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damkiannaTitle: went with her and is with her still
Fandom: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Rating: PG-13ish? Violence, definitely, though not too explicit.
Characters/Pairing: OC/51st Earth King, I suppose? Kuei is the only genuinely canonical character in here, and he is four years old at the oldest.
Wordcount: 3,800. (LOOK LOOK I WROTE ... PRETTY SHORT FIC!)
Summary: One person Kuei's mother might have been, and five ways she might have saved him. (Also posted @ the AO3.)
Disclaimer: Places and people you recognize from canon are not mine.
Acknowledgements:idriya, of course, was my beta; and MAJOR thanks to ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
seta_suzume/![[archiveofourown.org profile]](https://p.dreamwidth.org/b164c54b26e4/-/archiveofourown.org/favicon.ico)
Suzume, for her most excellent donation and most excellent prompts! (Another fic may be forthcoming, in fact, but that one's turning into something of an epic.)
Other Notes: There is ... a somewhat tenuous relationship between this fic and canon; I tried not to outright contradict anything, but we don't know a whole lot about Kuei's parents or about Earth King court/politics, so I filled in a lot of blanks with the contents of my own brain. As I so often do. This got away from me a little bit,seta_suzume, but I hope it's still something like what you wanted! (... If not, I will totally write you something else!)
The title (and cut text) are drawn from the poem "The courage that my mother had", by Edna St. Vincent Millay. It seemed apropos, considering.
(One person Kuei's mother might have been, and five ways she might have saved him.)
One:
It is with the wives of the Earth King as it is with the women of any noble house. To bear the child is theirs, work that cannot be passed off to another. But once the baby is out, there are nurses aplenty to be found in the streets of Ba Sing Se, even in the Upper Ring - perfectly respectable women who have lost their own infants but are still able to nurse. Oh, the wives of the king visit their children, now and again, for the Earth King and the people both think well of a loving mother. But they do not nurse them; they do not sleep alongside them. No woman of sense would risk losing the Earth King's favor by making herself unavailable to his whims.
So it is possible that Yi Hian is not a woman of sense. Certainly there are many people who say she is not; she hears the maids mutter, sees them shake their heads, and Yu Qing, who has been with her the longest of all her ladies, has come to her more than once with apologetic hints that the king looks very fondly on Lady Minjiang these days.
But her son is the only prince yet in a sea of daughters. The week after he was born, Lady Jun came to see him, smiling, and rested her slim cool hand on his tiny forehead; the day after that, one of Lady Jun's women came by to take a little work off Yu Qing's hands. If Yi Hian had not risen early and interrupted her, she might have left the corner of that blanket tangled round his little head.
An accident, she had said, pressing her face to the floor; and Yi Hian had had nothing to contradict her except the dread in her heart.
Yi Hian sleeps in her son's room, after that. She tends to him herself, feeds him and bathes him; her silks become spotted with water and spit and occasional bile, and Yu Qing turns the Earth King's messengers away with Yi Hian's deepest and most sorrowful apologies.
By year's end, Yi Hian has not seen King Daoyeng in eighteen months, and Kuei has taken his first step.
A woman of sense would regret it. So it is possible that Yi Hian is not a woman of sense.
Two:
When Kuei is nearly two years old, Yi Hian returns to court - she was not precisely gone, only removed to the outskirts of the Upper Ring, but she might as well have been in seclusion for all the banquets she attended. She has paid little attention to anything but Kuei.
But she has given the Earth King a son, and that son has lived to his first birthday; she has been promoted in rank accordingly, and is now Noble Consort Cheng. The Earth King's principal wife has been dead nearly two years, taken by the sickness that struck even the Upper Ring despite the walls' best efforts, and the mourning period is nearly over. Yi Hian has been incautious, but her timing appears lucky now.
She is unused to the sheer number of strange faces; she has been so long confined with only Yu Qing and her other ladies, and one of the king's doctors now and again for Kuei. It is a relief to reach the inner quarters at last.
The Noble Consort's rooms are vast and pleasant, and set away from the rest; it is almost quiet, even in the middle of the palace's bustle, and there is a courtyard behind with a garden and pavilion. Yi Hian sets Kuei loose on the carefully-tended grass, and he discovers the brook, guided by a sculpted path into artful configurations, almost immediately.
He loves the sound of the water, smacks it with his hand and giggles, and Yi Hian is giggling with him when Yu Qing touches her shoulder. "Lady," Yu Qing says softly, and Yi Hian has gone still in her heart even before she turns her head; Yu Qing is only so gentle, so informal, when she has something terrible to say.
Yi Hian's throat is dry, she cannot answer. She nods her head instead.
"I am sorry," Yu Qing says. "I thought you should know before - before it was announced. One of the kitchen girls has told me: the Dai Li have raided the house of Li Yi Tan, and he is under arrest. Long Feng himself led the detachment."
Yu Qing does not have to tell her the charges. Disloyalty to the house of the Earth King, subversion of the law of the city, conduct unbecoming a citizen; it does not matter. It will be serious and it will be difficult to dismiss. Long Feng would not be involved otherwise. He is not the head of the Dai Li, not yet - but he is highly-ranked, rising quickly, and he is not a man who wastes time with matters below his notice.
Yi Hian puts a hand to her forehead, and makes herself breathe. Li Yi Tan is an inconspicuous man, a man of few enemies; the only thing that is unusual about him is that he is her cousin, and what are the odds that the Dai Li should find cause for suspicion in Li Yi Tan the same day Yi Hian returns to the palace?
Low, Yi Hian thinks. Low, except that the presence of Lady Jun makes all odds higher, all unfortunate coincidences more likely.
Lucky timing, she had thought, but not for something like this. She has not even had a chance to request audience with the king - her year's absence has rendered her place precarious, even though she has been fortunate. This episode, this cruelty toward Li Yi Tan: this is a test, and Yi Hian is in no position to withstand it. And what would come next, if she did? If she made herself a shield about her cousin, despite whatever evidence will undoubtedly be found among his belongings - such close associations, people would say. Why does she work so hard to save her cousin, her cousin who has been found out by the Dai Li, who are the Earth King's right hand? Yi Hian does not have half Lady Jun's imagination, and even she can compose a fair helping of poison to spread with a moment's thought.
Kuei is still crouched by the brook, plunging his plump stubby hands in the water and shrieking at the cold. "Mama!" he shouts, and laughs, and sparkling drops fly from his fingertips when he waves his arms.
Yi Hian bites her lip. She was fond of Li Yi Tan, when they were children; he was unassuming and pleasant, and still is if his reputation is anything to go by. And no one is sent on their way from a Dai Li compound with a bow and a sincere apology. There is a saying: no man arrested by the Dai Li ever remains innocent for long.
But she cannot save him without risking herself, and she cannot risk herself without risking Kuei.
"Time it well," she says to Yu Qing past the sting in her throat. "Only after it is known, and leave a suitable period to account for shock. Tell them how distraught I am - how the king need only send me a general to lend me the use of a sword, and I will expunge this dishonor from his house forever." She snorts, because she will not cry. "Weep, if you can."
Yu Qing is not fooled. "As if for my own cousin," she says gently, hand on Yi Hian's shoulder, and Yi Hian squeezes her eyes shut. "If there is a way to arrange for something to be taken to him, something that will let him end it quickly, I will see that it is done."
Yi Hian fumbles for Yu Qing's hand, squeezes hard, because her throat has closed up so tightly no more words will come out.
Three:
The Palace of Endless Harmony is not outside Ba Sing Se - no king in the last three thousand years has set foot beyond the walls of the city, much less built themselves a retreat there. It was the great project of King Hu, who was Daoyeng's father; it lies within the outer wall but outside the city proper, nestled among the hills just beyond Lake Laogai. Sometimes it is also called the Palace of Ten Thousand Gardens - it is said that an assassin sent to kill King Hu failed because he could not find his way inside through them all.
Daoyeng's whims are sudden; Lady Minjiang's fall is nearly as precipitous as her rise, and three days after Minjiang's brothers are all ordered to frigid posts in the northern mountains, Yi Hian - Noble Consort Cheng - is invited to join the king in making use of the Palace of Endless Harmony. Affairs of state have kept the king from his son for too long, and no doubt the boy would enjoy the trip.
Kuei does; he was two with the passing of the new year, as such things are reckoned in Ba Sing Se, and the upper kingdom is warming with spring now. There may not be ten thousand gardens at the Palace of Endless Harmony, but however many there are, they will be beautiful.
It is strange to be outside the city; Yi Hian is not used to it. Even in the Upper Ring, there is always a certain bustle - the sound of trains, the tremble of Earthbending, the voices of ministers and generals calling out orders. On the far side of the lake, it is so quiet that Yi Hian almost forgets there is a war.
It does not last.
It has been ten days, and she has developed something of a routine: she wakes Kuei herself, with a kiss to his forehead and a pinch to his plump little sides; and when they have eaten - with the king, more often than not - they retreat to the Garden of Purest Bloom while the ministers have their audience. The Garden of Purest Bloom is rife with pear trees, blossoming white and riotous even before their leaves have unfurled, and Yu Qing coils up Yi Hian's hair and studs it with flowers while Kuei wriggles his tiny toes in the dirt.
Yu Qing has just tucked a blooming twig behind Yi Hian's ear, and Yi Hian has turned to smile at her, so she is the one who sees it first. A glint of red among the branches - and the leafless pear trees are not good cover. Yi Hian clutches Yu Qing's elbow and yanks her sideways, dragging them both to the ground as the first fireball crackles through the space their heads occupied a moment ago.
"Kuei," she gasps into Yu Qing's shoulder, and Yu Qing scrambles to her hands and knees and darts toward the little prince, who has begun to wail in startlement. Yi Hian shoves herself upright and clenches her hands into fists.
Yu Qing is a lady of many merits, or she would never have risen so high as to attend one of the king's first-rank wives; but Earthbending is not among them.
Yi Hian has not used it for anything practical in a very long time. She has learned bending as it applies to the arts of court, sculpture and small tricks and games meant to charm and amuse.
She has never used it against a person.
Her first stone flies wide, crashes into one of the pear trees and tumbles to the ground; but she raises a second, a third. The Fire Nation soldier sends a blast toward where Yu Qing is curled around Kuei, but he must retrain his aim and waste a fireball deflecting Yi Hian's second boulder.
Yi Hian takes the opportunity to turn and look: Yu Qing was struck upon the hip and arm, but she has not let go of Kuei - he was playing, as he so often does, by one of the neatly-shaped garden streams, and Yu Qing has lifted him sideways and settled herself halfway in the water to douse the flames.
Yi Hian turns back and slams her foot into the ground, raising another stone from the earth - she has been inattentive, she has looked away too long, and surely it will cost her; except it does not.
Her third stone - her third stone struck as it was intended to. He was thrown backward by the force of it, before he hit the ground and the full weight of the boulder came down. She looks away from what is left of the Fire Nation soldier and swallows twice, thrice, but it does not help; she drops to her knees and vomits in the middle of the Garden of Purest Bloom.
Four:
Yi Hian is lauded for what happened at the Palace of Endless Harmony. She protected the prince and the king with her own two hands and her life, and it makes a stirring tale for the gossip-mongers to spread. No one mentions the blood, the vomit; the glint of shattered bone in the sun does not make it into the poems. But then it never does.
Daoyeng is pleased with her. They have always gotten along well, and she did give him a son; now that she is becoming the subject of songs in the street, the model of an unflinching Earth Kingdom woman, she is an excellent choice for principal wife.
She is made queen and given a dozen titles so long that it takes her days to memorize them all. Her father is posthumously ennobled yet further, remembered as a trusted minister instead of a minor official, and her mother's family is quietly moved from the Middle Ring into the Upper. Her mother has not spoken to her since Li Yi Tan was found dead in his cell by the Dai Li, but she writes Yi Hian a stiffly-worded missive to thank her; it makes Yi Hian want to cringe. But she is the queen, and queens do not cringe.
Daoyeng stays pleased with her for some time, but Yi Hian is not his only wife and would not wish to be; she does not begrudge him the nights when his summons are sent to some other door. She concentrates her efforts on being charming and undemanding, on attending audiences regularly and giving good advice when asked, and on subtly reminding him as often as possible that she is the mother of the only prince.
But all things are impermanent. Partway through the year Kuei turns three, Lady Jun takes to her bed and bears the Earth King a second son.
As always, Yi Hian hears of it nearly the moment it happens, most likely before even Daoyeng, because of Yu Qing. And Yu Qing knows what it means as well as Yi Hian does - better, even.
A lone prince is precious. Even Lady Jun had known it; after that first dangerous year, there was more to be lost by Kuei's death than by his life even for Lady Jun, with the war and all the Earth Kingdom at stake. But if she has a prince of her own, a child that may be advanced to Kuei's position if it is made empty-
All the king's children are Yi Hian's, now, by all official measures, no matter which wife bears them; but if Lady Jun has her way, that will not matter. She no longer has any reason to keep Kuei alive, and a dozen to remove him.
Yi Hian forces herself to take a deep breath. She can waste no time; Lady Jun will make her move the moment she is able to, and even being confined to bed will not stop her. Even without a child newly born, Jun would never have touched Kuei herself - that is not her way.
"Whatever servants you trust most," Yi Hian says to Yu Qing, "get them here. We will not be able to do this alone."
*
It is such a shock, they say in the streets of the Upper Ring. Such a scandal! Oh, perhaps it is not so surprising in its outlines; a man with many wives is a man with many worries, they say, and it was the king's own mother who insisted that wives not spend their days wholly confined to the inner quarters. Something of the sort was bound to happen.
But one of the king's own ministers! And a thorough search of his rooms had revealed a box of red cloth, each singed in a different pattern - secret Fire Nation orders, there could be no doubt of it. The war had seemed so distant from Ba Sing Se, so far from the Upper Ring, before the breach that had allowed those assassins into the Palace of Endless Harmony. Surely this was how they had accomplished it. The Earth Kingdom's superiority is so great in every respect - surely it could not have been done without the aid of such a spy.
Such great misfortune! A second prince, after so long - everyone had been pleased, and there had been fireworks in the streets the night of his birth. And now it is all uncertainty: the king cannot keep another man's son so close. Oh, surely the child will not be killed - they cannot be sure his father is not the king, after all, and if something should happen to the elder prince it would be fortunate to have another. Still, it is a shame.
The wife has pleaded her ignorance, of course; and the king has been generous. She will accompany her father and all the rest of her family to his new posting near the southern mountains, where a minister of his precise rank happens to be urgently needed. Not the front lines; but the mid-south is hot and unpleasant, disease-ridden, and the minister is unlikely to ever be invited to visit the capital.
Lucky for the boy, though, that he will be given over to the queen! She has taken such excellent care of the elder prince already.
Five:
They say that the fifty-first Earth King died abruptly in his sleep - unfortunate, that he should pass so quickly with his eldest son only four years old, but he went peacefully and without pain, and deserved to. An excellent king, who met a not-unpleasant fate.
They say this because they were not in his chamber when it happened.
Yi Hian wakes to a quiet sound like a choked-off breath, and the feeling of a narrow line of cold metal against the side of her neck. She had fallen asleep on her side; she opens her eyes, and is met with Daoyeng's face, still wide-eyed with pain and surprise as his blood seeps into the pillow. They must have stabbed him very precisely, to have done it so quickly and caused so much damage. The stain has nearly reached Yi Hian's face already.
The blade is still upon her neck, so she does not move. "I am awake," she whispers into the quiet, and whoever holds the sword upon her hesitates.
"Idiot," someone hisses, and Yi Hian knows the voice: that is Long Feng. "Do it - she can scream all she likes, it does not matter. No one will hear but the Dai Li."
"Wait," Yi Hian says, and scrambles to think. "My son-"
"An unfortunate loss," says Long Feng, somewhere behind her. "Things are as they must be. The king did not understand what was best - what was best for Ba Sing Se, what was best to maintain order." He huffs out an irritated breath. "Our mission is sacred, handed down by the Avatar. He had no right to speak as he did, to disrupt what must be done."
Yi Hian spares a moment to wish she knew what he meant. Oh, she has received audiences with Daoyeng, but she is only a wife - not privy to his meetings with his generals, or with his highest advisors. She looks again at Daoyeng's unseeing face, and feels a twinge of regret. She was so very careful, so very quiet and delicate and inoffensive; they never truly talked. She suspects she might have genuinely liked him, if they had.
But now is not the time.
"You are a clever man, Long Feng," she says, lying with her back to him and her cheek smeared with her husband's blood. The sword is still against her neck. "Do not be a fool."
"You wish to beg for your life, I suppose." Long Feng sounds nothing but bored by the prospect.
Yi Hian takes a risk, and rolls over. It is never wholly dark, in Ba Sing Se; there are lanterns somewhere at every hour. She can see a man in a dark uniform - not the livery of the Dai Li - and it is he who holds the sword. Long Feng stands beside him, attired likewise, and looking down at her with a raised eyebrow. "I wish to help you," she says. "Think. What will happen, if we are all found dead? Another round of Fire Nation assassins, perhaps, another spy - what a comforting thought for the Upper Ring."
"Fear promotes order," Long Feng says.
"Comfort also does," Yi Hian says, "and panic does not. A man alone may die in the night and prompt few questions; fewer, if his mourning wife will attest to his uninteresting death." She apologizes silently to Daoyeng for the dishonor she will do him through such a lie, but it cannot be helped. "Kuei is only four - who could fault you for stepping in, to keep the burden of rulership from him until he is older? Think, Long Feng."
Her heart is pounding; she lies in a bed beside a dead man, and blood is drying on her face. Long Feng looks down at her with narrowed eyes.
"And what of you?" he says. "You will hold this knowledge in reserve like a game-tile, to be played at precisely the moment when I expect it least."
"I will be wrecked by grief," she answers. "I will follow the other wives of the dead king to one of the cloisters in the northern mountains - that is how it is always done, is it not? I will go and dedicate myself to the spirits, secure in the knowledge that the trusted Dai Li have the care of my son." She cannot help letting a little irony slide into her voice, but Long Feng does not seem to notice; he is turning the idea over, lips pursed.
It is dangerous - but if he thinks Kuei will be useful, he will not kill him, and as long as Kuei lives, she does not care. It is dangerous; but then it always is.
"Sir?" the man with the sword says.
"Lift your blade," Long Feng says, and Yi Hian closes her eyes and breathes.
Fandom: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Rating: PG-13ish? Violence, definitely, though not too explicit.
Characters/Pairing: OC/51st Earth King, I suppose? Kuei is the only genuinely canonical character in here, and he is four years old at the oldest.
Wordcount: 3,800. (LOOK LOOK I WROTE ... PRETTY SHORT FIC!)
Summary: One person Kuei's mother might have been, and five ways she might have saved him. (Also posted @ the AO3.)
Disclaimer: Places and people you recognize from canon are not mine.
Acknowledgements:
idriya, of course, was my beta; and MAJOR thanks to seta_suzume/Other Notes: There is ... a somewhat tenuous relationship between this fic and canon; I tried not to outright contradict anything, but we don't know a whole lot about Kuei's parents or about Earth King court/politics, so I filled in a lot of blanks with the contents of my own brain. As I so often do. This got away from me a little bit,
seta_suzume, but I hope it's still something like what you wanted! (... If not, I will totally write you something else!)The title (and cut text) are drawn from the poem "The courage that my mother had", by Edna St. Vincent Millay. It seemed apropos, considering.
(One person Kuei's mother might have been, and five ways she might have saved him.)
One:
It is with the wives of the Earth King as it is with the women of any noble house. To bear the child is theirs, work that cannot be passed off to another. But once the baby is out, there are nurses aplenty to be found in the streets of Ba Sing Se, even in the Upper Ring - perfectly respectable women who have lost their own infants but are still able to nurse. Oh, the wives of the king visit their children, now and again, for the Earth King and the people both think well of a loving mother. But they do not nurse them; they do not sleep alongside them. No woman of sense would risk losing the Earth King's favor by making herself unavailable to his whims.
So it is possible that Yi Hian is not a woman of sense. Certainly there are many people who say she is not; she hears the maids mutter, sees them shake their heads, and Yu Qing, who has been with her the longest of all her ladies, has come to her more than once with apologetic hints that the king looks very fondly on Lady Minjiang these days.
But her son is the only prince yet in a sea of daughters. The week after he was born, Lady Jun came to see him, smiling, and rested her slim cool hand on his tiny forehead; the day after that, one of Lady Jun's women came by to take a little work off Yu Qing's hands. If Yi Hian had not risen early and interrupted her, she might have left the corner of that blanket tangled round his little head.
An accident, she had said, pressing her face to the floor; and Yi Hian had had nothing to contradict her except the dread in her heart.
Yi Hian sleeps in her son's room, after that. She tends to him herself, feeds him and bathes him; her silks become spotted with water and spit and occasional bile, and Yu Qing turns the Earth King's messengers away with Yi Hian's deepest and most sorrowful apologies.
By year's end, Yi Hian has not seen King Daoyeng in eighteen months, and Kuei has taken his first step.
A woman of sense would regret it. So it is possible that Yi Hian is not a woman of sense.
Two:
When Kuei is nearly two years old, Yi Hian returns to court - she was not precisely gone, only removed to the outskirts of the Upper Ring, but she might as well have been in seclusion for all the banquets she attended. She has paid little attention to anything but Kuei.
But she has given the Earth King a son, and that son has lived to his first birthday; she has been promoted in rank accordingly, and is now Noble Consort Cheng. The Earth King's principal wife has been dead nearly two years, taken by the sickness that struck even the Upper Ring despite the walls' best efforts, and the mourning period is nearly over. Yi Hian has been incautious, but her timing appears lucky now.
She is unused to the sheer number of strange faces; she has been so long confined with only Yu Qing and her other ladies, and one of the king's doctors now and again for Kuei. It is a relief to reach the inner quarters at last.
The Noble Consort's rooms are vast and pleasant, and set away from the rest; it is almost quiet, even in the middle of the palace's bustle, and there is a courtyard behind with a garden and pavilion. Yi Hian sets Kuei loose on the carefully-tended grass, and he discovers the brook, guided by a sculpted path into artful configurations, almost immediately.
He loves the sound of the water, smacks it with his hand and giggles, and Yi Hian is giggling with him when Yu Qing touches her shoulder. "Lady," Yu Qing says softly, and Yi Hian has gone still in her heart even before she turns her head; Yu Qing is only so gentle, so informal, when she has something terrible to say.
Yi Hian's throat is dry, she cannot answer. She nods her head instead.
"I am sorry," Yu Qing says. "I thought you should know before - before it was announced. One of the kitchen girls has told me: the Dai Li have raided the house of Li Yi Tan, and he is under arrest. Long Feng himself led the detachment."
Yu Qing does not have to tell her the charges. Disloyalty to the house of the Earth King, subversion of the law of the city, conduct unbecoming a citizen; it does not matter. It will be serious and it will be difficult to dismiss. Long Feng would not be involved otherwise. He is not the head of the Dai Li, not yet - but he is highly-ranked, rising quickly, and he is not a man who wastes time with matters below his notice.
Yi Hian puts a hand to her forehead, and makes herself breathe. Li Yi Tan is an inconspicuous man, a man of few enemies; the only thing that is unusual about him is that he is her cousin, and what are the odds that the Dai Li should find cause for suspicion in Li Yi Tan the same day Yi Hian returns to the palace?
Low, Yi Hian thinks. Low, except that the presence of Lady Jun makes all odds higher, all unfortunate coincidences more likely.
Lucky timing, she had thought, but not for something like this. She has not even had a chance to request audience with the king - her year's absence has rendered her place precarious, even though she has been fortunate. This episode, this cruelty toward Li Yi Tan: this is a test, and Yi Hian is in no position to withstand it. And what would come next, if she did? If she made herself a shield about her cousin, despite whatever evidence will undoubtedly be found among his belongings - such close associations, people would say. Why does she work so hard to save her cousin, her cousin who has been found out by the Dai Li, who are the Earth King's right hand? Yi Hian does not have half Lady Jun's imagination, and even she can compose a fair helping of poison to spread with a moment's thought.
Kuei is still crouched by the brook, plunging his plump stubby hands in the water and shrieking at the cold. "Mama!" he shouts, and laughs, and sparkling drops fly from his fingertips when he waves his arms.
Yi Hian bites her lip. She was fond of Li Yi Tan, when they were children; he was unassuming and pleasant, and still is if his reputation is anything to go by. And no one is sent on their way from a Dai Li compound with a bow and a sincere apology. There is a saying: no man arrested by the Dai Li ever remains innocent for long.
But she cannot save him without risking herself, and she cannot risk herself without risking Kuei.
"Time it well," she says to Yu Qing past the sting in her throat. "Only after it is known, and leave a suitable period to account for shock. Tell them how distraught I am - how the king need only send me a general to lend me the use of a sword, and I will expunge this dishonor from his house forever." She snorts, because she will not cry. "Weep, if you can."
Yu Qing is not fooled. "As if for my own cousin," she says gently, hand on Yi Hian's shoulder, and Yi Hian squeezes her eyes shut. "If there is a way to arrange for something to be taken to him, something that will let him end it quickly, I will see that it is done."
Yi Hian fumbles for Yu Qing's hand, squeezes hard, because her throat has closed up so tightly no more words will come out.
Three:
The Palace of Endless Harmony is not outside Ba Sing Se - no king in the last three thousand years has set foot beyond the walls of the city, much less built themselves a retreat there. It was the great project of King Hu, who was Daoyeng's father; it lies within the outer wall but outside the city proper, nestled among the hills just beyond Lake Laogai. Sometimes it is also called the Palace of Ten Thousand Gardens - it is said that an assassin sent to kill King Hu failed because he could not find his way inside through them all.
Daoyeng's whims are sudden; Lady Minjiang's fall is nearly as precipitous as her rise, and three days after Minjiang's brothers are all ordered to frigid posts in the northern mountains, Yi Hian - Noble Consort Cheng - is invited to join the king in making use of the Palace of Endless Harmony. Affairs of state have kept the king from his son for too long, and no doubt the boy would enjoy the trip.
Kuei does; he was two with the passing of the new year, as such things are reckoned in Ba Sing Se, and the upper kingdom is warming with spring now. There may not be ten thousand gardens at the Palace of Endless Harmony, but however many there are, they will be beautiful.
It is strange to be outside the city; Yi Hian is not used to it. Even in the Upper Ring, there is always a certain bustle - the sound of trains, the tremble of Earthbending, the voices of ministers and generals calling out orders. On the far side of the lake, it is so quiet that Yi Hian almost forgets there is a war.
It does not last.
It has been ten days, and she has developed something of a routine: she wakes Kuei herself, with a kiss to his forehead and a pinch to his plump little sides; and when they have eaten - with the king, more often than not - they retreat to the Garden of Purest Bloom while the ministers have their audience. The Garden of Purest Bloom is rife with pear trees, blossoming white and riotous even before their leaves have unfurled, and Yu Qing coils up Yi Hian's hair and studs it with flowers while Kuei wriggles his tiny toes in the dirt.
Yu Qing has just tucked a blooming twig behind Yi Hian's ear, and Yi Hian has turned to smile at her, so she is the one who sees it first. A glint of red among the branches - and the leafless pear trees are not good cover. Yi Hian clutches Yu Qing's elbow and yanks her sideways, dragging them both to the ground as the first fireball crackles through the space their heads occupied a moment ago.
"Kuei," she gasps into Yu Qing's shoulder, and Yu Qing scrambles to her hands and knees and darts toward the little prince, who has begun to wail in startlement. Yi Hian shoves herself upright and clenches her hands into fists.
Yu Qing is a lady of many merits, or she would never have risen so high as to attend one of the king's first-rank wives; but Earthbending is not among them.
Yi Hian has not used it for anything practical in a very long time. She has learned bending as it applies to the arts of court, sculpture and small tricks and games meant to charm and amuse.
She has never used it against a person.
Her first stone flies wide, crashes into one of the pear trees and tumbles to the ground; but she raises a second, a third. The Fire Nation soldier sends a blast toward where Yu Qing is curled around Kuei, but he must retrain his aim and waste a fireball deflecting Yi Hian's second boulder.
Yi Hian takes the opportunity to turn and look: Yu Qing was struck upon the hip and arm, but she has not let go of Kuei - he was playing, as he so often does, by one of the neatly-shaped garden streams, and Yu Qing has lifted him sideways and settled herself halfway in the water to douse the flames.
Yi Hian turns back and slams her foot into the ground, raising another stone from the earth - she has been inattentive, she has looked away too long, and surely it will cost her; except it does not.
Her third stone - her third stone struck as it was intended to. He was thrown backward by the force of it, before he hit the ground and the full weight of the boulder came down. She looks away from what is left of the Fire Nation soldier and swallows twice, thrice, but it does not help; she drops to her knees and vomits in the middle of the Garden of Purest Bloom.
Four:
Yi Hian is lauded for what happened at the Palace of Endless Harmony. She protected the prince and the king with her own two hands and her life, and it makes a stirring tale for the gossip-mongers to spread. No one mentions the blood, the vomit; the glint of shattered bone in the sun does not make it into the poems. But then it never does.
Daoyeng is pleased with her. They have always gotten along well, and she did give him a son; now that she is becoming the subject of songs in the street, the model of an unflinching Earth Kingdom woman, she is an excellent choice for principal wife.
She is made queen and given a dozen titles so long that it takes her days to memorize them all. Her father is posthumously ennobled yet further, remembered as a trusted minister instead of a minor official, and her mother's family is quietly moved from the Middle Ring into the Upper. Her mother has not spoken to her since Li Yi Tan was found dead in his cell by the Dai Li, but she writes Yi Hian a stiffly-worded missive to thank her; it makes Yi Hian want to cringe. But she is the queen, and queens do not cringe.
Daoyeng stays pleased with her for some time, but Yi Hian is not his only wife and would not wish to be; she does not begrudge him the nights when his summons are sent to some other door. She concentrates her efforts on being charming and undemanding, on attending audiences regularly and giving good advice when asked, and on subtly reminding him as often as possible that she is the mother of the only prince.
But all things are impermanent. Partway through the year Kuei turns three, Lady Jun takes to her bed and bears the Earth King a second son.
As always, Yi Hian hears of it nearly the moment it happens, most likely before even Daoyeng, because of Yu Qing. And Yu Qing knows what it means as well as Yi Hian does - better, even.
A lone prince is precious. Even Lady Jun had known it; after that first dangerous year, there was more to be lost by Kuei's death than by his life even for Lady Jun, with the war and all the Earth Kingdom at stake. But if she has a prince of her own, a child that may be advanced to Kuei's position if it is made empty-
All the king's children are Yi Hian's, now, by all official measures, no matter which wife bears them; but if Lady Jun has her way, that will not matter. She no longer has any reason to keep Kuei alive, and a dozen to remove him.
Yi Hian forces herself to take a deep breath. She can waste no time; Lady Jun will make her move the moment she is able to, and even being confined to bed will not stop her. Even without a child newly born, Jun would never have touched Kuei herself - that is not her way.
"Whatever servants you trust most," Yi Hian says to Yu Qing, "get them here. We will not be able to do this alone."
*
It is such a shock, they say in the streets of the Upper Ring. Such a scandal! Oh, perhaps it is not so surprising in its outlines; a man with many wives is a man with many worries, they say, and it was the king's own mother who insisted that wives not spend their days wholly confined to the inner quarters. Something of the sort was bound to happen.
But one of the king's own ministers! And a thorough search of his rooms had revealed a box of red cloth, each singed in a different pattern - secret Fire Nation orders, there could be no doubt of it. The war had seemed so distant from Ba Sing Se, so far from the Upper Ring, before the breach that had allowed those assassins into the Palace of Endless Harmony. Surely this was how they had accomplished it. The Earth Kingdom's superiority is so great in every respect - surely it could not have been done without the aid of such a spy.
Such great misfortune! A second prince, after so long - everyone had been pleased, and there had been fireworks in the streets the night of his birth. And now it is all uncertainty: the king cannot keep another man's son so close. Oh, surely the child will not be killed - they cannot be sure his father is not the king, after all, and if something should happen to the elder prince it would be fortunate to have another. Still, it is a shame.
The wife has pleaded her ignorance, of course; and the king has been generous. She will accompany her father and all the rest of her family to his new posting near the southern mountains, where a minister of his precise rank happens to be urgently needed. Not the front lines; but the mid-south is hot and unpleasant, disease-ridden, and the minister is unlikely to ever be invited to visit the capital.
Lucky for the boy, though, that he will be given over to the queen! She has taken such excellent care of the elder prince already.
Five:
They say that the fifty-first Earth King died abruptly in his sleep - unfortunate, that he should pass so quickly with his eldest son only four years old, but he went peacefully and without pain, and deserved to. An excellent king, who met a not-unpleasant fate.
They say this because they were not in his chamber when it happened.
Yi Hian wakes to a quiet sound like a choked-off breath, and the feeling of a narrow line of cold metal against the side of her neck. She had fallen asleep on her side; she opens her eyes, and is met with Daoyeng's face, still wide-eyed with pain and surprise as his blood seeps into the pillow. They must have stabbed him very precisely, to have done it so quickly and caused so much damage. The stain has nearly reached Yi Hian's face already.
The blade is still upon her neck, so she does not move. "I am awake," she whispers into the quiet, and whoever holds the sword upon her hesitates.
"Idiot," someone hisses, and Yi Hian knows the voice: that is Long Feng. "Do it - she can scream all she likes, it does not matter. No one will hear but the Dai Li."
"Wait," Yi Hian says, and scrambles to think. "My son-"
"An unfortunate loss," says Long Feng, somewhere behind her. "Things are as they must be. The king did not understand what was best - what was best for Ba Sing Se, what was best to maintain order." He huffs out an irritated breath. "Our mission is sacred, handed down by the Avatar. He had no right to speak as he did, to disrupt what must be done."
Yi Hian spares a moment to wish she knew what he meant. Oh, she has received audiences with Daoyeng, but she is only a wife - not privy to his meetings with his generals, or with his highest advisors. She looks again at Daoyeng's unseeing face, and feels a twinge of regret. She was so very careful, so very quiet and delicate and inoffensive; they never truly talked. She suspects she might have genuinely liked him, if they had.
But now is not the time.
"You are a clever man, Long Feng," she says, lying with her back to him and her cheek smeared with her husband's blood. The sword is still against her neck. "Do not be a fool."
"You wish to beg for your life, I suppose." Long Feng sounds nothing but bored by the prospect.
Yi Hian takes a risk, and rolls over. It is never wholly dark, in Ba Sing Se; there are lanterns somewhere at every hour. She can see a man in a dark uniform - not the livery of the Dai Li - and it is he who holds the sword. Long Feng stands beside him, attired likewise, and looking down at her with a raised eyebrow. "I wish to help you," she says. "Think. What will happen, if we are all found dead? Another round of Fire Nation assassins, perhaps, another spy - what a comforting thought for the Upper Ring."
"Fear promotes order," Long Feng says.
"Comfort also does," Yi Hian says, "and panic does not. A man alone may die in the night and prompt few questions; fewer, if his mourning wife will attest to his uninteresting death." She apologizes silently to Daoyeng for the dishonor she will do him through such a lie, but it cannot be helped. "Kuei is only four - who could fault you for stepping in, to keep the burden of rulership from him until he is older? Think, Long Feng."
Her heart is pounding; she lies in a bed beside a dead man, and blood is drying on her face. Long Feng looks down at her with narrowed eyes.
"And what of you?" he says. "You will hold this knowledge in reserve like a game-tile, to be played at precisely the moment when I expect it least."
"I will be wrecked by grief," she answers. "I will follow the other wives of the dead king to one of the cloisters in the northern mountains - that is how it is always done, is it not? I will go and dedicate myself to the spirits, secure in the knowledge that the trusted Dai Li have the care of my son." She cannot help letting a little irony slide into her voice, but Long Feng does not seem to notice; he is turning the idea over, lips pursed.
It is dangerous - but if he thinks Kuei will be useful, he will not kill him, and as long as Kuei lives, she does not care. It is dangerous; but then it always is.
"Sir?" the man with the sword says.
"Lift your blade," Long Feng says, and Yi Hian closes her eyes and breathes.
