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1.
The minute Zolt is free, An hops up onto his shoulder. He strokes her bald head absently, both their gazes fixed on the impassive figures opposite.
“Let’s get those bastards,” he rasps.
“Yes. Let’s.”
With a battle screech An takes to the air. The white gyrfalcon wheels up too, a pale silent streak in the dim hall. Below them flames erupt, billowing nearly to the ceiling. An dodges through them easily, using her broad vulture’s wings to soar on the updrafts. Fast as a ghost is the white gyrfalcon, but An is bigger and stronger, has decades of experience. She is going to rip the little fool apart. Again and again An dives and plunges, until her head is spinning, and again and again her talons seize nothing but air.
Too fast, she realizes. How…
Then suddenly her connection to Zolt is severed, cut as cleanly as her beak through flesh, gone, and An is falling, and screaming screaming screaming.
2.
Gan prods carefully at the bundle of spines.
“Come on, Chiaki. Uncurl already.”
“I’m sick of being your chi-blocking target!” the porcupine daemon says muffledly. “Find somebody else to practice on.”
Gan glances over at Lili, who is practicing chi-blocking with Chiaki’s human. Her mother would have a fit if she knew they were sneaking out. But really, he and Lili are seventeen. They are old enough to know and follow adventure when they see it.
He pokes Chiaki again. “Come on…”
What was that sound? Gan pricks up his ears. An uneasy feeling coils in his gut.
“Lili…” he starts.
The wall explodes outwards in ice, and uniformed figures leap through. In the confusion of cold and shouting, Lili scoops Gan up and runs. He pokes his head over her shoulder to look back. Fox’s curiosity, after all; she is as much to blame as he is.
What he sees is enough to make him feel he will never be curious again. Gan tucks his head back into Lili’s shoulder, and silently promises that he has had enough of adventure.
3.
Ping pulls on his coat, blowing on his hands to warm them.
“The Avatar looked so angry,” he tells Yoshiyo. “I’m glad I’m not in the chairman’s place.”
Yoshiyo fluffs out her feathers in agreement, fine-boned and plump as only a sparrow can be, and then freezes. With a chirr of alarm she takes wing and wheels back up the staircase.
“Yoshiyo?” Ping calls after her.
“We have to go!” she whistles back. “We have to hurry!”
“What…”
Then Ping hears it: the heavy rumble of stone grating over stone. He breaks into a run.
4.
Siarut lays her pointed sled dog’s ears flat as she sniffs at the crumpled hawk, then raises her mismatched eyes.
“We are dead, Tarrlok.”
“I didn’t have a choice,” Tarrlok argues. “She would have killed me.”
Her tail lashes from side to side. “Do you really believe that?”
Tarrlok looks down at the unconscious Avatar and her daemon, fights down nausea as he remembers the choking grasp of bloodbending.
“It doesn’t matter,” he says. “There’s no going back.”
With a motion he raises Korra up and heads out without a second glance. After a pause, Siarut picks up the hawk and pads after him.
5.
One by one the Equalists drop down, inky and silent as a horde of spiders, and as numerous. Zhang circles back to back to Lin, his eyes continuously circling from one enemy to the next.
Lin still believes they can win. Although she says they are only holding back the invaders, in her heart she still believes they will be victorious. They have never lost; they are a team. In all these years, they have been undefeatable. They have become a name to be feared: the police chief and her rhinoceros daemon. Lin does not expect that to change tonight.
Zhang knows better. Even with his short-sighted eyes he knows their enemies are too many and too skilled. The best he and Lin can do is buy time for Tenzin and his family.
The Equalists close their circle. Zhang narrows his eyes. Behind him he can feel Lin coiled and ready to spring.
I am your daemon, and you are my human, he wants to tell her. No matter what happens to us, that will never change.
Instead he lowers his ivory horn, bellows out a challenge, and charges.
- - -
1.
With a soft flutter of wings, the white gyrfalcon lands on his shoulder.
“Siarut won’t talk to me,” she says. “Tarrlok won’t, either.”
“I know,” Noatak says.
She shoots a glance at him, then back at the two other occupants of the boat, suspicion stiffening in her stance. Noatak doesn’t move a muscle, stares straight ahead. He can feel her heartbeat, light and fast as her wings; Siarut’s beating despondently behind them; Tarrlok’s slowest of all, and resigned. He knows the second his brother begins to move, the instant his daemon understands.
The gyrfalcon turns back to him.
“Noatak…” she says softly. “What’s my name?”
It takes him a moment to remember.
It takes a moment too long.