foot on the large boulder that formed the lip of the cliff.

"Part of the reason I picked this spot," Heng said, a little proudly. She untied the baby sling that held her brother and asked Tieh to hold him. Tieh, Chu, and Fu An took Shen Kuo off to the side while Heng approached Zhengyi. She fished a few copper pieces out of her pocket and scattered them on the ground. Normally the copper pieces should have rolled and clattered around, but each made a sharp thud and held fast.

"Do you know what makes magnets stick together?" she asked him. Zhengyi shrugged. "Qì," she replied. "Yīn and yáng. Actually, I remember my dad saying it was kind of like the lightning techniques of firebending, or healing in waterbending. You're the Avatar—does that make sense to you?"

"I don't really know anything about that stuff," Zhengyi replied. "I mean, Aguta was my waterbending teacher. You remember him, right?"

"Oh yeah," Heng recalled. "Definitely not a healer," she chuckled. Zhengyi laughed too.

Tieh scowled at Zhengyi and Heng. "Hey, it's your turn," Fu An said, prompting him to return his attention to their and Chu's game of koi-koi.

"All right," Heng continued to Zhengyi. "Well, I don't know much about bending theory. All I know is when you do this— " she flipped her arms and a small rock sprung out of the ground—"a rock moves. But I can tell you what I remember from when my dad was training me," she said. "Just like there are qì pathways in your body, there are qì pathways in the earth. Normally qì in the earth just kind of swirls around at random." Heng bent two fist-sized rocks out of the ground and levitate them in front of Zhengyi. She made a short sequence of smooth, swirling motions and the rocks moved around her body. As she finished, she tossed the rocks to Zhengyi. He caught one in each hand. "Those are no longer magnetized," Heng said. "Feel how they don't attract? Now, if we can align the qì in the earth, or a part of the earth, so that it doesn't just swirl around but all flows in one direction—" she bent the rocks out of his hands and entered a deeper stance. She seemed to be concentrating harder. Her motions were now equally smooth, but more direct. She swirled her hands back towards her center and then thrust them out again in a spearhand, taking a step each time. Again the two rocks followed her motions in the air before her. She let them go and they fell to the ground as the copper pieces had done. "Pick them up," she instructed him.

Zhengyi moved forward to lift them with his hands, but he found it much more difficult than he expected, as though the rock was stuck to the ground with invisible glue. As he went to pick up the other one, he found it just as hard to lift from the ground, but he was really taken by surprise by how strongly the two rocks were attracted to each other. As soon as he had pulled the second rock from the ground it zoomed right into the other one. It took a good amount of exertion for Zhengyi to pull them apart and keep them that way. "Whoa," he said. He found himself excited and enthused by the sight of an application of bending he hadn't seen before. He had never had any first-hand experience with magnetism during the whole time he had grown up with Wu. And if he hadn't seen it, there was a good chance Wu hadn't either.

"The energy flows from yáng to yīn," Heng explained. "Yīn is receptive and yáng is active, so when the qì paths are aligned the areas of concentrated yáng are attracted to the areas of concentrated yīn."

"Why are these rocks more attracted to each other than to the ground?" Zhengyi asked, moving them together and apart so he could experiment with the force between them.

"As you become more advanced with this technique, you'll be able to alter the magnitude of the force as you choose," Heng replied. "The magnitude of the ground around here is relatively weak. I made the magnitude of those two rocks stronger. The magnitude of the lodestones in the kites is very strong, even though the stones themselves are small. That's why the coins I brought up didn't fly out of my pocket as soon as we got up here." She paused. "Anyway, let's see what you can do. Why don't you try and demagnetize one of those rocks?"

Zhengyi levitated the rocks, but he couldn't do much more than that. He tried to imitate Heng's movements, but he only succeeded in revolving the rocks around his body almost once before they clunked back together in midair.

Heng gave a little chuckle as Zhengyi shrugged in mock-humility. "All right," she said. "Better start with the basic stances."

A few hours passed. Tieh and Fu An, both non-benders, had concluded the card game and were now training at knife-play and fist-fighting. Zhengyi took Tieh to be the more capable fighter, since Fu An continuously deferred to him, and he doled out harsh corrections to the other boy. Zhengyi had begun to get the hang of magnetism, but his technique still had plenty of holes.

"No, not so loose. You're not waterbending," Heng corrected him as he tried to pop off a sequence of magnetized rocks from the ground and throw them at a nearby tree as projectiles. "Here. Start in a Rising Platypus-Bear stance." Heng got into the stance and Zhengyi did the same. They had both learned this basic earthbending move years ago under Shi Hua, and they both thought they knew how to do it. But they immediately saw that their stances did not match.

"Your other toe is supposed to be facing forward," Zhengyi told Heng.

"Um, who's the teacher here?" Heng replied. "That toe faces out."

"I'm telling you, it faces forward," Zhengyi said. "Otherwise your balance is all screwed up."

"No, don't you remember when Shi Hua taught us this?" she argued back. "And he put incense sticks under our heels to make sure we didn't put them on the ground?"

"And I kept putting them out with—" Zhengyi started to grin.

"—with firebending!" they said in unison, all but laughing at the antics of their shared past.

"Yeah, until he picked them up to see what was wrong with them, and you blew them up when he had it like two inches from his face!" Heng laughed, clapping her hands. "And he was all sooty! Guy looked like seared possum-chicken! Just two eyes like," she laughed again, and imitated a humorously staccato blinking pattern.

Zhengyi smiled as well, but his expression was clearly less enthusiastic. He enjoyed sharing these fond memories with Heng, and even though he had never actually hurt Shi Hua he felt badly for having treated him like that, in light of the circumstances of Hua's death.

Heng noticed this. "What's the matter?" she asked, her smile fading away.

"Shi Hua was killed helping me…helping me escape."

Heng put her hand on his back. "Zhengyi, I believe what you said about Wu before. I won't let any of our dai zhiwu get to him."

Zhengyi huffed a breath out his nose resolutely. "I know," he nodded. "Thanks."

"Come on," Heng said more cheerfully. "We'd better finish the lesson." She gave him a playful punch in the arm.

He grinned. He gave her a punch back, causing Heng to laugh even as she rubbed her arm. Heng lobbed a few easy rocks at him, giggling. Zhengyi zoomed past them and grabbed Heng's wrists, escalating the play fight. Heng half-laughed, half-shrieked in protest. Zhengyi got behind her and wrapped his arms around her torso, lifting her up off her feet.

Zhengyi was laughing, and the next thing he knew a fist had struck his face. He dropped Heng and brought his hand to his nose, taken completely by surprise. Tieh had positioned himself between Zhengyi and Heng, and apparently had clocked Zhengyi in the face. "Get away from my girlfriend!" he roared.

Zhengyi cursed. "I wasn't doin' anything, you psycho!" he yelled, checking his hand for blood.

"Tieh!" Heng yelled.

"I don't care if you're the Avatar or not! You touch my girl and I'll beat you down!" Tieh swung at him again.

Heng screamed her boyfriend's name again, and burst a lump of rock out of the ground below him, knocking him over.

"Zhengyi is my friend!" she barked, as Tieh propped himself up on his elbows. "We were just playing!"

"Yeah, sure," Tieh spat as he hauled himself up, obviously sarcastic. "You been makin' goo-goo eyes at this jerk since he walked into town."

"I told you Tieh, we're just friends!" Heng said.

Tieh looked back to Zhengyi. "I want him out of here by tomorrow," he said, jabbing his index finger at Zhengyi.

Heng knitted her eyebrows, almost in confusion more than anger. "You don't make demands of me like that," she scoffed. "I run the smuggling operation. You work for me."

"Well your friend and I are gonna have a problem if he stays around much longer," Tieh glared.

Zhengyi raised his fists. "Why don't you try something?" he goaded. "I won't use any bending."

"Zhengyi, please," Heng said sternly. "Let me deal with this." She turned to Tieh "It's almost sunset," she told him with an icy voice. "You're starting to make me mad, and if you don't want me to get any madder just do what I asked you to and meet with the contact."

Tieh continued to hold his angry gaze for a moment, then turned from Heng and Zhengyi. "Fu An!" he called to his friend, who had watched the whole exchange along with Chu. Fu An hastily got up and trotted over to join his friend as they walked away. They started back down the mountain.

Normally this would have given Zhengyi cause to smile, but then, Tieh had just expressed a pretty strong disliking for him. "You sure you trust him to do this?" Zhengyi asked. Normally Zhengyi would have been glad at the fact that Wu was about to ose a supplier, but then, the person in charge of that deal had just expressed a pretty strong disliking for him.

"Tieh has a temper, and he can be a pretty big jerk," Heng said. "But he is loyal. He's worked for my dad and me for years. He's okay. I'm sorry he hit you though."

"It's all right," Zhengyi said. "I want to finish the lesson."

"Can't believe Heng wants the order changed just 'cuz that guy asked her," Tieh huffed as he and Fu An headed to the rendezvous point a few miles from the town.

"At least we don't have to drag four bushels of plant with us like usual," Fu An joked, but Tieh remained humorless.

"The Ban clan pays good for our stuff," Tieh continued. "I don't know what Heng's thinking sometimes."

Fu An paused. "You think maybe we should…let the order stand?"

Tieh seemed to think it over for a minute, but finally said, "No. I shouldn't disobey Heng. It's that Zhengyi guy I'm mad at, not her."

The two walked on, and Tieh continued to complain about Zhengyi's sudden intrusion into his life. They reached the rendezvous point after about half an hour, but something unexpected met them there. The contact from Ba Sing Se they normally met was a single Ban clan member named Lai-fo and his covered cart. This time Lai-fo was there, but he was talking with four other people.

"Who are they?" Fu An whispered as they approached.

"I don't know. Be careful," Tieh replied in kind.

"Ah, Chang Tieh," Lai-fo said, turning to the boys. "And Hu Fu An. Good to see you again."

"Who are they?" Tieh asked unceremoniously, nodding his head toward the four strangers. He rested a hand on the pommel of the knife holstered at his side.

"They're Ban clan brothers, like us," Lai-fo smiled.

"We're looking for someone who crossed the clan," one of the strangers, the only woman, said. "He's a boy, about your age, kind of short, tattoo on the left side of his chest, probably wearing a green vest."

The woman caught the brief flash of recognition in Tieh's eyes as he realized Zhengyi was their quarry. As Tieh vacillated over this chance to expose his romantic rival, the woman shot a quick sideways glace at Lai-fo.

As much as he wanted to hand Zhengyi over to these strangers, he was sure Heng would never forgive him for it. And besides, they might come after her next for harboring him. "Sorry. I haven't seen anybody like that," he said coldly.

"Why don't you have my shipment like usual, Tieh?" Lia-fo asked, anger creeping into his voice. "What is Fat Yuh's daughter playing at?"

Tieh and Fu An realized that these people knew something was up. They hadn't anticipated four intimidating strangers to accompany Lai-fo. Lai-fo was never going to go away empty-handed unless they made him, and there was no way that was going to happen with these four backing him. Tieh had hoped he might be able to talk his way around Lai-fo, get away and maybe come back with more men, but the strangers had obviously clued him in to what was going on with Heng and Zhengyi. Tieh started to panic, and he could sense Fu An was doing the same. His eyes darted among the imposing strangers. There was no way out now.

Tieh whipped out his knife and swung at the woman who had spoken before. She produced a chain and wrapped it around his arm, intercepting the blow. In a flash, she wrapped another length of the chain around his neck, forcing him to the ground in a combination choke-hold and arm-lock. She placed a foot on the back of his shoulder, straining the joint. Tieh never expected these people to be so well-trained. He had been out of his league from the beginning.

Fu An had drawn his weapon, but had seen his friend get taken down before he had even advanced a step. He turned and sprinted for help, but one of the strangers, an odd-looking man with facial piercings, fired water from the skeins strapped to his back, trapping Fu An in rings of ice. The boy tumbled to the ground in mid-stride. The man formed a fearsome-looking claw out ice around his hand and advanced on Fu An.

"Aguta! Wait!" the woman barked. The man shot her a venomous look, but obeyed. The woman tightened her chain around Tieh's neck. "Tell me where the Avatar is, or I'll turn this guy loose on your little friend," she hissed.

Tieh wasn't about to risk the life of one of his real friends—or his own—for someone he didn't even like. It wasn't like he even had a choice at this point. He was sure this woman was about to strangle him.

Shuurai loosened her chain as she heard him trying to rasp something out. "Yuh's daahter," he wheezed. "With Yuh's daughter. At the Shi Wan delta."

Shuurai released him. "Take us there."

Tieh rose to his knees, propping himself up with one hand while he rubbed his neck with the other. "Wait," he panted. "I can get you close to him." He gulped, still recovering. "But you have to leave Yuh's daughter alone."

Shuurai eyed him. Then she turned to Aguta. "Let the other one go," she said. "We can use them." Aguta grumbled, but liquefied the rings trapping Fu An's body and bent them back into his skeins.