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Suyin was getting too old for this shit. She had thought that combustion bender had been the last one, that she’d evolved past the need to do this kind of work herself, but good help was so hard to find these days. The new metal guards were neophytes compared to the ones she’d lost—yet another inconvenience she could thank Kuvira for.
The matriarch tightened the iron shackles around the would-be assassin’s wrists and ankles, her face impassive as he emptied his stomach in the dirt at her feet and cried out for the spirits to take him. She was absently grateful for Aiwei’s treachery all those years ago; no one would hear the screaming down in these tunnels he’d built for the Red Lotus.
“I’ll ask one more time,” the matriarch said, bending just a tad more pressure into the restraints, heedless of the low crunch of bone starting to give way. “Who sent you to poison Kuvira?”
Zaofu wasn’t an easy city to move to. Every citizen was thoroughly vetted, and those who found employment in the matriarch’s household faced even closer scrutiny. It took documents, references. A lone actor, no matter how aggrieved by her ward’s late imperial project, would not have been able to pull it off.
The mercenary’s hands had swollen to the size of mech gauntlets, purpling with the lack of circulation. Su couldn’t see the feet, but assumed they fared no better. There could be permanent damage if he didn’t start talking soon. Pity.
“You’re just as bad as the uniter.”
“No.” Suyin’s fists clenched, shattering the ankles and wrists all at once, like stone hammered down into gravel. He passed out from the pain within seconds. “You’ll find I’m much worse.”
She called a waterbending medic—an older woman, Nura, highly regarded for her great discretion—down to revive him and stitch the bones back together just enough that the threat of breaking them again would carry weight.
All hope faded from the mercenary’s eyes when Suyin dismissed the medic.
Once Nura was gone, Su applied the slightest pressure on a half-healed wrist. There was a gurgling sob. A name and a motive tumbled out from cracked lips.
Then she buried him.
She reemerged in the estate minutes later, closing off the tunnel paths behind her. She had been changing in her room, trading her usual robes for trousers and a loose fitting jacket the color of night. She was fishing her mask out of the bottom drawer of her vanity when her husband entered the room, dressed in house clothes and with plans for a new bridge tucked under one arm.
“Sweetheart,” he began with a sigh. “What—”
“Honey, you don’t want to know,” she said, with steel in her posture and love in her eyes.
Baatar took her hands in his. “I know you’re worried about Kuvira. Maybe you’ll feel better if you just sit with her for a while. Make a decision in the morning.”
Su wondered, as she had done periodically over the last three decades or so, how such a kind, mild-mannered man had set his heart on her. It had to be the same emotional pathology that had their eldest son glued to Kuvira’s bedside not a year after she’d nearly blasted him out of existence.
“I’ll be back in a few hours. Don’t wait up,” she simply said. “If the kids ask, I went to bed early with a headache.” She leaned in to kiss her husband. “I love you.”
“I love you too, sweetheart.”
Then she was out the door and in the hangar, requesting that the guards on duty lower the domes just enough to let a plane slip through. Minister Feng had made a grave mistake in trying her.
Suyin had met the minister once as a young woman accompanying her grandmother to King Kuei’s court, and even then he’d been an exceedingly unpleasant man. A southern noble with strong ties to Ba Sing Se, Feng had been one of the loudest critics of her son’s redesign of the capital. He’d blamed Kuvira personally for the loss of his vacation estate in the Upper Ring, which had been demolished to build new affordable housing, and his ire only grew when Wu and Korra ruled to uphold her policies. Su knew that if she let him be, another assassin would appear on her doorstep sooner rather than later.
She landed the plane in a field a few miles south of the estate and bridged the distance on rock skates—one of the most enjoyable techniques she’d picked up from her mother.
The minister had little by way of security, and the guards that were present weren’t nearly competent enough to detect her presence. Getting into his study was child’s play. She sealed his mouth shut with a metal sheet before he could yell for help.
She had a number of elegant ways to dispose of Feng; she’d been disappearing troublesome people since her time with the pirates. But in the end, she just brained him with a rock. Blood spattered across the lacquered wood desk, dyeing the clear sake in the cup he held the pink of spring flowers.
Su took a handful of jewels from his safe on her way out and left it open. No doubt the local authorities would blame the attack on bandits or daofei; they were resurging again now that Kuvira’s army had disbanded.
She made it back to Zaofu in the hours after midnight, the plane to be refueled and the excursion to go unmentioned by the guards on the night watch. At the doors of the estate, she did a quick scan with her seismic sense for the steady heartbeats of her husband and children.
The matriarch frowned as she picked up on an irregular heartbeat. She followed the vibrations of the fluttering pulse to the library, where she found her protege curled into herself on a green sofa.
Su would be lying if she said she didn’t run to her, worried that the wolfbat’s bane would take her after all. She pressed a hand to the younger woman’s cheek—cold and clammy to the touch—and tried to wake her.
When Kuvira’s eyes opened, they were wide with fear. She sat up abruptly, every inch of her trembling with the effort, and Su felt the all bookends in the room fly from the shelves and sharpen into spikes. Kuvira was hyperventilating, her heartrate quickly approaching dangerous levels.
The matriarch’s brow furrowed in confusion; she hadn’t seen her panic like that since she was nine or ten. Then she remembered how she was dressed and what she’d tried to do the last time she donned that outfit. She removed her mask and hood at once.
“It’s just me, Kuvira,” she said gently as she claimed the bookends with her bending and sent them back to their places on the shelves. “It’s alright. You’re safe, but you’re going to hurt yourself if you don’t calm down.”
Kuvira’s eyes remained dilated, but her body slowly slumped back into the couch. Her heartrate slowed a bit. “Suyin?”
“I’m here.” The matriarch reached for her hand. “You’re safe. Just breathe for me.”
It took a few minutes to calm her down, and all the while Su wondered if it would be possible to quantify how much net suffering could have been avoided if this girl were at all capable of just doing what she was told.
“What are you even doing out of bed?” Su asked, when Kuvira’s shaking died down into small tremors.
She blinked a few times, trying to remember. “I got hot.” She covered her eyes with her hand for a moment. “Couldn’t get the window to open.”
Su shook her head; this child was so much trouble. “Are you still hot?” She wasn’t sure what else it made sense to ask.
“No, it’s cold now.” She glanced up at Suyin again, taking in her attire, her demeanor. “Who was it?” she finally asked.
Su considered playing dumb, but ultimately thought better of it. Kuvira had been the head of her security force. She knew where all the other bodies were buried—had buried some of them herself. She had been only nineteen then. Too young. A mistake, in retrospect. Su considered lying again.
“It was Minister Feng,” she said after a pause.
“Good.” Kuvira released a deep sigh. “I thought it had been someone with a good reason for wanting me dead.”
Unexpectedly, the statement put a lump in the back of Suyin’s throat. The thought of her fighting for her life, all the while wondering whether her would-be assassin had just cause, made her wish she had taken her time with the minister.
“Self-pity is an ugly color on you, dear,” the matriarch said, and pulled Kuvira into a hug. She swallowed, blinking back tears. “Besides, he’s gone now.”
If a tear or two leaked out and wet the collar of her shirt, Su wasn’t saying anything about it. It had been a long day.
After a minute, Kuvira pulled away, wiping at her eyes. “What happened to ‘killing isn’t the answer’?”
“It never is when you’re on trial for war crimes.” She shot a pointed look at the younger woman. “Now let’s get you back to bed before my son finds you gone and has a heart attack.”
A brief look of panic flashed in Kuvira’s eyes. “It’s not—”
“I don’t want to know, and it’s none of my business at any rate.”
Su helped Kuvira to her room, where the young metalbender promptly fell into the arms of her eldest son, who held the covers open for her and pulled her close when she complained that she was freezing.
At this rate, they’d be engaged again in a year’s time. Another disaster for another day.
When she made it back to her room, her husband had a glass of plum wine and a sweet cake ready for her. He greeted her with a kiss, and she smiled into it.
“You waited up after all.”