Chapter Text
“What do you think they did?” Azula said quietly, conscious of the fact that this was still enemy territory. “They used airships to bypass the city’s defenses and bomb the walls.”
Behind the much shorter foreign girl, the princess could perceive Ty Lee edging a little bit closer, a nervous expression on her face. The two girls made eye contact, and the royal one subtly shook her head. It wasn’t time to chi block their only reliable way in or out of the fortress city. At least not yet.
“Couldn’t you feel it?”
“How do you expect me to feel that?!” Toph’s tone was incredulous. “The walls are miles from here, and like a mile high! All I know is one second everybody’s screaming and running scared for some reason I can’t see, then there’s booms coming from somewhere far off and faint tremors in the ground.”
“Um, she’s telling the truth,” Ty Lee piped up, now peering around the corner at the end of the alleyway. “I can see the smoke coming off the top of the wall and everything.”
“I signed up for a rescue mission!” she spat through gritted teeth. “Not to help you guys destroy the city!”
“If we wanted to destroy this city,” Azula hissed in a low, cold voice, “why would we waste time attacking the strongest part of its defenses? We would use our airships to drop incendiaries all over its Agrarian Zone, then sit back and watch.”
The earthbender’s sightless eyes widened a fraction, and a bit of color left her face.
“Tell me,” she demanded, “how long do you think it would be before the citizens of Ba Sing Se were gnawing on each other’s bones in the streets?”
“Alright, sheesh, I get it,” Toph grimaced, loosening her hold on the princess’s tunic. “You don’t wanna kill literally everyone in here.”
The princess took the opportunity to wrench her clothes from the younger girl’s grip with one swift, decisive move. For all her status as a clear bending prodigy, physically she wasn’t all that strong.
“…Look, I’m no fan of this city or the jerks who run it, I don’t have a problem with fighting them, but that doesn’t mean I wanna see all the people out here being put through stuff like this over and over again,” she took a step forward and poked her in the chest with one finger. “I didn’t sign up to be part of something like that. Call it off, or I’m out.”
“I can’t.”
“What do you mean you can’t?!” she hissed. “You’re the princess!”
“And if I slink back out there a failure with nothing to show for all this, then the only thing that’s going to happen is I’ll be placed under house arrest just long enough to ready an airship to pack me off back to the Fire Nation,” Azula replied. “No one will obey a princess who’s been defying the throne’s orders if she can’t even demonstrate competence and divine favor.”
“You don’t… feel like you’re lying,” Toph muttered, somewhat reluctantly.
“Do you think I wanted this? Do you think I ordered it?” she pressed, leaning in close to the earthbender’s face and choosing to keep her suspicions of just who might have been able to do so to herself. “Do you think I want the people holding Aang fearful and riled up?”
“Urgh…” she hesitated, “I don’t…”
“Do you think that I wanted this?” the firebender repeated.
“If it wasn’t you, then who?”
“Does it matter?” the princess countered. “The way I see it, you only have two choices. You can turn back now, flee the city, and try to plead your case to whoever gave the order if you like, having just abandoned the only person who’s promised your parents protection to her fate.”
The blind earthbender crossed her arms frowned, pursing her lips.
“Or,” she continued after a moment’s deliberate pause, “you can stick with Ty Lee and I, see this through to the end, and return with the goodwill of a princess covered in glory.”
“…You really were born to do this,” Toph admitted, if a little bit grudgingly.
“I know,” Azula replied with a simple, slight smile, then spun on her heels and began walking. “Now come on, the sooner this is done, the sooner we’re out of here.”
As she went, wholly confident that both of them would dutifully follow, she allowed herself a moment of satisfaction for how she had played the situation off, followed by a quick mental note that her earthbender might be less world-wise than she liked to appear. Or was it that she was only concerned about what she herself was participating in, and not with what was to inevitably come with the comet’s arrival?
Negotiations were over. Toph was from nobility, she ought to know what happened when emissaries were attacked.
Really, who in this city could the Fire Nation even trust enough to talk with anymore?
“…And so, for all its sound and fury, the actual damage the assault inflicted was largely superficial,” General Ying of Ba Sing Se’s Council of Five concluded. “The walls remain as sturdy as ever.”
“And the Fire Nation army would be in no position to take advantage of a breach even if one had been opened,” General Sung hastened to add. “My scouts have assured me that there has been no large-scale movement of troops out of their camp, and no approach in force to the Outer Wall.”
As they often were, the highest military authorities of the Earth Kingdom’s capital were all gathered together around a semicircular table looking out over a vast map of meticulously shaped stone. However, today the usual strategic representation of the four nations had been replaced by a far more detailed layout of Ba Sing Se itself, once used during the great siege. Hundreds of small green figurines were scattered everywhere, with red ones mixed in in locations where the enemy bombs had caused damage. Observed on the mammoth scale of the city itself, these were reassuringly few.
“And our casualties?” the Long Feng asked from his place of honor, arms folded together inside his sleeves.
The Grand Secretariat’s personal presence at a council meeting was quite out of the ordinary. Normally he allowed the generals to debate their strategies amongst themselves – with a few carefully-placed spies looking on from the background, naturally – and simply present their plans to him for approval when they had come to some consensus. But today was far from ordinary, and he had deemed it best that he exercise his oversight of the military a little more directly than he usually did.
“Not all the rubble has been cleared yet, your excellency, but there appear to have been a few dozen deaths, perhaps a hundred or so at most,” replied General Zeya. “Roughly three times that wounded. Mostly soldiers stationed atop the wall.”
Long Feng simply nodded in reply. Insignificant on the scale of the city, then, and easily replaced.
“Civilian casualties appear to have been minimal,” he continued.
That made perfect sense. The map clearly showed that the targets of the air raid had been stretches of the walls, not the city itself. Civilians were strictly banned from being up there.
“Low casualties, damage that’s little more than cosmetic, no attempt at a follow up…” General How frowned as he looked out over the map, “and sporadic targeting that avoided any real points of vulnerability.”
“They didn’t strike his majesty’s palace,” Zeya observed.
“Or even attempt to break a gate,” General Dawei added.
“I know,” How nodded. “Brand new weapons and a whole city to aim at, and that’s how they choose to use them?” He looked up again, then over to the man on his right. “This was a terror raid of some kind. It’s the only explanation that makes sense. They can’t break our walls, so they seek to break our morale.”
“It might be working,” said another officer in a somewhat nervous tone. “Meifan was telling me that several of her brother’s stores in the Lower Ring have been looted, and even the Middle Ring-”
“The Dai Li will ensure order is maintained amongst the population,” Long Feng cut him off in a cool voice. “There’s no need to worry about that.”
In truth, that wasn’t quite as hard as some might have imagined. The people of Ba Sing Se had been conditioned for many, many years – long before his own arrival on the political scene – to obey the city’s cultural authority without question. Those with a proclivity for sticking their heads up had been dealt with long ago. Shifting back into familiar patterns of quiet obedience was the easiest thing in the world for the average man on the street – especially when there was little to nothing he could practically do about the airship hazard anyway.
That wasn’t to say the secret police weren’t having to exert themselves, though. They certainly were. For every agent of the Dai Li, there were hundreds of civilians packed tightly into the Lower Ring, and scores of more politically sensitive men and women amongst the more esteemed districts. His organization had recently suffered more casualties in a single day than they had known in decades. Their vast numbers of informants were coming in with more incidents to report than he had seen even during General Iroh’s harrowing two-year siege. That, at least, had been physically isolated to the Outer Wall and certain areas of the Agrarian Zone. This was everywhere, all at once.
“Ah, of course, excellency,” Sung nodded quickly. “I didn’t mean to imply-”
“I’m sure you didn’t,” the Grand Secretariat interrupted curtly.
The commander of the Outer Wall wisely chose to accept the invitation to shut up, shrinking a little back into his seat.
“I think you’re probably right, How,” Zeya said. “Why else would they waste so much blasting jelly just to add a few pockmarks?”
“What I don’t understand is why,” Ying frowned. “Why now?”
“The comet they’re so boastful about isn’t due until summer’s end,” Dawei agreed. “All they’ve really done is give us extra warning of what we might expect.”
“Perhaps they’re not as confident in the comet’s power as they’d like us to believe,” Sung suggested.
“It would make some sense,” How nodded a little, brow still somewhat furrowed, “try to intimidate us with the length of their reach, drain our resources by panicking the population, get us imagining what they might do with those airships once that comet of theirs appears.” His frown deepened. “At least, I can’t think of any other reason they would just spring like this on us so suddenly, with no follow-up.”
Long Feng could certainly think of one other reason, but it wasn’t one he cared to share with the military’s top brass.
“We should expect some kind of surrender demand, then,” Zeya reasoned. “If not right away, then soon.”
“There hasn’t been any word from the enemy, has there?” Ying asked, glancing to his left. “No messengers under truce flag approaching the wall?”
“There hadn’t been by the time I left, no,” Sung shook his head.
“If one does make an appearance, he is to be delivered directly to me,” said Long Feng, though he very much doubted one would, “under the strictest of confidentiality.”
“Of course, your excellency,” the general said deferentially.
“So you can… disabuse him of such arrogant notions personally,” said Dawei, clenching one fist in front of his chest.
“It goes without saying,” he reassured him, truthfully.
It would hardly do to have anyone blabbering to the generals about what he had done before the results were ready for display, after all.
“Hypothetical demands aside, the situation still demands a response from us now,” said Ying. “This can’t go unanswered.”
“Agreed,” nodded Zeya. “Even if the damage was minimal this time, they showed they could bypass the walls. They could do it again.” His expression grew grimmer. “There are hundreds of softer targets they could choose to strike next time.”
“But what can we do about it?” Sung asked in a worried tone. “It isn’t as though we can just… put a roof over the whole city or something.”
“We can make the ashmakers pay,” Dawei growled. “With a full mobilization-”
“Absolutely not,” interrupted the Grand Secretariat sharply, shifting his gaze to down the officer. To his mild surprise, it took the other man a few seconds to break eye contact and look down.
A single incident, even one on the scale of this, was ultimately containable. Deniable. Radically upending the capital’s entire social order, retooling its vast economy and population entirely towards war, simply was not. The peaceful, orderly utopia he had worked so hard to make of his city would be at an end. And what’s more, not only would such an act do far, far too much to discredit the Dai Li in the population’s eyes, it would necessarily mean ultimately giving the council hundreds of thousands more men under arms. The risk that one or more might then think to take it upon himself to challenge his own hard-won authority was simply too great.
“Ba Sing Se’s culture and traditions, our peaceful way of life, will not be sacrificed because of a lone abnormality,” he reminded them. “That is what you are fighting to defend.”
“Of course, sir,” across the table, General Zeya nodded appeasingly. “Of course.”
“If I may, sir,” said How somewhat cautiously. “It can’t have escaped your notice that the palace now lies within clear striking range of the Fire Nation.”
The Grand Secretariat’s brow creased, even though it hadn’t.
“Perhaps…” he went on, “it could be time that his majesty-”
“His majesty,” said Long Feng, putting a warning note into his tone, “is above sullying his hands with such mundane matters as the hourly changes of an endless war.” He leaned forward a little, placing both hands on the table. “It falls to us, his humble servants, to handle such things in his stead.”
“…And what do we plan to do about it, then?” General How frowned himself before taking a deep breath. “Your excellency.”
Said excellency made a mental note to have extra Dai Li agents assigned to the task of shadowing the council’s senior member once they were done here.
“What we plan to do,” he said firmly, folding his hands back into his sleeves, “is make the Fire Nation pay for its intrusion.”
Loathe as he was to waste his city’s resources beyond the walls, the Grand Secretariat saw little choice in the matter. The military needed some outlet for their aggression, some salve for their wounded pride, lest its eyes be tempted to turn inwards. With the Dai Li still reeling from the loss of many of their best personnel and one of the most developed of their hidden facilities, with the demands for their attention greater than they had been since the years of the great siege, now was not the time to be dealing with potential unrest within the army. And in any event failing to exact any toll on the invaders would only encourage them to do it again.
“These new machines of theirs may be able to fly, but their war camp remains rooted to the earth,” he continued. “In light of recent events, I’m authorizing this council to begin full-scale raiding operations against it.” His eyes shifted slowly from general to general, looking around the vast table to gauge their reaction. “Assemble whatever forces you think best suited for the task. I want you to hit the ashmakers along a broad front – don’t let them think that anywhere along the line is safe.” He held a short, deliberate pause. “See to it that the underworld claims at least two of theirs for every one of ours it took.”
There was a general round of nods at that. Even those on the council more temperamentally inclined to his own conservative strategies were still smarting at the seeming impunity of their attackers, still feeling the sting of their highly public embarrassment. The symbolism of this retribution, he judged, would be as important as any practical military effect. The enemy would be made to know that there was a price to pay for daring to strike the greatest city in the world.
“It will be done, excellency,” said General How after a moment, a hard expression on his face. “But, if I may ask…”
“You may,” he nodded.
“It’s all but certain that the Fire Nation’s new weapons will be based miles behind the front lines, if not across the lake itself. It’s highly unlikely that any raiding force will be able to inflict any damage at all, let alone enough to disable them.”
“I’m well aware of the continuing airship problem,” Long Feng assured them, “and I am working on a solution.”
He thought it a credit to himself that none of them presumed to ask exactly what that was.
“Hey, Yue?” Zuko asked over breakfast the next morning.
“Hmmm?” Yue paused mid-chew, her cheeks slightly bulging, a half-eaten bao stuffed with bullpig sausage and bearded quail egg.
“About last night…” he began, pausing a little bit to let her finish, then continuing while she washed it down with some of her favored creamy milk tea. “Can you fill me in a bit on that?”
“What do you mean?” she asked, setting the cup aside and looking him in the eye, one eyebrow raised.
“I mean, I get it, you want to help in the search,” her husband replied.
The moon child’s eyes drifted down towards the table, and her shoulders slumped a little.
“And I appreciate it,” he added in a comforting tone. “I’m sure Mom wou- does, too.”
“…I hope so.”
“I know so.”
“Right… I’m sorry,” she sniffed once, then drew herself up and looked back at him, just in time to catch a little encouraging smile present on his face. “I didn’t mean to cut you off or anything. Please, go on.”
“Sure,” the Fire Lord nodded gently before clearing his throat. “Well, I was just wondering: how do you think that’s helping? Meditating alone until you get so tired you just fall over on the couch, I mean?” He shrugged slightly, glancing briefly off to the side. “I’d assumed you were doing that stuff as a personal thing, to help you recenter yourself. But that’s not really it, is it?”
“Ah,” said his wife, a faint pink tinge appearing on her dark cheeks as she looked back down. “No, not really.”
“So, what is it then?”
“It’s… a bit of a long story.”
Zuko raised a curious eyebrow.
“What I mean is I’d have to explain some things first, or I don’t think it’d make much sense.”
“I can make time,” he offered a nonchalant shrug.
“…Alright then.”
The Fire Lady took one more long sip of her milk tea while it was still steaming, returning the cup to the table all but drained.
“Where to begin? Umm…” Yue scratched the back of her head, looking a little awkward. “Well, I guess the first thing you should know is that I think… I think you may sorta have married part of the moon spirit.”
Zuko blinked. “…What?”
The ashmakers wanted him alive.
That much had been obvious from the moment the mercenary scum had said as much, of course, but Jet had been half expecting to be escorted to a waiting pyre the moment he was handed off to her loathsome masters. Instead, the leader of the Freedom Fighters – he fervently hoped there were still some out there bearing that name – had been escorted to a huge, fortified stone tower built into outer rim of Caldera’s crater and unceremoniously tossed into a steel cage.
The windowless cell around him was every bit as dark and miserable as the cramped brig on the ship had been, even if a little more spacious. The only light came from torches out in the hallway, slipping in through a lone, eye-level slit in the cell’s outer door. The cage itself took up around half the room, with few features beyond the bars and a thin reed mat laid out on the floor. A tiny, reeking, metal-plated hole in one corner of it was the sum total of his captors’ apparent concern for his hygiene.
Jet had no doubt that this place was designed to break his spirit. No natural light, totally cut off from the celestial rhythm. No one to talk to, no people at all save the ever-present guards posted outside in the hallway and the silent, faceless woman that had shown up once to slip him a meager meal of mixed barley and brown rice and water. He hadn’t seen a single other prisoner since arriving, and he doubted he would any time soon. There was nothing to do in here, no way to pass the time save pacing the cell or staring up at the dull, featureless stone ceiling. Nothing for a mind to focus on, save its own misery.
Or, he figured, that’s what the enemy would like to believe.
He wasn’t going to make it so easy for them. The ashmakers might believe themselves the masters of flame, but there was fire inside him too. It had been set the day his village had gone up in smoke, the day his parents had been murdered in front of his eyes. Neither time, nor distance, nor the deaths of friends, nor the abuse he’d endured, nor the blood of the murderer himself had been able to quench it, and neither would this gloomy prison. He would never stop fighting until every last inch of the Earth Kingdom was free once more.
How to do it? Well, he’d had nothing better to do with his time than think. If they wanted him alive for now, he was certain it was because they wanted to make a spectacle of his death. When, or how, he didn’t know, and he didn’t plan to find out either. All that mattered was, right now at least, they wanted him alive. They’d undertaken a great deal of trouble, parted with a fair amount of gold, to keep him that way. That meant if, say, their prisoner started showing signs of delirium, of serious illness from these wretched conditions, they wouldn’t have much choice but to come running, would they? Would have to open the cage’s door…
The young warrior just needed some time. Time enough to recover some from the long, hard journey and the beatings inflicted on him. Time to build back some of the muscles lost to atrophy along the way. He eyed the metal bars above his head. The way he saw it, one good spring and they’d be perfect for doing some pullups. And there was certainly nothing preventing him from using his abundance of free time for pushups or curls.
The Fire Nation, Jet was determined, would rue the day it thought to take him alive.
“Your majesty,” Long Feng breathed, dropping to one knee.
“Grand Secretariat,” Kuei muttered somewhat distractedly.
The two of them were once more amidst the palace’s sprawling menageries, surrounded on all sides by the many exhibits of the Earth King’s numerous exotic pets. Guards stood at a respectful distance, while Bosco as ever was at his friend’s side. Unlike most days, though, the ruler’s attention was not on the bear.
A broad, domed cage of fine granite had been constructed by specialized earthbending artisans of the palace staff, polished to an almost mirror sheen, and filled full of climbing equipment, hanging perches, and simulacra of buildings and cliffside caves in which to hide or nest. The bars everywhere were only as narrow as they absolutely had to be, admitting plenty of sunlight. There was cool, clear water in fine silver bowls, and an assortment of fresh fruits and vegetables, meats, and even cooked mealworms were spread throughout. It was clear, even at a glance, though, that almost none of it had been touched.
“I’m worried about Bai,” said Kuei. “He hasn’t been moving around much, he hardly eats…” he leaned forward a little, squinting as he peered into the cage. “It seems like all he wants to do is curl up inside one of the little holes. I may not be an expert on his kind, but I’m sure that can’t be healthy.”
Bosco growled sympathetically, and the king absentmindedly scratched behind one of his favorite pet’s ears.
Without bothering to wait for permission, Long Feng resumed his full height. What would have been a nigh-unforgiveable breech of protocol for anyone else passed wholly unremarked between the two of them.
“Do you think he needs the company of more of his own kind?” the Earth King asked, still not turning to face his closest attendant. “A mate, perhaps?”
“I’m afraid I wouldn’t know, your majesty,” Long Feng replied, folding his hands into his sleeves in front of him. “All I can tell you is that he was alone when my men found him.”
“It’s such a shame about that plague,” he murmured. “I’m sure that the Air Nomads would have known more about his needs. I’ve read that these fascinating creatures are endemic to the mountains they used to inhabit.”
“A shame indeed.”
“Long Feng,” Kuei finally looked directly at him, “I wish for you to send more men back to wherever Bai was first found. See if more winged lemurs can be found and bring them to Ba Sing Se as gently as possible. Inform them that they’ll be well rewarded for each healthy specimen they present to me.”
“Of course, your majesty,” he replied, bowing his head and fighting the brief temptation to roll his eyes. “I’ll see it done.”
“Any texts you can find on these creatures’ habits would also be appreciated.”
“I’ll see to it that the libraries are scoured,” he dipped his head briefly again. “It is my fondest wish to soon have better news to present to you.”
Kuei face fell even further. “It’s not Lady Jiza, is it?”
“No, sire, nothing of the sort,” he shook his head, while the younger man breathed a little sigh of relief. “I come bearing ill-tidings from the court’s third-ranked geomancers. It seems that an ill wind has blown in from the sea, carrying the taunts of the waves that eat at the rocks, disturbing the spirits of the earth. They fear that, if not calmed, their foul mood may bring all manner of misfortune upon our fair city.”
“That is serious,” the monarch frowned.
“As such, I feel it is incumbent of me to ask that you begin to carry out Shin Rong’s Twenty-Seven Rites of Appeasement with delay,” he told him. “As the spiritual representative of the entire Earth Kingdom, there is no one better placed to remind the spirits of our ancient pacts.”
That those new duties would keep his majesty indoors more than ever, and towards the many shrines dotting the eastern half of the palace, was a fact that he was unlikely to notice.
“If it means averting disaster, then of course I’ll do my part,” the younger man answered. “I’ll begin ritual purifications as soon as this afternoon’s court is through.”
“I’m most pleased to hear it,” Long Feng replied, for once sincerely, dipping his head once again.
“Oh, and that does remind me…”
The Grand Secretariat’s eyes flicked hastily back up.
“After I finished the penultimate vernal veneration in King Yi Ming’s shrine today, I swear I saw clouds of black smoke coming from somewhere beyond the western gate,” the king looked a little concerned. “Was there a fire in the city?”
“…Unfortunately, yes,” Long Feng nodded. “These last several days of dry heat provided ideal kindling. Happily, I can report that the blaze was successfully contained and extinguished in large part due to the valiant efforts of the Dai Li.”
“That is good news,” Kuei agreed, before frowning slightly again. “But still, it must have been big for it to be visible all the way from the palace – I can’t remember ever seeing anything like it. Perhaps-”
“Your majesty,” he replied in a somewhat sterner tone, speaking in a manner more befitting a father to his child than a minister to his sovereign, “I feel I must implore you to remember your lessons. What is the foremost responsibility of the Earth King?”
“The maintenance of the kingdom’s spiritual and cultural health, and the assurance of the heavens’ favor.”
“And what is the greatest impediment to that duty?”
“An excessive focus on mundane matters beneath his attention.”
Long Feng simply gave him an expectant look.
“…Yes,” the Earth King blinked, then shook his head and gave a little sigh. “Yes, of course, you’re right.”
“There is no war in Ba Sing Se,” said Agent Sun Li of the Dai Li, standing in the center of a dark cell.
“You’re… you’re insane…” the sweating, middle-aged man cuffed to the chair in front of him, whose name he had honestly forgotten, managed in between pants. “They got past… they bombed…”
“There is no war in Ba Sing Se,” he simply repeated, not reacting at all to the prisoner’s words. He could see that the man’s eyes, held open by bits of clay stuck to the lids, were still stuck on the lone light revolving slowly around the circular track. That was what mattered, in the end. “Here we are safe. Here we are free.”
“Not sa…” he mumbled weakly. “Not…”
“There is no war in Ba Sing Se.”
“Th-there…”
“There is no war in Ba Sing Se.”
“There is…” he breathed heavily, “n-no… no war in… in B-Ba Sing Se.”
“Very good,” said the agent, though neither his face nor his tone shifted.
It would be several more minutes of carrying on in much the same manner, reinforcing the most basic positive ideas in the prisoner’s subconscious via the simplest form of repetitive conditioning, before Sun Li finally halted the light with a wave of his hand. Without ceremony he moved to unshackle his hypnotic subject and led the dazed, wide-eyed man out of the room by one hand. This was far from the most thorough or involved work he had done on a dissident’s mind, but a firm, prerational conviction of the city’s fundamental safety was all he had the time or energy for. It would have to do.
“Here,” he said flatly, simply giving his subject a shove that sent him stumbling towards his brother agent.
“I’ll see him back outside,” Xie nodded, grabbing the half-tranced man by one shoulder before he could slip. “Another’ll be down in a minute.”
“Another?” Sun Li’s shoulders sank. “I’ve done…” he had to think for a second, “seventeen today already, I think.”
His fellow snorted. “You’ll be lucky if you only do seventeen more before they let you off. There’ve been thousands of arrests topside.”
“That bad?”
“They’ve started shoving ‘em in regular jails up there,” he replied. “So, yeah, that bad.”
“We have to have them all processed today?”
“Orders straight from the top. Calm has to be restored immediately. Can’t give the city’s rumor mill time to grind.”
Sun Li let out an exasperated groan, which echoed a little in the underground hallway. His compatriot winced, glanced quickly over his shoulder, then allowed his expression to grow more sympathetic.
“Tell them ten minutes,” he continued after a moment. “No, scratch that, fifteen.”
“They’re not gonna be happy with that upstairs,” Xie warned him.
“I’ve been standing in that cell for hours on end. I need a break. If they don’t like it, they can take it up with Uncle.”
“I’ll let them know,” he nodded, before tugging at the unblinking prisoner’s shoulder.
With that, the two young men parted ways, heading down opposite ends of the crystal-lit stone hall. Sun Li ascended several flights of stairs, passing several men and a few women heading the opposite way as he did, slid back a false floor with a pulling gesture, and emerged into the inner courtyard of an upscale apartment complex in the Middle Ring. He removed the large, conical hat from his head and stretched, enjoying the feel of the sun on his face again. He then made his way over to a nearby bench and finally took a load off his weary feet, completely unconcerned about who might be watching – everyone in the surrounding building was some varient of either agent or informant anyway.
“You are most welcome, honored agent of the Dai Li,” said a woman in a pale yellow dress, one of several wandering the garden paths and lower floors. “Care for a date?” she proffered a bowl full of sun-dried fruit.
“I would,” he said, grabbing a few. “And while you’re at it, Joo Dee, rub my shoulders. They’re getting tense.”
“Of course, sir,” the perpetually smiling woman nodded.
Setting the treats down beside him, she walked behind the bench and dutifully began massaging his aching shoulders with the prompt obedience of the properly reconditioned. The young agent allowed himself to relax for the first time in many hours, chewing slowly on the sweet delicacies and relishing the warmth of the sun on his skin. A few minutes ticked quietly by in the garden, and he began to sigh contentedly as some of the worst knots in his shoulders were meticulously worked out. Idly, he wondered if this one had had some spa training prior to her induction.
“Thought I’d find you here,” a familiar voice cut into his thoughts.
Sun Li half opened one bleary eye. “Uncle.”
Head Agent Jianzhen was their organization’s highest-ranking member in their entire district, a potent earthbender and one of the seniormost officials of the Dai Li in all of Ba Sing Se. He also happened to be his mother’s older brother.
“You can’t be spending too much time up here, you know,” said Jianzhen as he took a seat on the bench beside him. “Not today.”
“Don’t tell me they’re complaining already.”
“You left your cell empty, boy. We’ve got a backlog hundreds deep, and every other cell’s running at full burn. They noticed.”
“Yeah, and I’ve burning lamp oil for hours with no backup.”
“Because Chin’s already doing the same in the next block over. Don’t play dumb, you know it’s all hands on deck right now.”
“Don’t remind me,” he said flatly, popping another date into his mouth.
“This is serious,” he could hear the frown in his uncle’s voice as he chewed. “High command is expecting a hundred percent out of everyone today. We can’t take the risk of even one potential agitator stirring up the populace into a panic. It’s the Grand Secretariat’s own order.”
“…The Grand Secretariat’s own order,” Sun Li repeated, pursing his lips.
“If you’re gone for too long, your brothers will talk. If word gets out of this district, his excellency might hear tales of you slacking off,” Jianzhen shook his head. “That wouldn’t be good for your career.”
Or yours, he noted mentally, fully aware of how he had been selected to join the cultural authority in the first place.
“I understand his excellency’s wishes,” he told his uncle, “but we’ve been at it all day and there’s still no end in sight. What does he expect us to do, fall asleep in our cells?”
“He expects the entire organization to keep working until this crisis is fully resolved.”
There was a brief period of uncomfortable silence, as the two looked sideways into one another’s eyes.
“…Can I ask how we plan to keep it resolved?” Sun Li asked in a low voice.
“It isn’t the usual practice of senior officials to explain their plans to junior agents.”
“Come on, Uncle. If we have to process thousands of frightened witnesses just to keep things calm every time the ashmakers float their new toys over the wall…” the younger man grimaced. “You know as well as I do that we’ll burn ourselves out.”
Jianzhen did not immediately reply.
“As far as we know, they could do something like this every single day. For all we know, they’re going to. We’d be more inundated than during the darkest days of the siege,” he turned his head to look directly at him. “What are we going to do, Uncle?”
“Our leader,” he replied slowly, clearly choosing his words with care, “believes that the solution lies in a combination of military action and proper employment of the Avatar.”
An army that can’t touch the enemy machines, he thought sourly, and a kid who’s brought us nothing but death.
“And has he told you,” Sun Li looked into his uncle’s eyes, recognizing a mirror of his own uncertainties in them, “how soon he expects this solution to be available?”
“He hasn’t shared such information with me.”
The young agent’s gaze shifted, briefly, around, and then he leaned in a little closer.
“Do you really think this’ll work, Uncle?” he asked quietly. “If those airships come back tomorrow, and the next day, and the next day, and the day after that, there’s no way we’ll be able to stop panic setting in. We don’t have the agents, the cells, the jails. You know that.”
Jianzhen sat there in silence, but the grim edge to his countenance told his nephew all he needed to know.
“And if they switched targets from the walls to the city… or worse, the crops…”
Uncle and nephew shared another quiet look. Both knew exactly what that would mean.
“And in the face of that, Long Feng’s solution is to bet everything on a kid? A kid who’s only killed us so far?”
“We…” the senior agent said slowly, almost painfully, “must have faith in our leader.”
His tone, and his eyes, said all they needed to about just how convinced he really was of that.
A grim expression on his face, Sun Li sat back against the bench. Both men sat there for a time without saying anything, both lost in thought, the only sounds the trickling of garden fountains and the sound of Joo Dee’s diligent fingers continuing to run over his shoulders. Neither paid her much heed, nor any of her other sisters that regularly came and went throughout the lush green courtyard. Not even the younger-looking one in the shadow of an overhang, a particular gleam only just visible in her dark golden eyes.
As the fullness of winter loomed in the southern hemisphere, the days were growing shorter. The sun rose later and later with each passing day, climbing ever less distance into the sky before beginning to sink again. Soon enough it would fail to crest the horizon entirely, and its light would come only via refraction, thrusting the land into perpetual twilight. And then it would disappear altogether, plunging the south pole into a months-long period of unending darkness.
There was, Chief Hakoda felt, almost something grimly appropriate about that.
The effective head of what was left of the Southern Water Tribe stood atop the deck of a wooden sailing ship, holding the mainsail secure and serving as a lookout as it pulled into their harbor. Savroq, one of his veterans, stood a little ways back on the jib, while Bato manned the tiller. Though they all knew these waters quite well, sailing in these low-light conditions, with new ice forming and expanding by the day, was still quite hazardous, and only the tribe’s most skilled and experienced sailors were customarily expected to attempt it. Within only a few short weeks the polar night would be upon them, and only the desperate or a madman would dare the freezing waters then.
Still, it remained a man’s duty in times of peace – for whatever that word was worth these days – to do everything he could to prepare his village for the long sunless months, and Hakoda had never been one to shirk his duty. The three men’s small cutter was loaded with as many of the dwindling schools of polar fish as their nets and spears had been able to catch over the past two days, along with a single unfortunate tiger seal that had been slow to migrate. Soon enough they would be offloading them for the women to clean and gut and dry, and he could almost pretend that everything was normal.
It wasn’t normal, of course. That was obvious to even a mildly knowledgeable observer pulling into the bay. His little village was much more visible from the water than it had been in a long time, and larger too. Part of that was simply to accommodate the return of the warriors to their homes, of course, but that could only account for some of the changes that had come.
As the ashmaker princess had promised, the Fire Nation had furnished several shipments of supplies to “assist” the tribe, including such things as coal, metal stoves and tools, “teaching material”, koalasheep wool, and containers full of dried, preserved examples of their own alien, overly spiced cuisine. More importantly, as she had said, waterbenders had arrived from their northern vassal state to assist with rebuilding. Hakoda had only ever grown up on stories of the Water Tribe in its prime, so it was still a matter of no small astonishment to him just how quickly ice structures could be raised by teams of trained benders working in concert.
The price, of course, was that the new buildings created by the northmen were, well, northern. It was natural enough, no one but the oldest in the tribe had even vague knowledge of what southern waterbending architecture had once looked like, and none how it had been before the war had forced military consideration on everything. The linked, multistory rectangular ice buildings were clearly derived from styles meant to host a far larger population than his tribe currently possessed, and he did have to admit there was a certain elegance to the curved, flowing facades they worked into the structures they had built. They had even managed to construct a flowing fountain into the village center, somehow.
What was a good deal less natural was the total absence of anything remotely defensible about the reworked village. Gone were any walls or consideration for mobility, let alone stealth. The icy buildings were far taller and more spread out than the igloos and hide tents the southerners were used to, and much more clearly visible to passing ships. The spaces left open between them, filled only with arching, overhanging bridges, meant that any would-be invader could simply stroll right in from any direction and face no obstacles and few chokepoints. The message was almost as unsubtle as the masks the northern soldiers stationed here wore.
Though their kinship was unmistakable in their physical features, even had their manner of dress been identical a total outsider would have had no difficulty telling members of the two tribes apart from the way each carried themselves. One guarded and aloof, largely formal with hints of underlying suspicion and condescension, holding themselves apart from and above those they were sent both to aid and to watch. The other downcast as only a defeated people could be, yet huddling together for support, determined to survive this as they had everything else the last hundred years had thrown at them. The cold air was thick with the resentful tension between them.
Hakoda, like most of his people, considered their cousins to be twice-traitors, who had abandoned them to the tender mercies of the Fire Nation for the better part of ninety-five years, coming out of isolation only to join the ashmakers in an act of shameless opportunism. In return, they were considered backwards rubes by the supposedly more sophisticated city-builders, some considering their southern kin little better than mad, half-feral savages for continuing their own war effort against a vastly superior force for so long. Now they had been forced to cross the entire planet to watch over them, separated from their own homes and families by months-long sea voyages.
It was thus that for all that the two tribes were called sisters, the northmen stationed here still for the most part preferred to dwell apart, amongst their own. And for their part that suited the preferences of the overwhelming majority of the southerners just fine. The dividing lines between those parts of the village occupied by those who had lived there all their lives and those who had rebuilt it were stark and obvious, marked out with totems, sigils, and tribal flags, and few crossed them save when they had to.
As the southern men’s small boat pulled in closer to the icy dock, Hakoda grimaced to see that today might be different.
It was normal for there to be a handful of the Northern Water Tribe’s men on hand in the harbor when ships returned to the village, making sure that there were no illicit weapons of war being smuggled in from what was left of the free Earth Kingdom, but today it didn’t seem to be a matter of three or four gruff, surly northmen clearly wishing to be somewhere else. As the chief and his small crew pulled their ship in, Savroq first over the edge to begin tying her down, he observed a force of at least twoscore soldiers assembling around the small pier’s base. Some were clearly benders, others clutched long spears, all wore masks.
The better to keep themselves apart, he thought sourly, before vaulting the ship’s side himself.
Hakoda set to work assisting Savroq with the mooring, deliberately going about the business of his tribe without any apparent regard for the occupiers’ presence. It wasn’t long before the ship was securely fastened, and Bato and Takano were lowering the wooden ramp onto the pier. Without missing a beat, the southern men began fetching the first of the catch from belowdecks, all in silent agreement that they weren’t about to let these traitors think that they were more important than the southerners’ efforts to keep their families well fed.
If they thought to make it a contest of patience, though, they were to be disappointed. They had barely even gotten started with unloading their cargo when one of the spear-wielding masked men, several waterbenders directly at his back, marched straight down the ice pier. He stopped only a few feet from them, slamming the butt of his weapon into the ground to get their attention. He was summarily ignored. He repeated the gesture, only to get the exact same result.
“You southern rubes think this is funny, do you?”
At the base of the ramp, Hakoda groaned inwardly as he recognized the voice of his least favorite of the northern officers. He sucked in a bit of freezing air between his teeth before setting down a wooden crate full of slick fish and finally turning to face the interlopers directly.
“Captain Hahn.”
Before him stood one of the few foreigners who didn’t seem content to mostly leave the southerners – and in particular their village’s small number of eligible young women – to their own devices when off duty. He had had to personally intervene on a few occasions to prevent fistfights involving him from devolving into something worse. Luckily, even as debased as they had become, at least the other northerners seemed mostly sympathetic to the idea of a tribeswoman’s honor and had not proven inclined to make a larger issue of it.
“Chief Haquota.”
“Hakoda,” he corrected sternly.
“Whatever.”
“What do you want, Captain?” he asked, keeping his tone level and his expression hard.
The older man already thought he had a pretty good idea. No doubt the swaggering northern warrior wanted to throw his weight around a little after getting forcibly disentangled from Rakkiq and escorted out the night before they’d set out on their fishing trip. Making a show of forcing the local chieftain to wait while he and his excessive number of men doubtlessly took their sweet time inspecting every inch of their catch might be just the salve for a bruised ego. The worst part was he couldn’t realistically do much about it if that were the case, save deny him any petty satisfaction he might gain from seeing his irritation.
“What do I want?” Hahn repeated, his voice a little less smug than Hakoda had expected. “You playing dumb or something?”
“I’m not in the mood for games, boy,” he replied. “If you’re here to look through our catch, then you can spare us the posturing and-”
“The catch?!” he couldn’t remember hearing the northern officer actually sounding incredulous, if only a little bit, before. “I knew you southerners were slow, but even you should be able to realize that the jig is up.”
Hakoda blinked once.
“I’m not here for your smelly southern seafood,” he continued, making a sweeping gesture with his weapon. “I’m here for you.”
Perhaps it was his imagination, but the freezing polar air seemed to grow a few degrees colder.
“You’re under arrest, Chief Haquota.”
“…What?”
“I said,” Hahn leveled the point of his spear at the older man, “you’re under arrest.”
Hakoda’s eyes narrowed. Arresting the chief and foremost war leader of the entire Southern Water Tribe? Over his intervening to break up a petty brawl? Perhaps he had underestimated the depths of this young man’s pride. And folly.
“You can’t do this, Hahn,” he reminded him firmly, hand drifting subtly towards the hilt of his whale tooth knife at his belt, knowing without looking that the veteran warriors around him would be doing likewise. They had been promised dignity in their surrender, not the self-imposed rule of some would-be petty tyrant. “We had a deal.”
“That,” the masked northerner answered, “was before your son helped your daughter attack the princess’s mother-in-law.”
Chief Hakoda’s heart abruptly skipped a beat. His eyes grew so wide that he might as well have not had eyelids. His mouth fell open a fraction, and he could practically feel the color draining from his face.
Sokka… he thought, Katara… what did you do?!