As the Inquisitor had calculated, keeping the daofei woman as leverage remained an effective instrument. Yet he harbored no illusions. A former Dai Li, even one fallen from grace, is no common seditionist to be easily cowed or deceived. Zhao Jingzhong is after all intimately familiar with the labyrinthine methods by which confessions were coaxed, extracted, or forced.
For the moment, the violence subsided. Wounded and restrained, Zhao Jingzhong lifted his head and addressed the Inquisitor, measuring each word with care in a futile effort to preserve both his own life and that of the woman beside him, but especially the latter's.
"I do not know who you are beneath that face paint," he said, steadying his breath. "But understand this. I hold no personal grievance against you, nor against the Director."
Even to the outsider accompanying this delegation, it was unsettling to witness a former Dai Li reduced to such naked vulnerability. The Inquisitor permitted him to continue.
"We will vanish," Zhao Jingzhong pressed on. "We will disappear from the world and never resurface, if you grant us this mercy. All we ask is to live in peace." The woman also nodded fervently in assent. "In recognition of our former brotherhood," he finished, bowing his head. "I beg you."
But before the indifference of the state and the cold architecture of its power, such pleas amounted to little more than a dying formality. The ironclad bylaws enforced by the embroidered guardians of Ba Sing Se, merciless even by the standards of an outsider, demanded swift judgment upon anyone who compromised the secret Earthbending disciplines passed down from their revered founder. Should an outlaw or any unlicensed dissident come to wield such techniques, the Dai Li as a whole would reap the consequences of their own clandestine craft.
Therefore, no survivors could be permitted. As for Zhao Jingzhong, there are still reasons to keep him alive.
Steel hissed as the saber was drawn once more. With a subtle flick of his foot, the Inquisitor sent a tiny shard of courtyard earth skidding, striking Zhao Jingzhong's knee with surgical precision, forcing renegade to fully kneel down. The blade hovered at his throat.
"To think that a former custodian of the city's cultural sanctity could sink so low. Unlike you, my colleagues and I have no intention of inheriting the frailty and incompetence that defined your generation." Nothing save for contempt remain in the Inquisitor's eyes. "A pity. Despite numerous of our guests hinting at ties to this establishment, some among our ranks still clung to the delusion that even a former enforcer would not be foolish enough to entangle himself with forces bent on eroding Ba Sing Se's very foundation." His gaze drifted briefly to the modest ancestral shrine in the courtyard. Neither Zhao Jingzhong nor the daofei woman had spoken the telltale phrases of that fringe spiritual movement which sought to extinguish all rival beliefs. Perhaps this was merely another small-minded betrayal, one driven by coin or naive conviction rather than any grand ideological calculus. Still, such motivations and treason are in itself, contemptible.
"The likes of you failed to protect the Dowager Queen, how then could you ever hope to resist or lecture your betters?" The Inquisitor continued, pressing the blade deeper into the traitor's neck, though not enough to draw blood. "Ordinarily, we preserve the loved ones of our guests. But as you are already aware even before my birth, divulging state secrets have consequences. You were generous enough to share our techniques with your companion, and with your experience, you know better than to believe that the Director himself would grant her exemption, even if you were to cooperate fully from this moment forward." Then he whispered, reminding Zhao Jingzhong about the result of defying the law itself by frailly succumbing to personal sentiments. "Ask yourself, who is she to us? When the Director learns of this, she will be—"
The opponent played an unexpected move, even the other Dai Li agents in the courtyard cannot help but be slightly impressed.
In a final, desperate act to save the life of the woman, Zhao Jingzhong slid his own throat across the Inquisitor's blade. The steel bloomed red as he collapsed forward, striking the earth face-first.
The courtyard fell into stunned silence. Even the Inquisitors stood motionless for several breaths, absorbing the unforeseen conclusion.