Fic Post - Listen to the Earth - Book Two: Chapter 9/13

[damkianna]

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Chapter Nine: The Wall

It had been the right ship - rather, the right ships. Nearly a dozen of them, lined up in a row like plums on a branch, and when they'd come close enough Mizan had practically been able to see the commander decide they could outrun Earth Kingdom ships. The smoke had begun to billow out the stacks with new fervor, and the line of supply vessels and escorts had slid neatly past the first three pirate tubs before the pirates were anywhere near close enough to cut them off.

Earth Kingdom ships were very like Fire Nation ships in one respect, of course: they had catapults, though they were used for hurling rocks instead of flaming pitch, and were made mostly from wood instead of metal. But the ships at the western edge of the fleet knew better than to really make an effort. They were there to give the fleet away, to give that unfortunate commander something to speed past. And Mizan couldn't even blame him or her for it - if she'd been aboard one of those ships, she might well have advised that very course of action. Everybody knew Earth Kingdom ships weren't fast enough to catch any but the most pathetic Fire Nation scow, and there was no reward for being cautious if it meant tardiness. Fighting a war an ocean away meant every single ship was needed. Meeting Fire Navy timetables had been one of Mizan's least favorite parts of the job.

So the Fire Nation ships had sped ahead, past the edge of the fleet - and into the middle. The pirate vessels on the eastern edge should already have begun to move together, cutting off escape; but Mizan had motioned to Isani to signal, just in case, and Isani had raised her hands immediately and sent fire flaring up into the air.

That had probably been the first real sign the commander would have had that something was not right - but by then, of course, it had been too late.

And now the ship's deck was scattered with dents and with rubble, and Mizan was in the doorway of the bridge.

"Disgusting," the commander spat at her, and twisted for a moment as though she meant to hit Mizan, even though Isani already had both of the woman's wrists. "You don't deserve your talents - may the spirits strip them from you-"

"I've no bending skill at all," Mizan said mildly. "So you may consider your prayer retroactively answered."

"From all of you," the woman amended, glaring at Isani, "who have no loyalty to our nation - no loyalty to the Fire Lord."

Mizan snorted. "He didn't care to have it," she said. No one who had been shuffled onto the ship that had ferried Prince Zuko away had been wanted - it would have defied the very purpose of exile if they had. Except perhaps for General Iroh, but Mizan suspected that it had not pained the Fire Lord overmuch to have his well-liked elder brother choose to spend a few years in obscurity.

She thought about it sometimes, of course - she was thinking about it now, watching the commander narrow her eyes. Things could have been different; any of a dozen small things changed, a hundred moments where Mizan could have followed orders, could have bowed and scraped, could have kept her mouth shut.

But she hadn't. It wasn't as though she hadn't known it had been expected of her, but it had grated on her every time to be asked to; and if that was what the Fire Lord and his admirals had wanted from her, they would never truly have gotten it in the end. Mizan had loyalty, just not the right kind - and it was General Iroh, the prince, and her crew who had earned it, and not some man on a throne whom she had never met. The officer disdained Mizan for a traitor, but she'd never switched sides; she'd hardly been on one in the first place. She was not built to be a hero of legend, to serve ideals of honor or the dreams of a Phoenix King. She made the choices that were in front of her, and saved what seemed to her worth being saved.

And right now, what was worth being saved was this excellent ship. Mizan cast a glance around the bridge. "What do pirates do with prisoners?" she asked Isani idly. "Throw them overboard? Maroon them?"

"Would defeat the purpose a bit, sir," Isani said, "unless we want every navy ship in Port Tsao on our heels."

"True," Mizan said. The navy wouldn't take kindly to a dozen murdered crews - that would make the pirates a danger, not just a problem, and as well as today might have gone, they weren't yet ready for the sort of retaliation that would bring down. "I suppose we can spare a few boats to let them row home." She smiled at the commander, very warmly; it seemed like the kind of thing that would annoy the woman. "And once we've cleaned them up a little, these ships should make a lovely addition to our little fleet."

Once Isani had taken the officer away, Mizan began the process of going through the bridge. There wouldn't be state secrets on a supply ship; but the woman did have good charts, and there was a messenger hawk in the rear office, beside a stack of papers the woman had not been able to finish setting on fire.

"Good bird," Mizan murmured, when the hawk screeched at her warily. She didn't have any meat on her, but it wouldn't be hard to get some, and if the hawk warmed to them it could be very useful. Messenger hawks were clever birds, and not difficult to train; once you'd shown them a place and identified it with a command they could understand, and made it clear food was involved, they'd carry a message nearly anywhere. It would be a decent way to keep the fleet in touch with Dou Ying.

The papers were not terribly important - the commander probably would have burned up everything in the bridge just to make Mizan think otherwise, if she'd had the time. But Mizan couldn't help frowning down at them a little. One of them was a stamped set of orders; the corner was missing, the edge black and crumbling, but there was no mistaking the general drift. Once they'd finished this assignment, the commander had been directed to pick up new cargo in the colonies and head to Chameleon Bay.

Chameleon Bay - that was on the other side of the continent. Granted, it wouldn't take steamships too long to cover even that distance, and it was certainly safer than trying to transport anything important over Earth Kingdom land, even when sea meant meeting the occasional newly motivated pirate fleet. Still, peculiar orders for a fleet that had clearly been making easy runs through the Smoking Sea.

But it wouldn't be the first time an officer had ever been assigned new duties, or sent to a faraway post. Mizan set the papers down and eyed the hawk. "I suppose I'd best get you something before you decide to eat my fingers," she said, and the hawk agreed with a shriek.

***

They left the Serpent's Pass behind before the sun could rise again, but it was still quite a ways to Ba Sing Se. The Pass had come out onto a fair-sized road that wound over plains and low hills, but it was eerily empty; evidently they really were the first group that had used the Serpent's Pass in quite some time, and apparently no one in Ba Sing Se wanted to head west. There were train tracks, built over arching columns that stretched away over the plains alongside the road - but Professor Zei had shaken his head and explained that there would be no train.

"The tracks west are closed," he'd said. "There hasn't been a train to the west since the Great Siege - General Iroh toppled several portions, and they have never been repaired."

They could see the walls, but that hardly meant anything - even in the south, they'd heard of the walls of Ba Sing Se. It was like the lighthouse of Shinsotsu except there were a hundred, a thousand, lined up in a row, and you could see the wall-lights at night for miles and miles.

Off the Pass, they didn't have to worry about the sun anymore; and it hadn't been easy to sleep during the day, even with the shade Toph had punched out of the rock-face for them. Now that there was nothing between them and Ba Sing Se but open space, Katara didn't find herself quite so anxious, and when Sokka yawned theatrically, she grinned at him instead of rolling her eyes.

"C'mon," he said, and elbowed her gently. "If the eclipse is between now and sunrise it wouldn't have done us any good anyway."

"Lazy," Katara murmured, but she let herself slow, and within ten minutes they'd found a clear, flat space, and Toph had kicked them a fair-sized rock tent out of the ground.

It didn't take long for everybody to settle in; but the furthest Katara could get was unrolling her sleeping mat. She was tired, but not the right kind of tired. She could Earthbend, she'd proven it, and they'd crossed the Pass and were resting practically in the shadow of Ba Sing Se - somehow everything that had been hanging so heavy over her felt further away, and in its absence she couldn't seem to make herself hold still.

Somebody touched her arm, and she looked up: Suki. "Aren't you going to sleep?" Suki said.

"Maybe later," Katara said, which was a terrible answer if she didn't want Suki to worry - but Suki looked at her hard for a second and then suddenly smiled.

"As long as you haven't found anything new to beat yourself up about," Sokka said past Suki's shoulder, stomping a couple lumps out of his own mat.

"She's just going to sit up and gossip with the intangible dead kid," Toph said pointedly.

She was never going to let that go. "I forgot!" Katara said. "I forget all the time, Sokka can tell you. We didn't tell Suki until I talked to him in front of her, either."

"Hah!" Toph said, and rolled over deliberately.

Katara glanced at Aang, just in case - she never knew quite how he was going to feel about being reminded nobody else could tell he was there - but he was grinning at Toph's back, and when he looked at Katara it mellowed out into a smile. "You're really going to stay up?" he said. "Just - sometimes it gets a little boring, when you're all asleep. Since - you know." I don't have to.

Katara smiled at him, and stepped outside.

Toph had made the little stone tent tall enough to stand up in - it was more like a house, really, "tent" seemed like the wrong word for something so solid. She'd closed off three sides, and the moment Katara was out, she ever so thoughtfully brought the fourth up with a slam. Toph had only had Katara envision it to help her Earthbend, but Katara still kind of did want to punch her in the face.

But Toph had closed their shelter up too soon; Professor Zei was still outside, muttering to himself and rifling through his pack.

"Do you need to get back in?" Katara said, when he looked up. "I'm sure she'd open it for you-"

"Well, actually," Professor Zei said, and then cleared his throat. He had a scroll of rice paper in his hands, Katara saw, and the hand he'd been shuffling through his pack with had come out with a brush. "I - I was wondering if you wouldn't mind - that is, you did say it was the most recent Avatar who traveled with you? Avatar Aang?"

"Yes," Katara said slowly.

"There were many wonders in the library," Professor Zei explained quickly, "and of course I would never have gotten as much as I have without it - but even the best written sources can only tell you so much, and I - there will never be another chance for me to speak to someone from the Southern Air Temple-"

"No," Katara said, immediate and sharp. She remembered the look on Aang's face in the desert, and the oasis; and in the temple room, surrounded by stone Avatars with his tattooed head bowed down, shoulders curved by a weight he shouldn't have had to carry.

"Please-"

"Katara," Aang said, and she bit her lip and turned to look at him. He'd come around to hover a bit in front of Zei's shoulder, and he was looking back at her gravely - and then he glanced at Professor Zei, and his expression turned uncertain. "I'd - I'd like to."

"Are you sure?" Katara said. He didn't look sure, and she wasn't going to make him. He'd trusted her with so much already, even back when they'd hardly known each other, and she wasn't going to force him to crack himself open again just so Professor Zei could get his answers.

But he was nodding. "Yeah," he said, and tilted his chin up. "I want to. I want somebody to - remember. Nobody can fix it, but I want somebody to remember. I want somebody to know about them, to know what they were like - to know what's gone, now that they're dead."

"All right," Katara said gently, and then glanced at Zei. "Okay."

Professor Zei sat in place instantly; there wasn't any fire or anything, but they'd propped up a couple of sticks and set them alight so everybody could see to lay out their mats, and both of them were still burning. He had a little stoppered pot with ink, already mixed, and he dipped the brush in and hummed to himself a moment. "A considerable number of my sources have mentioned the Southern Air Temple as a producer of exemplary fruit pies," he said. "Can Avatar Aang elaborate?"

"They were amazing," Aang said immediately, fervent, and laughed.

***

It was quiet, inside; Hok Suan and Eng Pin had both fallen asleep just about the moment they'd closed their eyes, judging by their breathing, and Toph and Yue had to be at least halfway there. It was quiet enough that Suki could just barely hear the sound of Katara's voice, even though she couldn't pick out the words.

"Do you really think she's all right?" Sokka murmured.

It was black as pitch with the walls closed up, but Suki rolled to face the sound of his voice. "Yes, I do," she said, equally low, and then smiled to herself. "Then again, I thought she was mostly okay right before she went off to hand herself to Zhao without telling us, so maybe you shouldn't ask me."

Sokka snorted, and then went quiet for a moment. "Was it - hard for you?"

Suki blinked into the dark. "What?" she said.

"Leaving them again," Sokka said. "Mikari and - and everybody."

It wasn't all that strange a question, really, except that he sounded so hesitant - that was what gave Suki pause. It had been hard, a little, but she'd made the choice months ago; she'd missed Mikari, she'd missed all the girls, but there hadn't been any difficult decisions left to make, in the ferry station. Except Sokka didn't sound like he knew that.

"I wasn't going to stay," she said.

There was a moment of silence, and then Sokka huffed out a breath. "How do you always do that," he muttered.

Suki grinned. "I don't need to see your face to know what you're thinking," she said. "There's more of us now, you don't need me as much, but-"

"No, we do," Sokka said immediately. "We, uh. We do. Need you. I mean, all of us do. Not in a - um, creepy way-"

Suki laughed, and fumbled her way across the space between them until she found his hand. He went still when she did, fingers pressed flat against his mat beneath her hand, but she didn't think it was because he minded.

"Okay, okay," Toph grumbled behind them, sour, "we're a happy happy family. Shut up and go to sleep."

"Sorry," Suki said, but she was still smiling, and she left her fingers curled around Sokka's when she closed her eyes.

***

"Hey - hey! You there, boy: another cup!"

Zuko gritted his teeth, and tightened his hands around the edges of his tray. He couldn't smash it over anyone's head, not and keep this job; but it was a little soothing to pretend that he might.

Uncle kept saying they were lucky to have found a place so quickly - Uncle didn't know anything. They hadn't been lucky in weeks, not since they'd reached the docks in Port Tsao and walked right into Azula. Zuko had let himself be fooled, had fallen into complacency: that woman Yin had brought them safely south again, and they had seen the Avatar light up half of Gungduan on their way past. He had begun to think everything might turn out as it should - as it must if he were ever to regain the place that was rightfully his.

That had been his mistake.

Since then it had been one indignity after another, that stupid girl with the scar on her leg and those Earthbenders who had saved them from Azula, the queen of Sennang and Wan Liu and her grubby children; it was vexing, was what it was, and Uncle was stupid to forget it.

But then Zuko was lucky that Uncle hadn't forgotten his own name, overwhelmed as his fragile sanity might be by the joy of working in a tea shop.

The man who had yelled at him wanted another cup of jasmine; Zuko carried his tray back to the counter and set it down with a thunk, and tried not to look Uncle in the eye while he relayed the order.

Certainly, there were many things about Ba Sing Se that were impressive. The trains were - to be honest, Zuko was not sure the Fire Nation could have constructed such things. The raised tracks were of such magnitude that only Earthbenders could have built them without unimaginable expense; they had boarded very near the riverbank where the ferry had let them off, and been carried all the way into the city proper, which had been nearly a day's journey even at the pace the Earthbender trains maintained. And the walls - Zuko could not argue that they were not rightly famous. He had never seen the like; to think that Uncle had sieged such a city, and had nearly obtained its surrender! It did not seem possible.

But they had come out of the train station into the Lower Ring, and promptly been packed in with every other dirty refugee or squalling peasant in the place. Uncle had, of course, refused to separate; it was excellent camouflage, he had told Zuko, to make themselves part of an Earth Kingdom family. But he had said it in that way that meant he thought Zuko had failed to understand something, and he acted so strangely - considerate, careful, as though he were trying to make something up to them. As though there were something he were sorry for, even though it was he who had done them the favor by obtaining their ferry tickets in the first place.

Infuriating.

And now here they were: working in a tea shop to earn pocket change that Zuko would have smelted down for practice at home, and sleeping packed into a single room with a random woman and all of her insane children. The middle girl kept them up half the night with her pointless crying, and Jin's efforts to never let a day pass without bothering Zuko at least once were succeeding admirably.

Azula would have laughed herself sick if she could see them.

Frankly, Zuko was surprised the refugees weren't all dead by now. There were whole districts of them in the Lower Ring these days, and they were so incautious it beggared belief. They shared rooms and clothes and even food - as though it made a difference when the whole Lower Ring was mud on the sole of Ba Sing Se's boot. Granted, there was no particular benefit to be gained by Zuko sliding a sword through Wan Liu in the middle of the night, as it would only make them conspicuous; but Wan Liu didn't know that. The woman simply was not careful.

They reminded him of those idiot villagers by the coast, giving away mats and stew to strangers they never should have trusted. Not that it wasn't useful - that was what Father would say. Useful - usable, able to be used, and when used fully, to be discarded.

And if Wan Liu had repaired the holes in his spare trousers without being asked, if Zuko could not muster quite enough anger to kick Jin away as he should, that did not matter. He was using them, and when he was done he would not look back.

"Nephew. Nephew?"

Zuko turned, startled, and nearly knocked the tray from the counter. Which would have been unfortunate, because Uncle had just set five full teacups on it.

"Your jasmine man, nephew," Uncle said, nodding to a cup set apart from the others, "and the corner table - all ginseng." He paused. "Unless you are unwell-"

"I'm fine," Zuko said sharply, and picked up the tray. The sooner they were away from here, the better.

*

They did not leave the tea shop until evening, the sun already down somewhere beyond the walls and the sky all crimson and violet overhead. Uncle hummed something to himself as they went, as though they weren't walking down a narrow, squalid little street surrounded on all sides by Earthbenders. Zuko still didn't even understand how they had gotten here - since they'd left Sennang and the queen with the game-tile, they hadn't spent an instant without some Earth Kingdom peasant or other looking over their shoulders, and Uncle still hadn't explained how they'd ended up with a queen's seal and safe passage.

Probably, Zuko thought, Uncle had known it would be like this - no doubt Uncle planned never to tell him, or hoped that he would forget. It didn't matter, Zuko didn't need him. He would figure it out himself, whether Uncle liked it or not.

The Lower Ring was always loud, even in the evening, and lit up everywhere you looked; people were always begging or performing in the hope of a few pathetic coins. They passed a street corner with a space marked out by dirty twine so a woman could dance, twirling fans as long as her arms, to the sound of a pair of boys singing high-pitched songs about silken-haired girls and the sea. People were always pushing and shoving, and the dumplings Uncle stopped for halfway back were too hot, steam rising like smoke from the folds pressed into the dough. Maybe some of it was smoke - Zuko doubted he could trust that the fat man behind the food stall hadn't burned them. Probably he'd charged too much, but Zuko had never had to learn what a dozen dumplings should cost, and Uncle would have paid the man no matter what price he'd asked. Uncle was foolish that way.

"Building" should have been too kind a word for where they were staying, but it had to be admitted that the place was fairly sound. In the Fire Nation, they'd have been huddling in a lean-to or sleeping on the street; but even peasants in the Earth Kingdoms could raise four solid walls and a roof, as long as they could bend. They were on the second floor - there was a second floor. Zuko supposed he should have been grateful.

The stairs were more of a ladder, dips carved roughly out of the stone of the wall; Zuko got partway up and then took the dumplings from Uncle, but before he could set them on the floor overhead, the girl was there - Qingying.

"I've got them," she said, so Zuko let go of the cloth they were wrapped in, and finished hauling himself up with both hands. The dumplings were handed off to Wan Liu, and Qingying reached immediately to help Uncle up - unnecessary, Uncle could make it on his own, but nevertheless he patted her hand and thanked her.

Lan was red-eyed but not currently in tears; the littler girl was sitting on Wan Liu's knee. The middle boy was tucked silently into a corner, as always, and Jin - Jin was scooting around the floor in circles making rumbling noises with his mouth. Perhaps, Zuko thought, he had suffered a blow to the head as a baby.

"Get up," he said sharply, when Jin nearly landed a knee on his toes.

"But I'm an Earth train!" Jin said, nonsensically, and offered up another coughing rumble when Zuko stared at him dubiously.

"I hope they weren't too much," Wan Liu was saying to Uncle, hefting the dumplings in one hand with a look of startled pleasure.

Uncle waved this inanity away, only to replace it with his own: "Nonsense, nonsense. We bought them for ourselves as well; do not give credit where it is not due."

"I suppose I am glad you say so," Wan Liu said, smiling, "for if they had been a gift I should not have accepted them." She glanced over toward the wall, where Zhiyang had folded himself up, and the expression on her face was, for the briefest moment, very tired. "Here, Zhiyang - they smell good, don't they?"

Zhiyang stood hesitantly. A waste of time and effort, to coddle such a child; if he did not speak it was because he did not wish to, and he would change his mind or he would not.

But Uncle was looking at Zhiyang, too - even Jin had ceased his noise, and was sitting squarely on Zuko's foot to watch.

"Pig chicken," Uncle was saying gently. "Very tender - good for young boys who do not eat enough."

There was a table in their little room, though the legs were uneven; Qingying had scrounged for rocks of precisely the right size to make it level, and mostly succeeded. It still wobbled a little, but Zuko did not - had not found the right moment to say anything about it. Wan Liu set the dumplings down and tucked the cloth flat around them so that it almost looked like a platter. They were still steaming a little; Zhiyang took one and bit part of the edge off, and though he still said nothing, he chewed with actual enthusiasm. He snatched up two more a moment later, which made Uncle laugh, and he scurried past the table-corner and knelt down to give one to Jin.

"Thank you," Jin said, wide-eyed and ridiculous in his effort at solemnity; and then Zhiyang held the other one up and waited.

Zuko blinked at him. For such a quiet child, he was unfazed by the attention - he waited, and held out the dumpling, and finally Zuko forced his arm to move and took it.

He glanced up to find Wan Liu with her mouth twisted up, her eyes suspiciously wet, and Uncle looking at him as though he had for once done everything precisely right, though he had only taken a dumpling from a boy. For some reason, Zuko felt his face grow oddly warm; to hide it, he lifted the dumpling to his mouth and took a bite.

Perhaps it was a little burned, but he supposed the taste was acceptable.

***

Mai had been told many times that she didn't smile enough. By Mother, who had never been able to understand why Mai couldn't simply be more pleasant; and by Aunt, who had said more than once that if she could not be pretty - and she couldn't, not with that sharp chin or those narrow hips - then she absolutely must learn to be charming. Even by Father, occasionally, though Mai suspected that was because Mother had spoken to him about it, not because he was paying attention to the expressions on Mai's face. She had begun to make an effort not to smile, and usually, it wasn't all that hard. After years of court, first with Azula and then in New Ozai, where two-thirds of the compliments were lies and all the jokes had teeth, not a lot of things struck Mai as worth smiling at.

Ty Lee, though, tended to end up in that category more often than Mai expected.

"I'm dying!"

"No you aren't," Mai said, but she couldn't quite get her mouth to flatten out as neatly as her voice.

Ty Lee was bending sideways, making a face that would already have been pretty grotesque even before she'd started mashing her cheeks with her hands; when Mai gave her the sideways glance she was so clearly hoping for, she stuck out her tongue, and then straightened up with a hop. "I could be," she said, earnest.

Mai tried not to let the corner of her mouth twitch up any higher. "Unlikely," she said.

"But we've been walking for ages," Ty Lee said, "and it's such a nice day!"

It wasn't true. Well, it was, but only half: the day was fine, blue sky and a gentle wind from the northeast, but they hadn't left the ships of the South Yellow Sea behind all that long ago. Azula had commandeered a battleship minutes after they'd reached the sea to carry them to the other side, and they'd disembarked on the east bank only that morning - a few hours ago, that was all.

"What would you rather?" Samnang said quietly, from Mai's other side. He flicked a pointed glance to the left, and then to the right; low grassy hills rolled away in all directions, and they still hadn't met up with the road. There was nothing to do, Mai interpreted, except walk.

"We could eat something," Ty Lee offered. "Or play a game. Or-"

"Hush," Azula said sharply ahead of them, and Mai went still and started paying attention. It was the best strategy there was for the times when Azula got that particular edge in her voice.

Azula tilted her head, and Mai did the same; for a minute, Mai could hear nothing but grass swishing in the wind, and by the vexed look on Azula's face, the same was true for her. But then there was a little burst of sound, so faint they might not have heard it at all if the wind had been going the other direction. A small pattering sort of noise - a laugh.

Azula smiled. "Perfect," she said.

Mai looked at her. No one had asked Azula how exactly she was planning to get into Ba Sing Se, never mind how she meant for them to find Iroh and Zuko once they were inside. Ty Lee hadn't asked because she didn't need to; things tended to work out the way Azula wanted them to, most of the time, and that was good enough for Ty Lee. Samnang hadn't asked because he never did - he was their friend, but he was a teacher's son with an island name, and it would never be his place to ask the crown princess what she was thinking. And Mai hadn't asked because it wouldn't matter if she did. Azula did what Azula thought was best, and was right often enough that Mai didn't mind helping. Besides, knowing things in advance was boring.

But sometimes, maybe, it would be a good idea anyway.

"This way," Azula said, and started off along the crest of the hill.

***

It didn't take long for them to catch up to the laughter - partly because the noise kept going. Chuckling, a yelp, someone calling out: this was not a stealthy group of people.

"Earth Kingdom, no doubt," Azula murmured, crouching low; she knew without looking that Mai had followed suit, and Samnang and Ty Lee were undoubtedly hidden below and behind. The endless hills sharpened occasionally into ridges, and they'd happened upon one that was perfectly placed. "No one else would be headed so boldly to Ba Sing Se." Except Uncle and Zuzu, of course; but they might as well be Earth Kingdom, for all their wretched behavior toward Father.

And, indeed, there were plenty of green clothes in the group on the road below. Two men, and a woman whose belly rounded out with pregnancy; two girls, a short one and a taller one-

Azula looked at the taller one more carefully, and then at the three who were left. Blue - Water Tribe? This far south? It had been irritating enough to find Waterbenders in amidst the rebels at New Ozai, but now there were more? Except, no, that girl - that girl with the white hair. Surely there weren't two Waterbenders in the Earth Kingdoms with such hair. They were the same ones, then. The girl with the braid - she had run off with the king, and the taller Earth girl looked familiar because she'd been the one with the fans. And the boy - the boy was the same one who'd given Mai's brother back to her. It was them.

Even better than Azula could have hoped. She could not have counted on any random group of Earth peasants to have benders among them; but this group could fight, and already had reason to. They were perfect.

"I remember that girl," Ty Lee whispered, bright. "Her hair's so lovely!"

Azula managed not to snort through sheer force of will. Ty Lee could be so ridiculous.

"But, uh," Ty Lee said. "Um. There's - more of them, now. More of them than there are of us."

Ridiculous or not, Azula thought, Ty Lee was probably the only person who could ever make words like that sound gently inquiring instead of heinously insulting. As if Azula couldn't see that already.

"I know," Azula said aloud, because she was feeling generous today. "That's why, when we go down there and fight with them, we're going to lose."

***

"What are they waiting for?" Toph muttered, and let out another loud chuckle before Katara could scowl at her again.

Like Katara had any reason to - Toph wasn't the one who'd forgotten to mention that there was a dead kid hanging around, and she was the one who'd felt them coming, even if the dead kid had been the one to double-check. And it wasn't as though Katara could blame her for that; Toph was awesome, but she wasn't invisible. Nobody was perfect.

She'd felt it like a little tickle, a sneeze against the soles of her feet; sure, it could have just been a rabbit fox or something, but with their luck, what were the odds? Something had been following them - and maybe Katara had meant it as some kind of gesture, turning to Aang right in front of Toph to ask him to go check it out. And he had, and they'd all kept walking until Katara had turned around suddenly and announced that it was some angry girl they'd met on their way south. Didn't sound that scary to Toph, but Katara had gotten her responsibility face on, and made them all pretend everything was normal while Aang kept an eye on their stalkers.

"Maybe they aren't going to do anything," Sokka said, tone absurdly mismatched to the words, and then he elbowed Katara like she'd just said something funny.

Katara grinned at him widely; Toph could tell, her voice came out in a hiss between her teeth. "She attacked us before just for taking a step toward King Bumi. She doesn't really seem like the type to sit back and let us walk by."

"She is Fire Nation," Yue said. Every step she took sent vibrations shivering up her legs and arms, and she was the worst of any of them at this pretending thing, for some reason. She was barely even trying; she was gripping her pike so tightly it was probably going to give her splinters. If Katara should be scowling at anybody, Toph thought grumpily, it was her. "Surely she could have nothing pleasant planned for anyone on the road to a free Earth Kingdom city."

"I cannot help but agree," said Hok Suan, and then she turned to Eng Pin and kissed his cheek. The motion let her look at the ridge, Toph realized, and she thought it at the same moment that a quiver of motion struck her toes. "They're moving," Hok Suan said, and Katara turned to look.

"They sure are," Toph said, feeling the thump of footsteps against the ground, and dropping the pretense that they all knew nothing was like punching the estate wall open, back at home - like leaving Master Yu's lessons behind for the arena. She swung around and planted her feet, and yanked a wall out of the earth.

***

Nobody hit the slab Toph lifted out of the ground directly; but the boy redirected a hair too slowly, slamming one shoulder into the corner, and the girl with the long braid had to fling herself into the air to avoid it.

She came down perhaps three paces from Yue, and Yue was already moving. She remembered how it had happened last time - only the smallest gap, and the girl had darted in and struck her, and left her arm numb and hanging and her bending water splattered all over the street. She wasn't going to let that happen again.

Yue swung out sharply; the blow did not connect, the other girl was too fast, but she had to flip backward onto her hands to keep Yue's pike from knocking her legs out from under her. She twisted her hips to aim a kick at Yue's face, and Yue ducked and slashed outward again in the same motion.

The girl was so quick - Yue would never be able to beat her in that. She was better with the pike than she had been, but bending would be more to her advantage; and yet the girl could take that away so easily, and wood seemed bound to prove a better barrier to her hands than water. Unless Yue followed in Toph's footsteps, and simply froze a wall around herself; but if the only thing she wanted was to keep herself safe behind a wall, she might as well have stayed in Kanjusuk.

Unless - Yue hesitated. The bending pouching Katara had helped her make was fastened at her waist, corked, and the girl already back on her feet; but if Yue could get a hand free-

The girl darted in, and Yue struck her wrist - not quickly enough or sharply enough to hurt her, but the blow knocked her hand sideways, and she only bruised Yue's collarbone instead of hitting the spot on Yue's shoulder that she had been aiming for. She made a sound and leapt back, and Yue raised her pike in readiness. But the girl just grimaced and put a hand to her mouth.

"Sorry," she said.

Yue blinked. "I forgive you," she said, because it cost her nothing to be polite; and she took the opportunity to slide her left hand off the pike's end just long enough to pop the cork from her bending pouch.

The girl beamed at her gratefully, like she had really been worried Yue might be angry with her, and then threw herself forward.

Yue swung the pike's end around to meet her - but her left hand was flattened, palm to the wood, instead of curled around. Her stance was not good, but there was energy in the motion nevertheless, and fully half her bending water leapt from her hip and smacked the girl in the face.

The girl would have dodged the pike in an instant at any other time - Yue had tried to strike her and hit nothing but air enough times to know that it was true. But quick as she might be, the girl was not expecting the splash; she flinched away and squeezed her eyes shut as it struck her, and a moment later the pike's handle hit her in the ribs.

She'd flip herself upright in a moment if Yue wasn't careful, so she didn't let the girl tumble backward alone - Yue followed her down, the length of the pike pinning her shoulders, and pressed a knee into her belly.

"That's going to bruise," the girl said, sounding more impressed than angry, still blinking water from her eyes.

"Sorry," Yue said, a deliberate echo.

"I forgive you," the girl said, and laughed.

***

Any other day, half of these fools would already have darts in their shoulders, their chests and bellies. But Mai was worth her weight in silver: she did what Azula had asked her to, and missed. Inflicting any kind of real injury would only slow everything down, and they needed to get to Ba Sing Se. Azula had watched Mai throw her darts and little knives a thousand times, and she knew what it looked like when Mai was throwing straight. She knew that extra tilt to Mai's fingers shouldn't be there; she knew Mai could have made the blade fly true.

This particular time, it didn't matter anyway - the dark-haired Waterbender slapped the knife away with a curl of water before it could get within a pace of the man Mai had thrown it at. Useless fellow; not a weapon on him that Azula could see, and he was yelling something about Azula's hair instead of ducking or running away. Azula would have been tempted to let Mai hit him.

But the Waterbender wasn't Azula. Sentimental, Azula thought, and stubborn; the southern raiders Father had invited to court now and again had said the same of the rest of her people. In the past, Azulon had made offers now and again to the captured Waterbenders of the south - the ones who hadn't killed themselves in the ships on the way north. Waterbending did, after all, have its uses, and there were ways Grandfather might have availed himself of the ability to stop a flood in its tracks, or part a river. Anyone could see that the Fire Nation was winning, would win in the end, and who would not choose to win? An unanswerable question, Azula had thought when she was little, but there was an answer: the sentimental, and the stubborn.

But everything was going perfectly. Ty Lee had already failed and been tackled to the ground, and the Warrior of Kyoshi had knocked Samnang's glaive from his hands and made him kneel with a fan to his throat. Mai was ducking the Earthbender girl's rocks and conspicuously not stopping the boy from sneaking up on her from the side. And the dark-haired Waterbender-

The dark-haired Waterbender was going to run out of water soon, if Azula wasn't careful. She forced herself to slow down. The next fireball she threw was not as hot as it might have been, blue flickering to white and yellow around the edges, but it still steamed away a fair helping of the water that the girl raised to meet it.

"Good thing I already want to hit you," the girl said, incomprehensibly, and then she settled her feet against the earth and waited.

For what? Azula was right in front of her, and had been throwing flames at her quite consistently, although admittedly none of them had done more than singe the girl's hair. There was still water in the pouch at the girl's hip, Azula had heard it slosh as she moved. Why was she so still?

It did not fit, and Azula did not ignore what did not fit - what did not fit was important. Her arms were raised already, her fists clenched, but there had to be something she wasn't seeing, some reason the girl would leave herself vulnerable. Azula hesitated, only for an instant; and that was when the girl moved.

It was graceless, the way she shoved her hands outward; uneven, unpracticed. But it was enough to make the ground follow.

The ground - the ground, when the girl was clearly a Waterbender, and there was only one thing that could ever mean. Even as Azula stumbled, she cursed herself; she hadn't been prepared for this, but there must have been signs. Even back in New Ozai, there must have been something. Something she had missed, and now she paid for it. Certainly there had been many rumors of the Avatar over the years, some more credible than others, but she had not expected - but that was an excuse. Failure was failure, no matter the reason. The proof was before her eyes. There was no other explanation: Azula was fighting the Avatar herself.

But it did not matter. The plan remained the same; there was simply an additional variable to consider.

The earth had rumbled away from the girl, sharply, and Azula with it, but both stopped with a jerk. Azula thought of rising; but she could not leap to her feet and throw fire with rock closed cool and heavy over her boots, around her wrists.

"You're not going anywhere," said the Earthbender who was not the Avatar, and with a sharp motion of her arms she dragged the stone cuffs on Azula's arms downward, and bound them to the earth.

***

It was pretty handy, that thing Toph could do to tie people up, but Katara was a little afraid to try it. She'd probably end up crushing somebody's fingers.

She hadn't quite been sure what would happen when she flung her hands toward the girl from Omashu - whether a rock might fly up, or the ground might move, or even nothing at all. There had been the Aang explanation, and then they'd been trying to finish crossing the Pass without dying; she and Toph hadn't really stopped to practice along the way. But she thought maybe she had done better this time. She'd waited - neutral jing, she'd reminded herself, and she'd remembered the way Toph had paused in the arena, the tilt of her head. And it had worked.

Toph shackled all of them - four, and they were all familiar faces. "You!" Sokka said to the girl with the braid. "You're the one who stepped on me, aren't you?"

"I did say sorry," the girl pointed out.

Professor Zei cleared his throat. "If I may," he said. "I suspect we are looking at the crown princess Azula."

"... The one who stepped on me?" Sokka said.

"Not precisely," said Professor Zei, "although I would not be surprised if she were highly ranked, given that she travels with the princess. The flame ornament - flames are a common decoration among Fire Nation nobility, of course, and always have been, but certain shapes are traditionally reserved for the royal family. And that," he added, pointing to another girl's head, "is one of them."

It was the sharp girl, the one who'd set the soldiers on them back in Omashu; when Professor Zei pointed to her, she tilted her chin up, and looked him up and down with a disdainful eyebrow raised. And, sure enough, bound up in her hair was a three-pronged red flame, on a golden band.

"The crown princess," Toph repeated, skeptical.

Katara thought about it for a moment. "That means you're Zuko's sister," she said. They hadn't seen the Fire Nation prince since Kanjusuk, but Katara hadn't forgotten the lighthouse in Shinsotsu, or Queen Mei's description of him. His father was the Fire Lord, and had banished him when he was barely Aang's age; and this girl was his sister. Had she missed him, while he was in exile? Did she think he had deserved it? Katara tried to imagine watching Sokka sent out into the ice fields alone and carrying on after like nothing had happened; she couldn't picture it. But she couldn't picture Father choosing to send him out, either, and yet the Fire Lord had.

The girl - Azula - pursed her mouth up tight for a moment. "Not at the moment," she said easily, like it really could be taken back just like that. "Although, as it happens, I have been looking for him, in the hope of ... correcting certain oversights."

"We can't leave her here," Suki said.

Katara turned to look at her: she was standing with her arms folded, looking down gravely at the crown princess and the red flame in her hair. After a moment, she glanced up at Katara, and shook her head.

"We can't," she repeated, and looked at Yue. "You said it yourself - she can't have been planning to do anything good, no matter who she's looking for or why. She's the crown princess of the Fire Nation, a day away from Ba Sing Se itself."

"Leaving her would kind of be asking for trouble," Sokka conceded.

"We should take her with us," Yue said, and she sounded startlingly firm. Katara was used to her being so kind and polite - it was easier than it should have been to forget the way she'd looked in Kanjusuk, standing at the high table with her hands in her sleeves, calmly telling Master Pakku he was six kinds of wrong. "If there is anywhere she can be securely held, it is Ba Sing Se - and if we-" She hesitated, and glanced at Azula - she'd been about to mention the eclipse, Katara realized. "If we do find what we are looking for," Yue said instead, "we will need to speak to the king. I suspect he will be considerably more eager to listen if we are able to provide proof of our good intentions."

"And turning over the crown princess of the Fire Nation would probably count," Toph agreed. She made a sharp little motion with her hands, and four sets of stone cuffs split free of the ground with a rumble. "Just as long as we don't let them slow us down."

***

It made sense enough, Toph could understand that; and with the rock she'd wrapped around their wrists holding their hands behind their backs, it would be pretty hard for any of them to bend their way loose. And that one girl couldn't throw her little whistling knives, either. Toph had thought it was her ears ringing for a second, that little hissing whine; but it had ended with a thunk of metal against dirt, vibrations tracing the edges of a small curved blade. It was actually pretty cool - it didn't really compare to throwing boulders around, but it was interesting. Zei'd said they were probably nobles, if they were hanging around the princess, and Toph had pushed the girl up off the ground with a hand on her arm - she was wearing silk. And yet there were throwing knives tucked up her neatly-embroidered sleeves.

Toph wondered what the girl's parents thought about it. Maybe they'd liked it; being a Fire Nation noble family in the Earth Kingdoms had to be pretty dangerous. Maybe they'd been glad when she'd learned to chuck knives at people. Maybe they'd taught her.

She was awfully quiet. "Are you even still breathing?" Toph said.

"Unfortunately," the girl intoned flatly.

"What," Toph said, "you're not enjoying this? Bummer."

The girl sniffed. "Walking is boring," she said.

Toph snorted. "Too bad," she said. "I'm not carrying you."

The girl was conspicuously silent for a moment. "I wasn't planning to ask," she said, but this time there was a little dryness in her voice, a tiny inflection. "What are you, ten?"

"Thirteen!" Toph said. "Well - at Spring Festival, anyway."

"Then you're short," the girl said blandly. "I don't think my feet would leave the ground."

Toph rolled her eyes, but she didn't let it bother her - fine, maybe she was a little short, but she wasn't the one who'd been knocked down and tied up. Tall Girl and her buddies had that distinction all to themselves. "Bet you're not that much older than me," Toph said. "Although I guess your parents were probably pretty glad to let you go with the - crown princess or whatever."

"They didn't mind," the girl agreed coolly. "You're Earth Kingdom - don't tell me yours minded letting you go with the Avatar."

It wasn't like being hit, like tripping or stumbling; there wasn't anything for Toph to brace herself against or catch herself partway through. Her eyes just started stinging. And it probably should have been because of regret, but it felt mostly like anger. Toph tipped her chin up and blinked twice, and then smiled defiantly at nothing, just because she could. "It wasn't up to them," she said.

"They really tried to stop you," the girl said, dubious.

"They - didn't understand," Toph said.

The girl was silent - startled, maybe - and Toph turned around before she could change her mind and start saying anything else. Katara was back there somewhere, Toph could feel her walking. Suki and Yue were measured, Yue a little lighter, and Sokka was unpredictable; but Katara always felt like she was about to break into a run. "Get up here," she shouted. "Don't think I couldn't tell earlier, your stance was terrible."

"It seemed to work okay," Katara yelled back, but she jogged up the side of the road until she caught up, and Toph made her punch out at the air until it was her hideous form that was making Toph angry, and not anything else.

***

Okay, so Toph and Katara were yelling at each other, and Professor Zei was going on about - about Fire Nation noble ranks, or something, while Hok Suan nodded politely and hid the occasional yawn in Eng Pin's shoulder. So it wasn't actually all that quiet.

But it felt quiet back here, weirdly so. Sokka probably would have picked Suki to break the silent feeling with, except he was tongue-tied every time he glanced at her by the memory of waking up still holding her hand; so that left the guy Toph had cuffed up with rock. Which was also awkward, granted, but in a different way.

"So," Sokka said. "Do they make you do the dishes?"

"What?" the guy said.

Sokka motioned ahead of them: Katara had dragged that Princess Azula girl up front with her while she argued with Toph about how she was holding her elbows, and the girl who threw knives was up there, too; the other girl was walking by Professor Zei with Yue a pace away, brightly offering corrections now and again. "The girls," Sokka clarified. "Katara makes us take turns."

The guy looked at him more closely, like he thought maybe Sokka was kidding, so Sokka adjusted his expression to convey some extra sincerity. "They don't - make me," the guy said slowly. "I do it. It's - suitable."

"Suitable," Suki repeated, and this time, Sokka could share a glance with her without his face catching on fire. Making conversation with the guy they had tied up really had been a great idea.

"Mai is a governor's daughter," the guy said, tilting his chin forward in the direction of Knife Girl. "Ty Lee's a seventh child, but her parents are still titled. Princess Azula is Princess Azula." He shrugged his shoulders as best he could with his wrists weighted down. "I wash the dishes." He hesitated, and then his mouth quirked - possibly the first actual expression he'd gotten on his face the whole time. "Ty Lee helps sometimes - when she remembers."

"What," Sokka said, "you're not some nobleman's favorite son?"

The guy's face smoothed flat again. "Does it matter?"

"Just asking," Sokka said. "I don't know if you've noticed, but we've still got kind of a long way to walk." The walls of Ba Sing Se looked closer than they were, thanks to their sheer size, but Sokka had seen the map, and it would still take them most of the rest of the day to get there. Maybe they could have gone faster - but Sokka wasn't about to start suggesting they make Hok Suan jog, or not let her rest now and again.

"Then maybe you should save your breath," the guy advised. It could have been mocking; it was impossible to tell. The guy's face showed nothing at all, and his tone was perfectly even, faintly deferent.

"You at least have a name, right?" Sokka said. "We can't just walk up to the king of Ba Sing Se and say, 'Here's three people with names and also this other guy.'"

The guy eyed him for a second, and then gave in - not visibly, his gaze was still narrow and wary, but he opened his mouth and said, "Samnang."

"There!" Sokka said. "That wasn't so hard. See, this doesn't have to be uncomfortable - except physically, for you, but, uh, we can't really fix that one."

"Mm," the guy said.

"You travel with the princess," Suki said, "but you're not a noble - did she hire you, then?"

Samnang looked at her for a long moment, like it was a question he'd never expected to hear, never imagined anyone would ask. "No," he said. "No, she doesn't pay." He glanced away for a second, up front, and then back. "She - asks."

"I guess it would be kind of hard to turn her down," Sokka said. "I mean, with her being crown princess and all."

"Yes," Samnang said, and now he was looking at the ground. "No one ever does."

***

"Your hair is gorgeous," Ty Lee said, when she couldn't hold it in anymore.

She had to say it right to the girl's face, or else she was going to keep thinking about it and imagining how she might say it and accidentally mentioning it to Azula. And there were few surer ways to irritate Azula than by telling her the same thing over and over again.

The girl blinked at her - even her eyelashes were white, Ty Lee noticed - and then ducked her head. "Thank you," she said, charmingly polite even though she looked sort of confused.

Ty Lee smiled at her. "How'd it get that way?" she said. "I mean, was it always like that?"

"Not when I was born," the girl said, and she sounded like she'd said it a lot of times already - which, probably she had, people must have asked her about it all the time.

Ty Lee wasn't sure what she'd expected the answer to be, but it wasn't the one the girl calmly recited, a sick baby and a sacred pool and the reflection of the moon setting things alight like a cold spark. Ty Lee stared at her, but she didn't seem to be joking - it was like a thousand stories Ty Lee had heard before, the kind that were about why the crow duck's feathers were black and how the tiger buffalo had learned to roar, except this girl had one all to herself, to explain her own hair. And the moon had done it personally, too. "Was your mother a priestess?"

"In a way," the girl said, after a moment. "I suppose - a queen, perhaps. My father rules the city-"

"So you're a princess, like Azula," Ty Lee said.

The girl hesitated, and glanced up the road from under her white eyelashes. "Not very much like, I think," she said. "But a little bit, yes."

"And you lived in the north! I've never been - is it really ice everywhere?"

The girl looked for a second like she wanted to laugh. "Yes," she said. "Ice everywhere - and this time of year there's almost no daylight at all."

"No daylight?" It was weird to think of - the sun was a constant, a great spiritual power, and yet there was a place where it wandered off and left everybody in darkness. Maybe - maybe it was no wonder not every place had Firebenders. Who would they have learned from, with no dragons and no sun?

The girl smiled. "Very little," she clarified. "The sun does not - come up, not all the way. But it is close, just underneath the edge of the sky. Like twilight, or before dawn." She hesitated. "I am sorry - I am sorry we have to keep you bound up. I hope it's not painful."

"It's fine," Ty Lee said quickly, because the girl really did look sorry. "We'd have done the same thing to you. I'm not trying to make you feel bad or anything, honest; it's just walking's so dull. I know you're - you know, enemies, but - well, you're right there, and it'll be a while, and-"

"Truce," the girl proposed gently. "Until we reach the wall - we will hand you over, then, and if we meet again afterward I shall hit you as hard as I ever have."

"And I'll punch you and stuff," Ty Lee said. She meant it, really she did - and she said it like a promise because it was a promise, much more than it was a threat, even though the words were actually kind of mean. Maybe that was why the girl laughed.

"Agreed," she said.

Ty Lee beamed. "I'm Ty Lee," she said, because she hadn't remembered to say it before, and if they were going to be temporary friends, the girl should probably know.

"I am Yue," the girl said. "And I think perhaps you ought to tell me something about yourself - I did answer you, about my hair."

"Well," Ty Lee said, "there's one other thing I should ask you first. Does the north have any circuses?"

***

Katara punched the way Toph told her to - or close enough to it that probably nobody could ever tell except Toph. By the afternoon, though, she had apparently stopped choking all her energy up in her elbows, and Toph had started making her roll a boulder along beside them, shoving it another pace forward with every motion of her fist.

Katara couldn't believe their luck - and couldn't decide whether it was good or bad. First Prince Zuko, who might be right behind them for all they knew, and now Princess Azula; she hadn't even been looking for them, if what she'd said could be believed, and yet here she was. At this rate, the entire Fire Nation royal court would be waiting for them in Ba Sing Se. They'd caught the princess before she could start chasing them around the Earth Kingdoms, but who knew who might be after them next? The thought made Katara punch harder.

When it grew warm in the afternoon, they walked in the shadow of the train tracks; the arches that held up the empty track cast shade perfectly along the road, at least until the first break. Katara didn't even realize it was there until the shade vanished, sunlight falling abruptly hot on her neck. The boulder crunched to a stop beside her, and she let it; she was too busy staring up at the tracks.

A good half-dozen of the great arching columns had been toppled, crumpling sideways and downward, or cracked in the middle and tilted halfway over like broken sheets of ice. Professor Zei hadn't been kidding - no train could cross that gap, and the scale was so tremendous, it would have taken teams of Earthbenders to fix.

"Must have been hard to do," Aang said flatly, hovering at Katara's shoulder. He was looking at the long flat face of the nearest column, Katara realized. It was slanted in just the right way to face the sun, and the rock was pitted, blackened and slashed with fire. Like the Air Temples had been, except there hadn't been a hundred years of weather to soften it, here - only seven.

"General Iroh circled the city from the southeast," Professor Zei said, and for once it didn't sound as though he were reading from a book. "There were trains from the west until the very last moment, every crate of supplies anyone could get their hands on - until he brought down the tracks, even before he had rounded the wall. Devastating. We could not have lasted much longer, and there are tales-" He cut himself off, the first time he'd ever stopped talking without being asked; and he smiled a little when he glanced at Katara, but it didn't manage to change the somber cast of his face. "I have never eaten so much shoe leather. I - did not regret having the opportunity to depart on my search for the library, when it was over."

"Why did they stop?" Sokka said.

At that, the princess snorted, and everybody turned to look at her. "Because my uncle is a sentimental fool," she said, and she rolled her eyes. "Oh, he had promise, I suppose, and he was clever enough - he could never have come so close to victory otherwise." She shrugged one shoulder, briefly awkward with the weight of her cuffed wrists behind her back. "But he lacked the strength to complete what he began. He failed us. My cousin was valuable, but even he was not worth so much."

"It was considered a great day for the city when Prince Lu Ten was killed," Professor Zei said neutrally. "I believe the woman who did it was given a title, and an estate within the outer wall."

Princess Azula gave him a flat look, and did not reply.

"Whoa, whoa, wait a second," Sokka said. "You think he's an idiot because he didn't feel like sieging the city anymore after his kid died?"

"He failed," Princess Azula said. "He deserved to lose his title. He could never have been a worthy Fire Lord, after such a thing."

"Aaaaand that makes two hundred and seven reasons I'm glad I'm not Fire Nation," Sokka said, making a face.

Katara could picture General Iroh, vaguely - he'd been on the ship when they'd looked from the lighthouse in Shinsotsu, but Katara hadn't been paying close attention. She remembered gray hair, a beard, a round face; that was all. Nothing that had made her think he had once nearly crushed Ba Sing Se, had had learned professors eating shoes. And then he'd stopped, he'd let it all go, because his son had died. It seemed weird, but not because she agreed with Azula - because he sounded like a legend, an unstoppable general, someone more than human, except all it had taken to stop him was grief.

Like the Avatar, she thought. Like Avatars who were afraid, uncertain, who lost children and husbands and everybody they'd ever known - it sounded contradictory, but only if you didn't look. Only if you didn't think about it.

"Here's an idea," Toph said. "Let's stop talking about people's feelings and keep walking! Come on, sugar queen, get that rock moving."

*

The sun sank gradually lower behind them, the red-lit walls looming nearer and nearer, and finally Toph let Katara take a real break. "Yeah, all right, don't break your arms," she said, and shoved the boulder away with a punch of her own until it skidded down into the ditch.

The road had gotten smoother, this close to the city; the outer wall was so long that it looked nearly like a straight line, even though Katara knew it had to be a curve. Even the Fire Nation princess looked up at it with something like admiration on her haughty face.

Until she noticed Katara looking at her, that is, at which point she raised an eyebrow and her expression turned disdainful again. She'd been quiet, and very calm, considering she was the princess of the Fire Nation and they were marching her to Ba Sing Se; her sharp snide face had never lost that superiority. She seemed like the kind of person who wasn't ever uncertain - who always knew what she meant to do next, and would always manage to do it.

Maybe she should have been the Avatar.

"I don't know why you let her speak to you that way," the princess said - drawled, really, slow and thick like each word was so enjoyable she didn't want to let it go.

Katara sniffed and looked away, strangely angry. She was allowed to get mad at Toph, she understood precisely how annoying Toph was; but this Princess Azula hadn't crossed the mountains or sailed the desert, fought scorpion wasps or held up a bridge. What did she know about it, anyway? "She's my friend," Katara said, realizing in the instant she said it that it was actually a little bit true. "She can speak to me any way she wants to."

"Mm," the princess said, managing to make even that sound dubious.

"Oh, and you make your friends call you Highness, I suppose," Katara said, and rolled her eyes. Was Prince Zuko like this, too?

"I'm not the Avatar," the princess said, tone suddenly mild. "The Avatar should command respect."

Katara thought about Roku, Roku and his two temples and only three sages who served him as he hoped they might, no matter how many had prayed to his memory and thought they honored him well. Respect was complicated. "I haven't really earned it," she said aloud. "Although delivering the princess of the Fire Nation to the king of Ba Chang won't hurt."

She meant it to sting, and maybe it did, a little; Princess Azula gave her a flat look and then deliberately turned back to the wall. "And then what?" she said.

Katara snorted. "As if I'd tell you." It made her suddenly angry - angrier - that Azula had looked away, and she grabbed the princess's elbow and yanked her to a halt, so she could glare right into her yellow eyes. "But even if I did," she said, "you wouldn't stop me," and it felt like she was saying it to the whole Fire Nation, to every red-armored soldier who'd ever stabbed an aunt or a cousin in front of her, to every sailor who had stormed Kanjusuk and been repaid with the ocean's anger. "I won't fail - I can't. It's too important." She let the princess go with a shake, and hoped Toph's stone cuffs scraped when she did.

But Princess Azula didn't seem angry. She looked at Katara for a moment, slick sharp mouth quirked a little, and then she said, "You'll have to get inside the wall first."

*

"The Gate of Harmonious Tranquility," Professor Zei declared, gazing up the side of the wall. It certainly looked like a gate, in a lot of ways - they'd had to go through one a lot like it to get into Gaoling, though of course that had been much smaller. The wall was even taller here than everywhere else, thicker by a dozen paces for the whole width of the road, and marked at the top with a great arching roof; probably a gatehouse, though it was much too far off, all the way up the wall, to tell for sure.

The train tracks had curved over, arches widening out to span the road like they were walking underneath a great huge creature - like they were underneath Appa and his six legs, Katara thought, except if she said it no one would understand what she meant but Aang. And there was a hole for it, a tunnel, made to let the trains that no longer ran this way through the wall.

But that was high over their heads - at ground level, there was nothing at all.

"There is a schedule," Professor Zei said apologetically. "Not every gate is open every day - I believe it was first instituted in the time of King - well." He cleared his throat. "At any rate, it may no longer be relevant - with the road little-used and the trains not running, this gate may too be closed to passage."

"There was a time when I would have thought this was totally ridiculous," Sokka said, "calling a blank wall a gate, but I think we've been spending too much time in the Earth Kingdoms - it must work just like the ferry place." He touched his knuckles to the unbroken, gateless wall. "Don't suppose there's a helpful gang of soldiers around this time."

"Bound to be somebody up top," Toph said.

Katara turned, but Aang was already moving. "Just a minute," he called back over his shoulder, and when he zoomed back down he was smiling. "There's soldiers everywhere - they'll be able to hold the princess, no problem. And inside - it's amazing, Katara."

"Told you," Toph said, when Katara relayed this, and then she clapped her hands together. "Come on, sugar queen. This'll be a lot more your speed than the other stuff."

Five minutes of practice, and Toph declared her acceptable, if inexpert. They gathered in a half-circle by the wall, and then Toph cracked the ground loose around them with a well-placed stomp. And she was right: the bending moves that served to draw their little piece of earth up the side of the wall were so smooth it was nearly Waterbending. Katara's end wobbled a little at first, but she kept an eye on Toph's hands and tried to match up, and soon everything evened out.

"You can see everything," Sokka said, looking out over her shoulder; and when they reached the top and she could finally turn around, she could see that he was right. The glimmer in the distance had to be the Yellow Seas, and every step they'd taken between here and the Pass was laid out to see, like they were standing over a rolled-out map, with red-gold light spilled across it like paint.

"It's beautiful," Hok Suan said. "We owe you so much for this," and she took both Katara's hands and touched her forehead to the backs, about as low as she could bend with her belly so round.

"Oh - no, really, it wasn't-"

Hok Suan straightened up and smiled. "Gratitude is like every other feeling, Avatar; it won't go away because you tell it not to be there. Best to accept it."

"Anybody would have," Katara said, her face still hot.

"Perhaps, perhaps not," Eng Pin said. "But I think you might agree that not anybody could have, all things considered. So we are grateful."

"What are you doing here?"

Katara whirled around, startled - that hadn't been Eng Pin, and it wasn't Professor Zei, either. Aang had been entirely accurate: there were soldiers on the walltop, green-armored, and they were lined up behind a stern-faced officer with no weapon in his hands at all and feet almost as bare as Toph's, covered only at the heel.

"Civilians are not allowed on the wall," the officer said. "Particularly not civilians who bring the Fire Nation with them."

"Fire Nation prisoners," Toph said loudly. "Speaking of gratitude." She'd ended up next to Princess Azula; she grabbed the princess by one elbow and yanked her forward, and it had to be obvious even to the officer that the princess's hands were trapped behind her back, even if he couldn't see exactly how from where he was. "You'd think you'd be glad to have the crown princess dropped in your lap."

"But, of course," Professor Zei added, "we would be authorized to enter the city in any case, though perhaps we would have been better advised to find an open gate." He still had his dusty papers folded away; he brought them out and handed them to the officer, and unlike the ferry woman, the officer glanced at them and his expression cleared.

"Of course," he said, "guests of the university. You should not have scaled the wall - but I suppose you were eager to bring your prisoners somewhere they could be held safely." He looked at Azula again, at the flame that caught up her hair. "And she does fit the description. Sometimes fortune requires us to make certain - allowances."

"Precisely so," Professor Zei said. "The princess Azula and her companions; or Fire Nation spies hoping to be ransomed if caught; or collaborators of some kind. No matter the explanation, it is a pleasure to hand them off to those better informed and better equipped than we."

He sounded like Yue when she'd been talking to Master Yu, Katara thought; and he was good at it, almost as good as Yue was. He hadn't gone for the obvious, talked about how upstanding the officer was or how well he and his troops would obviously handle such a dangerous group. He'd taken something not unlike the truth, and made it sound like praise instead of the simple fact it was; and the officer was smiling.

"Yun Ho, Chao, take them away," he said, motioning with one hand.

Two of the men behind him each nodded to half a dozen others and then jogged forward. Two took the princess, and there was one each for the other three, with enough soldiers left over to surround them in a ring and march them away toward the gatehouse.

"Most excellent, most excellent," the officer said, watching them go; and then he turned back to Professor Zei and bowed. "Welcome to Ba Sing Se."

***

They had come up from the south with wind and current both behind them, and made fine time. The distance had gone almost too quickly, in fact; Yin couldn't say she would have minded another day on the water, with clear concise orders to follow and no decisions to make.

But no such luck: they had reached the south of Chameleon Bay, and Admiral Paozun had been ready and waiting.

It was impressive, really, that the Fire Nation had a foothold in the east at all. The colonies were an anchor for them in the west, and after a hundred years there had been forts there longer than most people had been alive. It wasn't all that hard to hold territory like that.

But the southeastern kingdoms had barely been touched, until about ten years ago. Yin had heard the edges of it, mostly through the filter of Zhao's declarations that he could have done it better: General Tamang had taken three-quarters of the peninsulas and even begun to siege Bokjeo, before the Southern Water Tribe warriors and a fleet from Cheolla had tipped the balance the other way.

But they still held a good chunk of the western bay and northern coast, and the forward bases on the scattered islands had mostly remained intact.

Yin had been ordered to the main base, near where the Tai San emptied into the bay, and almost the moment she'd set foot on solid ground, Admiral Paozun had been there pounding her on the shoulder.

"No need to worry, Sub-Admiral," Paozun said, with a booming laugh; he still hadn't taken his hand off her arm, and he kept clapping her with it as though to punctuate. She was fairly certain she would have a bruise. "Your cargo is prepared and ready to load, and we are still holding the northeast and the mouth of the river, despite those icelickers and their toy boats." He turned away to spit in disgust. "Damned nuisances they are, but they won't keep us back forever."

"Of course not," Yin said studiously. "But tell me, Admiral - should I have been worried?"

Paozun finally let her go and sank down into the nearest seat; his tent was twice the size Kizao's had been, and much more lavishly furnished. "Well," he said, "there was some question as to the arrangements. There was - an unexpected difficulty in obtaining your cargo in a timely fashion. I hear one of the war ministers himself was involved in the trouble." He waved a hand, as though to brush all this away. "No matter now, though; it was handled some time before we had word to make ready, and with the fleet you've got you'll have it to the coast as quickly as the princess could wish." He chuckled. "Bet that minister's thanking the spirits he got things worked out - he wouldn't have liked the princess breathing down his neck."

"For the greater glory of our nation," Yin said.

The words felt strange, clumsy, and the sentiment clumsier; for a moment, Yin half expected Paozun to let out that belly-shaking laugh. But he only nodded earnestly. "Oh, of course, of course," he said, "no harm meant. The princess is zealous in her duty - much to be admired. But even war ministers can only work so fast, and I wouldn't have cared to be him if he hadn't managed it."

"No," Yin agreed.

Admiral Paozun smiled. "But as I said, everything's prepared; we can begin loading this afternoon, and then you can be on your way up the river."

Yin swallowed, and as though from some distance away, she could feel her heart begin to pound. Surely - surely they meant to assault Yushao, or to head overland to Wenling. Surely. "Up the river," she repeated.

Paozun grinned. "Oh, indeed," he said. "For the greater glory of our nation, Sub-Admiral, as you say - and you'll have a hand in it yourself, most likely."

"I do not deserve the honor," Yin said, and made herself smile back.

*

She walked back to the ship in something of a haze, and, as always, Kishen seemed to know it was coming; he was waiting at attention on the deck, and fell in beside her as she moved toward the bridge. "Enlightening talk, sir?" he said.

"Very," Yin said. "Whatever it is we'll be carrying, it'll go up the river."

"Toward Ba Sing Se."

Yin pursed her lips. "The admiral was not specific," she said.

"Northward," Kishen revised, "and we will no doubt unload on the shore of the South Yellow Sea. The eastern shore, potentially."

Yin sighed. "Potentially. There is a plan, to be sure; Admiral Paozun's orders come from Princess Azula, as mine did in the west."

"The Dragon of the West had a plan," Kishen murmured.

She gave him a sharp glance, and his expression turned mild; but she knew what he was thinking. Admiral Paozun was no Dragon of the West - and neither was Yin. In a hundred years, no one had come closer to capturing Ba Sing Se than General Iroh, and had he been successful the cost would still have been high, if justifiable.

But surely if anyone knew that, his niece did. She would not only have been taught about it, she might well have heard it herself. Before Yin had ever dragged the man north, killed an officer in front of him, and escorted his less-than-dead exile nephew south, he had lived in the palace in the capital - surely such things had been spoken of many times in the princess's hearing.

And in any case, Yin reminded herself, the attack was not her concern. She was only to carry her cargo up the river and unload it. The rest was up to someone else.

***

To their credit, Azula supposed, the soldiers were relatively orderly. But they had been so for too long, without enough additional discipline imposed; they were so used to order that they were not observant. As long as everything was where it was supposed to be, they did not look more closely.

She waited until they had descended the wall, of course. She was not a fool. They were lowered down into the city in a closed space, surrounded by rock; there was nowhere to go, and plenty of unpleasant things that a trained group of Earthbenders could do to them.

They did not come out on ground level, but at the train. The tracks remained broken outside the city walls, perhaps, but not inside, and the soldiers undoubtedly had need of transport to and from the city proper. It was still some distance to the true city - so much space, so many walls.

None of it, Azula thought, would do them any good.

They had to wait for a time before a train arrived, and they were not the only cargo - supplies had come out, no doubt, and reinforcements, and reports and soldiers who had been relieved went in. Azula allowed herself to be led onto the train, and sat quietly through the ride; Ty Lee spent it gazing raptly out the window and exclaiming over every little field or bush they passed, while Mai sat next to her and rolled her eyes at intervals, and Samnang appeared to have fallen asleep. Only once did she catch Mai's eye; she looked deliberately at the door to the train car, and when she looked back Mai nodded once, so slightly that she might simply have been tipped by the rocking of the train. Let them take you off the train, she had meant to convey; and Mai would do it.

The train ground to a halt again at the edge of the city proper, and Mai stood up first and then turned to Ty Lee, neatly blocking Azula in. "Come on," she said, "wake him up," and Ty Lee obediently tapped Samnang's shin with her toes.

"Mmrgh," he said, but he got up quickly enough - no doubt he'd been awake the whole time, and listening to everything even if his eyes had been shut.

Azula was already sitting forward because of the cuffs around her wrists, and she had to look as though she were ready to stand at any moment; it took the officer a minute to realize she wasn't moving.

"Well?" he said.

Azula didn't answer. She didn't even let her face twitch. Samnang was off the train now, standing on the platform looking placid, and Ty Lee was looking in awe at the rest of the station; Mai had three steps left, two, one ...

The officer made a grab for her arm, but he was more irritated than alarmed - he was not expecting the foot she planted in his gut, and with her shoulders braced against the side of the train, she was able to shove him entirely to the floor. He fell with a yelp, and she leapt to her feet and clenched her fists. It was difficult, she had been told, to manage the kind of sheer burst of heat needed to crack stone, but she had never found it so; it had always felt to her as though the fire were ready to leap free, and that the effort came in keeping it within herself, in preventing herself from setting everything she touched aflame.

The cuffs around her wrists burst apart with a crunch, sending shards of rock flying around half the train car; the other half of the force went into her lower back. She would feel it tomorrow, deeply - but now all there was to feel was the air on her free wrists, and the smile that crept across her face as she looked down at the Earth Kingdom officer on the floor.

She pulled a sharp heat into her fingers, enough for a thin blue flame to form. He tried to shuffle away, belatedly, but he was not fast enough to keep her from grabbing his ankle; he cried out with pain as her hand burned through cloth and struck skin.

"Quiet," she said, and he was; and as a reward, she pulled the energy back until her hands were only fever-warm. "The train will go to the city, won't it?"

He nodded.

"Good. You will get up, and you will go to the door - with me behind you - and tell your soldiers to uncuff my friends and let them back on the train. And give them their cloaks, while they're at it. You will tell them whatever they need to hear in order for this train to proceed into the city; and if we reach the next stop without interruption and are able to depart safely, I probably won't kill you."

The officer swallowed. "Probably," he repeated.

Azula grinned, baring her teeth. "It's the best you're going to get," she said. "Now get up."


Back to Top

---

Chapter Ten: Calculations

"Around the south of the island," Min Kyung said, and frowned down at their maps. "Is that truly the best approach? So much open water-"

Hakoda bit his tongue, quite literally, and carefully did not return Mikama's incredulous stare. "Yes," he said, "I believe so. You must remember: our ships cannot match the Fire Nation in size, but they are quick, and make very small targets."

He would not have had to say it to Seung Won; but Seung Won was gone, reassigned to the west where there was greater need.

When they had first come to Bokjeo, sailing halfway around the continent, there had been no greater need than at the coast of Chameleon Bay, and the finest generals in Bongye had all been at hand. Seung Won had been the best of them, and had seen every merit and flaw the Southern Water Tribe had to offer before Hakoda could even spell them out.

They had only a few ships. They were beautiful ships, hard light wood, and faster than anything the Earth Kingdoms could muster. Earth Kingdom ships tended toward a traditional shape with a wide flat bottom, made for shallow bays, for rivers, for calm water - not for sweeping between icebergs or slicing through waves.

And they were quick ships - fast, yes, but also quick, which was not quite the same thing. Fire Nation ships could be fast, could build themselves up to speeds nothing else could match; but they did have to build, to run their boilers hot and high, to have a long straight line to sail in. Southern Tribe ships turned well, could round a Fire Nation battleship a dozen times before it could even manage to come about. There were no long straight lines among the ice floes.

But they were few, and they were small. And Hakoda's people did not fit into battalions, did not work under generals. They had learned to handle their spears as children, hunting fish and birds and tiger seals, fighting the Fire Lord's raiding parties away from the village with their uncles and aunts and cousins beside them. They did not fight in armored rows.

And Seung Won had seen all this, and had seen that Hakoda knew it, too; and it had been easy to convince him to put the Southern Tribe warriors to their best use. They had saved Bokjeo and fought the Fire Nation back away from the walls, back to the water. And the worst of the danger had gone - and with it Seung Won.

And now they had Min Kyung.

A general's aide, who had been promoted for his excellent service. There were many things Hakoda did not understand about the Earth Kingdoms, even after years spent fighting alongside them. Taking a man who had proven so thoroughly that he could follow orders well and forcing him to give them instead - this was one of them. Following orders was a skill like any other; some people did it well and some people did not, and it did not seem like a reward to Hakoda, to be taken from a thing you did well and made to do a thing you did poorly.

And perhaps it hadn't seemed so to Min Kyung, either; but what could he do about it? It was hard to refuse an honor - that, at least, Hakoda understood.

Min Kyung sighed, and gazed down at the map. "If you say you can do it," he said, "then I must believe; you have been here far longer than I."

"We will not steer you wrong," said Mikama, and she managed to make it sound reassuring, though Hakoda could tell by the purse of her mouth that she wanted to roll her eyes.

Min Kyung glanced at her quickly, as though he had not expected her to speak; and then he nodded, sharp and a little awkward.

That was another thing about the Earth Kingdoms Hakoda did not understand. It was not so in every kingdom, he knew, and perhaps they had their reasons, here, to leave women at home who could surely have held blades. They put great stock in bending, still, where Hakoda had been forced to learn to do without; and women who could bend, they were willing to employ among their forces. But that was all. And there was a deeper difference, one that it had taken Hakoda some time to notice. All of the Earth officers Hakoda had met were men; and they were not precisely rude to the Water Tribe women so much as they simply - forgot. Even Seung Won had forgotten, now and again, that he might discuss their plans with Mikama or Ukara as readily as with Hakoda, and had spoken to Hakoda sometimes as though there were no one else in the room.

Min Kyung had set his hand upon the map, prodding one of the little blue markers that sat upon it; and he was opening his mouth as though to ask another question when there was a sudden clamor in the hall.

"Whatever is that?" he said instead, turning toward the door; and a moment later, the scout who came through it answered his question.

"For the general," the man said, clearly enough though he was half out of breath, and he bowed low. "A report of great urgency - a Fire Nation fleet in the bay, sir. It's moving."

*

They could stand upon the walls of Bokjeo now without having to worry that they would be shot where they stood, or catch aflame; they could be at their ease for as long as it took to focus the spyglass, and could observe the fleet one at a time and look their fill.

"They do not move as though to come here," Min Kyung said.

He passed the glass to Hakoda. It was true, Hakoda could see. Even without the glass - the ships were outlined in profile against the haze over the bay, the faint shimmer that was the edge of the further shore. They were not headed east toward Bokjeo, but north, toward ... what?

"What encampments they have on the north shore are very small," Mikama said. "I doubt they would send so many ships. And these have already passed north of the islands."

"The Tai San," Hakoda suggested. It was the only answer that made any sense; but what did they need with the river? Did they mean to capture the North Yellow Sea? To secure supply lines to the colonies - but they already had the Smoking Sea, there was no more convenient route for the Fire Nation in the world. Or - but, no, surely not-

"Ba Sing Se," Ukara said. They had passed her on their way to the wall, and Hakoda had caught her eye and tipped his head; she had followed, and now she was standing at the parapet with her arms crossed, gazing out at the Fire Nation ships like she could scuttle them all if she glared hard enough. "Surely it cannot have sat easily with them, to come so close and then lose so much. Surely it was expected that one day they would try again."

If it had been expected, it had not been by Min Kyung. "But - but they failed," he said. "They failed, the very Dragon of the West failed, and they have no Dragon of the West anymore - Ba Chang has felt no fear in its heart in seven years-"

"Then Ba Chang is full of fools," said Ukara flatly, and Hakoda could not precisely disagree.

Min Kyung stared at her, his mouth open, and Hakoda could not think how to say what should be said so as to make the man see without also making him panic; and then into the silence Mikama cleared her throat.

"We don't know," she pointed out. "It certainly seems likely, I would say, given what we are able to see even from here. But we do not know anything, not really. Those ships could be carrying anything - reinforcements for the South Yellow Sea, or supplies to set up a new base along the Tai San. We cannot say what they may be attempting."

"Then we must find out," Ukara said.

*

They had captured a Fire Nation ship not a month ago - it was one of a very, very small number that had not met their end by sinking into Chameleon Bay. Earthbenders did not tend toward restraint when they found themselves with the upper hand. It was also somewhat dented, but when Min Kyung pointed this out, Ukara only shrugged.

"That is what would happen to a small patrol ship separated from its fleet," she said. "We cannot follow them without them seeing us, and we cannot let them see us unless we have an explanation; that is as good as any."

And it was a fair point: if the ship had been in the waters near the city, had narrowly escaped the fate of its fellows, it would have been at least a little damaged - indeed, excluding the capture, that was precisely what had happened to it, and it was harder to maintain a lie than to maintain three-quarters of the truth. They had uniforms and armor, too, stripped from the prisoners they had taken. They could pass for Fire Nation well enough, as long as no one looked them in the eye. Better, even, than most of Min Kyung's legions could have done; an Earth battalion would not have lasted long pretending to be Fire Nation without a single woman among them.

They would need perhaps a dozen people - it was not a large ship, and so much of it was machinery that it needed fewer people to run than it might have otherwise. Bato was returned to them, and hale; he volunteered in a moment, stepping up before Hakoda had even finished speaking. Ukara would not be left out of her own plan, nor would Mikama let them sail off without her, and it took minutes to pick out the other eight.

"The rest will stay," Hakoda told Min Kyung, who sighed in relief to hear it. "We will follow them up the Tai San, and see where they go; and with any luck we will return."

"Then I wish you all the luck in the world," Min Kyung said, and bowed.

***

Suki knew she probably looked foolish, but she couldn't help it; she couldn't keep her mouth from hanging open as the train rumbled closer and closer to the wall.

Really, that was half the shock: they hadn't even reached the wall. Ba Sing Se was sort of like an onion, layered, walls within walls - and the way everybody talked about it, you weren't even in the real city until you'd passed another one. But they hadn't, they were barely halfway there, and yet you wouldn't have known it, looking out the window.

Or Suki wouldn't have, at least. She'd been to Kyoha, now and then, and thought it was pretty impressive - Manamota was a dozen houses and a hall, farms and fields scattered out further among the hills, and Kyoha had been positively bustling by comparison.

And then Katara had come along, and they'd gone from city to city to even larger city, between all the stretches of sea and forest and plain in between. Suki hadn't thought she'd ever see anything more remarkable than Kanjusuk - what could ever beat a city made from ice?

But the sheer size of this place - there were twenty Shinsotsus laid out below them now, twenty Hansings, buildings churning past beneath like waves as the train rushed by.

"Impressive," Toph muttered.

Suki turned to her. Obviously she wasn't looking out the window; but she had one bare foot pressed flat to the floor of the train car, and surely she could at least feel the size of the train tracks, how high they had to be to go over everything.

"Very," Suki said, sincerely, and was surprised when Toph snorted.

"Doesn't matter how much space they give you," she said, "if there's still a wall around it."

It's to protect people, Suki almost said, except she could still remember Toph's parents in their walled garden: we're only keeping you safe. Safety wasn't much of a reason for anything, not to Toph. "It's beautiful," she said instead, because it was: towers and arched roofs stretched out into the distance so far they got lost in the haze, and the first inner wall of the city rose up in front of them like a cliff.

"... Did you do that on purpose?" Toph raised an eyebrow.

Suki blinked and thought about it, and then wanted to clap a hand over her mouth. "I didn't mean it like that!" she said quickly. "I just-"

"Relax, relax," Toph said, and finally cracked a smile, reaching up to fold her arms behind her head. "I get it. I'm sure it's real pretty."

Suki blew out a breath, half of a laugh, and poked Toph's shin with her boot. "I guess you can't get much when we're going so fast."

Toph shrugged one shoulder, wriggling her toes against the train floor. "Enough," she said. "It's - it's just a city. I mean, I don't want to crush anybody's dreams, but it's not better, it's not worse. It's just - bigger."

Suki glanced down the train car. It was a civilian train, the guard trains went much faster; and there weren't all that many civilians moving to or from the outer wall, so they'd been able to spread out. Hok Suan and Eng Pin were a seat down, the swish and rumble of the train loud enough that they couldn't have heard anything Toph said, and they were both gazing out the window with wondering little smiles on their faces.

"Probably more people with knives here than there ever were in the ferry station," Toph murmured.

"But with nothing to stab us for," Suki said.

Toph's mouth quirked. "Nothing at all," she agreed, "except the thing about the eclipse. And the thing with the Avatar. And the thing where we try to get an audience with the king to share our military secrets-"

Suki pressed her lips together, but it wasn't enough to keep her from laughing. "We're getting so good at not dying, though," she said, and touched the toe of her boot to Toph's shin again, more gently. "I think we'll be all right."

"Sure we will." Toph's tone was blithe. "Anybody tries anything, I'll break their heads."

"Of course," Suki said. "You could even let the Avatar help, if you wanted."

Toph pursed her lips, expression exaggeratedly thoughtful. "Maybe." She hesitated, and then pressed her leg back against Suki's foot for a moment, companionably. "She's - she's okay. But don't tell her I said that."

"Never," Suki said.

*

They crossed the first wall before midday, and began passing over what Professor Zei called the Lower Ring. "The university is not here, of course," he said, as though it would have been impossibly foolish to think so. "There is nothing of note to be found in the Lower Ring."

"But it's huge," Sokka said, and the tone of his voice was marveling. Suki snuck a glance at him and nearly laughed aloud: he was kneeling on the seat with a hand pressed to the window, staring out with wide eyes.

But, to be fair, he wasn't wrong. The Lower Ring had even more buildings, though Suki wouldn't have thought it possible, all jammed tight together, with streets winding narrowly in between. It was impossible to imagine how many people must live in it - and there was at least one more wall ahead of them, a whole other district where the university stood.

Professor Zei, though, seemed far less impressed. He had lived in Ba Sing Se for years, of course, but Suki didn't think that explained the slant to his mouth, the faint wrinkling of his nose. "It is not - well-monitored," he said, "and riddled with criminals and malfeasants. No one who is careful ends up in the Lower Ring. It is best we steer clear of it."

He would know, Suki supposed - and even she could see there was a difference, when they reached the wall around the Middle Ring. The buildings were taller, prettier; there were more spaces between them, and more trees to fill those spaces, and the train station was far cleaner.

"Here we are," Professor Zei said, when the train rumbled to a stop, and clapped his hands together. And then he began describing the construction and history of Pear Blossom Station, but Suki was starting to get used to that.

"And the university?" she said, when he paused to breathe.

"Oh, not far," he said, "not far at all," and he stood and gestured them all toward the train door.

***

The university was probably real pretty, too, not that Toph could know for certain. She liked the way it felt, though. It was big, old, with deep foundations, and the buildings felt - graceful, sort of; nicer than anything that had zipped by below them on their way over the Lower Ring, for sure. They were wide and solid, thick walls that sang with every footstep like they were bells, and she could feel the carved doorways, the arches, the eaves that swept out and up at the edges.

It was walled-in, of course - these guys really loved their walls - but it could have been a lot worse. There were people everywhere, students rushing back and forth and shouting, hefting books under their arms; but it had nothing of the choking tension of the ferry station, no creeping fear.

The professor wouldn't shut up about it, how it had been founded a zillion years ago and how this building was named after some rich guy and that building had been constructed to honor some lady sage. Toph ignored most of it in favor of concentrating on the wind against her face, the weak sunshine - and then the professor stopped with an oomph when somebody going by whacked into his shoulder.

"Terribly sorry," said whoever it was, "I meant to - Zei?"

"Taoyi!" Professor Zei said, genially, and there was the tickle of a firm handshake and the sound of a few friendly claps on the shoulder. "Excellent to see you - you will be so pleased, my friend-"

"Pleased that I no longer have to do all your paperwork," said this Taoyi guy, but then he laughed. "I will never let anyone nominate me for interim department head again."

Great, Toph thought. Another one.

"Your sacrifices will be appreciated by generations to come," Professor Zei said loftily. "My fieldwork was most productive - and, in fact, I have generously brought the field to you. If, of course, there is time, Avatar-"

Taoyi went still, hearing it, barely a shiver from his direction except the sudden jump of his heartbeat.

"I - guess there should be," Katara said uncertainly, "if we can't get to the observatory right away - or after, once we know for sure."

"Yes, of course," Taoyi said, "the Southern Water Tribe - and the Northern, too, how extraordinary - how far did you go, Zei?"

"In point of fact, they came to me," Professor Zei admitted. "But I apologize - I am afraid we must postpone your interviews for a short time. Tell me, is the observatory staffed today?"

"Yes - yes," Taoyi said, and Toph could hear the scrape of his shoes as he turned to gesture. "I believe Dae Hyun means to teach this evening; I imagine he will be there. Did you intend to bring him an early class?"

The guy had a point: Hok Suan and Eng Pin were still following along, after all, and with Sokka and Suki, Katara and Yue - and none of them could see Aang, Toph reminded herself, but technically he was still there.

"Oh - yes, of course," Professor Zei said, and turned around. "I insist you stay at the university, at least until you have found another place," and he had to be talking to Hok Suan and Eng Pin. It was kind of cute, how they tried to refuse, but Taoyi took up the cause and led them off, assuring Professor Zei that he would settle all the arrangements for them with the university staff.

"Compared to what you left for me," he said, "this paperwork will be nothing."

"Most excellent," said Professor Zei, and then he tipped into a little bow in Katara's general direction. "This way to the observatory, Avatar."

***

A guest star - another, and this one some measure brighter than the last. Dae Hyun shuffled through papers until he had found the one he'd been looking for. Yes, some measure brighter; the observer had noted so. Dae Hyun squinted down at the sheet. Fu Min, from the second class. Her brushwork was terrible, but she had clearly done her research.

But of course they would have to consult. Fortunately the astrology department was not far. Dae Hyun was not incompetent - one could not hope to succeed as an astronomer without some knowledge of the workings of the spirit world - but he had concentrated his studies elsewhere-

Ah, the sound of the door - perhaps he was lucky today, under the influence of this guest star. Perhaps it would be Professor Lien, or Professor Kim, and he would not have to go to the astrology building at all.

But when Dae Hyun came away from his table and glanced around the screen to see the main door, it was not Professor Lien, nor Professor Kim.

Dae Hyun blinked, and tried to remember the man's name. Anthropology, anthropology - Dae Hyun knew that much, but what would an anthropology professor want with him?

"I hope we are not interrupting," said - Zei, of course, that was it. Out on fieldwork, Dae Hyun had thought; but apparently he had returned.

"No, no, not at all," Dae Hyun said, though it was not precisely so. Still, he could not say he minded the excuse to remain where he was. He was always loathe to leave his stars.

Zei was not alone, there were - five with him? Dae Hyun eyed them. It was true that the students tended to look younger and younger as the years passed, but surely these were still too young.

"If we may beg your pardon," Zei said. "I have brought the Avatar, and a question you may be able to answer."

The Avatar - one of the Water Tribe girls, no doubt, or else the boy beside them, and where had Zei gone on his fieldwork to find them? Never mind find whichever one of them was the Avatar?

"Well," said Dae Hyun slowly. "If it is a question to which I have the answer, how could I refuse?"

*

Eclipses - perhaps he should have guessed. "It is quite fascinating," Dae Hyun said. "It was determined a very long time ago that such phenomena are a function of the motion of the moon and sun, but of course that is not all there is to it. As those bodies influence the spirit world, so does the spirit world influence them in return."

"Right, yeah, of course," Sokka said - he had been the first to tell Dae Hyun his name. He paused, and then shifted from foot to foot. "What does that mean?"

Dae Hyun permitted himself a smile. "You must know, of course, that the moon shares the nature of water," and he nodded toward - Katara, the dark-haired one was Katara. And the Avatar. He had thought her young, and yet in some ways it was a miracle that she had reached the age she had. "The moon reflects whatever light touches it, as water does; and the sun, like fire, burns with light of its own. The moon is not the same thing as the moon spirit, though they are also not separate-"

"Like Katara's the Avatar," Sokka said, "but also just Katara."

"Precisely," Dae Hyun agreed. "Eclipses are not terribly uncommon, in fact; the moon and sun pass near each other every month, and the sun is eclipsed at least in part several times over the course of a year. But the effect of such on the spirit of the sun, and on Firebending, is negligible. It is a dragon eclipse that you hope for, and those fall far more rarely - a hundred years may pass at a time without such a one, though you are quite correct in thinking we may be due for another."

"A dragon eclipse?" Katara said.

"When the spirit world and the heavens manage to align," Dae Hyun said. "Or so it is held in the Fire Nation, as best I understand it. Firebending is a gift of the dragons, you see; in ancient times, it was said to be a reminder of humility, so that Firebenders would not forget to what and whom they owed their power."

"It was," Sokka said, leadingly.

"There are eclipses and then there are eclipses," Dae Hyun elaborated. "On a day when an eclipse might have been full but otherwise unspectacular, the celestial dragon, now and again, will swallow the sun - and that is an eclipse that covers the entire face of the world. That is not merely the moon's shadow; that is a day of black sun. And Firebending on such a day, at least for a time, is a lantern, snuffed - a candle, blown out."

Sokka scrunched up his face. "Swallow the - but not the actual sun-"

"The sun and not the sun," Dae Hyun said. "Such is the nature of the spirit world, present and not present." He shook his head. "It is damned irritating at times; it simply defies truly systematic study, and the calculations are a nightmare. Hee-sik's calendar was the only one of the kind for precisely that reason, and she is considered quite a genius. She as good as handed victory to Seon when she completed it, though of course it was some time before they were able to make use of their knowledge. The dragon comes when it comes. But the effects of the spirit world are quite real - although I suppose you do not need to be assured of that, Avatar," he added, with a careful dip of the head in Katara's direction.

"No," Katara said, and he thought she nearly smiled. "No, that I already knew."

Dae Hyun hesitated. "I should tell you - it is possible the day will not come. It has been said that precisely this same understanding drove the Fire Lord Azulon to have all dragons eliminated, in the hopes that the celestial dragon would follow, and never weaken his people again. I could not tell you whether he succeeded."

The Avatar's face turned sober again. "But - but if he didn't," she said, "you'll be able to tell us when the next one is?"

The armillary room was the pride and joy of the observatory, and Dae Hyun had claimed the room beside it the moment he had been able. He glanced at the doorway, thinking of the hall beyond and the door one pace further down it, and considered. "The armillary room was constructed to model the movements of the stars and the sun," he admitted, "but of course they did not neglect to include a moon, and it should be accurate enough for your purposes. We must check against what records we have, for signs of the motions of the spirit world; and as I've said, it may not happen even if all the indications are there. But if the dragon still comes to swallow the sun, I believe it should be possible to determine when."

***

It wasn't the answer Katara had been hoping for - most of the answers she got tended to be like that, really, and probably she should get used to it. But it was a chance, and a chance was better than nothing.

The armillary room didn't seem all that impressive, to start with. It really was a room - a small gap from the doorway to a flat floor, and then nothing but walls, straight and flat, and twenty lanterns hanging almost all the way at the top, latticed together. There was a fat short column in the middle of the room, eras and days and months written in circles on plates around the top, and it was - Katara squinted at it. It was set for tomorrow, to start with.

"Ah, most excellent," Dae Hyun said. "Professor Kim must have been in, and left the lanterns lit."

"Yeah, they're - nice," Sokka said, expression skeptical.

Dae Hyun smiled at him knowingly, and didn't say anything. There was a lever beside the column, set into the floor; Dae Hyun grasped the end and pushed until there was a clunk, and then everything changed.

There was a reason for the gap between the door and the floor, Katara realized. A great round wall - there was no other word for it - rumbled up from one edge of the floor and over the curve of the room, like a long slow closing of a great eyelid; it blocked the door, blocked everything, and left them standing in blackness.

"Um," Sokka said.

Dae Hyun's laugh came out of the dark. "Give yourselves a moment," he said.

The lanterns had been pretty bright, and Katara's vision was covered in spots; but she blinked once, twice, again, and then Aang said, "Oh - oh, wow."

There were lights, Katara realized. Tiny lights, like needle-holes bored through a cloth, and there were - Katara blinked again, her eyes adjusting. There were ten thousand - a hundred thousand, a perfect image of the night sky. Some were brighter, some were dimmer; they were holes, holes in the stone dome Dae Hyun's lever had raised over them, and the light from the lanterns was shining through.

"When it was first built," Dae Hyun said, "there was no housing room, and it relied only on sunlight. Poetically appropriate, I suppose; but it was not much good on cloudy days - and quite uncomfortable to use during heavy rain."

There was another clunk, and the dome groaned into motion again - when it rotated away this time, there was another dome behind it, made of panes of thickly frosted glass that were a dulcet shade of blue, and Katara couldn't imagine how much work it must have taken to craft such a thing.

And there was a sun, hung above them on a metal band. A moon, too - there was a second band crossing the blue glass sky, and the moon was a pale painted circle about halfway along its length.

"Most excellent," Dae Hyun said, satisfied, and then leaned over the column and began to rotate the plates.

They didn't have to check every single day until the end of summer; if nothing else, Dae Hyun told them, the eclipse they hoped for could not fall except on a new moon. "And it cannot fall only in part," he said; "it must be full across the face."

One new moon, two, three; Katara waited through the clunks and the grinding of stone, keeping her eyes on the path of the moon. Every time it got close to the sun, she couldn't help holding her breath - but again and again it was too far away.

And then, at last, it wasn't. The sky swiveled, the bands rotated, and when Dae Hyun brought everything to a stop, the moon was precisely covering the sun, edge to edge. "Ah, perfect - nearly four months away," Dae Hyun said, and then set his hands to the plates again. "That is one possibility. It is likely there will not be another 'til the winter-"

"No!" Katara said. "No, this is - it's this one or nothing." Dae Hyun was looking at her with raised eyebrows; she'd gotten so used to pitting herself against the end of summer, she had almost forgotten he wouldn't know better than to keep going. "Please, just - check this one."

*

"Astonishing," Dae Hyun said.

Katara jerked against the table at the sound, and blinked her eyes open.

Dae Hyun had explained that it would take a dozen other things, records of stars and storms and other eclipses, and they had to be gone through one at a time. Katara hadn't known where he'd found the patience. She'd meant to pay attention, but the sound of his brushstrokes as he took notes was so soothing, and his office in the observatory building was really fairly comfortable.

At least, she thought, she hadn't drooled on the table. She couldn't quite see from this angle, but she doubted Sokka could say the same, given the way Suki was smirking down at him.

And then, at last, the word registered; and Katara flew out of her chair so fast she banged her knee. "Astonishing," she repeated. "Astonishing - is it really-"

Dae Hyun began to nod, still gazing down rapturously at the top sheet in front of him. "I believe it is," he said.

"A fascinating train of logic," said Professor Zei. He was still standing exactly where he had been when they started, reading over Dae Hyun's shoulder with a look of intense interest.

Dae Hyun lifted the top paper and laughed, more amazed than amused. "Imagine it," he said. "That you should come to me at such a time, seeking such a thing, and find it. Truly, Avatar, the spirits are with you."

"So that's - that's it," Sokka said. He'd sat up at last, and was looking dazed; Katara couldn't be sure the expression on her own face was any different. A chance was better than nothing - it was still possible that nothing would happen, if Fire Lord Azulon really had managed to kill the celestial dragon, but if he hadn't-

Four months. It could all be over - the war, the Fire Nation, everything - in four months.

"We have to tell the king," Katara said.

Professor Zei and Dae Hyun had both been looking kind of dorkily pleased, which was fair enough; Katara was pretty sure it was Professor Zei's most cherished dream that the key to saving everything would be somewhere in a pile of paper. But now their faces both blanked out at once, and they glanced at each other a little uncertainly.

"What?" Sokka said.

Professor Zei cleared his throat. "Well, that is - that is somewhat more easily said than done, let us say. Access to the king of Ba Sing Se can be difficult to obtain."

"Difficult?" Katara said, but Professor Zei only waved a hand.

"Of course we will make the endeavor regardless," he said. "But you cannot see the king without permission; and you cannot receive permission unless you are able to enter the Upper Ring."

***

Zuko pushed himself up from the last rough stair and onto the edge of the roof.

At home, he could have blasted himself up - not well, perhaps, he had never had Azula's control. Or Azula's power, for that matter. He could have done it, though.

But he was not at home, and so he climbed the shallow stone stairs up the wall like any Earth peasant.

Not even any Earth peasant; some of them were benders, after all, and could have made the roof kneel down and pick them up, if they chose to. And Zuko was trapped among them, powerless, no more than a nonbender unless he wished instead to be a dead man.

A nonbender - that might have had Father disowning him from the very start. Would that have been a better course or a worse, to never have had a place at all? At the very least he would not then have been able to lose it through his own idiotic error-

Zuko held his breath for a moment, and then let it out slowly. This wasn't helping. He had come up here to get away from irritations, from Jin's constant noise and Lan's wet eyes, Wan Liu's tired face. And Uncle, always Uncle - who never stopped watching, never stopped judging. At least Father's criteria had always been clear; Zuko had always known with certainty that he had failed, and by how much. Uncle gave him no such clarity. Uncle gave only riddles, useless riddles and long sober stares and - and tea. Zuko snorted.

There was a startled hush of sound as though in reply - cloth, Zuko thought, cloth against tile, and when he glanced over his shoulder at the low slope of the roof-corner, Qingying's face was peering over the edge. "Oh," she said, and then dipped her head a little awkwardly. "I'm - I'm sorry. I didn't hear you come up."

Was there nowhere he could get free of Wan Liu's wretched horde? Zuko made a noncommital sound and didn't let himself scowl.

He sat upon the roof with his back to Qingying, the sun low but rising between them; there had been a chilly rain in the night, perhaps even a little snow, and the air was still crisp. Wan Liu had called this a mild winter, but that made it only another way in which Zuko was not at home - a mild winter, when there was still a sheen of ice glinting on the roof tiles? Zuko thought of the long wet storms that would be hanging over Da Su-Lien - with lightning, more often than not, and Azula had always dearly loved to drag Zuko up to the palace towers and watch him flinch-

Zuko scrubbed a hand through his hair. That wasn't helping either. Apparently there was nothing in his head this morning but dishonor.

"What are you doing up here?" he said aloud, before he could stop himself. Better conversation with an Earth peasant than his own thoughts. And he had told himself he could sink no lower.

He didn't turn around; it was easier that way, to pretend he wasn't mortifying himself. And Qingying's voice seemed to have come very far, when she answered - maybe she hadn't turned around, either.

"It's quiet," she said.

It wasn't, not exactly - the sun was barely up and people were already shouting in the streets, cart-wheels creaking and bells tinkling, stray pigeon cats squalling. But none of it was meant for them, Zuko thought; and so the roof did manage to feel somehow undisturbed.

But that wasn't quite an explanation. "And what do you need quiet for?" Zuko had a dozen reasons to feel out of place, even if you did not count the ones Qingying could never be permitted to learn; but that was Qingying's family shouting and crying and sighing down there. She had lived with them, surely they could not irritate her for quite the same reasons they irritated him. She hadn't done them any dishonor that Zuko could see. What did she have to escape to the roof from?

There was silence from the other side of the roof, for so long that Zuko turned despite himself to peer around the nearer corner. Qingying was not looking back, but she had not moved away from the far corner; he could see the back of her head, the braid pinned at her neck.

"Sometimes I think you're lucky," she said at last, which was both not an answer at all and the most ludicrous thing Zuko had ever heard.

He meant to laugh once, sharply, to tell her how wrong she was, but once he started it was hard to stop. He managed to limit it to a couple extra chuckles, and then let his head drop forward to rest against his knee. "Do you," he said, and he filled the words with all the scorn he had to give.

"You work for the queen - that's what Aunt says." Qingying sighed behind him. "You work for the queen. And you must have fought the Fire Nation, to have your eye burned like that."

Zuko gritted his teeth and said nothing. That girl Song had thought the same thing - and why shouldn't she? Why shouldn't Qingying? He was an Earth peasant like them, as far as either of them knew, and if the scar helped them believe it, then he should let it be.

But Qingying - her tone when she talked about the queen, and about his eye - she thought it was a mark of honor. And that was so far from being the truth that Zuko was compounding his shame all over again, letting her think so and leaving it at that.

"I did not get it - well," he said. "I deserved it. I dishonored my father - it could not have gone unpunished."

There, he had said it, and all of it true - Father could not have done anything less, the failure had always been Zuko's. And yet the girl could draw any conclusion she liked. That he had done his family ill by cowardice, and thought the universe had marked him for it; that was not unreasonable. And surely she would never in a thousand years come up with the truth.

To his surprise, she laughed. "If only that were true," she said, and it was startling to hear her voice so bitter when her laugh had sounded quite normal. "If all punishments are so neatly handed out - what is Jin being punished for, then? Or Yanhong? What crime did my parents have to pay for?"

Zuko flattened his hands against the chilly roof tiles and swallowed. That wasn't - he hadn't meant - he knew there was not always justice. Uncle had failed in his siege of this very city, after all, even with all the weight of righteousness on his side; and Mother had turned on them, on Father, so cruelly that Father still hardly spoke of her. Father had deserved neither of those blows - and he had not deserved the burden of Zuko's shame. That was half the reason it was so important that Zuko not fail, that Zuko bring the Avatar as his father had asked and hand her over. That would be justice.

And yet what were the odds that would ever happen? Zuko was trapped in the slums of an Earth city, working in a tea shop, and for all he knew the Avatar was safe behind fortress walls somewhere in Gungduan, or had returned to the north or the south. Qingying was not wrong: justice was very far away.

"I am sorry," Zuko said, and meant it, though he hadn't quite expected to.

"No, I - I am," Qingying said, and when Zuko peered over his shoulder this time he saw that she was rubbing her hands over her face, pushing her fingers into her hair beneath the knot of her braid. It was so like the way he scrubbed through his own hair when he was frustrated that he couldn't keep from snorting.

She turned her head at the sound and looked back at him, across the stretch of sunlit roof; and after a moment the corner of her mouth twitched. "So we are both sorry," she said. "That must make us even."

"Something like that," Zuko conceded. Not in the larger scheme of things - but here, in this moment, what larger scheme was there? He was trapped. Much as he had always fought to make it otherwise, he had no control, no power. In this instant, he was precisely as he appeared: a poor boy dressed in green, one of ten thousand refugees, who worked at a tea shop and fed a family that - that might as well have been his own.

There was a clunk from below, and a laugh that echoed up onto the roof; and Qingying smiled. "That must be your uncle," she said, and rose, flapping her hands at him as though he were an unruly pig chicken. "Quickly, Li, or you'll be late."

*

Zuko thought about the roof for half the morning; he couldn't help it. Had he - had he given up, then? Surely he could not so easily choose to let go of everything he wished for, everything he hoped to regain. Would that not be a greater cowardice than any other he had committed?

If he had been Azula, no doubt, he would have had all his revelations in a suitably legendary manner - on the lip of a volcano, in the middle of the heaviest rains, with lightning striking all around and a sharp smile on his face. But he was, as ever, himself; and he had a tray of empty cups in one hand and a tea-damp rag in the other when he stopped across the counter from Uncle and said, "What will I do?"

Uncle blinked, and eyed him uncertainly. "I would suggest you hand the cups back to Fei Yun," he said, "so that she may wash them."

Zuko ignored this inanity. "What will I do, if I cannot find the Avatar?"

"Ah," Uncle said, enlightened; he looked at Zuko for a long moment, and then something indefinable in his face went soft. "What you like, my nephew. Though I would still point you in the direction of Fei Yun, unless what you like is to be dismissed from employment."

"But if I-" The cups trembled upon the tray; Zuko set it down so that they would quit their rattling, and took a careful breath. "If I can't do this - how can I ever call myself my father's son again? What else is there?"

He could not quite believe the words had made it out of his mouth. Surely Father could tell somehow that he had said it, would know; surely lightning would crack open even a clear sky to strike him down for suggesting there could be any other path.

But, no, there was only Uncle, and if there were anything less like the striking of lightning than Uncle's gentle gaze, Zuko didn't know what it was.

"You have tried all your life to become someone you are not," Uncle said, "and you have never succeeded. Perhaps you should try being who you are, instead."

Resign yourself to disgrace - that was what Uncle's words truly meant, and Uncle had to know it. But then Zuko had told himself nearly the same thing, on that rooftop this morning. He looked down at the counter, and found himself reaching out to finger the delicate curving edge of a cup. "And who's that?" he said. It came out strange, cracked and too-serious; he scoffed to cover it.

But Uncle Iroh, as always, was unperturbed. "That is what I mean," Uncle said gently. "It is time you found out."

***

Sokka was starting to think nobody lived in the Upper Ring at all except the king, because he couldn't see how anybody else ever managed to get past the gates.

"We don't want to stay there," Katara said, "we just need to go in long enough to see-"

"It is not possible," said the fourth guy they'd talked to, which made it the fourth time they'd heard it.

The first guy had been a regular guard - really nice armor, very shiny, and he'd snapped out the first refusal and then gone and gotten the second guy when they wouldn't go away. The second guy had had even shinier armor. The third guy hadn't had armor, just robes, with a green circle in the middle that made Sokka think of General Fong's stone coins. And that guy had gone and gotten the fourth guy, who'd had even nicer robes and an even thinner, sterner face.

"Requests for entry to the Upper Ring must pass through the appropriate channels," the guy continued, his mouth all pinched and sour. "For the security of our king, and our city; to maintain order and tranquility. There is no other way."

Katara was staring at him like she couldn't understand what he was saying, or maybe more like she wished she couldn't - like if he were telling the truth, then she had absolutely no idea what to do next.

"Okay, fine," Sokka said loudly, and crossed his arms. "She's the Avatar. Does that help?"

"Sokka!" Katara said.

"What? It's not like it's going to be a secret now."

"Not anymore," Suki agreed in a murmur.

Sokka turned back to the fifth guy and pointed at Katara with both hands. "Avatar. Now can we come in?"

For just a second, the guy lost every cynical crunched-up thing about his expression; his eyes went wide, his jaw slack, like they'd finally told him something he didn't have a dozen responses memorized for. But then he yanked all that surprise back in like a fish on a spear, and said, "And why should we believe that?"

Katara's mouth flattened, and she glared at Sokka a little - but it wasn't like she couldn't prove it, now. She dutifully tugged a little pool of water out of her bending pouch and made it swirl around in a circle, and then shooed it back in and punched a loose corner up off a paving stone.

"Ha-ha," Sokka said, as Katara nudged the bit of rock back where it was supposed to go; but the fourth guy wasn't looking at him. He was looking at Katara, and he waved the third guy back over and murmured something to him that had the third guy hurrying away.

The fourth guy wouldn't say anything else except that they needed to wait, but it didn't take half as long as Sokka had secretly been expecting - maybe ten minutes, and a chunk of the Upper Ring wall clunked outward in a burst of Earthbending.

"I apologize," the fourth guy said, bowing. "I know you are not to be disturbed over trivial matters-"

"The Avatar is not a trivial matter," said the woman who'd come out of the wall, smiling. She was the fanciest person they'd seen yet, dressed in pale silk with dark panels at the neck and wrists, more of those Earth circles on her chest and her sleeves, and her hair done up with some complicated bar thing. Sokka barely even understood the stuff Katara did with her hair, this lady's was way beyond him.

And she was smiling, smiling - she looked incredibly pleasant, undemanding, but the fourth guy was still bowing and had started to back away.

The woman picked Katara out of the crowd of them like somebody had already told her who to look for, and bowed, hands tucked into her sleeves. "I am Joo Dee," she said. "Welcome to Ba Sing Se."

*

Joo Dee listened to the whole explanation over again, earnest and polite, and it was such a relief to talk to somebody who actually seemed like she was listening that Sokka couldn't help but relax. "I see," she said gravely, when Katara had demonstrated her Waterbending and Earthbending again, and then she smiled.

"So can we see the king?" Sokka said.

"I am but a humble servant of the Dai Li," Joo Dee said, "and I cannot alter procedure alone, even for the Avatar herself. But there are procedures and then there are procedures. I will see what can be done to hurry your application along."

***

Even with Joo Dee's help, they were still going to have to wait. Katara offered to try to find another place, because she was Katara, but Professor Zei didn't even let her finish her first sentence.

"No, no," he said, "I wouldn't hear of it. Taoyi would never forgive me if I let you go without getting him his interviews. Please, do us the honor of remaining at the university while you wait."

Toph still thought he was kind of stuffy, but overall he wasn't a bad guy.

He led them over the university grounds to some buildings tucked away near the wall - students who came to study at the university from far away needed places to stay, and not all of them could afford the Middle Ring. "It simply would not do for a university student to stay in the Lower Ring," Zei said, and Toph could feel him shaking his head. "Would not do at all - but there are spaces to be had, and some of them quite comfortable."

And it was true. The room he took them to was large, enough beds for everybody and plenty of space besides, and the whole place was stone, which was perfect. Walls were stupid; but Toph could always get out, if they were stone.

She ignored everybody's exclamations for a minute to feel the place out a little more carefully - good foundations, no cracks or anything. When she started paying attention again, they were talking about that princess - or Katara was, passing on a question from Aang to Zei about what the city would probably do with her.

Which was bound to have a boring answer, but the subject stuck.

"I wonder why she wore that thing," Sokka said, surveying the bed he'd picked. "The hairpiece or whatever. If it means what Professor Zei said it meant. I mean, not very stealthy, is it?"

"He was the only one who knew she was the princess," Suki pointed out. "Maybe we'd have known if we were Fire Nation, but in the Earth Kingdoms most people probably don't know the difference."

"It would not have mattered, for us," Yue said. "We already knew."

Everybody went still at once, so that for just a moment there was nothing to feel except the tickling murmur of heartbeats; and then Katara's feet, Suki's, and Sokka's all shuffled against the floor as they turned around.

"We did?" Sokka said.

"We already knew," Yue repeated. Toph flattened her toes against the floor, spread them out; it didn't quite feel like Yue was lying, but her heartbeat was different, a little faster than anybody else's. "They mentioned it once, in Omashu - they told us her name."

"Once, seriously?" Sokka said. "I don't remember that."

"In passing," Yue said, and then hesitated. Her heart was still off. "I did not forget. But Professor Zei was not wrong; and I think the general at the wall would have liked his explanation better."

Sokka laughed at that, and Toph couldn't quite be sure but she would have bet Katara and Suki were smiling. And then they started going back to their packs - they really couldn't feel it, could they?

Toph waited until they had all turned away, until Yue herself had leaned back over and set her pike against the wall, and then she took the four paces that got her around the end of the bed between them. "Why?" she said.

"... I'm sorry?"

"Why didn't you forget?" Toph said.

Yue's heartbeat had evened out, mostly, but she breathed in a little too sharply at the question. "I was reminded," she said. "I should not be surprised that they have forgotten - they did not see her."

"They didn't see her?" Toph said. "What are you talking about?" She made a face. "Is she following you around like that dead kid we've got?"

Yue let out a startled laugh. "No, that's - I had a vision," she said. "We all did. There was a swamp, on the way to Gaoling, and we all saw things. Suki saw Kyoshi, and Katara - Katara saw you, actually."

Well, that was weird. A little creepy, sort of - but that wasn't the point. "And you saw Azula," Toph said.

"I saw my own fear," Yue said. "I think - I think Azula was the only person I could come up with who might be cruel enough to show it to me. To - taunt me with it. I would have known it for a vision the moment it began, otherwise. I would not have believed in its potential, not even for a moment; and that was not its purpose."

Toph scooched a foot closer, to feel a little better. "So you did believe it. Believe it - had happened, or whatever. The thing you're afraid of."

"I did," Yue said, and her voice was calm but her heart had picked up for just a second, remembering.

Toph thought about it. "What even are you afraid of?" she said.

Yue swallowed, and shifted her weight. "I suppose - that the moon is all that is best in me. That it has given me all that I have that is exceptional, my bending and my skill with it, and without that there is nothing else anyone would want with me."

Toph tried not to do it, she really did, but even all the face-scrunching she could manage couldn't stop the snort from escaping. "Are you serious?"

"... Yes," Yue said.

"But you're all - dignified and - and princessy," Toph said. "You don't even have to work at it. I mean, my parents - they would have given anything to have somebody like you." She had a good handle on it, she wasn't going to cry or anything stupid like that; but she still had to clear her throat before she could keep going. "I couldn't be like that. But I tried. I wanted to."

Yue was still for a moment, almost not there except Toph could feel the weight of her feet against the stone of the floor; and then Yue let out a breath, and sat back on the bed behind her. "You wanted to be like me," she said. Her voice sounded like maybe she was smiling.

"For like a second," Toph said loudly, and sniffed. "Don't let it go to your head."

***

It was weird, to go through all their things. They hadn't really had a place where they'd needed to settle in since they'd left Kanjusuk; and with all the hurry, they wouldn't have taken the time anyway.

It had never seemed like all that much when Katara was carrying it, but when she spread everythingl out across her bed she couldn't imagine how it had fit in her pack.

Half of it wasn't even anything they'd started out with. They still had Gran-Gran's map, but of course it had been joined by the one they'd bought in that Fire Nation village the day of the festival - the day with the masks, the day Katara had fixed Sokka's burned arm. It wasn't as ugly a memory as Katara had expected; she would have given anything for Sokka to never have been hurt at all, but next best was being able to fix it. Despite all her hopes, there didn't actually seem to be a whole lot of things she could fix just by trying for a minute; but Sokka's arm had been one.

And the Waterbending scroll - she needed it less now, and maybe she should have gotten rid of it for the sake of space, but she didn't think she ever would. Tucked around it were the blueprints - the papers from Shu Sen, the ones Dai Kun had given them before he'd waved them off in their new boat as they sailed for the north. The water Yue's mother had given her was still tied to the pack, too, in its little pointed jar.

"You've gone an awfully long way," Aang murmured. He was hovering over the bed, kneeling - well, not on it, but very close, and reaching out over everything like he might have touched it if he had been able to.

Katara looked down at it all, and couldn't argue. There was a time when she never thought she'd go much further than the hunting routes across the ice fields, or the water between the floes where everybody went to fish. And then Father had left, and her idea of distance had changed: the sea wasn't the edge anymore, it was something to be crossed, when at last she could Waterbend well enough to join Father and the fleet. And then - and then Sokka had gotten himself hit on the head, she thought wryly, and everything had changed.

And now they were waiting to see the king of Ba Sing Se, to tell him that a spirit dragon might swallow the sun and give them everything they needed.

"I'm not done yet," Katara said.

***

They had taken the train into the city only so far; the Earth soldier had explained to them that it would be far easier for them to go unnoticed in what he called the Lower Ring. In gratitude, Azula had not shoved him onto the tracks. It would not, in the end, make them any safer if they killed him - when they failed to arrive where they had been sent, there would be inquiries whether the soldier was there for them or not. So there was nothing to be gained by it; and he had, in the end, been useful.

Azula left him on the train with a freshly-blistered cheek and instructions to wait until the next station to disembark. And either he followed those instructions or the city guard of Ba Sing Se was slower than Azula could ever have dreamed, for no alarm was raised - or not until long after they had left the station, at least.

And the soldier had been right: the Lower Ring was perfect. No effort had to be made to move with the crowd, to blend in or become indistinguishable; there was no other option. The people moved in hordes, a great crush along the narrow streets, and faces flashed by ten at a time, so many that any difference between them blurred away. Azula had to admire the practicality of it - it wasn't elegant, walling all the peasants up together to keep them out of the way, but it evidently worked well.

There were lines of laundry over some of the back alleys and rooftops; ten seconds and a few acrobatics from Ty Lee, and they could abandon their green cloaks without giving themselves away. Mai and Samnang made perfect street performers, Samnang still as stone as Mai hurled knives at a board propped up behind him, and Ty Lee could coax a coin from anyone with her smile and her big brown eyes.

And Azula watched.

They chose a spot not far from a gate, near another train station. The guards who paced along it were highly regimented; they changed on a tightly controlled schedule, no obvious gaps or flaws. But Azula suspected they would be much like the soldiers at the outer wall - unused to change, unprepared for a sudden sharp strike. Like the stone they bent - strong, solid, but no flexibility.

But the city guard was not alone. Robed men in round hats came by the gates, and they had no schedule that Azula could easily discern, though true randomness was unlikely. They had stern faces and long dark braids, and though they had no visible armor they walked with the confidence of men who knew no one around them could stand against them. The guards were unfailingly deferent, and even people who passed near them in the street bowed now and again.

Important men, then, and powerful - Azula's plans could not fail to account for them, whoever they were. She would not fail like Uncle Iroh; she would take Ba Sing Se with both strength and precision, and leave nothing to chance.

Ty Lee and Mai surely had some inkling that she meant to take the city, she had as good as said it out loud. Of course, they did not fully understand what she meant to do after; and if Samnang had guessed, he did not seem to have shared his thoughts. Azula had made no effort to elaborate, and that was for the best. Ty Lee and Mai would help her find Zuko and Uncle, once the city was secure, and in return Azula would be kind, would not force them to choose. Betrayal of Azula on one hand, death on the other - Azula could not expect them to make that choice wisely.

Azula had taught herself to separate feeling from result, by slow painstaking degrees; but not everyone had the same skill. Ty Lee had always been fond of Iroh, and Mai had once displayed a distressing tendency to find Zuko's idiocy more endearing than revolting. Their vision would be clouded - they would not see Father or honor or the Fire Nation, only old affection, and that would make execution unpalatable to them both.

Unkind, to pit friendship against such things; and yet Father's orders must be followed. So Azula would be kind.

The sun had begun to sink below the wall, by the time the day's last group of round-hatted men had nodded stiff approval to the guards and gone on their way. It was a challenge to descend from the rooftop where she had perched without Firebending, without even a small blast of fire here and there to cushion or correct her angle; but Azula loved a challenge.

When she reached the street, Samnang was helping Mai collect her knives from the board, and Ty Lee was - Ty Lee was beaming, because she was Ty Lee, and in the pouch she'd made with the hem of her shirt she had a whole jangling mess of Earth Kingdom coins. "Look!" she said, and held them out.

"Extraordinary," Azula drawled. "I'll have no need of the royal treasury now."

Zuko would have thought it an insult - and if she had said it to him, it would have been one - but Ty Lee only laughed, and then stuck out her tongue. "You should have seen them," she said, "they were wonderful."

"Yes," Mai said flatly, "performing on the street for spare change was always a dream of mine."

It had been a good day, and Azula was pleased; she let her mouth quirk a little. "We'll have greater things to dream of," she said.

"But not today, I'm guessing," Ty Lee said brightly. "So! What's for dinner?"

***

It was not precisely Joo Dee's intention to delay her return to the offices of the Ministry for Cultural Authority; but nevertheless she found herself meandering, taking a route that led through the sculpted gardens of the Upper Ring in a long rounded arc.

Public, she thought, was not the right word for the gardens - public implied casual use, by anyone who happened to pass. An invitation to disorder! No, the gardens were only for those who lived their lives in the Upper Ring, those who could by definition be trusted to act rightly, with caution and respect. Minor officials sent to report from the Middle Ring knew their places, and hurried past without pausing; but Joo Dee could slow, could pass the gate and enter.

There were pavilions here and there - works of art, Joo Dee thought, that would have been vandalized in a moment in the Lower Ring. A moment's walk brought her to the nearest, and she seated herself and looked out: bare branches everywhere, Spring Festival was not for several days yet and the leaves would not come for some time after, but the naked trees alone had a certain angular beauty.

The Avatar, in Ba Sing Se. Joo Dee had no need to lie, not to herself; her heart had leapt for a moment to hear it.

But she had remembered herself, had shown restraint. Time had shown that the Avatar could not always be trusted. The Dai Li were sanctified, their mission handed to them by Kyoshi herself - Kyoshi whom the spirits had granted exceptional long life, whose honor could not be impugned. But when her two hundred and thirty years had come to an end, she had left them with another. It would not be right for Joo Dee to pass judgment upon the Avatar; but Roku had lived and died in fire and darkness, had let Sozin take half the western coast - had even helped him, some now said. And then the war had come. The war had come, and the Avatar had not, not for a hundred years.

The Dai Li had not faltered, even without guidance. If anything, they had become stronger in their purpose, honed like a blade, and even without an Avatar they had turned back the Fire Nation when the time had come. Oh, the siege had been terrible, long and terrible, but they had prevailed. They had prepared themselves, composed their strategies - no doubt the Lower and Middle Rings had suffered, but the Upper Ring had been the city's highest priority, and, in the end, the city's salvation. They had had a scheme laid out for every ranking officer, and had been ready to risk agents on Dragon of the West himself; but it had been Joo Dee's own target whose death had brought the end at last, and, oh, that had been a glorious day indeed. Her exalted position now was in part the result of that fine work.

The Dai Li had preserved the city, and the kingdom with it, and proven that they had not been corrupted. Betrayal, greed, liberality, war - all these had come up against the Dai Li, in the years since Kyoshi, and all had been defeated.

And now the Avatar returned. A Waterbender - that, Joo Dee would not have been surprised by; and Joo Dee herself could flick a wrist and lift half a paving stone, but both skills together, in one girl - the Avatar.

And she wished to see the king. But for what purpose - that was the question. If she meant simply to make herself known to the king of Ba Chang, that was not unreasonable; but if she meant to drag them back into war, that could not be countenanced. Ba Sing Se must be preserved. The other Earth kingdoms could do as they pleased, but Ba Chang had won all that needed winning seven years ago, had earned peace. There was no war, in Ba Sing Se - and there would not be one, Avatar or no Avatar.

But either way, Long Feng had best be told. Joo Dee stood, smoothing her skirt. Kings were well and good, but in the end, no more inherently trustworthy than the Avatar. The Dai Li understood necessities: if it were best that the Avatar never reach the throne room, Long Feng would see it done. Ba Sing Se would fall to nothing - not to the Avatar, not to war; not even to its own king.

*

The halls of the Ministry were never still; there was always something to be done, and always someone in the midst of doing it. Joo Dee passed a line of agents likely headed for the Middle Ring, and exchanged bows with another woman - another Joo Dee, in truth. Names were of no use to the Dai Li, except the exceptionally ranked like Long Feng who chose their own; Joo Dee had no doubt had another as an infant, but she could not remember it. Every female agent wore the same gown, dressed her hair alike, and went by Joo Dee. They were each of them only one small part of a whole - to deal with one agent of the Dai Li was to deal with all the Dai Li, and in this way no one could forget it. Not even the Dai Li themselves.

But there remained some small ways for even the less acquainted to tell each other apart. When Joo Dee came to the grand tall door of Long Feng's office chamber, the guard's eyes went immediately to the stitching of her sleeves. The circled squares there were outlined in deep green and then a second, paler shade with three wider sets of stitches, which marked her as senior third rank; so he bowed and let her in, instead of demanding to know her business.

Long Feng was standing by the mantel, looking down impassively at a sheaf of pages in his hands - a report, no doubt, but no matter what it was it could not be half as important as the news of the Avatar. He looked up at the sound of her steps, and unlike the guard he knew her face.

"You know better than to interrupt me over unimportant matters," he said.

"I do," Joo Dee agreed, bowing low.

"Then you have a matter of importance." Long Feng set his papers down and gave her his full attention.

"I do," Joo Dee said again. She hesitated for a moment - foolishly, because she had just said it was important, and because she had already delayed far longer than she should have. And yet it was important, so much so that she was hard-pressed for a way to say it well. Well then, she thought, she would settle for saying it poorly. "The greatest importance - the Avatar has returned."

"So it is rumored," Long Feng said slowly, watching her with a steady gaze.

"Forgive me, I have been unclear," Joo Dee said. "The Avatar has returned, and come to Ba Sing Se; and she stood before me in the street and asked to see the king."

Long Feng was still for a long moment, and then he looked away from her at last with narrowed eyes. "Well," he said. "A matter of importance indeed."

***

Zuko served tea and served tea and served tea, and for once he could not muster any hatred for it; he could not muster any feeling at all, except something uncomfortably like uncertainty.

It is time you found out, Uncle said, as though it were so simple - found out, as though it were a secret someone held, and if Zuko only found the right person, cornered them in the warren of Ba Sing Se and asked, they would tell him the answer.

But it was not so. No one knew - no one cared.No one in this tea shop had any thought for Zuko except whether he would bring them another fine hot cup or spill it on their heads, aside from Uncle.

It should have hurt to think it. It should have been the final, terrible blow to whatever limping pride he still had left. But perhaps he had none; for all he felt was an odd hollow lightness, a sort of relief.

No one cared. It did not matter. No one was looking, no one was judging - except for Uncle, perhaps, but Zuko had never understood what Uncle wanted from him and was unlikely to start now. Zuko was only another face among thousands; not even the only one with a scar, now that the Lower Ring was choked with refugees from the front.

Expectations had surrounded him all his life, in the Fire Nation - eyes on him at all times; his every action examined by Father and his advisers, Azula and her friends. For all her later crimes, Mother had loved him, had never been truly disappointed by even his worst failures; and how ill had it spoken of him, that someone like Mother had felt that way? Loved best by a traitor. Perhaps Mother really had wanted him on the throne - for a puppet, or to push aside any time she liked, secure in the knowledge that he could never have stopped her the way Azula would have. Perhaps that was what Mother's favor had meant all along.

But: it did not matter. Here, he was - he was a blank page, a brush poised overhead but no ink yet fallen on the sheet. He had been marked at home, blotted, unable to forget or leave behind what everyone around him knew. But here he was unknown, and could be anyone he wanted. He could - be himself.

Whoever that was.

*

He was sent out in the midafternoon - a carpenter not far from the tea shop had been tasked with repairing a table with a wobbling leg. The tea shop owner was a narrow, nervous man who liked to think of the shop as a fine little establishment; a wobbling table did not suit, and he was eager to have it fixed.

Zuko wasn't sure what drew his eye to the uneven little block of wood in the corner, nor why he picked it up; but the carpenter turned from the table and caught him with it in his hand.

She was a heavyset, smiling woman, and she grinned still wider and took an unsettling step toward him. Zuko tensed - what did she mean to do to him? - but she only punched him companionably in the shoulder. "A toy," she said, and then laughed. "Or half of one - the man never came for it, in the end, and I can't work on things I won't be paid for. But here, you see, it was almost done." She took it from him and turned it over, and now Zuko could indeed recognize the general shape, though the finer details were not there.

He looked back at the carpenter; she was watching him, with the same thoughtful crease in her brow that Uncle got just before he said something cryptic and unhelpful.

"You may have it, if you like," she said. "It's no use to me."

He meant to say no, he did, but the carpenter turned away before he could so much as move, and spent a quarter-hour sanding down the edges. And after that, it would have been - it would have been rude not to take it. A day ago, he would have refused it anyway; but he was -

He was someone new today.

"Tell Pao kind things about me," the carpenter ordered him with a chuckle, and tossed him the half-shaped toy. "I haven't started - don't tell him that - but the table is a small job. If he sends you back tomorrow, I'll have it ready."

Zuko did not know what to say, so he said nothing. He bowed, and left the carpenter's workshop with his fingers wrapped tight around the little chunk of wood.

*

He thought a dozen times that he should toss it away, let it fall to the street and leave it there, but somehow he never quite let go; and when he returned to the shop he still had it in his hands.

Uncle said nothing, but whether that was because he was restraining himself or because he did not see, Zuko was not sure. There was something of a rush to be had in the late afternoon, at the hour when there was a chance to sit and drink and exchange the day's gossip before the streets of the Lower Ring grew dangerous in the evening; and Uncle was busy behind the counter, brewing. Zuko shoved the toy into his belt so he could take full trays of tea with both hands, and by the end of the day he had half forgotten it.

But it did not fall into the street on their way from the shop. It was not knocked from Zuko's hip by the crush of people, nor stolen by a street child mistaking it for a thing of value. And so it was still tucked there when Jin yanked on the leg of Zuko's trousers and said, "What's that?"

Zuko hesitated. No one was looking at him but Jin, and this choice need not define him; he could choose never to do anything like it again, if he wished. He had never done anything like it before - but that was the point.

"An Earth train," he said curtly, and tossed it down.

In an unusual display of coordination, Jin managed to catch it before it could hit the floor, and began to inspect it closely. It genuinely was the right shape, long straight lines and angled roof, and the little rows of windows were marked out along the sides, though the carpenter had not yet put any detail into the sills or roof tiles.

"It is an Earth train," Jin said, turning it over, as though Zuko might have lied about something so stupid; and then he lowered the wooden train car to the floor with a sound like a building falling in, and promptly rammed it into Zuko's toes.

***

They'd managed to settle into something of a routine, such that by the time Mizan had boarded the lead ship and come to the bridge, Isani already had the captain tied to his - it was a man, this time - own chair. He'd given her something of a fight, her nose had been bloodied; but Isani seemed not the least bit disturbed by the injury, smiling genially down at the man through the drying mess on her mouth and chin.

"Charming," Mizan told her.

"Thank you, sir," Isani said. "If he wished to have someone more pleasant to look at, he should not have hit me in the face."

She made this exceptionally fair point with another calculated smile down at the man, a bit of stray blood pinking her teeth.

"I imagine he's reconsidering his choices even as we speak," Mizan said.

This was not a cargo convoy; they'd caught two of those so far, and a pair of off-duty patrol ships, but this was their first communications squadron. Messenger hawks could be lost, caught in storms, shot down. Sometimes you needed people to do the sensitive work - people, and a few fast ships to carry them.

The captain was carefully trained, as a consequence - neither belligerent nor blustering. He sat quietly where he was bound and watched them, and if Isani's bloody smile rattled him, he wasn't showing it. But then Mizan wouldn't have expected him to.

He wasn't the only crew member they'd caught in the bridge. One of the Earth pirates had the woman who was second-in-command pinned up against the wall with her hands tied; and Mizan had had to step over two others on the deck just outside to get into the bridge.

There were papers everywhere, but Mizan spared them only a glance. They'd be in code, no doubt - impossible to read without a key, hours of trial and error, or intimate knowledge of which words to heed and which to ignore. But no matter. Mizan didn't need them.

The cargo convoys and patrol ships had provided the beginnings of a pattern. Mizan did not need deep secrets, here, only confirmation of the things she already knew.

"Judging by your charts," she said to the captain, "you were headed to Jindao."

He looked at her steadily and said nothing.

Mizan dropped into an easy crouch, elbows on her knees, and clasped her hands in front of her. From here, she could look the man in the eye. "Carrying essential orders, no doubt - fine fast ships like these. They've been maintaining that blockade for years under internal command. And yet here you are, with orders from outside. Intriguing."

If the captain had a tell, Mizan had no idea what it was. He blinked neither quickly nor slowly, swallowed without obvious anxiety; he glanced back and forth between Mizan and Isani in no particular pattern.

"And what might they be told to do?" Mizan mused aloud. "Not continue as they are; that would require no deviation from routine. To change, then - to do something else, go somewhere else. That is what orders are for. And after such a long time - surely such orders would come only for the most important of reasons. For an operation of great magnitude."

The captain's gaze remained unaltered.

"And what target might demand an operation of such size?" Mizan adopted a thoughtful expression. "What would the Fire Lord consider worth such an effort? Surely this degree of care is worthy only of the great city itself."

In the Earth Kingdoms, only one thing was ever meant by the great city. The captain was good, he did not so much as twitch; but behind him, his second tensed against the wall, and looked at Mizan with sudden sharpness.

So that was the answer, just as Mizan had expected. She tilted back onto her heels for a long moment, and then levered herself to her feet. "Outside," she said, with a nod to Isani, and then she turned and left the bridge.

*

"Two a coincidence, three a pattern," Isani said. "What does that make four?"

Mizan smiled out at the water, and shook her head. "A plan," she said.

There was no mistaking it. A massive advance was headed for Ba Sing Se. And it could not only be warships - Ba Sing Se was not so close to the sea as that. Incredible as it sounded, the fleets had to be the lesser portion of the threat, the vast battleships in the end less dangerous than the troops and equipment they had to be carrying. Nothing else made sense.

"They would not go north," Mizan said aloud. "Nor come from the east. Neither is a convenient route, when they hold the bay and the South Yellow Sea."

"The river, then," Isani said. "They wish to hold the sea, the coasts, and the river - they will not let themselves be taken by surprise if another kingdom should think to rush to Ba Sing Se's defense."

"Ba Chang's defense," Mizan said. "What will be left of the kingdom, without the city?"

Isani conceded the point with a dip of her head, and then a thought came to her, visibly blooming across her face. "But if they are so committed," she said, "what will they leave behind?"

Mizan turned to look at her.

"They will send their ships up the river, they will hold the coasts and the southern sea; they will let no one by to reinforce the city. Very well. But when they have walled off every avenue of attack, have they not also walled themselves in?"

"If they leave the bay," Mizan murmured. She went still for a moment, turning the thought over. Even if the Fire Nation did not abandon the bay entirely, they were giving all they could to the assault of Ba Sing Se - what would they leave behind? What could they spare, to hold the bay behind them?

And what good would it do them in the end to have the river and the sea, if they could not get out again after?

It was painfully tempting, and Isani knew it. "We do not have the ships for it," she said, but she was watching Mizan's face with a sharp light in her eyes, waiting for Mizan to prove her wrong.

"We will never have the ships for it," Mizan said. "If we are waiting for the day we will match the Fire Lord in numbers, we will wait forever. And there will never be a better chance." If they could take the bay - what a bottleneck the river's mouth would make! Even a few ships could hold there, if they had no need to worry over an attack from behind.

If, if, if - an unpleasant word, in wartime. Unless-

Unless they were not alone.

"That expression is not unlike the one you had when you first decided it was a good idea to join up with pirates," Isani said.

"And look how well that's going," Mizan said, bright.

*

Tan Khai was waiting on the dock for them - it was her habit, or becoming so, as though she thought every time might be the time Mizan would turn on the rest of the fleet and send them limping back to Dou Ying without her. Perhaps it was unkind; but Mizan did so love to disappoint her.

She had her arms crossed before her as Mizan came down the ramp from the ship, and watched Mizan's progress with a baleful sort of stare.

"It fills my heart with gladness," Mizan called down to her, "that you do not rest until I am safely returned."

"If you die," Tan Khai replied, "I would like to be the first to know." She paused a moment, and then uncrossed her arms, a tacit sign for truce. "The news?"

"The same," Mizan said. "Ba Sing Se, again. Not the ships we struck themselves, but they bore messages for others."

Tan Khai huffed out a frustrated little sigh. "To think," she said, "that we should come to know so much while we can yet do so little. To have knowledge that cannot be used-"

"Cannot be used alone," said Mizan.

Tan Khai's gaze snapped back to Mizan in a suddenly wary stare. "Alone," she repeated. "And who would you have join us?" Her eyes sharpened. "If you think to lead us into a trap - to goad us out where your own fleets can fall upon us like - like vulture hawks-"

"I tell you," Mizan said, "they would fall upon me as readily. They are not my fleets; this is my fleet, and if it should come to a bad end I will drown as readily as you will."

Tan Khai's mouth twisted, but she said nothing.

"This is my fleet," Mizan said again, "but I am not the commander. I will not tell you what to do."

Tan Khai stared at her for a moment, and then pursed her lips. "Oh, no," she said. "Never. You will simply make every option before us look foolish or nonsensical or cowardly, except the one you desire us to follow, and then you will sit back and ask us sincerely which course we intend to take."

"And the choice will be yours," Mizan said, all innocence. She paused for a moment; she should not make light, not when she truly did want Tan Khai to listen. "I remember what was said when I came here - how you longed to make a difference. That is all I wish to do, and I think perhaps we will be able to."

"Well, as long as you think so," Tan Khai said, with grim distaste, but then she sighed. "If we were truly to lose Ba Sing Se - I should not like to think of it."

Mizan did not like to, either. She had begun this peculiar alliance cast off, set loose, with the vague thought that perhaps she might divert a little attention from General Iroh and the prince; but surely they were either captured or long gone by now, and yet. She was no hero, but then the pirates were not either - they simply could not bear not to act, when they knew what might happen otherwise. That was a perspective Mizan could understand. She had no doubt been marked for death the moment she had fired on Princess Azula's ship, and there was nothing to be done about it now. If she were to be executed for a traitor, best she earn the title.

***

The Tai San was long and winding, and not always as deep as might be hoped when one had a fleet of battleships to maneuver up its length. Much was said of the Dragon of the West and the siege he had so nearly completed; but Yin suspected that General Iroh's greater accomplishment had been holding the Tai San long enough for a dozen locks and dams to be built.

It was said that ancient kings of Ba Sing Se had once employed hundreds of Waterbenders to accomplish much the same sort of feat. And no doubt it was also said that it spoke to the genius of the Fire Nation, that they had no need of such assistance - that even without Waterbenders, they could master the river. But Yin, looking out over the rail, could not help wondering what it must have been like.

Hundreds of Waterbenders. Perhaps there were still as many somewhere amidst the northern ice fields, scattered; but all in one place, traveling freely in the Earth Kingdoms! Unthinkable, today. Yin could only imagine the feats they must have been capable of. Waterbenders were not all the Avatar, waking the spirit of the ocean and capsizing battleships - and yet how invaluable they must have been in the face of floods or tidal waves, great storms or droughts. Strange, to think they might never be seen in such numbers again.

But then they were not alone in that. Yin remembered every lesson of her childhood in the dangers posed by the Air Nomads - so great that the spirits had gifted the Fire Lord with a comet, a blessing of power with which to wipe them from the face of the world. And yet surely they too had performed great wonders, in old times. Surely they had done works of great beauty.

The lock was very large, the changes in water level almost undetectable; but the great pumps were not subtle instruments, and Yin could hear it when they stopped. And evidently Kishen could also, for it was barely a moment before the hatch to the bridge clanged open.

"Nearly time, sir," Kishen said.

"Yes," Yin said.

The battalions assigned as lock-keepers had moved quickly for them. The whole fleet could not fit in each lock at once, but they were being shuffled through as rapidly as possible. There were two lanes of locks along the Tai San, one for those headed upstream and one for those headed down; but both lanes had been turned over to Yin's ships for the sake of speediness.

And, Yin thought, for the sake of the cargo they carried. War machines, the like of which Yin had never seen before - no wonder a war minister himself had been involved. The princess Azula did indeed have a plan, and it was one Yin suspected she was not going to like.

"The Tai San is a long river," Kishen said.

Yin glanced over her shoulder at him; he looked back with studious blankness.

"Even after we are through the locks," he added. "I expect it will take us some time."

"The Fire Lord has equipped us well," Yin said. "These are fine, fast ships."

Not that much time, she meant, and she knew Kishen was clever enough to understand.

Why was she even feeling this discomfort, this - foreboding? Perhaps, she thought, she was simply out of the habit of following orders, such that obeying without question felt like a misstep in and of itself. And yet there was no reason for it.

There had been clear gain in the north, with the life of the moon in the balance and Zhao's faults overwhelming, and a clear course to take. And it had been a lesser risk in many ways, murdering Zhao behind walls of ice when half the people nearby had turned out to have reason to like her for it. There was no choice to be made here, no principle at stake - she could save nothing, gain nothing, through even the most egregiously public disobedience. She was only the ferrywoman, and with any luck it would stay that way.

"And little is demanded of us," she added. "We have no reason not to perform most excellently."

"Indeed, sir," Kishen said, ducking his head. "Though surely they will not put us to waste."

Yin turned to look at him again.

"When we have come to the shores of the South Yellow Sea," Kishen said. "A fleet of the Fire Lord's mighty battleships - surely they will not put us to waste."

His tone was mild, even light, but his gaze was fixed on her face; he knew what he was saying, what it meant.

"No," Yin said. "I suppose they won't."

It had now been some time since the pumps had stopped, but the lock gates were not opening. Some small delay, Yin thought, and then a loop of fire rose above the gates.

"Looks like someone has a question for you, sir," Kishen said.

*

There was another ship, as it turned out. Only one, a smaller vessel, and by all reports a bit damaged. Not one of Yin's, but likely a scout or a patrol ship from Chameleon Bay.

The battalions holding the locks had two-person water-sledges to ferry them back and forth between ships; one came to carry Yin to the gate so that she could see the ship for herself.

It was a dented little thing, and clearly did not have a full complement aboard. But the woman nearest the bow had a reasonably sharp salute, and when she shouted up to the gate, she didn't sound tired or dispirited. "Apologies for causing you a delay, sir!"

Yin waved that away with an expansive motion of the arm, large enough for the woman to see. "No matter," she called back down. "You have business upriver?"

The woman shrugged one shoulder. "Reports," she said. "Messages, requisitions - nothing out of the ordinary. Of course we would be only too happy to wait until your fleet has passed; but-"

But why should we? It was a reasonable enough request; it wasn't as if one more ship would slow them down, not when they were already taking up both lanes of the river. And, truth be told, it was a relief to be confronted with a decision so simple, no great weight resting on her choice.

Yin turned to the officer who had escorted her. "They're one of mine," she said, "or close enough; I'll take responsibility for them from here. Let them come through with the third squadron, if you would."

***

"Well," Mikama said, "that was quite the stroke of luck."

Ukara's expression went sour. Sour-er. "Luck," she said, with a tone in her voice like she was talking about something that tasted unpleasant.

Mikama tried not to smile too much. Ukara hated anything that meant you were not getting things done yourself, with your own brain or your own hard work. Which Mikama could understand, a little - if you relied on luck, if you waited for it to do everything, sooner or later it would slide out from under you like summer-soft ice.

Sometimes, though, you had to have a little plain old good fortune; you could not plan for everything. And there was no way they would have gotten through this without some luck on their side.

They'd picked just the right fleet to follow, or maybe just the right day to do it - maybe the commander had happened to be in a good mood, the battalion running the gates less demanding than they should have been. Whatever the reason, they'd made it through, and now they were - well. Walled into an enclosed area with dozens of Fire Nation battleships, but that was, peculiarly, where they'd hoped to end up.

Hakoda eased off when they were safely inside the lock, and then he shuffled away from the windows in the bridge and yanked his helmet off. "Luck aside," he said, "that was well done."

Mikama accepted the compliment with a nod. She had been anxious beforehand, just a little - she was good at talking, as Ukara liked to complain to anyone who would listen, but this hadn't been a little evening storytelling over the cooking pit. For a moment, there had been lives in her hands that she wouldn't have been able to save if things had gone wrong, wouldn't have been able to bring back the next night with a new story.

She glanced at Ukara next, she could not help it, and Ukara pursed her lips. "We haven't died yet," she conceded, which was one of the kindest sentences Mikama had ever gotten out of her.

But if Mikama said so, she'd never hear anything like it again; so she didn't. "I do make an excellent Fire Nation officer," she said instead, and made a show of looking herself over.

And the Fire Nation armor really was well-made. Heavier than anything Mikama was used to fighting in, much stiffer than furs or cloth, but she could manage more flexibility than she'd expected. The helmets, though, she did not like. It was already far too hot in the north, even in what they seemed to think was winter - why make it worse with a pot over your head?

Ukara rolled her eyes and shoved the hatch open with a clang, and Mikama followed her out to look back across the water. They were well into the lock, now, and the last of the squadron they'd come in with was through the gate - the gate was grinding shut as they watched, and a moment after it thudded into place, someone shouted, and the great pumps began to churn.

"Not long now," Ukara said.

"All that remains is to hope they notice nothing until we reach the river's end," Mikama said.

"Hope," Ukara said, with exactly the same tone she'd used to say luck and they stood on the deck and watched the water rise against the gate, a ripple at a time.

***

"I say we should just go find the palace and break the door down," Sokka said.

"I'm sure that would go over well," Katara said, rolling her eyes. "Nothing could ever convince the king to trust us quite as neatly as an assault."

She was on the second-highest step of the anthropology building, leaning back against the top one; she could not see Yue's face, so Yue let the corner of her mouth curl the way it wanted to.

"I just hate waiting," Sokka groaned.

Yue turned far enough to see over her shoulder: Suki was leaning toward him, the picture of sympathy, and patted him twice on the arm.

"Won't have to for much longer," Toph said from the bottom stair.

Yue glanced at Suki, who looked back blankly. "What?" Suki said.

"That lady," Toph said, "from the wall. She's here. She walks all - light, glidey. Sort of like my mother." Toph sniffed and cleared her throat. "You've got to be able to see her, she can't be that far away."

And she wasn't - Toph raised one arm to point unseeingly in the general direction of the university gates, a student moved out of the way, and there was Joo Dee. She looked exactly the same as she had coming out of the wall of the Upper Ring, with the same gown and the same courteous smile; Yue had not thought of it before, but no doubt her fine robes were as much a uniform as any armor.

"Avatar," Joo Dee said, and bowed deeply to Katara. "I am sorry for the delay - and I fear it is only the first of many. You must understand, the king has so many-"

"-demands on his time, yeah, we know," Sokka said.

Katara flicked his shoulder scoldingly. "It's not her fault," she said, and then turned to Joo Dee. "I do understand - thank you for trying."

"That is not all I have tried," Joo Dee said, with a small smile. "I cannot get you to the king, not yet. But I am employed by the Dai Li - the Ministry of Cultural Authority, the office responsible for preserving tradition and order in Ba Sing Se. Of course I am not worthy of the honor, but it is no small posting. I have spoken with the High Minister himself, and he has agreed to speak with you this afternoon. If he thinks you have good cause to seek audience with the king, he will do his utmost to help you."

*

The Upper Ring was strangely quiet, after the bustle of the university, and Yue found it faintly unnerving. Everything in the Upper Ring was so - sculpted. At home, when Yue grew tired of neat corners and perfect arches, the wild ice was never far away; but there were no jagged cliffs or rough edges here. The wheels of Joo Dee's carriage turned so smoothly it barely felt like they were moving at all.

Yue had not been certain what to expect - "no small posting" could cover a considerable amount of ground, and of course "High Minister" sounded quite impressive, but "Cultural Authority" did not seem like the name of a ministry that called for vast offices. And yet when they drew to a stop, it was by the steps of a towering building that would not have been out of place on the university grounds.

"This is the place," Joo Dee said brightly, and smiled.

She waved them all out ahead of her, and closed the carriage door behind her without so much as a backward glance; but evidently the driver knew his duty, for he nudged the ostrich horses into motion and guided the carriage away.

It felt uncomfortable to watch him go, like letting a door close when they did not have the key to hand. Yue could see the Upper Ring wall from here, but not the university, and the city was so bewilderingly large-

"He can be sent for, when we are ready to depart," Joo Dee said.

Yue turned around. Joo Dee was watching her with a kindly expression, eyes crinkling at the corners, and when Yue looked at her, she shrugged her shoulders.

"It is not - orderly, to leave an empty carriage waiting in the street," she added.

The Ministry for Cultural Authority was like the Upper Ring in miniature: beautiful, clean, and yet for all its detailed ornamentation it felt oddly - featureless, each hallway indistinguishable from the last. It was a city sort of beauty, Yue thought; a stone city sort of beauty, made by people who depended on their workings to last. But of course she did not know the Ministry's halls - Joo Dee did not seem stymied by the place at all, so much of the sameness was, no doubt, in Yue's head.

Joo Dee stayed to one side, not letting any of them fall far enough behind to become lost, which was kind. And at last they came to a door that was different, grander; and Joo Dee pulled it open and bowed them into the room.

"Ah, yes," said the man behind the desk, and stood. "The Avatar and her companions. I am Long Feng. I am given to understand that you wish to speak to the king?"

***

"Yes," Katara said, and then bowed belatedly - it seemed like the sort of thing she ought to do. The room wasn't particularly warm, but she was uncomfortably sweaty. Joo Dee had made it sound like they might not see the king for months unless this Long Feng decided they had something worthwhile to say, and it suddenly felt like all she had to do was put one word in the wrong place and it would all be for nothing. "Yes, I - we - yes."

That was exactly the opposite of what she'd meant to do, but Long Feng just looked at her patiently, attentively.

"There's an eclipse," she blurted out.

Long Feng exchanged glances with Joo Dee. "As there tend to be, periodically," he said, but leadingly rather than unkindly.

"This one is different," Katara said. The whole explanation was long, and she only remembered about half of what Dae Hyun had said anyway, but the most important part was still clear in her mind: "This one will bring the Fire Nation low, if we can only - use it right."

"Ah," Long Feng said, half a sigh, and pressed his fingertips together. "And you would go to war, with this knowledge. Little wonder you wish to see the king." He looked at Joo Dee, and smiled; and then his gaze returned to Katara. "Please, Avatar: tell me everything."

---

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